The Red Centre

(Apologies for the change of appearance of this blog  half way through but I have tried everything and cannot correct it  !)

Five hours, two stops, one at a camel farm, where a very photogenic emu

 
tried to eat my camera,

                                                        and one at a cattle station, which was the size of Belgium (!!), honestly, and we were in sight of The Rock...............or so we thought! Actually we were all busy photographing Mt. Connor

 

 

and it was another 100kms before the ‘biggest rock on the planet’ came into view..........or is it the 2^nd biggest?? (Look up the Uluru/Mt Augustus : monolith/monocline debate if you’re interested).

Uluru/Ayers Rock,

                   

uniquely, officially has two names, the first is the ancient aboriginal name, the second, and more widely used, is the name given to it by the surveyor William Gosse, who discovered it in 1873, honouring the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers.

 It is regarded, by aborigines as a most sacred place, in particular to the local Anagu tribe, who own it and the surrounding lands. The aborigines were incredible story tellers and there are tales, known as dreamtime, relating to nearly every hole, scar, cave and gash in the rock, all of which remain visible due to the lack of vegetation growing on its flanks.
It’s stats are ….

·         348 metres (1141 feet) high

·         3.6 km long (2.2 miles)

·         1.9 km wide (1.2 miles)

·         9.4 km or 5.8 miles around the base

·         area 3.33 km² (1.29 miles²)

·         and, it is estimated, it extends several km/miles into the ground (no-one knows exactly how far!)

 

It’s a big old boy, incredibly impressive and, as I walked around it, I thought, it had a strange, almost calming aura about it, which sounds a bit strange for something that, after all is just a rock. This might be something to do with the quiet – you really are hundreds of miles from civilization, apart from the occasional buzz of the sightseeing helicopters overhead, perhaps coupled with the fact that there appeared to be a complete lack of wildlife in the area.

We were told that the water in the area is amongst the most contaminated in Australia!! The explanation opens a contentious issue.

Whilst in the ownership of the local tribe, it is leased back to the Australian government on a long term lease. The government allows anyone to climb the rock and there is even a chain handrail leading to the top. The aborigines ask people to respect the site and not climb, as the site is of great significance to them.
 

 

They liken it to allowing the public to clamber over our important religious and historical monuments.

Despite this, when the weather permits, hundreds still climb it daily. It is a steep climb that usually takes a few hours and, especially in the heat of summer, some people get sick, additionally there are no toilet facilities – can you see where I am going with this? ….. when it rains, all of this human waste is washed off the rock, into the water system surrounding it, it has nowhere else to go … hey presto … chronic pollution = no wildlife.

The rock itself is intriguing and there are pools, overhanging areas which, evidence reveals, were used as shelters, kitchens and meeting places, sheer cliffs that turn into magnificent waterfalls when it rains and rock paintings

                                           

                                           

The rock has one thing that it is most famous for and that is its apparent ability to change colour, notably at sunset and sunrise. Of course it is actually the way that we see the light reflected off the rocks surface that changes, but still it is an impressive display, BUT it depends on the sun/clouds playing their part and we were out of luck but for about 30 seconds when the top of the rock seemed to glow
 

                           
 

 as if it contained an electric bar fire element (ask your mum if you don’t understand this).

Obviously, having just seen the sunset, it was getting dark as we headed off to camp but the fun was just starting. On our way to the rock we had stopped and collected a roof rack full of fallen timber from the side of the road and the first job was to unload this and build a huge campfire.

The camp facilities were very basic, we occupied one of several purpose built areas that consisted of a covered eating area with 10 trestle tables, a truck battery, to which we hooked up 3 pretty dull lamps, a sink with cold water and 8 small tents. There were toilet/shower facilities 400 yards away which were very good, but no lighting anywhere, and in such a remote place it was very dark.

In the near darkness 3 volunteers, and Kate and Mick the tour organizers, mucked in and chopped, sliced, stirred, boiled on the open fire, a pile of food from the cool box in the trailer to present us all with quite a passable pasta and camel Bolognese with garlic bread supper and then it was swag time.

A swag is a rolled, thick canvas sleeping bag which incorporates a thin spongy base into which you put your own sleeping bag. The choice was to put this in a tent or around the camp fire and, as it looked like a reasonable, but a little cloudy night, most of us agreed that the tents were for wimps and we would sleep under the stars (even if we couldn’t see them).

At the cattle station we had had the chance to get some supplies and I had been given a steer (no pun intended!) that the home grown  port was the drop to go for. The very modestly named number (!!)
 

                         
 

proved as good as its word as the embers glowed, the temperature dropped and the dingos began to howl in the distance (which sent two young girls from the Black Forest to seek refuge under canvas      ……..wimps).

T shirt, shirt, fleece and sleeping bag wrapped around a 56 inch chest meant that my swag was snug! No problem for keeping warm but, when I woke at 4.30am and tried to turn skywards, it was as if I had been buried horizontally in concrete. It took about 5 minutes to wriggle enough to employ my ‘Houdini out of the straight jacket’ technique and get the zip down enough to start the rotation procedure. When eventually I did get to turn 45 degrees the rewards were totally disproportionate to my frustrations, as the clouds had disappeared and the view was incredible.

I had seen the stars from the desert in Dubai, from a safari park in Sri Lanka, from the banks of the Meekong in Laos, from a beach in the Catlans National Park in the far south of New Zealand, all pretty remote places, but here WOW!!! There seemed to be twice as many stars packed into the darkness than I had ever seen and the Milky Way looked as if someone had skidded across the heavens on a silver tyre. It was magical but it was all short lived.

In order to catch sunrise over the Olgas, another rocky outcrop not too far from Ayers Rock, we had to leave camp before 6am, so, before 5am it was time to start the pre departure activities of ablutions, breakfast, clean everything, pack everything and with 22 sleepy heads to organize, in total darkness, without waking the rest of the camp site it was challenging …. but successfully achieved.

Nature just wasn’t playing ball again, and sunrise was a non event as the clouds refused to break,
 

so, a little disappointed and bleary eyed we all set off to walk the Olgas or Kata Tjuta as it is properly named. It is part of the same National Park as Uluru but differs from it as here there are some 36 domed ‘heads’ of rock formed by  erosion over millions of years. The 6 mile walk was too much for my poor foot and so I did the first mile and went back to the bus, very slowly, to wait for my mates, but the scenery was terrific, in fact as opposed to the yomping I had plenty of time to look about and really soak in the beauty of this extraordinary landscape.

A DIY sandwich lunch and then it was off again for another 3 ½ hours, including stopping for firewood collection, to our next camp site  which we reached in daylight, which made the whole thing so much easier.

Three things to mention here.

First, in all the places that I have been to so far, in fact I would say in my life, I have never seen so many flies as there were in this area. They were everywhere and had no reservation about trying to get into your mouth when you talked and even seemed to want to get in your eyes!! How do the locals deal with it? Well this is the whole thing about corks on the hat.

Secondly my overriding memory of the countryside is the amount of tree ‘litter’ there is. Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of trees stand with anything from small branches to huge limbs strewn around their bases. It seems to be irrespective of the type, size even age of tree but it is staggering how often you see this.

Thirdly still no sign of a bloody kangaroo!!

Another triumph in the art of one pot camp fire tucker, as a chickeny, sweet and soury. stewy thing was served up followed by a good old Australian outback favourite, a damper (look it up) and then it was a chance to polish off the port around a roaring fire until the rain got too heavy and we wimped into our tents to our swags.

 

                      

There was a definite theme on this tour which was, make sure everyone has to get up before the sun and the last day was no exception. The maths were easy 1 ½ hour drive, 3 ½ hour walk, 5 hour drive home plus bbq lunch and wc/petrol stop = 12 hours. Leave site at 5am = get home before dark, and that was how it worked.

We were bound for Kings Canyon, another Red Centre attraction. Again my hoof dictated me taking the easy option and I took the canyon floor walk whilst the others climbed up to do the rim walk.
 

 

                                                   

Their views were fab, especially of the sheer canyon walls, but quite honestly I didn’t feel too deprived as the canyon walk was really impressive and I was getting to the stage where I actually wanted to be resting not tackling hundreds of steps.

The rest of the day went well and I made up for not seeing a pesky kangaroo by having a couple of extra kangaroo sausages at the lunchtime bbq, that’ll teach ‘em.

Overall the tour had been great, the well informed and good humoured guides had worked very hard –  all that driving, cooking, organizing of 22 people, most of them German and Swiss and supervision of a trainee tour guide, by Kate (24 years old). I wish I could done a little bit more but I was trying to protect myself from further damage whilst not missing out completely.

Tired,



 

some more than others, we got back to Alice, went out for a couple of pints with a few others that were staying overnight and then headed back to the digs for a good nights sleep before the next phase …… rejoin the Ghan and head south.

The Ghan 1

 

 

The Ghan, as both the train and the journey is referred to, is one of the great train journeys on the planet. The name is an abbreviated version of The Afghan Express, which was unofficially bestowed on the service in 1923, by one of its crews in honour of the Afghan camel drivers who arrived in Australia in the late 19th century to help find a way to reach the country's unexplored interior.

This was one of the pre-booked elements of my trip that I was really looking forward to. Essentially it was travelling by train the 2979 kms. from Darwin, in the north of Australia, to Adelaide in the south, with a stopover in Alice Springs, to visit Ayres Rock, about half way through.

As a UK resident there is a fantastic deal to be had with Southern Rail, who operate the service, their rail card, at a cost of £200, entitles you to unlimited travel on any of their services, including this and the Sydney to Perth, Indian Pacific route. You have to pay a small fuel surcharge, but still £20 for 3,000 kms. is a bit of a result, especially as the basic, standard adult fare is about $900 (£600).

The Ghan offers a Red, Gold and Platinum service. The rail card traveller can only access the basic Red service, but within that you get a reasonably comfortable, reclining seat in a carriage that has shower facilities and access to a cafe car, but alas, no disco!

By way of comparison, the Platinum passengers are picked up and dropped off at either end of their trip, have free access to some of the  excursions and get an en suite cabin, with foldable bunk beds, a personal steward and as much food and booze as you want. But ..... Platinum will cost you about $3500 per person (that’s about £5000 per couple), I suppose it depends how much you can drink, because whilst the dining is fine, the scenery is what is not to be missed, and the view is the same from both ends of the train!!

On arrival at Darwin station, one hour before departure, the place was a hive of activity. There are people who travel miles just to photograph The Ghan and a gaggle of them were assembled together with expectant passengers, relatives and well wishers, maintenance crew, cleaners, station staff and a swarm of well dressed stewards.

The average age of those travelling seemed to be about 70, supporting the fact that this trip has grown in popularity as a ‘bucket list’ activity, and the air was full of ‘oooohs’, ‘aaaaahs’, excited chatter and clicking cameras as the huge locomotive, sporting the iconic livery, thundered into the station.

The huge train appeared even more impressive as there was no platform and the theatre continued as the choreographed stewards placed sets of stainless steel steps outside each of the carriage doors to afford access.

Putting aside the razzmatazz, as a piece of engineering the engine is immense and the pulling power to drag along some 35 carriages, (49 when it is really busy) plus a few, fully laden, car carriers is awesome. The simple, classic design of the carriages forewarns you of the relatively basic interior of the ‘cheap seats’ carriages and the cafe car, whilst spotless, looked like most fast food restaurants did 10 years ago.

It wasn’t what you might call luxurious down the Red end of the train, but it was clean, reasonably quiet, spacious and as comfortable as any aircraft I had been on and after all I wasn’t there for luxury, I just wanted to have crossed this huge country from top to bottom, have seen some kangaroos and to have ridden The Ghan.

Right on time, we were ready, everyone was boarded, the smartly dressed stewards had given us the safety briefing, a couple of loud blasts of the horn had echoed around the rail yard and then, with the bell ringing ceremoniously at the front of the train, the carriages creaked into life, the wheels squealed with reluctance the train jolted into motion and we set off toward our first stop, Katherine Gorge.

All too soon we experienced one of the potential problems of this type of journey, its unpredictability. Despite the hoo-hah, The Ghan is just another train to traffic control and must ‘play by the rules’, the steward explained to us after we had been stopping and starting for what seemed like ages. Apparently rail safety regulations restrict certain combinations of passenger and freight trains in the same sector, so when we came across a delayed oil carrier, we had had to wait and the net effect was that, although Katherine was only 3 ½  hours away, by the time we arrived there, we were a huge 2 ½  hours behind schedule.

As a consequence, we had unfortunately missed the scheduled excursion and could not get to the famous Katherine Gorge. So, instead of marvelling at one of the natural wonders of Australia, I got to walk around a small shopping mall and listen to groups of drunken locals  argue outside the tourist information centre, for two hours. I honestly felt as if I had gone for a day out in Newport, but at least I got to buy some snacks for the train and see a statue of some bloke on a horse.

 

The scenery from Darwin had been a bit of a surprise. I fancifully imagined wall to wall red sand and rocks, tinder dry trees, mobs of kangaroos hopping competitively alongside the train and maybe the odd dingo. Instead it was mainly flat rough grassland, horizon to horizon, with odd patches of scrub land, some of which had evidence of bush fires and the only sign of life were termite mounds!

Reboarding the train the light was beginning to fade quickly. We had a long haul ahead, arrival time in Alice Springs was at 9.10am, 15 hours away, but the good thing was that, with dusk and dawn, to come, we were in prime time for spotting a ‘roo ... or two, and maybe the super sunset was a good omen.

In Alice Springs you are pretty much in the centre of Australia. Much debate has taken place as to whether the ‘centre’ should be calculated this way or that, but suffice to say you are within half a day of all of the suggested answers in Alice, as it’s known locally, and you are definitely remote. Although not remote enough for the local marsupials, apparently, because although I think I might have seen a ‘tail’ as we pulled into Alice, but there was still no definite sighting.

I had stopped here to make an excursion into what’s known as the Red Centre, because this was an area, allegedly, of nothing but the dusty, desert I had expected to see already. I would continue my journey onto Adelaide on the next Ghan, that would be in town in 3 days time.

Meanwhile, after an hour seeing all that Alice town centre had to offer and a reasonable night in a backpackers hostel, I was back into the old ‘up before dawn’ routine, as 22 of us set off in a mini bus for Uluru/Ayres Rock, nearly 500kms. away.

 

 

Thailand ....and on

Thailand ....and on

The next stage was a bit of filling in time and I knew exactly where to go to do this, I had a train to catch from Darwin, but not for a week or so, so I thought I would go and see my mate Jim.

Jim is a musician I met in Germany, many years ago, that had decided to try and find a place in the world for his later years, where he could live well and cheaply, without the hassle, or winters, of Germany, but still continue to play his music. He had opted for Thailand and was now in a little place outside Krabi called Ao Nang, he had invited me if ever I was in the area. I was, so that was where I headed.

Unfortunately, however, I now had, not only my foot giving me a bit of jip, but also had developed a ‘killer’ cold and turned up sniffing and spluttering feeling very sorry for myself. Of course for a guy that sings in a bar, 4 nights a week, for a living, having me turn up was like a visit from the tax man but, bless him, he made me most welcome and it was great to see him play through some of his enormous repertoire at the local beach bar.

Ao Nang is a pretty relaxed and laid back place at this time of year, but that was because it was approaching rainy season and capacity was probably down to about 30%, but things did get a bit heated one night down at the beach bar, when the hotel we were in caught fire!!

No matter how pretty and romantic Chinese Lanterns look, how it is possible for members of the public to buy a flying ’ fire bomb’ anywhere is beyond me. But on a beach, that is subject to onshore breezes, next to a large hotel, that has a bamboo thatch roof......really........?????

So whilst Jim was giving it his all with his rendition of Harry Chapin’s ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ and I was helping to sort out the low season dip in lager sales for the hotel, we, along with the rest of the appreciative audience in the beach bar, were unaware that the roof of the building was well and truly ablaze. Fortunately the incident was contained within half an hour or so and we were able to return to an undamaged bar for an ironic burst of ‘Smoke on the water’, the hotel however lost three bedrooms through this lunacy, but it could have been a lot worse.

Jim introduced me to a few of his new mates, notably two Australians, Rick and Phil. Phil, a former 747 pilot, had some business to attend to in Bangkok and asked me if I fancied a couple of days with him there.

My initial plan had been to return to Bangkok to get my connection to Australia and to this end when I had travelled to Krabi I had booked a return flight. My plans had actually changed slightly and I was now going to fly to Darwin from Phuket which I could get to from Ao Nang by boat, and this meant that I was going to waste the flight back to Bangkok.

 I decided to go with Phil and then return to Ao Nang, for the sake of just the one way flight it would give me a chance to have a look at Bangkok with someone that used to live there (and give Jim some ‘germ free’ time, although by now my cold had all but gone).

The plan was fine in theory, but in reality, Phil’s business commitments and our attempts to track down some computer equipment for Jim, left us with little free day time whilst we there, but, in the night, we did get the chance to get out and in particular one evening had a really great night of jazz and good food at the appropriately named Saxophone Club.

On my return to Ao Nang, the weather had become a little more typical for the time of year and on the Sunday in particular I went to a local restaurant with another new friend, Chris from Melbourne, and we sat and watched an afternoon of torrential thunderstorms roll in off the sea from what had been, when we started, the best view in the area.

A couple of days later and it was time to take the trip to Phuket but unfortunately the weather caused the cancellation of the boat and I had to take the 5 hour mini bus option, lucky I was an old hand at this sort of thing, but this was just the start of another long travel stint.

I didn’t go to Phuket town, but rather to a convenient small hotel close to the airport. The evening was good fun with a couple of Welsh guys watching the Lions on tv and having my last in situ Thai dinner for a while.

On the subject of food I must admire the Thai ability to make a meal out of nearly anything .......  !!!

 

 

A pleasant an uneventful hour and a half or so and I was in Singapore for a tedious and seemingly never ending 11 hour wait.

Most modern airports have super facilities and Changi is one of the best, but 11 hours was hard work, and even then the worst was still to come!

I had been trying for a week or so to get some accommodation sorted out for myself in Darwin and there just seemed to be nothing available unless I was prepared to pay really big bucks. Five hours after leaving Singapore I found out why. Darwin was hosting the current round of the V8 Super Car tournament........uh?.......... exactly what I thought, but this is THE biggest event that this area hosts and hen’s teeth were as common as hairs on a dingo, compared to rooms to let under $500 (£350 ish) per night.

Put into the mix that the facilities in Darwin airport are seriously eclipsed by most Kwik Fit centres, the internet didn’t work and it was 4.30 ......... am!  I was not a happy bunny!

Six hours later the lady in the Information Centre fought to hold back the laugh when I asked for a room for two nights in Darwin and this was the story for the next five (!!) hours as I walked, (in 30 degrees of humid sunshine), carrying 30kg. of luggage and knocked doors, pleaded and even begged for a room anywhere, but nothing.

Pretty much resolved to having to pay $1000 for digs at The Marriott, I caught sight of some people going into a corner shop about 400 yards in front of me and decided that a bottle of water or even an ice cream and a taxi number would probably be available there. I just prayed it wasn’t a mirage

As I was nearly there, opposite the shop I noticed a broken sign, hidden behind a hedge, that read ‘Gecko Lodge’ and, with no optimism whatsoever, I crossed the road for the next refusal ..... which I duly got, from some stupid French git who was too busy working on his stupid tan to even get up off his stupid Gallic derriere to talk to me, but rather grunted “Non .... backpackers it finish” in a stupid, Monty Python-esque, accent from his stupid string hammock.

Of course my predicament was nothing to do with Monsieur Stupid, but I suddenly had an incredible urge to knock him back to Le Dordogne, but instead, bit my toungue, muttered something very rude and turned away, straight into a tall Thai man, who asked what was going on. Had I not been so exhausted I think I would probably have told him to ‘run along’, but I was, thankfully, too slow, and, it transpired, he had not finished his sentence, which concluded, ‘I am the owner’.

I explained as briefly (and emotionally) as possible my predicament and he explained that the only room that he had was awaiting redecoration after a long term let. I told him that I was desperate and then, this complete saviour offered me a room, for $120 provided I didn’t mind sharing a shower with a young German couple in the next room. I explained that I would share the bloody shower with Goebbels and Himmler and that $240 was fine and that I would give him cash, immediately, and then, to my surprise, he explained, $120 would be for 2 nights. What a result!!

The room was fine, the linen crisp and clean and the kids next door were a delight and started work 2 hours before I got up.

The next day was my chance to see Darwin and frankly there’s not really much to see and what there was, wasn’t up to much imho.

A lot is made of the fact that it was the only Australian city to be bombed in WW2, by the Japanese and the harbour area has some  interesting historical sites; a new waterfront development has transformed a previously tired, semi industrial wasteland and is now home to new apartments, bars, restaurants and an impressive lido with sufable waves; former fishing wharfs are used for fish and chip and fast food ‘sheds’ and the main drag, Mitchell Street, is where you find the Irish bars and steak houses.

 

And they do have the odd crocodile problem !!

 

Darwin does have a couple of good museums and art galleries and it is certainly a centre from which to explore - the National Parks are supposed to be fantastic -  but I didn’t have time for any of these unfortunately ........  I had a train to catch   .....

Indo China 5

Cambodia

 

This was the final stage of the tour of Indo China and it started pretty inauspiciously with a trip to the public bus station!

I have no idea why we changed from our usual arrangement of having our own minibus, but in all honesty the public transport was fine and in fact there was more leg room than on most of the private buses we had used.

We were bound for Phnom Pen, the capital of Cambodia, and were told that it was impossible to predict the time that the journey would take because of the border crossing bureaucracy. It may take half an hour, it might take as long as 4 or 5 hours, and there was no rhyme nor reason for it, sometimes you were lucky, other times not so. As it happens we must have caught them in a good mood and sailed through in about an hour, meaning that the whole journey only took about 7 hours.

We stopped just over the border for lunch in a pretty grotty service area and immediately noticed how comparatively expensive things were. Cambodia has its own currency, the Riel, but it is not the preferred method of payment as they are linked to, and really want you to use the US Dollar. But they also have a little trick up their sleeves, because they will usually give you dollars in change, but not cents! So spend $4.10, tender $5 and get what looks like a handful of washers in return and it is amazing how many things cost just over the dollar!

We arrived at our hotel, quite a nice place, but just two blocks from the busiest, smelliest market we had seen and soon after we were mustered for a group outing. We all climbed aboard cyclos, the pedal rickshaws, and set off like a green ‘conga’ through the capital for a look at the principal sights.

Whether as a consequence of his choice of passenger, or the sudden onset of  complications relating to a previous life as perhaps an asbestos worker, my chap seemed to develop a chronic bronchial condition half way through the tour and  coughed and spluttered his way into last place as we arrived at each attraction. This was not too much of a problem for me, although a little bit noisy, until it started to rain, whereupon everyone stepped up the pace apart from Mr Wheezy, who managed to return me to base a full 10 minutes after the first arrival, soaked!

The following day was probably the most emotional and disturbing of the tour as we delved into the horror of the Pol Pot regime that beset this poor country in the late 70’s.

Again I stress this is not meant to be a history blog and if you are interested there are thousands of pages of information about these atrocities on the net.

In very basic terms Pol Pot took the thoughts of Mao Tse Tung to the extreme and concluded that true communism, and ultimately success for his country, could only be achieved by returning to a 100% agrarian economy.

To this end, when he came to power, he changed the date to Year Zero and set about emptying the cities and forcing people back onto the land to work. He was assisted in this by the magnitude of the American bombing campaign during the Vietnamese war, which of course, similarly to Laos, had already resulted in huge amounts of ordnance having been dropped on Cambodia, his huge propaganda machine convincingly persuaded people that to stay in the cities would put them at a high risk of death as a result of the bombing.

Unbeknown to the former city occupants, and in particular the more educated members, upon moving from their cities they were automatically categorised as lower class citizens in the new order as they were the ones that were most capitalistic and were deemed a higher risk to the regime, consequently they were detailed for extra work, given poorer living conditions, less food and often subjected to interrogation.

WARNING  I have re read what I have written below and it may be upsetting to some. I make no apologies, this is what I saw, heard  and experienced but if you would rather skip it scroll down to this mark ***  in the margin

We first visited a former school that had been turned into an interrogation centre for ‘VIP’ detainees, politicians, teachers, lawyers etc. the intelligentsia that were at the forefront of the perceived threat to the administration

 Former classrooms, sub divided into tiny cells where people were kept in subhuman, unsanitary conditions, overseen by trigger happy, sadistic guards, and the interrogation, or more accurately, the torture rooms, where barbaric and gruesome techniques were employed to extract information from what had been the pillars of the previous society. The barbed wire on the front of the buildings, we were told, was not to stop escape, there was no escape, rather it was to prevent suicide.

The walls are now covered with drawings and paintings of the despicable

 practices and conditions that prevailed, painted by people that survived them

Cabinets house recovered items from when the camp was freed and include many human skulls

 

some of these bear evidence of what must have been execution ...... all of the evidence suggests that this was a common occurrence.

And then, if this experience had not been disturbing enough, we were taken to the local ‘killing fields’, one of the countless out of town extermination camps that existed all over the country to dispose of the former interrogation camp detainees, objectors, family members of the above and/or just about anyone else that refused to go along with or work for the new regime, or even so much as thought an anti-regime thought.

The barbarity of the system really manifested itself here. It was a very simple operation, turn up in a lorry, be killed, get thrown in a pit or, dig your own mass grave and be buried alive.

We were told that, as either a cost saving exercise, or because they just ran out of bullets, executions would sometimes be carried out by beheading ........ using the stem of a palm leaf, (something that resembled a hockey stick with a flat end) but as this was not ‘blade sharp’, it might take up to 30 or 40 strokes to decapitate the unfortunate victim.

 

 

The best guess, and this is all it can be, is that there were in excess of 1,000,000 people executed, our guide (pictured above) lost his father and explained that there was no extended Cambodian family that had not lost someone!!

Probably most disturbing of all, however, was the ‘baby tree’, against which guards would smash children to death before tossing their bodies into a pit, dead or alive. The body pits were covered in strong chemicals, including DDT to kill any survivors and to stop the smell of decomposition

But, this was not the whole story as it does not account for the estimated (and this may well be a wild underestimation, no one knows) further 1,000,000 people that died through overwork, (actually being worked to death) malnutrition and disease.

And even after the above, the catalogue of disgrace and misery continues, because the other appalling side effect of the genocide was the innumerable number of orphans created and there are no records of either how many of these there were, or, how many died.

The rest of our day was a little subdued

***

Our final destination before heading back to Thailand was to Siem Reap a city rich in both colonial and Chinese architecture and culture, but primarily a staging post for visiting the local temples, most notably Angkor Wat.

Now I know I have put myself on record as behind a bit fed up of temples, but this is far from your average experience and frankly awesome. It is the largest religious monument in the world and part of a huge ‘I can build more temples than you’ competition between successive kings of the Khmer empire in the 11^th and 12^th century, that resulted in well over a thousand being built, although clearly not all on this scale.

 

 It is documented that it took over 30 years to build just this one temple and took 300,000 workers using an estimated 6,000 elephants It became the centre of Angkor, which was home to over 1,000,000 inhabitants at a time that London had a population of about 50,000.

Other temples, like the Bayan temples were built with  'signature' 4 heads on the principal towers to show that they were from a different king

 

 

 

 

One of the most amazing things about Angkor is that, after a succession of wars against Thailand, the Empire collapsed and the whole area was abandoned and lay dormant and at the mercy of nature for some 400 years!! The true extent of the area was not even known about until the French involvement in Indo China in the early 19^th century. The whole area had become entangled in jungle and this is a photograph of an area that has been deliberately left to show the extent of the previous jungle but with a path cut through it

 

 

 especially at Ta Promh, which was the temple made famous by the location shots in the Tomb Raider movie series, it is most striking how the trees, particularly the silk cotton and strangling fig trees grow right out of the walls themselves in an incredibly dramatic fashion.

And then.......that was it!

A final 7 hour minibus journey, during which we stopped at another roadside toilet/coffee/buy a kit kat for £4 area and I was introduced to my final wildlife of the trip by some local children,

and then it was back to Bangkok for a farewell dinner and a few drinkies

The trip had been fab, we had seen and experienced so many things, the group had got on really well and I don’t think any of us will ever forget it.

Next stop .....  a bit more of Thailand