Fukushima Da-ichi nuclear plant

And so, on this March 17th 2011, radiation is continuing to leak from the TEPCO Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, but at what rate? I keep hearing conflicting reports about radiation levels monitored, recommended exclusion zone distances, and the possibility of health effects. Will this affect my travel plans to Japan in November 2011? I decided to do some general study into comparatively toxic levels (measured in millisieverts) in different circumstances, and collated some readings from the Japanese Government‘s official data releases (from the MEXT website) of radiation levels that have been detected in various major cities in Japan, and at various outposts within the 80km international exclusion zone. Bear in mind the date of this essay, the potential for further increases in radiation release cannot at this stage be excluded.

It all comes down to millisieverts (mSv). In Australia, the average annual radiation is 1.5mSv (3-6mSv in America). Smoking causes annual exposure to 10-60mSv. The legal limit for nuclear workers in the US is 20mSV annually. Nuclear power workers and airline workers can be exposed from 2-10mSv annually. Radiographers average 3.2mSv annually. Sleeping in bed with a partner every night for a year exposes you to 0.18mSv, whereas living next to an “intact” nuclear power station for a year exposes you to a maximum of only 0.01mSv, the same exposure as you get from eating 20 bananas per year. In terms of single doses, a dental xray is 0.005mSv, a mammogram 3mSv, CT brain up to 5mSv, a CT chest up to 15-20mSv, a plain abdominal series 14mSv, and a chest xray 0.01mSv. A fully body CT would be up to 45mSv. US emergency services personnel are allowed to be exposed to a single dose of 500mSv while preventing a major nuclear escalation, while single exposures of 1000mSv are allowed when lives need to be rescued.

In terms of health effects, it’s conservatively postulated from a linear expression that every 10mSv exposure adds 0.05% to your lifetime risk of cancer, an 0.5% increased risk after continuous exposure at 20mSv/yr has also been reported, although increased cancer rates have only been proven to occur after exposures of more than 100mSv (as a single dose) or over 100mSv per year (ie. 20 head CTs, or 5 chest CTs). By the same linear extrapolation, a single exposure of 1000mSv increases your lifetime risk of cancer by 5%. A dose of well over 50mSv is required to cause a miscarriage in the first 2-3 weeks of pregnancy, doses greater than 300mSv may cause severe developmental problems in the 3rd-8th week of pregnancy, and the risk (of congenital abnormalities, thyroid cancer and leukaemia) decreases over time so that the risk to a foetus over 20 weeks’ gestation is practically identical to the risk presented to an adult exposed to the same amount of radiation. Exposure of over 50mSv/year for 30 years can lead to cataracts. A single dose is comparative to a cumulative dose, in terms of carcinogenicity, although larger doses are safer if staggered over time.

The radiation levels in Japan peaked at 400mSv/hr next to reactor 3 of the Fukushima Da-ichi plant. A person standing next to the plant continuously at these levels would suffer bone marrow toxicity (200mSv) within half an hour, and acute radiation sickness (500-1000mSv) after 2 hours. At these levels, 50% of people would die after 11 hours of exposure (4500mSv), from serious bleeding and infections. After 24 hours of exposure (>10,000mSv) no one would survive. By contrast, at Three Mile Island, the closest resident was exposed to less than 1mSv. The levels have dropped to around 80-700mSV/yr (10-80uSv/h) at the outposts 30km around the reactor (noting that >100mSv/yr is proven to be carcinogenic). Tokyo is experiencing radiation of 0.05uSv/h* (although had a brief wave of up to 10uSv/h following the last reactor explosion), Kyoto 0.04uSv/h, Osaka 0.05uSv/h, Hiroshima 0.05uSv/h*, and Sendai (the area affected by the tsunami just north of the plant) 0.14uSv/h* (or 1.3mSv per year, the same as background leves in Australia). All of these readings are below the level at which health becomes affected. Even if you went to visit Japan for a week and stayed 30km from the nuclear reactor, your total exposure would be up to 13mSv** (the equivalent of an plain abdominal xray series or a CT chest). Living on the cusp of the exclusion zone at the current radiation wouldn’t result in a measurable increase your lifetime risk of cancer until you had been exposed continuously over 6 months**.

A week long visit to the outskirts of the nuclear reactor zone would increase my risk of cancer by 0.07%**, this would be essentially zero in any of the major capital cities. Even camping outside the front gate of the reactor would be unlikely to increase your cancer risk in the first 100 hours. Well,  now i’ve got that into perspective, time for me to book those incredibly cheap flights and support the Japanese economic recovery.

A nuclear SAFE tourist destination

Disclaimer: Radiation levels may be subject to change. Watch for updates.

Update 18/3

* = all readings current as at 17/3

** = 30km from the Fukushima plant, the peak radiation level detected on 17/3 was 170uSv/h, which would expose you to 30mSv over a week, increasing your lifetime risk of cancer after 3-4 weeks of continuous exposure at this level (however, very safe nearby readings are as low as 1-3uSv/h). A linear extrapolation shows that a week’s exposure at the higher level of radiation could potentially increase your lifetime risk of cancer by0.15% (although this is below the threshold for statistically proven carcinogenesis).

See more on up-to-date radiation monitoring from the Japanese Government (MEXT) at http://eq.wide.ad.jp/index_en.html.

The counter at Readings, Carlton

As a child, I was always inspired by the effect of being in a library. Surrounded by books stacked metres high. Knowledge. I could spend hours, just absorbed, going from book to book.

Readings, Carlton gives you that feeling. Bookshelves lined to the ceilings. Popular books, literary works, hardcover titles on art, design, textbooks, travel books that transport you to other worlds, children’s books of high fantasy, religion, history, the highlights of civilisation, knowledge, learning. Every category that one would find in a library. The books themselves are well picked; classic graphic novels sit amongst Nebula and Hugo award winners, Pulitzer and Booker prize winners, topical and controversial books, classics, obscure but important treatises on various subjects. This is not your average bookshop, supplying what an imagined denominator would want to read. No, this is a place devoted to the love of words, pictures, human experience.

Knick-knacks, Readings

This is a bookshop that typifies Melbourne- the quirky, the amusing, the classic. There is culture- movies in the form of DVDs, CDs of music, magazines from a variety of subcultures and subjects; there is the fine touch of small gifts such as small books with jokes, observations, photos, elegant handcrafted postcards, knick-knacks for a loved one’s desk. This is quality with an amazing breadth; while there is quantity it is not the all-encompassing quantity of Borders that includes the banal and tawdry. You get the sense that it has all been hand picked.

Children's Section, Readings

There are nooks and crannies to sit in and enjoy a read. Leather lined seating by the window, even an adorable chair and table in the excellent children’s section. The genres are paid good attention as well as the mainstream fiction. The non-fiction has, once again, depth as well as breadth- the psychology section covers guides for the casual reader all the way to the DSM IV case book.

More than anything, Readings is a bookshop that housed part of my mind and being and soul while I was a poor student at the University of Melbourne. The staff are helpful, welcoming, warm. They will talk to you of their own love of books, reading, culture. And so it is a place of memories that has a warm place in the hearts of many a student throughout the city. Not to mention that it is open till 11pm in Carlton most days!

While Readings, Carlton is the original shop, opened in 1969- it has expanded to locations in the CBD (in the State Library ), Hawthorn, Malvern, Port Melbourne, St Kilda, and during the Melbourne Writer’s Festival- all with a similar ethos and approach to the art of book-selling.

 

 

Bustling Hindu temple situated in the centre of Little India

Crikey! I have just stepped onto the KTM Intercity overnight steam train from KL Sentral station to Singapore. I’ve just lugged my enormous 20kg travel bag about 13 carriages down to J1 in 32 degree heat, and dripping with sweat. My feet are killing me from my expedition to the mosque, and walking around the main shopping centres of Bukit Bintang, looking for an obscure Korean Pop EP at the various CD stores in Kuala Lumpur. After about half a dozen average CD stores, we lost faith. I have become accustomed over the last few weeks to the luxury of hotel rooms with adjustable air-conditioning, and unfortunately this air-con is just a few degrees to warm for my comfort, as i lie on the top of a rickety plastic bunk hanging from the wall on hinges, looking up at the roof just over half a metre above me. At least my friend has a window on the lower bunk. If only I was over six foot. As I climb down with difficulty to the floor, and squeeze past the non-working TV into the toilet, I realise it doesn’t flush. At least there is a sink with running water, even if not fit for drinking. And there is a small shower, a couple of towels and a couple of bottles of drinking water provided. There is nowhere to stand, unless you want to risk standing between the carriages, which they let you do to stick your head out in the fresh air and admire the mountainous jungle countryside in pitch black, despite the warnings about doors being left open.

In fact, you’ll hear most of the doors of the train

Chinese Temple near the Ibis on Bencoolen

clanging all night, because they tend to pretty much be ignored, and just smack open once in a while. Suprisingly, once I finally accept I have no option but attempt Buddhist meditation in order to sleep, I awake 5 hours later at Johro Bahru at Malaysian Immigration and Customs. We seem to be delayed here for almost an hour, as the Immigration Police munched on take away food, laughing and playing cards. Perhaps we were refuelling. There were a number of prolonged stops along the way. The train is supposed to arrive at 7am in the morning, but it’s much more like 9am when you arrive at your destination. At Johor Bahru a policeman comes on board, takes the departure card you got at the airport, and squiggles on your passport. Over the bridge you go, and disembark at Woodlands station in Singapore with all your belongings. Nothing is to be left on the train. All cigarettes and alcohol is confiscated, or you pay tax for it. If you declare anything, or appear confused in any way, you might also find yourself separated from your pirated DVD box sets from Vietnam. Fortunately, we’re looking calm and smooth, as we sail confidently through the non declaration aisle without detection, and wait in the holding area for about half an hour before we are allowed to reboard. Another forty minutes and we’ve progresed to Tanjong Pagar station at the end of the line, and a cleaner kindly wakes us from the empty seats we have usurped as our own (for half an hour of far superior sleep), to disembark.

This is a relatively simples tation compared with KL Sentral. There are few shops to get basic food and drink, passenger information is closed, there are a couple of security guards, and a taxi rank. No ATM. After we refuse a ride in a van from an old chinese fellow, who would deprive us of a $50AUD note for a ride to our hotel, because in his economy Singapore and Australian dollars are roughly the same, I’m informed by one of the security guards that all taxis in Singapore have electronic credit card facilities. We jump in the next taxi that stops at the rank. A middle aged retiree driver, takes us for a direct but opportunistic guided tour of the CBD through relatively modest traffic. It’s a bank holiday today, but shopping, tourism and transport here are running 365 days a year. They don’t close museums on a Monday here,

as they do in Kuala Lumpur. Every day is a holiday here, or a working day, depending on how you look at it. It’s definitely a city that stops for nothing. I’m relieved by the fact that my cab fare is only just over $5SGD ($4AUD). The delightful Chinese man tells me proudly that “in Singapore, we have very few cheats”. Everything is certainly designed for the convenience of tourists here,although after travelling elswhere in South East Asia, the budget part of my holiday has definitely come to an end. Fortunately our hotel was brilliant value for money, and that we booked it early. It is now well over $200 per night to stay here. This hotel is basic, but extraordinarily clean, modern and comfortable, with a pleasant atmosphere, little need to rely on the helpful service, a working wi-fi, drinkable tap water, a convenient coin laundry, cheap smorgasbord full of Singaporean cuisine (lots of Malaysian curry Laksa and Chilli Crab), a 24-hour 7-11 next door, and a much needed shower after that rickety steam train. It is situated just behind a busy Chinese temple where I dare you to take a photograph inside, around some outdoor malls with street shops, Asian food centres, and on the same block as the Sim Lim Square (where you can buy some of the cheapest electronic goods in Asia). It is five minutes walk from a station on the MRT (Singapore’s world class underground metro railway network), and ten minutes walk from Little India, with its spectacular array of food and clothing shops, with a bustling Hindu Temple, and all the sights and smells of Indian cooking and incense.

Marina Bay Sands Complex

There is only about 4 minutes between trains on all of the major lines of the MRT, which are conveniently linked by inte rchange stations. Changing lines is frequent when travelling around on the metro, but this gets used to, as the carriages are well air-conditioned, the trains you need to catch are generally conveniently on the opposite platform as you alight, the edge of the platform is met by a wall with glass doors which open in synchrony with the train doors when the train arrives at the platform, preventing any accidental or intentional deaths at the station. A poster of three beaming Chinese princesses wearing bright coloured gowns and jewelled crowns tells you to be polite and wait for the people coming off the train, as you stand behind the red lines on either side of the doorway. All this leads to the efficiency of people getting on and off in less than about 20 seconds before the doors close. There’s much more standing room available on these trains than in Melbourne. They are relatively cheap, and if you’re here for two or three days you can get a tourist pass from City Hall station, which allows you to merely swipe your way through the gates for a few days without having to buy tickets from the convenient electronic machines that give you a one dollar refund when your standard ticket has expired. You can literally get anywhere on these trains, and the buses (which operate on the same ticketing system, unlike in Sydney), connect at bus interchanges that are well labelled with route maps and numbers, so you can find the correct berth for your bus, while you watch the television screen to see what time it is arriving, which is usually within 10 minutes or so. Exits to the stations are also well signposted with all the major shopping centres, landmarks and tourist attractions, so that when you alight, you know which exit to use. There also is a local map avaialble at every exit to every station in Singapore. The trains are roomy, clean, less noisy and seem to accelerate and decelerate a lot faster and yet more smoothly than the trains in Melbourne. A world class public transport system here for a tiny fraction of the cost to the consumer, makes one realise how much Australia has fallen behind in terms of metropolitan infrastructure. Although in many ways, while the traffic is much better during off peak hours, this is a city that competes with Sydney in terms of its aesthetics and grandiose modern architecture, and Melbourne in terms of its multiculturalism and convenience. It succeeds Melbourne in this goal at the very least.

The enormous Marina Bay Sands Casino with its shopping malls, elite hotel, and skypark viewing deck where hotel guests swim in a pool that meanders all the way up to the roof’s edge, sports the best city views in Singapore. The walk from Raffles Place MRT station to the Hotel complex around the bay opposite the Merlion, through a mist-spraying water sculpture is spectacular enough, with views of both the Casino building with its three massive towers, and the enormous Singapore Flyer,

Marina Bay Sands Hotel Rooftop Pool at the Skypark

with its rotating capsules, which you can sit inside for 30 dollars and rotate for half an hour above the mouth of the Singapore River and observe the skyline and the Formula 1 grand prix racing track below. I’m still jealous I didn’t get to use the pool, but that would have been over $300 a night for the privilege.

Every drink of every possible flavour is available at the 7-11 here, including beer. In fact, everything here is exceptionally utiliser-friendly. This may not be cheap living, but it is relatively good value for money when you consider it, if you were ever to get over being a tourist. It must be the cleanest city in the world, mainly because it is subject to some of the most stringently enforced anti-littering legislation. There are no smelly drains here. There are always public rubbish bins and western toilets available for the squeamish, and traffic is orderly and road laws are obeyed. They even drive in the correct lane, for those of you who find sitting in left hand drive vehicles overseas disorienting. There are a number of social advertising campaigns here urging people to be vigilant against terrorism, to reduce their environmental footprint, and to prioritise disadvantaged people on public transport. The Images of Singapore museum on Sentosa Island kicks off with a video about the four ethnic winds meeting in Singapore, representing the Chinese, the Indians, the ethnic Malays, and the British, whose wise and jolly spokesmen bless you with their wishes for family, peace, community and harmony, respectively. This is a city where multiculturalism is celebrated, and heralded as the heart of their national achievement and success. This is definitely a city that feels that it has got the balance right. It promotes itself as almost a perfect way of living, a thriving economy with an enormous appetite for growth, a place with progressive and yet totally sensible attitudes and laws, and for the total convenience in the way everything in Singapore is designed, in every aspect of the commercial world, in many ways it is hard to disagree. Even shopping here may not be cheap, but the range is far more extensive than anything we have available in Australia. If you are shopping for anything, Orchard Road is the place to go, with hundreds of massive shopping malls, you can find even the most obscure here, including the

Korean EP we were looking for in the massive HMV in 313@Somerset, which is a shopping centre at the entrance to a train station on the MRT, and also does some very tasty burgers at The HandBurger. HMV has inflated prices, just like in Australia, but if you really want that random CD you can’t get anywhere else, that limited edition, that artist that is out of print, at HMV in 313@Somerset they have everything. They not only had our Korean Pop EP. They had a Korean Pop section, as well as an Asian charts section (on which the EP was number 15) selling hundreds of copies (that Malaysia seemed to be completely out of print for). That CD shop at Pacific Plaza, just up the street, around the corner after the underpass is also a great place to get obscure and locally produced lounge music, that’s worth a listen just to walk through the shop. Down the street, one of these shopping centres houses Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore chain which is the largest bookstore in Southeast Asia. The Forumis a shopping centre almost

totally dedicated to children, with a number of clothing stores, and Toys-R-Us. There are food courts everywhere, and everything is within walking distance. If you really get over being a tourist in Singapore, and shopping is your thing, this is pretty much shopping heaven.

It is here, in this thriving metropolis, we came across Emily and Paul. Emily was one of the interns at the hospital where we worked together last year in Ballarat. She has now migrated to Brisbane with Paul, who has survived his first year of medical school with eccentric professors who link random celestial events to the development of G6PD deficiency, in a faculty which appears to be run predominantly by television personalities. After facebook alerts us to our locational coincidence, we decide to catch up for a day at the zoo. We start off at the Jurong Bird Park where we get our three-park pass to see the Bird Park, Rainforest Zoo, and Night Safari. The Bird Show is spectacular, particularly the parrot that can sing songs in three languages and count to ten in both English and Chinese. The best rainforest zoo in the world is another great boast of Singapore. The night safari, next door to the zoo, is also no disappointment. There are two train stations on the MRT running regular buses all day (or night) to these locations, and if you miss the last bus after the Safari, a $4 courtesy bus will take you within 5 minutes’ walk of your hotel.

White Tiger

You will see some of the most exotic, endangered, and African animals, grazing comfortably in this well maintained paradise in the central hinterland in the centre of the Island of Singapore. On the night safari, you will see not only all of the animals that you forgot to expect at the zoo, but all kinds of random mountain goats and deer, African wild dogs and hyenas, elephants, rhinos, bats, otters, gliders, all the usual and unusual big cats, and even extraordinary creatures that look like they originated in Jim Henson’s laboratory. As we walk around the Zoo with Emily and Paul, surveying poisonous and not so poisonous but just as deadly snakes, feeding giraffes, we trade stories. They are headed to the filthy and inconvenient capital city of Kuala Lumpur we have just escaped to the comparable tourist paradise of Singapore. They’re also going on the same train, but it will cost them three times as much in the opposite direction, for exactly the same type of cabin. You might be just as comfortable going for a seated option, or even catching a plane instead.

Singapore Zoo

If you have a few days to spend here, it’s really worth waking up at a civilised time one morning, leisurely taking the MRT to Harbourfront station, and getting a $4SGD cab to the Mt Faber viewing point, to ride a Jewel Box Cable Car across the channel to the Imbiah Lookout on Sentosa Island. Here you can purchase your Sentosa Choice packages that allow you to get discounts on a range of Island attractions. Sentosa is like a giant theme park, but with independent attractions. There also is a Resort World, and Universal Studios for the kids, with a rollercoaster. A massive water park is being built as we speak. There is an interactive museum here called Images of Singapore, a restaurant, ice-creamery, gift shop, ATM (believe me, you will need it) and 4D theatre (where you get tickled, sprayed and spat on, as you watch your 3D adventure), and cinematic rollercoaster ride. You can choose to get to Siloso Beach from here by either Luge (a cross between a go-kart and a toboggan, swerving about 1km down the hill), Skyride (a feeble viewing chairlift), or MegaZip (a massive flying fox that zooms you over the rainforest canopy within seconds down to the beach). If none of these modes of transport interest you, take the free courtesy bus around Sentosa Island. If you think they’re all far too expensive, then get the escalators down the the foot of the massive

Mt Faber Cable Car Experience

Merlion statue, near the entrance to Resort World, and catch the monorail back to your hotel. If you’re not sure how much a particular tourist attraction costs in Singapore, estimate about $30 and your budget should start balancing. You can easily spend a whole day here, but you may as well give Underwater World a miss, as it’s far too packed and really doesn’t live up to its reputation as the biggest oceanarium in the world. It’s simply not. Seal and dolphin shows are the only highlight here, at the dolphin lagoon, and if you want your foot callouses bitten off by miniature fish after going on the small underwater travellator (where all kinds of rays and sharks fly over you), it will cost you $38 additional dollars for the privilege. There is also no discount here with your Sentosa Package. More interesting is Fort Siloso, which like the superior Battle Box at Fort Canning Park (where the scenario leading up to the British surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 is reenacted in a maze of old military tunnels), is an old military museum reminiscing the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, the worst disaster in British military history. Finally, after experiencing all the rides and attractions Sentosa has to offer, climbing the Merlion, walking past the artificial wave activites on the beach after sunset, it is finally time for the Songs of the Sea. This is a spectacular pyrotechnic display

Cannon guarding Sentosa Island

with multicoloured images projected onto an artificial wall of water, towering above a small village of stilt houses in the ocean, which light up in different colours as part of the display. The main characters dance and sing on the beach and interact with the giant pyrotechnic display, while sound effects and music emanate from the large speakers on the beach. The narrative may be a little lacking, but definitely child friendly, and the effects are spectacular. Fortunately, the monorail back to Harbourfront continues to depart approximately every 3 minutes from here, so there is plenty of transport back to your hotel, if you are not staying on one of the plush resorts on the Island already.

Finally a trip to the Asian Civilisations Museum is well worth the trip. Interactive video guides talk you through the various different galleries. You can sit and listen to the daily Islamic prayers sung in Arabic, at one headphone display, or go check out some of the spectacular Chinese embroidery. Every religion and historical culture in Asia is represented in this truly diverse and industrious museum. A short ride on the MRT to City Hall will lead you to Raffles Hotel, an old colonial building named after the British founder of Singapore, and is the home of the famous Singapore Sling (a refreshing cocktail, unlike the MegaZip which transported me from Imbiah Lookout to Siloso Beach), which you can purchase from either the Long Bar, in the courtyard, or on the balcony of

Sentosa Island Soung and Light Show

the Bar and Billiard bar in front of the fountain, for the pleasure of $58 dollars for two, including GST and a service fee. Probably the most expensive liquid per millilitre ever to be quenched down in such record time. What a shame I couldn’t keep the Raffles Hotel cocktail glass, although I dread to imagine what the price would be to buy one, were they available from the museum (near the Jubilee Hall auditorium and lounge) or gift shop, which sadly they are not. Everyone’s experience of Singapore is going to be somewhat different. They have enough variety and choice of activities and attractions, that you can pretty much take your pick. The flyer, Marina Bay Sands skypark, the zoo, night safari, and Mt Faber/Sentosa are all fantastic options. But for those who like to visit temples, and explore ethnic culture, you can take day tours of the city, or make your own way around the streets of Chinatown and Little India with relative ease. Everything you could ever want is avaialble here, and fortunately some genius has made sure nothing will be difficult for you to find. Just make sure you remember to bring plenty of cash if you’re planning to stay for any more than a few days. You will need it!

The Singapore Sling, as originally invented, at the Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel

Halong Bay, Vietnam

We’re currently sitting in an air conditioned corporate taxi to Halong City, crossing the massive iron truss bridges over the Red River Delta. I am continually amazed, watching intently as our well-groomed driver, dressed in an extraordinarily expensive suit, frequently overtakes into oncoming traffic barely 100 metres away at record speeds, and reenters the stream of traffic in one piece, without even flinching. I am beginning to appreciate that in Vietnam, driving in these conditions involves a completely different level of skill, requiring constant 360 attention and lightning reflexes. Perhaps this is why Asians make such terrible drivers in rural Australia. I could imagine how, being used to driving in Vietnamese conditions, you could drift into a daze driving in rural Australia because everything is so ordered and there are such relatively fewer obstacles, until of course you hit a surprise kangaroo. I’m not quite sure what to expect from this tour.

Are we meeting up with a tour bus somewhere? Surely we’re not driving all this way in a premier cab. But it appears after a couple of hours of gazing into grasslands, rivers, and industrial estates, we’re definitely in the car for the whole journey. Even when the agent from the tour company calls me via the driver’s mobile, insistent that she still hasn’t received our passport details despite us having e-mailed it three times and faxed it from the hotel, it seems that even without the adequate documentation, we’re clearly on a one way journey.

Half way, we are asked to alight. There is food and toilet facilities here, and we will have the opportunity to stretch our legs and peruse some of the most professionally handcrafted souvenirs in the country, in what could only be described as a massive luxurious souvenir warehouse for tourists, which has visa facilities yet also accepts a wide variety of foreign currencies. Unlike everywhere else in Vietnam, where prices are marked in dong, all gifts here, except for in the food section, are marked in US dollars. I get myself a finely decorated wooden Vietnamese pipe, and a oil painting of a traditional junk boat mounted on a hanging bamboo scroll. I also purchase a small cylinder of hot and spicy ‘Mr Potato’ (identical to Pringles) for the ongoing voyage, but when we return from our brief shop, our car appears to have disappeared. Oops, I wonder. Maybe they’ve decided to get all official about the passport details after all, and we’ll be stranded at this rural outpost for a while. At least I’ll be able to get plenty of souvenirs while we wait, I think to myself. A shop attendant attempts in vain to explain to us that our car is waiting at the opposite end of the building. But she seems insistent on being followed, so we take the bait, and wind up in the car park next to our beaming driver, leisurely finishing off his cigarette.

Passing another junk boat at the fishing village

The best part of a second two-hour journey, and we arrive at the main pier in Halong City. There are literally hundreds of traditional junk boats anchored at the pier, and a number of smaller open-deck seated ferries docked at the bottom of the retaining wall, transferring passengers with their luggage between their cruise junks and their transport back to Hanoi. Apparently, as the smallest group of passengers travelling together, we had scored the corporate taxi service, whereas the majority of the other passengers had been transported by the slightly less corporate mini-bus service. We are greeted by our Vietnamese tour guide, who grew up in Halong Bay and speaks quite reasonable English. He advises us keenly of our itinerary, and we set sail for about an hour or two, until we reach the spectacular limestone cliff-island paradise of Halong Bay. Images along the journey include a small city about the size of Geelong, which disappears behind a massive cable bridge on the horizon, and cruising past a fishing village. Here, a girl jumps onto our vessel from a little motorised wooden speedboat driven by her mother wearing a conical straw hat, and successfully completes the sale of an enormous hand of tiny bananas to a couple of middle-aged Queenslanders. Two couples, travelling together, share images of Ho Chi Minh city in the south, the beautiful French colonial port of Hoi An, and other exciting expeditions having traipsed through flooded waters in central Vietnam. This is certainly a very large country to navigate around. It is a long way from the North to the South, and yet it’s evident there are spectacular places to see in all four corners of the country. I am jealous, in some respects, that I’m only five days in Northern Vietnam.

The Amazing Cave/Surprise Cave at Halong Bay

We sail our course between the majestic limestone mountains before anchoring in a large cove with a Buddhist shrine dug into the cliff-face, and a massive cave towering above the lagoon. This is Hang Sung Sot, a giant cave with spectacular chambers lit up like a magical underground cavern in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. It takes a good half an hour to walk through these three massive interconnected caves. We and the other hundreds of tourists feel like ants here, walking back up the staircase towards the viewing platform at the roof entrance of the cave, as the chamber itself is so enormous. The view at the top entrance of the cave, overlooking the dozens of junk ships anchored in the cove, is one of the most breathtaking sights I have seen. Some of the beautiful old red and yellow sails, and grand bows of ships guided forward by their wooden dragonhead mascots. The cove is surrounded by a series monolithic limestone islands, and there is no doubt why this magnificent location is in the running to be named officially as one of the seven natural wonders of the modern world. We return to our junk ship for a brief trip in a kayak, trying not to paddle aimlessly in circles. A tip for newcomers to this fine sport who choose to sit in the back of the kayak: think twice before attempting to hit your partner with the oar in frustration for steering you in the wrong direction. You will find it is actually yourself who is supposed to be steering. So, after a a few tips from our helpful but concerned-looking tour guide, and a few flash photos taken by some highly amused Dutch tourists, we finally stop paddling in circles and gently edge towards the beach, for a brief stretching of the sea-legs. Tonight’s evening cruise involves some expensive wine, a dinner of steamed clam, roasted crab, squid soup and boiled shrimp. If you are vegetarian, anti-seafood, or merely prefer eating meat without having to dissect through its exoskeleton, there is a small bowl of rice, and a stir-fried green vegetable of the day, with some fresh fruit at the end of your meal for comfort. It’s peaceful after sunset, as the junk boats glitter in the darkness and become restaurants, anchored in a cove. Music can apparently be heard playing on one of the boats until 2am… must have been the nightclub junk. For the rest of us non-partiers, twelve hours of the most restful ocean sleep awaits.

Junk ships reflect off the water after dusk

A simple breakfast is provided (exoskeleton-free, to our great relief), and we all pile inside a wooden paddle boat, and sail underneath through a small boat cave to the other side of a spectacular lagoon. It is misty here, and the morning sunlight shimmers off the jungle vegetation, and the only sound to be heard is a Vietnamese boatmaster, whistling a high pitched tune that echoes throughout the lagoon like a scene from Picnic at Hanging Rock. A troop of monkeys swing their way out of the trees or clamber down the rockface to the feeding platform, where a breakfast of fruit is served. A few things about monkeys in South East Asia. Firstly, they really do seem to like tourist hangouts, especially when there’s food involved. Secondly, they are also very religious, and can be found making their respects at almost every Buddhist temple of the region, even when there is no left-over food (just scraps and empty drink cans for their amusement). Thirdly, they really do like posing for the camera, except when they are being cheeky and stand perfectly still until the moment they can hear your flash about to go off. This is a uniquely tranquil location, amongst the morning sea mist and glistening trees, where the jungle towers around the lagoon in 360 degree magesty. We make our way back through the hidden cave at low tide, into the cove where are junk is anchored.

Boat Cave lagoon entrance, Halong Bay

By this stage there is the odd merchant, generally a woman in a conical straw-hat on a wooden motorboat, selling pearls, or snacks, from her small floating business. We sail back leisurely towards the pier, and sit with the middle-aged Queenslanders, gazing out at the ocean and reflecting on the bustling use of waterways in Vietnam, the efficiency of the way space is utlised in this country, where energy-use is minimised, and where nothing seems to be wasted. A proud hardworking communist nation is this, Vietnam. Nearly every junk boat in Halong Bay and shopfront in Hanoi has a Vietnamese flag. Museums are everywhere celebrating Vietnamese independence and its historic victory against America. Ho Chi Minh is a national hero… you can buy his t-shirt, or visit his Presidential Palace and House of Stilts. We visited him briefly in the mausoleum, where he is embalmed for all to pay their respects. There is certainly more yet to explore in this proud, thriving and historically fascinating country, but if you are visiting Vietnam for any length of time, twenty four hours on a junk cruise is definitely an experience not to be forgotten.

Monkey stakes out the feeding platform at the lagoon

House of Stilts, Ho Chi Minh Complex, Hanoi

A floating pearl merchant, in Halong Bay

Masjid Negara, National Mosque

We have just experienced a mindblowing week and checked off two of the world’s seven ancient and natural wonders, the magnificent limsestone cliff islands and coves of Halong Bay and the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, with its detailed engravings and spectacular architecture. I’m now sleeping on the plane from Phnom Penh airport, where I thought I’d have to refinance my assets just to pay the airport departure fee (although I trust it gets put to good use). Here, I also first sampled the tastiest of all the Khmer dishes I tried in Cambodia, Beef Lok Lak with green peppercorns. A sudden jolt of turbulence and I’m awoken, only to the horror that the nose of my Air Asia Airbus is angling downwards at about 45 degrees and the plane is vibrating intensely. At this moment in time, Air Asia’s $50 luggage fee (that my online itinerary convinced me I had already paid for), pales into into insignificance, as I grab onto my friend’s arm for dear life. My arm is quickly removed. It appears I was only having a false awakening, a symptom of jet lag and disturbed sleep patterns as you move between time zones. I’m only losing an hour here though, which is ironic as I am going from east to west. Timezones in this part of the world seem to zigzag randomly all over the place, and once I perused the Time Zone map in the Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur, I could see exactly why.

Model of Mecca, Islamic Arts Museum

We’ve been through Kuala Lumpur airport once before, on the way to Hanoi. But on that occasion, we were on a connecting flight, and stuck on the other side of customs with all the duty free shopping malls and cafes. You can actually catch a bus between the two terminals and spend a few hours exploring their shops. For business and exclusive passengers, they have lounges you can pay to “lounge around” in, have a shower, use the internet, and basically make yourself comfortable with five star service. There are bookshops as well, but prices are probably similar here to what you’re used to in Australia. There’s a rainforest waterfall constructed in the centre of one the terminal building malls, which is really spectacular although somewhat artificial. This time, we get off the plane and head straight for the “foreign passports” queue, with our prefilled immigration tickets labelled with the handy warning “DRUG TRAFFICKING IN MALAYSIA INCURS THE DEATH PENALTY”, not that there’s any turning back from here. This is an Arabic nation. Most of the women are wearing hijabs, with the occasional niqab. Malaysia is ruled by Sharia law, although ironically Kuala Lumpur, a multicultural mixture of Chinese and ethnic Malays (the majority of which are muslim), Indians, post-colonial British and Christians, is actually a very tolerant city. The odd drag queen roams free to taunt to tourists in the street, minding their own business, in Bukit Bintang, the central shopping, food, and market district of the CBD, only a short cab ride from the spectacular Petronas Towers, which absolutely must be seen from KLCC Park at night time, accessed from the equally excellent Suria Mall inside the street entrance of the towers, and housing one of the most spectacular bookshops in Asia Kinokuniya, where they sell every range of specialty books, from medical, to crime and historical, asian and foreign books, maps, and every kind of religious book you could imagine. Malaysia prides itself on its first principle which is the freedom of choice of religion of the individual. Not much is really censored in Kuala Lumpur, other than what people would culturally choose to censor for themselves. But Kuala Lumpur is a bustling city of 365-day-a-year equatorial humidity of around 32 degrees. There’s a lot of thunder and lightning, but the rains are generally pretty tame, despite the frequent risk of storms.

Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, Waterfall Exhibit

We head straight through customs through a hallway lined by small stands selling tickets for shuttle buses and taxis. A number of women with hijabs call out to try to sell us a transfer. We walk quickly past the stands. I have no ringgit, only US dollars, Australian dollars, Vietnamese Dong, and Cambodian Riel, none of which are useful here. At least I’m in a capital city now, I think to myself. This might be the end of my cheap holiday, but at least all the ATMs are going to work (as they had all worked in even the obscurest ATMs in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia). First ATM… fail. Second ATM… fail. Third ATM… fail. It seems only Maybank and a couple of the others have designed new ATMs for the new chip credit cards distributed by the Australian banking pillars. So if you go to Malaysia, don’t expect every ATM with a plus sign to be able to handle your card. You might have to hunt around for one of those newer ATMs that accept the chip cards. Finally, an ATM works and dispenses me a number of 50 ringgit notes. We make our way with our trolley to the taxi rank, only to find that we cannot get a taxi from the airport without a ticket from one of those booths that we neglectfully skipped through on our way from customs. I now have to run back into the airport and find another section of transport booths. The young lady in the hijab asks me how many passengers and bags I have, and then presents me a 120 ringgit ticket (about 35 Australian dollars) for a premium taxi to the Airport (I later find out I’m being raped for about 3 times the price of a normal taxi). We make our way through the futuristic motorways of KL, past massive high-rise complexes even dozens of kilometres from the city centre, for almost an hour into the centre of Kuala Lumpur. You literally can’t see the Petronas Towers until you’re getting especially close to the CBD, and the city is high-rise for miles into the inner suburbs.

Petronas Towers as pictured from the KLCC Park

After surviving the putrid streets around our hotel, and airing the window to remove the foul stench of decades of neglect, despite our hotel’s spectacular metropolitan glitzy casino style lobby, we spent hours attempting to converse with a non-English speaking housekeeping staff (at the International Hotel, with also had no International power points, nor any usable wi-fi), to try and arrange for our laundry to be done for over 30 Australian dollars. We breathed a sgh of relief that at least we had a western toilet, as a wait for the toilet at McDonalds earlier involved a queue of about 10 other gents. “Selamat Detang. Please Come Again.” says the jolly McDonalds cashier in the hijab as she offers me my fries with a standard shaker bag provided with a sachet of spicy bbq seasoning. At least there would be plenty of western toilets if needed in an emergency while exploring this vast Asian metropolis, or so I thought, as I nodded off to sleep.

Getting around the massive CBD of KL was also more stressful than I anticipated. There is a good monorail system, but multiple different lines with different ticketing systems, and stations you can only reach from other stations by signposted sheltered ten minute walks. Getting off at Masjid Jamek station, and exploring the streets of Little India was probably the first mistake I made, the second was my decision to walk down to the Lake Gardens precinct via Merkeda square and Chinatown. Little India’s drains were filthy and putrid, and the streets were damp and smelly. Little India in Singapore is comparatively upmarket, with beautiful shops and smells, a spectacular temple and a must visit. By comparison, this is a filthy dump, and there are not even many Indians here. We get lost with our inadequate map of KL (most maps of the city are too small and undetailed to be of much use, and in some areas there’s three different storeys of street to choose from), and found the long way round to Merkeda Square and the Sultan Building. The beautiful Masjid Jamek mosque sits on a street just behind, above a putrid drainway, adjoining a dirty alleyway where a homeless man is sleeping on the steps. We quickly make our way through Chinatown, and I’m hoping for some kind of western take away franchise I can spot that is likely to have a Western toilet. We stumble upon a two-storey McDonalds. Only two people in the queue fortunately, I think to myself, looking around nervously, desperately hoping there will be toilet paper at least, as for now, I can see there is no soap, dryer or paper towels. A few minutes later, and here I am, lo and behold, looking deep into the bottom of a squat toilet, with nothing but a mere hose provided for my convenience. Who needs to pollute the waterways with heaps of treated tissue anyway? At least I’ll be washed clean as well as just wiped clean, even if my jocks will be soggy for half an hour afterwards. Aim is the tricky part, and that also applies to usage of the hose. But really, this is a more natural and environmentally friendly way of using a toilet, and you only need to use as much water as is required to flush. Even in the most expensive of shopping malls and hotels, there is always a squat option for he or she who cannot stomach the thought of sitting on a seat that thousands of others have sat on, and prefers to keep his or her pelvic muscles strong. Nevertheless, these insightful and tolerant afterthoughts did nothing to soothe my feelings of bitter resentment towards the international fast food conglomerate, whose lack of clean and decent amenities required me to make a trip to the nearest 7-11 to get hand sanitizer. People are expected to carry their own toilet paper and hand sanitizer in Malaysia. Although if you’ve always lived in this city, you’re probably used to all the toxic E Coli, which have become part of your normal gut flora, so you probably don’t need them. After all, who needs to pollute the waterways further by adding soap?

Kuala Lumpur Skyline from the KL Tower Observation Deck

Dripping wet, I risk death crossing a couple of major arterial multi-storey traffic thoroughfares with my friend, before arriving at the National Mosque (weird, modern, angular, bland, asnd difficult to photograph) where we begin our journey up the hill to the Bird Park. This lake gardens precinct starts here, and really, we should have caught a taxi right here in the first place, rather than attempting the journey on monorail and foot. From here you can access the dodgy planetarium, the shady bird park with drinks, a restaurant, and the world’s biggest free range aviary, the orchid garden with suprisingly few orchids, and the lake gardens at the bottom of the hill. There is also the police museum, (if it’s open. Almost nothing apart from the Bird Park is on a Monday, as we discovered.) There is the Islamic Arts Museum with its spectacular ceilings and models of international mosques, and the National Museum over the bridge from the planetarium. The Planetarium has good views from its very roasty observation deck, but its exhibits are targeted at little children. I learned my resting pulse rate was 102, got sucked into a zero gravity vaccuum toilet, and experienced the dodgiest resolution IMAX/audio inside the dome I have ever experienced… it literally took me ten minutes to work out the voiceover was in English, and it was a story about the atomic bomb. You can spend the better part of a day here, but the highlight is the Bird Park, and that sadly applies even if you are not into birds. We missed the National Monument (after briefly opening the KL guide for a photograph, to ascertain whether it was walking back up the hill for) and the Butterfly Gardens, and caught a taxi home to spend an hour on the fifth storey pool instead, while it was starting to rain and become thundery. It was actually quite cool on the roof of the fifth floor.

Hindu Temple in the Batu Caves

Our second day trip was a visit up the KL tower, to see the Petronas Towers close up and the mountain ranges surrounding KL. I hear the rest of Malaysia including Borneo is actually a beautiful mountainous and tropical rainforest paradise, and that Penang and Malacca are well worth the visit for the beachfront utlity and colonial architecture. It is a shame that this is the only view of the natural beauty of Malaysia we really got. A short train trip now takes one all the way to the Batu Caves, guarded by a massive statue of Buddha, where you can walk up a 250-step staircase to a dingy Hindu temple with heaps of graffiti and rubbish inside the otherwise spectacular cave, infested by pigeons and monkeys that live off the human scraps, playing with and aluminium drink cans. Another longe 45-minute train ride from KL Sentral station, in a cramped non-airconditioned carriage with windows that don’t open, will take you to the station of Shah Alam, where you can either get a five minute taxi or spend an hour walking over a bridge and then risking death crossing about ten massive parallel freeways traipsing in ankle-deep mud to reach the massive blue mosque with its giant dome and four surrounding towers, situated next to a quiet suburban lake with a path you can walk around. It really is beautiful to see and a brilliant photo opportunity (though possibly not worth the pilgrimage to Mecca required to get there). As we are walking around the mosque, the evening prayer songs start bellowing from the loudspeaker in Arabic. We kid ourselves for ten minutes that a random taxi might take us back into the city from here. All the cars here are whizzing past at least 80kph, and no one is stopping to pick up a couple of Western backpackers hanging outside a desolate mosque. Fortunately, it was only a ten minute walk before we found a local shopping mall, and a hotel which ordered us a very good-value-for-money air-conditioned taxi back into the CBD after sunset.

Batu Caves monkey

We got a small glimpse of this massive metropolis, but in hindsight it was a really bad introduction to Malaysia, as it exhibits all of the worst features of the country, and of a capital city. There is no doubt Malaysia is clearly an Asian leader in multiculturalism and has a thriving competitive economy, but many people here are grumpy and unhelpful. The city is dirty, and at times smells putrid. It is not designed to be tourist friendly, there’s little way to identify you as a tourist anyway, and you’re better off getting taxis to most of your pre-determined destinations. The cabs are moderately cheaper, but beware, these taxi drivers are just as cunning as Melbourne taxi drivers. The majority refuse to use their meters here, despite it being a bureaucratic requirement stated clearly on the door of every taxi you get into. People don’t necessarily speak as much English here as other places like Thailand and Cambodia that have large tourist populations. English here is possibly irrelevant to survival if you are Chinese, Indian or Malay. You will certainly not be pampered here, you are just an ant on the street in a massive metropolis. You might prefer to tour the beautiful scenery one or two hours away than spend much time in KL itself. If you really like shopping, this could be a good time filler, and it’s airconditioned and not too uncomparable from prices at home, but with a slightly better range. There are loads of malls around Bukit Bintang, but Suria KLCC in the ground floor of the Petronas Towers is a must. Plus, with respect to the towers, they are the tallest buildings in the world after all (after September 11), and you will get dizzy just looking up at their Arabic glory (designed by an American, of course). The airport is extraordinary. But in all major respects KL really fails to sell as an overall holiday destination. I would certainly never make it the priority stay of your trip. If you’re stopping over here, you may as well spend the majority of your time shopping, as very few of the tourist attractions are really worth the effort finding!

A floating greengrocer restocks outside her home on the Tonle Sap lake

There are three ways of travelling to Phnom Penh from Siem Reap- by road, by barge, or by air. This morning we toured Chong Kneas, a floating village in the Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater body of water in South East Asia, where we jetted past a number of floating shops, houses, churches, schools, restaurants and basketball courts, and the very dingy and claustrophobic-looking narrow-roofed barge that apparently transports you between the two cities. I felt somewhat relieved that I was arriving by giant (although still cramped) air-conditioned coach. In my head, I still have the images of the small child on a tiny motorboat who stealthily jumped on board our isolated cruise vessel to try to sell us some cheap softdrink, as well as the little boy who wore a pet snake around his neck for a cheap photo opportunity. I wonder how people survive under the constant threat of electrocution from the water (surprisingly most floating houses still have TV’s and basic electricity) and crocodile attack (a rarity, as there are only freshwater crocodiles here, and yet one boy was apparently taken by a crocodile in the late 90s).

Kbal Spean Waterfall Engravings

As I gaze out the window at the late afternoon sun beating down upon the rice fields wet from the warm downpour we have just had, I realise just how flat the countryside is. This must be one of the flattest parts of the world here, and as I learn later, during flooding seasons this seemingly infinite palm-cluster and straw stilt-house studded desert expanse of rice crops is apparently completely underwater. During the wet season, the barge may be your better option, as I’d imagine this would not be a great place to skid or get bogged. There are only small towns that dot the roadside between Siem Reap and the capital. The highway is narrow with a single lane in either direction, and there are no lights or reflectors on either side of the road. It’s way past sunset, and the person sitting next to me claims to have seen a roadsign saying 75 km to Phnom Penh. We have been travelling for well over 5 hours, and I can feel the cramps building up in my feet, which are weary and blistered from temple fatigue. Is this the beginning of a DVT I wonder, and quickly wriggle my legs to reactivate my calf muscles. This was supposed to have been a four-and-a-half hour trip. It’s starting to get well beyond six, and I’m starting to doubt whether the capital is really any closer. I keep looking out the window for a light haze on the horizon or any other sign of life. But all I can see is palm trees and the reflection of the moon in vast expanses of water by the roadside.

Central Market, Phnom Penh

Another couple of hours later, and without much of a drumroll, we arrive in one of the most poorly-lit cities of the trip. Numerous people gather outside their front walls here, watching the traffic go by. Most of the houses here have seem to have large stone walls and massive gates, rather than fences. There’s the occasional market, and as the streets start to become busier, they become dominated by Tuk Tuks and motorbikes. Finally, on arriving at the bus stop, a friendly Tuk Tuk driver with a bus company shirt offers to transfer us to our hotel for a couple of US dollars. Sitting in a Tuk Tuk in 32 degree humidity is actually one of the easiest ways of getting some shade and moving air on your face, especially during the middle of the day. The streets are only lined with occasional trees, and the sun can be quite ferocious, bearing in mind that it doesn’t get much cooler in the evening here either. We drive past the night markets, some working girls staking out a busy intersection, a few street stalls, cheap bars and restaurants, and finally pull up in a dingy isolated back street, where our Australian-owned hotel with the 24-hour swimming pool, the Billabong, is apparently situated. Breakfast here is served all day, and there is a decent menu and range of ice cold refreshing drinks. Most of which are delightful, although I wasn’t such a fan of the cashew nut smoothie. (It’s surprisingly, although perhaps unsurprisingly, nutty!)

Ta Prohm, Tomb Raider Temple

There is a permanent guard who sits out the front, but he is usually asleep in his Tuk Tuk. Many of the moderately finer properties in Phnom Penh are under 24-hour guard. This is a reasonably well-serviced city with a population of 2 million, but local unemployment is a problem, and your Lonely Planet guide will warn you against roaming the streets at night, although probably the same could be said of Ballarat, St Kilda, or anywhere in the world that has a lot of people and cheap beer. So after fighting temple fatigue, I decide to brave the nocturnal heat and face the “horror” of the streets, in this hexagonal grid-like city where all the streets are conveniently numberered, and yet sometimes the street numbering is profoundly erratic. (Some numbers are repeated twice, some numbers start all over again, have inappropriate numbers randomly thrown in, or are deleted altogether.)

the 1000 year old inscriptions at Angkor Wat

I stumble upon The Heart of Darkness, which is only a block or so away from our hotel, on an odd numbered street, therefore running north-south). This is a nightclub filled with heavy disco music, and beats out a number of traditional Khmer classics like ‘Lady Gaga, Telephone’. Angkor beer is on tap here, the scene is fairly dark with eerie red lighting, and is the venue is occasionally decorated with brightly-lit replicas of temple relics. This is clearly the hippest nightclub in Street 51, the night-club district, where young, well dressed, and educated Cambodian women parade with their Western trophy boys on their sleeve. Outside the motorcycles are piled up in rows. There is no door charge, but expect to be body pat-searched by one of a dozen burly security guards on entry. Nevertheless, they are quite friendly here, although I am too tired to stay for more than a softdrink, and make my way back to the hotel.

The four faces of Buddha that guard the entrance of Angkor Thom

Why have I come here to the ends of the Earth? I ponder as I lie in my hotel room, with the fan on full blast and the air conditioner set to sixteen degrees (although I rarely achieve a temperature lower than 25). Who goes on holiday to Phnom Penh? I realise I’m spending 48 hours in a city that has Lonely Planet warnings, and that no one I know has ever visited. I later discovered that bats fly around the pool at night, which really didn’t bother me at the time anyway, as I thought they were giant dragonflies. Also, a hallmark of every hotel you will visit in Cambodia, are the geckos. They love the underside of sheltered second and third storey ceilings, and are fortunately very socially conscious and tend to remain outside your room, perhaps because they are smart enough to realise that this would potentially involve using the floor. They eat geckos in parts of Cambodia, as well as snakes. Their curries are often like a disappointing twist on Thai curries, and use a lot of fish paste. There are lots of mosquitoes in Cambodia, which seemed to bother me less than the blowflies back in Australia when I returned, despite the billboards outside the children’s hospital in Siem Reap that you pass on the way to the temples, pleading for blood donations as there’s a current outbreak of haemorrhagic dengue fever. Tarantulas are also considered a delicacy by some, although I honestly never saw a stall selling fried tarantulas like the one in the Lonely Planet guide.

South Gate of Angkor Thom City, near Siem Reap

I’ve spent the last three nights in Siem Reap, a comparative paradise whose economy thrives on tourist pleasures of all kinds. For those who like temple trekking, it is hard to believe these ancient Buddhist/Hindu ruins are only 1000 years old. These national symbols of the Cambodian people demonstrate a legacy of a proud thriving ancient empire, an ancestry of remarkable aesthetics and industry. You can definitely get temple fatigue wandering around the ruins all day in the blistering heat of the afternoon. This is somewhere where you could spend a few weeks visiting temples in the early morning, and in the late afternoon/evening, and meanwhile relax in the pool, and receive professional foot massages during the day, or wander down to the market to buy an oil painting, some Cambodian silk, or get your weary feet nibbled on by minaiture fish in a tank, for a nominal price. Fish reflexology seems to be a widespread phenomenon in South East Asia, from Thailand, to Singapore, to Cambodia. If you want the experience, be mindful that at Underwater World in Singapore it will cost you $38 for the privilege. So if you’re keen, Siem Reap is probably a good place to get acquainted with the experience. The town has about the same population as Geelong, but the main tourist area is fairly small and easy to navigate around. Pub Street is easily accessible, sporting a number of restaurants selling really decent Khmer food. Can I recommend the Beef Lok Lak over one of their curries or soups, which some may find a little bit lacking on the taste buds. Seafood here is massive, although in the dry season a lot of the fish are fairly miniature.

Pub Street at night, from the Temple Balcony in Siem Reap

Occasionally you will be shocked by: a young Cambodian man approaching you on a motorcycle offering to take you for “lady massage… with happy ending”; a well nourished Cambodian child approaching you in desperation for cash for food; a lady using her bottle fed baby as a prop to explain that she needs financial assistance. The amputees, some with quite extraordinary handcarved wooden crutches, tend to gather around tourist areas mainly during the day. When you leave any of the temples around the Angkor region, you will be swarmed by a pack of at least half a dozen working Cambodian children under 10, demanding insistently that you buy 10 postcards for less than a dollar, and getting quite indignant when “you no buy!” Everyone who comes here has to question their own intrinsic level of cultural naievety and judgmentalism, and decide whether it is right or wrong to support these people.

A display of deactivated landmines at the Landmine Museum

If you are feeling a sense of moral awkwardness after ignoring 100 little children, and even feeling the need to run away from them, please consider a visit to the Landmine Museum, which can be combined with a trip to the spectacular Banteay Srei women’s temple and Kbal Spean carvings in the waterfalls. Tourists can no longer drive in Siem Reap, but hiring a Tuk Tuk or car with a driver for the day is relatively cheap. If you want a tour guide, you can pay for him separately. Most speak great English, and they are all registered. Beware of anyone who offers to drive you to the temples AND show you around them. The two professions are legislatively separated in Cambodia.

The Landmine museum contains information about Canadian NGO-sponsored detection and deactivation of unexploded mines. The children they support, mainly amputees and burns victims, are clearly protected and partitioned from the museum. You can learn about local heroes here, helping communities rebuild after only just more than a decade of peacetime. These are the sorts of people who really need yourhelp, and you can give organisations money which directly goes towards their aid. The other thing you might want to consider, while in Cambodia, if you want to help the local community, is giving blood. Don’t feel sorry for wiley old below-knee amputees wielding their expensive crutches, who magically transport themselves to hard-to-find tourist hangouts, and gesture to their leg with an an open hat for donations. They get plenty of money already, and know how to get more.

Cambodian National Museum in Phnom Penh

It is true that while you could spend weeks exploring the hundreds of temple ruins in the Siem Reap province, you can visit most of the national landmarks of Phnom Penh in half a day. Nevertheless, here is some of the most beautiful architecture, the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, and National Museum (all within walking distance), Sisowath Quay where you must have lunch at the FCC restaurant, which has the tastiest food, and cheap Western and vegetarian options you will die for after eating 3 days of fish paste curry. It also sports a balcony with a view over the Tonle Sap river as it begins to drain into the Mekong. It’s only a short walk up from here along the Quay to Wat Phnom, the Buddist temple on the hill, and you’re done. Two dollar Tuk Tuk ride back to the hotel for a snooze, a dip in the pool, or a cold watermelon shake. The real reason you are here in this lesser known city of Asia has yet to become transparent. You really haven’t seen anything yet.

Electrified barbed wire to prevent intentional prisoner suicide

It was our last day in Phnom Penh and our tour guide arrives at the Billabong Hotel. Do you have a Christopher staying here? He presents the ticket to one of the reception staff. “No, definitely no one staying here with that name” reply the reception staff. Had we not been checking our bags out simultaneously, we may have missed out on a fascinating and life-changing historical journey. There was only us two, the driver, and the tour guide in the car. We booked lucky, and had the tour guide all to ourselves. He spoke spectacular English, gave a knowledgeable and complex political history of Cambodia from the prosperous years after their independence from France, prior to the war which spilled over from Vietnam, and the succession of the very unpopular US-backed military government by the Khmer Rouge communist regime, who declared an immediate end to the war before staging the evacuation of millions of educated, professional people from the capital to work on the rice fields, to achieve Pol Pot’s unfulfilled aim of supplying other communist nations with the world’s biggest production of rice. Those who didn’t agree with the Khmer Rouge, or comply with their domination, were imprisoned in one of three main prisons, tortured, had digits removed, were forced to lick faeces, were beaten and starved. And those enemies of Pol Pot, who opposed the year zero social experiments, and survived the prisons, were forced to walk or were driven in trucks to the Killing Fields, where you can visit the main shrine in Choeng Ek containing thousands of skulls. More than 8000 skulls were found here in mass graves, where children were beaten to death against trees, and few people died from gunshot, mostly by brutal beatings and knifings. Associated with the prison are a few of its 12 survivors, who still spend most of their day at one of the prisons, which has been converted into a Genocide Museum. Mug shots of the prisoners were discovered in Pol Pot and Duch’s offices inside the prison, which the Khmer Rouge had converted from an old school, after the facility was quickly evacuated when the South Vietnamese took Phnom Penh in 1979. It is said that a couple of Vietnamese soldiers walked past the prison, smelt rotting flesh and uncovered 12 dead bodies. Pol Pot was exiled but ruled the outlying jungle areas, which he had already controlled prior to taking the capital in 1975. Many of the prisoners had the same identification number, illustrating the mass number of prisoners who died here. The electrified barbed wire on the second storey was constructed to prevent intentional suicide, and the classrooms were partitioned into about 8 brick units each, which operated as cells. You can visit both of these places in half a day, but unless you have done your reading on Cambodian history, it is definitely worth the expense of a professional tour guide, as this is a story that needs to be heard as much as it needs to be told.

S21 Prison: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

They now have political stability in Cambodia, with the same prime minister for 30 years, who almost always wins elections, but prioritises the stability of his continued rule over the election result. Considering the Khmer Rouge were so widely cheered and celebrated when they took power in 1975, having an extremely popular leader isn’t necessarily the greatest advantage to the average Cambodian anyway, in a country where stability is of the utmost importance, with UN brokered peacetime having existed only since the late 1990s, to end the killings between the military groups led by the widely Popular Prince who abdicated the throne as King during the prosperous years of Cambodia to lead his country in the elections, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge party, and the current administration that was installed by the South Vietnamese. Pol Pot was put under house arrest by his own party, before dying in comfort in 1998, unpunished for his crimes. Duch, who ran the prison S-21 with Pol Pot, which is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, changed his identity to eventually become a popular lay catholic priest in rural Cambodia, before some of the 12 survivors and a reporter finally caught up with him. He has now confessed and has been sentenced by the International Criminal Court, and will be released at the age of 87. This is the true history of Cambodia. It is a dreadful one, and totally unique. That one man can manipulate a whole army into committing mass genocide of their own people under a banner of communist atheist domination. If anything about Cambodian life is difficult for you to understand, remember that a fifth of the population was wiped out during the four years of Pol Pot’s reign. This is a population that is used to being desperate, and is still left relatively without the wealth, services and infrastructure it needs, despite having spent years before wartime with no reliance on international aid.

Skulls in the Killing Fields Shrine at Choeung Ek

A journey out to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Killing Fields is definitely a must if you are visiting Cambodia. There’s probably no other great reason to spend more than 24 hours in this fascinating dark city. And for god’s sake, if you are travelling from Siem Reap take a taxi, it’s almost as cheap and a lot faster and less cramped than the bus, which rarely goes faster than 80kph. Visiting Phnom Penh is definitely a life changing experience, and a chilling and humbling informer of the recent tragic history of Cambodia, after being overwhelmed by the spectacular ruins and remants of an ancient once-thriving and advanced civilisation of the ages.

Executioner's Tree at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

"Hanoi traffic" by Chem7 (Flickr)

It’s a 32 degree, humid evening in Hanoi. We have just walked out of our hotel in the Old Quarter, for a casual stroll down to Vincom City shopping mall. We’re on a mission to locate an iPod charger, and pre-book our tickets to the water puppets and the circus. All we have is a fairly sketchy map of a city that’s celebrating its 1000-year anniversary.

There’s no clear CBD here. No skyscrapers, just lots of semi-detached, narrow 5 storey buildings . There appear to be no real planning laws either- which means a mosaic of buildings of varying different colours, heights and styles, all lined up one after the other. Some of these narrow, curving lane-ways are only about 5 metres wide, but contain busy streets of bidirectional traffic. A number of taxis, the odd tourist bus, a few vans, hundreds of motorbikes. Women with conical hats on bicycles carrying giant racks of food and oven parts, serving as mobile shops. The odd cyclo, and street stalls galore. Pedestrians share these narrow lane-ways in the Old Quarter, and each narrow shop front is studded with every kind of shop you could imagine. Convenience stores, clothes shops, fabric stores, souvenir shops, woodwork, artwork shops. Enticing are the T-shirts available 20,000 dong (or $1 USD), and the 7-disc region free DVD box sets for under $10 USD (Yes, we did get them through customs!)

Hanoi Opera House with traffic

After surviving near misses with a number of motos, and getting used to the disorientation of vehicles travelling on the right hand side of the road (so much for a relaxing stroll), the massive pedestrian crossing greets us at first with a modicum of hope, before we finally come to the accurate conclusion that it’s pedestrians that give way to all other vehicles in this city. This, and the fact that people actually only use the right side of the road when it suits them, means that you can forget that “look left, look right” business, and move onto 360 scanning mode as you risk your life weaving between the moto-bikes. Meanwhile, apparently in Hanoi, as a courtesy, every vehicle that overtakes another or sees another vehicle or pedestrian they are passing, beeps its horn. I find the odd horn useful to save a life, when I carelessly cross a road without looking, but here the horns are deafening, chaotic, and at times flourish into celebratory orchestrated patterns of nonsense, and I cease to believe they serve any logical purpose. Even the Vietnamese countrysiders make jokes about the use of car horns in Hanoi.

While we stare in disbelief at the pedestrian crossing (and in fact every time we stop walking for even just a moment to take a breath or look at the map) we are approached by about half a dozen local Vietnamese, gesturing at their vehicle and offering “moto” or “moto-bike”, to courier us to our nominated location for a nominal price. I’m not sure which was more terrifying, the idea of getting on a bike and losing my travel partner, and possibly end up flattened on the road somewhere (although in reality the traffic would probably be going slow enough to stop you doing any significant injury, unless you are old and osteoporotic, or are unable to protect your head), or braving the pedestrian crossing.

An elderly Vietnamese woman in a conical hat suddenly claps the hand of my friend, and starts pushing him gently into the road. Thank god, I breathe a sigh of relief. A local has seen a couple of bewildered tourists and has come to the rescue. Actually, she was far more clever than I realised. Realising her bones were slightly more fragile than ours, she decided to use my friend as a human shield to cross the road. Fortunately, she knew how to weave her way through the motorcycles, or so it seemed anyway. We made it to the other side, and lived to tell the tale.

c?u Thê Húc (Huc Bridge)

Turtle Tower (Tháp Rùa) in Lake Hoàn Ki?m (H? Hoàn Ki?m)

Water Puppets

The circus is on the other side of the park, a few minutes walk from the north gate. After a ten minute stroll through the park, dodging soccer balls, we arrive at what looks like Hanoi’s permanent circus building, and there is a group of Vietnamese people of various ages sitting around the pavement next to the very closed looking ticket booth. None of them speak English, and I spend about ten minutes explaining that I would like to buy a ticket. On first appearance, this group of Vietnamese women appear to be bystanders, and all they seem to have to say about the circus is “no no tonight, no Saturday”. As I become more persistent, a lady stands up with her handbag, and unlocks the unused ticket booth, and presents a roll of tickets. I’m pretty persistent that I want my Saturday night tickets if possible, although she seems to be overly keen to sell the Sunday ones, despite the Saturday night still being available (and there were lots of empty seats).

Banana'n'Hanoi

After finally managing to score our tickets, we proceed to make our way through the park before realising our ticket only bought us a one way pass through the public park, and it will be another dollar approximately to re-enter. We brave our way around the perimeter instead, with a very keen eye on the traffic.

Now the sun is setting, and after a brief stop for a drink at the shopping centre, we finally make our way back to the lake via taxi, and walk back to our hotel around the lake (the only places where the pavements are vehicle free, and you don’t have to weave your way in-between parked motos.) By this stage, we are both worn out from the heat, fed up, and walking at different paces. Perhaps in hindsight, we should have stopped here on the west front of Lake Hoan Kiem for dinner at the I-box, a plush Vietnamese/Australian fusion restaurant, with three course meals for under US$20 and live piano playing on most nights, or stopped for an exotic milkshake or ice cream sundae at Fanny’s, a very exquisite ice cream parlour where they will make you a banana split called Banana’n'Hanoi, sheltered by a little conical Vietnamese straw hat, like the Vietnamese women in Hanoi wear, who are often seen carrying two baskets on either side of a wooden pole over their shoulder. (In fact, one woman even tried to give me her baskets so she could charge me for the photo opportunity.)

After crouching down to re-tie my shoelace, I look back up and realise my friend has totally disappeared. I don’t believe this. On the other side of the equator, in the searing humidity of northern Vietnam. After we both struggle to come to terms with the fact that we’ve lost each other, I turn to my mobile phone with very little battery left, and make a quick prayer to the Telstra God who invented international roaming, despite its expense. My friend has only enough credit for one text message, and doesn’t know the name of the hotel. He hasn’t yet changed his money so has no local currency with which to hail a taxi, although I’m sure some dodgy moto driver will be more than happy to relieve him of his $50AUD notes.

I have one chance at this. I quickly find my way back to the hotel, where I barely make it onto Google Maps given the hotel’s dodgy wi-fi connection, and get my friend to to text me his address. He is at Tien Dat Fashion, which according to Google Directory is located at 27 Hang Dau (pronounced Hang Zow in Vietnamese). I know where that is, I exclaim to myself, looking at my map. Hang Dao is the main arterial spoke emanating from Lake Hoan Kiem (we have been walking around), which becomes the Dong Xuan night market of an evening.

I quickly traipse my way across the narrow streets again, dodging the motos, to arrive at 27 Hang Dao. Bugger… it either doesn’t exist, or I’ve got the wrong address. This is a clothing shop, but no one has heard of Tien Dat Fashion, or seems to know where it is. I make my way around the streets, back towards my hotel, and finally a few people point me in the right direction (despite a few people pointing me in the wrong direction, a few moto drivers offering to take me somewhere completely different altogether, and the odd person that will only give me directions if I let them hold my phone with both hands, scrutinising my text message very carefully in order to read the lettering.) One dude is hanging onto my phone a little bit too long, and too keenly, and I quickly snatch it back off him before darting back into the traffic. A couple of cyclo drivers point at my pot belly and start giggling “ooh look… big fat!” They seem to think obesity is a matter of extraordinary comic value in Vietnam, as it’s not something they’re prone to at all. Anyway, I think I roughly know where I’m headed now.

Finally the street I am on, Hang Be, appears to become Hang Dau. Damn, that was Hang Dau, not Hang Dao, but it’s apparently pronounced almost identically. I’ve finally rescued my friend, who by a freak of chance, is literally less than 5 minutes walk from our hotel, where we charge the iPod and safely tuck away our Puppets and Circus tickets. First day in Hanoi. Survived. Tick!

Tran Quoc Pagoda

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An island temple jutting off a road-bridge between two lakes

A place of worship on a busy traffic thoroughfare just north of national Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh precinct in Hanoi. The ground floor of the temple is busy and jostling but not packed. People walk around, light free incense, take free flowers as a sign of respect and place them in jars of water in front of the main altar region, and take photos of the golden images of Buddha and artistic religious exhibits inside and around the temple. You can buy a cheap can of ice-tub cold soft-drink for under a $1US or buy a cheap souvenir from one of the sheltered vending areas. Concrete footpaths on both sides of the road-bridge provide a spectacular view of the sunset, and a number of very nice looking hotels, an entertainment complex, a McDonalds mimic franchise at the immediate roadside edge of the lake, with a second storey view, and a number of decent looking cafes along the roadside. The lake itself is surrounded by high rise hotels and tall apartment buildings, mainly of the 60-70′s era. Best view of the sunset over the Ho Tay Lake, while the smaller Ho Truc Bach is apparently the site where the US air-forces were captured landing during the war. Many young lovers meet here in the evenings on their motorbikes for a romantic walk. Definitely a must visit…

A few weeks ago I needed to go and commune with some sort of nature. And thus, I chose on my day off to ascend a mountain. Looking around Google Maps, at first I didn’t find a thing in this flat plain. Remember, I’m from Auckland, a city of 17 volcanoes. Mt Dandenong is just a hill to me. I bounded up it in 40 minutes once, years ago.

So I headed to the closest ski field to Melbourne. Mount Donna Buang.

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Concrete and anonymity faded past Ringwood, gradually. The road narrowed. Soon I was on a country highway, a sealed lane each way, dips, rises and turns this way and that. Field, sheep. Green. Country riding is a lot of fun. You feel the raw power and manoeuverability of the bike. You find your self fading into the pure experience of The Ride. Amazing.

I stopped in Healesville, at the base of the mountains. Healesville is “almost Melbourne”. It’s a very pretty tourist town with tree-lined streets and Victorian era buildings and a gorgeous old pub, the Healesville Hotel (where I stopped on the way back for a roast dinner).

Next, I proceeded towards the mountain. Now, I had never driven on unsealed roads, let alone windy, steep ones. And a third of the way down Donna Buang Road (NB: closed July-September) that is exactly what I encountered. This is a popular motorcycle route, and one that is clearly marked as being potentially hazardous- for good reason. The gravel is slippery, the road of poor, eroded condition. While it was marked as being 50-60kph with turns often at 30-40kph I found myself going far slower- more like 20-40kph through most of it. It was fun, adrenaline packed, but on a road bike also nerve-wracking. Not for the faint of heart.

The view on the way however- spectacular! Thick forest punctuated with fingers of sunlight. Occasionally it cleared enough to see miles and miles away over treetops and over the Victorian plains. Finally, I wound past the top of a ski run and emerged at the top, into sunlight. What a ride! I parked. My shoulders ached from the backpack I wore, and the sheer energy of the ride. On my way I had passed 2 cyclists and one other motorist- a car. But how delicious, I thought, to have the mountain practically to myself. I was only a couple of hours from home, and yet, for the first time in months, I was miles from habitation. Bliss.

There was plenty of bird life to keep my ears company, and a gentle, warm breeze. The view from the top of the viewing platform- which must be about 20m off the ground- is breathtaking. Forest, trees, blue, rolling mountains, and in the far distance, Melbourne, and the sea.

I took my time driving back. I was in absolutely no hurry to get back to the city. I had brought myself to the mountain, we had communed.

I was at peace.

You head down the street, past an unmarked door. You pause, turn back, open this door. You trudge up the flight of stairs as warm jazz hits your ears. At the top, you are in a secret lounge, warmly lit, filled with large, comfortable, chocolate leather couches. Columbia looks down at you from a huge painting on the wall. The waiter smiles and shows you to a seat.

You order a bottle of wine from the generous menu. You sip at a glass of it. It is good, delicately textured. You order some food. The mood of the place takes over.

Later yet, you take a journey upstairs to the rooftop bar. It is a little chilly, even for November. You get them to make you a dirty Martini. It is exquisite, the perfect balance of salty, bitter and tart.

You watch the city from where you stand. The wind rustles your hair.