New Futures Orphanage

Most of what I have been doing is pretty dry to write about - teaching teenagers whose own language doesn't have tenses the difference between the past tense and the present perfect is going to make exciting reading.

I guess I could tell you how pleased the kids were when the donated tuk-tuk arrived or when we gave them 200 balloons but, far worse than boring you, I think that that would make me sound like a hippy.

I am still in Cambodia though, so weird things are still happening. There are baby chickens wherever you walk and Jonny has to get a tattoo because of a drinking game.
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Weirdest Food Eaten:
This is a tricky one. I think that the deep-fried spider is the weirdest thing I've eaten in the last couple of days. Dan reckons that the duck embryo is the weirdest thing I've eaten this year, and that's a man who's seen me eat a lot of weird things. So which is weirder? Answers on a postcard marked "Stomach Abuse".
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If there are any hippies reading this and want to do something to help the orphanage you can donate time or money through their wedbsite: www.newfuturesorganisation.com

Checkey Bon Cor Hi

Gecko's make an absolutely ridiculous noise. Tor-kay, but in a way reminiscent of one of those squeaky hammers that a toddler might play with.

It all got quite exciting here yesterday. It was Yamaha Day (and I forgot to send cards - how careless - Happy Yamaha Day anyway) and there was a big festival in town and the guy that sings "Checkey Bon Cor Hi" was there (you know the song, right? I appreciate that I've written it phonetically in a "Ken-Li"-by-Mariah-Carey" way but it's everywhere, so you'd recognise it. The girl gets run over by a bus at the end of the video - you know? no? well maybe the phenomenon is yet to hit blighty). Jonny was way more excited about it than he should have been so arranged a trip there with fifteen of the older kids. We only lost one. Well done us, I say.

A couple of days back our English class got a bit disrupted by a snake-scorpion double bill. We realised we were a bit out of our depth so let the kids deal with it. One of them tried to smoke the snake out of the tree; another destroyed the scorpion with a stick - the girls incorporated the bits of scorpion carcass into their game.

Well Altruism

We've volunteered at New Futures Orphanage. It's not quite how I pictured an orphanage, if I'm honest. I guess I've just had misconceptions because of the Romanian pictures that you always used to see. The kids here are all smiley and super clever (presumably because they spend a whole heap of time hanging put with gap year students - the clever bit, not the smiley bit, obviously).

We're in Takeo, which is about two hours off the gringo trail, which means I had to step over a goat to get to the internet.

As I'm now an ethical traveller, I feel I should state for the record that I haven't blown up a cow with a bazooka, despite a lot of tuktuk drivers best efforts.

Holiday in Cambodia

Phnom Penh might have just usurped La Paz as the weirdest capital city I've been to. Within the first evening we'd seen a stray elephant, watched mass aerobics in the park and been jumped by a gang of ladyboys.

On a less frivolous note we spent today between the Killing Fields and S21. It's not been the most happy-go-lucky day of the trip.

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Weirdest Food: Obviously this is going to be weird: take your pick from crickets (pork scratchings with legs), beetles (burnt chocolate with a shell) or maggots (pop-in-your-mouth disgusting). Incidentally it turns out that beggars can be choosers; when I gave a beggar half a bag of assorted, deep-fried insects they seemed less than grateful.

Wat a Carve Up!

The Angkor temples were everything that I'd hoped Machu Picchu was going to be. The biggy, Angkor Wat, was proper big, proper ornate and must have taken ages. Bayon, which I'd never heard of, was eerily full of patchwork faces staring down at you. Ta Prohm, or The One From Tombraider as it seems to be called nowadays, was battling nature like a bad boy. The whole complex is just blow-your-face-off great.

At one point we followed some music and ended up in a monk school where all the tiny monks (let's cll them monkies) were learning to tie robes. We also found that all the kids that sell you bangles and coconuts around the temples are phenonmenally good at capital cities. I'd recommend anyone travelling to Cambodia to learn the capital of Madagascar because it's a little bit embarassing being outfoxed by a 5 year old (incidentally, I'd also recommend not getting any Cambodian currency as no one uses it. Even cash machines'don't give it out).

So yeah, we're in Cambodia. And so far it's been amazing. The journey across from Thailand was pretty silly. We stayed in Arunya Prathet, on the Thai side of the border for a night. It was the most travellery I've felt in ages. Eating a street vendor curry with my fingers in a municipal square in the dark. Washing in a public fountain. Staying in a pound-a-night hotel. Pubcrawling the town without seeing anothber gringo. Travellertastic.

The border crossing would've been painless if it hadn't been for the money changing thing (it was made more interesting by the ultramodern casinos that had been built between the borders) and as the road to Siem Reap has been upgraded even that journey wasn't as bad as we were expecting.

When we got into town last night we went to Seeing Hands for a massage from blind Cambodians, which, thanks to Mr Fish, was only our second weirdest massage of the day.

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Weirdest thig eaten: Fried frog.

Krung Thep

We're in Krungthep mahanakhon amonratanakosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amonpiman avatansathit sakkathattiya witsanukamprasit and how we've managed to Anglicise that into Bangkok I'm really not sure.

Don't think I like it here all that much. It's hot, muggy and it seems like everyone's trying to rip you off, which has just made us uber-cynical and slightly angry.

The journey here was a little bit crazy. We got an overnight train, figuring that we could do a bit of sleeping on the way up. We hadn't bargained on being right next to the karaoke carriage. More fool us. The train ride was made even less fun by the volume of dead mosquitoes that stuck themselves to your face if you did fall asleep.

Spent yesterday pottering round temples - they do a mean temple here, I'll give them that. We released some finches at the big Buddha for longlasting prosperity. We saw a bird that looked suspiciously like one of our finches in the mouth of a cat about 8 seconds later. I'm hoping that's not symbolic.

Spent last night watching Thai boxing. Only two fights drew blood. Rubbish.

Siamese Dream

The boat trip to Koh Tao was horrendous. The windows were nearly touching the water. I was loving it, but I think, judging by the amount of vomitting going on, that I was in the minority.

Anyway, Koh Tao is supposed to be one of the best places around for snorkelling but, because of the old tropical storms, we couldn't get a boat anywhere. Spent most of the time there wandering aimlessly in the rain trying to find accommodation. Tropicalparadisetastic.

Oh, and I put a piece of coral through my foot, which makes walking with a backpack fun.

Howling at the Moon

I'm in Thailand, on Koh Pha Ngan. Last night was the Full Moon Party. It was messy. Literally. I've got rave paint on all of my clothes.

To be honest Hat Rin, where we were staying, had a bit of the old 1830s about it (you know, everyone dressed up as Charles Darwin - not really), so the days leading up to the party had a reasonable level of messiness going on.

We've left Hat Rin now and headed to the quieter side of the island to a beach that's not on any maps - how very 'off the beaten track'?

It's a Jungle Sometimes

I'm on the Perenthian Islands, off the Malaysian coast. If you picture how a tropical island is the where we are is slightly better. Palm trees. Jungle. Beach. Coral reef. Water so clear you can see the multi-coloured fish. Add to that that our dorm room overlooks the beach and it's about as close to a paradise cliche as you're going to get.

It was a bit of a mission getting here though. It took best part of 48 hours. Some of which was spent on the Jungle Railway (another one of "the top 5 railway journeys") which would have been supercool if train delays hadn't meant we were travelling at night. On the plus side it did mean we saw some of the more "off the beaten track" parts of Malaysia.

Back to Weird Travelling

This isn't the kind of temperature that gingers thrive in. Stupidly hot. My face has melted all over my t-shirt.

So I'm in Asia now, in Singapore, and everything is all crazy weird: part ubermodern aircon highrise where you can buy Percy Pigs from Marks and Spencer; part bustly thirdworld hubbub where you don't understand anything and drinks contain tapioca pearls.

Travelling with Dan again. Drunken-karaoke-tastic.

Went to the zoo today - it has a rep for being the best zoo in the world. It's probably pretty accurate. Had free-roaming orangutans. And a three metre long fish that i'd not heard of. And performing otters. There's not enough performing otters in zoos nowadays.

Weirdest thing eaten: Crocodile. Dan beat me to the "make it snappy" joke. I was disgusted at myself.

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I've not commented too much on current affairs and the like while I've been travelling (mainly because I don't hear about it for a week or so) but just heard about a celebrity death that took me a bit by surprise. Calling Swells an inspiration is probably overdoing it somewhat, but, you know, what a writer - if only I was that good. Rant in Peace.