The Road to Cambodia

What kind of time is 4:45am to get up? I had a McBreakfast at the airport, sad to say (and it wasn't even that nice!).

We boarded our Air Asia flight to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Two hours, plus lost an hour as Cambodia is one hour behind Malaysia, despite being further east, paradoxically. The arrival hall is gorgeously done out in Khmer style, complete with statues of gods on various transport methods (elephant is the one you see first). It was good they had some nice sculpture to look at as they took some time to sort out your entry visa.

We were met by a driver from our hotel who tried to giveus the hard sell to get him to drive us around the next day. We weren't having it as we wanted a tuk-tuk (see later). The hotel was reached down a dirt track in the heartof the city, but what a gorgeous and idyllic place it was. A lush garden surrounding a swimming pool, with the most wonderfully friendly staff. Though it was little later than 9am we were able to check in straight away.

We dumped our stuff and had a wnader into Siem eEap, having breakfast at a French-style patisserie, dodging the offers of tuk-tuks wherever we went. This is a feature of Cambodia, offers of tuk-tuks, offers of a massage (legit type, often involving fish nibbling your feet), or ragamuffin children trying to sell you postcards or bamboo bracelets. It isn't major pestering, as a simple "no thanks" does the job. After this we wandered further into the city to get an idea of the orientation. We found a couple of wats to have a look around, similar to Thai style, though maybe a little less ostentatious.

Back to the Central Boutique Hotel for a breather then out for some lunch at a small cafe nearby where we had noodles/fried rice. Chatting to the owner, she had a American husband, though we didn't figure out the whole story. I did, however, win a free beer as my ringpull (one of the old fashioned ones you pull off) had a symbol for some competition where you could win up to something like 500,000 riel.

This is something to mention: currency. Cambodian currency is the riel as I just mentioned. However, they commonly use the US dollar such that, when you get money from the ATM it is in dollars. There are 4000 riel to the dollar, and when you buy something that isn't in full dollars, you get the change in riel (so a 1000 riel note is 25c).

We got back to the hotel and had a bit of a swim in the lovely pool. Then, doing a quick bit of research, I also found that there were aerobics classs at 5:30 in the evening which was something I was determined to have a go at, so I set of to look for them, just finding them in time. It was fun, if hard in 30deg heat and very high humidity, but only cost the measly sum of 1000 riel (or about 17p). Most of the clientelle were women, many of them quite old, but that's nothing new as far as my fitness regime is concerned.

I got back, and we got ready togo out for the night, and see what the begining of the weekend had to offer in Siem Reap. There are no shortage of nightspots, with the main drag for nightlife being called Pub St. We ate at a place called the Khmer Kitchen, which did the local specialities, not that there is any shortage of this around teh place as you might expect. The main dish was Khmer curry which was fantastic. Not disimilar to Thai style curries, but less hot, and with less obvious lemon grass and coconut milk.

We drank a few more drinks (mostly beers, but they d a good selection ofcocktails too) at a variety of places. Best of all the place is very cheap, with it being low season, and most places offering a happy hour all the time with draft beer being often 50c a glass. Cocktails too are usually chap to start with or on 2-4-1 offers.

We got a tuk-tuk home. Cambodian tuk-tuks are different from those you see elsewhere in that they are in effect moped-drawn chariots. That is to say, the passenger compartment is a trailer (sitting 4or 5 people) hitched up to a moped. It's a good way to travel, and relatively cheap. A quick one dollar ride home and we were in bed

Fast and Loose

Day 4 Equatorial Hotel, Melaka
(updated with photos)

Today we were off to stay in Kuala Terranganu, a town on the NE coast of the peninsular which is handy for the beach. On the other hand, it's also a very strict Muslim state so we were aware that we might have trouble obtaining food before sundown or in getting hold of the odd beer at all. We did have a few possible options though. More waffles for breakfast before packing up, checking out and getting in a taxi to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) for our short internal flight up the KT. The taxi driver was a friendly chap, explaining that his family were from India. He didn't drive too fast but did ride up the arse of cars in front.

We reached KLIA in one piece and tried to check in, even though we were about 4 hours early for the flight. Jane insisted as she worked out it could take 3 hours to get to the airport and we needed to be there 2 hours in advance or more. Say what you like about her, but she does err on the side of neurosis. Anyway, there was some issue with names on the tickets or something so we waited 20 minutes for checking in. The girl doing it was a trainee so that probably didn't help.
We had lots of time to kill so wandered about, ate a burger again (there isn't much in the way of eating in the domestic terminal), this time at Burger King to our shame.

The flight was ridiculously short as we were in the air less than half an hour, during which time the crew managed to serve up peanuts and juice (pink guava. Yum!).

We landed and got a cab to our hotel. The place we were staying was the Hotel Continental which was a rather tired looking place and had signs all over the place saying how much the stuff in your room costs "if you wantd to buy it" and how they would prosecute for nicking stuff (really, a threadbare, ragged towel wasn't the most tempting booty). It could be a great hotel if they tarted it up.

Heading out to explore we wandered past where they was a Ramadan bazar cooking all sorts of fantastic food, though we weren't hungry. The idea is that the people buy the food, then take it home and eat it after sunset. We wandered further into Chinatown here we found places to buy beer. Bless Chinese communities the world over for providing places to drink, whatever the predominant local attitude to alcholo is. They also serve Guinness Extra wherever you find them, so you can always have that taste of not-quite-but-not-far-off home. We stuck to the local nectar that is Tiger. The Chinatown is very atmospheric with drab shophouses and its own arch.

Chinese arch
Chinatown, Kuala Terangganu

Wandering back into the town we came upon a well known traveller's cafe called Ping Anchorage (sic) which also has a travel agents on ground level. Again we could slake out thirst with fermented hop juice. Walking back we passed the local mosque which is very impressive, and walked back thro9ugh the bazar. By this time it was approaching fast-breaking time, and this food was just too good to pass by so we bought chicken biriyani, BBQ chicken wings and beef murtabak

The Town Mosque
Kuala Terangganu

Making satay at the Ramadan Bazar
Kuala Terangganu

Not wanting to be rude or disrespectful we went over to the grassy area by the water front and waited, along with lots of locals and joined them eating when they broke their fast at about 7:30. This was the sort of thing that makes holidays memorable, even though we hadn't been fasting ourselves, it was a shared experience that we will always remember.

Sunset falls

Preparing to join the locals breaking their fast as the sunsets in Kuala Terangganu

That evening we wandered over to a Chinese owned fish estaurant and had steamed grouper with fried rice and vegetables (containing meat, prawns and squid). Way too much food for the two of us (especially having been porkerly early on with the fast breaking). This lot with a couple of large bottles of Tiger came to about £15.

After this there wasn't a great deal to do so we just went back to the hotel and played cards while drinking out duty free vodka with some coke we had bought earlier. Then we went to bed

Get it on, bang a gong

Day 3, Equatorial Hotel, Melaka

(revised and updated with pictures)

Up with the lark again, if the lark had been out drinking until gone 1am and needed to get up to get his breakfast before they stopped serving the buffet at 10:30am. More of the same food except this time I had discovered the waffles. Fresh waffles prepared before your eyes with plenty of butter and maple syrup. Oh, yes. Food of the gods.

Today’s itinerary was to explore more of Melaka town starting with a Chinese cemetery which we managed to reach despite the horrendous traffic (where the hell was everyone going on a Saturday?). This isn't as morbid as it sounds as it is beautifully peaceful, contrasting with the aforementioned traffic, not to mention the fact that it was noteworthy for being the largest Chineses cemetery outside of the People’s Repulic. Wandering through here we came out at the Melaka River, near a preserved Malay village or Kampung called Kampung Morten. If the name doesn't sound particularly exotic, that is because the name is from the last British Governer of Melaka before Malaysia gained independence.

The main house is called Villa Sentosa which means House of Peace. Strangely enough, in Singapore, the former British naval base on an island to the south of the city, where the Brits signed the surrender to the Japanese in WWII is also called Sentosa, and is now a buzzing resort complete with casinos, so I wonder which meaning of the word "peace" this was in WWII or now. Another family arrived just as we did and we were then met by an elderly Malay man called Mr Abdul Rahim Haji Hashim who owned the house and had converted it into a living museum. He proceeded to show the six of use from room to room, each one soaked in history about Malaysia, the Kampung and his family for several generations. There were artifacts from over the last hundred years including old cameras, old versions of the Koran and many pictures of his family and ancestors. There were pictures of when the king of Malaysia had visited, as well as various other dignitaries from all over the world. We saw his guest books going back many years with entries by all sorts of people from all over, and even included an endorsement from Winston Churchill himself. The tour ended when we were invited to bang an ancient gong to bring good luck.

Tranquility in a Chinese Cemetery

Colourful mushrooms growing on a log in the cemetery.

There's more than a little "On Ilkley Moor Bah 'tat" about this

Kampung Morten, with Vila Sentosa proudly decorated in the Malaysian flag.

Merdeka is the name of their National Day

King and Queeen for a day.

Sitting on bridal thrones in Villa Sentosa, Kampung Morten

Gong with the wind.

Banged for good luck, this gong is ancient. Whether whether it works or not, it seems not to have done Mr Hashim and the other residents of Kampung Morten any harm.

After this we headed along the river via a new boardwalk, walking past mudskippers, kingfishers and monitor lizards. This wound its way back into town, apart from one place where the area was dug up forsome new road or other. We went back along the river in Chinatown and stopped at a place called Riverine for food. This was wonderful. I had a delicious spicy laksa washed down with Tiger. It was full of all sorts of stuff like prawns, boiled egg, beansprouts. It’s also very yellow so stains like hell, but the splatters you may get from loudly slurping the noodles (when in Rome..) is worth it.

A monitor lizard
Seen en route from Kampung Morten to Melaka town

Back to the hotel for a swim, a freshen up then out to paint the town merah as they say in Malaysia. We went past a kung fu expert whose party trick is jabbing his index finger into a coconut. He took ages to go about actually doing it so we couldn’t be arsed to stay and watch for another 30 minutes since it culminated in some sale spiel for some miracle oil and we were hungry. However, here is a Youtube link of him doing his stuff. We instead went inland to get something to drink, going back to the Eleven bar from the previous evening for a Tiger. This allowed me to watch some of the football, though I had a bit of an alimentary attack, but survived relatively unscathed.

Being tourists, the next thing we did was go and get a boat cruise along the river. This was fun as all the other passebgers were Malay teenagers who whooped and hollered at every other boat passing and at a lot of people we passed too. We went back along the route we had walked earlier in the day past the Malay village, then back again. The waterfront of Melaka is undergoing a lot of deveopment and it will be a popular destination when it's finished, though it might also tarnish the soul of the town in the process if it's not managed well.

Villa Sentosa at Kampung Morten as seen from river cruise at night

We headed back for more drinks, and had been thinking of grabbing some food, but I wasn't feeling that well up for it, so we just stuck to beer instead. Ahh, the curative properties of Tiger. We stopped off at a couple more places before we weent home. Being in a particularly tourist frame of mind we got a ride back on a trishaw, or cycle rickshaw to the hotel. This is a fun way to travel, even if you do feel a little guilty for the poor man having to pedal you the distance home. Still it's a living for him and keeps him fit. Not sure I'd fancy doing it during Ramadan though when you can't eat or drink during the hours of daylight, especially in this climate.

Melaka by pedal power at night
Our cyle-rickshaw driver slogging away to our hotel while we reclined and took photos. I can defintely see the appeal of being a colonial master

Our driver for the night
Note how gaudily decked out the trishaw is. This was by no means especially heavily decorated compared to others

Sad but true ,, ended the day with a McDonalds burger, because we were hungry and my stomach was still playing Twister, and this sort of near-digested pap is just the sort of thing an ailing gut can deal with. Then it was to bed.

Noodles to Hitler in one day abroad

Day two

Up with the lark. Well, up in time from breakfast at least (not sure they have larks in Malaysia anyway). Breakfast was a massive buffet with the full complement of cooked (no pork, but chicken sausages and ham, not as bad as they sound, and eggs prepared at the egg station to your liking), continental, pastries and of course the Asian selection. You ain’t never been to the Far East if you never had fried noodles for brekkie. I have so far drawn the line at the congee porridge though.

Full up and ready to go, we retraced our route from the last night to take in some of the sights

The first place we came to was St Paul’s Church which has been used by St Francis Xavier to do some miracles, and his body was kept here for a bit and you can see what was his tomb The church occupies an imposing position on a hill overlooking the river and out to sea, and is reached by going on a long slog up a flight of steps after entering through a gate at ground level for. This is called Porta de Santiago which was part of the original town fortress the Portuguese built which was almost destroyed by the Dutch until Stamford Raffles (the one that founded Singapore and gives his name to the most famous hotel there where the Singapore Sling was created) got them to stop. Parts of the old fort and town wall are excavated all around this area.

Jane at St Paul's Church, Melaka

Walking up into Chinatown and the atmosphere you could feel the previous night was no less for the daylight. The shophouses and narrow streets are incredibly evocative, especially those that are preserved in their authentic state. You can easily imagine what it was like in the early part of the 20^th Century or earlier when Melaka was a vital port on the way to the Spice Islands. We came across one shophouse that had been restored to its traditional state as part of a heritage project. It’s simply called 8 Heeren St (see the Dutch history with that name), after its address, and wandering round this it was incredible to think that these places weren’t being snapped up to convert to houses as they would make great modern homes. Talking to the chap who was oversaw the project, and he said they have something like 100 of these places on the go to restore them to their original setup, but it isn’t cheap. They have grants from various sources including the US Embassy and Ford, but it amounts to something like £500,000 just for the restoration. Many more are gutted to convert into modern shops, or are demolished, but it’s good to know that there is someone fighting to maintain the heritage of this historic area.

A view up Heeren St, Melaka. Note the Chinese style shophouses

We went out from here and wandered a bit more, coming across Eng Choon Association, an incredibly well preserved guild house and Chinese temple, with gilt decoration and dragons carved in to the roof and supporting pillars. The amount of work involved in this is amazing, with the columns carved in stone with the most intricate detail. We stopped for another drink at the Geographer’s Cafe before wandering onto Temple Street, as this road is known due to the fact that it has the oldest Chinese Temple, oldest Mosque and the oldest Hindu temple in Malaysia all harmoniously co-existing side-by-side. There were several other Chinese temples and shrines and a Buddhist temple also. The oldest Chinese temple is called Cheng Hoon Teng and built in honour of the Kuan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy . This was in much better taste than a lot of Chinese temples as it wasn’t really gaudy, but mostly in dark wood and gilt. It dates from 1646 and is still in use as a place of worship.

The Eng Choon Asociation door on Heeren St

Interior of the Cheng Hoon Association complete with dragons on roof

Carved pillar inside Cheng Hoon Assoc

Heng Choon Temple

Detail on roof of Heng Choon Temple

The mosque is called Masjid Kampung Hulu and different to most mosques you see as it was designed in the style of a Balinese temple, and the minaret built in the style of Sumatran mosques, with a tiered design (so the plaque said anyway, as I’m not really much of an authority on Islamic architecture). The Buddhist temple was a fairly modern build and pretty large. It was very peaceful wandering around the statues of legendary monks in various poses, though the significance of these was largely lost on me sadly, but I could see how people could be moved to meditate in this environment.

Masjid Kampung Hulu Mosque

Next on our route we went through Chinatown and to an Indian foodhall called Selvam for some curry which was staggeringly good. This was a banana leaf restaurant where you have no plates, just a large piece of palm foliage to eat off, and no cutlery. The food was rice and vegetable curries, plus dahl which is dolloped onto the leaf , then another man came round to give you rice, and another came to ask if we wanted chicken or mutton, so we opted for chicken which was again curried. It was, as I said, excellent and tasted all the better for eating with fingers. Not that Jane did, she asked for a fork. I on the other hand looked like I’d been snogging a peat bog by the time I’d finished. Of course, the locals are much more adept at this way of eating than I am, but they still provide wash basins which is a good thing or else people would be thinking I’d had an accident with cheap toilet paper if I tried to shake their hands.

We then stopped at a place for a drink called the Discovery Cafe which is very much a backpacker hangout, but the cafe itself has some character despite this, with the bar open to the road but festooned with all sorts of memorabilia like old typewriters, records etc. We enjoyed a beer here to wash down our curry before heading back to our hotel to take advantage of the swimming pool before the rain came.

After a dip, just in time before the rain reached us, and by rain I mean RAIN, complete with thunder and lightning, we went back to our room before we came down to the drink reception we had gone to on the first day for another couple of beers and some food. I then insisted I get to the gym to try out the dance class that was advertised. Big mistake as it was a essentially line dancing, so I did some work on the treadmill instead. I mean where was the street dance attitude? All the finely tuned moves I’d learnt over the last couple of years to hot joints from the street? They wouldn’t go down to the instructor and the two local ladies who were the attendees of his class. Their loss.

Friday night is one of the major nights out in Melaka, where Jonker’s Walk, the area on which the Georapher’s Cafe is situated, becomes a thronging night market. We wandered around this before settling to have a drink in a bar called Ringo’s opposite the Geographer’s to watch the world go by, and listen to Ringo himself (not the drummer, or if it was he has changed an awful lot since his peace and love speech telling pople not to send him stuf for signing) murder a few Beatles numbers. The set up at these bars is odd in that the staff seem to be employed by the beer companies rather than the bars. There was an army of scantily clad girls in outfits from Tiger or Carlsberg serving the beer of that brand. Not that I was complaining as they certainly beat the barmaid at the King’s Arms, on a purely professional level obviously. We headed further up the same street and alighted at another bar called Eleven where we had yet more beer and some food. The speciality of this place is Portuguese-cum-Asian and again was rather good. The prawns in sambal was sphincter quiveringly tasty . As the evening went on it turned into a bit of a pub crawl as we returned to the Discovery where they had a band on , wandered back towards the hotel and to a bar nearby, called Friends Cafe and finally had one at the place belonging to the hotel making it to bed for 1ish.

On last thing. When we were coming back to the hotel to use the bar I spotted a cat that was the spitting image of Adolf Hitler. This meant I spent 10 minutes chasing it around a car park to get a picture. It's not brilliant (it as 1am, I was drunk and I don't think Hitler cat wanted to be photographed), but here it is. I already sent it to the website catsthatlooklikehitler.com so hopefully they'll post it there

Day -3. More prep and musings on British life

It's the home straight. Three days before we fly, two days before I officialy go on holiday from work at 5:30pm on Tuesday. All the main tasks are sorted: getting a haircut (yes, both of us), having the car serviced and MOT'd, buying a couple more useful gadgets like an MP3 speaker. So now it's just the packing to worry about. That, and preparing for what we will be missing and what makes coming home worthwhile.

Football is something that is a consideration when we are away. The Championship officially began this weekend, and the Premiership season opener, the Community Shield, was on today. This was previously called the Charity Shield, but I suppose, given that the charities probably had less to spend at the point of need than the collected players earnt that week, it's probably a bit of a misnomer. Saying that, the philanthropic trust that is McDonalds were crowing, by way of advertising hordings, about how many coaches that had been installed for youth and grassroots football. I'l bear that in mind that next time I get a Big Mac whilst musing over how shit we were at the World Cup thanks to the intervention of the American obesity merchants.

One of the things about this sort of holiday is how you get to a place and think it's idyllic (apart from the massive poverty, healthcare problems and deprivation of the local populace, obviously), and you think how cool it would be to live there. As an expat, obviously. I mean, I'm not stupid, you do want to maintain a living standard close to that to which you are accustomed. Anyway, the point is, you know that it's pie in the sky (not much call for Clinical Biochemists in Batambang, Cambodia, where the healthcare system is pretty strained), so it helps to keep a sense of what you are looking forward to when you get home.

Reasons to come home:

British beer
The football (at a sensible time)
Television
Sunday roasts

Of course, dark, bitter beer isn't really missed when it's 37 deg outside and you need something ice-cold and wet; when you can get the football easier than ever online, with Satuday games on telly at 10-11pm, so when you're at the pub; when you have Youtube for any programmes you miss; and the fact that they do actually roast meats in a lot of countries. Really, though, without the dour British weather and the shortening day as we lurch towards winter to make all those things feel better, they are worthless. Obviously.

Two gym days left, following a step class this morning I managed to drag Jane to Huddersfield Total Fitness. That's her last activity before we go, that's for sure. Me, I don't want to hammer things, but I do want to do a couple of sessions. It is what I do, after all.

Anyway, we had our last Sunday roast, which was a fantastic piece of lamb with new spuds, broccolli and roasted butternut squash, as well as home-made mint sauce. It was something wonderful, something you don't get in SE Asia. Meh, who am I kidding? There's nothing we are going to miss from our Brit life being away, be it for 3 weeks or 3 years. There is so much to love about British life, but there are as many compensations for living elsewhere.

Next post wil probably be made en route to SE Asia, at the airport (though never say never) which, as far as I am concerned, is when we really are ON HOLIDAY!

Day -8, just over a week to go

PROLOGUE
Location: Horbury, W Yorkshire

No, we aren't off just yet, but it will be soon. All of our accomodation is booked, as are all our internal flights, as well as our long haul flights (naturally, since our holidays are usually based on wherever we get a flight to). Jane is responsible for itinerary whereas I'm in charge of logisitics. We are up to date on jabs, have malaria meds which we probably don't actually need. I will try to ease off on the travel nerdism, especially about equipment, but it is something I like about planning a trip. A lot of the fun of the buildup is getting the stuff together you need to take but I can become a bore on the subject. I mean, I'm not sure anyone really wants to know about our new camera with a huge zoom (Panasonic tz7), or that the new shoes I bought were Nike Alvord VIIs which are trail running shoes, even if I did want something that was good for some light jungle trekking, but light enough for some jogging or even aerobics which they are suppsed to do al fresco by the Mekong in Cambodia. Yes, I do have a hankering to do some aerobics in foreign climes, especially after seeing an outdoor class underway in Laos a couple of trips back that I missed out on taking part in.

Anyway, there's little else to do now, but wait and get our stuff together before we start packing. There's mundane things like haircuts and getting the car in for its annual service and MOT. We have a spare weekend to go after two when we were playing host to both our parents (don't get me wrong it was fun as any excuse for a meal at a decent restaurant is always welcome). There's a lot of lists to make: what to pack - which has sublists of things like toiletries and documentation, lists of thing to do in the house, like watering plants. Fact is, this is just marking time until the holiday actually starts. We aren't likely to forget anything major, and the act of packing takes little more than half an hour, but the fights have been booked for 7 months, so it's not unreasonable to be pretty excited by the impending adventure.

We have to bear a few things in mind already. We travel on the first day of Ramadan, which might be considered not the wisest time to visit a Muslim country, but they have a significant Chinese community where we will be able to eat any time, no to mention get booze. One of our previous trips we spent a day in Kota Bahru in the NE coast of the peninsular which is a pretty devout area, and it was only in the Chinese cafes there that you could get a beer so it's not unprecendented. As well as this, the fact that people eat in the evening following a day of fasting means that the evening meal takes on a special significance so there are some fantastic places to enjoy Ramadan evening banquets. Still, it does mean that bacon will be pretty scarce on the Malaysian part of the holiday.

Jane has looked up the entertainment for our outgoing flights which became available online at the begining of the month. I see this as cheating, like peeking at your Christmas presents on 23rd december, though she did tell me they have Shutter Island and Iron Man 2 which I'm happy to hear. I'm surprised she hasn't looked up the food, or the names of the air cabin crew. I don't call them anything, I just press a button to get their attention and order a bloody mary (the only time I ever drink a bloody mary is on a long haul flight, don't know why).

OK, enough already. This is just a preamble, and I may post one or two more in the next week, and I know it's a bit dull because I haven't done anything or have any pics to display, but please stick with it.