18 Mayıs 2010 Salı
Near Death On The Worlds Worst Road - Bolivia Travel Story
Read any guide book on Bolivia and you will find gushing reports of a traditional local culture and your impending discovery of the El Dorado like ‘real South America’. Get in quick before it changes!. It was after just a few weeks in the country that this traditional culture came flying past me, my best mate, fellow bus passengers and through a neighbouring window. For in Bolivia serious road accidents are as much a part local life as panama hats and t-shirt inspiring socialist revolutions. The guide books are right. Bolivia is country with a great many draw cards for the average tourist. From the Amazon jungle to the vast salt flats, said traditional culture, the brilliant white of the Andes and an abundance of cheap cocaine.* Bolivia has enough to keep you on your toes. When you’re with a good mate in a country so appealing to the senses, and to the budget, it seems almost like nothing can go wrong. It might be this sort of free and easy attitude that one so easily finds on the road (and is often quickly lost at home), that lures many travellers towards one of the countries more dubious attractions. Perhaps it says a lot about a country that this particular drawcard is a piece of infrastructure so monumentally poor it’s been rightly dubbed the world’s most dangerous road. This danger was never an attraction for me or my hetro life partner (think a male friend of significant importance, being on mancation, a bromance). After a few months in South America we had become all too familiar with the daily dice of riding local buses at speed along routes on which mountain goats would struggle keeping a sure footing. For us the infamous ‘most dangerous’ road was more an obstacle in the backpacker quest to get to a destination by any means for as little as is possible (in this instance 16 hours on the bus for less than the price of the local daily tabloid back in Australia) than it was a goal in itself. The road in question winds down from the capital La Paz, through mountain passes and eventually into the Amazon basin. A popular activity is to mountain bike the worst of the road: A silly challenge posed by operators cashing in on some travellers burning need to tell people at home just how ‘crazy’ their trip was (just Google it or look on You Tube for examples). Our goal was past this section of road. Rurrenabaque is a town nestled at the foot of the mountains and is a popular gateway for budget travel into the jungle and wetlands. This was our destination and after over a month spent in the mountains over 10,000 feet finally hitting the oxygen rich jungle was a legal high enjoyed without the risk of ten years in a Bolivian prison (though this amount of jail time might give you the material for a best seller, or win you fame on ‘banged up abroad’). The finer details of our week in the jungle on a ‘tour’ costing $6.00 US dollars per day (food, transport and guide included) are probably better left for another story. The short version starts with an accidental mohawk haircut, disco clothing, snakes, sandflies, jaguars and an Israeli companion losing his mind in the jungle 30 hours from help. Our time in the jungle finished with a 24 hour bout of food poising so violent I can barely remember making my way back onto the bus to La Paz. It might have been an easier day if I hadn’t recovered so quickly once we got going. For days in the jungle and now following us back to the city was rain, and lots of it. This is not a great thing if you are on a dodgy bus humming along dirt mountain roads with the driver showing scant regard to corners or his passengers safety. If there is one rule for bus travel in South America it might be that the more religious paraphernalia driver has at the front of the bus the more worry this should inspire in the passenger. You might be not ready to meet your maker but the more obviuosly prepared the driver very well maybe. So it was that we were making into the mountains at speed. We were at around 4,000 feet (a safe estimate when you can’t see the ground beneath the road) when the bus shuddered, skidded towards the edge of the road, back the other way and tipped over. The impact sent passengers from one side of the bus crashing onto us and into the windows. One finely dressed Bolivian woman ended up in my lap after hitting the window next to me. The fuel tank had ruptured and we had diesel up to our knees, it was dark and it was carnage. Luckily nobody was killed. While there were a few serious injuries the end result of us losing control was far better than if we had ended up at the bottom of the mountain. After four hours we were pulled straight by a passing truck and with a jerry rigged tank providing the fuel we were on our way again. The driver put his foot down as ‘he was now behind schedule’. We got off before the 'worst' of the road ahead, sat in the dark with a bottle of local rum and waited for the morning to continue our jouney on a new bus. I’ll never forget it. While a new road has been built to bypass much traffic away from the worst stretch of the road, if your riding along the old trail spare a thought for those that were not as lucky as us and came of the cliffs with alarming regularity (250 or so per year). You will be riding past the site of literally hundreds of peoples graves.
Throuh The Roof In Quito - Bolivia Travel Story
Tad and I had been in Ecuador for two weeks when he nearly died. We had planned our around the world trip together for as long as we could remember, and it had very nearly ended with the thud of Tad’s hide onto the floor of a Quito courtyard, leaving a Tad-shaped hole in the roof several metres above him. Hailing from Los Angeles California, Tad’s been a close mate since we met by chance on a family vacation to Hawaii when we were both 16. We hit it off quickly and found that we both wanted nothing more than get travelling as soon as we got the chance. Since meeting we have been back and forth travelling through the States and Oz, all the while planning the big trip in question. The trip started with a relatively uneventful 6 weeks in New Zealand. Our second stop was Quito, Ecuador. With Tad’s fluency in Spanish and our first few weeks coinciding with Carnival (it’s not just Brazil that goes nuts around mid February) we were both enjoying the place and were pretty much into the travel groove by then. The one thing we both struggling with, along with most travellers over there, was the bus rides. Taking a trip through mountain passes with a suicidal maniac behind the wheel of a bus riddled with bullet holes from the previous week’s hold up is enough to drive most to a drink. We did not resist this urge to steady our nerves with a beverage after a particularly harrowing overnight bus ride from the coast back to Quito. Arriving back late afternoon we were offered a drink by a kindly Columbian pirate DVD salesman staying at our hostel (apparently not all Columbians find themselves trading the one particular class A item). So it was that we had a few shots of a Columbian liquor that could only be described as a drink seriously missing a warning label and or disclaimer against any personal damage about to be inflicted. With our Hostel sitting on the fringe of what was considered the ‘safe zone’ (or tourist ghetto) it wasn’t far then to enough clubs and bars to keep us occupied till the early hours. The details of the later hours of the morning are sketchy, but the clear details remain that there was a fall from a decent height, three hours of concussed confusion and a bruised backside and shoulder that would remain problematic for months. After piecing together the little memory and information we had the extended version is as follows. The story finds our hero heading back from the clubs around 3.00am. With myself fast asleep in front of MTV on the hostel couch. Tad stumbled through the dorm out onto the balcony. It is worth noting that said balcony was three storeys above the neighbours’ place (which was bordered by a high lock out fence and razor wire). Looking for away to either amuse or relieve himself (we will never know) Tad decided to balance on the edge of the balcony, at which point he toppled over and free fell two storeys through a garage roof and then another storey into a very luckily unoccupied residence next door. We only know this as our mate the DVD guy had seen the whole thing go down. While the DVD guy did check on Tad’s welfare, he told us that as Tad looked OK, he had decided to go back to sleep (A kind and caring man). All Tad remembers was waking up not having a clue as to his whereabouts and realising that he was locked inside a strange courtyard. For three hours he searched for an exit (including through the house), only then to look up and see the hostel roof next door. He then eventually yelled up at the hostel for help and was rescued by our confused hotel owner. They say incidents involving drugs and alcohol are your biggest risks overseas. I guess ‘they’ are right. We always laugh about what would have happened if the neighbours had been home. A stray gringo crashing through their roof would have been unwelcome to say the least, and I cringe to think that they would have probably been armed. It was one of many times that either he or I would have close shaves on that trip, but the only one that could really be put down to sheer drunken stupidity. The bruises lasted months but the story seems to have legs of its own.
Salvador Carnaval Machete Attack - Brazil Travel Story
WHERE: Carnaval, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. WHEN: February 2008. WHO: 4 Australian males in mid 20's.
It's as simple as this: if my younger brother's reflexes had been a split second blunter, he would be dead. He would have been murdered 5 hours after arriving in Salvador, with no witnesses and no way of his travel partners knowing where he was.
Interestingly, days earlier on the island of Morro de Sao Paulo, a short catamaran ride from Salvador, a now eerie warning had been received by a complete stranger. Antony, a local boxer and capoiera enthusiast, showed us his three horrifying scars from a machete attack in Salvador. He proudly revealed massive, thick, and puffy scars on one of his hands, the side of his stomach, and, scarily, the top of his head. He told us that Salvador, the Bahian capital sitting a short catamaran ride from this idlyllic island, could be peligroso - dangerous. The story captured our attention, but like all stories that will never happen to you, failed to chip away at our keenness.
It was around midnight on our first night in Salvador that Pulse, just turned 23, and having been displaced from his friends, decided to walk from the main square of old town Pelourinho to the seaside barrio of Barra for a look, drunk and alone. He heard from someone that Barra was where the action was and knew what direction to go. But he had no idea it was 5 km away. He could speak no Brazilian Portuguese whatsoever.
At the best of times, Pulse is a casual man. He had been given the nickname Pulse by teammates at Collingwood, a Melbourne club in the Australian Football League, because it was unclear if his heart rate could ever skyrocket. Even in the intense atmosphere of professional football, Pulse was apparently always calm, never flustered. It was this laid back nature, combined with a number of cans of Skol, that would lead him down an unlit alleyway to urinate on his walk.
Standing 6 foot 2 inches tall, and a fit 85kg, he wouldn't make the ideal target for a young Brazilian thief. But in this alley, with his shorts down, drunk, and with two fleet footed, and probably experienced assailants, Pulse was edging perilously close to the definition of a sitting duck.
The attack went like this. Whilst actually urinating against a wall, Pulse, in the corner of his eye, noticed a blade coming for his head. Instinctively, the right hand that had been holding his penis, thrust out and up to protect himself. This right palm clutched to the assailiants wrist. It stopped the 30 cm machete blade a foot from the side of his head. He states simply that if he had been any later, or missed the kids hand, the machete would have sliced his head open, and he would be dead.
But he was not out of danger yet. The assailant repeatedly attempted to thrust the machete towards his head, half a dozen times getting quite close to striking. Pulse kept his grip on his wrist, luckily stronger than the kid, said to be slim, black, ragged, and maybe aged 18.
Suddenly, and horrifyingly, Pulse felt the presence of another kid behind him. If this 2nd thug had a machete also, he was surely finished. But he didn't. Instead, he rifled his hands through the back pocket of Pulse's boardshorts, looking obviously for money. Amazingly, only 5 minutes earlier Pulse had moved his money, 150 R (about $50), from that pocket into his shoe. He had remembered my earlier tip from someone against pickpockets. All the thief got this time was what was left in his pocket. Two condoms.
After about 10 seconds of struggling against the machete kids, Pulse managed to break free, and sprinted to the end of the alley, where the lights of the crowded street shone. The kids fled the other away.
But Pulse had not seen the last of his troubles for this night. One hour later, we were all together again, having bumped into each other. We were drinking in a semi-crowded dirt street a couple of blocks north of the main Pelourinho square. A young black fellow was chatting with us. He seemed cool, and seemed to be the only foreigners around, but I suddenly noticed in the eyes of a nearby local girl that something was wrong. She warned me to get away from this guy, and realising she was right, I told him to go away. He didn't. And Pulse, completely unaware and ignoring our requests to come with us, was suddenly separated from the group, and was surrounded by characters who had coe form nowhere. Before we realised what was happening, the creep snatched at Pulse's pocket, ripping it almost off his shorts, and ran.
This time the theif missed out on condoms. But he did get Pulse 150 R, which Pulse had for some reason since the machete getaway, moved from his shoe back to his ripped pocket.
A classic first night, it wasn't the last of the muggings for our group that week. I had to fend off two teenage kids who tried to rip my pocket off on a dark Barra main beach, having followed me from the toilets up on the road, and sprung form nowhere. I managed to get my hand over the pocket, before both kids tried to retch my fingers away. I was staggered when one of them, desperate for me to release my grip, knealt down and clamped his teeth hard into my wrist. The the only time I've been phyically mugged, I was surprisingly calm, though there was clearly no other white people in the vicinity. The local girl I was with on the beach had reeled back in horror, screaming. Then suddenly, not strong enough to overpower me, the kids fled. Maybe it was lucky they didn't have machetes. We later heard a foreigner had been murdered on one of the beaches during the week.
Another night, Partyboy was swimming in the ocean on the main beach with a local girl. They were in underwear only, their clothes in a neat pile on the sand. Suddenly he noticed some kids heading towards the pile. He thought about running into shore to stope them, but his calculations that he was too far out from the beach, were correct. The kids grabbed everything, and bolted. Stranded in jocks, they had to work out how to get back to Pelourinho, 5 km away. A nice man lent a Medellin soccer top to his lady friend, keeping her modesty. But Partyboy, wearing only a set of litte-boy jockets with blue and white vertical stripes, was exposed. They got the local bus back to the pousada.
Also, on the street during the week, I was punched in the head twice and we all continually felt pickpocketers hands thrust into our pockets. But despite all of that, I can say that the Salvador Carnaval is the best travel event I have been to - and I have been to 50 countries.
It's as simple as this: if my younger brother's reflexes had been a split second blunter, he would be dead. He would have been murdered 5 hours after arriving in Salvador, with no witnesses and no way of his travel partners knowing where he was.
Interestingly, days earlier on the island of Morro de Sao Paulo, a short catamaran ride from Salvador, a now eerie warning had been received by a complete stranger. Antony, a local boxer and capoiera enthusiast, showed us his three horrifying scars from a machete attack in Salvador. He proudly revealed massive, thick, and puffy scars on one of his hands, the side of his stomach, and, scarily, the top of his head. He told us that Salvador, the Bahian capital sitting a short catamaran ride from this idlyllic island, could be peligroso - dangerous. The story captured our attention, but like all stories that will never happen to you, failed to chip away at our keenness.
It was around midnight on our first night in Salvador that Pulse, just turned 23, and having been displaced from his friends, decided to walk from the main square of old town Pelourinho to the seaside barrio of Barra for a look, drunk and alone. He heard from someone that Barra was where the action was and knew what direction to go. But he had no idea it was 5 km away. He could speak no Brazilian Portuguese whatsoever.
At the best of times, Pulse is a casual man. He had been given the nickname Pulse by teammates at Collingwood, a Melbourne club in the Australian Football League, because it was unclear if his heart rate could ever skyrocket. Even in the intense atmosphere of professional football, Pulse was apparently always calm, never flustered. It was this laid back nature, combined with a number of cans of Skol, that would lead him down an unlit alleyway to urinate on his walk.
Standing 6 foot 2 inches tall, and a fit 85kg, he wouldn't make the ideal target for a young Brazilian thief. But in this alley, with his shorts down, drunk, and with two fleet footed, and probably experienced assailants, Pulse was edging perilously close to the definition of a sitting duck.
The attack went like this. Whilst actually urinating against a wall, Pulse, in the corner of his eye, noticed a blade coming for his head. Instinctively, the right hand that had been holding his penis, thrust out and up to protect himself. This right palm clutched to the assailiants wrist. It stopped the 30 cm machete blade a foot from the side of his head. He states simply that if he had been any later, or missed the kids hand, the machete would have sliced his head open, and he would be dead.
But he was not out of danger yet. The assailant repeatedly attempted to thrust the machete towards his head, half a dozen times getting quite close to striking. Pulse kept his grip on his wrist, luckily stronger than the kid, said to be slim, black, ragged, and maybe aged 18.
Suddenly, and horrifyingly, Pulse felt the presence of another kid behind him. If this 2nd thug had a machete also, he was surely finished. But he didn't. Instead, he rifled his hands through the back pocket of Pulse's boardshorts, looking obviously for money. Amazingly, only 5 minutes earlier Pulse had moved his money, 150 R (about $50), from that pocket into his shoe. He had remembered my earlier tip from someone against pickpockets. All the thief got this time was what was left in his pocket. Two condoms.
After about 10 seconds of struggling against the machete kids, Pulse managed to break free, and sprinted to the end of the alley, where the lights of the crowded street shone. The kids fled the other away.
But Pulse had not seen the last of his troubles for this night. One hour later, we were all together again, having bumped into each other. We were drinking in a semi-crowded dirt street a couple of blocks north of the main Pelourinho square. A young black fellow was chatting with us. He seemed cool, and seemed to be the only foreigners around, but I suddenly noticed in the eyes of a nearby local girl that something was wrong. She warned me to get away from this guy, and realising she was right, I told him to go away. He didn't. And Pulse, completely unaware and ignoring our requests to come with us, was suddenly separated from the group, and was surrounded by characters who had coe form nowhere. Before we realised what was happening, the creep snatched at Pulse's pocket, ripping it almost off his shorts, and ran.
This time the theif missed out on condoms. But he did get Pulse 150 R, which Pulse had for some reason since the machete getaway, moved from his shoe back to his ripped pocket.
A classic first night, it wasn't the last of the muggings for our group that week. I had to fend off two teenage kids who tried to rip my pocket off on a dark Barra main beach, having followed me from the toilets up on the road, and sprung form nowhere. I managed to get my hand over the pocket, before both kids tried to retch my fingers away. I was staggered when one of them, desperate for me to release my grip, knealt down and clamped his teeth hard into my wrist. The the only time I've been phyically mugged, I was surprisingly calm, though there was clearly no other white people in the vicinity. The local girl I was with on the beach had reeled back in horror, screaming. Then suddenly, not strong enough to overpower me, the kids fled. Maybe it was lucky they didn't have machetes. We later heard a foreigner had been murdered on one of the beaches during the week.
Another night, Partyboy was swimming in the ocean on the main beach with a local girl. They were in underwear only, their clothes in a neat pile on the sand. Suddenly he noticed some kids heading towards the pile. He thought about running into shore to stope them, but his calculations that he was too far out from the beach, were correct. The kids grabbed everything, and bolted. Stranded in jocks, they had to work out how to get back to Pelourinho, 5 km away. A nice man lent a Medellin soccer top to his lady friend, keeping her modesty. But Partyboy, wearing only a set of litte-boy jockets with blue and white vertical stripes, was exposed. They got the local bus back to the pousada.
Also, on the street during the week, I was punched in the head twice and we all continually felt pickpocketers hands thrust into our pockets. But despite all of that, I can say that the Salvador Carnaval is the best travel event I have been to - and I have been to 50 countries.
Drugs and Guns in Rio Favelas!!!! - Brazil Travel Story
Ok, so when me and my 2 friends first got to Rio, the first guy that we talk to is our Taxi driver who took us to our hotel. It was about a 30 minute drive so we started talking to him and ended up organising to go out with him and have drinks the next night. So we went out and partied and it was all good. Then the next day, he tells us that he wants to take us to his home neibourhood to show us where he lives so we say sure, why not. So we ask him where he lives on the way there and he says favelas. Anyone who knows about the Favelas would have a general understanding of how we started to feel when he told us thats where we were going. So we get to the bottom of the mountain and drive round this corner and ahead of us is a Y shaped intersection and sitting on a bench at that intersection is 2 kids who look about 14 years old and they are both holding ASSAULT RIFLES!!!!!!!!! Thats right, the kind u see in the jungle on James Bond. So we pull up to these guys and they jump up and have the guns pointed at us in the windows until our driver explains the situation and that we are just here to see the town, then they pull the guns away and let us through. So we ask our driver why the hell those kids need to have guns or at least such massive powerfull guns, he replied well my friends, there are no police in the Favelas, they are not allowed, and if police come round that corer back there, BANG BANG BANG. We were shocked of course!!! So wedrove about a hundren meters up the hill and get stopped again as a guys comes out from a shop on either side of the road, this time its not rifles but SHOT GUNS they are pointing at us until our driver explained again what we are doing up there. We had to go through like 5 of these gunned checkpoints just to get into the town all the while looking out the window at people walking down the street casually holding pistols in one hand and a beer in the other! When we get to the top he askes us if we want to go inside, we thought we had been pretty brave up until now but we werent game enough to go into his house and possibly never come out again so we tried to politely decline so he went inside and brought a beer out for all of us. When he went inside he had to ask these 2 guys to stand and guard us while he went in to make sure we didnt do anything but mostly to make sure that if anyonefrom the street came up to us they could let them know that we were allowed to be there, which did happen a couple of times in the 2 mins it took our guy to get the beer. Then once he gave us the beer, he gets back into his taxi and pulls off the air conditions vent at the back of the center console and pulls out 2 little handfulls of cocaine baggies!! I said whats that for? and he just saidoh just makin a delivery. Then he told us that people that dont live there only come to the favelas to buys cocaine or to buy guns otherwise its too dangerous for non favela people to be there. On our way back down the mountain, he proceeds to tell us about his former taxi life of selling guns and dealing drugs and making deliveries and about all the gun fights that happen all the time between these people and the police and we come to realise that our taxi driver was a bit of a gangster a few years ago and he told us the only reason we were able to get up that mountain was because of who he was!!! Crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We found out later that companies run tour to the favelas which on a few different mountains and outskirts of the city, but NOBODY goes to this one because its way to dangerous to runs tour through there!!! Um, so thats it.... We went back happy to be alive because weve never experienced anything like that before
An Inveterate Traveller - Brazil Travel Story
Towards the end of our month-long sojourn in Brazil, courtesy the Group Study Exchange Programme of Rotary International, we came to a small city, Sao Jose do Rio Prato, St. Joseph of the Black River. We had crisscrossed Sao Paulo state, starting our journey from the megapolis, Sao Paulo, we travelled to tiny habitations like Fernandopolis, Jales, Cafelandia... We had helicopter rides, river cruises and numerous visits to schools, hospitals and small factories. We were in the local newspapers, the city mayors extended a warm welcome to us. To a whole lot of the hinterland Brazilians, an encounter with a group of Indians was a novel experience. That we could rattle off the names of Brazilian World Cuppers was something that startled them most. Thanks to a crash course in Berlitz School, London, we had picked up a little Portuguese, throwing around lots of “Obrigado†(thank you) and trying to impress every Brazilian woman we came across with “Voce e’ bonita†(You are beautiful!). As we reached Rio Prato after short stints at around fifteen small towns and travelling miles and miles of wilderness by road, our hearts were full with Brazilian exotica. Rio Prato was our last halt before the journey back home via Rio De Janeiro. On a lazy afternoon as we were having lunch hosted by a local Rotarian in a downtown restaurant, a lanky brown young man walked in. He was greeted warmly by our local hosts and introduced to us as an English teacher who had recently migrated from the United States. After the exchange of initial pleasantries, he settled down with a ‘cerveja’ (beer). He introduced himself to us as John Aashfaque, a traveler by profession! The moment he came to know that I hail from Calcutta, he startled me by speaking in Bengali. After a month in Brazil, Bengali sounded so strange! Bengali drew us closer and we met twice after that. John fascinated me as I was getting to know more and more about him. He was born in Calcutta in the late fifties of a Bengali Muslim father and a Christian mother. Soon after his birth, his family migrated to Dhaka and John left for England for his schooling. On finishing school, he drifted across to West Germany and lived by doing odd jobs. Between jobs John went around Western Europe several times on a motorbike, making forays to Hungary on the Eastern side. He fell in love with and married a German girl. But his mother-in-law was averse to the ‘black and white together’ concept. He had a baby daughter but his marriage was soon on the rocks thanks to his mother-in-law. Divorced, John jumped across to New York and soon became part of the city’s cultural crosscurrents. He started working for an Indian TV channel interviewing celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan and making programmes for US-based Indians. He spent five years in New York, and travelled to nooks and corners of the United States. But stability bored him and he set out to travel in Amazonia. John came to Brazil and cycled down to the Amazonian forests. Drifting around the state, he reached Rio Prato and started teaching English after being cajoled by the locals. John had been at Rio Prato for about a year when I met him. When asked about his next plan, John said that he would like to travel to Australia, the only continent he had yet to visit. John could speak fluent Bengali, English, German, French and Portuguese and managed with a limited fluency in Hindi, Italian and Spanish. As I asked him whether he ultimately wanted to settle down anywhere, apt came the reply, “Oh yes, I would settle in Brazilâ€. But why? He answered, “It’s the only country where there are no colour feelings, I’ve experienced colour discrimination everywhere elseâ€. That observation endeared Brazil more to me than their football feat. -Soumitra Biswas is a Chemical Engineer by profession and works as the Adviser in the Union Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. He dabbles in photography and travel writing in his spare time. Soumitra lives in New Delhi with his wife and two children. The views expressed in the article are totally his own. Soumitra may be contacted at soumitra03@hotmail.com
Burmese adventures - Burma Travel Story
8 months ago, before my start, I said to my father: “Take it easy dad, in this journey I will always stick touristic routes and I’ll never go in dangerous places, for sure I won’t go to Burma!”
And here I am, confident, and with grandpa Willy supporting me from far away, checking in for Yangon, Burma’s former capital city.
The history is quite easy: after being a province of British colonial empire together with India, from 1962 Burma is ruled by a dictatorship military junta: martial law.
In ‘89 the name was changed to Myanmar, but we don’t like regimes, especially the military ones, then we keep the name Burma, feeding the protests, ok?
Every voice of democratic opposition is promptly shut up and huge peaceful demonstrations in ‘88, ‘97 and 2007 ended up with a bloodbath as much as TienAnMen, where young military men were forced to shoot on the crowd (monks, students and likely their families gathered in the streets); those who were hesitating, showing humanity, were arrested and replaced by other poor and ignorant youth taken from remote countryside villages, being happy to hold M-16 or AK-47 and playing at wargames, having a grotesque revenge against rich and cultured university students...
All this shit is happening today, present time, it’s not history; and nowadays the terror regime makes every wrong deed or word suspicious of conspiracy, leading, if lucky, lo prison… Students and Intellectuals are constantly under fire from sharp shooters and those who speak too much with foreigners must check their back and avoid taboo words.
I’m wondering what’s behind this Orwellian madness (that was prophet writing “Burmese days”, “Animal Farm” and “1984” in the ‘40ies).
I can’t believe a surgent waking up one day and creating all this; then I got the answer: Burma is n.2 producer of Opium (n.1 Afghanistan), keenly smuggled by China and Russia, with silent ok by the US (they are behind everything, and increasingly fearing China); in turn they provide weapons and intelligence.
While in the middle east the “democratic” wars are constant, here they don’t even need lullabies...
What you see in everyday life is a “police and thieves” game in a paradoxical exotic and sadly happy context; the Burmese people are stick to the wall, chocked and impotent in their farmer old tradition, and I still wonder how some people can sleep at night...
As a tourist, I brought some bad and some good: 50ish of my dollars ended up in the government pockets as “security foreigners taxes”, on the other hand I lent both my ears to the many voices willing to talk and shout their rage, I brought many smiles and laughs, I made friendships and I showed a human side to those living under siege, where your neighbor may be a spy and shoot your back.
I could write 10 more html pages about shit seen, read and been told, but I’m rambling and you’re getting bored so I better start to write about my 4 burmese weeks:
Sadly I haven’t done any mean of transport trades (after having sold my skateboard to a teenager in Bangkok!), and switching from a board to a paddling boat to an aeroplane might sound drastic, but I didn’t have a choice, all the land crossing are shut due to rebel fights and opium business...
So you think New York is the metropolis, the definitive multi-culture place?
You’re wrong, Yangon is the real meltin’pot!
Whites, blacks, yellows and reds: Burmese, Chinese, Bengali, Cingali, Pakistani, Nepali, Buddhists, animists, hindu, muslims, jews and cristians all live in a square meter!
“Hey Brother! Change money! Taxi! My friend! Drink tea! Want girl?”
A stroll through Yangon’s streets is a trip of smells, stinks, dust, trash, colors, sounds, noises, screams, robes and turbans, the experience I was waiting for! A big city, where old women sell dubious food covered by flies next to modern coffee shops, where barefoot Indians sell hi-tech products, where garbage is a décor and living scenography!
A dive in this world, where the heat is unbearable so that taking showers is just useless, you better get use to and manage the layer of sweat-dust-smog-shit that grows between you and the rest of the world, hoping a strange ecosystem won’t rise up!
After this poly-sensorial experience I start hitchin’ a ride: the first goal is to see the new capital city built just 3 years ago in the middle of nowhere 6 hours north of Yangon:
NayPyiTaw (pronounce NiPiDo) is well off the track and protected from everything and everybody, where only military men and government officials live, where electric power is running 24 hours a day (in the rest of the country light is yo-yoing, and people have power generators and some hire power from Chinese companies), and, most important, where astrologists said that is the perfect point where raising the capital of “A new perfect society, a new race...”, awkward.
No bus leads there, no guidebook talks about it, nobody wants to go. I start walking, like a lunatic, under the boiling sun through the surreal, long, desert paved and clean road that lead to NayPyiTaw.
I feel like entering Pyongyang, North Korea.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nuclear weapon behind a dune or a Blackhawk hidden in the bush.
I’m stopped by 3 police blocks where the guys, surprised as much as me for my appearance, ask me where the hell I am going: I mumble, gesture, pretending to know where I am and start walking again. The cop speaks in his walkie talkie my arrival in town. I start feeling like a fugitive.
Luckily a concrete mixer truck comes with some ok Burmese that bring me to their place of work: the building of the new government palace, a huge, no, more, a fucking huge cement building under construction rising in the distance from the desert, that annihilate the palm huts in which the slave… ehm the workers live, with a bridge crossing the huge moat dividing the palace from the rest of the world. Will they put crocodiles? It’s majestic, big, beautiful, and reminds me of Berlin’s Reichstag but 10 times bigger and spiky roof.
What the fuck!! Where the hell am I? Will I be cuffed?
While some fear starts bumping in my throat I also feel much adrenaline growing up, and take as many pictures as I can, before a guy on a motorbike approaches me “Hey you?””Yes?””No photo.””Ok my friend thank you!” He leaves, I’m safe.
Another motorbike comes and takes me downtown: a cluster of 4 lane streets in the middle of nowhere, kilometres of poured asphalt separating nothing from nothing, while the sun seems to melt down the landscape. Am I dreaming? Hallucinating? What the fuck!
Eventually we reach the first houses, built with dreadful Chinese material, all the same, with obscene colors, with barbed wire and machine guns (no just kidding), with barbed wire and many antennas; entire ugly blocks, where nobody walks, nobody lives, where the hell is everybody? Man or robots?
Ah there they are, all in the main square drinking hot tea, today actually is Sunday.
The ugliest square around Asia, I guess, everybody stares at me and mumbles. I drink some sugar cane juice pretending to feel comfortable. Somebody talks with me, don’t know if they are spies or whatever and I just nod at them. One man sits next to me and tells me that he hates this place and he was forced to move here 3 years ago from Yangon with all his family.
Then he leaves. Tough situation.
As somebody says I’m the first tourist of 2009, so I gift myself a t-shirt “Rememberance of NayPyiTaw”. I look for a place to sleep and the only one open to foreigners is an expensive 20 dollars one (never paid more than 5 dollars in Asia), thus I leave the capital, choosing the option “Northbound Night Train”.
The journey reminds me of the unforgettable route Beijing-Pingyao with people sleeping anywhere, with a bit less rubbish on board but more bumps, a swinging slow train.
Yawning, I get to Inle lake, a hi-altitude lake surrounded by mountains, where I put aside my revolutionary thoughts and military shit and enjoy them, the Burmese, in their simple fisherman’s life, rowing with one foot while catching the net with both hands and standing still on the other foot. Circus!
After many funny lifts on motorbikes and trucks I get to central Burma. In the dusty Mandalay I find the exuberant and conspirator Moustache Brothers and chat with monks and local friends, while striving against sandstorms comparable to Gobi desert ones. Sometimes the famous layer of sweat-dust-smog-shit is really unbearable...
All the country is filled with temples and pagodas, especially on the mountain tops, these lands are with plenty of golden towers, hence the name “Golden Land” is worthy! Burmese truly believe a lot in Buddhism, they practice and travel the country as pilgrims, not tourists, and try to gain merit for their next life, hoping that will be better than this...
In Monywa I luckily saw 2 huge Buddhas, one reclined and one standing, more than 130 metres high! Much more stunning than the Leshan’s one, in China, and inside him (!) 25 floors (now available only 5), showing images from Buddhist’s Hell (a moment between one life and the other), in which I don’t wish for you to end up: people twisted, broke into pieces, stabbed, cooked…
Then in Bagan, after 1 million more pagodas, it’s time for adventures: I met some Burmese guys who invited me for an incredible event: Nat worshipping festival: 2 days of party and offerings to the Nats, the spirits that, according to pre-buddhist beliefs, live inside everything surrounding us! Just like shamans and animists they worship these spirits being sure to get their luck and their protection.
At 4am I’m ready to ship with other 80 burmese man and women aging from 1 to 70, going north to the small village where the massive festival is held.
On the swinging boat everybody is beautiful: men wear short sleeve shirts and longji, the traditional and everyday life cloth that covers legs like a long skirt;
their mouth and teeth are stained with a redder-than-blood powder, it's not they've been eating a zebra in the jungle; it's betel, local liqorice!
Women are simple and beautiful in their flowered long dresses, and their cheeks are full of thanaka: a yellow cream, gotten from wood, that everybody, men and women, use as makeup, decoration and protection against the sun. The results are amazing and exotic designs painted on everybody’s face and arms, stunning on chubby child’s face and sweet Burmese girls! Ah so much exoticism!
I’m by far the dirtiest on board (I didn’t expect all this cleanliness!) and with some compassion my friend MaoMao lent me a shirt and a longji: I’m a Burmese! I’m clean!
Burmese’s English is definitely good, but it seems they mix a little English and Spanish: their “Yes, Nos, Thankyous” bring big laughs to my face!
We’re off: from 8 to 11 a woman around 30 starts the worshipping on the boat, offering food, drinking, smoking, dancing and singing under the crazy Burmese music coming from crappy megaphones. After 3 hours the woman will have honestly finished a bottle of rum and smoked at least 60 cigarettes (2 at a time!) and fed everybody on board including me, and we all thanked the spirits burping!
The chaotic music, the noise of the engine and the swinging of the boat, the chanting, dancing and some rum and I’m totally dizzy and in a spirit trance together with my crazy crew!
Fantastic, absolutely amazing, and more has to come: at night, after 12 hours sailing upstream we reach the village, and we are not alone! Flocks of boats come from every corner, overcrowded with party-mood and full-of-rum Burmese singing and swinging.
The real festival is managed by some men dressed as Nats that took all the offerings of money and alcohol giving back dancing and blessings.
The crowd is literally overwhelmed, they mosh pit dance under the full moon in an atmosphere that... I cannot say... Crazy? Magic? Enchanting? If only I would be able to understand what they are screaming out...
A human sacrifice would be the perfect climax, but it seems these indigenous still have some brain power!
The night I sleep, well I try to, on the roof of the boat, with the echo of the music still running until the morning... The day after on the way back I find myself in the middle of a fight on the boat: 2 guys, due to too much rum, cannot peacefully decide who was winning over a card game and as result all the people on board hysterically scream and push each other among shouts, tears and flying punches!
I remove myself and watch (never get into local’s affairs) and after 5 mins the fight is over; the balance is not bad: just one slightly wounded.
Great stuff man!
So now I also have protection from the spirits, nobody can stop me!
Eventually I reach the Bengali bay and rest at the beach for a few days. Burmese on holiday (for now is summertime here) swim in the ocean totally dressed with shirts and long pants (!) for their society is pretty much conservative, and a bikini may be too much...
I have great symposiums in French with a 60 year old couple from Paris now retired (just like me!). And finally I meet Jack, he’s over 50 and he tells me how 20 years ago he was in the Philippines and ended up working as an extra for the movie “Apocalypse Now”! Crazy world!
Yes, that’s my Burma, where, far from political shit, I had a great experience with this great people, but where political shit is rooted and scary; I often felt like bandit, and in fact I did, for their laws!
After seeing NayPyiTaw it seems, alas, that the worst still has to come, but I hope I’m wrong;
For my little side, I hope at least that these words help to keep alive the memory all my friends met in Yangon, Bago, Inle, Mandalay, Monywa, Bagan and ChaungTa, and the ones that were so brave by challenging the spies and talking to me, will have good luck as much as courage.
Amazing Burma.
On the fly back to Bangkok I met a brother whom I travelled with in Mongolia, reminding me of yaks and camels, yeah!
And now I’m in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and have too many plans in mind for the future so let’s see what happens in these 30 days!
And here I am, confident, and with grandpa Willy supporting me from far away, checking in for Yangon, Burma’s former capital city.
The history is quite easy: after being a province of British colonial empire together with India, from 1962 Burma is ruled by a dictatorship military junta: martial law.
In ‘89 the name was changed to Myanmar, but we don’t like regimes, especially the military ones, then we keep the name Burma, feeding the protests, ok?
Every voice of democratic opposition is promptly shut up and huge peaceful demonstrations in ‘88, ‘97 and 2007 ended up with a bloodbath as much as TienAnMen, where young military men were forced to shoot on the crowd (monks, students and likely their families gathered in the streets); those who were hesitating, showing humanity, were arrested and replaced by other poor and ignorant youth taken from remote countryside villages, being happy to hold M-16 or AK-47 and playing at wargames, having a grotesque revenge against rich and cultured university students...
All this shit is happening today, present time, it’s not history; and nowadays the terror regime makes every wrong deed or word suspicious of conspiracy, leading, if lucky, lo prison… Students and Intellectuals are constantly under fire from sharp shooters and those who speak too much with foreigners must check their back and avoid taboo words.
I’m wondering what’s behind this Orwellian madness (that was prophet writing “Burmese days”, “Animal Farm” and “1984” in the ‘40ies).
I can’t believe a surgent waking up one day and creating all this; then I got the answer: Burma is n.2 producer of Opium (n.1 Afghanistan), keenly smuggled by China and Russia, with silent ok by the US (they are behind everything, and increasingly fearing China); in turn they provide weapons and intelligence.
While in the middle east the “democratic” wars are constant, here they don’t even need lullabies...
What you see in everyday life is a “police and thieves” game in a paradoxical exotic and sadly happy context; the Burmese people are stick to the wall, chocked and impotent in their farmer old tradition, and I still wonder how some people can sleep at night...
As a tourist, I brought some bad and some good: 50ish of my dollars ended up in the government pockets as “security foreigners taxes”, on the other hand I lent both my ears to the many voices willing to talk and shout their rage, I brought many smiles and laughs, I made friendships and I showed a human side to those living under siege, where your neighbor may be a spy and shoot your back.
I could write 10 more html pages about shit seen, read and been told, but I’m rambling and you’re getting bored so I better start to write about my 4 burmese weeks:
Sadly I haven’t done any mean of transport trades (after having sold my skateboard to a teenager in Bangkok!), and switching from a board to a paddling boat to an aeroplane might sound drastic, but I didn’t have a choice, all the land crossing are shut due to rebel fights and opium business...
So you think New York is the metropolis, the definitive multi-culture place?
You’re wrong, Yangon is the real meltin’pot!
Whites, blacks, yellows and reds: Burmese, Chinese, Bengali, Cingali, Pakistani, Nepali, Buddhists, animists, hindu, muslims, jews and cristians all live in a square meter!
“Hey Brother! Change money! Taxi! My friend! Drink tea! Want girl?”
A stroll through Yangon’s streets is a trip of smells, stinks, dust, trash, colors, sounds, noises, screams, robes and turbans, the experience I was waiting for! A big city, where old women sell dubious food covered by flies next to modern coffee shops, where barefoot Indians sell hi-tech products, where garbage is a décor and living scenography!
A dive in this world, where the heat is unbearable so that taking showers is just useless, you better get use to and manage the layer of sweat-dust-smog-shit that grows between you and the rest of the world, hoping a strange ecosystem won’t rise up!
After this poly-sensorial experience I start hitchin’ a ride: the first goal is to see the new capital city built just 3 years ago in the middle of nowhere 6 hours north of Yangon:
NayPyiTaw (pronounce NiPiDo) is well off the track and protected from everything and everybody, where only military men and government officials live, where electric power is running 24 hours a day (in the rest of the country light is yo-yoing, and people have power generators and some hire power from Chinese companies), and, most important, where astrologists said that is the perfect point where raising the capital of “A new perfect society, a new race...”, awkward.
No bus leads there, no guidebook talks about it, nobody wants to go. I start walking, like a lunatic, under the boiling sun through the surreal, long, desert paved and clean road that lead to NayPyiTaw.
I feel like entering Pyongyang, North Korea.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nuclear weapon behind a dune or a Blackhawk hidden in the bush.
I’m stopped by 3 police blocks where the guys, surprised as much as me for my appearance, ask me where the hell I am going: I mumble, gesture, pretending to know where I am and start walking again. The cop speaks in his walkie talkie my arrival in town. I start feeling like a fugitive.
Luckily a concrete mixer truck comes with some ok Burmese that bring me to their place of work: the building of the new government palace, a huge, no, more, a fucking huge cement building under construction rising in the distance from the desert, that annihilate the palm huts in which the slave… ehm the workers live, with a bridge crossing the huge moat dividing the palace from the rest of the world. Will they put crocodiles? It’s majestic, big, beautiful, and reminds me of Berlin’s Reichstag but 10 times bigger and spiky roof.
What the fuck!! Where the hell am I? Will I be cuffed?
While some fear starts bumping in my throat I also feel much adrenaline growing up, and take as many pictures as I can, before a guy on a motorbike approaches me “Hey you?””Yes?””No photo.””Ok my friend thank you!” He leaves, I’m safe.
Another motorbike comes and takes me downtown: a cluster of 4 lane streets in the middle of nowhere, kilometres of poured asphalt separating nothing from nothing, while the sun seems to melt down the landscape. Am I dreaming? Hallucinating? What the fuck!
Eventually we reach the first houses, built with dreadful Chinese material, all the same, with obscene colors, with barbed wire and machine guns (no just kidding), with barbed wire and many antennas; entire ugly blocks, where nobody walks, nobody lives, where the hell is everybody? Man or robots?
Ah there they are, all in the main square drinking hot tea, today actually is Sunday.
The ugliest square around Asia, I guess, everybody stares at me and mumbles. I drink some sugar cane juice pretending to feel comfortable. Somebody talks with me, don’t know if they are spies or whatever and I just nod at them. One man sits next to me and tells me that he hates this place and he was forced to move here 3 years ago from Yangon with all his family.
Then he leaves. Tough situation.
As somebody says I’m the first tourist of 2009, so I gift myself a t-shirt “Rememberance of NayPyiTaw”. I look for a place to sleep and the only one open to foreigners is an expensive 20 dollars one (never paid more than 5 dollars in Asia), thus I leave the capital, choosing the option “Northbound Night Train”.
The journey reminds me of the unforgettable route Beijing-Pingyao with people sleeping anywhere, with a bit less rubbish on board but more bumps, a swinging slow train.
Yawning, I get to Inle lake, a hi-altitude lake surrounded by mountains, where I put aside my revolutionary thoughts and military shit and enjoy them, the Burmese, in their simple fisherman’s life, rowing with one foot while catching the net with both hands and standing still on the other foot. Circus!
After many funny lifts on motorbikes and trucks I get to central Burma. In the dusty Mandalay I find the exuberant and conspirator Moustache Brothers and chat with monks and local friends, while striving against sandstorms comparable to Gobi desert ones. Sometimes the famous layer of sweat-dust-smog-shit is really unbearable...
All the country is filled with temples and pagodas, especially on the mountain tops, these lands are with plenty of golden towers, hence the name “Golden Land” is worthy! Burmese truly believe a lot in Buddhism, they practice and travel the country as pilgrims, not tourists, and try to gain merit for their next life, hoping that will be better than this...
In Monywa I luckily saw 2 huge Buddhas, one reclined and one standing, more than 130 metres high! Much more stunning than the Leshan’s one, in China, and inside him (!) 25 floors (now available only 5), showing images from Buddhist’s Hell (a moment between one life and the other), in which I don’t wish for you to end up: people twisted, broke into pieces, stabbed, cooked…
Then in Bagan, after 1 million more pagodas, it’s time for adventures: I met some Burmese guys who invited me for an incredible event: Nat worshipping festival: 2 days of party and offerings to the Nats, the spirits that, according to pre-buddhist beliefs, live inside everything surrounding us! Just like shamans and animists they worship these spirits being sure to get their luck and their protection.
At 4am I’m ready to ship with other 80 burmese man and women aging from 1 to 70, going north to the small village where the massive festival is held.
On the swinging boat everybody is beautiful: men wear short sleeve shirts and longji, the traditional and everyday life cloth that covers legs like a long skirt;
their mouth and teeth are stained with a redder-than-blood powder, it's not they've been eating a zebra in the jungle; it's betel, local liqorice!
Women are simple and beautiful in their flowered long dresses, and their cheeks are full of thanaka: a yellow cream, gotten from wood, that everybody, men and women, use as makeup, decoration and protection against the sun. The results are amazing and exotic designs painted on everybody’s face and arms, stunning on chubby child’s face and sweet Burmese girls! Ah so much exoticism!
I’m by far the dirtiest on board (I didn’t expect all this cleanliness!) and with some compassion my friend MaoMao lent me a shirt and a longji: I’m a Burmese! I’m clean!
Burmese’s English is definitely good, but it seems they mix a little English and Spanish: their “Yes, Nos, Thankyous” bring big laughs to my face!
We’re off: from 8 to 11 a woman around 30 starts the worshipping on the boat, offering food, drinking, smoking, dancing and singing under the crazy Burmese music coming from crappy megaphones. After 3 hours the woman will have honestly finished a bottle of rum and smoked at least 60 cigarettes (2 at a time!) and fed everybody on board including me, and we all thanked the spirits burping!
The chaotic music, the noise of the engine and the swinging of the boat, the chanting, dancing and some rum and I’m totally dizzy and in a spirit trance together with my crazy crew!
Fantastic, absolutely amazing, and more has to come: at night, after 12 hours sailing upstream we reach the village, and we are not alone! Flocks of boats come from every corner, overcrowded with party-mood and full-of-rum Burmese singing and swinging.
The real festival is managed by some men dressed as Nats that took all the offerings of money and alcohol giving back dancing and blessings.
The crowd is literally overwhelmed, they mosh pit dance under the full moon in an atmosphere that... I cannot say... Crazy? Magic? Enchanting? If only I would be able to understand what they are screaming out...
A human sacrifice would be the perfect climax, but it seems these indigenous still have some brain power!
The night I sleep, well I try to, on the roof of the boat, with the echo of the music still running until the morning... The day after on the way back I find myself in the middle of a fight on the boat: 2 guys, due to too much rum, cannot peacefully decide who was winning over a card game and as result all the people on board hysterically scream and push each other among shouts, tears and flying punches!
I remove myself and watch (never get into local’s affairs) and after 5 mins the fight is over; the balance is not bad: just one slightly wounded.
Great stuff man!
So now I also have protection from the spirits, nobody can stop me!
Eventually I reach the Bengali bay and rest at the beach for a few days. Burmese on holiday (for now is summertime here) swim in the ocean totally dressed with shirts and long pants (!) for their society is pretty much conservative, and a bikini may be too much...
I have great symposiums in French with a 60 year old couple from Paris now retired (just like me!). And finally I meet Jack, he’s over 50 and he tells me how 20 years ago he was in the Philippines and ended up working as an extra for the movie “Apocalypse Now”! Crazy world!
Yes, that’s my Burma, where, far from political shit, I had a great experience with this great people, but where political shit is rooted and scary; I often felt like bandit, and in fact I did, for their laws!
After seeing NayPyiTaw it seems, alas, that the worst still has to come, but I hope I’m wrong;
For my little side, I hope at least that these words help to keep alive the memory all my friends met in Yangon, Bago, Inle, Mandalay, Monywa, Bagan and ChaungTa, and the ones that were so brave by challenging the spies and talking to me, will have good luck as much as courage.
Amazing Burma.
On the fly back to Bangkok I met a brother whom I travelled with in Mongolia, reminding me of yaks and camels, yeah!
And now I’m in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and have too many plans in mind for the future so let’s see what happens in these 30 days!
From Siem Reap to Angkor Wat - Cambodia Travel Story
The journey to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, is a bumpy one, however, ten hours of rugged dirt tracks do little to diminish the sheer intrigue and anticipation of finally seeing the ancient temples of Angkor Watt for the first time.
Built between seven and eleven centuries ago when the Khmer civilization was at its peak, during this period the Khmer’s empire was magnificent stretching from what is now the Bay of Bengal in the west through Vietnam to the east right up to Yunnan in China. Consisting of over 100 temples, perhaps the greatest surprise to visitors is the sheer size of the Angkor complex which spreads out into the now overgrown jungle of surrounding Siem Reap.
Following the rapid fall the Angkor Empire in the intervening years, nature took it’s course and engulfed much of the Angkor complex. It was not until 1860 when French naturalist Henri Mouhot published an article on the temples, following his voyages through south east Asia in Le Tour du Monde, that western archaeologists took to research Angkor. As a result of an unstable, violent century for Cambodia marked by war and dictatorship, any real excavations of the area have been near impossible until very recently.
Even today much of the area is still hidden in dense jungle which has taken its toll on the temples. Now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, extensive restoration work is underway, and the main sites are now accessible to visitors. Nevertheless, the task at hand is huge and large areas remain heavily mined following the Khmer Rouge’s enforced rule.
When visiting the temples a number of safety considerations are paramount, above all, never ever stray from the well marked paths as mines are still prevalent in the area. To put things into perspective, 1 in 250 Cambodians are amputees following the incomprehensible dumping of over 5 million land mines across rural Cambodia, these warnings are deadly serious.
To visit the temples, officially, you have to have a local guide to escort you, though it is possible to visit without a guide. Local guides know the area well and know exactly where to go and where to steer clear of. In reality, the logistics of seeing the temples of Angkor without a guide would be near impossible. Dispersed up to 40km apart, without a guide to lead you, you would be hard pushed to find your way. Like most backpackers, we hired local teenagers to scooter us about on the back of their moto-bikes for the three days, friendly and informed they were ideal companions.
The three most magnificent temples are Bayon, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. To begin to a get a feel for Angkor you will need at least three days. This will give you time to properly view the major temples as well as an array of some of the more ornate smaller complexes further out such as Banteay Srei.
Angkor Wat is considered by many to be one of the greatest monuments ever constructed. Like the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids, with its soaring five towers and beautiful bas reliefs, few people fail to be in awe of the sheer grandeur of these ancient temples.
In comparison, Bayon is far more intimate, built around 1200 by Jayavarman VII, the most illustrious of the Angkor leaders, from a distance it looks more like a mess of decrepit ancient rock, yet, as you near, Bayon takes shape to reveal 54 huge faces of Avalokitesvara staring down at you from all areas. There is definitely an other-worldly feel to Bayon, every turn revealing yet another gigantic disdainful stare from the ancient god, as P Jennerat de Beerski wrote in the 1920’s, ‘with slightly curving lips, eyes placed in shadow by the lowered lids (they) utter not a word and yet force you to guess much’.
Finally, of the ‘big three’ is Ta Promh. Located close to Bayon, here the ancient ruins have deliberately (and questionably) had little restoration, and the awesome effect of the jungle can be seen, as thick powerful roots thrust from the earth and rip huge sections of the temple walls apart. Massive stones lie scattered like building blocks to leave narrow passage ways and corridors which act as light relief from the searing heat. There is definitely a feeling of discovery at Ta Promh unlike any of the other central Angkor temples, as we climbed through the rubble and roots to unearth another secret passageway or statue. Ta Promh brings you closest to replicating the atmosphere that the first French explorers must have experienced 140 yrs ago.
Practicalities
Siem Reap is the nearest town to the temples. Heavily dependent upon tourism, hotels and hostels cater for all budgets are widely available. Siem Reap now has its own airport to accommodate the new influx of attention, though most international flights arrive in Bangkok and then transfer to Siem Reap which takes under an hour. The cheaper option is to take one of the several mini-bus runs across the boarder from Bangkok (8hrs). Travel from Phnom Penh takes about 10hrs. Roads are not tarmaced so get ready for a bumpy slow ride.
To visit the temples you have to buy a visitors pass with photo ID, so make sure you bring some passport photos with you. Entry is $25 for one day, $40 for three days or $60 for a week pass. Payment is taken at one of the several gated entrances to the main section of the Angkor complex.
Built between seven and eleven centuries ago when the Khmer civilization was at its peak, during this period the Khmer’s empire was magnificent stretching from what is now the Bay of Bengal in the west through Vietnam to the east right up to Yunnan in China. Consisting of over 100 temples, perhaps the greatest surprise to visitors is the sheer size of the Angkor complex which spreads out into the now overgrown jungle of surrounding Siem Reap.
Following the rapid fall the Angkor Empire in the intervening years, nature took it’s course and engulfed much of the Angkor complex. It was not until 1860 when French naturalist Henri Mouhot published an article on the temples, following his voyages through south east Asia in Le Tour du Monde, that western archaeologists took to research Angkor. As a result of an unstable, violent century for Cambodia marked by war and dictatorship, any real excavations of the area have been near impossible until very recently.
Even today much of the area is still hidden in dense jungle which has taken its toll on the temples. Now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, extensive restoration work is underway, and the main sites are now accessible to visitors. Nevertheless, the task at hand is huge and large areas remain heavily mined following the Khmer Rouge’s enforced rule.
When visiting the temples a number of safety considerations are paramount, above all, never ever stray from the well marked paths as mines are still prevalent in the area. To put things into perspective, 1 in 250 Cambodians are amputees following the incomprehensible dumping of over 5 million land mines across rural Cambodia, these warnings are deadly serious.
To visit the temples, officially, you have to have a local guide to escort you, though it is possible to visit without a guide. Local guides know the area well and know exactly where to go and where to steer clear of. In reality, the logistics of seeing the temples of Angkor without a guide would be near impossible. Dispersed up to 40km apart, without a guide to lead you, you would be hard pushed to find your way. Like most backpackers, we hired local teenagers to scooter us about on the back of their moto-bikes for the three days, friendly and informed they were ideal companions.
The three most magnificent temples are Bayon, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. To begin to a get a feel for Angkor you will need at least three days. This will give you time to properly view the major temples as well as an array of some of the more ornate smaller complexes further out such as Banteay Srei.
Angkor Wat is considered by many to be one of the greatest monuments ever constructed. Like the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids, with its soaring five towers and beautiful bas reliefs, few people fail to be in awe of the sheer grandeur of these ancient temples.
In comparison, Bayon is far more intimate, built around 1200 by Jayavarman VII, the most illustrious of the Angkor leaders, from a distance it looks more like a mess of decrepit ancient rock, yet, as you near, Bayon takes shape to reveal 54 huge faces of Avalokitesvara staring down at you from all areas. There is definitely an other-worldly feel to Bayon, every turn revealing yet another gigantic disdainful stare from the ancient god, as P Jennerat de Beerski wrote in the 1920’s, ‘with slightly curving lips, eyes placed in shadow by the lowered lids (they) utter not a word and yet force you to guess much’.
Finally, of the ‘big three’ is Ta Promh. Located close to Bayon, here the ancient ruins have deliberately (and questionably) had little restoration, and the awesome effect of the jungle can be seen, as thick powerful roots thrust from the earth and rip huge sections of the temple walls apart. Massive stones lie scattered like building blocks to leave narrow passage ways and corridors which act as light relief from the searing heat. There is definitely a feeling of discovery at Ta Promh unlike any of the other central Angkor temples, as we climbed through the rubble and roots to unearth another secret passageway or statue. Ta Promh brings you closest to replicating the atmosphere that the first French explorers must have experienced 140 yrs ago.
Practicalities
Siem Reap is the nearest town to the temples. Heavily dependent upon tourism, hotels and hostels cater for all budgets are widely available. Siem Reap now has its own airport to accommodate the new influx of attention, though most international flights arrive in Bangkok and then transfer to Siem Reap which takes under an hour. The cheaper option is to take one of the several mini-bus runs across the boarder from Bangkok (8hrs). Travel from Phnom Penh takes about 10hrs. Roads are not tarmaced so get ready for a bumpy slow ride.
To visit the temples you have to buy a visitors pass with photo ID, so make sure you bring some passport photos with you. Entry is $25 for one day, $40 for three days or $60 for a week pass. Payment is taken at one of the several gated entrances to the main section of the Angkor complex.
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