When the third world gets to second base

Had 12 hours to kill at Bangkok Airport so we decided to jump the Airport-Link train and head for the centre. Simple. Twenty five minute ride to the end of the line (seven stations from the airport). Grabbed a cab with a couple from Germany and got out at the Royal Palace.

Ignored the Royal Palace and went looking for food. Not much by way of street food and finally found a place that looked promising. Went in, came out. Buggered if I was going to be in Bangkok for a day and eat French Fries and burgers. Found a chain that did passable Thai/Chinese - more than passable in fact given that the dish Andrea ate nearly blew her head off with the chilli heat. And she likes chillis (thats my memory of Bangkok 38 years ago. Pointing at what looked like fantastic food in a market and having to run for the water trough and dive in to put out the fire in my mouth).

Anyway to cut a long story short this story is about affluence and traffic. Phnom Penh is 85% motor bikes and tuc tucs and 15% cars - as was Bangkok in 1977. Now it seems the ratios are reversed. Barely a tuc tuc in sight and relatively few motor bikes. The result: gridlock. We hailed a cab at 6pm and asked to be taken to the closest Airport-Link Station. Our flight was boarding at 11pm. At one stage I thought we might not have allowed enough time - you do the maths. We sat in traffic for an hour and a half moving less than a car length every ten minutes. I swear the traffic lights 100 metres ahead changed at least 20 times before we reached them.

We made the station at 7:30 and were at the airport at 8pm. Easy.
It's ridiculous to want people to remain poor but there is a cost to affluence and status and its called gridlock. Poor Phnom Penh doesn't know what's coming.

Floating Village Siem Reap

Ankor Wat- Cambodia

More from Laos - Day 6 - 10

Laos

Day 6. Nam Kiau. The mad bus ride took us to Nam Kiau. Surrounded by vertical cliffs and in a bungalow overlooking  the Ou River this was a special place. Hard to describe really. It was just the quiet, the tranquility.When we returned to Luangprabang the next day that serene town seemed like a madhouse.

Day 7. Ever driven at breakneck speed for three hours down a mountain passing other vehicles (always) on blind corners or crests of hills? It's adrenaline rushing stuff. We had the good fortune to be sitting directly behind the driver so we saw all the near misses in technicolor. Amazing how many dogs, ducks, bullocks, chooks, children can find their way into the path of a minibus in one afternoon. This was the bus we passengers had bribed to leave on time - so it wasn't as if we were running late.

Day 8. Ben (Beh), the manager of our hotel in Luangaprang, has flown to Vietnam for a few days to check out his (prospective) new wife. Turns out the woman/girl who is filling his role while he's away is his sister-in-law and is also Vietnamese. I know Laos custom requires you to marry outside your immediate village community but is that taking it too far?

Day 9. So any French speaking tourists in Laos. French colonial history seems to draw them back. They are by far the largest group of travelers in the country.They are mix of young and old and are invariably charming and unpretentious..To Stephane, Nicola, Cecile, Olivia and all the other intrepid explorers - bonjour et merci beaucoup.

Day 10. Vientiane. Feels like a city albeit a pocket sized one. Traffic, rubbish, building projects, signs in our hotel declaring sex workers were not permitted to use the rooms. Still it feels largely untouched by the scourge of rampant drugs and sex tourism. It is sedate. Great coffee served by a lovely and helpful Chinese girl who came here to work on the hydro schemes and now makes flat whites and great espressos. Paul Ryan, who scoured Europe searching for "flat whites", would be impressed.

Laos Women's Rugby.

Okay, how strange is this? Women's  Rugby (Union)  in Laos is booming. Even more weird is that the national competition is being organised by a young woman from the USA who is a Rugby tragic. She plays front row in local tea (she's a giant by Laos standards). She studied International Development at Uni in the States and wanted to get into Development work in Asia, saw an ad for a volunteer to work in the Laos National Rugby Office and arrived 6 years ago. Only in the past year has she begun to be paid.

Why Rugby? Why women? Well soccer is seen as a man's sport - that's what the TV programs they see tell them. No one had heard of rugby, so when it arrived the girls said lets make that our game and while there is also a men's comp the women own the code in this country.

It's widely played in the villages where it's used as a way of getting young women involved in leadership and education programs. This young American knew far more than I did about the recent world cup. In fact she was there at the final in London and was able to give me detailed account of the final which Australia lost to NZ.

We met her in a coffee shop where she was online  organizing an international comp for Laos for February next year.

One of the more unusual stories of the trip so far.

On the River

These  boys were great fun to watch.

Buddhist Monks' Dawn Ritual

 Strange dawn  ritual where saffron robed  monks receive  alms from Tourists (arriving  by the busload) pretending to be locals  having bought  their offerings  from real locals making a buck. Monks appeared to be real. And  some real  young.
Point  of interest  - lower case m  is achieved by applying  CAPS  LOCK and then "shift  m"  - in case you were wondering.

Tea Cosies disguised as hats - for Loani

Head  pieces  worn by the woMen  of northern hill tribes  - HMong  and others.  The  original  tribes migrated here froM China about 1000  years  ago.

Laos Week 1

One  week  without writing and  I’m out of practice.  Not to Mention the  frustration with a coMputer which  I have to trick into working. The  space  bar  will only  work  if I press  the shift key at  the saMe tiMe and  lower  case M  has  died.  Other  functions are conspiring  to  follow  suit. I  need  a new  coputer. Hence My blogging will be short. A  constraint which Might teach Me soMething.  A  new awareness of the  frequency  of  the use of the letter M in the world for example.

Brevity  HMMMMM,  not My best suit. IMpresssions.

Day 1, Flying into Luangprabang below the height of the surrounding Mountains, following the line of the valley like a sfighter pilot, wild jungle-clad country below and deep green forest crawling up the hills on either side.

Day 2. Wide brown Mekong River. Barely a sign of life as we Motored upstream for two hours. The river is at summer height  -  Metres below  wet season  level.

Day 3. Tourists are like  plagues of locusts – they swarm. At the beautiful waterfalls 40 Minutes outside Luangprabang they  are there in full force. The rock pools are beautiful – a powdery  blue colour.  Laos is a conservative country, odest, but the tourists ignore this and strip to their skiMpy g-strings and  plunge in, I’Mn no different, I suppose, in My budgie sMugglers.

Day 4. The technical deMands of weaving silk thread on a hand loom (where did that lower case M coMe from?). I watched a young girl for five Minutes and she completed about ten rows. Every tiMe she shot the spindle across through the warp (or weft – can never reMeMber which is which) she had to reset the threads and adjust the tension etc etc. Talk about painstaking. It takes seven weeks to complete a three Metre length.

Day 5. OMG. A simple (there’s that erratic M again) bus ride turned into an epic journey. SoMe local rules I was unaware of. 1. Buses leave when they are full – so tiMetables are a guide. 2. Buses can be encouraged to leave on tiMe if the passengers pay the cost of the eMpty seats. 3  All buses going to the saMe destination Must share the passengers equally – lots of negotiations and enticing beMused passengers to change buses before we can get under way. Add to those rules abuswhich turned back half an hour into ours trip to pick up soMe passengers we had Missed and asset ofBrakes which the driver stopped to check a couple of ties Making us very nervous as the trip was into the mountains. A 3 hour trip becaMe a  6 hour ride. The destination (for a one night stay) was nevertheless beautiful and worth the trip.