Retrospective Cambodia: Part Bii

A photoBlog of my brief 4 day visit to The Land of Wonder in 2008:

Poipet in all its glory: 2008

One of the main roads through Cambodia.  En route to Siem Reap.

Shooting range at Siem Reap.  Bit pointless if you ask me but some people like it.

Hotel balcony view in Siem Reap

Floating village on the Tonle Sap lake.  This photo was taken from a very low lying/sinking boat.

Temple kids surround our Tuk-Tuk.

The magnificent Angkor Wat

Boat racing during the water festival on The Tonle Sap river, Phnom Penh.

View of the light boats from a restaurant on Preah Sisowath Blvd, Phnom Penh.

Inside S-21; the infamous school that got turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Classroom/torture chamber: S-21

That's all folks...

On India and The Commonwealth Games

I love sport and particularly athletics. It has been saddening for me watching the events taking place in Delhi over the past couple of days but, for me personally, completely expected.

Let me explain.

In August 2008 I set off on a gap four months which began in India and specifically, Delhi.  My travels in India were to last a month and would take me from Delhi south and across country to end in Chennai.  It was an interesting and difficult month, one which frustrated and left me flabbergasted at much that I saw.  Below I've looked at two issues that to do with The Commonwealth Games in Delhi but there is still a lot more to come out at some point.

Sport:

August 2008 was the month of the Beijing Olympics and in India I was able to see…none of it!  I tried, I mean I really tried, I really, really wanted to watch the 100metres (I was a sprinter at school) but I just couldn’t find any coverage.  Admittedly I wasn’t in the heart of the biggest cities but I was hardly in the middle of a shanty town either; more on that later.

There were great celebrations for the Indian athletes that won medals, especially the gold medal winner, but he is the exception not a rule.  His father built him a shooting range in the family grounds to help him practice, hardly a legacy for future Indians. 

A legacy of sport in India needs to be massive grass roots exposure.  Education does come first but sport (alongside art) can be, and should be, a big part of that.  I had a similar conversation on a train between Mysore and Chennai with an Indian man.  He argued that education should be a primary focus and that children should not be distracted by sport. I said that some of the smartest people I know were also incredibly good athletes and that in U.S.A they use sport as a way of educating those less fortunate through the college sports scholarship program. 

If the youth of a country are being disencouraged from sport what is the point of an international multi-event games being held in the country?

Construction and Organisation, or lack there of:

Bureaucracy in India has reached new highs of ridiculousness.   Forms have to be filled in to complete almost every action and heaven forbid if that form is completed incorrectly, that’s a new form, and if you don’t have the right official document to accompany the correct form that will be a new appointment with a new form and so it continues.  Accompany this with “the world’s largest democracy” and a country that has over 300 major democratic parties (The U.S.A has 2 major parties, the U.K 3) and it is easy to understand that things can ground to a halt pretty quickly. 

There is another major problem that may prohibit progress in construction works: backshish.  No Nik, not what Puff, that amazing magic dragon likes but, what makes India work.  You can call it tipping if you want, you can call bribery if you want but, what it is does do is make things work a whole lot easier and, more importantly, a whole lot quicker.

With a lack of backshish but a lot form filling out going on India has created its own time zone: IndiaTime.  Here, anything is possible; a train can leave 2 hours late and arrive 30minutes early, time can just drag on. And on. And on. And…

It is my, very humble, opinion, that there needed to be one figure who could hold everything in the construction of the Commonwealth Games together.  That however, was never going to happen. 

What now appears to be complete disorganisation of The Games I fear is systematic of the whole country.  In late 2008 Britain gave over 500million pounds in charitable donations to fight poverty and inequality, The Games are estimated to cost 2billion pounds.  India has a higher rate of poverty than sub-Saharan Africa, 400million people live under the UN’s decreed poverty level and yet it has a space program.  I can’t believe alone in spotting these blatant, horrible contrasts.

By winning the privilege to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games India should not have tried to compete with Beijing to create a showcase event, to create a magnificent world image.  Imagine what a world image would be created if a country managed to significantly reduce its poverty rate, or, made huge efforts to prevent insect borne diseases instead of making holes in the middle of its capital city so that they can be filled with water perfect for mosquito breeding and then create one of the worst dengue fever epidemics seen in the city.  All in the name of world image through sport.

Do I believe that India should have got the games? No

Do I believe that India should spend its peoples taxes on fighting poverty and not trying to create a great global image? Yes

Tell me what you think

Retrospective Cambodia: Part Mui

I first arrived in Cambodia as a, relatively, wet behind the ears 19 year old as part of a two month backpack around South East Asia. After having had my senses and sweat glands punished by three days in Bangkok I had acquired the a Cambodian visa and an exuberantly overpriced bus ticket from Bangkok to Siem Reap via the Poipet border crossing.  I should add that the person that financially screwed me on that first day in Bangkok taught me a well learned monetary lesson; don't trust no one in transport at face value.

I have never liked Bangkok and I guess I never will.

Poipet was, and still is, hub of smuggling in South East Asia.  Everything, from timber sadly to children, is reputed to go through this town on the way to who knows where.  My first experience was of being dumped off a "luxury" coach onto an minivan and then from a four lane motorway onto a dirt strip in what appeared to be the middle of a market. mmmmh.  The crossing itself from Thailand was then a no man's land, where street urchin children piled up rubbish next to the bridge you walked across  and then begged not for money but for a bottle of water.  This all happened under the shadows of the giant casinos set up for rich Thai business men who cannot gamble in their own country.  It was hot, it was humid, it was harrowing, it was going to get worse.

Poipet 06/2006

At that time it was my experience that Cambodia had three tarmacked roads.  They were between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh to the Vietnamese journey.  It is 8hours between Poipet and Siem Reap on an old rickety bus, traveling on dirt roads without any air conditioning.  You have two choices for the journey; open the windows and be slightly cooler but get covered in red Cambodian dust, or, keep the window closed and become unnecessarily hot and dehydrated.  These are you 2 choices for EIGHT hours!

Siem Reap, made famous by Angelina Jolie/Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, is the oasis in the desert.  You reach it at night and can feel and hear the bus gliding onto tarmac.  The lights of the giant hotels light up the streets and you feel as if you've discovered the world again.  In 2006 though the gap between poor and rich was probably worse than it is now. It was a city being built rather than a finished product; I attempted to use the only ATM in the country but it didn't accept my card.


Angkor Wat's construction began in 900AD and finished two centuries later when the city was abandoned.  Almost 1000 years later it is helping to build Siem Reap town again.  Of the thee ancient sites I've visited; The Great Wall, The Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat, Angkor still remains my favourite.  It is huge for starters but it is the feeling of discovery you get walking round that makes it what it is (just ignore the mass groups of Japanese and Korean tourists).  It feels like you are walking around a site that was lost to the jungle and only now, when you turn the corner is it being seen for the first time in centuries.  There are problems though.  That it is such a significant tourist pull means that there is an unequal amount of beggars, more often than not children, selling you cheap tat or asking for the obligatory $1. This can be a) irritating b) draining c) emotionally difficult.  My advice is have a laugh with them, ignore them, don't buy anything and don't promise to buy anything.  However if you can suppress all of the above emotions Angkor Wat is, quite simply, magnificent.

Angkor Wat (south entrance)

Phnom Penh from 2006 is a strange beast to remember because like most tourists who visit the city I never got under its skin but somehow really enjoyed myself.  There were visits to the Killing Fields an area outside the city where mass graves were, barely, dug for the people killed under the Khmer Rouge.  They are still trying to find everyone who was killed there and when you walk over the paths around the pits rags and bones can be seen under the dirt; it is a truly distressing and depressing place.  There was also a visit to S-21 which is the school that was converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge reign.  Here up to 30,000 Cambodians were imprisoned and sent to their deaths and the school museum is kept in the same way today as it was then; you can famously still see the blood on the floors of some of the torture cells.

Sihanoukville is Cambodia's beach side resort.  At the time there was building work going on a plenty and certain areas of notoriety today weren't so back then.  It was, and still is, a friendly place much out of keeping in some ways to the rest of the country where time can feel to go backwards when you're sat on the beach eating lobster and drinking 50cent beers.  Life is hard sometimes...

Intermission

Right, after rereading my virginal blog i realise that there is more to this lark than simply placing one thought in front of the other and hoping that they read well in words.  The people who i think do a great job with their blogs can be seen on the right hand side of the page, as can Nik's.

For Nik, you're welcome.

One other thing that i am debating is how do i write my I? is it a lower case i or an upper case I....This is irrelevant and i/I do apologise but it will bother me for a long time

I'm going to be doing a few postings on Cambodia in the next few days and I assure you that they may be interesting.

Worried musings....

As this is my first post I am obviously concerned; will it be interesting, will my grammar be correct (it's my job after all), will I end up talking about nothing in particular? oh.  Okay, time to crack on.

Hopefully this is going to be my last week in the UK after i returned from Cambodia at the end of June.  It's been fun but I do miss the craziness of a city, a different culture and as much as thought I missed British weather I now seems that I don't; bring on the winter!  Things that I have enjoyed though include; going to the cinema.  There is nothing like seeing a GOOD movie on a big screen and Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs The World and even Piranha 3D have reminded me how much a love the medium; support your local cinema!  One other thought on film though would be NO MORE 3D!!! That is all.

Being in the countryside is a blessing and the pollution free air has been much welcome.  After being in Indian and Chinese smog at the back end of 2008 I bought some walking boots and hit the hills.  This summer the Old Man and I wen to the Lake District in North West England and had a great time walking on the crags, drinking the local ales and stroking Bassets.

View from Great Crag

What else has been good whilst i have been home....ah yes! FOOD!  I think I've eaten rice twice since being home and the free availability of potatoes and dumplings has been highly satisfying.  Other favourites include lasagne and roast dinners.  Booze has of course played its part but I think I'll leave that for another post.

Seeing family and friends hasn't been bad either.

Right I'm off to the pub.