Red Wine Express

We haven’t hit Europe’s impressive river system yet. That’s about 10 days away. First up is visits with rarely seen relatives and some wonderful (if you call a raging hangover wonderful) reunions. So the title of this and the next few entries will be something of a misnomer. So, from the beginning.

The CB and I are now winging our way to London. A break of almost a day in Hong Kong was nice. The CB hasn’t been here for years and it’s changed a bit. However it’s good to be back on our way to the final destination. Actually that’s an interim final destination – Manchester and probably better described as “the start” as Hong Kong has been designated Day Zero. The “final” final destination is Budapest in four weeks.

Anyway, it was a good day spoiled by the fact we have been given the two middle seats of a row of four on our flight to London. Those of you who have read my previous travel stuff will know I am a firm believer in frequent traveller privilege. That’s a bit like white privilege but not as insanely PC. We are in premium economy with seats configured 2-4-2. Qantas wouldn’t have dared put us in those seats but we are on British Airways and despite the fact I was born in England, I suspect winning back the Ashes hasn’t counted in my favour. And just for the record, when sitting in a Cathay Pacific premium economy seat, I can’t reach the seat in front of me. On BA I can almost reach the seat in front with my elbow. And not to labour the point (much) when the seats are dropped back for sleeping (they go back a long way – big plus), I am trapped.

But let’s scroll back. The flight to Honkers was fine. I had an aisle seat. Okay, okay, enough. Pretty uneventful. Airline coffee is not remotely like real coffee and I fell asleep before Stephen Hawking had got though the two years he was initially given to live, in the movie about his life. Did you know he outlived his doctors?

It’s August so Hong Kong is hot and sweaty. Notwithstanding, the usual haze was absent so the CB and I got the Peak Tram up to the Peak (funnily enough) to look at one of the most spectacular views in the world. We had to queue for about half an hour. Not too bad considering the time of year but I am willing to bet money that in all of that time we didn’t encounter one member of Asia’s most exclusive club – the Personal Space Appreciation Society. When I traveled frequently for a living and especially during the period when I had a pathological hatred of wheeled luggage, I used to carry a suit bag, the sort that carried a week’s worth of clothing, a couple of pairs of shoes and a spare book. If anyone nudged up behind me, they wore that bag which could be swung around savagely, ostensibly to realign it on my shoulder. In these circumstances I’m always reminded of a sketch on the old Dave Allen (the late great Irish comedian) Show where about eight cloth capped workers marched into the sardine factory, for want of a better phrase, dick to bum.

A few cold beers and a bit of pub food in Lan Kwai Fong (see previous post, A Week in Honkers) and we were knackered. It would have been almost unbearable had we not been able to walk almost all of the way from Hong Kong station to the Peak Tram station, undercover and mostly in air conditioning. The walk-way system round Central is brilliant.

We have now landed in London. Immigration hasn’t improved since last time (see European Safari). We faced long queues, minimal personnel and total indifference. If minimum airline connection times used Heathrow as their base line, they’d all be increased by an hour.

To finish Day Zero on a positive note, the weather is excellent…….but we haven’t got to Manchester just yet – sorry, couldn’t help myself.

 

It’s time for a treatise on pets. They’ve been mentioned in despatches occasionally in my Facebook musings and the occasional atrocity has been described and pictures published but it’s now time for an in-depth investigation. What has prompted this, you ask? It’s all about a rug and then some. Apparently “and then some” was a phrase Kurt Vonnegut used a lot – he wrote Slaughterhouse Five. I learnt this from a National Lampoon magazine parody of great English language writers not from an analysis of his writing style. But I digress.

The rug in question is a beautiful Turkish piece that the child bride and I bought in Turkey, funnily enough. In fact it’s one of two we bought in Kusadasi on a trip some years back. We didn’t want to hang them on the wall and make the place look like a Middle Eastern brothel because being rather expensive and hand-made they are quite durable so we put them where one normally puts rugs – on the floor.

In the picture above you can see an opening on the right which is the doorway into the laundry. On the other side of the laundry wall are located not one but two litter trays. These are placed there for the cats’ convenience however one of the cats has decided that he doesn’t like grit in his furry hobbit-like feet so he occasionally craps on the rug. I am sure this is also to keep us on our toes such that when we stagger downstairs first thing in the morning to give the cats their breakfast (also located in the laundry) we have to watch where we step. Hence the first order of business (if you’ll excuse the pun) is to stand and stare at the rug until the morning’s booby trap has been located if there is indeed one there. It took me three stares one morning before I saw the offending bratwurst. If you want to know what that’s like imagine doing a Where’s Wally puzzle when you’re half pissed.

Now in that photo there is a cat crap somewhere and I defy you to find it. I’ve forgotten where it is and I can’t find it. Top left I think.

Cats are considered to be fastidiously clean because they lick themselves constantly. What this means is that they swallow a lot of their own hair and occasionally it comes up the same way it went down in the shape of a fur ball. And cats will chunder where they stand which is what we woke up to this morning. We regularly wake up to last night’s dinner spread all over the floor or dripping down the back of a chair because the cat couldn’t be bothered getting off the dining room table.

Charlie the small white dog on the other hand, will demand to be let outside and he’ll bounce around like a pogo stick if he really needs to go outside. He may be a veritable crapping machine but he knows where the convenience is – anywhere outside.

The most alarming thing about cats is that they epitomise the old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. They fight each other regularly although it rarely escalates to a full on biting, scratching death tangle because one’s a bully (Ed) and the other one (Kaos) isn’t. The bully is big and slow and the other is small and agile so spends quality time under chairs which are no-go zones for Ed of the ponderous bulk.

Ed and Charlie on the other hand have lived an inter-species truce for the past year or so except for the past few months where Ed has taken to stalking Charlie and literally boxing him when he least expects it, like when they are seemingly innocently walking past each other. Of course Charlie recognises that he has to stand up for canine pride so the occasional biff from Ed degenerates into sound and fury. This is where the enemy thing comes in. If Charlie and Ed are in a blue, Kaos charges in and blind-sides Charlie in a neat pincer movement. So the poor little bugger is being punched in the head from all directions.

I challenge anyone to attempt to break that up with anything other than a broom or if one isn’t handy, a foot. I reached into one of these altercations a while back and months later we were still finding blood spatters in odd places after a vein on the back of my hand was opened by a razor sharp cat claw.

If we didn’t lock the cats outside and Charlie inside when we go out, God knows what we’d come home to. We love Charlie but look forward to the day David gets his own place and moves out with his dog. Unfortunately, the preferred living option at the moment is right across the road from us so during working hours we would be right back where we started. Not to worry.

 

Last night was a trip down memory lane – back to the times when we spent hours standing in smoke filled rooms getting our ear drums assaulted. The only differences last night were the complete absence of cigarette smoke (or any type of smoke for that matter) and the difficulty in standing for two hours without both knees locking up.

Yes, the child bride, the son-in-law (who kindly provided the tickets), one of his mates and I attended a Led Zeppelin tribute concert at the local Hamilton pub. The Hammo has an upstairs room with a laughable VIP section right at the back, a very long and well attended (both sides) bar, very few tables and chairs and a stage just big enough for a four piece band and all of their gear. Actually, that’s not quite true – two of the speaker stacks were on the floor in front of the stage. So they were just a little bit closer to us. We were about six or seven metres from the stage.

Of course a Led Zep tribute band doesn’t work unless the singer sounds like Robert Plant. This guy pulled it off with aplomb although the little thermos he occasionally sipped from, I’m sure was filled with honey and Lemsip, rather than vodka. Getting through Stairway to Heaven which starts slow and low and finishes fast and high would challenge the most muscular vocal chords let alone two hours of high pitched wailing.

Listening to the real Led Zep taught me the value of a tight rhythm section. Forget Plant and Page. It was Jones and Bonham who held it together. The two P’s were always keen to demonstrate their virtuoso capabilities with musical and vocal flights of fancy but it was the other two who kept herding them back onto the straight and narrow. Without them, the more complex songs would have become a self-indulgent cacophonic mess. And so it was with “Song Remains” which I believe was the name of the band in question. No, not a cacophonic mess, a rhythm driven performance.

Every time the base player hit a note it felt like I’d been punched in the lungs and the base drum is still pounding my skull 12 hours later. However I could have done without the 10 minute drum solo. I thought drum solos had gone out with Iron Butterfly and Cream. Still it gave the other guys an opportunity to indulge the rock god/groupie paradigm with some of the “girls” from the audience. Or maybe they just had a rest.

I’m assuming now that these guys haven’t been too successful to date although that would be a shame because they are very talented. What drew me to this conclusion was the fact that the guitarist only appeared to have one guitar. In a four piece band where one of the four doesn’t play an instrument and two of them are keeping the beat, the fourth has to fill a considerable musical void. So the distortion level is turned up to broaden the sound but not to the extent that it disguises those famous riffs. That’s all very well on Rock and Roll and The Immigrant Song and Black Dog but doesn’t work at all on Stairway to Heaven where a much cleaner sound is required. A pedal would have done the trick but he must have left it at home. Knit-picking I know because he did manage to sear a trench between my ear-drums as those famous riffs were being meticulously reproduced.

We’ve been to see a lot of the bands of our youth in recent years – Rolling Stones, Status Quo, Eagles, John Fogarty, Mellencamp and others – and as the CB says, it’s as interesting to observe the crowd as it is the band. And so it was last night. When we arrived there was a group of skinny seventy somethings who looked like how you would imagine Spinal Tap would look today. Where these people hide during the day is beyond me. We thought they may have been the band. They weren’t but they did park themselves right next to the aforementioned floor mounted speaker stacks from start to finish. They may have been the road crew but didn’t seem capable of lifting their heads such was the mass of hair, let alone a massive speaker.

And of course there’s the obligatory wanker who wants to work his moves and doesn’t care about bumping those near-by or jumping in front of others while the missus feigns indifference. No doubt he had ambitions of indulging the rock god/groupie thing when they got home. I hope she had a headache for the ages.

And have you noticed how in a crowd, if you leave a space, someone will come and stand in it. It’s like waiting for your luggage to appear on the carousel at the airport. Unless you are hard against the carousel, someone will come and stand in front of you. So we had a reasonable area around us which respected our and others’ personal space and then the Andrews Sisters came and occupied it. Their jiggy little coordinated dance move where they hopped from one foot to the other would not have been out of place at a Barry Manilow concert. It was absolutely unacceptable at a rock and roll concert.

As the CB is fond of saying, I’m getting grumpy in my oldish age. That may be true but I prefer to characterise it as reducing tolerance for idiots whose indulgences reduce my enjoyment of an event. And if you believe life’s too short, that’s non-negotiable. Notwithstanding crowd induced minor irritants, it was a great night.

As an epilogue, we got home in time to see Djokovic beat Nadal 10-8 in the fifth at Wimbledon after Anderson beat Isner 26-24 in the fifth in the other men’s semi final. The equally remunerated women’s final was a 6-3 6-3, 65 minute romp. If you believe in the gender pay gap, there’s a perfect example of one. But that’s another story for another day.

No one has ever been able to convince me that mankind is creating a climate catastrophe. An alliteration catastrophe perhaps but not climate. For all of those people who “studied English” at school less than 20 years ago, alliteration is stringing together a number of words with the same first letter or sound. And by the way, you’re mostly to blame for encouraging the doom and gloom merchants perpetrating the biggest scam in human history on the world. Those of us who were taught to think for ourselves are waiting to see the evidence. If you advocate shutting a coal mine because parts of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching, you are making a giant leap of faith with “faith” being the operative word.

We (mankind, that is) may be a minor irritant when it comes to the climate like an errant thread on a new jacket. We can tug on the thread and make a manageable situation much worse or we can snip it off. Similarly if the temperature goes up a tad (or down – ice ages anyone?) we can adapt as we adapt to night by turning on the lights although it has to be said that every day fewer of us have this privilege as the carpet baggers, rent seekers and thieves who run our parliaments and power companies keep imitating King Canute (or Al Capone, take your pick).

I’m not here to present a detailed case for sanity or debunk (much) the case for the prostitution. If there is evidence to support one side or the other go and find it for yourself. Incidentally, that’s part of the problem. Too many people, especially those with vested interests (looking at you Al Gore) don’t want to face facts because as mentioned above, it’s a faith thing and plus there’s the all powerful kaa…ching factor.

I can’t resist inserting a celebrity into the discussion here because as we all know, celebrities have the answers to everything. This allows them to hold a tune or be really good at pretending to be someone else. Or is it the other way round? I’m never sure. Anyway our favourite intellectual chanteuse Missy Higgins said this about the Adani coal mine (which is yet to produce a tonne of coal) – “This coal mine is so big it will tip our climate into environmental devastation”. It’ll produce 40 million tonnes a year. The world currently produces 7 billion tonnes a year. Enough of this stupidity.

No, I’m trying to find an analogy that presents the issue from an Australian perspective in an understandable light. There’re those pesky lights again. Yesterday I thought I had something really neat but when explaining it to the child bride I realised I had made a major mistake. But let’s enjoy ourselves and I’ll give it to you anyway. See if you can spot the error.

Imagine the atmosphere is the packed crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which we’ll round up to 100,000 people. If 4% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide (NOT “carbon”), that’s 4000 people. If mankind is responsible for 4% of carbon dioxide emissions and nature the rest, that’s 160 people. If Australia is responsible for 1.3% of the world’s man-made emissions, that’s 2 people. Our government’s emissions reduction target is 26%. For the sake of argument we’ll ignore the virtue signalling idiots on the left who want an even bigger target and stick with 26%. So we will save the planet by disposing of one half of one person in the MCG crowd of 100,000.

Then I realised where I had made the mistake. Carbon dioxide isn’t 4% of the atmosphere. It’s 0.04% of the atmosphere – 100 times less than my original calculation. So instead of half a person in the MCG crowd we, in Australia, are reducing global emissions by a toe. So if you’ve had your power turned off because you can’t afford to pay your electricity bill anymore you can be contented knowing that those billions of dollars of renewable energy subsidies we pay every year are paying for a toe.

 

Of the many business trips I’ve done over the centuries very few have involved staying in one place, or even one country for the duration of the trip. Even conference attendances were usually combined with onward trips to other less salubrious places – give conference organisers their due because you rarely end up in (which country/city/race am I going to offend here) Caracas or Lagos or Port-au-Prince or Pyongyang or Adelaide. It’s always Bali or Paris or Cancun or Singapore. And when was the last time a save the environment conference was held somewhere where the delegates could see the problem they were pretending to be concerned about first hand? Rio de Janeiro could almost qualify if the delegate excursion to the favelas had been held in something bigger than a tandem motorcycle but I guarantee no one touched the ground more than two blocks from Copacabana or Ipanema.

Which brings me to Hong Kong where I was for a conference last week and stayed for the entire week. Hong Kong is a great place. It’s a love it or hate it place but in my book, I could live there. Having been there numerous times I know there’s traffic and it’s crowded and there’s smog and typhoons and expat bankers and the Chinese think we are barbarians despite them being the rudest people (with one or two exceptions, says he inserting the cowardly caveat) on the planet. And they’re the most numerous on the planet so big tick for me for offending the most people possible from one race in one sentence (no, muslims aren’t a race so they didn’t qualify). But you never tire of the view and the energy is electrifying. Unfortunately every time I go there the land bit has got bigger and the sea bit has got smaller as more and more land is reclaimed. Victoria Harbour is up there with Sydney Harbour and the Bosphorus as one of the most spectacular waterways in the world but I expect to be able to walk from Hong Kong Island (or the Southern Suburbs as it will then be known) to Kowloon without going through a tunnel or over a bridge or getting my feet wet in the not too distant future.

Speaking of bridges, the Chinese have just built one from Hong Kong to Macau – 35 miles long and the world’s longest sea bridge. As the Chinese are inveterate gamblers (that’s “inveterate” meaning hardened or incurable not “invertebrate” which is what I am after a skin full of sherbets), they now have something for the Hong Kongers to throw themselves off after losing the family fortune in Packer’s old Macau casino.

The object of the conference exercise was to promote a mining project to potential investors. This involved booth manning (I will not say “personning” even if Canada’s teenage girl prime minister wants me to) and spruiking the benefits of the project to everyone who stopped by. If we get to do this again I think I’ll round up a few of the Indian tailors who you trip over in Nathan Road. They’d be able to sell a coal mine to one of the drink waiters.

Standing up and talking for a few days straight is all very well but one needs stress relief and it comes in the form of evening functions that are attractive for one reason and one reason alone – free booze. The first one was an awards night celebrating the accomplishments of various industry high achievers. So we had a room full of miners and bankers being plied with free drinks and some poor sod at the front of the room trying to get them to shut up long enough to hand out a few gongs. Fat chance. Rudeness is an abundant commodity in the mining and money communities. Or deafness perhaps, which would have explained all of the shouted conversations. And here was me thinking they were shouting so they could be heard by their fellow rudees over the bloke at the front with the microphone.

My two colleagues and I eventually escaped to the more sedate, heaving pub precinct of Lan Kwai Fong and seated ourselves roadside to watch the world stagger by. It was a public holiday the next day and the rugby sevens was in town so the bar staff were busier than an octopus with tinea but still managed to keep the Heinekens flowing to our table at a most acceptable rate despite our being as far away from the bar as it was possible to be – take note all you bar slicks in Australia who only ever see the chicky babes lining up at the bar.

The bar entertainment was outstanding and entirely free. Well that may or may not have been the case for other revellers because the entertainment was, in fact, a ticket scalper who happened past advertising his wares while we were enjoying the view and the ice-cold beers. His accent was very familiar and it turned out he lived about a mile from my Manchester relatives and my parents’ old stamping ground. This guy really had the gift of the gab which I guess is rather fundamental to his chosen profession and once he got warmed up we went from the Winter Olympics to the Summer Olympics to the World Cup to the Rugby Sevens to the Commonwealth Games in about 45 minutes without a pause for breath. And all it cost me was a beer. Well played sir.

This was my first overseas business trip for some time and I’d almost forgotten what it was like to lie flat in an aeroplane. Those of you who have read some of my other travel epics on this blog will be aware of my pathological hatred of crowds. Especially when that crowd comprises economy class plane passengers. You will know that until about four years ago, I thought jumbo jets were only 10m long. I was never curious about nor cared where all of those people were going to after they passed through that curtain at the back of the plane – back into the terminal I guess. Before this trip I’d almost become a plebeian plane passenger again but a timely injection of silver-service snobbery brought me back to my senses. Phew.

 

Well we got back from our Cambodia / Vietnam adventure yesterday and as is the case with most holidays, the glow wore off about half a day after returning as the memories sunk inexorably into the past. We were jolted back to reality after the child bride went to pick up the cats who had resided at the cat motel for the past two weeks. Almost immediately there was a territorial stand-off between Charlie the dog and Kaos the cat and we woke this morning to a fir ball on a rug (not on the wooden floor of course) and something disgusting in the litter tray.

Oh to still be sitting in the Game On Bar in Saigon watching the NRL or the AFL or the rugby or the EPL of the boxing or the racing or the golf – TV’s showing sport everywhere you looked, local girls in tight shirts serving ice-cold beer and pub-food that doesn’t look back at you. We managed to get there twice in two days.

The first day in Saigon we explored a local market. Imagine the Baywatch girls, in beach uniform, attending a maximum security prison. That was the rather aggressive, noisy and touchy/feely attention a westerner generates in that place. It is rather intimidating but we managed to get out with the required shirts and dresses albeit with the wallet a little lighter and the bargaining voice a little hoarser than the parallel experience in Cambodia. Not to worry because it was only a 10 minute walk to Game On which was only a two minute walk from the tallest building in the country which had a viewing platform and……a bar.

Met up with our four Victorian mates in Game On and drifted from beer to beer for the rest of the day including dinner at a restaurant where a local entrepreneur (who was a boat person and made his money in Oz) ran a restaurant training street kids (chefs, front-of-house, waiters etc). The food was nothing like rat, very nice in fact and like the art school in Siem Reap, an admirable enterprise.

Day two in Saigon and we had to check out at twelve, and had our hotel transfers arranged at four. How to kill a few hours on a hot steamy afternoon? Here’s an idea, thought some genius. Let’s take a 10 minute, $3 cab ride to Game On. Done. And so the gentle transition back into Australian culture began.

Visiting developing Asia is a great and rewarding experience as long as you can experience most of it standing up rather than sitting down, if you get my drift.

Well it’s only one more day on the boat then off to Saigon tomorrow. And not a day too soon for some, I think. The last couple of days have been absolute carnage with this place now resembling the aftermath of the Alamo. This is not in any way, shape or form a criticism of the cruise company. They have been scrupulous in their adherence to safety and health standards.

The karaoke excesses of a couple of nights ago plus the accumulated impact of different foods and breathing different air, especially in the open markets, have taken their toll I think. I was a mess yesterday but am fine now. But I reckon if it was possible to harness the power generated by the simultaneous sphincter clench of 78 people, you could drive this boat from Saigon to Brisbane without refuelling.

The markets in the Mekong delta have to be seen to be believed. People shop twice a day because apart from a few random blocks of ice and the fact that most of the seafood and assorted reptiles and amphibians are still alive, everything is out in the open. However to spare the sensibilities of the more fragile brethren, the rats are skinned before being put on display.

Last night was concert night when the various ship departments put on a show for the guests. Watching a bunch of Vietnamese and Cambodians pretending to be The Village People and doing everyone’s favourite, YMCA, had to be seen to be believed although I’m not sure they all comprehended the significance of the arm movements.

And after that finished some of the guests who had “volunteered” the night before, had to get up and perform. Apparently I volunteered but I’m pretty sure I was volunteered. Had I been forewarned or at least been vaguely aware of what was coming, I could have prepared Not Garfunkel’s full repertoire. But my still alcohol fogged brain was only capable of a rendition of Hotel California on the only guitar on the ship. A Londoner got up and told a few jokes and as he warmed up, they got better and better if you know what I mean.

We are now wending our way to the last stop before leaving La Marguerite. I think it’s to see another bloody temple. Actually I can now see a massive bridge that I and a lot of other Australian taxpayers built about 10 years ago. I recognise it from last time we were here so we must be getting close to the end. The internet connection has been getting progressively better so it stands to reason.

Maybe one more travel blog to impose on you before we leave. We’ll see.

We are now at the Cambodia/Vietnam border and it’s day something or other into our caravanserai  adventure as we watch the world slip by in air conditioned comfort. Thank you barman, you may indeed freshen up my drink and as the story goes, I have this medical condition which requires this glass to be replenished every half hour, on the half hour.

Yesterday, our second day in Phnom Pen was a great day, it has to be said. After trying to imagine what it must have been like (impossible) during the Khmer Rouge times the child bride and I decided to have the afternoon in. We were all pagoda’d out anyway. Then some of our party mates suggested a trip to a bar down town. No worries said I. Five of us piled into a tuc tuc and off we went. We found a place overlooking the river where happy hour went from 7.00am to 11.00pm, I kid you not. Icy draft beer for $0.75. We spent the afternoon there and the bill for five was less than $30.00. I am moving to this country and buying a Lexus.

Needless to say, last night (two nights ago, now) was either a write-off or a triumph, depending on how you look at it. We’ve pretty much commandeered the music situation so instead of middle of the road we now have Rolling Stones and Guns ‘N Roses and the place is jumping. It’s karaoke night tonight so that will be interesting.

It’s the morning after karaoke night and it’s been a struggle. My attention span could not extend to the intricacies of a spinning loom operated by a 12 year old girl I’m afraid. And vague memories of Wish You Were Here are swirling round my brain and bouncing off the insides of my skull. Fortunately we’re cruising this afternoon because I don’t think I need to learn any more rural Vietnamese life skills.

I decided to finish this story in the library. It’s the only public place on the ship where you can’t be tempted by alcoholic extravagance and it’s as far away from a bar as it’s possible to be.

Just spent a very confronting morning at one of the killing fields outside Phnom Pen then the Genocide Museum which is in what was a school and was used by the Khmer Rouge as a torture venue. From reading some of the so-called confessions and listening to the guides relate stories of the time you wonder whether the Khmer Rouge ever questioned how the CIA managed to employ hundreds of thousands of agents including whole families. Being good Buddhists the locals eventually forgave the bad guys whereas most of us would have been sorely tempted to exact some form of retribution, with extreme prejudice.

You’d think Cambodia would be the most anti-communist place on earth after experiencing the most perverted version of an already perverted political philosophy but there can’t be too many places with both a North Korean Embassy (next door to the Prime Minister’s house as it happens) and a Cuban Embassy as well as a street called Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. I took a picture of the North Korean embassy but we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the US embassy. I guess if you’re North Korean this is probably one of the safer places in the world to be what with The Donald’s finger hovering over The Button. That reminds me, North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and under Pol Pot this place was called Democratic Kampuchea. The similarity is that no one gets to or got to vote.

Time to lighten the mood. If I asked you to name the place with the largest proportion of Lexus’s (or is that Lexii) on the road in relation to the other vehicles, you might suggest Nagoya, where Toyotas are made or Geneva (no, that’s Ferraris with Arab rego plates) or Manhattan. I guarantee you wouldn’t guess Cambodia but that is in fact the case. They are everywhere. It’s like some weird parallel universe. And I still haven’t received a satisfactory explanation as to why. It’s fated to be one of those unanswerable questions like why does a women stroke her chin when she drives or why does “change up” mean “slow down” or why can’t some people see the absolute logic of all of my arguments?

Actually “Mekong” is a bit of a misnomer. We have been on the Tonle Sap River for the past 3 days and don’t reach the Mekong until this afternoon in Phnom Penh. The Tonle Sap River is highly unusual because in the dry season the Mekong pushes water north along the Tonle Sap and in the wet season there’s enough water flowing into the Tonle Sap Lake in the north to push the water south down the river. So it’s one way part of the year and the other for the rest. Wouldn’t be out of place in Hollywood.

There are 172 floating villages round the lake. Everyone lives in a relocatable home and all are connected to the same sewerage system. Needless to say of the hundreds of fish species in the lake, the most prevalent is the brown trout. Fish and rice provide most of the sustenance but like an old mate of mine from Japan, they’ll eat anything with its back to the sun, tigers and elephants excluded. Tarantula sandwich anyone?

On a more serious note, Cambodia has an awful lot of catch-up to play after the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. There were about 10,000 doctors here pre-1975. By 1979 when Pol Pot and his mob were finished there were seven. SEVEN! Now families have eight or nine kids as repopulation continues apace. There are some inherent human skills that can never be eradicated even by the most determined scumbags.

This trip is quite unlike what you would imagine a river cruise to be if you’re thinking of Amsterdam to Budapest or the Loire Valley. It’s all very rural and life experience stuff. Yesterday we went for a ride in an ox cart which really loosened up the joints. I suggested to the farmer in charge of our transportation that he consider installing eight sided wheels as they’d be much more comfortable than his six sided versions.

But it’s not all killing fields and Old Macdonald’s farm. Back on the boat there’s a party group as you would expect. Yesterday was my birthday (thanks for all the good wishes) and we found a guitar so raucously worked through all of the songs I could remember. It’s amazing how good Wish You Were Here sounds with a bucket of Southern Comfort in the bag.

Off for a tuc tuc tour of the city soon. A tuc tuc is like a carriage for two or four people towed behind a vehicle with what sounds like a ride-on mower engine. Should be interesting. We’ll be stopping at some markets where the child bride will put her considerable bargaining skills to good use. So I’ll have to stop at an ATM.