With a transit through Singapore I decided to spend a few days there exporing. More on that soon.
I like the Cambodians attitude to food - if it's edible, then eat it. Frogs, beatles, crickets, spiders, and crocodiles are all on the menu somewhere in the country. The fish farm also farmed crocodiles. These were out of our price range though. A full crocodile sets you back around $400.
Yup, you can even buy snakes for eating at your convenience on the lake.
Apparently what makes these interesting is they aren't portraying angels or gods - but normal people. If you had the time and patience, you can find around 50 different hair styles depicted. Different poses and costumes add to the variety.
The highest level of "Heaven" has been closed for restoration for about a month now! There's a brand new museum in Siem Reap too - and that opened for the first time on the Monday after we left town. Talk about bad timing.
It's not just all large faces at the Bayon, like Angkor Wat there are bas-relief carvings. At the Bayon these tell a few stories as well as depicting everyday life in the 12th century. Raising an army and defeating the Cham's features prominently. A navel battle is shown complete with crocodiles eating men that had fallen overboard. It looks a bit comical actually - not sure if it was intended that way though!
The jungle has well and truly attacked this temple. Although the trees have been pegged back, some of the temple is only standing because the roots of the trees are holding it together! The green glow through the jungle canopy gives this temple a nice ambience.
It's a tragic example of the worst that humans can do to each other. Interestingly, parts of the museum as dedicated to the people who ran the prison. Most of them did it out of fear of death. The régime killed anyone who refused to work the job given to them. They had 12 and 13 year old children as the medical staff in the prison, with no training provided to them. The Khmer Rouge boasted that they estimated that no more than 2 million people were needed for their "new society". This was being broadcast to a population of around 10 million. It's in this light that you can start to understand how something like this can be run, and how the population can be kept in such a state of fear.
The outer fences of the prison consisted of corrugated iron, topped with electrified barbed wire. On the wall in one of the buildings is a set of the most basic electrical equations. You can't run an electric fence without these equations. But they were killing all the intellectuals in the society, they must of been afraid of losing this particular piece of knowledge.
That's right - if you don't have a gun, you can't get any drugs!
I'd never considered the contrast between these two landmarks. The Opera House is like nothing else, soaring, white and modern - whereas the bridge is dark grey and industrial.
When I wandered over to Circular Quay I found out that there is a ferry service to Parramatta. I'll catch that to work one day. It only takes 15 minutes longer. A nice sunny day is a pre-requisite however!
Wednesday night I had the worst Thai meal ever! I was wandering around the city looking for dinner, and found a place that looked good. What should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn't good at all, was the large bain-marie at the back of the restaurant. When I asked for the menu I was told there is none, you just pick your meal out from the bain-marie. Suspiciously all the meals were in take away containers... Being naïve I thought maybe this was just for take-away customers, so I asked for the Pad Thai. The waitress opened a take away container of Pad Thai and emptied it on to a plate for me. It was the worst tasting meal ever!! I gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, and went back to the hotel.
Tomorrow I'll head to The Rocks and Circular Quay and check out the famous sights (and pubs) of Sydney.
Not an insignificant list of items! Luckily I can work around most of them - for instance I drove to work before the flight and picked up my laptop charger. Even so, it's a good trip to be reminded of the ease of such oversights - good because it's only going to be a week long, and it's not too far from home.
The lack of a camera - dodgy camera phone excluded - is annoying me. I decided against taking the bulky SLR as I wasn't going to be touring, but I did forget to grab a little point 'n shoot. Once in Sydney I've been wanting to take photos ever since! My hotel room is on the 2nd storey, and looks directly out onto the Sydney monorail - not so exiting for a local, but pretty cool for me. Last night I went for dinner at a Spanish restaurant and got served a magnificent (although slightly too big) roast pork meal. It was definitely worth a photo!! The fish markets in Pyrmont were also worth a few photos: if I had a camera!
Okay enough ranting about that - lesson has been learnt. More observations about Sydney: it's damned haphazard! None of the streets are straight, some are one way, and all of them cause me to get lost. Luckily this new fangled phone can be used to look up maps of the city : ) The skyline looks imposing too, as the buildings "overlap", whereas in Melbourne, due to the city grid if you are walking along the street the buildings "line up" and have gaps between them where the roads are.
Tonight I met up with Mark who I worked with a few years back at Dynamic Hearing. He's recently become the father of two twin girls, and so it was great to catch up with him. We had fun comparing notes on transition stages of life. Me getting more involved in my work and career, and him winding back work a bit to help his wife Liz look after two demanding little people.
Another thing I forgot - I didn't find out if they were identical twins or not. Not so important : P
This beige and blue box makes the Internet work on mobiles phones. I'm listening to Nick Cave at the moment, and to take a lyric I just heard completely out of context... "we are magicians".
I've crossed back over the equator, and dinner is about to be served. Time to wrap up this post. I'll be home in around 12-hours. : )
Postscript #2. As it turns out the Singaporeans don't know the restrictions like they think they do. There aren't any restrictions for liquids on domestic flights - so it would have been okay to buy drinks anyway.
These common houses also helped out the local single men. At night they were able to sleep in them! A community sponsored bachelor pad?...
It was cool to see that even among the hundreds of tourists milling around that some locals could still find some space for a game of chess.
The Temple of Literature, or Văn Miếu, also had nice gardens. It was founded in 1070 as a Confucian temple, but 6 years later became Vietnam's first university. Some of the architecture is from the 11th century. It is probably the only place in the country that has architecture that old.
This reads "... virtuous and talented men are state-sustaining elements: The strength and the prosperity of a state depend on its stable vitality and it becomes weaker as such vitality fails. That is why all the saint emperors and clear-sighted kings didn't fail in seeing to the development of men of talent and the employment of literati to develop this vitality."
In the late 1940's and early 1950's the Vietnamese fought the French, in an attempt to gain independence. The above painting illustrates the jungle on fire, with an anti-aircraft missile chasing an unseen French aircraft. Below is a painting that depicts Việt Minh tanks rolling into Saigon in 1975. The paintings were quite compelling, and I'd recommend going to see them. There are easily more than 100 items in the contemporary exhibition.
Lacquer is a traditional Vietnamese material used by artists as there are native trees that produce lacquer. Most of the the paintings, old and new, were lacquer paintings. The sculptures were all made of bronze, and this was also a traditional Vietnamese material.
Moving on now to the Army Museum, I arrived at the same time as three bus-loads of young army recruits. As part of their training they must have to learn about Vietnamese military history. There's plenty to learn too! While the museum focuses mainly on the war with the French, there are significant amounts of captured American hardware, as well as smaller exhibits of ancient weapons. In this photo the recruits are being told about a captured French artillery piece:
I suspect the communist party had a fair say in the exhibits of the Army Museum as everything always pointed to Vietnamese victories. Furthermore I was surprised at the emphasis placed on the war with the French. It seems that this war was more important in the minds of the Vietnamese. Sometimes some of the translations might have been a bit askew, such as the caption on a French helmet riddled with bullet holes: "a steel helmet - evidence of the failure of the French".
The museum also featured some war-based artwork. There were some paintings inside, and a few sculptures scattered around outside. One sculpture was a massive combobulation of different pieces of destroyed French and American aircraft. Below is a photo of just one jet engine amongst all the different parts:
Outside the museums, I had to tell a few enterprising locals that I didn't want to take a motorcycle back to the hotel, I'd much prefer a taxi. It was well after lunch time, and I was pretty hungry. After 2 weeks of having Vietnamese lunches I really really wanted a sandwich. Hence I used room service for the first time, and ordered a club sandwich and a coffee. It was pretty good : )
(the bunny is almost all gone : )
Around 11 the party started wrapping up so we decided to check out a massive dance club down town called "New Century". Apparently it's the place to be in Hanoi. First impressions were a little odd - the bouncers were wearing what looked to be bullet-proof vests! Once inside however it was a normal club. The beer was a little pricey by Hanoi standards, but as Mark pointed out... no cover charge : )
This next photo shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. In fact in Hanoi, the cat and every other meat is skinned in the street, and sold right there. (Okay maybe they don't sell cat, but you can definitely get dog in the country North of town.) There are plenty of flies having their fair share of the produce too. The guy in the right of the photo, Tung, is a local engineer I've been working with. He's looking at me funny because I'm taking a photo of the butcher - why would I want to do that?! It's so normal!
Note: Tung's head isn't really that warped, it's the dodgy quality mobile phone camera that I took the photo on. The high quality landscapes you'd got used to from Halong Bay are sadly not replicated by a tiny pin-point camera. I think I might go and purchase one of those pocket sized digital camera's for moments like this.
The Vietnamese word bia means beer, and is pronounced in the same way. This particular can of Bia Hà Nội was being consumed by me while I was attempting to figure out how to get free Internet in the hotel.
Another beer I've been sampling has been 333 Export, which is from Ho Chi Minh City, so not strictly a local beer. This is a annoying beer to order until you learn the Vietnamese word for three is ba. Hence you order a ba ba ba. Alternatively I had some success asking for the "beer from the south".
Many battles have been won by the Vietnamese here, and I can understand why - it'd be very easy to hide amongst the islands and channels. More on that later. The bay also supports a whole bunch of fishing and industrial shipping:
In 1994, UNESCO classified the site as a "world heritage site", the Vietnamese people seem to be very proud of this. Unfortunately the combination of people living on the water, industrial uses, and tourism means the bay is polluted with rubbish. As part of the world heritage listing, the fishermen were ejected from the caves that they lived in. I'm not sure how long they had been living in the caves - maybe only since the Vietnam war, any longer than that and I would have thought that would have been part of the heritage. Anyway, when they were banned from living in the caves, UNESCO and the park management built them floating houses:
Overnight we slept on the boat, it was very comfortable! I had a king sized bed, and my own en-suite. All the islands in the bay ensure it is very protected from the any bad weather in the gulf, hence I couldn't detect any motion while sleeping (the boat had anchored too). In the morning the sun was shining through the clouds. I'd been in Vietnam for 7 days, and it was the first time I'd seen the sun! February through April in Northern Vietnam is characterised by its overcast days, and it was certainly living up to that. The bay looked even better with a bit of sunshine. Here's a photo of the sunrise that I managed to fall out of bed for:
The second day of the tour took us to one of the 300 known caves in the bay. This one was particularly big, and was used as a hospital in the Vietnam war. The bay itself has been used as a defensive position against ancient attacks by the Chinese and Mongolians. In the Vietnam war it was heavily bombed by the American forces because they knew there munition supplies stored in the caves. The caves provided enough protection however. The caves were explored by the French in the early 1900's as well. The following photo shows a mix of French and Vietnamese graffiti. Enlarge the photo to see the dates more clearly; 1901, 1906, 1907 and 1911 are all visible (although 1906 is partly obscured).
The tour included all our meals, which were quite nice. They provided us with many dishes per meal, which was great way to sample a range of local stuff. Some of the dishes I'd had with the local engineers during the week, but some were new. Sautéed squid is nice : )
Behind the façade are the temple grounds, with a few more buildings further back. The temple was built because the people worshipped a Prince that vanquished some pirates back in the 11th century. He then did some other nice things, so they made him a God. Not a bad job description I reckon - Godprince.
After wandering around the temple grounds for a bit, the zoo then extracted its revenge on me for avoiding it at the start of the walk. To continue my walk I had to enter, and pay the extravagant entrance fee of 2000 Vietnamese Dong... which is an entire $0.15 Australian... : )
Inside the zoo, the vast majority of exhibits were Vietnamese animals, which is great for a tourist, but all the signs were in Vietnamese too; not so good for a tourist! But then again, I was the only westerner in there as far as I could see, so they've got their target audience correct. (The relativity cheap entrance fee might also be an indication that it's for locals.)
There were also the usual such as elephants and tigers; the ordinary such as goats and deer; and the more interesting such as the Malaysian Porcupine (below), and the Binturong - otherwise known as the catbear, which of course is neither a cat or a bear (just like the platypus isn't a duck or a beaver!)
The elephants were a bit sad, as the were chained down to the spot by their legs - except for the one that was currently being exhibited, it was being fed, but was made to stand on a ridiculously small stand, like in an old fashioned circus. The goats on the other hand had an awesome enclosure, with a temple like construction for their protection from the elements. If it's not colloquially known as the temple of the goat, then it should be!!
That's the view from the smokers balcony / flower garden. To keep a tired traveller happy there is plenty of free grog samples in the duty free store downstairs too.
The traffic, as you can see, is pretty damn insane, though I have been enjoying the taxi rides; they are very entertaining. The guy standing under the unbrella is a traffic policeman - his job is to fine anyone who ignores the traffic lights - a manual red light camera system : )
My favourite traffic sights so far have been a toddler riding between Mum and Dad on a motorbike - ASLEEP!!, and a guy transporting two dead pigs, tied to either side of his motorbike. These are closely followed by people transporting 19" LCD's on the back of their bikes.
Due to the original room only had single beds, I've been moved down two floors to a room with a king sized double. It has a view over Thu Le Park:
The park has a zoo, and an ancient temple, and... the Australian embassy!.. Tomorrow morning I don't have to be at work until 10:30ish, so I plan on going for a walk around the park.
