South East Asia Round Up List

This is being done out of pure laziness, but sometimes I prefer going back and reading lists:

Laos
- so few beggars, everyone has something to sell or offer, one guy in vientianne played flute, we spoke to a local and apparently he used to play it really well and didn't make so much money so now he plays it badly and is much more successful

- misty in the morning and at night it's never picth black even in the countryside, everything is visible just shadowed and in gradations of grey, our theory was that it must have had something to do with the reflection of the moon on the mist?! Not very technical

- harvest moon - the most beautiful moon I have ever seen. So so low and so full and yellow, like another planet just on the horizon, it gave off an alarming amount of light, you were compelled by its power to look at it

-lots of children and grown ups with one blue blind eye, some sort of nutritional deficiency or genetic disorder? In Cambodia as well

- Laotians don't drink tap water either, everyone drinks bottled water, so it's a scam at restaurants when they try to get you to buy bottled water because it's customary to provide it anyway

- 4 kids to a motorbike. Or an entire family! Pile em on

- memory of rice cakes drying in the sun, everywhere lots of little perfectly round white discs glistening 4 across and 10 down on a massive tray left out on walls and tables on pavements, so sweetly delicious and so tempting, yet never a stolen one, always in perfectly alligned rectangular shape

- volleyball, the most popular sport, only with a slight variation - w/a wicker ball, sounds so painful a hard wack on a bare foot. So beautiful to watch with lots of balletic kicks

- red clay, dust roads, trees with a thick rusted film, everything blanketed in terracota

- xmas lights used all year round as decoration for shop fronts, petrol stations, homes. New Years banners are a permanent salutation

-ELEPHANTS - stu of stu and lu, who we met in nong khiaw spent some time at an elephant rehabilitation centre in Thailand learning to be a mahoot (person who takes care of elephants) and he warned us NEVER to take elephant rides. In order to train the elephants their captors basically break their souls. The elephants are initially kept without food and water and are deprived of sleep for 3 days, at this point they have given up hope and submit, they fall out of line and they are swiftly brought back in with the threat of stabbing from a sharp long blade. Elephants in captivity have been known to commit suicide by stamping on their trunk, thus cutting off 80 percent of their oxygen intake and then hold their breath. They murder their own young by crushing them so as not to submit them to this existence.

Elephants are smart, sensitive creatures who live in complex family units, when you see them at angkor wat or various tourist stops you look into their eyes and you see pain. No it's not a wishy washy sentimental personification of animals, it's absolutely true so don't ever ride an elephant ok?!!! Cos their lovely

-BEST PART OF LAOS, makeup lesson with tribal children on trek. I taught all the little girls and a few of the boys how to apply lip gloss. I never thought I'd make much of a teacher, but I really enjoyed the captive audience and the precision with which they followed me and their seriousness. But then it tasted like mango so they just started eating it from the tub instead. Oh well

CAMBODIA
-children with knives, LARGE knives, I know that we live in a nanny state but some things I think are better out of the reach of babes, like butchers knives and cleavers. Although seeing a todler wandering about with a blade was comically reminiscent of maggie in the simpsons it's really really not funny as they make stabbing motions towards you or hold it alarmingly close to their face so the point is near their eye (does that explain the blue blind eye phenomenom in SE Asia?). I know that kids learn certain tasks early in asia like lighting fires or what have you, but weaponry mastery is a skill best saved for well actually in a perfect world no one.

-I don;t know if one person came here and made it their mission to disseminate this phrase across the country, but as soon as the locals know you're english they respond with 'lovely jublee' (catchphrase from only fools and horses - brit sitcom for the international readers). Towit I say 'he who dares rodders, he who dares'

- Police uniforms, we met a guy from chicago in Phnom Penh who'd been out to a market by the airport where he bought an entire cambodian police uniform - from the hat to the badges and spats and boots. He was 6'3" so he had to buy trousers that looked the part as opposed to the real thing, but otherwise he was really pleased. He said that lots of police men were up there purchasing special medals and markings to stitch on to their shirts, I love that it's not by merrit that you get them but by fancy

-construction workers, a lot were female. I didn't notice because they were dressed in baggy clothes and had headscarves on to protect them from the dirt, but sarah pointed out that they had boobs

-lots of barbershops set up on the side of the street with swivel chairs and red and white striped taurpaulin, lots of similar set ups with seamstresses

-FACT it is impossible to finish a journey in the same mini van that you started out in. Everyone I spoke to had the same experience of a break down and then waiting on the side of the road for 6 hours in the dark til the driver could flag down another van. Makes journeys that are supposed to be 3 hours a day and a half long saga
-bus drivers stop for no one. While on a bus in cambodia the vehicle ran over a dog, many many chickens, some cats and nearly an old lady

-Betelnuts - I think this is all of asia, everyone chews them and the little men that sell them on the side of the road and chew them all day long have a gollum like quality about them. Dilated pupils, skinny, speedy, no teeth because they've all been corroded away, bright red salivating mouths (betelnut saliva looks like blood). In India Julie tried to buy chocolate from one of these guys and he wouldn't let her, he said he'd only sell betelnut, even though the chocolate was costlier and was presented as if it were for sale. He rolled and chewed, one for the customer one for him, one for customer one for him. The life of an addict

KO PHANGAN

-first off, here is where I learned the reason that so many men keep one very long nail - often the pinky nail which reminds me of harvey keitel in taxi driver whose character is a pimp and a child molester with stringy hair and has the same long nail but his was for sniffing cocaine - this image has forever imprinted in my mind that such an affect is a sinister thubg, but in asia it's supposed to signify that you're not a manual laborer, even though a lot of the time the people who have them still are

-noticeable difference between thailand (which is for the most part SO much richer than it's neighbours) is that pet cats and dogs have collars in thailand whereas in laos a child ties a piece of ratty old string round it's animals throat to mark his/her ownership

-sea lice! What a discovery that was, I always thought that when I went into the water and it stung it was because that ocean was particularly salty at that time or my skin was especially sensitive to it, but no, it's because a legion of microscopic little sea creatures are devouring you

- mushroom mountain at the end of hat rin - the main beach area, up above all of the beach parties, 3am downpour with 20 bats inside the bar circling and making figure eights, great memory

- saunas at the buddhist temple, that sometimes smelled of curry and sometimes of lemon grass and sometimes somewhere in between the two

- visibility of climate change, phangan used to be a fishing island (now it's tourism and coconuts that brings in the cash) and knowing about winds and tides and seasonal variations in weather is in their blood, so talking to mama - of the family who ran phangan rainbow, she said how worried she was by the fact that it was so overcast and there was rain at this time of year. The pattern of the tides has altered completely and it draws in and out haphazardly.... this is the beginning of the end......

-there were two italian metrosexual pretty boys at phangan rainbow and I was so envious of how romantic they were - moonlit bonfires and beach barbeques, collecting shells together, guitar accompanied sing alongs, cartwheels on the sand. Normal men you could really learn a trick or two from the girlie boys

- Old man security guard at ferry dock taking his responsibility a little too seriously, sauntering about like John Wayne, guarding his line like gandalf - you shall not pass. Just funny seeing him try to take on rodney who is enormous and hulking and muscle bound and 3 times the size, and the satisfaction in his face when rodney shuffled back the 3 inches behind the line

-lastly, on my final night in Phangan I learned about the island it used to be. 15 years ago there was only one road going from hat rin to the port and no electricity, it was samui's undiscovered neighbour, you only went to the island for one thing and that was weed. The beaches were full of people but not families or package holiday makers or pill heads or wreck heads or israelis, only weed smokers. Charlie an old veteran would tell stories of how papa (a well respected man on the island, the first to own a car) would chop and serve up the potent leaves and bring it out on a tray with all of his drug paraphenalia and keep his favourite bong hidden until his arrival. The beach deck which now has 8 long tables had only 2 and the rest of the place was covered with marijuana plants like a green house jungle. At that time a large number of the visitors were japanese youngsters who were first time smokers and martin swears that there were some cases of extremely bad reactions to over use. Stories of people freaking out and going missing or being physically restrained and tied to their beach huts. I have read anti-drug publications that warn that marijuana use can bring on dormant schizophrenia or that innercity weed can be laced with PCP, but martin seemed really genuine in his assertion that people went nuts from smoking themselves silly. Wouldn't it all have been something to behold?

-oh and finally thailand dispelled me of the illusion that all things french were wonderful, on the nightbus back to Bangkok I sat next to a pungent gaul who stank of stale beer, cigarettes and too much boss cologne, he sweat like a pig and ogled the thai ladies and until he spoke I was convinced he was english. Not only was he offensive just by his very being, but an hour into the journey he asked if he could prop his head either on my lap or my shoulder so he could sleep. I wanted to say I would rather have my eye gauged out with a red hot poker and then eat it you sweaty smelly cheese eating surrender monkey, but I just said no.

-bangkok airport rocked because sarah and I ate a meal for free at a thai deli, big tubs of free samples of wasabi flavoured seaweed and chocolate flavoured mung bean buns and spicy peanuts. Heaven

-Julie had a story about her night out in Patpong in Bangkok, she visited a girlie bar where all the girls danced around in their underwear - not much thought in the outfit, literally evryday mismatched kinds, and had little numbers pinned to them. More than anything, she said they just looked bored rocking and twisting their hips unenthusiastically to the western music, but she said at closing time it all changed. They played thai pop and everyone danced and sang -so excited to go home and not be slobbered on by fat hairy westerners probably like the frog from the bus.

OK done now, sorry this was so long, if whoever reads this gets to the end you're a really good friend email me and tell me and I'll get you a present for being so attentive