New house mate in our center

On Friday Rita managed to bump into yet another carnival celebration in Cusco while getting back from her school - it seems that the festivities are not slowing down even though it is already the third week since they started. This time though it was more like Rio Carnival with lots of dancing, costumes and girls in high heels and short skirts... I stayed at center that day so I missed all the fun.

At 7 am on Saturday the girls went to the market to make shopping for the entire week - Rita, Sonia, our cook and Alana, our volunteer from New York. They came back with tons of excellent photos (and fruits & vegetables in varieties we have not seen before) and a new flat mate. Some of photos are really gruesome but definitely worth seeing. Have a look at our new flat mate below:

He is beatiful - not scared of us or anything else around so he roams freely around the house and the patio. Incredible - I used to have a rabbit when I was small and now I have one with incredibly fluffy fur...he eats quite a bit and quickly understood that he is not allowed to enter the rooms. Nobody can really explain how come he is so friendly - it is kind of strange as obviously he was raised for food and fur...Anyway he is a great pet and almost as smart as a dog. Next we are getting a book on how to train house rabbits. He is definitely a favourite of mine just like little Sandra below - I mentioned her earlier so now here comes her photo. We need to take her to an optician to check her eyes and get her proper glasses or whatever else is needed.

Through the last week we have also been working on some ways to do some fundraising for the children of our Cusco center - lots of them have various untreated problems just like Sandra. As a result we have created a fundraising web page (see also on the left side of the blog) through which everyone can make small donations with a credit card. We will appreciate all the help...

Cuyeria in Cusco

We have a new flatmate in our center. His name is Choclo - he is a baby and scared to death - basically does not move whenever he hears somebody around. Right now he lives in a carton box. One of our volunteers received him as a gift from our social worker. Basically Choclo is quite lucky - non of our Peruvian friends have ever seen a guinea pig as a pet. In Peru Choclo's relatives are considered a delicacy. There are restaurants specializing only in serving guinea pigs and most of the tour groups with home stays coming to Cusco end up preparing a guinea pig for dinner as a way of immersing in local culture. For the time being I do not want to develop too strong bond to our new friend as it would be extremly difficult to think that then we would have to it him. Not that we plan but he is kind of doomed as I think he cannot stay with us forever. Anyway for now we were told he cannot get water because his belly will blow up so he eats apples etc. and seems healthy.

Otherwise, the week has passed very fast - we have some new children in the schools - my favourite new student is little Sandra who needs however to have her eyes checked as she is a little cross-eyed. We will need to find a doctor for her. Otherwise, she is a great student and very conversational girl.

We have also made preliminary arrangements for pub quizes where we are going to raise some money (it flips me out a bit since I will have to lead them) and we still have not managed to renovate our bathroom - no one dared to touch the "mud" walls - but we might finally do it this weekend. The plaster we used earlier comes off the walls just like it was the case before we started renovating.

The best thing however, about our days after school is that we have an excellent cook so we have everyday a good lunch and a great Peruvian soup...Everything is vegeterian so sofar Choclo is safe :)

Cienciano Cusco

Weekends go fast especially if you are aware of them. Last six months we did not know what day of the week it is but by now we do know again how to appreciate weekends. This time we planned to go out of Cusco but did not manage to fulfill our plan. Finally though we managed to visit the art district of Cusco. We have also been to a football game of Primera División Peruana - between the local Cienciano and one of the teams - Universitario. Surprise, surprise after the first half Cusco team was loosing...during the second half though the guests could not run anymore and in the end lost...It was Rita's first visit to live football and at first she did not like the wild crowd. After some time though managed to find her favourite sector with live trumpet music...All in all the spectators were less lively than I would expect from Latino's :))) We are all cursed by stereotyping - aren't we? We went to the stadium with lots of kids from a different NGO and all enjoyed ourselves as long as there was sun - no sun means that you freeze as I have mentioned a couple of time before.

Otherwise our week has started very nicely - we have new volunteers - one American girl speaking Czech so I can practice my Polish...and of course our cook is here so finally we have food, we do not do shopping and general feeling of cleanliness creeps slowly in...We even started renovating the bathroom but got stuck on the point of how to put plaster on adobe - the walls of our bathroom are basically earth structures - same as used thousands of years ago by all sorts of local tribes. We might have a solution but we are still double checking - nobody dared to strip the walls of left over paint as to have the adobe stick out completely. Rita was of the opinion that then the whole structure will collapse. It is a bit like a crush course in home renovation.


The best thing however is that we are going to travel again - not yet but soon and to new places for us!!!

By the way my brain still refuses to process Spanish in a way that anything sensible would come out of my mouth. Russian and German dominate the field and Spanish cannot find its place in my brain - scary.

Cusco - the coldest day ever

Today was the God damn coldest day ever here - it was raining for the whole night and the day was way too cold to be called a nice day. One had to make it through mud up to your ankles to get to school (it was raining whole night) - half of the kids therefore did not show up in school...

So finally we are the proud owners of a small heater!!! It uses a hell of energy but today was way over the limit of my endurance in terms of coldness...

Tomorrow 7.08am, I am going to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. We have cable TV in the center so I kind of started being more up-to-date with the most important things in the world (CNN just aired a story about a dog killed by some mad man to a local mayor in the US of whom I have never heard). It is a perfect way of wasting time. Anyway no zapping of channels since we have no remote control and it takes around 10 minutes to move from first channel to the 99th standing in front of it...

Anyway after the opening ceremony (or rather in the middle of it) we will go to school for the arts day which we decided to introduce...we will make small puppets with the kids - photos coming up - international delivery possible :)))

Good thing is I started talking sort of broken Spanish - somehow till now I could not do it...though I still say Russian "paka" to kids when finishing school...somehow it comes out automatically...

A day in Cusco - continued

We have just added the first set of portraits of our kids. We have three schools so there will be three sets...With time each picture will tell a story (we have to learn them ourselves)...We are also working on setting a separate blog for the Cusco center...ex and current volunteers will post their experiences from their time spent with the kids etc...

As to current events - we have just gotten our hands on our recruiting fliers. They are black and white and Rita decided to color every single one of them. I told her that it is pure madness - but I had nothing to say to her response - she told me that it is like watching soccer games on TV. When she told me that I ought to watch European Championships when they are replayed instead of live (once we were in Asia usually the games started at 2am), I politely refused saying that it is not right since I cannot influence the game any more. Once I watch them live on TV obviously I DO INFLUENCE THE SCORE (sadly with little success what comes to the performance of Polish team)...Therefore she will color all 1000 pieces so that they have a personal touch and better success rate in recruiting volunteers.Lets see...So far going to the schools every morning is kind of hard on me.

A day in Cusco

Cusco is a probably the tourist Mekka of Peru (if not to certain extent of whole South America) due to its proximity to Machu Picchu...we kind of thought that we will feel like them...though right now our days differ a bit...we have not been sightseeing too much...

Our day starts early
- around 7.30 as we have to start preparing around 40 sandwiches for the kids and boil probably 10 liters of water to make hot local specialty drink for the kids from kiwicha, hava and soya, which are all very healthy and strange tasting :)
- around 9.00 together with the teachers we take taxis to three different schools in three different neighborhoods
- around 9.15 we arrive to schools and we are greeted by all kids without exception demanding to be hugged and kissed...
- around 9.20 the kids first wash hands and get their breakfast
- around 9.40 they brush their teeth
- afterward we start the lessons usually dividing the kids into groups based on their age or knowledge (I usually get the smallest kids and together we start from the basic of counting to 40 or so). This goes on with little break perhaps until 12.15...I can tell you that it is very hard as getting their attention is a sign of genius on behalf of the teacher
- around twelve each kid gets some fruit and after goodbye's we all part (I am usually quite dizzy by that time)
- we are back in the center by 12.45 more or less as we come back with the bus
- as the directors of the center we are responsible for preparing lunch for the rest of the volunteers...in other words cooking
- at 3pm I have individual Spanish class and at 4 pm Rita has her lesson
- right after the class the best part of the day begins...we go shopping for the next day
- we buy 40 little breads, around 4kg of fruits for next day (once we tried buying fruits for 3 days in advance but carrying the load was beyond our capabilities although we have made it to Annapurna base camp without porters earlier this year), vegetables etc. for the volunteers lunch...we could easily compete with the camels
- we are back by 7pm quite exhausted (it is quite a walk to the market and the store - I can assure anyone doubting it - especially at 3400 meters above sea level)
- afterward it is time to eat and do Spanish homework if you are able to think straight still

Actually we have never done it yet but we should be doing fund raising in pubs with pub quizzes etc. in the evenings ...so far though we never had the energy...

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So starting next week we have decided that we will have a maid to cook, do the shopping and clean the center..As my mum put it giving employment is better than charity...We have also designed a flyer to start recruiting volunteers from all sorts of tourists coming here...the "print house" will have first 1000 pieces ready by Monday. More volunteers means that we make the sandwiches less often, we have more money - kids get better sandwiches and in general there is more happiness :) We plan to devise a healthy diet for the kids instead of the cheapest as is the case more or less now (don't get me wrong we are still giving them very good sandwiches which we eat with them)...

In other words we will make the world a better place - also for us :) As for the kids we are waiting for proposals of receipes for balanced weekly diet in terms of sandwiches menu...

Cusco

We arrived to Cusco after a 21 hour bus ride without our backpacks...We were not robbed but they were not on the bus...it quickly became obvious that we have forgotten them in Lima...we did not check them in as we thought but left them at the luggage deposit...our only hope was to ask the bus operator to send them to us the next day. So we did...

The happening has been a déjà vu for me - I have once very long time ago forgotten my backpack in a different country and boarded a bus without it :) - one would think that such things do not happen as you get older...

So we arrived to Cusco - a place where it is warm only when the sun shines. At night it is freezing cold...and honestly our room is by no means warm so instead of waiting to get used to freezing temperatures (as we were advised will happen) but decided to get ourselves a small heater...a week has passed but we still do not have it...we simply have not found one...but we got ourselves ponchos gloves and hats from beautiful alpaca wool.

I am still suffering from the fact that Cusco is located higher than the ski resorts I used to go snowboarding in Alps - 3400m above see level is probably higher than any peak in Alps we visited...and here we live at such altitude - going to toilet makes you gasp for air... The city has also a very lively nightlife with all sorts of nice bars including irish pubs and salsa clubs with live music...good for us as we will have to do some fundraising in them...

There are three schools with a little over 30 kids that we have to take care of - the districts they are located are not as scary as in Trujillo and the kids seemed a bit more disciplined...perhaps it is the weather :) So it is easier to deal with them...so far none has complained about my very basic Spanish - still I cannot help kids over 10 years as their textbooks are too complex for me...right now I am at the level of a preschool...

During the weekend we celebrated our first wedding anniversary and splurged on a nice hotel room and a nice local dinner. But what we enjoyed (almost) the most was a clean and hot shower. To remain on the constructive side we have an opportunity to develop house renovating skills if we want to make our new home somewhat cosy... The following day we chilled on the Plaza de Armas, Tomek enjoying the sun halfway leaning on Rita, when a policewoman with a deafening whistle blow appeared and straightened us not to disturb the local order. Rita has been already once cursed in Kiev by a babushka at an orthodox monastery so this was not so bad. Actually we have been already over 6 months on our honeymoon trip - the time flies...

By the way - the next day our backpacks arrived and nothing was missing despite of the horror stories we hear about pick pocketing and theft...luck is still with us...They must all have been trained in the famous Polish prewar pickpocketing school in Lvov as they are unbeatable in their skills.

Northern Coast of Peru

Besides our first baby-steps in volunteering in Trujillo, we had some free time to discover the wonders in the neighborhood. We began with a half our ride in a local “collectivo”, which is either a regular car or a minibus picking up passengers on a hypothetically pre-defined route. Though we never had the chance to figure out what the route is... The funny thing about these public transpot vehicles, that the number of people inside them and the speed they are cruising about is unlimited. Once there were 4 of us sitting in a regular car in the front seats and 5 in the rear :)

But coming back to our cultural discoveries, Chan Chan is a is the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the biggest adobe city in the world. Built in AD 1300 by the Chimu, it hosted an estimated 60 thousand inhabitants as the capital of the larger empire, until they were conquered by the Incas in 1471. The site would have been beyond comprehension without an English speaking guide, who explained us the functions of the different parts of the remaining citadel, which indeed had very distinguished symbolism and functionality. Unfortunately what we can see today is a fraction of the original leaving your imagination alone with the one and only mud color your eye can detect, melting the enormous structure into the equally mud colored scenery. But it is truly captivating, maybe because of its brutal simplicity.

Our next destinantion was the ceremonial and administrative centers of the Moche empire: Huaca de la Luna, the Temple of the Moon, which is 700 years older than Chan Chan. Actually the real attraction would be opposite, the Huaca del Sol, the Temple of the Sun, if it was not closed for visitors. It is still the largest single pre-Columbian structure in Peru, though one third has been washed away during the last one and a half millennia. It was built with an estimated 140 million adobe bricks, prepared and donated by the Moche people. Many of the bricks wear the unique sign of each household or worker who prepared them. The Huaca de la Luna, a good 500m across the desert is a pile of five temples built on top of each other, each new one completely covering the previous one.

We have also visited a sea resort of sorts – Huanchaco – some 20 minutes by bus from Trujillo. It is a great place to relax though the beach is not exactly the nicest we have seen. The good thing about the place is that you can learn how to surf for almost next to nothing. Of course if you do not mind the cold Pacific Ocean. It would have been our next challenge…

We have also had the pleasure to witness the start of another project related to Bruce Peru – WindAid. Basically a wind power generator to be deployed on rental basis in areas where there is no electricity. We have seen it work next to the coast but it really does not need much wind…Since basically you can find generic manuals how to build one on the internet my next challenge once we stop our nomadic life will be building one for myself…Anyway a very inspiring project which I hope will fly big time.

More or less our exploration of the north of Peru ended there. We were proposed to take over the lead of a Bruce Peru center in Cusco. We still spent the weekend in Trujillo roaming around a bit as we have described above. It was a bit sad to leave our room where we kind of settled in already. We had a two day trip in front of us…We arrived to Lima without any hiccups, took a taxi to the next bus terminal from which we were to depart in the evening to Cusco. After checking-in the bags (or so we thought) we had some breakfast at the bus station (don’t think of the bus station as an usual filthy shack but imagine an airport terminal of sorts)…

Anyway during breakfast we made the final decision to make it to Pachacamac, a massive archeological site from AD 200. We took a taxi to the outskirts of Lima where we were supposed to catch a bus to Pachacamac. On the way the taxi driver gave us a local newspaper so that we could read it on the way (some kind of a perk I guess). There began the terror – on page 1 we see the bus of the company we were supposed to board in the evening, totally smashed after a frontal accident with another bus…On page two there is an article about again the bus of the same company being assaulted on the way to the south. Rita told me that 39 people were shot dead and robbed. I could not believe it since the story was on page two. After consulting the driver we figured out that people were alive but without their belongings and even clothing as the bus was stopped during the night and robbed.

Both accidents happened just a day before. It did not inspire us positively but in the evening we nevertheless boarded our bus to Cusco - a 16 hour trip which we thought would be as comfortable as the ride to Lima. The bus was indeed much more comfortable than an average long haul bus in Europe but still not as nice as we expected…We were a bit scared…but there we were – on the way to Cusco…

Trujillo

Now we are living in the desert - though Trujillo is advertised as the city of eternal spring. It never rains, except when the El Niño arrives. Therefore the landscape is quite a bit eerie; basically your eyes are deprived of green except for some palms on the main square. The good thing is that the temperature is very mild - around 18 degrees Celsius, though at the moment a bit chilly at nights.We have arrived on Saturday morning to our new, more long term destination. After our arrival we were taken to our apartment right in the centre of Trujillo, a pretty, colonial city of circa half a million inhabitants - most of which live in the slams around the city. The apartment is a huge five bedroom flat and at the time we moved in the whole place was for two of us only. After a couple of days two more flatmates moved in from the US. In the light of our plan to spend the coming minimum 3 months in Trujillo we have taken the weekend very easy, leaving plenty of time to discover the beauties of the neighbourhood. We looked around the centre and waited for our first ¨working week¨ at the organization we have chosen to volunteer with. Despite of the universal rule according to which Tomek is always right, he gave up finding our way in Trujillo on the first day. And despite of the other quite universal rule according to which women have sense for directions comparable to a parrot, Rita is quite able to navigate throughout the chess table streets of the centre. We have also learned the meaning of a new sign - most buildings have a green sign, one like the one on the right. Though I am still not sure that in case of an earthquake I would not rather want to run out of the building.The week started slowly. BrucePeru is a Peruvian Non Governmental Organization (NGO) with the mission to help children participate in the National Education. They approach parents, usually single mothers living in poor conditions and try convincing them to let their kids come to a one year school, instead of or besides making the kids work or beg. In the schools BrucePeru teaches them basic literacy and maths and supports them socially and emotionally to be able to succeed in the National Schools. As an induction we were to see various activities of the organization; the first day we spent at the celebrations of completion of first year of microfinance project that the organization is running in order to support women to develop enterprises to be able to finance their children’s schooling. We have not learned much there but it made us curious what is behind it. The next day more than compensated for the first one. In the morning we were taken to the local slums to the schools (each of us to a different one). First of all the slums are quite shocking as such. They are in the middle of a grey sand desert and you cannot see the end of them. There are no trees, no running water and we learned that we go there only in the mornings since later on it becomes dangerous to hang around there. The kids are also not the easiest to get their attention. Both of us in different schools got the ones that pose the most problems and it was quite a challenge even without the obvious language barrier we have. Tomek was told by his pupil that he is a bad professor due to the fact that his Spanish is almost non-existent, and asked whether he is a niño or a senior :) He figured that for now the only way to get closer to kids was to go play football with them...Rita got a mentally disabled girl in a wheelchair with 3 other little boys with behavioural challenges, one of which beat her with his little notebook whenever he got upset. By the end of the day both of us were quite stunned by what we experienced. The next day we went to different schools where Rita had her first admirer drawing hearts with arrows for her and easier kids to deal with...The thing that the schools have usually no floors and something that resembles a roof did not shock us on the second day...
On the fourth day we ´strolled´ around one of the slums with two Peruvian employees from our organization responsible for microfinance project, visiting the homes of the projects participants. We saw their new small businesses, houses, market and in general the local life that takes place there. Nobody there spoke English so Rita really had to do her best in Spanish, but amazingly she was able to make herself understood and translate most of the things. Some of the women set up little shops in the centre selling grocery, some make shoes, others silver jewellery or herbal products. It was great to see that some of the businesses where doing very well. Though the general atmosphere of the barrio was far from uplifting... quite an experience that you do not get as a tourist to Peru just like that...All in all the organization is doing a great job - we had our doubts before coming here and were quite sceptical but both the founders and the local staff are just great. It is quite remarkable how much effort they are putting into helping people and kids avoid a pretty sad future.

By the way thanks to Petra there are two new photos of us in the London set on Flickr (photo1 & photo2). This is how many things one needs for one year of travelling - each of us carrying around 15kg´s on our backs :))

Book Review 2

Three months have passed so it is time to give you a glimpse of our readings. I guess during the next three months we will not be reading that much - more watching movies as we have bought a set of Cannes Award winning movies (since 1946 I believe), and collections of Almodovar and Bergman movies.

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Shosha

If you would like to learn about Jewish customs in the pre-WWII Poland this book will give you an atmosphere so strong that sometimes you beleive you feel the smell of food cooked on the streets, which by name are still there but without all this milieu. I liked that the author spared the description of the horror Jews went through in Poland, and rather tells about social life, love and culture - making these suffocating times so much easier to embrace and even to like. And of course you learn again something new about the ways love works.

Herman Hesse: Siddharta

Our edition contained not only the novel, but a Hesse biography with an interpretation of the novel. A fully educating piece. The novel itself was just the perfect synthesis for our SE Aian trip, especially the Buddhist part - as you cannot escape the obvious connotations. Though I think just like most of Hesse´s novels it is a must read at certain age and not any other time, when the message becomes unimportant. If you are ready for some relatively staightforward teaching about how to lead a good life, go for it but do not be disappointed if you find, that there is no universal recipe for enlightment :)

Jose Saramago: The Siege of Lisbon

Another book which makes a city breath alive on the pages, especially if you have been to Lisbon prior to being guided around the contemporary and at the same time medieval streets in the novel. Besides the academic theme around the theory of history - wheter history as such exist at all and what history is after all - it is a manicured love story. This book did not shake the way I see life, but made it cosy and so much comfortable. It makes you want to go to Lisbon and rumble down the streets with a map and this book in your hand, drink coffee and eat pastry in those wonderful brasilleries. Oh, and it will give you an entirely new experience of reading dialogues: you will have to use your imagination to find out who is talking and where is the end of the sentence. Do not give up after the preface, it is worth the try :)

Graham Green: The Quiet American

I wonder why I have not read anything from Graham Green till now. He is just genious. Not only because it is great to read a book about the country you are travelling to, but because his writing is such as Leonard Cohen's songs: they are boiled down to simplicity and tell more by silences than with words. It is a not especially unique story told in a very special way about those inevitabely peculiar years when French lost grip in Vietnam but the Americans did not mess around yet too seriously. And as ususal it is principally a love story plus a friendship, a lot of Saigon folklor with the tension of politics.

Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
It is a book everyone should read. It teaches you about the Afghan culture, which is partially lost, partially hidden for most people who listen only to the news about this unfortunate country. Besides it is a heartbreaking, wonderful story, written in a beautiful fashion, teaching you so much about human nature as ten other books together cannot. There is the finest sensitivity paired with such brutality you would not want to see on film and twists and turns making it not only wonderful but exciting, too. And most of all, you really have to give up thinking about right and wrong, just dive into the ocean of man-made complexity and try surviving it with a full heart.

Yann Martel: Life of Pi
I had this book in my hand so many times contemplating whether I should read it or not that it became an engagement I could not escape. The book finally landed on me as a result of a book exchange from our Australian fellows travelling with us in Myanmar and I finished it almost in one shot on one of our never ending bus rides. It is a refresing peace of work especially for those interested more in the method of teaching literature than enjoying it, though I have to admit, it is a very exciting and unique story. It teaches you a great deal about animals and you become almost a zoo expert by the end of the book - though do not try training tigers how to jump through circles based on the instructions, even if you tend to believe it as a true story :) Besides to Pondicherry zoo my favorite part was the way the three big religions (Hinduism, Islam and Christianity) entered Pi´s life and how he introduced them through his perception, accepting all three of them simultaneously. If you are ready to test your concentration skills and ability to understand the debth of text, try answering the list of questions at the end of the book. It really does show how much blackout we have while reading.

Gregory David Roberts: Shantaram
This is a totally unbelievable autobiographical book written by a guy who used to lead an insane life. It shows Bombay in the 80´ties with its slums and local mafia. There will be soon a Hollywood movie staring Johnny Depp. At the beginning of the book I was totally incaptivated by it but with time I did develop certain distance to the guy as his values or the way he acted on them were inconsistent at best. Below his not so short biography:

* Marriage break-up, loss of daughter in custody dispute, beginning of heroin addiction, 1976
* Armed robberies with toy pistol to support heroin habit, end year 1977
* Capture and imprisonment, 1978; Escape from Maximum Security Pentridge prison, 1980
* Escape from custody (twice) in New Zealand, end 1981
* Arrive in India, beginning 1982
* Six months in remote Maharashtrian village, learn to speak Marathi language
* Live in Bombay slum, establish and operate free clinic for slum dwellers
* Imprisoned in India for 4 months
* Recruited by Bombay mafia, training in currency crime, gold smuggling, passports
* Gunrunning operation to unit of mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan
* Wounded in action, evacuated to Pakistan, recover and return to Bombay
* Appointed controller mafia forgery unit, write short stories, published in popular series
* Passport smuggler to Nigeria, Zaire, Iraq, Iran, Mauritius, Sri Lanka
* Establish casting agency for foreign extras in Bollywood movies, act in movies
* Arrive in Germany, work as singer, establish rock band, receive recording contract
* Manhunt by European police, escape custody in Italy & Switzerland, escape to India
* Act in Bollywood movies & TV dramas, establish travel agency in Bombay
* Passport smuggling to Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Nigeria, Zaire, Mauritius, etc.
* Break with Bombay mafia council, freelance drug smuggling missions to Europe
* Teach myself to read & write German, win concessions, extradited to Australia, end 1991
* 2 years solitary confinement, 4 years mainstream prison in Australia, begin novel, 1991-97
* Develop philosophical and cosmoogical model, "Resolution Theory"
* Released from prison, begin novel 1997, end parole 2002
* Sell rights Shantaram, in USA (St. Martin’s Press) & UK (TimeWarner Books UK)
* Publish Australian edition of novel, Shantaram, August, 2003
* Sell movie rights to Johnny Depp, Brad Grey, Graham King, Warner Brothers, October 2004

Lima

We are suddenly on the Southern hemisphere hanging upside-down - at least compared to our usual Northern hemisphere experience and instead of being ahead of Greenwich time we are lagging behind. All these changes to digest within the frame of 2 and a half weeks during which we have been to six countries on three different continents. It has distorted our sense of time and space in general. While we were used to moving 600km in 12 hours on a bus, crossing thousands of kilometres by plane introduced a bit more of confusion. Especially that the local conditions varied tremendously. Comparing Yangon to Bangkok is one thing, and comparing Yangon to London where we landed one day later is yet another.

Anyway after our six day visit to Buenos Aires we boarded a plane to Lima. For some reason we imagined that it will be a short 1,5 hours maximum type of intra European flight. It was strange though that we got pillows and blankets, we were informed about a coming film and dinner to be served - all in such a short time… We burst out laughing seeing the astonishment on each others face when it was announced that the flight will be 4 hours 40 minutes and it would add another 2 hours time difference to our Central European time (summing up to 7 hours).

Managing your expectations is always the best way to make yourself happy, and anyway, during our trip so far we learned that a new place is always unpredictable. First of all we have sometimes ignored some advice (vide crossing the boarder to Nepal where a general strike took place) or taken it a bit too seriously (vide Myanmar where we have landed with our backpacks full of dry noodle soups in case we had nothing to eat). Based on the information we gathered about Lima we had nightmares how awfully dangerous, polluted and ugly it will be, so we planned as short a visit as possible in the possibly safest barrio.

As we had enough of adventures during the last couple of weeks we decided to book a hotel in advance and pre-order a taxi. When we landed in the modern Lima airport (it is tricky to judge a country by the airport you land in as i.e. Myanmar has also a very modern airport but the rest does not live up to it), found our taxi driver, took local money from ATM, locked the taxi doors from inside as advised, prayed to God to arrive without being robbed and set off on the road...The road led us through a district full of huge shopping malls with all imaginable global brands what already made us wonder how can it be so dangerous if you seem to have all the big companies doing business here ?!

Most of the scary stuff proved to be some illusionary tales by people who never went out of their safe countries...and somehow made it to Peru without being anywhere else...Obviously it might not be the safest country on the planet but it is far from being ultra dangerous, or after the land of Buddha and Hindu Gods we had a very fast acclimatization in Buenos Aires, where after the first shock we safely survived several pick-pocketing attempts and a double attempt to be cheated by our hotel receptionist J ...

We arrived safely and stayed in a nice hostel in Miraflores and the next day went sightseeing...The main square was beautiful and the whole centre was full of extraordinary Catholic churches (in Asia we had an overdose of Buddha temples and here it seems we are going to be cured by an overdose of Catholic ones). As usual we have also seen anti-governmental demonstrations. It seems wherever we go we end up in a place of unrest. Argentina was the same not to mention any of the South East Asian countries we have visited. We ended the day in a very nice cafe sipping Coca de Mate tee and preparing for our bus ride to Trujillo where we are to stay for longer. The bus we took was as luxurious as the premium business class on Thai Air with fully reclining seats, a DVD and bus assistant serving food and drinks. Our luggage was collected at a check-in desk 30 minutes prior to departure, our fingerprints taken and lastly we had to cross a metal detector. So much about the scary Lima... We enjoyed ourselves in Lima as if we arrived home. Our low expectations surely helped, or our survival instinct, since this country will serve as our home for some time now J

Buenos Aires

After a 14 hour flight from Frankfurt we arrived in Buenos Aires airport very much excited about arriving so far away from our home lands. From Thailand you can always make it overland to Europe - with South America there is an ocean to cross.

Buenos Aires international airport felt a bit like landing in Moscow at the Sheremietievo airport, or perhaps arraiving to Warsaw to the main railway station - anybody who has been to those places will know what I mean. Usually it does not bode well.

Anyway we decided to take the local bus to the hotel we booked through the internet - all went well since people in the capital of Argentina are extremely helpful. A guy on the bus helped us change to the metro line (95 years old metro line that does feel like it WOULD be 95 years old). It definitely feels that no special attention has been paid to keeping it in good shape. It is however a highly atmospheric ride hardly comparable to anything in Europe (except perhaps the old metro line in Budapest which is much better taken care of).

So we arrived in our hotel - it was the worst we have ever been to in our lives - it was kind of disgusting especially that we were paying 20 USD instead of the usual 5 USD which we paid in South East Asia for our hotels. For the price one would expect some kind of decency in the offer. This place was so bad that we decided to check in (it was already midnight when we arrived) and at once go out to eat to think of a strategy for the next days. The street in front of our hotel did not look much better - there was something in the air telling us that we might get into trouble any minute. So not too stretch our luck we went it to McDonald’s. The first one during our whole trip this year. Kind of safe bet at midnight. Obviously we decided to look for an alternative place to spend the next nights…

Since for the first time during our trip we arrived to a city without a guidebook, the next day we bought ourselves a TimeOut magazine…below the description of the street we have managed to book our hotel (Lavalle street) “It is every claustrophobe’s sweat-soaked nightmare…the mother lode of the mayhem is called Florida, the only completely pedestrian street in BA…However, amid the human statues, money changers you can still find traces of its refined past. Lavalle on the other hand makes Florida look chic and classy. It’s packed with blockbuster and B-movie cinemas, advertising hoardings and enough neon to power a nuclear sub”

As you can imagine when we arrived to such place the only thing in our mind was - why was my brother saying that Buenos Aires is so nice? Have we arrived to a different place? TimeOut quickly made it clear to us that we have managed to choose the worst place in Buenos Aires (perhaps apart from Boca district)…

From there on things started picking up. We have managed to find a very nice hostel and decided to enrol for a four day Spanish language crash course combined with induction to Buenos Aires…a very good choice…

We have also managed to find the charm of Buenos Aires - beautiful districts like San Telmo with its weekend markets, Palermo with its bohemian atmosphere and beautiful parks and plaza’s…and everywhere Tango and great places to eat or chill…after 6 months of rice diet, I have decided to change to jamon and Argentinian beef. …

All in all there is no question that Buenos Aires is a great city - where is perhaps a bit too much of pick pocketing and general feeling of insecurity but otherwise it lives up to its expectation…We have just managed to choose another place with demonstrations against the government and street fights with the police. :)

London

We were so eager to arrive to London that our last 10 days in South East Asia were somehow difficult for us. It was tough on us mentally - we knew that so many things we were used to having while living in Europe are waiting for us there. I was waiting for a wide choice of chocolate which is more or less not available at all (except for Snickers and a couple of others wannabe chocolate types), all kinds of diary products especially cheeses, and weather which will hover around 20 degrees as opposed to 40 Celsius. I am by no means a food freak - neither a shopping freak but I like the idea of having a choice. In fact to fulfil my desires it is enough to see that I have a choice - I do not even feel then a need to buy things anymore. It was enough that once I had a chocolate, some cheese, a döner in Frankfurt (while already on the way to South America) to be mentally prepared for not having these choices for another six months.

Anyway London was wonderful in all aspects; we were staying at Rita’s cousin’s place at Gipsy Hill. She and her boyfriend made us feel very much at home at their beautiful flat. Gipsy Hill is a very quiet neighbourhood where we tried to recover from our extensive travelling.

We both have been to London quite a few times but it is one of those places for me which every time feels like I would be visiting it for the first time. We did not intend to move around London too much this time but just recharge before moving on; nevertheless we managed to experience quite a few nice things; we went to see painting exhibition of Cy Twombly at Tate Modern which did not impress me at all. There is quite much hype about his works but I can admire him only for one thing - with this kind of art to create such hype…There is no visit possible to London without ending up in Camden Town and of course some nice English pubs where Rita could enjoy the jacked potato and fish & chips she has been craving for. We have also visited the famous Banksy graffiti exhibition near the Waterloo tube station. We have found there Pope Benedict XVI posing in Marlin Monroe dress and Madonna kissing Britney Spears - though we are not sure whether any of them was done by Banksy.

On our last day we enjoyed the hospitality of our Indian friend from our yoga vacation in the Trivandrum Ashram in India. Our visit began with the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) Temple in North West London, a contemporary masterpiece of Hindu architecture; its carved white marble with the lace-like windows letting the sun shine through makes your jaw drop when entering the temple’s interior. It is truly the most wonderful Hindu temple we saw out casting the ones in India. First time in our lives we were invited for a dinner to an Indian home, where we had a wonderful evening with our friend’s son and his wonderful wife overwhelming with their hospitality and of course delicious Indian food.

The one week in London passed very fast giving us a fast recovery we badly needed including a full laundry in a real washing machine, muesli and foamy thick coffee in the morning with endless excellent discussions, good smelling bed, a bathtub and washing teeth with tap water first time in 6 months. And of course a gorgeous hair make for Rita by her kuzynka. See for yourself.

Bagan

Bagan became our last destinations in Myanmar. Although we were supposed to go to Inle Lake because of Rita's food poisoning problems we run out of time. Both of us felt extremely happy though about such course of events. The 16 hour bus ride from Mandalay to Bagan was more than enough of pain and yet another to Inle Lake would have been to much. Imagine the state of the road considering that it was only 145km's from Mandalay?!

Tomek was looking forward to arriving to Bagan for one specific reason - our guide book said that Bagan has two types of food to offer - pizza and non-pizza; and pizza was supposed to resemble Italian pizza. It was more than you might possible want after a long bus ride - and this time the pizza lived up to its promises. He was delighted. The following two days in Bagan we concentrated on eating things that would not make us sick. The thought that in a couple of days we will be in London with all its goodies made every single day quite a pain. We had enough of rice, watching out for getting sick and the heat - we just dreamed about 'summer' in London. It is definitely much harder to survive in tough conditions once you know when you will move on to the less severe ones.

Bagan as such could compete with Angor Wat - it is as beautiful and almost completely tourist free. It was supposed to be a UNESCO world heritage site but the local government rejected cooperation. The ruins of Bagan cover an area of 16 square miles. The majority of its buildings were built in the 1000s to 1200s, during the time Bagan was the capital of the First Burmese Empire. We have spent two days visiting tens of temples in the surrounding area. Most of them in good shape and beautiful setting. The first day we hired a horse cart to look around and the second we roamed on bicycles. The sunset we have watched from one of the temples was beautiful.

The horse cart industry is by the way doing great in this place - every year there are more and more of them on the streets - literally they dominate the landscape at the moment. Obviously it says much about the development of the economy - and unfortunate lack of tourists. Bagan as such is though much better prepared to take in many more tourists - probably some years back there must have been bigger groups coming in.

All in all we took it easy in Bagan - we were mentally preparing ourselves for the last stretch of our trip in South East Asia - back by bus to Yangon (another 14h), by plane to Bangkok and then to London for a week of 'vacation'...

We both have come to the same conclusion about Myanmar - it is very much worth visiting and it is quite easy to travel around (definitely easier than in India which boasts millions of tourists every year). So if you can go there - people will be happy and you do not have to give your money to the government....Burmese people are very friendly and do not deserve to be punished even more by everyone avoiding their country (their government makes their lives hard enough). The sanctions imposed by international community take a heavy toll on the local population but we doubt that on anybody else...

Mandalay

UPDATE: Pictures are now available in our gallery!

Mandalay is over 600 km north of Yangon and totally unaffected by the cyclone. We made it as usual on an overnight bus. Although very long, the bus ride was bearable mostly I think to air conditioning and an easy going style of the driver. All in all it was a piece of cake in comparison to some of our other trips in the region.

In the morning we arrived to a bus station outside town which looks more like a town lined with houses and innumerable amount of buses run by different companies . How one makes sense of it is a mystery. In fact it is just like in Yangon where we took a taxi to the station and the taxi driver after 15 minutes of roaming around found our bus. In Myanmar we tend to book our hotels in advance and get a pick-up to the hotel - makes life easier after a long bus ride - the reason why pick-ups are readily available is very simple. Already during the ride to the hotel we learned that we were the first tourists since two months in our hotel (one of the more popular in better times). Together with our fellow co-travellers - a couple from Australia who we met on our plane from Bangkok, we have however probably started some better times as everyday since we arrived at least one person additionally checked in to our hotel.

Already the first days we ventured to climb up Mandalay Hill it became clear to us that this is the land of Pagodas. They are just ubiquitous and huge majority of them kept in very good shape (clearly supported by the junta as there are always pictures of the military visiting that particular pagoda). For the second day we had an organized full day program. We hired a mini pick-up taxi (car dating back to the sixties) and drove to visit three former capitals of Myanmar which are in the vicinity of Mandalay. This country has always had a tendency to shift capitals (sometimes as often as every 10 years) that the fact of moving the current capital by the ruling junta to Naypyitaw should not come as a surprise. Though I have never heard of a capital out of reach to anybody as is the case here...

In order to get Inwe (one of the old capitals) we had to take a boat and a horse carriage. There was basically no other way of going around the sites. Among one of the site we visited was a very old wooden monastery in which a single lonely monk lived and was heading a small school for kids. There we learned the Burmese alphabet which for me consists of a set of smiles in different shades (very cute!). On the way back our guide took us to a place where he gives English classes. It was in fact probably a home of the students. The group was very diverse both in terms of age and advancement. In fact they did not have any language books to learn from, just their notebooks to write the phrases into. We offered to send books but the probability that they would reach them would be very small. Anyway everyone was extremely excited to converse with us and we enjoyed it and the sugar cane drink very much.

In the next days we have visited lots of other interesting places including the Manadalay Glass Palace. Although it has been restored very poorly it was amazing for us to see the pictures and main characters of the Glass Palace book by Amitav Ghosh. It was really for some reason surreal.

We have also been lucky to see the workshops were marble Buddha statues of gigantic proportions were made. In fact the artifacts were wonderful and cheap and we were tempted to buy a 150 kg marble lion but could not figure out how to get him out of the country :)

On other occasion we were taken to goldsmiths were gold is flattened into very thin sheets (by hammer by a guy who does not need a workout for his body). The sheets so thin that they glue themselves to any surface one put them onto (usually Buddha statues here). We bought some sheets since they are also very good addition to drinks.

We had also the pleasure of visiting the famous banned Moustache Brothers who spent years in prison camps for their politically incorrect performances. We met personally two of them. They still cannot perform in public but they do shows at home without costumes for foreigners. Unfortunately they did not perform for us as they were in the middle of preparations for sending rice they gathered for the cyclone Nagris survivors.

All in all we spent quite a few days here and once we were about to embark on the 14 hour boat journey to Bagan, traditionally one of us got food poisoned (there is hardly any electricity here - it is worse than in Nepal and I believe the food storage conditions are terrible). This time Rita got sick so we had to wait two days for her to recover before moving on...

Yangon

Yet, another early wake up at 4am - we have almost gotten used to it. This time we were to embark on an exciting trip - back to Bangkok airport to catch a flight to Yangon in Myanmar. We were sure that we are going to be the only passengers on the flight but to our surprise the Boeing 737 was full. Later on we have found out that nearly half of the plane was aid workers (had a special visa counter in Yangon) and the rest monks and a very few tourists. Passport control was very quick and our luggage did not get checked at all in a very modern airport building. We quickly found our pick-up guy from the hotel and drove to the hotel. There are not too many cars on the streets (by the way all Japanese from the 70'ties & 80'ties in the best case) and that the traffic is much more organized; no constant blowing of the horn or overtaking at most awkward places. The mystery of very light traffic quickly revealed itself to us - bicycles and motorbikes are forbidden in the city except for the monks and the military.

If we had ever complained about too many tourists Yangon proved to be almost tourists free. One could meet one or two persons who looked like tourists per day at best. We have criss-crossed the city several times on foot - especially the center and found it to be a little bit like India - perhaps because of the smell of Indian spices (although lots of Indian's fled Myanmar after several rounds of unrest one can still find living Indian districts). There are many other ethnic minorities in Myanmar resulting in an exciting "cocktail" of over a 100 different languages. Yangon at the present does not reflect what western media convey. The city is cleaned from befallen trees and damage caused by the storm and the streets are full of sellers selling tasty food, vegetables and fruits and whatever one sells in South East Asia. It seems that at least in Yangon there is more than enough food - in the Delta Region the situation must be much worse nevertheless this city has already the worst behind itself. We have tried excellent food in the ubiquitous tea houses around the town and also went to what was to be one of the nicest restaurants according to our guide book with reasonable prices and great local food. The place proved to have something of a typical Polish country side wedding atmosphere if you know what I mean. Except that again there was nobody except us and the food was just so so.

For the time being we cannot upload any pictures since Yahoo, Hotmail and Google are blocked by the government. Of course all the Internet cafe's go around it but it makes internet very slow and unreliable. We have lots of very nice pictures which will be showing up gradually in our gallery. In general the whole government versus society issue is kind of a mouse and cat game where the people openly criticize "the tiger" and black market exists with very little control.

Anyway going to Yangon as a tourist poses no threat - there is enough water & food of all sorts at VERY reasonable prices. People are extremely happy to see foreigners greeting them with blinks and smiles. It would be great of course if more tourists came and left their money there. Great choice for anyone who wants to escape the main stream tourism and see some stunningly different cultural heritage.

One may get more than enough of paya (pagoda in Burmese) and an overdose of stupas, but these golden gilded upside-down bell-shaped buildings do give a unique ambiance to the city. THE place to visit in Yangon is the Shwedagon Paya, built 2500 years ago (though archaeologists argue whether its origin dates to the 6th - 10th century) and is as much a landmark of Myanmar as the Eiffel Tower to Paris. It dome rises to 98 m enshrining some of Lord Buddha's hair. Depending on the day you were born you can choose one out of the shrines dedicated to the 8 days of the week (Wednesday is divided into morning and afternoon in order to overcome the dilemma of matching a 7 days week pattern). Sule Paya and Botatung Paya are the second and third mostly visited sites with more Buddha hair relics and an educative demonstration of varieties in pagoda and stupa architectural stiles.

Angkor Wat

Arriving to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh by bus was comparable to travelling in North India; on the stops you could buy deep fried spiders and crickets double the size they are in Europe - if at all they live there. On arrival rickshaw drivers almost broke the bus window to be the first choice. Luckily we organized a room from Phnom Penh with a pick-up from the bus, so we thought and let the only driver with the business card with the name of our guesthouse to take us. We did not drive long when we understood that we are victims of an obvious scam; if you do not commit for a whole day ride the following day to visit temples, the ride is not free to the guesthouse. This made it clear that we are sitting on the wrong vehicle and after some fuss we got on two motorbike taxis and arrived to our planned destination.

The same evening we went on a sunset watch trip to Prasat Trapeang Ropou and observed that the best way for us to discover the ruins will be on bicycle. Tomek came up with the idea that the following morning we should start at 4 am in order to be the first to arrive to the main temple of Angkor Wat and see it in the rising sun. After a one hour ride in pitch dark we arrived together with hoards of toursist, none on such a sporty vechicle though... Newertheless the temple was mesmerizing as the first rays of sun gave color to the ancient stones. We were among the first to enter the center piece of the temple, which was hypnotic in its silent peace. We continued our discovery on the so called "small loop", which is a 17 km circle passing by the most important ruins: Angkor Thom with the Bayon, the Terrace of Elephants, Ta Prohm. By 1 pm we felt totally wretced and decided to pedal back to Siem Reap.

On the next day we rented a moto rickshaw to visit Kbal Spean and Banteay Srei, a good 60 km return trip mostly on dirt roads full of red dust - and of course some tropical rain. To visit the Thousand Lingas, the phallic symbols of fertility in Kbal Spean you should trek an hour and a half in the jungle. The Citadel of Women, Banteay Srey on the contrary is a very easy access. Though it is small and the last temple we visited it could still surprise us with its distinctive carvings and structure.

To finish our trip we settled in a Sports Bar to watch how the Poles perform in F1 and the European Soccer Championship. At 3.30 in the morning we had a romantic walk to our guesthouse to have a blink of sleep before we depart to Bangkok at 7 am. With the hope to have a tight sleep on the bus we placed our hopes in the driver - not for long. After 1 hour of sitting on top of our backpacks in a totally crowded and hot bus the driver entered to a shouting competition with one of the passengers and started the engine only after making sure he is expelled from the trip. The road is less thatn 200 km to the border, but it took us 6 hours, just to learn that we are not going to make it through the border. Visa on arrival is not available contrary to the information we gathered previously, so the devil was laughing at us having another 6 hours in front of us back to Siem Reap. Besides the obvious pain we felt about this mess we were about to miss our next day flight from Bangkok to Myanmar. I will not enter into all the details of finding the way to fly to Bangkok, but for certain if one thing goes wrong there will be as many following it as it is possible. Only the departure tax we had to pay per person at the airport was double the price we paid for the bus to Bangkok, but the airport in Siem Reap is tip top - no doubt. Arriving to Bangkok, rushing through our To Do list gave us another 4 hours to sleep before we headed back to the airport to fly out to Yangon.

Southern Coast

We left Phnom Penh on a motorbike though we were really reluctant how is it going to be to ride a dirt road motorbike (no others seem to be available for rental). Since neither me nor Rita has ever sat on such a bike we had our concerns (mentioning the fact that we do not have a driving license for motorbikes should excuse our shyness). The rental agency guy sensed our reluctance and offered to teach us how to ride a bike in case we do not know how to do it - no problem just pay for the bike and off you go :) - it does not make you feel to confident about the skills of other participants of the traffic...

Anyway we decided to make life a bit more challenging and rented one bike instead of two - I became the lucky one to be the first to get the responsibility for acting us the "driver". We have not made more than 500 meters when on the first traffic lights Rita made me cross the red lights since as she put it "all the locals do it so I should not obstruct the traffic flow". A moment later we got stopped by the police and my driving license (for the car of course) got confiscated and a certain ransom was communicated to me...

Our trip all in all was a success - we enjoyed the south as it somehow felt it was just left to us (pretty much everyone else visiting Cambodia must have traveled to the north I guess). We have visited sleepy Kampot where we found the house in which my father used to live, forgotten Kep where we met the first real Hungarian during our trip (who has just opened a great Hungarian restaurant called Eldorado), went to Bokor Hill where we saw destruction and beauty of the nature in one and chilled on the beaches of premier beach resort in Cambodia - Sihanoukville. All in the span of five days.


There was something fascinating in each of the places - Kep because it could be a very successful resort town but there are so far no tourists there. We also had a great dinner there - eat a huge crab - our business with eating this beast took us two hours.

Bokor Hill due to the destruction of what used to be a beautiful hill station with a casino and a hilarious road there and in the end Sihanoukville with great accommodation and nice beaches. To Sihanoukville I arrived sitting on the back of the bike - Rita made the whole 150km trip. My task included finding a bungalow for us - so we safely arrived, I went into a hotel to check our place while Rita stayed sitting on bike - when I came back I found her right at the moment when she was falling together with the bike - Murphy's law I guess :) - she is alright so no needs to worry...

The road to the south was much more easy that we suspected - although we got lost since there are not too many signs on the roads we also managed to see beautiful country side, establish that 4-5pm is not the best time to be on the road since the cows, buffaloes and kids from school are heading home...and practice riding in torrential rain (you do not get cold since the temperature anyway does not drop below 30 degrees).

We got back to Phnom Penh where we made a fatal mistake as to what concerns visa issues...

Phnom Penh

Arriving to the capital of Cambodia was a little bit like landing in Bangkok; another surprise, especially considering what nightmare this country went through not that long ago. First of all it is huge, you can drive for hours and still not reach your destination and it is very nicely resaturated. Funny though that instead of names the streets have numbers, but actually I liked it this way; very logical and almost totally apolitical - save the Mao Tse Tung Boulevard :) To be fair, the country is very far from anything like communism, the competition created an excellent value for your money, much less "copy pasting" in business and no price cartels at all, unlike in Laos. So we like the place.

After squatting at the budget travelers hot spot on Street Nr. 93 at the Lake Side we started out with the Royal Palace, which is a real beauty. Nicely renovated with manicured gardens it is the sister of the one in Bangkok, but somehow more serene and peaceful - maybe because there are hardly any tourists. The next day we rented a motorbike and immersed in the local traffic, which bears the same traffic characteristics as any of the other SEA countries we visited so far; if I will not lose my sense of humor I will compose a post about the "Alternative Traffic Rules in Asia".

But anyway, the driving was not more chaotic than before, except that we did not have a real map and the signs are really really poor. After driving an extra 10 km finally we found the Museum of Killing Fields, which is a terribly sad memorial of something similar to what happened in Europe under the Nazis. Except that this outrageous mass crime was committed within one nation, not even between ethnic groups, but grotesquely the "New People" against the "Old People". (Old People stood for everybody without discrimination who lived in a city and/or was considered part of the intelligentsia, the New People meant everybody, who lived in the countryside and was basically illiterate) The referred museum is built on mass graves, prison and forced labor camp - one out of hundreds throughout the the country with a tower like pagoda filled with the bones and clothes of the deceased. If you want to know more about the Red Khmers and this part of Cambodia's history, there is a museum in Phnom Penh about the period in a former school, which the Red Khmers used as their torturing and exterminating institution. We rather choose to see a documentary film, "Death and Rebirth" in the Meta House made by former East German film makers in the beginning of 80's - not totally free from socialist propaganda, but still extremely informative about the happenings in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime.

Though before you rush to participate a program in Meta House I would like to warn you, that there is a probability, that something similar will happen to you, too: half an hour after the advertised starting time one of the organizers stood up to announce, that she is terribly sorry, but she does not have the film. A second later it turnes out that the film in question supposed to be shot the day before; after some confusion it turns out that the organizer does not know what the day is and finally relieves everybody with a cute laughter that everything is all right, she thought it was Sunday, though it is Saturday, the film will be soon shown. Until another half an hour passes and she makes another announcement that no one finds the DVD in question. By this time half the audience leaves, luckily we entertain ourselves respectively with a gin and tonic and beer, undisturbed by these events and about two hours later to our greatest surprise the planned film began.... Now had I done something so silly it would not have been a great surprise, but this was a lady in her late 60's, obviously the director of the institution. :)

As our last program in Phnom Penh we visited the former Russian Market, where some years ago you could buy hash or for the more aggressive a Kalashnikov. Today the range of choice is equally wide, though illegal in a different, somewhat more sophisticated way: you can acquire any of the latest softwares for as much as 2 USD and on the next stand you can choose from pig's ear and Khmer antiques....

Mekong Delta

We have learned a bit on our past adventures with crossing the borders (remember our crossing to Nepal and horse carriage?) and decided to buy two day tour from Saigon to Phnom Pehn through the Mekong Delta. It cost next to nothing and we assumed it will save us a lot of hassle.

The first day of our trip was relatively easy going - we were on the bus most of the time but also visited a floating market where you can buy wholesale and retail quantities of fruits and vegetables straight from the boats...in other words you are on a boat in the middle of the river and trade with other boats also floating in the middle of the river. We have also seen how all kinds of coconut candies are made, sort of popcorn from rice in local villages etc.

We spent the night in a rather grim town next to the Cambodian border, Chou Doc - the next day we had a very early wake-up and right after a light breakfast were taken to a boat as we were to arrive to Phnom Pehn by boat. Obviously not on a luxurious Caribbean line cruiser but on something but floats. On the way we visited very interesting floating fish farms - houses under which fish are being held so to say and a Cham minority village where Muslim population lives. Almost each of those houses had a satellite TV although otherwise they were very poor. As we have learned the satellite TV's are being subsidized by the Vietnamese government as a contraceptive. There are two reasons for it - people watch TV instead of having sex and the second that TV takes space so on small boats there is less space for kids...Supposedly it is effective.

Now, the trip was supposed to be quite smooth and fast - it did prove smooth but definitely not fast. We spend four hours on the first boat cruising pleasurably through the Mekong Delta - it was great although the sun was really strong. We then arrived on the boarder in a middle of nowhere, had lunch and crossed it on foot. On the Cambodian side another boat was waiting for us - we assumed that it will be a quick ride but it took another 3 hours plus around two hours with a bus to our final destination in Phnom Pehn. During the second boat trip at some point the air stopped moving and it became so hot we could barely stand it - of course right the movement we were to disembark it started to rain...

Phnom Pehn was a shock to us with lots of nice buildings, clean streets and a western look - we did not have expectations as we knew that they started from zero in the beginning of nineties. We went to the tourist ghetto for budget travellers called Lake Side were we found nice accommodation right next to lake for 4 USD (for one or two USD more you can have a room with TV). Of course, if you wish you can have a room for 200 USD as lots of new hotels have been lately constructed.

For the rest of Cambodia we decided to follow the steps of Tomek's father who was stationed in Cambodia with the United Nations in the beginning of the nineties.