singapore
i just don't like this place. the thing about singapore is that it's absolutely flush with cash, obscenely affluent when compared to its regional neighbours. as such i'm sure that if you had a bit of money, and were well connected to others in a similar financial situation, you'd have a ball... few drinks at raffles and on, 3am burger at the 24 hours mcdonalds, morning cup of coffee at starbucks to get you through the next day at work, and so forth. for the budget backpacker however there is virtually nothing, at least not for me.
one thing that is free is the sight of large numbers of very fruity oriental looking ladies padding across the streets. but despite this obvious attraction, the fact that people won't cross the road until the green man appears, that there are more kfcs then noodle parlours, that a dorm bed costs $10 (you could have got a penthouse suite for that in phnom penh), means that i'm still not convinced.
cambodia: epilogue
i love this country! take world class ancient heritage monuments, brutally compelling modern history, an archetypically chaotic yet charming south east asian metropolis, and blissed out beaches; season with drink, drugs, and interesting strangers (nuff love to mark and will, the barbican casio crew!)as required, and you have a pretty tasty travel destination. the roads are smooth, the guesthouses are incredibly friendly, and it's all just good. there's a really positive sensation in the country of leaving behind a dark time, which i think contributes to just how nice the cambodians are.
come visit, cambodia rocks.
aaaaaaah
blind masseurs are all the rage in cambodia. i thought it was a bit of a gimmick but i'm a definite convert. like all deep tissue massages it hurt like hell when i was in there but i now feel like i'm floating on a happy little cloud. leaving cambodia tomorrow, i'm gutted.
lazy wednesday afternoon
independence beach is set in a secluded little cove lavished with golden sand, flanked by clear turquoise water flecked with the glimmer of sunrays, and almost totally devoid of people and noise. it was a happy day i spent there, lazing on the beach, splashing about in the sea, floating around on an innertube, and generally achieving very little. the culmination of this day of sunkissed sloth was a heart stoppingly beautiful sunset, a real firey red sky reflected in the shimmering water. all in all a good day again, cambodia continues to tick all the right boxes.
sun, sea and noukville
sihanoukville, on the cambodian south coast, is hitting all the right buttons after my khmer rouge snapshot. i'm just taking it really easy for a couple of days, lazing on the beach, drinking a few beers and doing very little. cambodia in general's been pretty good for that actually... it's like thailand, but with people that are a little bit older and more interesting. met a plethora of cracking folk (easy dave, gav, catia, et, leah, frida, malin, kim the kickboxer) and i'm basically quite a content little bunny at the mo. happy days!
scars
yesterday was harrowing. i'm not going to go into the details of the things you witness at the s-21 detention and interrogation centre, nor the killing fields, because they are so grotesque that even if i was at my most objectively descriptive i fear i'd end up being morbid. all i'll say is that, even though it must be impossible, they give a true indication of how horrific and brutal the genocide under the khmer rouge was. the sheer numbers would be enough: the dried blood stains on the floor just serve to consolidate and further horrify.
it was difficult for me to garner my emotional response to both the places. i wanted to feel that it was like watching a car crash, that i would somehow be doing the respectful, the right, thing by looking away. but to do that would have actually been the cowardly route, to ignore the lessons of history, the teaching bled from the lives of thousands of cambodians and the collective consciousness of an entire nation. i was struck by bizarrely inconsequential things... between 1975 and 1979 over a milion people were slaughtered, individually, by hand. the obvious response is that that kind of genocide seems the stuff of medieval barbarism, not the late twentieth century. more than that though, i couldn't stop thinking about the fact that, for us, the 70s means acid, flares, abba: even now people dress up like idiots to celebrate the revelry of this so called golden era. yet while london and san francisco were partying, people were simultaneously getting bludgeoned to death in their thousands. same time, diferent world. i'm never going to another 70s party again.
the other thing that i couldn't stop thinking about was the concept of a base, a residual, morality. i know this flies in the face of all postmodern theory, but surely there are some things, notably murder, that are just wrong? but actually what you realise is that this is bollocks, that actually postmodernism was spot on: morality is defined by the ideology in which you find yourself subsumed, it just happens to be that the one we're used to is so dominant we find ourselves unable to see it as a construction. the guys who were battering their comrades to death genuinely didn't think they were doing anything wrong, because within the tenets of the animal socialism in which they were operating the slaughter was not questionable: the boundaries of morality had been redrawn, or rather were anomalous to those which we take for granted, and they merely acted within them. just like people ordering troops to war. or indeed those placing bombs on trains.
i don't really know where i'm going with this. maybe i always laboured under a belief that whatever happened, some form of human goodness would win through. but that fragile illusion has been shattered: human nature is what it is made to be, a reaction to its political environs. all it takes is one smooth orator and any of us could go from being a human life to something to be disposed of in the eyes of a complete stranger.
one final quick rant about the un... not only did these fuckers do nothing, they actually gave the khmer rouge a seat at their council. they did fuck all then, just like they did fuck all in sudan last year, just like they do fuck all anywhere. why do we fund these people? their sole purpose seems to be to give politicians a stage from which to deliver self aggrandising addresses, and to fill up the airtme of 24 hour news channels. maybe they should give up the pretense of being useful and just let rupert murdoch fund them, top up the money they skimmed off from oil sales in iraq. wankers.
either way a big day. i'm just taking a bit of time out in phnom penh now, watching bad films, drinking beer and taking it easy. fair play to the people here, if you talk to anyone they all still know someone who was butchered, but they're moving on as fast as they can. maybe they've realised that history suggests we keep making the same mistakes, but memory lasts for a generation: by the time bad things arrive here again they'll be long gone.
