Bokor Hill Station

Yep, its the hauntingly beautiful and melancholic Bokor Hill Station pictured above. Photo taken from the Hill Station itself, the main building on the hill. It had this whole colonial-days-gone mood to it, Bokor itself, originally serving as a summer retreat for the French colonial staff, reflected in the now eerily empty grand ballroom in the hill station basement and the rustic fireplace.

Bokor's checkered past also include serving as a base for French colonial forces (the barracks and Catholic church still exist), then for the Khmer Issara nationalists fighting for independence, and in a last sorrowful chapter, as a place where invading Vietnamese troops fought the Khmer Rouge. The Catholic church, apparently, was where a major battle took place, the Vietnamese troops firing at Pol Pot's troops bunkered in a nearby casino less than 200 metres away.

You could almost feel the ghosts of the past and its history in the tendrils of mist that gathered around the abandoned structures and swirled around the cliff edge. Haunting, indeed, was the experience, walking, even in daytime, in and around the rooms of the once grand Bokor Palace hotel, through empty halls and corridors, and up and down the broad, crumbling stairways.

Left: Thats the basement of the Bokor Palace, note the fireplace on the left. The sheer emptiness of the hotel, which once must have been grand, and the plaster gathered on the floor just adds to the ghostly, hauntingly beautiful appeal of Bokor, like it has been left to the past and forgotten by the rest of the world.

Practicing hedonist

"Practicing Hedonist ( I'll get it right one of these days )".

Saw this on someone's profile. Brough a smile to my face

Music to Travel to

Currently hooked on Simon and Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa, lovely stuff.

"I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet, Yes i would, if i only could, i surely would"...
Magical, i say.

Other all time favourites include:

• Damien Rice - Cannonball
• Five for Fighting - If God made you (Thats where the blog title came from)
• Johnny Cash - I've been Everywhere
• Willie Nelson - On the Road Again
• Lisa Ono - Take me Home (country roads)
• Lisa Ono - Jambalaya
• Lyle Lovett - If I had a Boat
• Oasis - Don't Look back in Anger (singing along in Angkor What? bar/club in Siem Reap with a group of half drunk Swedes and a Briton was memorable)
• Oasis - All around the World
• Murray Head - One Night in Bangkok
• Kim Wilde - Cambodia
• Toto - Africa

Almost tempted to do this APA style, after all the painful hours doing APA formatting for my college papers (most of the time wasted on trying to find rubbish like the year of publication, publishing house, etc etc. You get the drift.) Bullet form is well, a liberating experience.

Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia

Cambodia

Having referred to Bokor quite a bit in the previous postings, i guess ill do a proper section on the hill station itself.

This, on the left, is the view of Kampot, a small fishing village on the Cambodian coast that is the base for going up the Bokor Hill Station, which i believe is gazetted Bokor National Park.

Going to Kampot from Phnom Penh, according to theory, and Lonely Planet, takes 4 hours or so. In theory. Assuming the roads are tarmac and paved and the bus doesnt break down (on purpose or otherwise). What life tells us about theories is that they remain theories because they are often wrong.

What i expected to be a short trip from Phnom Penh, starting at 12 noon, to Kampot soon developed into a 8 to 9 hour long voyage, in no small part due to the roads that were scarred and potholed extensively. Another delay was caused by having to change buses (from a small one to a smaller one) midway - the bus just stopped abruptly and we were told to get off, when it was around 7 in the evening. I was either too tired or ignorant to be anxious, but, yes, commission scam alert, (the lesser of two evils - I don't want to think too much of the other one), and we were delivered faithfully into a waiting pack of touts. And picking up random people (and their chickens/bags of rice/veggies) along the way, which seemed an unwritten fact of bus travel in more remote parts of Southeast Asia, while an interesting experience, did nothing to make the journey faster. Bumping around in the bus and trying to peek out of the windows through the drawn curtains (it was hot) reminded me of Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey into Night, in the thank-god-i-don't-have-to-read-it-again way (it was one of SIX texts we had to prepare for the A levels).

Since it was late, i was willingly "touted" to a nearby guesthouse, seeing its touts as the lesser of two evils. Well, turns out, after all the "my friend, come my guesthouse" sweet talk, it wasnt half bad. The view was awesome - the photo was taken from my room window - Right smack beside the Kampot River, river breeze, fresh air and all all adding to its ratings. The "restaurant" had decent food at decent prices, and again the view was a big plus. Great music too - music to chill and reminisce to, thinking about life this far away, in some far flung corner of the world, staring at the darkened river, hearing the soft lapping of water against the shore.

Seeing that this place is not listed on any of my guidebooks, ill just do a basic impartial intro on it here.

Kampot Riverview Guesthouse.

They do have a dorm (one main building with TV in the centre of the compound) as well as single/double rooms (chalet style, right smack before the river). I took the single room.

Was about 4 US dollars for a clean, spacious room with attached shower (big plus at 4 dollars - other places u only get a spartan room or a dorm bed for this price). Furnishings incude a helpful rack and a hatstand. Bed was clean too.

Other services provided include transportation (shared taxi, friendly owner has a moto and willingly ferries you around Kampot) and organisation of short trips to nearby Bokor, Kep (for the limestone caves), and some waterfalls. One word though, is that u can get better prices at other places in town - Mealy Chenda GH (guesthouse) offers the best prices for tours.

If u need more info, i seem to have their email and phone number jotted down somewhere. Drop a comment, ill pass them to you.

Kampot, of course, if famous for her pepper. LP proclaims "no self respecting French restaurant would be without Kampot pepper". Having sampled some - it made a world of difference to plain bullseye eggs I can say that Kampot pepper is famous for a reason.

From Sihanoukville/Kompong Som (for the royalists), its a more (very) humane 2 hours plus trip to Kampot by shared taxi, going down smooth, beautiful tarmac all the way. Much like Malaysia's North South Highway, with plantations and trees at both sides. Taxi cost 3-4 dollars (depending on how good u are at bargaining) - for A seat. Cannot stress this enough. You pay for one seat, but as a nice surprise, guess how many seats they have in an old Japan imported Toyota Camry/Corolla? 4 at the back, and 2 in the front passenger seat. Needless to say, its going to be squishy. The trick is, if you are not on such a tight budget, pay for 2 seats, and ask/beg/plead for the front seat. I did this trip (to S'ville) in reverse, going from Kampot, and sharing it with a family, i got the front seat. (yay-ness)

In Jan 2007, they were building a new bridge across the Kampot River. What new transport options will be available, im not sure, but i think it might be the continuation of railway services to Phnom Penh.

I realise i haven't quite covered Bokor, ill leave that to my next post then.

It started with a map

This map brings back so many memories. I remember looking at it and thinking in June 2006 back in junior college that hell, i wanna be there. I should be there instead of here, in front of a computer terminal right outside the library and looking at a "normal" (read: boring) life ahead of me. The social "wisdom" of going from primary school to secondary school, to junior college then a good university, get a good degree, then start earning money just so you could pay for the house, car and whatnot that, sure, you really need.

In January 2007, I was there. At the Angkor standing alone on the Terrace of Elephants just like the God-kings of old, inspecting his victorious troops in parade after marching in through the Victory Gate of the Angkor Thom (Great City in Khmer). The incongruity of it eh. It was like discovering a new world that existed beyond the doomed cirle of production and consumption, to be slightly modernist about it.

Laos Please Don't Rush

Lao PDR. Standing for Laos Please Don't Rush. I like that. Slow being an understatement of travel in Laos PDR (People's Democratic Republic actually). Wonder why countries with Democratic in their names are usually anything but.

Rough itinery now is like this. Arrival Udon Thani (UTH), then to Nong Khai, Thai bordertown 2 hours or so away from UTH, where ill hitch from the Friendship Bridge to Vientiane, Sandalwood city on the Mekong, 22 km away.

All my distances are in rough estimates, cant really do proper planning at the moment, no thanks to the exams. The quiz on Thursday was a real morale (what's the antonym of booster) - dampener just doesnt sound drastic enough. Never knew Multiple choice questions could be so hard. Hell, what's done's done i guess. Times like this, knowing life is more than a single bloody quiz is rather comforting. (Cue images of the Greater Mekong, the Angkorian temples, hot coffee on a cold Burmese morning (they do get rather friggin' cold) on the road to Mandalay...)

Anyway. Back to the plan. From Vientiane, ill take a bus up to Vang Vieng, spend a few days, tubing and all, then again up the road to Luang Prabang, then its Luang Namtha and Muang Sing at the Chinese border, where do some trekking before trucking back to Namtha, then going straight back to Prabang.

From Prabang, its off to Phonsavan, Plain of Jars, if i still have time on my schedule. Then its back to Vientiane, Nong Khai and UTH, and a flight back to Singapore.

It's November

It's November, in this part of the world.

Exams in 13 days - hell where did all the time go? And leaving for Laos in 29 days.

Which leaves me little time to continue my postings. Looking forward for the post exam period where ill try to get the Burma posts done before jetting off to Laos.

Laos seems to be the new buzzword amongst the backpacker grapevine, its name whispered among independent travellers as someplace yet largely untouched by tourism and commercialism, somewhere where the travel experience is still authentic and somewhere where travel itself is the attraction. I remember sometime back it was postwar Cambodia, appealing to the danger travel crowd, and decades ago it was Thailand and her many shimmering tropical islands.

I guess i was somewhat influenced by the hype in choosing Laos, wanting to see it before it becomes another package tourist destination, like Siem Reap with the Angkor Temples are now and Thailand's many gorgeous beaches that were serendipitous paradise islands before these were claimed by tourism and corporate interests.

So far, i guess Burma has been my most authentic travel experience, beating largely my own trail and not seeing foreign faces around me most of the time. Bokor in Cambodia ranks pretty highly on my list as well, the hauntingly beautiful French casino and hill station, along with the Catholic church that stand as silent sentinels on a cold, remote mountain top, bearing witness to many things time itself has even forgtten, surrounded by lush primary forest trying hard to reclaim the single track up. Finding my own paradise. Hedonistic? Not actually. Just a reminder of how simple and uncomplicated, beautiful life can be.