rakish richard's rants...

And THEN There Was The Time I Was Packin' Heat...

Welcome back loyal readers, I return from weeks in the jungle...

Tonight we come to you LIVE, from the heart of Saigon town, and to enhance your reading experience, I suggest you begin this programme with the requisite stereo listening of Uncle Billy Joel's 'Goodnight Saigon'.

In our last episode of our famous radio play "Rakish Richard's Escapades For Boys", our lithe and slender hero was hacking through the jungle towards the legendary temples of Angkor Wat, pursued by a pack of tenacious tripod-wielding tourists. Let's see how he got on...

Well, that Angkor Wat joint really is a pretty fly joint, I have to say. Let's check my notebook (leather covered, kept in my utility belt between the whip and the duct tape) for some details. We began - after a rest day, it's a tough trip down to Siem Reap my friends - by taking in the full experience; sunrise over Angkor Wat. This of course meant a 4:30am start, baguettes for breakfast, and traipsing through the entry gates around 5:10.

But, it was all worth it, ohh by the hammer of the gods, it was all worth it.

We decamped just inside the main gates, with a lotus filled pond between us and the temple. I'm going to try and break this tremendous thing down into a few simple adjectives, so bear with me loyal readers, it could be a rough one.

First, it's MASSIVE. The massiveness of Angkor exceeds the number of pastels in Miami Vice, the depth of Helen Clark's voice, and the numerical skill of my beloved sister. It eclipses the vastness of Pakuranga's wastelands and the entire literary output of Barbara Cartland. It mocks the Pyramids with its halls, walls, galleries and beautifully tight stone jointing, and kicks sand in the face of the scale, breadth and ambition of Berin’s stag night. It's a big one indeed, and when smarty pants Mr. Architect of Angkor sat down to carve some plans, he really SMOKED this one...

Starting off as just an outline, the whole structure started to grow and gain depth as more light fell on it. As the sun broached the top around 6am I was - loyal readers - simple agape.

Secondly, it's OLD. Now, I know you've all seen old; in the faces of aged relatives, in the hallowed halls of the Precious Books section at the library, and in some of your own faces (Shame on you, mirror gazers - one in particular who thinks that if his name was Grace, they'd call him an Amazing Grace). BUT, this bad boy was thrown up 900 years ago, and doesn't look a day over 150. She wears the best part of a millenium pretty well, and given a 26 piece backing band, she'd be well within her rights to shout,"Jump back! I wanna kiss myself!" (On the other hand, the Plain of Jars was already 2100 years old before they started building Angkor, so...)

Thirdly, it's one of about 70 temples that you can visit, some of which are easily as large as the most famous (Angkor Wat, duh...) in the whole complex. We clocked up a dozen or so, and only just scratched the surface.

Lastly, it IS Architecture, with a big thumping capital ‘A’. Not only that, but once you brush away the scrub from round the bottom of the ‘A’, you find a narrow entry, opening up to spaces most Architects still couldn’t master if they tried. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s a thousand more chambers opening off this first one, such that if you tried to drink up the spaces (don’t even start me on textures! Form? You can’t even imagine… Ooooo, but the exquisite light, the controlled movement, the mastery of masons making stone fly like clouds! I feel dirty just thinking about it…) you’d die bloated before you came up for breath. This was only the third time in my life where the strength of a building has given me goose bumps and elicited a truly visceral response. (First time, Tadao Ando’s Church of Light, second time Frank Lloyd Wright’s Yamamura house.)

Anyhow, Angkor highlights;

Bayon, famous for the carved faces of the King, looking in all the primary directions. Facey. Julie lost her bike key here, but by some miracle it returned to us courtesy of the local 'Police'. I felt really bad getting them out of their hammocks and making them get dressed, but they managed to magic up the key somehow...

Preah Khan, mostly ruined, and made for some really good climbing about and Linga appreciation. Musty.

Ta Keo, somehow this one didn't quite get finished, I think they held back some money from the builder. Very cubist, steep, rich, a real cracker. Blocky.

Bantey Srei, the Womens' Citadel. This had some of the best carving of the lot, beautiful red stone, PERFECTLY scaled buildings and spaces between, all bathed in sun that proved particularly dangerous to a certain balding man who sat there sketching for two hours. Burny.

Ta Phrom, where Tomb Raider was filmed. Got some great sketching done of trees growing out of rocks - clinging over displaced keystones with roots working open cracks over many a century - before spending a few hours just trying to find my way into the centre. This one got a second visit on the third day. Rooty.

We splashed out on a little tuk-tuk for the first day and a half, who took us out for sunset, and jaunted between the immediate temples. On our second day he took us out to Bantey Srei (35kms out from the main complex) before we laid him off in favour of bicycles. Bikes worked out well (lost keys aside), but cost us dearly in the gluteals, say no more...

3 days, 5kms walked/climbed (they have some REALLY steep stairs there!), 50 kms cycled, 97 ‘Mister, buy postcard from me’ offers declined.

So, our three day passes expired, and when it became evident that no amount of begging could get them extended, we resigned ourselves to the bus trip down to Phnom Penh, where we were met by a friend of our last guesthouse and safely deposited in welcoming accomodation within minutes of arriving. Simon's Guesthouse looked after us well, with good food and spectacular sunsets, and we even had our pictures taken for a promotional brochure just after walking in the door - keep your eyes peeled, I'm the one wearing the 'Laos' T-Shirt...

Now here we are, and Rakish Richard now wakes up to another November, with his faithful volleyball, to take in the sights of Cambodia’s capital city. We arrived just in time for a four day national holiday as the new king took the throne, which was, um, nice.

Despite our marathon efforts at Angkor, we still opted for a wander through the back streets to make our way to Tuol Sleng, the former high school known as S-21, where prisoners of the Pol Pot regime were imprisoned, tortured, and killed at a rate of up to 100 souls a day. Not the cheeriest thing to start the day with, but certainly an eye opener when you think you’ve had a bit of a hard time of things. A particularly eerie place, (especially after having spent two years working somewhere that looked EXACTLY like it) far different from seeing such things remotely from where they actually happened. It was gruesome. It was creepy. It was interesting.

Our next day started with a contrast that weighed on my contrast a little, but didn’t actually stop me from doing it; a trip to the shooting range, coinciding strangely with an email from Morgan showing Ollie doing exactly the same thing…

We tripped out of town on the back of motorbikes, braving the worst of the traffic (far easier to write about than to experience) all the way to the 91st Airborne unit’s training base. As a huge 7-bladed transport helicopter took off in the background, we chose our weapons from a laminated menu (just like lunch!), in front of a wall of M16’s, AK47’s and Kalashinakovs. Sadly single rounds couldn’t be purchased (the American M60 machine gun would have been an obvious choice, but at $100 for 150 rounds it just didn’t stack up) so I went for a clip each from the Russian Tokarev T33 and the American Colt .45.

Fred (my brother in arms, so to speak) and I emptied our 36 rounds into a shared target, but sadly could claim only 8 ‘hits’. There was one bull’s-eye, which I’m pretty sure I got, seeing as I fired at least two shots on-the-side gansta style…

Just to take the contrast a little further, we mounted our bikes again and headed out to the killing fields of Cheung Ek, 14kms out of town. This was as to be expected, another sobering experience. The now famous stupa of skulls (all 8,965 of them) offered some good sketching and fairly convincing contemplative time, but it was the remnants of clothing, bones, and even teeth that can be found around the excavated mass graves that brings it home.

Pol Pot; catchy name, bad guy.

That was Phnom Penh, and on the 3rd we bussed out of town and made for Sihanoukville, where a short stop revealed that it wasn’t quite what we were looking for. Now, as if finding out that my name is VERY close to the Cambodian word for ‘shit’ wasn’t enough, somewhere along the way I lost my beloved camera – the zipper on my daypack was undone, the bus was empty, and someone now has a lovely picture of Fred and Julie… Condolences should be directed to me by email, no flowers thank you.

Still, we continued by chartered taxi (Mr Te; good driver, bad with numbers) past the famous pepper producing prefecture of Kampot and on to Kep, where we stopped a couple of nights.

Kep is a strange place, as close to a ghost town as I’ve ever seen. At the end of the Khmer Rouge’s rule, this town was looted and all the buildings stripped of everything that wasn’t dynabolted down – leaving dozens of beautiful ruined concrete shells, cleverly inhabited by the few people who still live there. Quite a sight, could’ve taken some great photos I’m sure… After our rest day (election results coming courtesy of our guesthouse owner as I tracked down my camera, by crackly phone from Phnom Penh, “Yes, yes, Bush is again…”) we took a boat ride out to Rabbit Island, where everything was Irie. Three days over there wasn’t enough to get used to the stampeding cows, fresh seafood and magnificent boat building I undertook with nothing but my trusty Swiss army knife, but we had to relent and begin one of the biggest travel days yet.

On the 8th, we caught our little boat back to Kep, taxied from there to the Vietnam border (walking over borders is fun! Now I’m in Vietnam! Now I’m in Cambodia! Now I’m back in Vietnam again!), took motorbikes into town, caught the 5pm bus to Saigon, then taxied into the center where a great little guesthouse found us wandering, and we were all wrapped up and in bed by 1:30am. Quite the day. Pretty tuckered out. Not as bad as crutching 400 ewe lambs though, let me tell you.

Cambodia was really great. After losing over 2 million people, the national psyche is one of great optimism, rampant reproduction, and impressive resourcefulness. It’s a similar attitude to Laos I think, making for spectacularly friendly people and children so smiley even dentists would wince from all the teeth.

Well, Rakish Richard and his trusty volleyball are now back in ‘Nam, and due to the preapplication of our visas have only 12 days to race up north, seeing as much as we can, before having to enter China. Plans for the Trans Siberian are as changeable as a changey old variable thing, and time is now pressing. Ironically, the time it will take me to apply for my Mongolian visa is the same amount of time I had allowed to go to Mongolia, so the latest option is going DIRECT from Beijing to Moscow, 6 ½ days straight travel. Stay tuned sports fans.

On a brighter note, I went shopping today for a new camera, having decided there was no way I could leave the latter part of my travels unrecorded, and splurged on the splendid Sony Cyber-shot® Digital Camera (DSC-T1). It's a doozy, and I'm pleased to be back in the saddle again.

Well then, thanks for reading. Big ups to my Dad, for having his birthday last week, and also to my toooootally radical former supervisor in Japan for sending over my final pay cheque.

Your man, otherwise known as 'Shit' in Cambodia,

Arch :)

PS: Special thanks to the lovely person who gave me the link to Concord Dawn's 'Morning Light', I'm crying...
PPS: OH POOR SOUL! The Mighty John Peel has passed away! Now The Cosmic Wheels can never do a Peel Session! Unless... we get some potatoes, a knife, and have someone record THE WHOLE THING... ha haa, nyyyyaaa haa HAA, MMWWWAAAAA HAAA HAAAAAA!!!!!!

posted by Arch @ 2:24 PM