++ Caution extreme dark humour – a pinch of salt before consumption is advised. ++ Here I commence my list of things-to-recommend-to-people-you-really-don’t-like: The Siam Reaper – Cambodia You and your friend/victim will in this instance be travelling in South East Asia. Perhaps start off in Thailand, if you’re a Brit, Etihad can fly you to Bangkok in reasonable comfort, otherwise go check out skyscanner.net. I expect you will receive a 30 day visa on entry but do check the visa status for your nationality before flying. So, sometime before your 30 days is up you’re going to want to head to Cambodia. I’d recommend going to airasia and booking a flight from Bangkok to Siam Reap, but if your budget is tight you can get the train to the border and then a bus. Siam Reap is home to the temple Angkor Wat and numerous other Wats also. Our initial goal here is to get your companion so fed up with temples that they never wish to see another one in their life. Here this is a reasonably easy thing to do. The simplest way to start is to hire a Tuk-tuk driver for a day; we used Chang, nice chap, $15. You can alternatively go on a selection of organised tours. Angkor Wat is certainly one of the more impressive ruins on the planet. A large site, surrounded by a moat the locals claim was dug to keep the marauding Thai’s out. So enjoy, learn about the Khmer civilization. There is also a lovely ruin in the forest; huge trees wrap their roots around the stonework in a slow but fatal embrace. It’s really quite beautiful and if you are a nerd, Angelina Jolie tomb-raided here so feel free to dress up as Lara and take photos to post here, unless you are Boris Johnson, I don’t think we are ready for that yet. At the end of day one of temple seeing I am pretty confident that you will both be saturated. It is of vital importance that you appear to be massively into seeing temples unless you wish to suffer with your companion on the next stage of our trip. If this is the case, you really should seek professional help. Anyway, moving on… You will say that you are going to stay on for another day to look at some more temples, but that it is fine if your mark wishes to travel on to Phnom Penh on the morrow. Now the unpleasantness begins. Get drunk together. Ten beers should do the trick and set you back only $10. In the morning, equipped with hangover, drag your hapless victim to a Cambodian café and eat something foolishly spicy for breakfast. Next, purchase a ticket on one of the high-speed mini busses going to Phnom Penh. You want to leave buying the ticket until the last minute as this should guarantee a seat at the back of the bus. These seats do not recline and have much less leg room than the others. Tell your friend to go and see the S-21 detention centre and the Killing Fields when they arrive in Phnom Penh. If all things have gone according to plan, your friend will be in for one of the most unpleasant journeys of their life. It will be immediately apparent that the layout of the bus has been set with people of an Asian or hobbit size in mind. The taller your victim, the greater their suffering is about to be. Me, I tried sundry different contorted postures in a vain effort to find a comfortable position. For the most part I was with my knees under my chin. I am of an age such that I recall the days of corporal punishment in schools; teachers administering a good hiding in loco parentis. Forget six of the best administered to the behind with a slipper and contemplate if you will one thousand of the best dealt to your rear, your back, your head and most brutally your knees. These little busses make the journey in several hours less than their larger more ponderous and comfortable brethren. They do this by completely ignoring any posted speed limits along with all other inconvenient road traffic laws such as which side of the road to drive on. The pain factor derives from the state of the Cambodian roads and the fact that the velocity of the bus can be reasonably estimated in pot-holes per hour. The driver will make some attempt to avoid the worst of these if he sees them in time, swerving alarmingly across the entire width of the road or even off the road entirely. Let us not forget the hangover and the curry, oh no… For five hours or so, the digestive system was thoroughly shaken, not stirred. I do not like to think about the consequences had I not dosed up on Gaviscon before setting off. As it was, I believe it was pure mind over matter that kept my breakfast on the inside. In the midst of what I came to regard as prolonged torture, looking around the bus gave some comic relief. Implausibly, the majority of the other passengers (who were of course all locals) were asleep! Like rag-dolls they were bouncing around all over the place, occasionally briefly waking up when they clonked heads with a neighbour. This seemed totally impossible to me but like most things, there tends to be a scientific explanation if one looks, in this case, Vallium. The only people on the bus not in a drug-induced torpor were me and the driver, he was obviously on speed. Being is a situation where seemingly endless pain is being applied with no immediate hope of escape is certainly an experience. One’s brain goes through all kinds of contortions to try and cope or make sense of it all. Mine seemed to settle on a state of partial delirium. I don’t remember a great deal about the second half of the journey as by then my mind had packed up and gone home. When what seemed an impossible dream happened, and we arrived at Phnom Penh I was no longer a fit human being. I exited the bus like some aged crone, bent double. Wounds long healed were now all woken afresh, movement, agony. So, time to go to check out S-21. In the 1970’s a chap by the name of Pol Pot, leader of the then ruling party, the Khmer Rouge, decided that the way forward for his country was agrarian. To implement this new enlightened policy, he set about forcing the population from the cities to the countryside. He also decided that education was also a bad thing for everyone in the country, except of course himself and his cronies. People suspected of hiding educated thoughts (wearing a pair of glasses could be enough) would be sent to S-21, a school, converted to be a place of imprisonment and torture. Here they would remain until a confession could be extracted. Once this was obtained, any family members would be arrested, brought in and tortured, men, women… and children. My five hour ordeal rather paled into insignificance. When the torturers had done their work, the hapless families were loaded into a truck and told they were to be relocated. They were driven to one of the many killing fields, not to be shot or gassed; this was deemed too expensive; they were hacked, beaten to death with whatever came to hand. Loud patriotic music was played to cover their screams; the babies were dispatched by having their brains dashed against a tree. The entire family was always erased leaving no one to later seek revenge. By 1979 Pol Pot had brought about the deaths of one quarter of the population of his country. He was forced to retreat into the jungles by an uprising of the people assisted by Vietnamese troops where amazingly he remained the leader recognised as legitimate by the UN for many years to come. This country has known unspeakable suffering. You should get yourself on one of the overnight busses or a flight to Phnom Penh to find out what remains of your friend. If you are feeling merciful you could point them in the direction of Me & U massage where they can have a one hour essential oil massage for $15. For me, this was a first, but I was in such pain that I was willing to try anything. So, getting naked and being rubbed down with oils by another bloke it was. Lying there, all could think was, so this is it, now I find out if I am at all gay. There have been times in life when I have thought to myself, “life would be so much simpler if I were gay; men are so much more… predictable”. This is of course incorrect thinking as there are extremely effeminate gays as well as blokey ones. As the strong young man rubbed oil around my groin in what I can only imagine would be a jolly homo-erotic experience for some, there were no stirrings, so it was with mixed feelings that I finally laid that question to rest. Now I don’t know what you think, but I have this suspicion that all homophobes are in fact themselves in the closet. This trip does suggest an interesting way to test this thesis. Send a bunch of Texan Republican gay bashers on the trip, if they run out of the massage place screaming, trying to cover up raging hard-ons then, well, QED? If you try this, do pay the massage place up-front… I am writing this several days after arriving in Phnom Penh myself, most of those days have been spent in bed with agonising back pain and diarrhoea. For your emergency medical repair needs it is recommended that you avoid Cambodian businesses, sadly here, if you want a degree, you simply pay for it. So, Pharmacie du Gare, the pharmacy by the station, is where I recommend you dose up. Accommodation here, try Nomads near the American embassy if you are a hard-core backpacker. It’s a cheap, no frills place, and the owner, Robert, is very helpful. If you want to spend more for a few extra creature comforts (such as a rooftop bar) try The Mad Monkey. This trip has been fully tested by me. I remain in considerable pain and discomfort. I would rate this trip as follows: Pain and Suffering 80% Chance of Death 15% Moral Value 90% For other trips that may suit your needs more precisely you may wish to consider: Oh Farc It! – Colombia Pain and Suffering 50% Chance of Death 80% Moral Value 1% Ode to a lump of green putty they found up my bottom one midsummer morning – Singapore Pain and Suffering 5% Chance of Death 90% Moral Value debateable. (A pint at my local if you can correct the quote… and name my local.)
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 11:13:39 +0000
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