Scott Fletcher Travels

Well after a good nights sleep it was time to find out how easy it was going to be to get into China. According to the lonely planet you can not cross the border here unless your visa was issued in Hanoi or Beijing as the case may be. Mine was from sunny Sydney! Well after a brief breakfast I headed the 500m or so to the border. It could not have been easier, exited Vietnam in about two mins, walked 200m across a bridge then got into China in about 2 mins. It was quite funny on the Chinese side they were renovating their border building and you had to get your passport stamped in the middle of a construction site. There was jackhammering about 4m away, and then walking through a myriad of bamboo scaffolding and wires along the floor was something different.

Upon arrival I changed my money for Yuan, then went to the bus station. I was in Guangxi province (state) so heading to the capital seemed like a good idea. After about 30mins I was off to Nanning. The bus was easy and after managing to get a nap I was in sunny (extremely hot would be better) Nanning. A girl helped me onto the bus and I got to my hotel without any problems at all. One thing I was quickly realising is that English is next to useless in China, hardly anyone speaks it, and if they do it is like me trying to speak Chinese reading straight from a book, really hard to understand. The people were all nice though so that was good. One thing that really surprised me after going to India is how modern China is. In a lot of ways Nanning was more modern than Sydney, all the buildings look brand new, there are apartments everywhere, great shopping malls. Well that is how is appeared on the surface. I guess I was expecting a bit of a shambles.

After I settled it was time to walk around and see what was going on around town. I quickly started to realise (and had also read) that they have not really let anything stand in the way of progress. In Nanning they had no nice old buildings, the architecture was all extremely functional and cutting edge but lacked the human touch. The brand new malls were bustling but were all perfectly square, they did not have common areas like open food courts or something just corridors to fit in lots of box shaped shops. It was good to have a look around, but the problem with shops is they are only any use if you want to buy something.

The next day I booked a night bus ticket to Guangzhou which is the capital of Guangdong province, it was a sleeper and was meant to take 11 hours but I was surprised how expensive it was compared to what I had been paying in Vietnam. When I say a sleeper I really mean a sleeper, the bus was full of bunk beds, three across, two high and about maybe 8-10 deep.

Once in Guangzhou I made it to a hostel after some agitation on the buses, trying to find one to go where you want to go is very hard, but they are very cheap about 2 RMB which is about 30 cents. The hostel was good, it was clean and air conditioned which makes all the difference. I have a long much needed shower with hot water! That was joy! It was only about 9am so I decided to go and check out Guangzhou it is a great town with plenty to see and do.

I decided to spend the day walking around, I mapped out various things to go and check out, temples, parks, shops and food. The temples were good and there were hundreds of incense sticks burning all over the place. The highlight would have to be when I went to a great park called Yuexiu park, it was similar to the botanic gardens I guess with a lot of different paths and sculptures. A great thing about Guangzhou was their subway it was amazing, so fast and really easy to use, Sydney needs one desperately to get around the city and near by suburbs.

The next day it was off to Maccau so I jumped on a bus that took me to the border!

I can’t access my photos in China but you can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/fletch007  

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Tags>> Border crossing China Nanning Vietnam

Well Frida was heading back to Bangkok and I wanted to go and check out the wild north east of Cambodia, apparently it is great but I will never know. At least not for a while anyway. After starting off to head to a mountain town called Prasat Preah Vihear I was told the roads are all stuffed because it is to wet to get there. Then I wanted to go to an area called Ratanakiri, but I needed to get to a place about 5 hours away to leave from there called Kompong Cham. The first step was getting out of Siem Reap, which I am a big fan of by the way, everyone rubbishes it but I had a lot of fun there. I caught a moto from Siem Reap to Dam Dek, about 50km for $3 which was great. When I got there I managed to get a bus ticket 2 hours later to Kompong Cham.  While I was waiting I checked out a really cool market where they don’t really get westerners. I was talking to a guy who owned a bike shop and the basic bikes over there are $25, picked up some tasty food and then some fruit to eat while I was waiting. I managed to find a spare hammock to wait in which was great. The bus came about 1 and took about 5.5 hours, always longer than you think. So basically I was on the road since a little after 8am, arrived pretty close to 6pm and was maybe 350km from where I started. I started asking people about Ratanakiri and apparently there were floods there, and the already shit roads were now impassable. This was starting to get frustrating as I was in a dead end town and no where near where I wanted to be. I ended up getting some great street food that night which was really good, one was like a shrimp biscuit fried up, and the other ribs and rice mmmm. I decided that I was done with Cambodia, and was going to head back to Vietnam. Ahh the pain starts.

 

I booked a ticket on the 7am bus to Phnom Penh($2.50) which was meant to arrive at 9:30am. We crashed twice which was fun, and everyone gets out has a look and stands around. After getting to

Phnom Penh at 11:30 there was a bus leaving to Ho Chi Min City at 11:30($9), so I jumped on that, and was on my way. I arrived at about 7:15pm and enquired about buses to Nha Trang($5), there was one leaving at 8pm and arriving at 6am, apparently it was a really comfortable sleeper bus. Well that was where the pain really started to kick in. I could not get to sleep to save my life, I was stuck in the back seat which was hot and could not recline J. I arrived at 7:30am without a wink of sleep and was already booked on a boat tour around the islands thanks to pre planning.  So the moral of the story is, buses are always late, sleepers are never really sleepers, and don’t spend 23/24 hours on a bus, it is not fun.

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Tags>> Border crossing Cambodia Kompong Cham Vietnam

Phnom Penh by speedboat James Bond style(the only way to roll) on the 27th of July. I went to get some accommodation at the lake, a particularly touristy area. I got a room but planned to move on the next day and meet up with Frida whom I met in Phu Quoc.

That afternoon i had a walk around town to get my bearings and it was pretty good, walked to the tallest point in PP, being a whopping 27m high. After that highlight I decided to trek along the river to the national museum. This was a bit of a hoax really, there was not much there, the most impressive thing was the courtyard in the middle.

On day 2 I moved hotels, i would really recommend the OK Guesthouse $4USD, it went above my expectations of being just ok. That afternoon i went to the Killing fields and a place called s-21. This was a sobering day, going to the killing fields was pretty horrific but it did lack the human touch that you would experience going to say Dachau a Nazi Concentration camp. The place was amazing though, over 14000 people murdered and buried there. There were a series of deep holes where they had exhumed bodies and had some remains on display. Most of the bodies where bludgeoned to death, and you could see all the fractures in their skulls. S-21 was a museum where they had tortured and killed people during the time the Khmer Rouge were in power, in 1975-79. Most of the people that were tortured there ended up at the killing fields. I think this day would have had even more impact if i had seen the way they people had been treated first. It was quite a depressing way to spend the afternoon but something that had to be done.

That night it was Frida’s birthday so about 12 of us went out to dinner and then went to a great club called Heart of Darkness. It was a really good night!

Next day was more of a recovery, about four of us decided it would be fun to catch the 12 hour train to Battembang, so we could sit on the roof of the train. We woke on the 30^th at 5:30am so we could get on the 6:20 train. Upon arrival at the station we were told there are no trains until Saturday. So I decided to head for the beach, and caught a great bus down to this place called Sihanoukville and found a room 25m to the water for $2.50 a night at ‘The Nap House’ it was absolute gold. You could have a beer in really comfy chairs on the sand with the water lapping at your feet. Cocktails $1.50, dinner $2.50 and the water is high 20’s!

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Tags>> Border crossing Cambodia Dachau Killing Fields Phnom Penh S-21