Living Down Under
Right I know I haven't posted in ages... But better late than never and here I finally am!
Living near the beach!
Now in Melbourne - joined Treacy, Michelle and Conor here in early November and we are now living in an area called St. Kilda near the beach. The previous tenants left behind their rollerblades so in the midst of that 'coldest winter in decades' I've been hearing about you can think about me cruising along the beach on my rollerblades... It might send a warm fuzzy feeling up your spine... OK, maybe not..!
Couldn't sell water in a desert
Jobs are not a-plentiful on these shores which is strange since Australia's meant to have a very low unemployment rate. But I guess with all the houses and cars people have here there's a lower turnover in the jobs market. I managed to get one as.... (hangs head in shame)... a door-to-door salesperson. Yes, yes, OK are you finished laughing yet? Selling child sponsorship for World Vision - all in a good cause... I have managed to sell two sponsorships but am concluding that I'm the crappiest salesperson in the world. Had a woman on the verge of tears yesterday after talking about poor starving kids and, while most salespeople would have turned this into a guilt trip thus securing the sale, I simply didn't have the heart to push her and ended up reassuring her, saying that if she couldn't afford sponsorship, that her prayers were just as valuable. For feck's sake, Cathy!
Before Oz - in a nutshell (for those with lives)
Phnom Penh - Siam Reap - Bangkok - Koh Tao - Phuket/Similan Islands - Singapore
Before Oz - the longer version (if you haven't got a life)
I really really want to go back to Cambodia - it was an absolutely fascinating country but with only eight days and being firmly entrenched on the tourist trail I didn't come away with a feeling of having seen the real Cambodia. Arriving after three weeks in what I thought was a poor country (Vietnam) I was completely taken aback at the poverty that permeates Cambodia. It's clear from the boulevards of Phnom Penh that it was once a very grand city... But now it's hard to get the sense that you are in a proper capital city - the roads feel like those out in villages. I read in a book I am reading here that lots of peasants moved into PP in the 1980s and as education is not universal these people still lead 'peasant' lifestyles which explains perfectly the ambiance around PP. I mean, in one day, I saw a monkey scuttle across a telephone wire, five sheep drinking water out of a barrel on one of PP's main boulevards, an elephant disrupting traffic in rush hour...!
Visited the Deaf Development Project which was set up by the Finnish Deaf Association in the 1990s - Melissa and Justin (from Australia and the UK) told me all about deaf education in Cambodia. Up until 1996 there was no provision, educationally, for deaf people and as deaf people didn't congregate there was no sign language either. The situation has changed dramatically in the last 9 years - while Cambodia has a long way to come, deaf people now have sign language and education, primary and adult, available...
On the same road as the Deaf Development Project is the Tuong Sleng Museum. The museum is housed in what was originally a school, and turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge reign (for those not in the know, the Khmer Rouge were communists that took over the country in 1975 until the Vietnamese invasion in 1979). The museum isn't the most sophisicated around but with all its photos of people, including children and babies, who were killed because they were middle class, lived in the city, educated or something as simple as having glasses (a 'sign' of being educated according to the Khmer Rouge) it really was the most chilling place I'd ever been to. I had mixed feelings at the 'Killing Fields' (where people were brought from Tuong Sleng to be killed) - situated in the country outside PP it has a beautiful memorial, was very peaceful and should be a place of reflection. But tourists are bombarded by people begging and because you know that these people are desperate it's extremely difficult refusing money. So there you are surrounded by tragedy, past present and future (seeing kids who've been amputated and knowing their futures are likely to be dire).
But later that day, I went to the National Museum which is in an absolutely stunning rust red pagoda-style building and then onto the riverbank where PP-ers meet to socialise, chat, flirt, eat and meet friends at sunset. A man out with his baby son offered me some barbequed fish with chilli and, later, two young lads gave me some of that citrus fruit you see around SE Asia (I never found out w
hat it's called) and some chilli salt... Up in Siam Reap after explaining those strange contraptions on my ears to some curious kids, a girl put one of the bracelets she was selling on me and told me to keep it to remember Angkor, being offended when I offered to pay for it. It was a whole other side to Cambodia - despite the poverty and tragedy people live with, they know how to smile and are extremely generous.
Siam Reap - Thailand Defeated
That's really what Siam Reap means - Thailand defeated... Can you imagine going to visit 'England Defeated' in North France or similar?! Anyway Siam Reap is the gateway city to Angkor Wat. The town itself is a busy place with restaurants, hotels, a market but not much else - it's all happening down at Angkor. I hired a bike, bought a three day pass and set off to explore Angkor. Wow, whatever words I use won't do it justice. Cambodians are extremely proud of Angkor and it's easy to see why - it's evidence of a glorious past. Huge huge wats (temples) made out of grey stone, some with purplish hues, others having a luminous green tinge from
moss and a few looking almost red, built in an area across about 12-20 KM... My favourite wat was the one where Tomb Raider was filmed - most wats have been restored but this one was left as it was found and is just the most magical place ever with trees growing on top of buildings etc. What I need to do is post some photos so you can see what I mean. Something else I loved in Angkor were all the butterflies fluttering about - bright yellows against the grey of the buildings. The colours were so vivid - it's really a photographer's dream. While I had a three day pass unfortunately I came down with a fever and slept right through the second day so only had 2 days to see it which was a right bummer but I did get 2 days...
The worst road in the world
Driving from Siam Reap to Bangkok, according to a map, shouldn't take that long. Getting from Bangkok to Poipet on the border takes 4 1/2 hours and is twice as long as the distance from Poipet to Siam Reap... So about 7-8 hours in total you might think. Think again... Getting from Siam Reap to Poipet alone took NINE hours, ALL of it on what was literally a dirt track covered in potholes, no, make that pot-craters. The van we were on suffered a flat-tyre after crashing into one of said craters - the only surprise is we didn't have four flats... Poverty's definitely all relative - Thailand seemed poor-ish when I first arrived in September but after Cambodia it felt like being in a really rich developed country.
Back in Bangkok
After being sick for a few days and that hazarduous bus journey, I was ready for some pampering. And how better to pamper oneself than go on a shopping spree?! Hit this big shopping centre in Bangkok which was bursting with cheap jeans, shoes, bags, jewellery and more... At the end of a hard day's shopping, went to see a Thai romcom with English subtitles in a big comfortable AC-ed cinema... What luxury!
The next day I met up with Naomi from London and we headed down to Koh Tao where Naomi was doing her instructor's course. I enrolled on the Buddha View Open Water course - that's the scuba-diving for beginners course. It was such fun I decided to go on an eight-day diving trip around the Similan Islands in the Andaman sea on the other side of Thailand. I needed some persuading to do it cos it was expensive but am so glad I did go. Eight days of living on a boat (we were all 'landsick' when we touched on land on the last day!) eating amazing food, getting to know fellow-divers (who harked from Holland, Germany, Sweden, France and the USA) and, of course, doing four dives a day and seeing a whole other world... I won't go into what fish I saw much because am sure no-one reading this'll know what they are but I did see lots of leopard sharks and even stroked one, a big mantra ray and had a sea-turtle swim around me looking for food. Forget Paris and Milan, the only fashion show that matters is the one below ocean-level. All kinds of colours, designs and shapes being paraded around stunning coral shelves. Some areas had these HUGE boulder rocks and we could swim in and out of grottos - dead exciting! Other places such as the Garden of Eden were simple dives but had the most vivid array of colour you could ever hope to see. Oh I met Nemo by the way... A nice little lad he is, but rather shy.
Singapore
Singapore was a culture shock after being in SE Asia for a few weeks... I was broke and couldn't shop... And Singapore is first and foremost a shopping city... Met up with a friend from Sydney who was on his way to Dublin which was good - he knew Singapore pretty well and showed me around the shops (I did manage to rake up enough money to buy a bikini) and the following day we went to Sentosa Island which can only be described as surreal. It's basically an island that's been turned into a playground with an aquarium, dolphin park, skyview tower, a giantic lion/mermaid statue-thingy, a cinema-experience (one of those things where you sit on moving chairs) and stuff like that. Totally commercial but it was fun for a day. Also managed to take in Little India and visited a deaf girl who lives with her husband, three kids, mother, father and sister in a one-bedroomed apartment....! Her friends were all visiting the same day so there were like 20 people packed into this tiny space!
Melbourne!
From Singapore it was onto Melbourne and door-to-door selling... I am gonna love you and leave you all now but will try and make updates more regular from now on!
Keep the emails coming in even if I don't reply - I love hearing what's happening back home!
Mwah xxxxxx
Living near the beach!
Now in Melbourne - joined Treacy, Michelle and Conor here in early November and we are now living in an area called St. Kilda near the beach. The previous tenants left behind their rollerblades so in the midst of that 'coldest winter in decades' I've been hearing about you can think about me cruising along the beach on my rollerblades... It might send a warm fuzzy feeling up your spine... OK, maybe not..!
Couldn't sell water in a desert
Jobs are not a-plentiful on these shores which is strange since Australia's meant to have a very low unemployment rate. But I guess with all the houses and cars people have here there's a lower turnover in the jobs market. I managed to get one as.... (hangs head in shame)... a door-to-door salesperson. Yes, yes, OK are you finished laughing yet? Selling child sponsorship for World Vision - all in a good cause... I have managed to sell two sponsorships but am concluding that I'm the crappiest salesperson in the world. Had a woman on the verge of tears yesterday after talking about poor starving kids and, while most salespeople would have turned this into a guilt trip thus securing the sale, I simply didn't have the heart to push her and ended up reassuring her, saying that if she couldn't afford sponsorship, that her prayers were just as valuable. For feck's sake, Cathy!
Before Oz - in a nutshell (for those with lives)
Phnom Penh - Siam Reap - Bangkok - Koh Tao - Phuket/Similan Islands - Singapore
Before Oz - the longer version (if you haven't got a life)
I really really want to go back to Cambodia - it was an absolutely fascinating country but with only eight days and being firmly entrenched on the tourist trail I didn't come away with a feeling of having seen the real Cambodia. Arriving after three weeks in what I thought was a poor country (Vietnam) I was completely taken aback at the poverty that permeates Cambodia. It's clear from the boulevards of Phnom Penh that it was once a very grand city... But now it's hard to get the sense that you are in a proper capital city - the roads feel like those out in villages. I read in a book I am reading here that lots of peasants moved into PP in the 1980s and as education is not universal these people still lead 'peasant' lifestyles which explains perfectly the ambiance around PP. I mean, in one day, I saw a monkey scuttle across a telephone wire, five sheep drinking water out of a barrel on one of PP's main boulevards, an elephant disrupting traffic in rush hour...!
Visited the Deaf Development Project which was set up by the Finnish Deaf Association in the 1990s - Melissa and Justin (from Australia and the UK) told me all about deaf education in Cambodia. Up until 1996 there was no provision, educationally, for deaf people and as deaf people didn't congregate there was no sign language either. The situation has changed dramatically in the last 9 years - while Cambodia has a long way to come, deaf people now have sign language and education, primary and adult, available...
On the same road as the Deaf Development Project is the Tuong Sleng Museum. The museum is housed in what was originally a school, and turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge reign (for those not in the know, the Khmer Rouge were communists that took over the country in 1975 until the Vietnamese invasion in 1979). The museum isn't the most sophisicated around but with all its photos of people, including children and babies, who were killed because they were middle class, lived in the city, educated or something as simple as having glasses (a 'sign' of being educated according to the Khmer Rouge) it really was the most chilling place I'd ever been to. I had mixed feelings at the 'Killing Fields' (where people were brought from Tuong Sleng to be killed) - situated in the country outside PP it has a beautiful memorial, was very peaceful and should be a place of reflection. But tourists are bombarded by people begging and because you know that these people are desperate it's extremely difficult refusing money. So there you are surrounded by tragedy, past present and future (seeing kids who've been amputated and knowing their futures are likely to be dire).
But later that day, I went to the National Museum which is in an absolutely stunning rust red pagoda-style building and then onto the riverbank where PP-ers meet to socialise, chat, flirt, eat and meet friends at sunset. A man out with his baby son offered me some barbequed fish with chilli and, later, two young lads gave me some of that citrus fruit you see around SE Asia (I never found out w
hat it's called) and some chilli salt... Up in Siam Reap after explaining those strange contraptions on my ears to some curious kids, a girl put one of the bracelets she was selling on me and told me to keep it to remember Angkor, being offended when I offered to pay for it. It was a whole other side to Cambodia - despite the poverty and tragedy people live with, they know how to smile and are extremely generous.Siam Reap - Thailand Defeated
That's really what Siam Reap means - Thailand defeated... Can you imagine going to visit 'England Defeated' in North France or similar?! Anyway Siam Reap is the gateway city to Angkor Wat. The town itself is a busy place with restaurants, hotels, a market but not much else - it's all happening down at Angkor. I hired a bike, bought a three day pass and set off to explore Angkor. Wow, whatever words I use won't do it justice. Cambodians are extremely proud of Angkor and it's easy to see why - it's evidence of a glorious past. Huge huge wats (temples) made out of grey stone, some with purplish hues, others having a luminous green tinge from
moss and a few looking almost red, built in an area across about 12-20 KM... My favourite wat was the one where Tomb Raider was filmed - most wats have been restored but this one was left as it was found and is just the most magical place ever with trees growing on top of buildings etc. What I need to do is post some photos so you can see what I mean. Something else I loved in Angkor were all the butterflies fluttering about - bright yellows against the grey of the buildings. The colours were so vivid - it's really a photographer's dream. While I had a three day pass unfortunately I came down with a fever and slept right through the second day so only had 2 days to see it which was a right bummer but I did get 2 days...The worst road in the world
Driving from Siam Reap to Bangkok, according to a map, shouldn't take that long. Getting from Bangkok to Poipet on the border takes 4 1/2 hours and is twice as long as the distance from Poipet to Siam Reap... So about 7-8 hours in total you might think. Think again... Getting from Siam Reap to Poipet alone took NINE hours, ALL of it on what was literally a dirt track covered in potholes, no, make that pot-craters. The van we were on suffered a flat-tyre after crashing into one of said craters - the only surprise is we didn't have four flats... Poverty's definitely all relative - Thailand seemed poor-ish when I first arrived in September but after Cambodia it felt like being in a really rich developed country.
Back in Bangkok
After being sick for a few days and that hazarduous bus journey, I was ready for some pampering. And how better to pamper oneself than go on a shopping spree?! Hit this big shopping centre in Bangkok which was bursting with cheap jeans, shoes, bags, jewellery and more... At the end of a hard day's shopping, went to see a Thai romcom with English subtitles in a big comfortable AC-ed cinema... What luxury!
The next day I met up with Naomi from London and we headed down to Koh Tao where Naomi was doing her instructor's course. I enrolled on the Buddha View Open Water course - that's the scuba-diving for beginners course. It was such fun I decided to go on an eight-day diving trip around the Similan Islands in the Andaman sea on the other side of Thailand. I needed some persuading to do it cos it was expensive but am so glad I did go. Eight days of living on a boat (we were all 'landsick' when we touched on land on the last day!) eating amazing food, getting to know fellow-divers (who harked from Holland, Germany, Sweden, France and the USA) and, of course, doing four dives a day and seeing a whole other world... I won't go into what fish I saw much because am sure no-one reading this'll know what they are but I did see lots of leopard sharks and even stroked one, a big mantra ray and had a sea-turtle swim around me looking for food. Forget Paris and Milan, the only fashion show that matters is the one below ocean-level. All kinds of colours, designs and shapes being paraded around stunning coral shelves. Some areas had these HUGE boulder rocks and we could swim in and out of grottos - dead exciting! Other places such as the Garden of Eden were simple dives but had the most vivid array of colour you could ever hope to see. Oh I met Nemo by the way... A nice little lad he is, but rather shy.
Singapore
Singapore was a culture shock after being in SE Asia for a few weeks... I was broke and couldn't shop... And Singapore is first and foremost a shopping city... Met up with a friend from Sydney who was on his way to Dublin which was good - he knew Singapore pretty well and showed me around the shops (I did manage to rake up enough money to buy a bikini) and the following day we went to Sentosa Island which can only be described as surreal. It's basically an island that's been turned into a playground with an aquarium, dolphin park, skyview tower, a giantic lion/mermaid statue-thingy, a cinema-experience (one of those things where you sit on moving chairs) and stuff like that. Totally commercial but it was fun for a day. Also managed to take in Little India and visited a deaf girl who lives with her husband, three kids, mother, father and sister in a one-bedroomed apartment....! Her friends were all visiting the same day so there were like 20 people packed into this tiny space!
Melbourne!
From Singapore it was onto Melbourne and door-to-door selling... I am gonna love you and leave you all now but will try and make updates more regular from now on!
Keep the emails coming in even if I don't reply - I love hearing what's happening back home!
Mwah xxxxxx
posted by Cathy Heffernan | 8:53 a.m.
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