Only a week late, but we have managed to catch some fireworks. We’re back in Phnom Penh after a brief trip down to the South Coast. This week is the water festival, as well as being Independence Day, and a Full Moon. So it’s all happening in Phnom Penh.
The Bon Om Thook water festival celebrates the changing direction of the Tonle Sap River at the end of the wet season. Don’t ask me how that works, but they have a big party anyway. As a well as a boat race with teams from each different province, big illumated floats going up and down the river at night a bit like a Disney Parade, and a big firework display.
“Right so what should we do about the public transport, the Subway just isn’t cuttin it.”
“Yeah maybe an overland train through the city?”
“Hmm not really enough room, too many buildings and stuff.”
“What if it just followed the main road that’s already there and we built the train directly up above it?”
“Haha, yeah good one…. Hmm no that’s good actually. What would we call it though?”
“Ummm…. ‘The Sky Train’ ”
“Shut up now your just being silly!”
“Sorry. Umm….”
“Yeah let’s go with Sky Train”
“Cool! Lunch?”
“Yeah I’m starvin!”
“Hey what about that big monument thing at the Roundabout though?”
“Ah I’m sure we could just shimmy around it.”
“Yeah probably. And this eh, Sky Train thing, it’s gonna cover the Old Town right? Cos we kinda skipped that bit with subway.”
“Nah, it’s only tourists that go up there anyway, they’re fine with the tuk-tuks.”
As we passed the halfway point on the ”Small Tour” of Angkor Wat, I asked our Tuk-Tuk driver what time it was. He looked at his watch, spent a few seconds translating into English, and informed me it was 12:40. For a moment I was relieved he could speak English, otherwise we wouldn’t have had a clue what time it was. Until I realised I could just have looked at his watch myself. In that case then, thank goodness he and his country tell the time in the same way as me, otherwise we’d be really stuck!
What if it was like currency exchange? Everyone measures money in different ways so it’s pretty lucky we all ended up measuring time in the same way.
“Ëxcuse me, how long does it take to get to the airport?”
“About 2000 bajodas, depending on traffic.”
“George, how much is 2000 bajodas in hours?”
“Öh don’t worry dear that’s only about eleven and a half minutes.”
“No, I don’t want a Tuk-Tuk, or a taxi, or a guided tour, or some lovely gems. And tell your mates in Hong Kong I don’t want a suit, or shirts, or a watch”. OK, so I haven’t actually said that to any of them, I’ve been amazingly patient, and smiley. It’s all about the smiles in Thailand. It’s also all about the scams. Granted you’d have to be pretty daft to fall for most of them, but it gets a little irritating being constantly paranoid of anyone that tries to talk to you. And the simple matter of getting a lift around the ‘old town’ (conveniently both popular with tourists and not served by regular public transport) involves a tedious and time wasting bout of haggling. I’ve never been great at haggling, and it’s difficult to find the motivation when you suddenly realise your arguing over a matter of twenty pence. OK just have the 100 fucking Baht if you’ll shut up and let me get on with my day.
But it’s not all bad in Bangkok, there’s some cracking markets to hunt round. Last weekend we headed for the famous (well, it was in the guide book) Chatachuk Weekend Market in Bangkok. Fiona thought it started at 7, so we got up at 7, which meant we arrived just in time for it actually opening at 9. This was handy as it gave us a chance to give the place a once over whilst half the stalls were still setting up, and the market was still fairly quiet.
Four hours and probably several hundred stalls later, we made our way back upstream, passing by the hoards of punters coming off of tour buses, and I got to thinking about markets back home. Certainly Camden and Spittalfields are always crawling with tourists, but what about the Barras? Does Lonely Planet Glasgow list it as a must see? I haven’t been there in years – and I mean years as in the last visit I remember we were buying pirated floppy disks with Atari ST games for £2.50, maybe £2 depending on how good Dad’s haggling was that day – but I think I’ll definitely make a trip down there when I get back to Glasgow, just to see how it compares to the markets I’ve been kicking around in London and the rest of the world in the last few years.
After all the effort of carefully selecting music for my iPod before I left, I’ve hardly even listened to it so far. On the first flight from London to Tokyo I was kept entertained by the films and muic they had on the wee screen at my seat. They had the new Raconteurs album (Consolers of the Lonely), which I hadn’t got round to buying/hearing yet, so I listened to that while I was snoozing. It’s pretty good! Although to be fair I always find that music sounds twice as good when your half asleep – it’s a strange phenomenon.
As I mentioned in my ramblings about Tokyo, the new Oasis album (Dig Out Your Soul) was released in Japan the day we arrived (a week earlier than in the UK), so I was dying to get alisten to that. When I got to Mount Fuji on Sunday night, I had an email saying that as part of the deluxe box set I’d ordered, I could download the album the day before it’s UK release! Which I did, but then couldn’t actually listen to on my iPod for various technical reasons. Until I got to Hiroshima, got it sorted and had a good listen. First impressions are good although it always takes a while to draw your attention away from the first couple of tracks and any singles you’ve heard already.
The new Metallica album is awesome! There’s probably not much more to say on that. It’s fast. It’s loud. It’s catchy. (Some would say too loud but that’s a story for another day!)