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January 29, 2006

The Easter Bunny of South East Asia

I am the Easter Bunny of South East Asia. I’ve left behind:

What’s next???

Posted by stu at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)

January 25, 2006

Chilling in Sihanoukville

View of Gulf of Thailand from Occheuteal Bungalows in Sihanoukville, CambodiaMy first evening in Sihanoukville on the coast consisted of getting semi-swindled into a $15 double room with air conditioning at the New Christmas Guesthouse back a few hundred meters the beach. I had insisted that my driver take me to Occheuteal Beach My motorbike driver and he had taken me to three other guesthouses that were apparently full. At the bus station an older western man told me it was full down here, gave me the card to his guesthouse in the center of town. My lack of planning was starting to look like a mistake. That evening on a $5 rental scooter I explored town, including Victory Hill and Beach. It is supposed to be more of a low end backpacker scene there but I thought it was just plain nasty. Le RoseauSo I went cruising the guesthouses back on Occheuteal Beach and quickly found the Occheuteal Bungalows.

At the Occheuteal Bungalows they arranged for a really nice $15/night room with fridge, a single large bed, satellite TV and most importantly a sea view from the balcony with chairs and a little table. I’m splurging again. First thing the next morning I moved to my new digs, settled in and wandered down to the beach and found a charming little restaurant/beach chair place called ‘Le Roseau’. The staff are really nice but typically Thai-like in their concepts of service, but that’s ok. Jan, Victor and Lea at Le RoseauThat first evening I met Jan from Norway. The second day of laying around in the beach I met a couple from Austria, Victor and Lea. (BTW: Lea is not with an 'h'!) Victor is actually British, but that is beside the point. My third day in town Levi showed up and the group of us spent the day hanging out at the beach.

Tani chatting with me at Le RoseauWhile on the beach I got a manicure and pedicure for $3 from an older Vietnamese woman named Long, which was great. Also a young woman named Tani sold me some hand made bracelets with my two niece’s names on them, which her sister Dani hand made a few tens of meters away in the shade while Tani and I chatted down by the ocean water.

Sunset from Occheuteal Beach at Le RoseauThe beach area is really relaxing. The surf is generally calm, a few people playing about with Frisbees and rafts, people walking up and down the beach just relaxing. I’ve taken a few swims each day and the water in the Gulf of Thailand is just about perfect. Unfortunately there is little local fish life as dynamite fishing was all the rage a few years ago. The sunsets have been spectacular.

Little French shitOn the third night Victor, Lea and I headed up to Victory Hill where there is supposed to be some sort of night life. The reality is that it was pretty dead and lots of strange characters about. We settled in street side at the Paragay Taras Bar for a beer. At one point a young French boy walked up and sat down with us. His mother was across the street getting drunk with some weirdoes. The young Parisian was very polite at first but then he became a little shit faster than Bush can make an excuse to invade another country. At one point he stood up with a rolled up a news paper and smacked me on the forehead with it. Very uncool. I spanked him twice on the ass, pushed him away, and grabbed his chair from him so that he couldn’t sit on it. We then agreed that we should head inside the bar and but soon got bored and left.

Frisbee on Occheuteal BeachOne the scooter taxi ride home, my driver veered off and tried to take me to some dodgy girly bar away from any other night life. After some polite ‘no, no, just take me back home’ he finally took me back to my digs at the guesthouse where I crashed.

On the fourth day, after having been in party mode for the past two nights, I just hung out in my room sleeping, watching some television and writing some emails and blogs. Le Roseau at nightJust some quality time with Stu to take the edge of such a relaxing few days.

I’m scheduled to leave Friday back for Phnom Penh where I have a flight Saturday but am half temped to blow that off and hang out a few more days…it is very relaxed around here, it is not crowded at all, prices are decent and I’m just liking S’ville a lot more than I expected. Decision day is tomorrow.


Posted by stu at 04:28 PM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2006

Comments

OK, I’ve had some private feedback on my blog and would appreciate any readers opinions on the below topics.


Use the comment feature, let me know what you think.

Posted by stu at 10:05 AM | Comments (3)

This used to be a school

After having read David P. Chandler's Voices from S-21 while in Vietnam and Laos, I knew that I wanted to visit the notorious S-21 Prison in central Phnom Penh. Before having read Voices… my knowledge of Cambodia’s recent history was much weaker than I had realized. Now my understanding of what happened here in the ‘70s is another piece of the jigsaw puzzle we call modern South East Asian history.

Barbed wire in paradiseThe Tuol Svay Prey High School, later referred to as the S-21 prison under the Khmer Rouge, is now named the Tuol Sleng Museum. There are five main buildings at the former school site. The administration building in the center of the five structure E-shaped compound is used for the museum’s administrative purposes but the cells blocks and torture chambers of buildings A, B, C and D now host artifacts, picture galleries but most areas are as they were during the Khmer Rouge’s administration of the prison. The site is ringed by fences and barbed wire.

Chained to the floorBuilding A is where many of the torture chambers were located. There are still some of the bed frames in several of the rooms. Building B is now mainly dedicated to photographs of the formerly imprisoned and later executed victims. Building C was full of cells for the prisoners. It stands out from the rest of the buildings because the upper floor walkways are enclosed in barbed wire and each of the former school rooms has been divvied up into cells with bricks on the ground floor, wood on the first floor, and nothing on the top floor. There are iron rings embedded into the floor that are all too real.

When this was a prison, nobody learned. When this was a school, nobody died.In the right side of building C, under the stair case, there was a bunch of graffiti by English language tourists. The scribbles were unanimous in their condemnation of what happened, but varied from the religious (“Jesus saves�) to the comparisons with recent events (“G-Bay�) to completely off kilt Michigan Militia-like ideological crap (“take away their guns� being the first step to such an atrocities). The only one that stands out in a positive aspect was “When this was a prison, nobody learned. When this was a school, nobody died.� Building D housed a photo exhibition of photographs and statements by former prisoners, guards and Khmer Rouge headmen—many of whom are still alive today. Pol Pot’s photograph had been heavily and repeatedly vandalized.

There were about two dozen westerners about, including a few Asian-Americans. The few that did speak spoke in hushed tones. No body laughed. Nobody smiled. Nobody made eye contact. It was eerie and I have not felt like that since my first visit to the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC. I guess all such places, those memorializing the death of so people so recently like S-21, are like that.

Posted by stu at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

Check box tourist

My fist real day in Phnom Penh was “check box tourist day�. I really wanted to see the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh Royal Palace monumnetthe Tuol Sleng Museum genocide museum and just wander aimlessly thought the streets trying to understand the city.

It was hot and humid and water stops were frequent. After some difficulty, I arrived at S-21 (Tuol Sleng Museum.) There will be separate post on that. After two hours I headed back north to my hotel and stopped off at the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda which is a HUGE complex. And amazing. And beautiful. Give me a week or two and the pictures will be up in the picture gallery.

My final day in Phnom Penh as all about breakfast and taking the bus to Sihanoukville, a $5 four hour ride in seat 15. The Cambodian man adjacent to me tried to trick me into taking the window seat, but after a few laughs and a ‘no way in hell, buddy’ smile we settled in for the journey in our semi-air-conditioned 50 pax bus.

Posted by stu at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2006

Off to Cambodia...

With only a few days left in Chiang Mai there was a bit of pressure to square things off before leaving: pack up and ship home newly purchased stuff, come to a stopping point with Child’s Dream and the web site, and organize my last few weeks in Asia. Except for shipping a 10kg box back to Zurich for 2200 Baht, I failed at everything. The web site is going to need my intermittent attention for the next week or so. I have lost my UBS ATM card. (Now I’m on the backup Credit Suisse ATM card.) My plans from here on out include only 4200 Baht return tickets form Bangkok to Phnom Penh, a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia flight to Macau in mid-February, and a two night reservation at the Kowloon New World Renaissance for my last two night in Hong Kong. Everything else is a mess and I’ve got some hard dates to work with.

After over a day of trying to get the Bank of Bangkok to open up their ATM machine for me to look for my card (successfully searched but no card) I just had to get down to Bangkok for my Thursday morning flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Bangkok AirwaysThat meant a Wednesday evening 1900 VIP night bus for a whopping 780 Baht—nearly double the train fare. But the ride in seat A7 on the air conditioned 30 seat Mercedes-Benz was comfortable enough with its wide seats to get maybe four hours of sleep. The driver even dropped me off right at the airport, which he was not supposed to do, at about 4am. My check in time was at 5:30am so I just sorta cruised the terminal for a while before check in. That gave me enough time to sort out my 2200 Baht VAT return for the replacement camera, grab a bite to eat, and check the internet for hotels/guesthouses in Phnom Pehn.

After sleeping most of my Bangkok Airways flight PG920 away in seat 17D, we landed in Cambodia. The US$20 visa-on-arrival process was quick despite being so poorly organized. Next was immigration, baggage claim, customs and a US$7 taxi to the Dara Reang Sey Hotel where, in room 102, I’ve got air conditioning, cable TV, the best hot shower I’ve seen in months and a broken refrigerator. Oh, well. By 10am I was fast asleep again. At 3pm I awoke with a major headache and sore throat—Pam back in Chiang Mai was ill and now it seems I’ve picked up her disease. Super. I grab some food downstairs at the Guesthouse kitchen (cheese omelet, French bread with jam) and head back to bed to watch TV, read the latest issue of the Economist, and try to sleep my illness away.

Posted by stu at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

Last two days in Mae Sot

Market in Mae SotFriday morning I went on a self guided tour of town to see the market and a failed attempt to locate the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) museum. The market itself was somewhat entertaining and an interesting with such items for sale as flowers, turtles, brooms, shells, and two frogs in a bag. After wondering around aimlessly for a while I settled into Baifern Bar & Restaurant again for lunch and then went back to the Green Guesthouse for a nap. Earlier that morning Brittany had taken off for a refugee camp for some meetings and was planning to return the next day. The previous evening, her friend Amanda offered to take me out again to Kong’s Bar, which I naturally agreed. That evening I met many interesting people, including David Arnott, an online librarian and photographer for the Burma Peace Foundation (www.burmalibrary.org), and many other friendly people working for various NGOs in the region like the Francophile Aide Medicale Internationale, a.k.a AMI.

On Saturday Brittany was supposed to be back from her trip but by the late afternoon it is clear something has come up. So I head off for the Mae Sot Business Center to do some email, Boots-n-All catch up, and Internet work (Marc and Child’s Dream had a little emergency which I was able to rectify after an hour or so.) There I bumped into Jan of Denmark. We had met earlier at the guesthouse in the morning and agreed to meet later on at Kong’s Bar. Jan is in town working on a documentary about how information gets into and out of Burma. A while later David Arnott arrives, the Burma information librarian mentioned above, and those two got along famously having mutual professional interests. For a while I chatted with Bruce, a ten year Mae Sot resident and NGO worker. The man beside him was clearly deranged and talking to both us and himself simultaneously. Around midnight I wander back to the guesthouse ready for bed.

It must be said that towns like Mae Sot, a small boarder town near a very unstable country, attracts a lot of strange characters. I met many dedicated, purpose driven, intelligent people with good intentions. But there were also some strange ones about, like the man at Kong’s passionately talking to himself. Disgustingly, this kind of town also attracts pedophiles and other nasty creatures. Repeatedly during conversations with some of the NGO-folk talk turned to ‘that older Swiss man with the old green Mercedes’, etc. My colleagues back at Child’s Dream don’t like to do anything there other than get in, do our business, and get out. After four days in town I can understand why.

Painting at Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) in Mae SotSunday morning Amanda picked me up at my guesthouse and dropped me off at the AAPP museum which I had failed to reach the previous day. It is in a small, semi-secluded house with no signage indicating its existence. I received a guided tour by a man who was previously a political prisoner in Burma at Insein Prison, the current regime’s main gulag which had been built by the British decades earlier. The museum is quit small, about 18 square meters, and has a map of Burma with dozens of know political prisons, pictures of known political prisoners both dead and alive, some graphic photos that need no description here, a scale model of Insein Prison, some shackles worn by inmates, little doll houses presenting what a prisoner’s cell consisted of, and diagrams detailing the various stress positions prisoners where made to endure. While looking at the scale model of Insein Prison my guide said “my cell was in this building� and pointed to a little box on the model. Nasty stuff. After my guided tour I was shown a twenty minute video and then let myself out.

Time to get back to Chiang Mai. I’ve not heard anything from Brittany (no mobile signals in the refugee camps) and Pam sends me a text message asking me to be back at her place (where I am staying and have the keys to) by midnight. So after a quick lunch at Canadian Dave’s shortly after noon, I grab a 50 Baht minibus ride to Tak. The journey is not comfortable at all as I’m on the aisle seat which is on a hinge—every time we take a left hand corner at speed my seat flips up to the right and dumps me into the lap of my amazingly compliant neighbor. There are two police check points along they way where they make us all get out and show our papers. Once in Tak I catch a 162 Baht air conditioned ride to Chiang Mai where I arrive around 7pm. Fortunately I sleep through most of this ride.

A 40 Baht motor bike ride back to Pam’s flat and I’m done for the day.

Posted by stu at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2006

Mae Sot (again) and day trip to Myawadi, Burma

Green Guesthouse, Mae Sot, ThailandWednesday afternoon’s five hour bus ride was pretty uneventful and I was fortunate enough to sleep through most of it. At about 5pm our air-conditioned late model 50 pax Scania couch pulls up beside the Mae Sot agricultural market and I hop out, make plans to meet Brittany at 7pm at Restaurant Baifern on Intharikhiri Road. Lucky for me, there are signs from the patch of dirt we call the bus terminal to the Green Guesthouse where I stayed before on my first trip to Mae Sot in October. After some directional confusion crossing a river I check into room #9, a clean dimly lit shoebox of a space with cold water shower for a whopping 150 Baht (US$4) per night. Mae Sot Illegal Immigrant Detention CenterIt is conveniently located 20m from the Thai police’s illegal immigrant detention center.

After settling in to my room, I head out early for the restaurant for a Leo Beer and continue reading my latest book purchase, Nickel and Dimed by Barbra Ehrenreich. At about 7:20pm Brittany shows up and we proceed to have dinner. My green vegetable curry with coconut milk (80 Baht) is decent and just about perfectly spicy. While we are sitting there many of Brittany’s friends come up to chat—this is her town and it’s a small town. Apparently, there is a little party going on at Brittany’s flat on the west end of town that she didn’t organize and so we head off there. At her home, a typical Thai-style house-on-3m-stilts we find about a dozen people underneath it finishing up dinner and drinking Leo, Chang and Singha beer. Nothing crazy, to Brittany’s relief. There I met several interesting people including a few NGO worker’s who have either heard of Child’s Dream or actually know people there—it is very pleasing to who know more about the situation in Burma and Thailand that I do, who can educate me a little bit more on what’s going on, and who like to socialize. There were also many ethnic Karen exiles from Burma who there who are learning English. I spoke with two of them, but conversation was difficult. They were very dedicated to anti-junta causes and were spitting out acronyms of various movements that just baffled the shit out of me. (There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of anti-junta organizations in Thailand and Burma.)

Burma propagandaThe next day, Thursday, Brittany is off to work and I head for Myawadi, the town just across the boarder and the Maoei River from Mae Sot. It is about 7km to get there from the center of town so I rent a bicycle from the guesthouse for 10 Baht. (Considering my recent Luang Prabang, Laos bicycle follies, I should have known better.) After passing through the deserted Thai immigration office I head across the nearly traffic-less 80 million Baht Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge built in 1997. About halfway across I am intercepted by a man who intends to be my guide. The previous night over beers I had been warned about the assertive nature of the guides so take the situation in stride. We exchange names and ages. “What country are you from?� he asks. “Switzerland� I reply.

Burma immigraiton buildingOnce on the Burma side of the boarder I enter the immigration office. There the official take my passport and asks/declares that I am an American. After confirming this fact, he roars with easy mirth “GEORGE BUSH! WA HA HA HA HA HA�. I just shake my head and look at the floor smiling. This is not the place to get into international political discussions. 500 Baht later, he let’s me go with a blue post-it bearing an immigration stamp on it and the words 'USA' and 'Male' on it.

Wat in MyawadiI’m free and clear. My wanna be guide is there and we start walking down the main drag. He keeps trying to steer me into stores, temples, restaurants and markets but I’m pretty much fixed on walking straight ahead until I’m out off town. All this time I’ve got the new Canon strapped around my neck like a good little tourist. I do let myself once get side tracked into entering a Wat, take some pictures and ‘donate’ 5 Baht to the guy who watches over my stolen flip-flops. (NYE at THC Roof Top, the shoe situation was a free for all…someone had nicked my 200 Baht Tevas, and I needed shoes, so I just slipped on the first pair that did not hurt.)

Myawadi is a pretty small place, but even so it is difficult to get through town due to all the recent and on going road construction work. The government is building a nice, new big highway through the center of town. At the moment, it is just a long, inconsistently leveled stretch of dirt as they make an effort to widen the road. After an hour or so we are on the outskirts of town and I am getting plenty of “why on earth are you walking out here?� looks from the locals. Myawadi country sideAs we approach the top of a hill, my increasingly agitated ‘guide’ tells me that there is a police checkpoint over the hill. “Men with guns�, he insists. That’s warning enough for me, so I (we) turn back. It is about this time he is realizing that I’ve got my own agenda and could care less about his 'services'. He angrily tells me “I will remember you people from Switzerland! You are not good!� and he stomps off. Free at last, free at last. My only regret is that I didn’t tell him I was Canadian.

Sowing on a Singer in MyawadiNow that I’m back in town, it seems like a good idea to take a walkabout through the side streets. There are many vendors and such, a few clothing shops with old school Singer sowing machines, and people just milling about staring at the weirdo farang who must be lost. After a while I pass a few police men sitting at a cafe้. One of them starts up a conversation and I’m playing stupid tourist and just sort of go along with it. Most of the conversation was his speech about the history of Burma: “The British were here and they fucked everything up, we’ve had some problems but that’s all over with now, and now we welcome you tourists. Enjoy your stay.� Before sending me on my way, he discretely says “If you need any help, just come to me. I can help you.� Yea, sure. Thanks for that, you fucking thug in a uniform.

Minutes later beside a mosque I’m greeted by an older man from Kashmir with pretty good English. After pleasantries he asks me if I am a trader. Instinctively I want to say something cheeky, like “yea, a few kilos of heroin would be great…got any left?� but again I stay well behaved. The man and his entourage were all very nice and they could have been just innocent gem dealers or something. Burma is world renowned for its jade.

Mae Sot Immigration buildingIt was about then that this deranged looking man starts following me. He really, really, wants to make eye contact with me. I keep moving and no longer stop to take pictures, smile at kids, look into stores, etc. Every two or three minutes he starts out with a seconds long slow, devious laugh/giggle straight out of the mental institution patients one sees in Hollywood movies. 30 minutes of that and I was ready to get the fuck out of Burma and so work my way to the immigration office. With no hassles I pick up my passport and head back access the Friendship Bridge and into the waiting arms of Thai immigration. It is there that the most spooky of things happens of my entire Burma day trip: The Thai immigration officer asks me for my phone number. So, I put my Swiss number down. He says, “No, your Thai mobile number.� How did he know? Paranoia sets in. I jot it down thinking that it is better to not get caught in a lie. Brittany later tells me that he just psyched me out, but I don’t know…it was strange.

Anyways, after biking back to the guesthouse I shower, change, nap and later meet Brittany and friends at Crocodile Tears Bar and Restaurant. After one round we head off for Kung's Bar for a few more drinks and then call it a night.

I’m enjoying my stay so far in Mae Sot and decide to extend it two days until Sunday.

Posted by stu at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

Web server was down for two weeks

My web server was down for about two weeks from about the 23rd of December to January 8th. Three cheers to Dani and Nina in Zurich for sorting this out. Apparently, the power was interrupted to my flat in Zurich and my server did not come back up with the power. Murphy's law: nobody was around to do anything about it.

Over the next days I'll post what's been going on!

Keep checking below this post to find new posts

Posted by stu at 08:18 AM | Comments (4)

January 11, 2006

My New Year

THC BarNew Year’s Eve was pretty…OK. After searching for something to do and people to hang out with for a day, I finally ended up at The THC Roof Top bar across from Tha Phae Gate where Chiang Mai’s organized festivities were held. It was a lot of fun running around and talking to different people, 99% were travelers or on short holidays, but I was bored and tired soon after midnight and headed home.

Bullet in the roofMarc and Daniel of Child’s Dream had a bit of excitement when they returned home New Year’s Day. They found my colleague Tai’s glass desk shattered, her papers all over the place and even some damage as far away as 2m from her desk. Apparently, some gun loving fools were shooting into the air and one bullet came down on the Child’s Dream house/office, penetrated the roof and smashed through Tai’s desk! It looked like a large bore rifle bullet to me, but I’m no expert on firearms.

Anti-FTA protesters in front of StarbucksOver the next few days I did some work for Child’s Dream, bought a new camera (a Canon EOS 350D) to replace the stolen Sony (DSC-T1), and walked around town learning how to use it. This is my first SLR camera and it is very cool. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I can’t afford it and had to charge it to my UBS Mastercard…where the balance will sit for several months. But, it’s really cool! The picture here is of a anti-Free Trade Agreement protest in Chiang Mai this week. I like how they organized the protest march at Tha Phae Gate across the road from Chiang Mai’s brand new Starbucks.

It’s a crazy world…

I’m off to Mae Sot on the 1145 direct A48 bus today to see the town again, visit friends, and hop across the border into Myawadi, Burma for a day trip.

Posted by stu at 03:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2006

Notes on trip into Burma

Notes on my trip into Burma:

Posted by stu at 04:07 AM | Comments (0)

Kentung morning market, then Kentung to Chiang Mai

Vendor girlThe next morning I woke up early and wondered about the local early morning market. Before taking pictures of people, I first asked or tried to bribe. The first attempt was with a women selling these small bags of fried culrly things. She handed one to me, I ate it, thought “ummm…yuck�, but bought a package for 500 Jyet anyway. Then I got the shot. Later one I walked about the market and offered the curled whatevers to people I wanted to take pictures off, including this old woman and young girl. She didn’t seem to like the friend curly things either.

Hammering the doughAfter getting bored with the main street market I wandered into the surrounding side streets where people were going about their daily business. At two houses I found people working on some sort of dough making machine which were basically 3m long cantilevered hammers that would pound the dough. Two to four people would work one end to raise the hammer and then let the hammer head fall onto the dough itself every second or two. (There will be a a sound clip in the audio gallery soon.) As the hammer head was being raised, a woman would flip the dough halfway like an omelet. After many minutes of this, they would add some red stuff and be done with it. I think the end result was the doughy-like fried things we ate for breakfast, but am not sure.

After my stroll I sent back to Harry’s for coffee, etc. My fellow guesthouse tenants told me that the friend curely things were pork rinds. Double yuck! Somehow this lead to a conversation about my vegetarianism. At one point, this lone 50-something American package tourist with guide asks me “Is your skin turning yellow? All the vegetarians I know turn yellow.� It is one of the strangest questions I’ve ever heard, but coming from this bumbling fool (he said lots of little, zany things) it was really not a surprise.

Once it reached 9am or so, Britney and I caught a 500 Baht each taxi to the boarder and made such good time that we made it back ‘home’, well at least for me. She was en route to Pai for New Years Eve. Once we crossed the boarder we caught a fully packed 8 Baht Sawngthaew to the bus terminal were within twenty minutes we were on a 50 Baht, one hour long, air-conditioned, 2nd class bus ride to Chiang Rai. I had seat 4A, just behind Brittany’s 3A window seat. (The direct Chiang Mai bound bus was sold out.) In Chiang Rai we did well and within another twenty minutes had boarded the 3 hour, 88 Baht bus number N261 for Chiang Mai in seats 9A and 9B. This was my first-third class bus ride in Thailand and I won’t be doing it for any long haul travel again.

We finally arrived into Chiang Mai about 2200 where we took a Tuk Tuk to the Child’s Dream office, picked up the scooter, dropped off Brittany at a guesthouse, and I was off for bed at Pam’s flat. Yipee.

Posted by stu at 03:57 AM | Comments (0)