Note: This is the third part of a complete three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. This entry continues our adventures in Halong Bay and the wonder that is Tet in Hanoi.

The next day we were taken to a large island and dropped off. There we were given a bike each. These were frankly terrible bikes and I got the distinct impression that that staff did not expect us to ride them. They expected us to pay for a moped instead. An older couple from our group did so, but Cesca and I insisted on riding and so set off. The chain fell off immediately, so Cesca changed her bike and we set off. The wheels locked immediately, so Cesca changed her bike again and we set off. The seat fell off immediately, so Cesca took my bike, I got another one, and we set off.

The trip was through the mountains and I rode up to the guide,“What’s with these bikes?”

“They are the best we have.”

“Well, perhaps a little maintenance is in order.”

“Listen,” he said, “These people don’t have much.”

I thought this was a bit rich since it was his company’s responsibility to provision local services. Since he had so much of our money (about $2000 paid by the entire boat), one would think one of the locals could be trained as a bike mechanic. I suppose he was trying to make me feel guilty, but unfortunately for him I had already been to Laos. Those people had nothing. These people were relatively rich.

We rode through the mountain pass and down into the next valley. This was your absolute picture perfect Vietnamese countryside. Rice paddies, buffalo and villages set against the majestic mountains. Eagles soared overhead. The problems with the bikes were quickly forgotten.

We rode through the village and smiled a hello to all we met. This was much more like it. After about 5 miles or so, we stopped at a little cafe and bought some drinks, and then the guide led us to the walk.

It was clear to me that most of the time people do not actually fancy the walk, as it was straight up the mountain on a dirt track.

However, this time he had not only Cesca and I, but also a guy from the Italian mountains. He walked up the thing, back down, met us half way and back up again all without breaking breath. By the time we reached the peak (about an hour later), the three of us (plus guide) were the only ones who had bothered to make it.

At the top was an old base left over from the war, which afforded incredible views of the valley on either side and the water all around with the peaks of islands in the distance. It was one hell of a view.

We walked down again and stopped for refreshment. There I met another English couple who were about to go home. They too had got to wondering what their trip was all about and bemoaning the fact that they felt exactly the same as before they left. Don’t worry, I told them, it will come to you at home. Epiphanies are not always of the order of magnitude you expect. Not everyone can have the flashing burst of the infinite that struck Jesus or Buddha, some get lots of little ones, some get none. Perhaps they are something you must not look for.

Perhaps they are why we climb mountains and travel countries.

Personally, I get a little one every single time I cuddle up to Cesca in bed. That is good enough for me. Anyway, I had a big one about 12 years ago in Israel. Still, we jumped back on the bikes and rode out the way we came in.

Back on the boat, we were taken for one last jaunt, to Monkey Island. As we arrived, our group, which was by now getting on well, passed around some whisky and I read the Lonely Planet description about Monkey Island. I read it again aloud and everyone voted to give it a miss. Monkey Island is unsurprisingly full of monkeys that, also unsurprisingly, have developed a hatred for humans, not that I can say that I blame them. Subsequently they often attack them, and some have rabies.

Instead, the boat took us to a local floating village comprised of a couple of shacks, some barrels and a lot of nets. There we met with a clam farmer who uses an amazingly clever way of farming clams using buckets of mud suspended under water.

This was the most genuine experience of the entire venture and the one that we all enjoyed. The farmer was friendly and we joined him for a toast of the local firewater outside his shack.

The inside the shack sat his children and they obviously all live in this strange place. I think, it is quite possible the strangest lifestyle I have ever come across. At once so remote and harsh, and yet he gets tourists popping in all the time.

After half an hour of nodding and smiling, but no actual conversation, we got back on the boat and made for the final island.

Cat Ba Island is much larger than the rest and has a lot of building going on it. I suppose the idea is to turn it into a holiday resort, but now it is a bit of a concrete jungle amid a building site. We jumped into transports and were whisked to a hotel. This was purporting to be the Vietnamese idea of a high quality hotel, but I spied that it was really another type of tourist trap. That night we all met up for a set meal and some very expensive drinks. The food was ok, nothing special, but I really enjoyed the company as by this time we were all getting on in that peculiar British way of connecting when stuck with each other.

We slept comfortably that night. The next day, after a breakfast, we headed back towards the city. About half way, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. This also had something strange about it, as although it was nice and the food ok, I could not escape the feeling that only tourist busses come here. For people like Cesca and I, used to the genuine experience, such sugar coated tourism felt wrong and unnatural, but still the view from the window was great.

We bid the others goodbye when we arrived back in Hanoi and re-entered our original hotel. The staff was not pleased to see us at all. In fact, they told us that we could not stay. After I pointed out that we had already paid to stay, they got a little agitated. Eventually, they went over the road and organised for us to move hotels.

This turned out to be a great idea as the staff at this second hotel, the service, the room and the food, was the best I had in the whole of South East Asia. Friendly, quick, polite and happy these people made us feel right at home.

In the room, Cesca was still steaming about the other hotel. I personally think that the staff had made plans to close the place during the coming New Year, and we were totally buggering them up. Still, rudeness, the most unforgivable trait in a hotel concierge, was painful.

That night was the first day of Tet and effectively the Vietnamese New Year. Our hotel manager explained what that meant. Tet is the celebration of many things all rolled into one. The traditional Tet is the New Year, which means, like in the UK, that the year ticks over by one. However, unlike in the western world, it is also everyone’s official birthday. Therefore, someone 29 today would be 30 tomorrow. Someone born today would be one tomorrow. Crazy as that sounds, it gives rise to the third phenomenon: Tet is also Xmas. Of course, the Vietnamese are not a Christian nation, rather they are Buddhist, but Tet affords all the practical actions over a British Christmas.

Firstly, everyone takes as much of the week off as they can, they also go to visit their families for that time. They have a special social practice around this, where on the first day of Tet, only the direct family are invited, then on the second day wider family, the third day, neighbours, and so on. It is very easy for foreigner to cause offense in such an environment and if you are invited on a certain day, you must never appear beforehand. You are seriously warned about this.

Secondly, everyone buys each other presents.

Thirdly, they all surround themselves with a special tree. Rather than the Norwegian fir tree used in the west, they use a peach or orange tree. The entire city was decked out in beautiful fruit trees all around. It was rather magical.

Looking at it from his viewpoint it is not hard to comment that Vietnamese Tet has everything in common with the average UK Christmas; religion enters into it in only small and controlled amounts, while superstition is rife.

Also worth remembering is that Tet is the anniversary of the Tet offensive against the Yanks. The Vietnamese feel very strongly that the thousands slaughtered in the ensuing battles died as heroes, every single one. Amazing and even now the strength of feeling still moves me.

The final thing that happens is that the City empties in the run up to Tet and then everyone comes out for the fireworks party. Cesca and I spent the day exploring the area set aside for the party and planning our night’s activities. We had a lot of fun playing in the strangely silent roads, possibly for the only time in the year that they are empty. For a country such as Vietnam, where everyone – absolutely everyone – has a moped, this was a surreal experience.

As the night came down, the city stirred and we went in search of food. On the way we bumped into a few people we knew and shared a hearty “Chuc mung nam moi!” which is the cry of Tet. We eventually found a very special place to hold up awaiting the action coming later, this was a great bar above a street and one of the few place still open. Most were either eating in roadside food cafe’s, a sort of selection of crates used as chairs and planks of wood as tables – fear not as the food is amazing at these places, or they were ensconced in the higher end bars that charged Western high prices.

We managed to find something in between and had a very romantic time.

As the hour approached, we made our way down to the lake, which by now was stacked with people. Our worry about being unwelcome at such event vanished as the Vietnamese seemed to adopt all the foreigners that night, everyone was happy and smiling, all had brought their families out to enjoy the event, it was a wonderful feeling to be so welcomed at such an event and lots of smiling shouts of, “Chuck Mung Nam Moi!” reached our ears from all directions.

The crowd closed in and the numbers welled to thousands. Now everyone was standing. Cesca and I could see over the sea of heads that they were awaiting something. We worried for a moment that the trees lining the lakes edge would block the view of the festivities, but then the fireworks started and banished those fears.

I have seen fireworks all over the world, In Disneyland Florida, in the seaside coastal town of Brixham, in Australia, in Cambodia, in Brazil and even in Israel, but the fireworks I saw that night were as good if not better than any of them. The Vietnamese welcomed in the New Year, their new ages and honoured their dead with one hell of a bang.

After almost an hour, the last explosion lit up the sky and the crowd started to move in one direction. It seemed that some sort of temple ceremony was now happening and the idea was to visit the temples in a certain order. Cesca and I joined in and were carried along amongst the happy fellows.

Many hours later, we managed to arrive back to the hotel. There we found that the manager was having her family event right there in the lobby. With great joy she bid us to join, and greatly honoured, we did. I hope it brought her luck. We ate the traditional cakes and drank a little before thanking her and heading to a well-deserved bed.

A day later, we were leaving Hanoi and Vietnam in general and I took stock of what he had experienced. The people of Vietnam are a pragmatic and hard working bunch. Their economy is trying to copy the successes of the western while avoiding the problems, at least for now. Their cities are rich and impressive and they have a very positive attitude. They love visitors, but do not love tourists and in that I agree wholeheartedly with them. They cater to tourism out of the fundamental need to enrich themselves. Their cooking is divine, their beer is fine and their women are very good looking. We had seen the most sugar coated sights and yet had also managed to peek a little into the truth under these illusions. There was so much more to explore here that I felt that we could be back one day and see the rest.

I loved Vietnam. The country that, more than any other, I got “wrong” in my preconceptions. It has to be seen and felt with the heart itself as, like the brochures for Halong Bay, pictures alone cannot do it justice.

Regards,

Basho

Coming next: Coming in the next article is the mighty city of Bangkok, an incredible meet-up with some old friends and the horror of the Bridge On River Kwai, where Basho comes face to fangs with an eight inch spider.

I’m not sure what they have done to deserve it, but it seems almost instinctive. I just cant stand them. They give me the impression of being unhappy, of being mean, of being violent. Spiders in the UK may not be able to envenomate a human, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. I have been bitten by an English spider, and it was a little shocking to actually feel it. I hoped I wouldn’t be bitten by any on my travels. I trace my fear back to my early teens where a nest of the little blighters was on the wall in my room and I awoke to find myself crawling with them. But, if I am honest with myself, it goes back further than that. I vividly recall, at the age of 6, bursting into tears when my mother gave me a wind-up spider as a Christmas present. It is amazing that a childhood memory can trigger a certain response; that of wrath. You see, I am not so much afraid of spiders, than that I have to kill them when they are present. In England this usually amounts to a fencing lunge while wearing shoes, or the services of a cat, but English spiders are generally small; what is to be done when the spider is bigger?

The correct way to conquer a fear is to face it down. This worked with my childhood fear of the dark, which I cured by locking myself in the airing cupboard. It also worked with my fear of heights by my jumping off the highest bungee in New Zealand. Sitting here now, can I say the following tales have cured me of a fear of spiders? I will leave that to the end of the article, after my memory has disgorged these tales.

Warning. If you are scared of spiders, then these stories may make you want to never leave your house. Of course, and especially if you live in the country, your house is teeming with them already.

Just so you know.

All of the following are absolutely true. I know because they happened to me. Honestly, I don’t know why so many of the bastards came after me, it must be in revenge for the thousands I have killed in the UK. I think they put the word out that Basho was coming, with orders to crawl all over him…

…and so they did.

The one where Basho meets the Wolf and White Tailed spiders of Australia.

Cesca and I lay in the hostel. It was hot as hell. That sort of muggy heat not usual to an Englishman, who is more used to cold North Sea climates. It was the heat of Cairns, on the north east coast of Australia, a muggy tiring wet heat. We were exhausted. Not least of all because this was the morning after our three day diving course and we had been working hard, but also because we had been out all night celebrating our having passed the training. No one can drink as hard as a crowd of divers. Even Rugby players would have watched us from across the bar and remarked, “Oh, surely that’s just too much!”

Cesca stirred on her side of the bed and groaned. Obviously the head ache was coming for her. “I think we need to take a few days off.”

I opened an eye, “Sure.” I paused. “Just one point, we don’t have jobs to take a day off from.”

“We have been bussing up this country for the last two weeks! I need to take a rest before we go on.”

“You have something in mind?”

Without bringing her head out of the bed covers, she reached a hung-over arm to her bedside table and without looking picked up a pamphlet and slapped it on my chest.

I considered the pictures and title. The text was nigh on unreadable in my current mental state. “The Sanctuary?” I asked.

“Three days of peace in the jungle.”

“Ok. But, first breakfast.”

So a the next day we arrived at the Sanctuary. Built as a yoga retreat literally in the jungle south of Cairns, the main longhouse dominated the lush trees all around. The brochure spoke of wild cassowaries’ roaming the tracks, it also said that if you didn’t like spiders then perhaps this was not your place. The owner drove us up to the longhouse and I saw that it was of the highest build quality. A sort of open plan restaurant, bar and sitting room. It was wide and tall and peaceful. I loved it immediately.

The owner checked us in, and I whispered to Cesca, “Where are the rooms?”

She simply smiled and said, “You’ll see.”

The owner handed us over to a Woofer to show us our room. Woofers are people swapping work in exchange for free accommodation. It is a way of getting around the need for a working Visa when visiting a country. A month from this day we too went Woofing, which you can read about here. Anyway, he was English, and a nice guy. He led us out of the Longhouse and down the path on the hill, into the jungle that enveloped us immediately. The path cut a neat swath through the trees and light filtered through the leaves to become dappled as it played over our faces. The guy was speaking, and I wasn’t really listening until suddenly my ears pricked up.

“Yeah, we had one in room one the other night.” he was saying, “that’s your room.”

“Oh, really?” said Cesca.

“Yeah, they called me down to get it out,” he motioned a thumb at me, “but, you have him. Don’t worry.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Huntsmen,” said Cesca.

Huntsmen spiders. “I see” I said in that careful English way of voicing extreme discomfort.

The Woofer, being English, picked up on it straight away, “Hey don’t worry about it, you will be fine.”

Then I saw the room and I use the term lightly. Imagine this: You take a frame of a room, just the edges, like a wireframe model, and instead of walls made of wood or bricks you use green netting. So the room was basically a square tent in the jungle, and right amongst it.

“The sun rise is the best bit, “the Woofer explained, “It comes up the path and through the trees. It is wonderful way to wake up.”

Cesca exclaimed in excitement and clutched my arm.

“Wow,” she said.

I must admit, it was special. The room had a large bed in the middle and no power. Not even a light, but it had that rustic charm experienced only by those living on desert islands and perhaps by Tarzan. Of course, the netting was not what you might call airtight; it wrapped around the frame leaving huge gaps open to the outside. Anything that crawled could get in.

We plonked down our stuff and ventured back to the longhouse for lunch. There we met with some very nice people and made some good friends. Friends that I am glad to say, have stayed so. We talked with them and the woofers until the night fell and had an excellent bottle of wine. Then the time came to head to bed. The path was darker than a black-hole and without a torch the steep path could be dangerous. Slowly we made our way down to our room and took it in.

“Go on then,” Cesca said nudging me with her arm.

“Go on then what?”

“Go check the room.”

I sighed and reaching into my go-bag took hold of the nearest blunt object, which turned out to be a plastic lunchbox lid. I hefted it a few times and motioned to Cesca to follow me. We climbed up to the door and played our torch over the green fabric. It very neatly blocked the light from entering the room and I realised we would have to check it from the inside.

I found the bolt and clicked it open. I had that sense one gets when sneaking around the house for fear of waking someone.

“Get on with it,” Cesca said.

I pulled a face, turned on my head torch and flung open the door. Immediately something moved in the room. I heard a scrabbling of something frightened and annoyed at being disturbed. My torch played around the net-walls of the room as I tried to locate the source of the noise when suddenly a cricket ball sized shape flickered into view and flashed towards me. Cesca stepped back and I involuntarily cried out as the white shape, only just caught in the torch light, flashed directly at my face. Instinct kicked in and I batted it away with the plastic lid in my hand. The contact was a heavy thunk and whatever it was fell back into the room, only to flow carefully in an arc and flash for my face again. I batted it away, terror giving my body extra might but, again, it simply came straight for me. Over the next ten seconds I played tennis with it, crying out like a professional, batting it backhand and forehand in desperation to get it to stop coming for me. What was it? My mind screamed. Suddenly I realised that I was standing in the way of the exit. It was probably trying to get away! I jumped to one side and my head torch, loosened by the action, was flung from my head and fell against the doorframe to end up at my feet. Almost immediately the creature made a dash for it and…

…landed on it.

There was a moment of silence, broken only by my heart pounding. Both Cesca and I leaned in and took a close look. It was a, slightly battered, Goliath Moth. It had been attracted to the bright light of my head torch and acted only as come naturally for a moth. We looked at each other and laughed. I put the poor fellow outside the door. Goliath Moths are huge in the extreme and he was not permanently damaged by our 2 sets to 1 encounter.

We checked every inch of the room that night, but nothing was there and after a cuddle, we tried to sleep. In the morning I awoke to find Cesca wide awake, with her camera in her hand, pointing at something. Sitting on the bed post, staring at us, was a large spider. It was moving its feet in time like it was tapping them in impatience. Cesca was taking photos of it. I looked and thought I recognised it as a White Tail spider.

White-tailed spiders are medium-sized spiders native to southern and eastern Australia, and so named because of the whitish tips at the end of their abdomens. Common species are Lampona cylindrata and Lampona murina. Both these species have been introduced to New Zealand.^[1]

White-tailed spiders are vagrant hunters who seek out prey rather than spinning a web to capture it. Their preferred prey is other spiders and they are equipped with venom for hunting. WIKIPEDIA

The White Tail has a fearsome reputation outside Australia, mainly due to exaggerated stories in the papers regarding the effect of its bite. It is said that the venom causes necrotic lesions in the victims flesh and huge chunks of your body rot and never heal. Photos abound the net of the damage these white spiders cause.

So say.

Suffice to say that while a bite from one is not something you want; it would bloody hurt, the flesh eating venom has not been proven by science. It may be that there is a particular variety of White Tail that causes this damage, or it may be something else altogether, Nevertheless, I wanted nothing to do with it. The idea that it may have been crawling all over us was bad enough. We gave it a wide birth and dressed for breakfast. It rotated to follow our movements around the room and then climbed onto the wall where Cesca snapped this photo:

Wandering up to the Longhouse was somewhat of relief by this point. I wanted nothing more to do with spiders, giant moths and jungle for one day. We met up with our new friends and sat down for breakfast.

Here it comes…

As we tucked into the repast and regaled the above two stories to our friends over coffee and eggs, the male of the pair suddenly pointed at my right shoulder.

“You have a bloody big spider on you mate.” He said alarmed.

I remember thinking that he must have been joking, just adding some spice to the story we were telling, and I laughed. It was only when Cesca, sitting next to me, put her fork down very slowly that I realised that he wasn’t joking. For some reason I didn’t panic at all. In fact at this point in the proceedings I was cool as a cucumber. I was so cool you could keep a side of beef in me for a month. My conscious brain took hold of me and controlled my reactions.

I looked.

On my right shoulder, looking straight at me, front legs raised threateningly, was a Wolf Spider the size of my fist. And I have big hands.

“Indeed” I said.

Wolf spiders are members of the family Lycosidae, from the Greek word “?????” meaning “wolf”. They are robust and agile hunters with good eyesight. They live mostly solitary lives and hunt alone. Some are opportunistic wanderer hunters, pouncing upon prey as they find it or chasing it over short distances. Others lie in wait for passing prey, often from or near the mouth of a burrow. WIKIPEDIA

I could see his eyes reflecting mine as the Wolf Spider has very large eyes. I could see his fangs. He was so close that my left eye couldn’t pick him up properly and so I one-eye goggled at him.

With a smooth and definite motion I reached up with my right hand and swept him down and away from my body. Unfortunately the angle I chose was not a good one and the spider battered into the table edge, flicked over in mid air and landed feet-first on my testicles. I remember clearly feeling his eight feet dig in as he landed. He was cupping my love spuds with the manner of one who has been ill used, but then fate has handed him the ultimate chance of payback and he was weighing his options. This time I jolted in terror as my subconscious, clearly upset with the pigs-ear my conscious brain had made of the situation thus far, stepped in with an adrenal dump into my muscles.

For me time slowed as the chemical cocktail entered my blood stream. All sorts of fighting systems powered on. I felt no pain or fear anymore. I felt no discomfort as all pain signals were dampened. My reactions and hand to eye coordination improved two fold and my vision narrowed with my pupils contracting to focus on the coming conflict. It was as if my conscious brain had been relieved of duty and locked in his room. The subconscious had pressed the “whoop ass button”.

With a speed that would have out-foxed Bruce Lee, my right hand moved so fast it tore reality apart at the seams. For under a picosecond there existed a perfect quantum moment as time divided the future into two streams. In one stream the spider still had my balls in its grip and yet in a spate of time that made a microsecond seem like an eon the other reality stream exerted itself and the spider was batted off my family jewels. My great haste caused small localised black holes to burst into existence and suck away the winsome reality where the eight legged freak still had hold of my love spuds!

Time’s flow returned to normal and I breathed a sigh of relief as the large spider picked himself up of the floor and ran out of the room.

“Wow,” noted Cesca, “You ok?”

“Yes. Now, where was I?”

The one where Basho meets the Australian Redback

“What do you think?” Cesca asked.

I looked at the man in question and considered the options. “Hell, why not, he looks OK” Actually, he looked a little crazy.

We had met Franco only about an hour before. He was a passenger on our train from Alice Springs, deep in the outback, to Adelaide on the southern coast. We were going overland onboard the famous Ghan train, one of only four trains in the entire country. By far he was the most vocal man I have ever met, talking ten to the dozen to anyone who would listen. Cesca had been drawn into one of the conversations and they had hit it off. I joined in and we both talked to him, pumping him gently for any information about Adelaide that may help us during our coming stay there. Franco was a goldmine of information on the subject. He was Italian Australian and had lived in Adelaide for most of his life. The difficulty was picking the information out of the high flow stream-of-conscious constant talking he was doing.

“Talks a lot, doesn’t he?”

“He’s just had a near death experience”

Franco had explained, to anyone who would listen, that he had just survived three days in the desert after his car got bogged in sand on the way back from an Aboriginal commune. He had been in the commune to see some aboriginal artist friends who had asked for help dealing with the governments new mischief. The government had closed all the stores in the commune and opened a government store, which only took tickets in exchange for food and supplies. An action known as the Intervention, but to Franco was clearly apartheid. The dishonour of this had been getting the Aborigines down and they had asked for help. Franco had driven across the desert to see what was happening and had got stuck on the way back. For three days. Finally, he had been rescued by some Aborigines and pulled out of the sand.

I looked out of the window at the searing Australian outback passing by. It was exceedingly inhospitable and I wondered if his story was true.

“How did you survive?” I had asked.

“Oh, I went into starvation meditation.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, I was a monk in Italy and learned the technique, it was the only thing that saved me.”

“A monk…”

“Yes, I walked across Europe dressed as Charlie Chaplin, for peace, I got to Rome and demanded to meet the Pope and after he saw me I became a monk.”

“The Pope…”

“Yes, but I am not a monk anymore, I teach at the University.”

“I see…”

“I know, why don’t you guys come and stay with me? I can show you around Adelaide…In exchange for a little gardening. Mow my lawn for example.”

He continued for about twenty minutes, almost gasping his breaths.

Cesca asked me again, “What do you think?”

“You believe him?” I was not sure that I did.

“Yes, why not?”

I looked at Cesca, she was a much better judge of this sort of thing than I. I tend to put everything through the filter of firstly, my martial arts training, then my sceptical filter born in the crucible of my Philosophy degree. Cesca had studied neither of these and so tended to trust her instincts, which are excellent. A lesson in natural Daoism that is not lost on me and one of the things I adore about my wife. The next morning, the train arrived in Adelaide and we departed. Franco rushed to get his car and we saw it coming off the train.

It was covered head to toe in red dust.

So, soon, we stood in his front room and he was still talking. It had become to us like a background track, its constancy driving the sound under our conscious radar. I didn’t mind, near death experiences remind us that life is precious, and I am sure I would feel the same – and be talking to everyone – if I had been in his situation.

If you can talk, then you are still alive.

“I have to go out, a Aborigine in prison has freaked out, and I am his carer.”

“Sure, Franco, no problems.” By now, his constant and outlandish life was not raising my eyebrows. I was not sure I believed half of it, but we was a nice guy to have us to stay.

He went. Leaving two people he has just met alone in his house.

“You know Cesca,” I said to her, “everyone always trusts you. It’s your charming face. We should become criminals, we would make millions.”

She laughed, “Have you seen the back garden?”

“No, not yet.”

“Go take a look. Oh and by the way…” She pointed towards the sideboard. I looked and saw a single framed photograph. I leaned in to see it clearly.

It was a photograph of Franco dressed as Charlie Chaplin, on the steps of the Vatican, talking to the Pope.

I walked out to the rear garden and took a look at it. The grass was four feet long. I would need a chainsaw to cut it down to size. Franco made good on his promise that day and took us around Adelaide to see the sights. We all had a great time and got on very well. The next day, armed with an industrial hedge trimmer I set to work on the lawn. It was slow going, but eventually I had removed enough to revel a path running through the garden as well as the remains of a fallen down barbecue. The four of us, Cesca, Franco, his friend (a local tree expert) and myself, started pulling the bricks from the thicket and throwing them in a wheel barrow.

Franco was still talking constantly. He really hadn’t drawn breath in the last two days, and always about himself. I don’t think he even asked us what our jobs had been until we prompted him. I was not really listening to what he was saying as I reached for the bricks, but something he mentioned made me turn and look, a brick still in my hand.

Then I looked back and the Redback spider looked right at me.

The Redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti) is a potentially dangerous spider native to Australia. It resembles a Black widow spider. It is a member of the genus Latrodectus or the widow family of spiders, which are found throughout the world. The female is easily recognisable by its black body with prominent red stripe on its abdomen. Females have a body length of about a centimetre while the male is smaller, being only 3 to 4 millimetres long. The Redback spider is one of few animals which display sexual cannibalism while mating.

Redbacks are considered one of the most dangerous spiders in Australia.^[1] The Redback spider has a neurotoxic venom which is toxic to humans with bites causing severe pain. There is an antivenom for Redback bites which is commercially available. WIKIPEDIA

Redback spiders are common in the gardens of Australia, but that is not a comforting thought. It had been many years since someone died from a bite from one, but this was mainly due to the availability to the anti-venom, rather than any decreasing species lethality. The results of the bite are almost immediate. Firstly, it hurts like a kick in the teeth. Apparently, you know you have been nipped by one; there is no doubt. The second result is the shakes, followed by all your mucus membranes going into overdrive. After this your entire body starts to hurt. This get increasingly worse for three days until, in agony, you either get better or have a heart attack. Of course, the anti-venom makes the worst of it fade quickly.

I tried to calculate the distance to the hospital in my head, but the spider had me mesmerised. The Redback is well named, it is coal black apart from a very red stripe down its back. It is also quite small. A relative of the black widow, the Redback is a modern web spinning spider like your average house spider. It as thin stick like legs and raises its body high above them. When threatened, it lacks the displays of the other, more ancient, type of spider and instead raises only a few legs to reveal the fangs.

This is what it was doing now. Probably annoyed at being dragged into the light by a jobbing Englishman. After all, given the state of Franco’s garden, it had been given a free run of the place for months. Cesca spotted the spider and came to the rescue. Or at least I thought she did, what she actually did is take a close up photo of the little blighter on her ever present camera:

“Thanks darling, big help.”

She laughed.

“Franco!” I called, “Look what I have found.”

Franco came over to look at the killer spider. He considered it for a few seconds.

“Oh yeah, the garden is full of ‘em”. He then picked it up with one hand and chucked it away. Like it was a woodlouse, not like it was a dangerous spider. Cesca and I were amazed. What is it with Australians and dangerous animals? They have no fear whatsoever. Is it that you simply have to get used to them? Or perhaps Franco’s near death escape from the desert had made him feel invulnerable? I don’t know, but he didn’t hesitate at all, one second the spider was in charge and the next it was flung through the air, probably wondering why it had bothered getting up this morning!

The one where Basho meets the biggest spider in the world, in Laos

In 2002 science discovered the worlds largest spider. It was a great day for science. Deep in the caves of the country of Laos, lived a real monster. A local variety of large and aggressive spider, common in Asia and Australasia, known as the Giant Cave Huntsman.

The giant huntsman spider (Heteropoda maxima, from maximus, meaning “the largest”) is a spider of the Heteropoda genus. It is considered in a December 2008 WWF report as “the world’s largest Huntsman spider. “^{[2] WIKIPEDIA}

This genus of spider is famous for a number of reasons, firstly it is large. Secondly, it is mean. Thirdly, it is fast as hell. The average Huntsman encounter is over in two seconds, as the hapless human comes face to fang with one and screams, by the time the sound has reflected off the corner of the room and made it back to your ears, the spider will have started his jet engines. A horrible scrabbling, scraping sound, a blur of speed and an eight legged bolt for the door. If you are standing in the way of the spiders jump-to-lightspeed then you may well get bitten. I remember the description of the beast in the Australian book of spiders; it simply read, “Ready biter.” Anything that is a ready biter is not my kind of petting animal, no matter how many, or how few, legs it has.

Luckily being bitten by one is not fatal nor particularly dangerous, it just hurts like hell. Well, that’s OK then!

So, in these caves, scientists discovered something new, something huge. Of course, this was science’s discovery of the beast, the locals have been putting up with them for generations stretching back to the stone age, but since they don’t know any Latin they don’t count. The Huntsman is impossible to miss, even when not super-sized. It has longer front legs that curve around in a particular way, hence you cant mistake one for something else. These scientists, exploring the caves, came across the Laos Cave Huntsman and, after a large scream and probably a brandy, announced it to he world in triumph.

I have something to tell them. Drop the “Cave” part of the name.

Cesca passed me a drink, as we were starting early. We all were. Our little group of 7 party animals had arisen at 6am on this special day. We were seated in a makeshift wooden bar on the bank of a Mekong tributary river, about 12 miles north of the Laotian town of Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is roughly half way down Laos and a famous stopover on the backpacker trail. In fact, it holds a certain amount of awe and dread. Anyone over 28 (myself and Cesca excluded) pretty much hates it, while anyone under 25 considers it heaven. This is because the city exists for pretty much only one reason; hedonistic partying.

The plan was simple. We were going tubing, which I had been assured by my Irish friend Colin was the, “best time I ever had, and I’m not joking”. I had no doubt, since the premise had a lot of opportunity for fun. Tubing is when you hire an inflated lorry inner tube, about 4ft across, and sit upon it as you float down the river back to the town. That’s the idea. The reality is that around 20 shack like bars containing swings, mud pools and buckets of strong drink, had taken up residence on the riverbanks lining the route. So, tubing basically involves drinking all day, floating from bar to bar and dancing with a lot of drunk girls wearing only bikinis.

Maybe, Colin had a point; this was going to be fun.

We were making an early start on the drinking before even getting a foot wet. Bobbits and Lenin had steered the rest of us into the bar next to the start point and bought a round of drinks. I didn’t mind, as the bar was right on the banks of the river and I could see across to the stunning Karst mountains of Laos. The view is amazingly beautiful as the mountains jut out of the flat fields and reach straight up to the sky. The sun was rising behind them and coronas glowed around the tops, high above the plains.

Cesca and I watched and then smiled to each other.

“I read,” I said, “that during the war, the Vietnamese army and the Communist Laotians hid in those mountains.”

“Cool, are there caves?” she asked.

“According to Lenin’s book he lent me, yes, huge deep caves. They are about 2 miles away from here, I’d say. Many are not fully explored. There could be anything in them. Perhaps we can go visit them before we leave Vang Vieng?”

Cesca arched an eyebrow, “Bats?”

I shrugged and supped my drink. It was hella’strong.

Cesca eyed her drink and chuckled, “Yes, I would like that, but let’s see how we feel tomorrow.” She then looked straight at me, “No bats.”

Lenin spoke up, “Best to use the toilets before we get on the tubes.”

“Good idea,” I said finishing my drink. “I bet they’re out back. Baggsy’ first,” and I rushed off ahead.

Sure enough around the back of the bar was the traditional Laos toilet block. Four cubicle shacks made out of uneven planks of wood with a straw roof to keep off the rain. Like a cargo cult of a phonebox. I pushed open the creaking door of the first one. A basic Asian toilet, little more than a hole in the ground awaited me. No light or any toilet roll. Just a bucket. Sighing, I squeezed into the small dark and foul smelling hut, pushed the door closed and squatted over the hole. I was humming to myself tunelessly in the dark gloom when I heard the following conversation outside the toilet:

“F*cking Hell!” came the voice of Lenin. He sounded genuinely shocked.

“Look at that one!” said Mariluz. She sounded revolted.

“Bloody hell,” came Cesca’s worried tones, “I am glad I am not in that cubicle!”

“It must be the biggest spider I have ever seen!” reiterated Lenin.

Spider! The word was like ice down my back. They were standing outside my cubicle. With a creeping terror I looked slowly up. Above my head, so close that it is miracle I didn’t catch it with my hair when I entered, was the biggest spider in the world. What was immediately clear to me was that is was looking directly back at me. the Laos Cave Huntsman, always posed to run or bite, was considering his options.

It was lucky that I was in my current position, because this revelation was like like a jolt of electricity through my body and I involuntarily let out a small mammalian whimper. Surely the same whimper two legged creatures have been making in similar situations since the dawn of time.

“Basho!” came Lenin, “Are you in that one?” He laughed out loud.

“Look up darling,” said Cesca.

I tried to talk and look inedible at the same time, only gibberish came from my lips, “Bwwwwahhhh…”

“Yep, that’s Basho,” said Cesca.

I quickly finished my business and pulled up my trousers. Still squatting I waddled out of the toilet. My friends saw my horrified face and could not stifle a laugh. I stood and turned to see the monster hanging over the hutch.

“What the smeg is that thing? Its huge!” I said trying desperately to look nonchalant.

“Dunno, but I think it wanted to eat you,” laughed Lenin.

The rest of the crew elected to go in the other cubicles and afterwards they forgot the monster and got on with enjoying the day.

Enjoy it we did, but I cannot look at the following video of us sitting in the bar without remembering the spider looking at me as I looked at him.

The one where Basho visits Spiderville, Cambodia

It all came about when our Laos travelling companions decided to fly out of Siem Reap in Cambodia; over 28 hours away.. They left the journey as late as possible so that they could make a final rush for the airport (they were flying to Australia) and sleep on the flight. The last thing they thought we would do is join them. Our sensible option would have been to enter Cambodia at a slower pace and then take a week or so to work our way around to Siem Reap, but we decided that we wanted to be at Angkor Wat for Christmas day and so the mission was on for us all.

The first challenge was the border crossing. The southern Laos border has, until recently, been closed. The latest Lonely Planet edition makes no mention of being able to get through at this point. However, the enterprising Laotians have realised that opening the border here will exponentially increase the tourists coming down to the 4000 Islands region. The effect is to turn this quiet backwater section of the Mekong, seen by only the completist, to a bustling Western haven for those crossing into Cambodia.

Bustling is good for money but what damage will it do to the area?

The private bus companies are all for this change and many deals have sprung up for easy transport to Cambodian cities. We chose to take a bus at $20 a head. It started with a boat ride out of the water locked islands followed by multiple small 12-seater transports to the border. The border guards inspected our Laos Visa’s and entry cards and penalised all who had lost them (the vast majority of the Vang Vieng Crowd), then they pointed out down a simple road to Cambodia. As Cesca and I walked I could not help but imagine snipers watching our every move, and so we danced across the line “Morecambe & Wise style”, just to show them.

On the other side we were ushered into a more transports and then onto a larger bus. The usual frauds were in operation about changing currency, which involves a confidence trick in convincing you that any Laotian currency cannot be changed anywhere else on your trip. This is, of course, rubbish and the rate being offered is very bad. However, the rate all over Cambodia is bad and the best idea is to change all your Kip to US Dollars before entering Cambodia at all. The real journey then began in earnest. The north east of Cambodia is perhaps the most un-touristed area, and for us it was passing by in flashes out the window. Trekking is available here, but like in all of this war ravaged country, stepping off the path can be deadly.

We arrived that night in the darkness of the capital. There are very few times that I allow a tout to select my hotel for me but this was one of them, as we had no idea where about we were. The hotel was actually quite good and obviously had a large crowd of tourists staying. We crashed out and awaited the next day.

The next day came with an unwelcome change of bus. This new bus was stacked with wood. That is to say, the entire inside of the bus, under every chair and in every nook and cranny, were large planks of wood that had been stacked and were taking up all the room. For a tall man this made the journey even more distressing. Now the bus plied its way up the western side of Cambodia towards our final destination.

All busses make stops, but the stop here was one I will not forget.

Spiderville is very well named. The bus stopped and we all piled off to stretch our legs. I was quite sleepy and did not take a clear look at the food items proffered by the lady tout sitting outside. It was only when my mind grabbed my eyes and fixed them onto the thing crawling on the young lady’s arm that I realised she was selling deep-fried Tarantulas.

Tarantulas comprise a group of hairy and often very large spiders belonging mainly to the family Theraphosidae, of which approximately 900 species have been identified. Historically tarantulas were the bigger genera from the family Lycosidae (like Lycosa tarantula) WIKIPEDIA

And that one had obviously escaped:

She saw my eyes widen, “You want spider?” She said while pulling the arachnid back into place as it tried to scamper up her top. She then pulled it off and offered it to me, legs a-wiggling.

“Err, no. No thanks very much, I am fine,” I managed to say backing away slightly.

The girl was sitting down on a bucket, which I thought was only her chair.

It was not.

She took my hesitance to mean that I did not want this particular spider and so she stood up from the bucket and showed me her selection inside. Twenty of the monsters were all tumbling over each other to be my deep fried food choice.

“Bwahhhh,” was an accurate translation of my reply and I quickly moved on.

The next girl was selling deep fried spiders too and had a pile of paprika coloured crawlers on a tray on her head.

After a few further spiders sellers I was able to purchase a Coke and make my way back onto the bus. A few brave souls bought one to eat and a large offering was passed around the bus. Lenin, our travelling companion, tried a leg but I passed it on:

“Sorry, I’m trying to cut down…”

The one where Basho is offered spider for breakfast in Thailand

We were driven to a staging area and then picked up by our guide and a local villager. He arrayed us with water and then we were off into the jungle. Trekking is something Cesca and I love. It gets you out of not only your comfort zone, but out of your mental map of yourself. You are immersed in the sights and sounds of the trek and have plenty of time to think. This was real trekking. The villager spoke almost no English, but our ever-helpful guide translated splendidly. The jungle was all around us and I could not see that we were following any sort of recognisable path through it. After a while, the villager cut us down some bamboo and fashioned us some walking sticks, something that really helped. We crossed swelling rivers, went up and down rocky slopes, through valleys, up hills and everywhere the jungle was all around. No signs of human life. I really felt that we were really in the mix. Of course, we were probably only a thick bush away from Starbucks, but it felt real. What also felt real was at one point we were crossing this giant fallen log, using it as a bridge over a massive drop, when the villager and guide both froze. In front of us was an enormous snake that spotted us and slithered into the undergrowth. It was about 5 feet long and looked to me like some sort of pit Viper with its arrow like head and hissing out a warning to us. It disappeared and our hearts stopped hammering in our chests. Relieved and laughing a little we all continued.

About 7 hours later, we came to a stream. There the villager stopped and made some cups from bamboo (I still have mine). Into these, he poured some local firewater and we drank each other’s health. It was strong stuff and that is putting it mildly. He then led us onwards and out of the jungle into pastures. Through these and onwards to a small purpose built wooden village.

This was arrayed with bamboo huts into which we deposited our gear. To wash we went down to the river and washed standing in the freezing waters. Not the safest thing I have ever done, but I was at least clean.

Then we went and helped with dinner. Other villagers arrived and one man played a strange stringed instrument as we helped prepare the food. Wok cooking is a favourite of mine and we soon got stuck in frying all the various dishes. Dinner was wonderful and as the night drew in, we went to bed in our hut, idly wondering about Spiders and bed bugs.

The next morning, we were up and at them at an ungodly hour. I am not the most morning orientated of people and struggle to wake up. This morning, they had what must be the ultimate way of sobering me up but not in a good way. The guide called me over to a mud bank where the villager was violently digging out a hole in the ground. It looked vaguely familiar.

“What is he doing?” I asked.

There followed a rattling conversation in the local dialect, which is a little bit Thai and a little bit something else.

“The guide turned to me and motioned the hole, “He finding you spider.”

“Spider!” I exclaimed.

“You say last night, you like spider, so he find you one.”

My recollection had been that I had indicated a certain level of reluctance on the part of spiders in my room. Quite how this turned into me wanting to see one was lost to me. However, before I could stop him the violent digging halted and the villager was now poking a slim stick into the hole.

I was fascinated to see how he flicked the stick in a certain way and ground it around the hole, but I could not see into it myself. Suddenly he cried out and jumped back as an enormous and very angry spider came out of the hole.

Spiders are naturally nocturnal and this big fella’ had been woken from his morning slumbers by someone knocking down his home and dragging him out by force. He reared up and waved his legs menacingly.

I instinctively took a step back. He was huge and black and about the size of Cesca’s hand. I would bet that he was some sort of Tarantula, but I don’t know. The villager was not so hampered by fear and he pushed the stick under the beast and flicked it up and out of the hole, onto the bank. The spider made a dash for it, but the villager was ready and it reared again. Fangs the size and shape of clipped toe nails juddered as he tried to scare us off. The Villager was having none of it and with a very deft and practiced movement, he slapped the stick down on the spiders back and pinned it to the floor. He then rushed up the stick and grabbed the spider from the back holding it down. He then gripped it in a certain way, obviously some sort of spider jujutsu hold, and lifted it up in his hand. The spider was totally in his control. Satisfied, he smiled, walked over and thrust the struggling giant arachnid in my face.

“You touch, please” said the guide. Gingerly I reached out. “Not there! He bites you. Leg.” My hand froze and I adjusted my aim. I felt one of the large footpads. It was amazingly soft and not all spiky. Kind of like rough felt or a good shag carpet. “Now you,” he said indicating that Cesca should also stroke the struggling arachnid. Gingerly she put forwards a hand but the waving legs meant that she closed her eyes as she did so.

“That’s his balls you’re holding,” I pointed out.

She yelped and opened her eyes; sure enough, she was groping the poor creature’s spinnerets. “Urrg!” she exclaimed.

The villager smiled, laughed, and put the spider down on the ground. The spider obviously did not quite know what to make of all this and eventually decided to make a run for it, possibly to call a constable and report being molested. The villager rattled off something in his local language, which the guide translated for us.

“He say, you lucky his father not guide today. He eat spider.”

Both Cesca and I made the same face of disgust.

“What, raw?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Can we have something else for breakfast?”

“Yes, come, fruit ready.”

Epilogue

So, there you have them. In one year away, you are always going to get involved with things that are outside your comfort zones, but for me these five encounters have had a big effect on my life. I’m not talking about my fear of spiders, that is still the same and I still kill rather than capture rogue spiders in my house, instead I am talking about some of the wonderful people in these stories. Franco, Lenin, Bobbits, The villager, the lady outside the bus, these are the things that I will remember. These are the things I cherish.

Don’t stay at home just because you may have to face something that terrifies you. As you have read, I came close to some of the most dangerous spiders in the world and didn’t get bitten, they are not creatures to be feared. Rather they should be admired. Up close, the world’s spiders are really quite amazing. They are almost, and I hesitate to suggest this, quite beautiful. The wonder of nature is that this small and intelligent creature has been around the Earth for millions of years. They have been our eight legged companion for a thousand generations, and they will be with us on this journey for a thousand more.

Just, hopefully, not attached to my testicles next time.

Regards,

Basho

The trip cost us $85, and we were lucky, others on our boat later told us what they had paid anything from $80 to $160 each for exactly the same experience.

The bus arrived at the dock’s edge (having visited the ubiquitous tourist-shucking-shop on the way) and we joined the scrum waiting for their boats. It was there that I started to come up with a theory:

What appears to happen, to my sceptical mind, is that the tour guide from the hotel is actually an agent from one of these travel cafes. He arrives with busload of suckers, all who have been sold “luxury” cruises and generally up-sold as much as possible, and then goes into the dock office and passes you off into that system for a commission.

Then he buggers off.

Now you are in another system, which has bought you all at the same price. This is why paying more makes no difference to the client. To the agent, paying more goes straight into his pocket. So now, you are randomly’ishly assigned a boat by block and shuffled aboard. The boat crew have paid the office a small amount for membership of the boat club and they then earn all their money, beyond a cut of the price, in the reselling of extras. This explains why a beer is £4 and they hate you bringing your own water.

However, that is just a theory and frankly like most we simply went along with it like sheep. After ten minutes our boat was ready. It didn’t look too bad; a little fake in that extra effort had been made to make it look oriental, with wood panels and dragonheads, etc. Really, it was just a big square-bottomed cruiser.

We said hello to our fellow passengers and settled into our room. This was in the second deck above the main kitchen, which itself was above the engine. The quality of the room was not too bad for two days at sea and I am sure that in the summer a lot of fun is to be had in sunbathing on the decks. This was not summer, but then we are British and are more than used to that. Cesca showed concern about the noise, but I figured that we would be stopped during the night.

Of course, the boat and the rooms had only passing resemblance to the pictures in the brochures.

The boat made its way out of the bay, jostling with the absolute armada of other semi-identical boats all setting off at the same time. We piled onto the top deck and considered the scrum; a veritable traffic jam of boats hitting each other and men shouting while wielding barge poles.

All the boats had people on the top deck (effectively the roof) by now and everyone was a little sheepishly staring at each other’s transport to see who’s was the best. I think that ours was average.

I was filming this amazing sight on my camcorder when it suddenly went pop and broke. Yep, I went off-line with my filming from this moment. This was the start of a big hassle and I did not get a working video camera up and running until half way through India, two months away!

Anyway, we chugged across to the famous limestone karsts peaks of Halong. They were large, strange, and popping out of the water to great heights. Over all there are more than 775 dotted around only 334km.

These amazing ancient structures have featured in many novels and films and it is not hard to see why, as they are unique. At least that is what they tell you on the trip. They remind me of fjords that have half collapsed into the sea. We passed by umpteen small structures as the sea mist swirled around them. The consensus on board was that they were well worth seeing

What I personally enjoyed more, strange old me, was the communities that live on the water, literally on the water, at the bases of the islands. Floating little villages and boats ferrying locals to a fro were very interesting. What would living in such a place be like? I wondered to myself. How would you get to work or to school?

The boat made its way further amongst the islands, roughly in a line with all the others. Then we came to the first stop; the Sung Sot Caves, or in English, “The Caves of Surprises!” I have been in caves all over the world, from Asia, to America to Australasia and of course, in the UK, but here was a cave system of magnificent proportions.

The Vietnamese know this and have designed a walk through the cave system that would be in Disney World if it were not so real. Well lit and stunning in proportion we went down to the caves in groups. The group leader tried valiantly to tell us about what we were seeing, albeit an official version, but I could not understand a word of what he was talking about so I started listening to the next group. Then I noticed my American chums from Sothern Vietnam.

After exchanging hellos and a quick update on our journey through the county, Cesca and I joined in with them and we all walked around together. The girl, and I honestly cannot remember her name – sorry, was about to finish her 6 month trip and head back home.

This was the first time that I had come across a now very familiar syndrome. When people start travelling they expect something to happen. They expect to change, get religion, or become one with nature. To find themselves changed inside, with the flashing of epiphany and momentous re-understandings of spacetime. It is not their fault; this is how travelling is sold to people; its image. Watching films like, The Beach or The Motorcycle Diaries, suggests that you can lose yourself and find yourself on your travels. Perhaps even become a famous revolutionary leader!

The truth is not so seductive.

This is 2009 and it is quite possible, even on a budget, to travel for months and never be out of your comfort zone, to never be reached inside, even by yourself. This is partially due to what is called, “The backpackers bubble”. It is really hard to honestly break out of this bubble. This leads to a quite strong feeling of frustration with having missed something. People tend to become uncharacteristically philosophical at these times, they tend to want to talk about, “what they have learned and what it all means.”

She talked and I listened.

Since then, I have come across this mind-set many times and I have talked many people through it, lent an ear and spoken a little on the subject. In fact, I have been thinking about it deeply and I am going to write a lot more than is appropriate here. Suffice to say, this girl was ever so slightly disappointed with her trip and needed to talk about it.

I am glad that she chose me for that brief moment for I was able to tell her this: “When you get home, when you find your old life envelope you like a warm bath, you will feel a tinge of guilt. Guilt that you did not become Che Guevara or a Zen Buddhist Master. You may also feel shame. Shame that there is not a book going to be written about your experiences. You want your life to have a meaning; you are told that it is special. Of course, life itself is special, but the meaning of an individual’s life is not found at the end of journeys. Meaning is found by living and breathing. Life is not a pilgrimage with a reward at the end. Life is a dance, and one that you only get to dance once. Cherish what you have done, not what you missed. Don’t look back, don’t look forwards. Concentrate on now. Live in the now and let the past rest and future be. Then your life will not lack for meaning.

Anyway, out of the caves, we returned to the boat and it took us to a floating village. This village had some very dodgy canoes, which we all jumped in and rowed ourselves around and through a cave system. This was pretty cool, but let down by the very poor equipment and the short time given to this part of the journey. I got the sense of boxes being ticked by the tour guides.

Then we were dropped off at an island to walk to the top of a karst mountain. It was great fun, if a little steep. At the top, we watched the nightfall and the lights come on all around.

That night we came down for dinner and sat with a nice English couple we had been chatting to and getting on well with.

Then the staff came up and directed us to move to sit with a different group.

“Why?” I asked

“You have different meal.”

“But we don’t mind, neither do our friends here,” cue agreement from our new comrades, “we want to sit here.”

“Move that table now,” he said pointing to the table next to us.

“Does it really matter?”

“Now!”

This conversation was then repeated with the next table and so on until the entire boat was being rearranged because no-one was seated “where they should be”  Everyone had to get up, move a few feet and back sit down. People were all a little miffed to say the least and some loud protests fell on deaf ears.

After all that, the only difference in the meal was the starter: crab.

The Vietnamese insistence in this regard, and their total bemusement regarding our reticence, was the first time I had come across a peculiar Asian phenomenon. It does not happen very often, but mores and social norms are naturally different over here. Not that they are in any way wrong, just different and when Western and Eastern feelings clash it often results in a complete lack of understanding. Our hosts simply stood bemused at everyone’s problem with moving, shocked (probably) at the (apparent) rudeness. For the Westerners, on the other hand, who had all been brought up that the “customer is always right”, rules in restaurants are really only guidelines; often broken as a way of making one feel special. To us the staff were being amazingly fussy and rude.

Who hasn’t been asked to follow a rule by a server of some type and then had them make an exception, “just for you sir”? We all have, it is common in the west. A Western server would not have insisted on a shuffle, they would have simply served where we were. It really was not important that we got the “right” meal, but it was important that we sat with who we wanted to.

None of this exists in Asia and I had similar things happen in countries all over this continent. Especially Japan, where the normally super-polite Japanese can turn into being, what can only be described as, “bloody insistent.” I suspect the core of it is the language barrier, as English has all sorts of nuances and “ways of putting things” when speaking to soften an order into a request. To those coming to English from another language, having been taught direct speaking, they can appear rude as all hell. Once we had all had about six beers in us, the staff started the hard-sell on things like pearls. They did not get very far, but Cesca did buy some postcards.

I suspect that the staff on these boats hate the rich westerners with their drinking, loud aggressiveness (to us: assertiveness) and incredible rudeness (what the westerners call ‘being direct’ or ‘plain spoken’). On the other hand, westerners probably just want an authentic experience without being asked to dip into their pockets every five seconds or the feeling that they are being fleeced. I think that trips like these made Cesca and I want to drop off the tourist routes as much as possible. To break out of that bubble and into a little freedom and honesty, where “tourists” were only normal “customers” and “servers” became “locals”. Such wants started to pull at us and our future plans for India started to take shape.

Anyway, after enough drinking, Cesca and I left the others to it and turned in. The boat was anchored in a peaceful lagoon along with many others and it slowly drifted around the anchor. Cesca and I opened the windows to watch the lights of the other boats playing against the deep darkness. The sky was clear and in the distance loomed the shapes of the giant karsts.

It was quite beautiful.

The next part is coming soon…

Regards,

Basho

Note: This is the first part of a final three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. The next part will be auto posted in 4 days and the third part 4 days after that.

This was the last stop on our tour of Vietnam and almost the last stop in the whole of South East Asia. It had been a long winding road up this thin and sunny country. A long winding road inside us too; as the further we travelled around SEA the more we felt changed by our time here. We wanted it to be an ending to remember. Luckily, the Vietnamese were only too willing to provide one hell of a party to see us off.

This was because in a few days it was Tet. To the Vietnamese this is Xmas, New Year’s Eve and everyone’s birthday all on the same day.

We arrived in Hanoi by, the now commonality, of a “Crush Bus” and were dumped unceremoniously on the outskirts of the city by the corner of a set of turnpikes. Traffic ran seemingly in all directions around us as we negotiated our bags off the bus.

Sitting on the sidewalk for a few moments, we almost fell prey to the taxi drivers who descended on the arriving tourists like fisherman who have just spotted a large shoal of fish. Cesca and I watched as the newer tourists were netted, gutted for cash, placed in small packed tins and driven off into the city. Clearly the bus company had dropped us here as a way of supporting outrageous taxi fees, probably for some sort of kick back. I looked around; the Hotel was probably only 30 meters away as the crow flies, but from here, well most would pay anything to get away from all this traffic. Cesca waved away all prowling taxi drivers and we sat on our bags and waited. After a while, we were the only tourists left and indeed the bus moved on as well. Only a few unlucky taxi drivers remained.

Good. We were ready.

We approached one and offered a price, a fair price.

He demanded a ridiculous price.

We all laughed and the game begun.

I remember thinking that seen from a distance through the eyes of, say, an observer from another planet, what was happening here would look like some sort of strange and ancient ritual dance. The Taxi driver and we moved around each other twisting and swaying, we were all pointing at maps and towards distant objects. We were haggling with big arm gestures and subtle head nods or shakes. At moments, we would turn away with a wave of a hand dismissively, and then strangely come back almost as if we had forgotten something whereupon it would all begin anew. The taxi driver would throw up his arms and cry out deploringly, and then hold his hands apart in an unmistakable gesture of reasonableness. There was lots of counting on fingers.

The observer from another planet might say to himself that, “Surely all this cannot just be for a taxi ride?” and when his fellows asked him later, he would probably theorise that we were conjuring up some sort of God.

Eventually all the moves were made and the strange waltz ended with my saying, “Look mate, do you see anyone else here except us? Don’t you want to get paid?”

The taxi driver sighed and considered the truth in this fact. “Ok,” he said. He conspired to look wounded.

It was at that point that I realised that we had in fact lost this exchange; as although a $30 taxi had cost us $10, it was actually only worth $5. No matter, he had been a worthy opponent and I respected that.

The bus company we used to move around Vietnam is called Sinh Cafe. As mentioned in previous posts all Vietnamese cafes are in fact tourist offices. The Sinh Cafe office was the location we now departed in the taxi. However, I was surprised to spy another office with the Sinh Cafe logo on the drive in, “Look baby,” I said pointing out the window, “another Sinh Cafe, it’s probably a little closer for when we leave.”

“And there,” she said point in a different direction.

“Oh and another there,” I said. “Hang on…”

“They’re all over the place!”

Indeed, on the journey into the heart of the city, we came across no less than 18 Sinh Cafe’s, all with the correct logo, all with the correct adverts, but all fake.

Some were laughably so; containing nothing more than a single bedraggled looking person sitting on what looked to me like an upside-down bucket. Others had taken the deception so seriously that they looked more professional than the real thing; investing in moulded plastic counter tops and sporting large hi resolution posters. We counted them off as the Taxi pulled into the narrow streets that make up the old quarter. The traffic, mostly an endless train of mopeds, was everywhere. A few more turns and the streets narrowed again. Now the shops took on a strange and more “touristic” look. I started to see western style bars, street food vendors, and endless travel agents amongst which were dotted infinite fake Sinh Cafes. We were in the tourist quarter now; a place as much removed from the city’s true life as it was possible to get.

The Taxi dropped us off, spat out our bags and was instantly gone into the throng of bikes. We walked down a narrow alley to our hotel. There is no shortage of hotels in Hanoi, of course, but trying to find one with good reviews, had space and was open over this period was difficult. The staff was unusually brusque considering I had cash in my hand, and I came to the initial conclusion that we had annoyed their sensibilities merely by being born. At the time, this manner seemed strange, but now I can see that this was a New-year for them and they would rather be with their families.

In fact, this attitude was to be found almost everywhere on that day. They say not to travel at Tet, and yet we had no choice, I remember wondering how well this was going to work out.

We went out for a walk around the city and tried to get out of the tourist bubble. As these things go, there is lots to see here. There is the park area around the lake, which functions as a sort of meeting point and place of celebration,

…the street market with its fresh fish and a million smells,

…and the church area with high-end coffee shops and moneyed wealth. Then there is the amazing way that the city planners have laid out the shops; all are collected together according to type. So, one street has only spice shops full of strange things in jars that smell incredible,

…while another has fake money sellers who sell stacks of fake $ notes used in funerals.

One street we walked down was full of nothing but people noisily hammering out tin buckets.

Cesca and I really enjoyed our walk that day.  When we arrived back we looked into a 3 day trip to the legendary Halong Bay, and be back for Tet proper.

Something you have to come to terms with when picking a trip to Halong Bay is that you cannot make a correct choice. That is one that doesn’t, somehow, try very hard to rip you off. It is a kind of like a shell game, in that the entire edifices of the travel agents, brochures, glossy posters, special money-off deals and so-called impartial advice is setup to convince you that what you are sold is somehow relevant or bares any relation whatsoever to what waits for you when you get there.

It does not.

So, in order to assist readers considering the options, remember that there are really only three price brackets:

Under $50: For which you are probably kidnapped and buried alive at midnight. At least that is the impression that the woman in the hotel conspired to give us when we enquired about the “cheaper deal.” It is impossible to buy this deal or more likely it probably does not exists at all.

$80 – $140: If you do not look rich, then you are pushed firmly towards this bracket. While the price range here appears large, do not let that fool you into thinking that one boat is actually going to be better than another. Whatever your hotel or travel agent tells you, WHATEVER, the boats are effectively randomised. This is the range in which to bargain hard.

$140+: You can pay up to $1000 without trying in this bracket. The boats promise to be truly splendid for this much, but remember that they are all going to the same places and taking the same trips off the boat. However, I am sure that if you pay enough, you will get an amazing experience.

Cesca and I were offered two options in the second bracket and she pointed to the one she liked. The women pointed to the other.

“What about this one?” the very short, female hotel manager asked.

“No that one please,” said Cesca smiling and pointing again at the brochure on the left.

“Ok then,” she replied with a nod to the one on the right, “I book you this one.”

“No, I said that one,” Cesca said pointing, “I like the look of this boat more than that one.”

The women picked up the brochure and considered the picture of the boat carefully. “You go better on other one.”

“Why?”

“Boat better.”

Cesca was getting annoyed but her voice remained very calm (only I – as her husband – could pick up the anger), “I… want… that… one.”

The women looked at Cesca as though questioning the innocence of someone choosing a tour based on the picture on the brochure, which clearly, she knew, was nothing to do with anything. Cesca was looking very determined and I could see the lady weighing up her options. She broke first, and waved a hand smiling, “Ok ok ok. This one.”

“Thank you.”

Of course, the next day, we got on the bus and found that we were on the other boat tour…

The next part is coming in four days…

Regards,

Basho

Journeying into Laos with like-minded travellers enabled us to delve deeply into the history and heart of Laos both through our shared experiences and many discussions. We shared our discovery of a country that exudes a wonderful cocktail of scenery, emotions and memorable experiences and our horror at the unveiling of the very real tragedy lived out here. For many hours we discussed and agonised about the plight of Laos and its future.

For the most part though Laos still remains off travellers’ radar. Westerners are often asking us, “Where exactly is Laos?”  Well, for those who don’t know or are not yet plugged in, Laos is an extremely beautiful country in the middle of South East Asia that is landlocked by China to the North, Vietnam to the East, Cambodia to the South and Thailand to the West. 

Initially a French colony until WWII the French imperialist fingerprint has been firmly impressed into Laos culture and is particularly evident today in the architecture and cuisine.

Laos History – struggles behind smiles

To truly understand Laos first you must understand the events that shaped it into the country it is today.

Sitting Buddha destroyed by the bombing

Geographic location has played a strong role in the history of Laos initially attracting the French for mineral and monetary wealth. Subsequently though the Eastern mountainous jungle terrain provided the ideal Viet Cong route for the supply of people and weapons from Russia to Vietnam during the Vietnam/American War. This “Secret War” as it was known, was in reality an intense carpet bombing campaign along the length of Laos in order to disable this supply chain known as the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”. Americans fought for democracy on behalf of the Laos Government alongside Hmong tribes people against the Communist ideals of the Viet Cong and Northern Pathet Lao. As the Vietnam/American War came to an end and the communists in Vietnam took power so did the Pathet Lao. Laos became Laos PDR (Peoples Democratic Republic) which welcomes democratic ideals in name only (it has only one political party) and courts the trappings of international wealth through tourism, but underneath holds communist ideals at its core.

Now three decades after the war has ended, it horrified me to learn that unexploded ordinance still litters the countryside inflicting untold devastation on civilians and severely limiting economic progress. There is a small exhibition at MAG in Vientiane, showing the extent of the bombing and the work undertaken to clear the ordinance. It is truly daunting and heartbreaking to see the sea of red dots on the map below represents all unexploded ordinance still in Laos.

Carpet bombing of Laos

For Laotians being surrounded by bombs and the devastation they cause has become a normal part of life. Lives are continually shattered by people just trying to make a living. Parents are regularly killed or maimed and families ruined by ordinance buried in the farmland. Despite the dangers children are driven by poverty to risk life and limb to collect scrap metal from these, often live, bombs and bombies (cluster bombs) for which they get paid a pittance. The courage Laotians show in the face of such danger amazes me, particularly those who have lost lives, loved ones or limbs at the hands of these explosive devices.

We are certainly not the first people to have been emotionally moved by the plight those living in bomb infested countries. The enormity of the task ahead in Laos renders many with a feeling of helplessness alongside a strong motivation to do all you can to help, however, small it may appear. As part of our ongoing support we would like to voice our whole-heartedly support of the many amazing people who continue to work tirelessly to improve the lives of those affected by the bombs.

Firstly our praises go out to the men and women at MAG (Mines Action Group) who should be awarded the highest recognised for their dangerous work locating, defusing and disposing of unexploded ordinance. Teams of bomb experts risk their own lives daily to make a safe environment for the people of Laos. They plan to have cleared all ordinance in here by 2012.

MAG all-female team move a bomb prior to demolition

Munitions deactivated by MAG

Secondly, to the people at COPE who fit artificial limbs, provide physiotherapy, psychotherapy and open doors to enable those who have lost a family members or been maimed by a bomb to find work and rebuild their lives. I feel honoured to have met a few of these amazingly brave people and my hope is that life becomes brighter, safer and more prosperous for them.

   

The amazing exhibition at COPE

To get the full picture of the continued affect of the war we highly recommend the extremely informative and exceptionally emotional exhibition at COPE, in Vientiane, that fully explains the severity and effects of the bombing and runs a selection of films showing the impact of the bombing and honouring the tireless work being done to disarm these bombs. (See also Basho’s post on “The American War”)

Laos Heart – Stay Another Day http://www.stayanotherday.org/

Luckily for us we discovered ‘Stay Another Day’ soon after arriving in Laos. Covering IndoChina this not-for-profit organisation produces insightful books, and in the case of Laos an exhibition too, highlighting “destination friendly” tourism projects to encourage people to get under the skin of the country and support the local community.

This book gave us great insight into many local enterprises initiated to help people help themselves out of poverty and enable them to lead a better quality of life. This also allowed us to focus our energies and spending power in support of Laotian people in a beneficial way. There are many enterprises throughout the country, but shown below are the places we visited and are in support of…

In Luang Prabang:

  

Kopnoi (clothing), L’Etranger (books) and Tamarind (local food and cooking lessons!)

In Vientiane:

Big Brother Mouse (children’s books), MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and COPE (prosthetics)

Our complete list of places we chose to visit and show our support for:

• Big Brother Mouse – Laos books for Laos readers http://www.bigbrothermouse.com/index.html
• COPE – Co-operative Orthotic & Prosthetic Enterprise http://www.copelaos.org/
• MAG – Mines Advisory Group http://www.maginternational.org/
• Mulberries – http://www.laosilkandcraft.com/gallery_teas.htm
• Kopnoi – Fair Trade clothes made in Laos http://www.kopnoi.com/
• L’Etranger – Book shop plus cafe that buys/sells/trades/rents books http://www.stayanotherday.org/project/L_Etranger/introduction
• Tamarind – A taste of real Laos cuisine http://www.tamarindlaos.com/
• CAMACRAFTS – Non-profit org, handicrafts made by Lao artisans http://www.laosilkandcraft.com/camacrafts.htm

I hope this article goes some way to educating and empowering future visitors to this special place and encourages them to be sensitive and understanding whilst visiting this fragile country. Should you choose to visit please don’t take Laos for granted. Laotians still have a wonderfully inviting innocence behind each smiling face, despite everything they have been through. Please let’s not allow tourism to change that.

Laos is an amazing country which we feel privileged to have visited before mass tourism arrives. Through this emotional and in-depth experience our passion and love of Laos will forever be close to our hearts.

Cesca

Our journey through Laos – written in two posts

Post one is our boarder crossing into Northern Laos from Thailand and journeying down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang, then as we re-enter the river again in the South for our adventures in the 4000 islands and post two is our journey through the cultural centres of Laos and the great fun and frolics we had along the way.

 
Along the Mekong and city life in Laos

Hope you enjoy them too!

Cesca

Introduction

They say the better part of travelling is meeting the people from the countries you visit.  They do not say how much that meeting will affect you, neither how heartbreaking such encounters can be.  The first time I met a one legged man in Laos, while visiting COPE – the charity for the war injured, I asked him how he lost his leg?

“The American’s took it,” he replied.

What can one say to that? 

Such emotionally confronting sights are common in South East Asia if you let yourself see them.  Too many of the people who come here simply gloss over the lives of the people they encounter.  Too many go home and say, “Oh South East Asia is alright, beautiful countryside… but so many beggars!”  Without giving any thought to what this means and what causes people to beg on the streets.  Beg, not because they want money for a drug addiction, simply because there is no governmental help for the war-wounded and having no legs, fingers or arms is a lifelong barrier to entry to almost anywhere.

We have spent the last three months travelling all over SEA with our eyes wide open.  In fact, we decided to go all the way and visited all the disabled workshops, children’s orphanages and museums that we could.  We have met with Cambodians missing limbs, Children Orphaned by AID’s, Vietnamese who fought against the US and Laotians struggling to come to terms with their ravaged country.  Along the way, we have visited many of the actual areas attacked by or affected by the war, spoken with war photographers who captured the images that define the war and run our hands over the pockmarked remains of war equipment.  This is not very hard to do.  Simply visit Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam and you cannot help but see if you only look.

However, the results are not pretty.

Read more by clicking here:

Through all this I have held off commenting on the war, known to those in Vietnam as “The American War,” until I actually left the area.  This is because millions of people in South East Asia are still feeling the effects of the conflict everyday and by being there I was in danger of missing perspective on the big-picture.  I wanted to be far enough away from it all to be able to get some context before I commented.

That is why this blog entry exists.  We left the area in February, bound for India, and after much discussion between us, I feel I can properly write about the American War.

Historical Outline

Everyone knows about the war in Vietnam, right?  Wrong.  Before coming here, 90% of the information I had about the Vietnam War was created by the US movie industry.  I grew up watching Platoon, Hamburger Hill and The Deer Hunter.  To me the Vietnamese were slant-eyed nightmares who charged the noble US grunts fighting for freedom in the jungle.  Before I left home, I had neither any idea where Laos was nor had I known the tragic history of Cambodia (all I knew was that it didn’t look like Kansas).

If you are in the same situation, here is a quick outline of what actually happened in easy to understand steps. 

Caveat.

Please keep in mind that while I do have some qualifications as a historian, I have not attempted to be definitive here in any sense other than intentions. Some of the numbers happened at the same time and some may be out of order.  I have linked all my sources in the endnotes of the article.

The War

1. The French took over a lot of SEA apart from Malaysia, which was British owned thanks to a British adventurer who had his balls shot off.

2. The Japanese invaded in WWII and “kicked them all out”.

3. The British, US (via sea), Australasians’ and free people of SEA defeated the Japanese.

4. The French tried to get their empire back.

The French landing back in SEA were confident of victory

5. They were defeated by the Vietnamese in battle.

 

A soldier begs for the end to battle

6. Meanwhile the Chinese went communist.

7. The US invented the idea that since China was next to the USSR and SEA was next to China, a dangerous “Domino Effect” might spread Communism as far south as taking over Australia.  This shows a mighty misunderstanding of the Australian temperament.

8. Ho Chi Min declares his country separate and his view communist.

Ho Chi Min (Centre in white)

9. The King of Cambodia declares his leanings communist after a long visit to China.

10. All parties agreed to avoid war or get involved.

11. All parties ignored this agreement and the US started “advising” South Vietnam.

12. The South Vietnam regime is blood thirsty and even uses the guillotine. Much like the reports of the North then.

The guillotine of Deim

13. The South Vietnam leader is assassinated, which shocked Kennedy.

Kennedy and US Defence Secretary Robert Mcnamara

14. Kennedy is assassinated.

15. The US either engineer, or allows to happen, the Gulf of Tonkin incident securing a declaration of war.

16. The US strategy in the war is similar to the “Shock and Awe” tactic used in the 2nd Gulf War.  They believe that the communists will eventually quit.  Thus, it becomes a war of attrition.  This later proved a wrong move (see endnotes).

A US base comes under attack

17. The Vietnamese do not give up and build a very long road that weaves in and out of Vietnam and Laos, which allows them to go around the north/south divide in Vietnam.  This is known as the “Ho Chi Min Trail.”

 

When the trail was blown up the VC simply carried their equipment

18. The Laos army tries to stop this and the Vietnamese start a revolution/uprising/civil-war in Laos.

19. Laos’ king asks the US to help after being left somewhat in the lurch by the French.  They start a secret CIA led war in Laos by using the highland Hmong tribes as soldiers supported by the US airforce (directed by the famous Ravens). This war is against the Pathet Lao communists supplied by the Vietnamese.

One of the Raven spotter planes

20. The US uses most of their airforce in Laos to bomb the HCM Trail.  In fact, the bomb they crap out of it with cluster bombs, high explosives, soap and anything else they can think of.  Nothing works to stem the flow and many of the bombs do not explode.  The rest they use against the Pathet Lao around the Plain of Jars.

Bombing runs in Vietnam

21. The US government says to the people that the war will soon be won; the communists are weakened and cannot fight anymore.

 

The US president Johnson talks the talk

22. In reality the communists threaten the Khe San base to such an extent the US commanders plan on using short range nukes to defend it.

23. The Khe San offensive turns out to be a ruse by the Vietnamese and they have been secretly digging tunnels to Saigon (the Cu Chi tunnels).  On the eve of the Tet celebrations (New Year – around mid Jan) the Vietnamese attack everywhere from these tunnels.

A US soldier orders up help during the Tet offensive

24. These resulting battles are all won by the US, but the public realise that they have been lied to and the US have to pull out.

 

Nixon describes the pull out of troops

25. Without US support Vietnam falls to the HCM forces.

26. Laos falls to the Pathet Lao and the Hmong are all killed or flee around the world.  Many now live in the US.  Some, amazingly, still live in the Laos hills avoiding the Laotian army.

27. Cambodia is in civil war at this point and the communist Khmer Rouge win the conflict in many ways thanks to the king (who is still in China) publically supporting them.

28. The Thai / Cambodian border is mined.  A lot.

29. The Khmer Rouge move into the capital of Cambodia amid celebrations, but they have another agenda.  They announce that all the people must leave the city immediately.  Anyone who argues is shot on the spot.  Those hiding in the French embassy are forced to leave and shot.

30. The Khmer Rouge forces the people of the cities of Cambodia to work in the fields as farmers.  Anyone who argues is shot.

31. The Khmer Rouge leader starts rounding up people who do not fit his plans, basically educated people.  Has them all seriously tortured and then taken out to fields and beaten around the head until dead.  This is a staggering amount of people.

32. The Khmer Rouge then tries to take over Southern Vietnam.

33. The Vietnamese invade Cambodia, knock over the Khmer Rouge in two weeks and turn Cambodia into a vassal state only allowed to buy products from the Vietnamese (much like Laos then).

34. Thousands of Laotians start to die from Unexploded US Ordinances (UXO’s) every year.

35. Thousands of Cambodians step on land mines every year.

36. Thousands of Vietnamese start developing strange symptoms and having children with very serious birth defects.  This is traced to “Agent Orange” that the US dropped on the jungles of Vietnam.  “Agent Orange” contains some of the worst ingredients imaginable. Top of the list is Dioxin – look it up.  Its claimed effect was to defoliate the areas hiding VC troops (Chu Chi for example), but the ingredients basically kill all life, not just trees.

37. Australia does not become communist.

That is the basics.  There is much more to it than that, but this is enough for you to be going on with.  What is clear from the history of the area is that the US hates Communism.  Hates it to such an extent that they almost nuked the country they were trying to defend to stop it.  That’s some hate.

Why?

What is so wrong with Communism?

Well, nothing in particular, but it is essentially a people supposedly without rich and poor.  Equality.  Which doesn’t seem so bad until you realise how screwed up some of the attempts to implement the idea have been. 

Take Cambodia.  There, the Khmer Rouge were inspired by Maoist Communism and yet decided that it was not going far enough.  They tried to force the entire Cambodian people back into a simple farming life, a basic existence, by shooting anyone who said anything against it. 

Alternatively, take Laos, the Pathet Lao won the war and changed the country forever.  Consequently, Laos is one of the world’s poorest countries; it has elections but only one party is on the ballot. 

The issue is not so much that a share-alike egalitarian culture is a bad idea, only that it has not been successfully implemented yet (Kerala in India not withstanding- it’s only a state).  To the US though, it is more than this.  The US is essentially designed as a country that rewards striving for wealth.  The idea that a man is due the full value of his work in the pursuit of happiness.  This is the “American Dream.”  What it leads to is a country split between those who have and those who have not.  Those who have: have a lot, and those who have not: have bugger all. 

The government is highly influenced by those who have and they were not about to give it all up to those who have not, right!?  Bingo.  The people who have won the “American Dream” deeply fear to lose their cut of the world’s profit.  This fear underpins almost all US aggression around the world.  The rest is just marketing; the picking of a bogyman and sticking it to him.

The Aftermath

The aftermath of the American War is the greater tragedy. 

Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge was one of the most bloodthirsty murdering governments in history.  One really has to get Biblical to match them.  Would such a group have prevailed if not for the war?  This is perhaps something that no one could have predicted.  However, their legacy is still with us today; anyone over 35 in Cambodia lived through the Khmer Rouge government.  That in itself is an achievement and the scars are everywhere.  There is honestly something in the eyes, something in the attitude of Cambodians, which is not yet healed; the entire country is still emotionally broken.  Mostly, this is due to the lack of justice done on the Khmer leaders.  Pol Pot died under house arrest escaping a trial, and even the man who ran the Tuol Sleng Centre (also known as S-21) has not been tried yet.  The ringleaders of the Khmer Rouge are all dying of old age before being judged.  Its not that putting octogenarians into jail is going to protect anyone, but the country needs to judge these people as wrong.  Only then can the healing begin. 

The horror of S-21 and the Killing Fields

So what’s stopping it?  The Khmer Rouge have simply faded into a new skin: that of the Communist Party.  The trials are therefore all being held up and so justice and healing for the Cambodian people is still a long way off.

When visiting Cambodia, a number of things tug at your heartstrings.  That is, after they are through tugging your arms.  The whole country is awash with children who are forced to work.  In many cases this is a genuine need for the family to supplement its income, but it does not change the fact that these children are everywhere.  Everywhere but school.

Child workers sell theirs wares and services to a
Western Lady

The second thing also tugs at you.  At your ankles.  So many people have lost limbs through stepping on mines, or though the war, that you encounter them all the time.  In certain places you will encounter one every ten minutes.  Cesca and I went to a performance by an invalided acting troop in Siem Reap and saw firsthand the mental effects and stigma of having such injuries in a country without a social service.  Begging becomes their only hope.

The disabled acting troop in Siem Reap

Thus, the cycle perpetuates itself.  In fact, for the children at least, selling bracelets, massages and themselves on the beaches of Cambodia is a real career choice.  I remember Cesca asking one little girl what she wanted to do when she was grown up.  “Doctor!” came the reply.  Cesca was moved enough to buy the proffered item; why not to help a girl in her ambitions?  Twenty minutes later another girl came up and she wanted to be a doctor as well.  So did the next one after that.  It seems that “becoming a doctor” means more sales because Western people respect doctors a lot.

Small things like that work on you.  They gnaw.  Cambodians are great people- friendly, helpful and smart.  They need a break, but for now, they are broken.

Laos

The US really wanted to save Laos. I say that now because this is the only redeeming quality for what they did to this country.  It was akin to saving a man from robbery by shooting him in the head.  In addition, official history has not been kind to them on this score- the Pathet Lao, now the government, has very subtly changed the version of events in its official histories.  As far as they are concerned the US were fighting against the Laotians, not for them.  Such a dichotomy partially explains the over-bombing of Laos, making it the most bombed country in the world, when in fact the truth is far worse. 

The US bombed the hell out of Laos to try to save it.

Of all the countries to suffer from the American War, Laos is the one left with the longest legacy.  The entire eastern side of the country is littered with unexploded bombs of all types.  Even monstrously large B52 bombs are regularly dug up. On one video we watched they found two in the road between two schools.  Both armed, both ready to blow if knocked.  Aside from the big stuff, Laos was cluster bombed to hell and back.  Cluster munitions, called bombies by the children of Laos, are small cricket ball sized bombs of varying types. 

A collection of deactivate cluster bombs (bombies) made into an art exhibition at COPE

The idea is that the cluster container opens and disperses these bombies over a large area.  The problem is that they often did not explode; in order to prime the basic type requires a number of rotations.  If they hit a paddy field before the required count or snag a tree and stop spinning then they will often not explode.  That is until picked up or disturbed by a local.  Then they will blast out 200 red-hot ball bearings in all directions.  Mixed in with such devices were all sorts of ‘special’ bombies.  Some are smaller, some are meaner, but by far the most terrifying is the Spider Mine.  On landing, this bombie shoots out trip wires in four directions and blows up the first thing that crosses them-

Usually a child.

You see, Laos is so poor that scrap metal is worth serious money.  Little children all want to get the bounty on scrap and so regularly hunt for Bombies.  This is too often a tale with the most tragic ending imaginable.  I cannot think of anything worse than children blown to bits by cluster bombs dropped by an ally in order to protect their culture. 

That is exactly what happens every day here.

Laos was the country that stole our hearts in SEA.  It has an innocence about it that belies the fact that a fair percentage of the population is living with the threat of being blown to bits every single time they step out their door.  It is testament to their innocence that they do not realise that this is not normal.

Perhaps they are waking up.  The government of Laos is a classic Eastern Block Communism but now with capitalist overtones.  The opening of the country to international trade has started a chain reaction that will eventually lead to change, even if that change is violent.  Necessity will drive it.  For now Laos is a wondrous mix of countryside Asia unchanged for 100 years and French inspired food and drink.  The beer in Laos is one of the very best in the entire world and in the capital you can get a brilliant steak dinner for pocket change. 

The simple Mekong Life – how long will it last?

The visitor numbers are increasing and it will not be long before this travel trade, properly directed, will make a real difference.  Much of the conversation held between backpackers is on the subject of the travel trade in Laos.  The question is, “will the money made from travel affect Laos in a good or bad way?”  Already the town of Vang Vieng is given over to supplying tourists with drink, drugs, endless episodes of Friends and riverfront clubbing.

Lao T-Shirts, great but only for tourists.

To those harmed by bombs it is already too late, but organisations such as MAG (Mine Action Group) are trying to de-bomb Laos by 2012.  On our visit to their headquarters, they showed us a computer drawn map of the amount of Unexploded Ordinance in Laos.  Each bomb sortie was a red dot.  The entire eastern side of the country was red with so many dots that they all blended together.  You can see the data yourself online using Google Earth.  We donated all we could to MAG and hope they achieve their projected clear date as each year adds more misery to this already burdened country.

Downtime in Vang Vieng

Vietnam

Vietnam’s issue is not with UXO’s – although they do exist and like Cambodia, you should never walk off the path, nor is it to do with societal mental damage.  In Vietnam, they have sorted through the American War and put the blood very firmly on the hands of the US.  In Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) there is a very good museum to the war that pulls no punches to tell you what the US did to these people.  However, it did not break them.  The Vietnamese are proud of their achievements.  Proud to have won what, was from their point of view, a war of independence.  I could not help but be impressed by both their attitude to it and indeed their industrious attitude to the future.  So, what is the damage here?

Basho considers facing one of these monster US tanks in battle – they are scary enough when decommissioned.

Two things. Firstly, one man you meet fought against the US, the next fought for them.  This has a dividing effect on the country and while the north/south border has physically gone, the mental border is still there.  Still, that is no worse than in England.  The second, and far worse thing, is the way the world see’s Vietnam is through US war movies.  I watched Rambo cut down multitudes of evil VC in the Rambo: Part 2 movie.  I saw Platoon portray the VC as simple targets.  I have seen them dehumanised repeatedly.  Even the films that try and “apologise” for the war, like The Deer Hunter, shows the VC in a way that would be scorned if it were – say – the Japanese.

I have seen a man in Ho Chi Min take his children for a walk to the same park every day.  Feed them breakfast on the grass, play with them and watch over them.  He did not fit a stereotype I was force fed all my life, he was simply a good father.

This Hollywood movie misrepresentation leaves the Vietnamese with a lot of catching up to do even today.  I lost count of the number of people who warned me against the Vietnamese culture.  Many said that they were rude, hostile and not friendly.  This malignment was quickly banished on arrival.  I have to say that the Vietnamese are some of the nicest people we have yet met on our journey and all through the country the same smiling faces greeted us.  We felt very welcome, even when chatting to a man who had lost his arm during the war.  They are proud of the war.  Such wounds are worn with pride here.

 

The modern Tet celebration has a real buz about it.  It is everyone’s birthday, the New Year and the “surge that changed the war” all rolled into one. Great fireworks.

Conclusion

In 50 years time, will we be writing posts like this about Iraq?  The amount chaos left in South East Asia is truly tragic.  Death and destruction to prevent a theory, a theory that said if SEA falls to the “commies” that “western” people may be next.  The real fear the US had was a fear of about its own societal core, it is after all a very young country and such upheavals always seem more possible.  It is no gratification that the US even turned on its own people to flush out possible communists with the advent of the “Reds under the bed” and McCarthyism.  It is, I guess, just another part of the tragedy of the American War in South East Asia.

Regards,

Basho

Endnotes:

Where the note is marked “(WIKI)”, it is linked to Wikipedia.  Note that this brilliant website is not the be all and end all of factual information on anything.  It is, however, a very good place to start.

We made our way into the bus station to find a ATM from which I needed to extract the local currency (Ringgits).  At that moment I had nothing but a little Singapore money.  The ATM spat me out £10 worth and refused to give me anymore.  I tried all my cards, VISA, MasterCard and Switch but nothing worked.  A rising sense of worry hit me; I was in a very foreign country with almost no money at all.   Being the first time I had experienced this dread I was quite mortified by it.  Now, of course, I don’t give it a second thought.  You see I soon learned that all my banks and credit card agencies block my cards once I cross any border.  I have to make a round of phone calls to the UK at high cost to get them working again.

“It’s for you protection,” they always tell me.

“It’s an automatic system,” they sometimes claim.

“Well turn it off!”” I ask, but this of course they cannot do.  Nor can it learn.  I am journeying around SEA and will cross many borders, if they know that it is me using the cards in Laos can they not work out that it is also me on the border town with Cambodia?

Obviously not!

Anyway, we caught a taxi to our Guest House (Number 20) that was within the old town on a street called Jonker Street, which is within the China town centre of the district. 

The view from our Guest House

The China Town here is made up of the classic open fronted stores, which could be selling anything from soap to singlets, and mansions built to house the rubber barons that made the port so profitable.

 

Temples abound in the area

I sat under the aircon in our room trying to cool down enough for my mind to focus.  Sufficiently cooled we went exploring.  The old town is split in two by a large river running through the middle.  One side is the China town, resplendent with many Malaysian-style temples the other by a fort called A Famosa atop a steep hill. 

 

The fort on the hill contains the bones of those who fought the British

Surrounding the base of this fort are all the museums and attractions.  The history of Malacca is extremely complex, but the general gist is that the British took it over from its previous European incumbents and the town flourished into a major trading port.  If one is really interested, then a particular historical-fiction novel gives a lively account of the period through the eyes of its eponymous hero.  The novel is called, “Flashman and the Great Game” and features many of the heroes and villains from that era.  Most notably the great Victorian explorer and adventurer James Brooke who after having his penis shot off by pirates went on a bloody rampage across the coast and put all pirates to death.  Such success he had that he was able to be appointed the Raja of Sarawak and British influence in the area was cemented.

You wont get much of that tale in the excellent Independence Museum, it mentions him only a little, but the British did have a massive influence here until the Japanese invaded and after the country had a long hard slog to independence.  Something that they are particularly proud of.  The museum recounts all this and includes the later struggle against communists that much of the SEA has suffered from.

The car which the President drove to Independence

One of the peculiarities about Malaysia is the price the beer.  Being a Muslim country, the locals don’t drink hardly at all and beer is consequently imported for the minorities and foreigners and costs a lot of ringgits.  I was paying 14 for a large bottle and some nicer places had it even higher in price.

 

James goes glass-eyed as he realises the price of beer in this bar

On the recommendation of the guidebook, we tried the national dish; Satay at the Capitol Satay restaurant near the (very) little India north of the main square. I have always been a big fan of this in the UK and had been looking forward to trying it in its home.  We went to the restaurant, which was a run down place and full of locals (both things I know know are actually good signs), and was seated at a table with a large gas bottle burner underneath and a hole in the middle.  They then brought out an entire cauldron full of peanut satay sauce and turned on the gas bottle.  A flame licked the bottom of the sauce and it started to bubble. We were then invited to take plates of uncooked food from a large open front fridge and cook it ourselves in the bubbling brew.  It was quite a lot of fun, although the multitude of other tables and therefore open flames made the already hot environment akin to a furnace.  We boiled the meats, vegetables and cheeses and then tried vainly to get it onto our plates and into our mouths without making a mess everywhere.  Eventually I realised that making a mess was all part of the fun and got stuck in. 

Cesca, unfortunately, doesn’t particularly like satay, was suffering a little from the heat and not liking the mess when she spilt a big dollop on her top…

After that we adjourned the meal.  I am just glad that, what with the port being so close, the locals probably have heard worse swearwords.

Probably.

After a few more pleasant days exploring Melaka

 

This is Melaka: temples and Tuk-tuk’s

we decided to head back to the station and catch the bus to our next stop, Kuala Lumpur.

KL is the capital of Malaysia and, so far in our journey, the city I have enjoyed the very least.  I don’t know what exactly I don’t like about KL, for it has another great China town, a smooth running transport system, large open spaces and of course those twin towers to visit.  It is also very very busy, smelly with big open drains, packed to the gills with traffic, and full of a feeling of danger.  I think I got the sense that it was not a city at peace with itself in the way say, Melbourne is.  Anyway, we had a mission to perform while here, which was to find Cesca an international plug adapter for her computer and camera chargers.  We decided to try in one of the large malls and were pointed towards the low Yat tech mall across town in the Golden Triangle area.

Riding the monorail train service was an experience.  I had no idea so many people could fit in such a small space without undergoing gravitational collapse and becoming a black hole.  The joke was not lost on me that, what with the monorail going in essentially a very big circle, and the crush inside, if we were to hit something then we might well discover the Higgs Boson make the Large Hadron Collider obsolete over night!

Eventually we reached the stop (Imbi) and made our way down the correct mall.  The city was thronged with people and, strangely, masseuses and we gingerly picked our way through them all.  The Low Yat mall was even busier. 

I grabbed an iced coffee and jumped into the throng.  7 floors of pulsating technology of all possible types.  I expect it was my friend Kieran’s very idea of heaven.  I saw everything under the sun that required a plug, all manner of Mp3 players, laptops (including the new IBM mini laptop – nice!), phones of types I have never even heard of (and I read Engadget!), huge stores of computers, bags, geek clothes and multitudes of music and gaming shops. 

One strange thing, amongst many, was that here they don’t buy games they go to a store and pay for a few goes like an arcade but with PS2’s.

It was also a place that had no idea of the recommended retail price.  By shopping around we were able to find one store selling the needed adapter at a quarter of the price of the others.  And although it does have a cheap Made-In-China look to it, it does work fine.

That night the heavens opened and we spent the evening in the China Town market watching the world flow by.  The market runs South to North along Jl Petaling behind the main China Town roads.  It is thankfully covered and we escaped most of the rains retribution.  Food in any China Town is always much of a muchness, but it was a pleasant meal nonetheless with lots of fluids to replace those we have sweated out during the day.

The next day we spent hiking up to the Menara KL communications tower, which has fabulous views of the city and surrounding areas and is well worth the hike through the thick forest that circles it.  It is definitely the best place to take pictures of the Petronas Towers. 

The cost of entry includes a video console which gives you a window-by-window tour of the city.  In the afternoon we walked over to Merdeka Square, which was hosting a cycle race.  This large open space is basically different colonial buildings surrounding a cricket pitch.  Its openness makes sunstroke a real possibility and so we made our way down to the north end which boasts a large set of fountains, the spray from which cooled out heads nicely.

We left KL the next day and I was glad to get away from the chaos of that city.  I don’t suppose more people live there than London, or that the streets are any less chaotically laid out, but I didn’t wish to return any time soon. 

We were heading towards the Cameron Highlands and a spate of cooler weather!