Angkor

The ancient Khmer capital of Angkor comprises of dozens of temples. The most famous - and largest single temple - is of course, Angkor Wat.

We arrived in the blue-grey light of mid-dawn. It had rained the night before (it's rainy season) so we were not blessed with a perfect sunrise, but still. The sight is not one to be complain about:

 

We spent an hour just gazing at the towers, before heading in to see the magnificent carvings that adorn the walls of the outer passages:

It was still and hot, despite the early hour. There's no wind, no movement, virtually no sound. It's a old, warm place.

After a much-needed breakfast and drink break, we moved on to the Angkor Thom complex, which is the largest area overall, and has the most ruins. We started with the eye-catching Bayon:

Can you spot all the faces carved into the towers? I certainly couldn't. They're beautiful up close though:

We weaved our way in and around more temples of the complex. The Wah scrambled up decaying and steep staircases like Spiderman. Clunking around with my big camera, I was more cautious.

The temples at Angkor were "discovered" by the French in the 1860s. Previously, they'd been lost to the jungle, known only to locals. We saw a good example of this at Ta Prohm, where many giant trees have been left in place to show tourists what those explorers must have seen when they first cut their way in:

It was an awesome couple of days at the temples. I cannot wait to return to Siem Reap, and Angkor. It's a wonderful town, with gorgeous people, fantastic eating and night-life, and shopping to die for.

Oh yes, and we also saw monkeys:

Angkor Elephants

When you get to some "must see" destinations in the world, you sometimes feel they've been over-rated.

The Temples of Angkor - in particular, the marvellous Angkor Wat - are NOT one of those places.

I'll post some pictures of our nine-hour day at the temples this morning soon, but first, I must show you - feeding bananas to elephants!

Tasting Tarantula

What do you do at a petrol stop at Skon, about 75 kilometres north of Phnom Penh? Try some crispy fried tarantula, that's what.

The Weeds and the Roots

Warning: this post contains extremely graphic imagery and descriptions.

There is a saying in Cambodia that "when you clear weeds, you must remove them from the roots up".

Sarloth Sar saw weeds and roots everywhere. Between 1975 and 1979, he removed - in the most brutal ways possible - between 1.7 and 2.5 million of them.

The instruments used to carry out this mass extermination were the brain-washed soldiers of the Khmer Rouge - some just boys, many others in their teens. Sarloth Sar was Brother Number One. He gave himself his infamous moniker, from a French nickhame "politique potentielle". He was Pol Pot.

Tuol Sleng was a high-school once. Just a few kilometres from the centre of the capital Phnom Penh, it was to become a place of torture. Re-named the S-21 security centre, Tuol Sleng saw between 14,000 and 17,000 people enter its doors. Only seven survived; they had been able to hide from Khmer Rouge soldiers who'd been ordered to slaughter the last remaining prisoners before fleeing the city - and the incoming Vietnamese Army - in 1979.

The rest were weeds.

To begin with it was the intellectuals, the "elite". Soldiers had asked for doctors, engineers, teachers - any professional - to come forward, insisting they'd be transferred to a good job somewhere else in the new regime. Instead, they were taken to S-21, and asked to name fellow professionals. If they did, they were taken away to be killed. If they didn't, they were tortured, repeatedly and horrifically, until they did. Then they were killed as well.

Women were not spared this unflinching evil; most were raped and stripped naked before torture - including the removal of nipples with pincers. The final, merciless act was to remove the "roots". Educated people were more likely to have educated families. Educated families might have the ability to harness opposition to the regime. At the very least they might swear revenge. That would not do. The answer - to round them up and kill them all.

It doesn't look like a scene of madness. It doesn't look as big as you might think, considering the numbers. But the Killing Field just outside of Phnom Penh is just one of over 100 scattered across the country, kept silent from province to province so farmers and workers were unable to grasp the full scale of their country's civil mass murder.

But there are bones still visible in the dirt paths; and the mounds are the sides of pits, into which dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies were thrown. Hog-tied and blind-folded, the victims were not given a relatively compassionate death by bullet. Ammunition was too precious to the regime. They were beaten with iron bars, or bamboo sticks, or worse - had their throat slit with a sharp-edged frond from a sugar palm tree.

Children were not spared.

Once the regime was toppled in 1979, the scale of the Khmer Rouge's blunt extermination of around 20 per cent of Cambodia's population started to become clear. The Killing Field was dug up; bodies exhumed; clothes and skulls put on display in a respectful "stupa" memorial.

Butterflies now flitter and float about The Killing Field. Their beauty is in stark contrast to the evil once seen there. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot perpetrated one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. It should not be forgotten.

Picture Perfect

Our time in Vietnam is drawing to a close; after a full day here in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday, we're off to Cambodia on Friday.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting. We're having a grand adventure, and as always it's lovely to be able to write about it as we go along.

Now for more photographs! We've been using both my new Nikon D80 with the mega-lens that I still don't really know how to use, and the Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot. The following are a mixture of both:

Our fantastic guide Quan, doing his bit to break
down those degrading cultural stereotypes.

Just keeping abreast of the local beers in Hue.

One of the ruins at My Son, outside Hoi An.
These Hindu temples were built by the Champa people
between the 4th & 14th centuries, then lost to the jungle
until the late 1800s. Many were destroyed by US bombings.

On a boat on the Mekong River, near the town
of Ben Tre. The water is that colour due to silt.

We rode bikes pulling trailers to our lunch at a local village.
I can't describe how much fun this was.

The Wah on a bridge, as we await our sampan boats
Do you like his ridiculous hat?

Ho Chi Minh City's elegant Opera House.
Built by the French.

The Pampering

It was the rubbing of her buttocks against mine that was the strangest sensation.

I'd rocked up to the Na Spa in Hoi An, conveniently located diagonally opposite our Cua Dai Hotel, and just next to Mr Chin, who offered laundry at a very decent $1 per kilo, as well as bicycle and motorcycle hire at very reasonable rates. Helmets included.

The nice ladies at Na Spa gave me thongs to wear instead of my beaten and dusty blue Crocs (a relic of the Great Wall of China walk that I cannot bring myself to throw away), and handed me a tall glass of iced tea. I've never drunk iced tea, never thought I'd really like it. But it's amazing the new taste sensations you discover when it's in the mid-30s outside with humidity close to 100 per cent; and you've just returned from a sweaty fitting at the Yaly tailors', where your suit, while beautiful, seems remarkably browner than when you first picked out the material.

Eventually, the Therapist took me upstairs to the Massage Room. She was a tiny lady with little English, but the 'take your clothes off' gesturing crossed the language barrier well enough. I was given tiny white mesh pants to wear; the kind midget porn stars might don before a tough day at the office.

She spread a large sheet of plastic on the firm (and generously wide) massage bed. I clambered on, all grace and elegance in my near-nudity. I plonked my face into the head-rest-with-breathing-hole-cut-out bit, and the Therapist got to work. She smeared my body with papaya, back then front. She then folded the plastic over me, and left me there, like a bizarre cross between Laura Palmer and a fruit salad.

Once marinated, I was sent into the shower cubicle to de-fruitify. I donned a second pair of white mesh pants, wondering where the factory for such garments might be. I returned to the massage table, where a fresh plastic coating was waiting. Another delicate mount, and then the Therapist began applying the coffee.

I'd ordered the coffee scrub after hearing rumours that the ground beans work well on the so-called "problem areas". My "problem areas" are rather too many to describe in a blog post, but safe to say I was hoping for a caffeine-inspired boost.

She mixed the coffee with some sort of liquid; I suspect water, but I'd like to think milk, just to get that cappucino effect. She began scrubbing furiously at my pasty doughy white skin, taking off at least six or seven layers of epidermis in the process.

The most confronting part was, having done my back and legs, she got to my... ahem...chest area. Now Judith Lucy once famously said "I don't know about you girls, but I don't carry a lot of tension in my breasts." But then, this wasn't about tension, it was about exfoliation, so The Girls were in for it.

Her technique was firm and steady; but she went at each breast like Demi Moore went at that pottery wheel in Ghost. I wanted to say, "Love, it doesn't matter how many times you do that - it's not going to turn into a vase!" I almost laughed thinking about it; which she took as a grimace and softened her grip somewhat.

I entered the shower after the coffee scrub looking like I'd rolled through 70 packets of broken Oreos. I wondered if this is what I would look like if I got an oh-so-natural-super-dark fake tan.

The water restored my paleness, and I returned - smelling like a tropical expresso - for the full body massage. I thought I had been fairly well massaged enough, but that was not the case. The Therapist took this opportunity to jump onboard the table, straddling my middle, and putting the full-force of her 50 kilos onto my spine. She rolled back and forth like a ship in a swell - hence the rubbing of the buttocks. Thankfully she was clothed and my modesty was protected by a towel, otherwise it could have got very Swedish in there very quickly.

A few pressure points later, some graphic rolling of my feet - accompanied by the grinding sound of my wrecked ankle joints - and we were done. She tapped my back, tapped my head, tapped my shoulders - soliciting all sorts of hollow noises - and wished me well.

I handed over my Visa card to the receptionist, before staggering back across the road to the hotel and collapsing with jelly-like flubbery-ness onto the bed. But damnit, a rest was not to be had. For I had a fitting at the tailors'....

All the way to Hue

You know, there's a lot to be said about being completely unprepared for your holiday.

If you plan stuff, then you have expectations. Due to all of the work and various theatre commitments I've had this year, I put very little thought into this trip - what I wanted to see and do. I had very few expectations.

And you know what? It's FANTASTIC.

Everything has been an absolute joy. Every day is full of surprises and unanticipated delights. Even the jellyfish sting worked out OK; I have a big angry red welt on my left forearm, but damnit if I don't look hard-core for it. Here's a shot of The Wah and I at the cave entrance, overlooking the bay, near the site of the now-infamous stinging.

Mmmm, we're sweaty.

And who would have thought I would have enjoyed crossing the road? Such a simple activity, but here it's like being thrust into your own fully-immersive video game, like a cross between Tetris and Frogger. You just step out and go for it. There's fewer cars, but loads of motorbikes and scooters. Sure, traffic is slower, but there's more cohesion - despite the constant stream of tooting on horns. Traffic is one big organic mass; you move for someone, they move for you. Road rules are fine, but optional. Helmets are compulsory, which is good.

I wore one today, as we took a motorbike ride around Hue, visiting various places of interest. Back home I'd be wary of riding a bike; here I didn't even think twice, and I didn't feel unsafe for even a second.

That's Teo, my biking buddy. We're in the haze.
And I'm in a ridiculous hat/helmet combo.

We motored around back streets and jungle-y areas, through rice paddies and villages. We stopped to see how incense and conical hats were made; we saw the Colosseum a 19th-century King had built (when Hue was the capital) to see elephants fighting tigers. We stopped at a Buddhist monastery for a massive vegetarian lunch - where I was force-fed by a Lady Monk. She literally shovelled the food in my mouth.

Food, glorious, non-meaty food

We finished off today with a look at the Heavenly Lady Pagoda - which was the home of the monk who set himself on fire in Ho Chi Minh City as a protest in 1963. You know, the one from the Rage Against the Machine album cover. The blue car he travelled in that you can see in the photo is preserved there.

We finished with a boat trip along the Perfumed River, before a final bike trip back to the hotel and a refreshing swim. Oh the heat is wonderful and terrible, as it generally is.

Tonight I will feast again; for the food here is delicious, full of flavour, and extremely affordable. Our first night, I had duck in a tangerine sauce. TANGERINE. I hope to have it in pineapple sauce next...

The Sting

It was actually The Wah who got hit first.

"Argh!" he cried, throwing his arm up out of the warm waters of Ha Long Bay. "I've been stung, something's stung me on the arm!"

"Deep breaths, and we'll swim back to the boat quickly," I yelled back.

Then, bam! Lashings of fire raced up my left arm.

"It's got me too...argh!"

I raised my arm above the waterline, but could see no stingers or tentacles on me. The pain wasn't too bad then; just a strong burning feeling. I looked ahead.

The boat - the Bien Ngoc 08 - was still about 20 metres from where we where, treading water and trying to see into the thick green around us for anymore signs of the little bastard/s that had got us. But directly in front of us was a young woman, on her small flat wooden boat, with a traditional conical hat shielding her face from the late afternoon sun, and her oar outstretched.

"Jellyfish!" she cried, slapping the oar down onto the water next to her.

The Wah and I tried to move in the other direction. "Jellyfish!" she cried again, pointing, this time to water on the other side of the boat.

"Which way?" we yelled. "Are you pointing TO the jellyfish, or AWAY from the jellyfish?"

The young woman had been circling the boat for a while, her craft laden with Oreos, Aquafina water bottles, Choco-Pie biscuits, and alcohol. Water-born touts, trying to make a living from hungry western tourists. "You buy something?" and "Ice-cold beer, vodka, whisky!" had seemed to be the limit of her English-speaking ability.

That, and of course, "Jellyfish!" She slapped the oar down onto the water again.

We'd passed her by a few minutes earlier, after deciding we wanted to swim out about 200 metres and touch the base of one of the huge limestone mountains that make up the World Heritage listed Ha Long Bay. We'd turned down her requests to buy something. But now, two jellyfish stings later, she was going to be of service, whether she liked it or not.

"We're just going to have to push," said The Wah. "We'll just push her boat towards ours, and stay at the back. Hopefully the jellyfish will keep off to the sides."

We grabbed the wooden stern, arms still aching, and started kicking. After a while, the confused young woman realised what we were doing, and starting paddling her oar. A few minutes passed, punctuated by the occasional "Jellyfish!".

By this time, everyone else on board the Bien Ngoc 08 was watching. They'd all climbed out of the water while we were over at the rock, having been warned of jellyfish coming out in the pre-dusk. But we'd been too far away by then; and they didn't want to panic us. After seeing us both get stung so close to home, they were ready at the ladder to help us onboard, once we'd kicked the young woman's boat far enough.

"I'll come back, I'll buy water," I told the young woman. She scrounged about in her battered esky and fished out a few pieces of ice, which a fellow traveller took and began applying to my arm. The Wah and I climbed the stairs to the ship's main deck, where other passengers had grabbed several lemons from the crew.

"Vinegar! We need vinegar!" said The Wah.

But they didn't have vinegar - only lemons. We squeezed about half a dozen of them onto our arms - the Wah had also receiving a whip across the lower chest. Both had turned red-and-white, the skin raised with angry heat. The Wah, being more stoic than I, took the pain more manfully.

Mindful of my relatively fresh travelling companions, I decided against completely losing my shit, despite the pain that seemed to grow and come in waves of white heat. Some kind of shock set in, and I sat down, my stomach knotted, my back tense with pressure, opening and closing my hands to make sure they didn't clench themselves into paralysis.

It took over an hour for the pain to subside enough, and the shock to wear off enough, to brave a shower. I managed to climb onto the boat's roof just in time to see the beautiful pink-and-orange sunset over the limestone. With a deep breath, I blessed my good fortune in not being more greatly injured.

And with a second breath - I cursed all jellyfish kind.

Five-Zero-Zero

Sometimes I get a bit randomly teary.

Like this afternoon, for instance. Why should the song Paparazzi by Lady Gaga make me teary? Why would that happen? Particularly while driving?

I think perhaps it's because I lead a very charmed existence, and sometimes I remember to not take that for granted. When that happens, I generally get a bit teary.

Take for instance, Prognosis: Death! RELAPSE at the Brisbane Arts Theatre. Our last three shows were amazing, with great performances and some absolutely truly memorable moments. My personal favourite was St Love and the Odyssey - because I got to play the bad guy. The spirit of an Ancient Greek siren inhabited the body of Nurse Lottie Buble, sending her into a man-eating frenzy. I even managed to crank out a good "Siren Song" too - with rhymes and everything.

Best thing about those show is that the wonderful cast and crew of Impro Mafia and the BAT all happen to be my best mates as well. Sometimes I have nightmares that one day I'll be banned from doing theatre and impro and forced to live in a small box with a pair of football-liking rats. And I think of Ratty 1 and Ratty 2 cheering on the Rabbitohs while I try in vain to interest them in a discussion about theatre or history, and I get a bit teary.

And then there's you guys - the people who pop in and out of girlclumsy.com. Thank you for taking time out of your days to read what I'm writing; thank you to those who take even more time to comment. I was always a terrible diary-keeper - but blogging is one of my favourite things to do now, because I know there's a chance someone might read, and enjoy, and interact. Sometimes I think how lucky I am to have such a nice little corner of cyberspace to share, and I get a bit teary then too.

This post actually marks the 500th entry on girlclumsy.com - which I began almost five years ago as a travel blog. It's fitting then, that I write now just hours before heading off with The Wah on yet another adventure - this time to Vietnam and Cambodia.

I'm not taking my laptop with me to Indochina - but I will be checking in at internet cafes along the way. Hopefully I'll get a few chances to upload some photographs and stories. And I certainly hope to be a reasonably entertaining read, as I kick the off the next 500 posts.

Now. I should pack...

Bringing Ugly Back

I haven't been watching this MasterChef program, but it seems I'm missing out on ogling the biggest ballistic sexbomb since Mr Darcy emerged, dripping wet, in his shirtsleeves, from the pond at Pemberley....

...er, sorry, where was I? Oh yes. Sex symbols. Apparently, this chef bloke called George Calombaris is one. So much so, that he's inspired Karen Brooks' column in today's Courier-Mail - Ugly is the New Sexy.

I'd like to come back here with a sensible and well-reasoned argument, but the truth is - this is all just seven types of bollocks.

If George Calombaris is sexy - and that can depend on your personal definition - it's because he's interesting and talented. He can cook you a damn fine meal, and talk to you intelligently about it.

In The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, one of the characters remembers a former lover wistfully, saying "You can forgive a lot if a person's interesting." (apologies to Birmo if I've misquoted).

Anyone can be sexy. Good-looking people just have a headstart.

Buy a new shirt. Get a haircut. Learn how to put on make-up sensibly. Wear a fragrance. Stand up straight. Smile. Don't be a creep. Talk confidently, but not arrogantly. Don't say the words "dude" or "bro" too much. Lower the tone and pace of your speaking voice. Don't get too stupidly drunk. Have an opinion on things, but don't be dogmatic. Pay attention to the person you're speaking with, and listen to what they say. And skills with food are always good.*

Having said that - and even though beauty can be subjective - I don't think one article like this signals the start of the Great Loving of Ugly People. Thanks to the last fifty years of pop culture, we're all too shallow for that.

*Yes, these are tips for me as much as for anyone else. Gosh, being beautiful would be so much easier.

News Ltd Takes the Piss

I am delighted to present to you a piece of sub-editorial silliness that I'd like to think would make Stuart Littlemore chuckle.

During a pre-bedtime news check, I logged onto news.com.au to find this on the front page:

Now look closer at the top story next to the wannabe model:

Notice something familiar about that photo?

It is, in fact, Andre Serrano's Piss Christ, a controversial artwork first displayed in America in 1989. In 1997, it came to Australia, where two teenagers smashed it with a hammer as it hung in the National Gallery of Victoria.

It's called Piss Christ because it is a photograph of a small crucific suspended in a jar of the artist's own urine.

I love the thought that a late-night sub-editor saw a story about an alleged exorcism, did a quick Google search to find a religious-related photograph, was attracted by the bright yet filmy orange of the Piss Christ, and whacked it up without a second thought.

Although, it could be that the sub-editor is making a meta-point about the terrible things that have been done to religion, or in the name of religion. Perhaps he or she is having the last laugh. In that case, I salute you, subversive sub-editor.

I wanted to put these screen shots up because I suspect by Tuesday morning it will be long gone.

But I'll let you make your own jokes about the front page of News Limited's flagship website being covered in urine.

Boys Behaving Badly

Ah, the National Rugby League. A game full of fine, upstanding young gentlemen, full of enthusiasm for a healthy and active lifestyle, with impeccable manners and enormous respect for women.

Toilet training, however, seems to be optional.

This evening, Roosters player Nate Myles was suspended for six matches over a drunken incident in a NSW Central Coast hotel yesterday morning. Apparently, an extremely inebriated Myles attempted to barge his way into the wrong room, before being discovered naked and disorientated in a fire escape. But the classiest part? Myles was found to have defecated on himself in a corridor.

I don't know. Perhaps he thought the hotel was a dump, and decided to crank out a three-dimensional critical review.

Now I'm not a drinker. Despite what The Wah claims about that time in Scotland when I had to skull a pot of beer and a peach schnapps in order to win a trivia contest*, I have never been drunk. So I don't know how bad things can get when you're completely muntered and need a privvy urgently. But honestly, how bad does it have to be to drop trou in the middle of a inn to get half your middles out?

Then we've got the revelation that a bunch of Aussie sailors on the ironically-named HMAS Success have been sent home after their cute little "See How Many Chicks We Can Bang" competition was discovered - no doubt by humourless femminazis who weren't featured on their charming list.

I was astounded by the number of people calling talkback radio today to say various versions of the following:

"Oh, it's just young people with healthy libidos. It's been going on for years! Matter of fact, when I was in the service, it was the GIRLS who used to rate the blokes! What's all the fuss about?"

Now I know that being in the military, or police, or politics - or any kind of workplace really - might often seem like a school camp, full of that away-from-home unreality magic. I remember my own Year Nine school camp, when Andrew Barlow gallantly asked me to "snog him", despite his outright loathing of me during normal school hours.**

I appreciate that people like to have sex with other people, and that the achievement of said sex can become a hot topic amongst various peer groups. But to keep a ledger? And award points?

It's so... it's so... it's so Schoolies Week.***

I don't like to draw too much of a conclusion about the macho cultures of rugby league football and the Royal Australian Navy, but I will say there was a fair whack of Hahn Super Dry consumed after our impro show last Saturday, and the worst result was a hangover that caused several players some uncomfortable "I-need-to-stay-in-a-cool-dark-place" moments the next day.

There's always a fair bit of sexual tension in scripted theatre too - with cast crushes common, and cast party shenanigans almost compulsory. And yet, and yet! We've all managed to keep our bowel movements private and our sexual bragging modest.


*Yes, that's right, the Scots found a way to incorporate a drinking contest into their trivia competitions.

** I refused. He was seeeeeeedy. Then he didn't talk to me for three years. I didn't mind.

***Which I didn't go on. Being a non-drinker, and not particularly interested in more potential Andrew Barlow-style offers, I didn't mind.

Blood and Laughter

Heading back in to the Brisbane Arts Theatre for the second season of Prognosis: Death! was like being reunited with a long-lost love, and finding everything that was exciting and wonderful and fulfilling the first time around is still just as it was.

We played with a slightly different opening for our first show, "St Love and the Visitors", because we wanted to add in some extra soap opera-style plot twists. The plot - about brain-eating aliens possessing St Love Hospital's resident priest, Reverend Jeremy Thistlewaite - took slightly longer to build, but the return of Dr Burton Mangold (the Best Damn Doctor in St Love), and the revelation of the invading aliens as rather camp showgirls made for a great second half. Plus we had GREEN blood:

Friday saw us hit absolute top stride with "St Love and the Phantom", which became a medical-comedy-musical-parody of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's famous production, with a one-time Best Damn Doctor rising up from his rat-infested lair in the hospital basement to seduce Dr Melody Carmichael with the piano accordion. It was wonderful.

Finally, our wonderful musician Kris took these shots of me before and after my blood encounter on Friday night - I couldn't believe I'd made it to the interval with my uniform still clean:

But I made up for it at the end of Act Two, with The Wah (Director & Chief Blood Dispersal Operator) shooting three large syringes full of our sugary blood mix straight at me:

I can honestly repeat my assertion that making an audience laugh - and on occasion, cheer - is the best feeling in the world. I adore this show, I adore everyone in it - and I love the fact our audiences seem to adore it too. I can't wait for tonight.

Prognosis: Death! RELAPSE
Brisbane Arts Theatre, 210 Petrie Terrace
8pm (Sat 4, Thu 9, Fri 10, Sat 11 July)
Book on 3369 2344 (or just rock up)