Traditionally, some of us like to go where the snow is, where it’s bloody freezing and where Santa has no troubles wearing ultra-thick clothes. Others choose to follow the sun, to seek out places where kids can play on white sand beaches and swim in the warm sea. Places where adults can go shopping dressed in Hawaiian shirts and straw hats without being laughed at by their mates.

Thailand is one of these places.

Unwind and enjoy the festive break on one of Thailand’s numerous beaches and islands. The following are a few recommendations from us.

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The Understated: Cha Um

Cha-am is a little like Vientiane, upon first arriving you wonder what the draw is and why people stay there…then the enchantment sets in. The natural beauty of this small traditional Thai town on the beach combines with the warmth of its people to create a world of carefree relaxation. Experience all Cha-Am has to offer in a chic yet understated style at the best little guest house in town, Cha-Am Inn@Cha-Am.

Stay: Putting the boot in Boutique, Cha-am Inn offers the best value for money, with bamboo mats over polished cement floors, tasteful bathrooms with either balcony or window seating, its rooms are modern and minimalist with just the right touch of elegance (ca. 1200 THB/night) http://www.cha-inn.com, Tel: +66 (0)3247 1879

Do: Wake up looking over the beachfront promenade, hire a bike and cycle to the fisherman’s village, buy the fresh catch of the day and bring it back for the Cha-Am Inn guest house kitchen to cook-up, offering a festive feast on the beach.

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The Family Celebration: Hua Hin

For those needing action, care and attention from the moment they wake up until the moment the head hits the pillow – and we are referring to all ages from 6 months to 86 years – Baan Laksasubha is the family resort to check-in. We can even let the grown ups into a secret – children will find Santa here on vacation too! Seriously….he will be on the beach reading Christmas stories to the children, handing out gifts and may even join you for the Christmas lunch and carol singing. Rumour has it he can’t get enough of the place!

Stay: Enjoy a truly unique family Christmas celebration in the beautiful resort of Baan Laksasubha and with their Costenara restaurant being the only direct beachfront dining space in Hua Hin, an alfresco Christmas Eve or fun filled Christmas Day on the beach doesn’t get much better than this.

Do: In the true spirit of fun and festive giving, there will be games on the beach, entry is at a small donation request from participants with proceeds going towards building a library for the Hueng Pueng School, which is located on the remote hills of Hua Hin. Last year, Baan Laksasubha already started funding the building with a contribution from the United Nations Women’s Club.

www.baanlaksasubha.com

53/7 Naresdamri Rd., Hua Hin, Prachuab Khirikhan 77110. T +66 2261 5551  F +66 2258 7347

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The Escape Artist: Koh Jam

A hidden jewel nestled off the coast from Krabi, Koh Jam (often spelt Koh Jum for confusion and to keep the masses at bay) is the ultimate island holiday experience for the escape artist looking to get away from it all.

Stay in comfort in one of the guesthouses offering bungalows on the beach and wake to the soothing rhythms of waves lapping the shore. Ho-ho–ho only crosses your mind when you think of the madness in the shopping malls that you have escaped. It’s just you, the beach, and a few other like-minded travelers in the know, relaxing in this bliss of exquisite oasis amongst lush forests, long secluded beaches and a never-ending ocean.

It isn’t that Christmas is cancelled here, there is bound to be a smattering of tinsel somewhere, but the island makes wishes come true from October until April every year. Be sure to tick off the days to departure on the calendar, it’s the kind of place you can just lose yourself in and forget to leave at all!

Stay: Koh Jum Lodge www.kohjumlodge.com for an ecolodge with style amongst the horticulture of tropical grounds and white sand on the doorstep. For the minimalist, Siboya Bungalows has a bed with your name on it – www.siboyabungalows.com – and you will find they have a verdandah and a hammock waiting too.

Getting there: Boats between Krabi and Ko Lanta drop travelers off at Ko Jam for 450 THB. The island can also be accessed by boat from Ban Laem Kruat, a village just 30km from Krabi for just 100 THB.

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The Thrill Seeker: Phuket

Fire your imagination and revive your spirit with all the fascinating wonders around Phuket. Travel in comfort on a luxury yacht to the islands; explore an abundance of stunning islands, including the Racha and Coral islands; snorkel or dive and be surrounded by schools of tropical marine fish and fauna or simply lay back and cruise the seascape of the Phang Nga Bay. At the close of a full day, return to a 5 star resort and spa such as Anantara Phuket.

The Minor Affair, a Sunseeker Manhattan 60 packed with charm and sophistication, offers intimate cruising options for up to eight guests seeking island hopping and overnight adventures. Discover a breathtaking diversity of exotic beaches and pristine waters in the beautiful Andaman Sea from the privacy of a luxury yacht. Rates for a full day charter including lunch are 205,000 THB plus tax and service charge.

Stay: Anantara Phuket Resort & Spa is an ideal setting for a Christmas story you’ll tell forever. Located on the island’s secluded northern sunset coast, a collection of 83 expansive villas all benefit from a private pool, outdoor terrazzo tub and an array of luxurious facilities.

Do: Add to the adventure by chartering the yacht for an extended cruise from 2 days to the Similan Islands where whale sharks have been spotted, up to 8 days to Mergui Archipelago in Burma.

http://phuket.anantara.com

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The Upgraded Backpacker: Koh Samui

Don’t you just love it when the upgrade comes naturally? Once the backpackers pilgrimage, Koh Samui island has undergone some serious nip and tuck treatment to welcome back yesterday’s backpacker returning with family and friends in tow.

The extraordinary landscape encompasses mountains, verdant valleys and the beautiful waters and beaches around the coastline, accessible from the 100km ring road around the island. From the picturesque fishing village in Bo Phut to the waterfall at Nam Tok na Muang, this remarkable island will enchant and amaze.

Stay: Bandara Resort and Spa, in pure Asian style where imaginative design has combined with nature for a sanctuary of solace. Take a day trip to see some of the local sites of Bophut Beach, visit Big Buddha, local markets, shopping areas and the bustle of Chaweng. Return for a sumptuous seafood dinner at the beach side restaurant to the backdrop of gentle lapping waves on the beach and a thousand stars above.

www.bandarasamui.com/
178/2 Moo 1, Tambol Bophut, Koh Samui,

Surat Thani 84320 THAILAND

Tel: +66 (0)7724 5795

Fax: +66 (0)7742 7340

samuisales@bandarasamui.com

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Hideaway for Couples: Yao Noi

If you always thought Christmas was meant to be spent in a private infinity-edged pool villa, in a Hilltop Reserve, with a private sundeck and comes with a personal villa team who is trained to anticipate every whim, then surrender yourself to complete tranquility in this idyllic haven called Six Senses Yao Noi. Its where soft, white sand meets sparkling azure ocean in the perfect location for you to rest and rejuvenate your mind, body and spirit.

This exclusive space is guaranteed to satisfy your every desire with private villas, seductive spa treatments and extensive health facilities.
You will leave wondering if Christmas was ever spent any other way.

Stay: Six Senses Hideaway Yao Noi is located on the island of Yao Noi, situated midway between Phuket and Krabi, among the awe-inspiring limestone pinnacles of Phang Nga. The resort can be accessed from both Phuket airport and Krabi airport. A quick drive and boat ride will bring you to the resort, or to arrive in style, try the helicopter option!

http://www.sixsenses.com

Six Senses Hideaway Yao Noi

56 Moo 5, Tambol Koh Yao Noi, Amphur Koh Yao, Phang-Nga 82160, Thailand

Tel: +66 (0) 76 418 500, Fax: +66 (0) 76 418 518

E-mail : reservations-yaonoi@sixsenses.com

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Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Thailand’s Coastal Christmas

Those with a keen interest in mod­ern history may well be familiar with the work of the French photojour­nalist Roland Neveu. His pictures have been featured on the cover of Time Magazine whom he worked for throughout the 80’s -covering numer­ous stories including missionaries in New Guinea and the war in Lebanon from 1982 to 1985.

He took the first images of Soviet pris­oners in Afghanistan’s mudjahe­deen holy war, the wars in Lebanon and conflicts in Central America. He was also the first to photograph victims of AIDS in Uganda in 1986. He has worked as a stills photographer on many films in­cluding the blockbusters Platoon, Born on The Fourth of July, Thelma and Louise and The Doors. As a documentary filmmaker he covered the fall of Marcos in the Philippines, the Touaregs rebellion in the Sahara in 1990 and the plight of Kurd refugees after the Gulf War in 1991.

For his latest project, Roland has returned to the day that launched his career and the work he is most famous for, the fall of Phnom Penh in April 1975.

When Roland first set foot in Cambodia it was 1973 and he was visiting as a sociology student with the dream of becom­ing a photojournalist. In his student days he photographed anti Vietnam War protests for left wing news organizations. However, before he turned his lens on the fall of Phnom Penh all his work as a photographer had been largely unrec­ognised and unpaid.

During this period media channels throughout the world were saturated with coverage of the war in Viet­nam. With this in mind Roland and a fellow student decided to turn their focus on Cambodia – a country that was teetering on the edge of civil war. They stayed three months and Roland sold his first photo to AP (Associated Press) before returning to France to fulfill his military obligations.

During military service Roland kept a close eye on the turmoil in Cambodia with intent to return once his time was served. Cambodia had gotten under his skin and he had a sixth sense that things were about to explode in the country. As he had previously been lucky to sell the pictures he took of war in Cambodia he thought, with hard work and more experience, he would be able to capture the situation better and in turn make more sales.

He returned to Phnom Penh in March 1975. The city had changed since his first visit and with refugees com­ing in from the countryside the population had grown to more than two million.

Times were tough. Inflation had gone through the roof and surviving off no more than three US dollars a day meant even obtaining food became a challenge.

Roland confides in his book, The Fall of Phnom Penh, “From a purely selfish point of view I can say that the fall came as a relief to me. Inside the French Embassy compound, I didn’t have to worry anymore about food as there was simply nothing to eat. Everybody was in the same situation. All that really mattered at that time was the story.” And the story he was to cover would launch his career as a world renowned war photographer.

He woke on April 17th 1975, to witness the first batch of Khmer Rouge soldiers entering Phnom Penh. This was the first time he’d seen a Khmer Rouge soldier in the flesh. He was not sure how they would react to having their photo taken. They did not seem to mind so Roland set off on foot, unsure what the situation was, capturing images of these soldiers. He hitched a ride on one of the Khmer Rouge commandeered trucks entering Phnom Penh and rode with the soldiers down Monivong Boulevard that cuts through the centre of the city. He captured many images along the way, some in colour but most taken with black and white film. As the truck reached the other side of town more Khmer Rouge sol­diers climbed aboard. These soldiers weren’t as friendly as the first ones had been, one pointed a gun to Roland’s stomach and demanded he hand over his camera and film.

Luckily for Roland, at that very moment several shots were fired and everyone jumped for cover providing a escape route for the young photog­rapher. Not wanting to risk any more chances of loosing the film – let alone his life -he walked back to the French Embassy for safety and to at least try and find out what was going on.

The situation was uncertain and it was to stay that way for the two weeks he spent inside the Embassy. Over a thousand people were stranded inside its gates; journalists, diplomats and for­eigners and also about five hundred Cambo­dians unsure of what the future was to be for Cambodia. The final decision made by the new Khmer Rouge run government was to evacu­ate all foreigners to Thailand by truck while all Khmer citizens were made to stay.

What was to follow would be one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

Roland spent the next four years travelling to various parts of the world including visits to the refugee camps along the Thai/Burmese border. However, gaining access to the country was near impossible until 1979 when the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed under the Vi­etnamese invasion.

In January 1981 he was invited to Phnom Penh to celebrate the two year anniversary of the Vietnamese military victory over the Khmer Rouge. It had been almost six years since he was last in the city and he was amazed at how unrecognizable it was. The population had diminished from two million down to barely a hundred thousand and the streets were almost empty. He was also shocked to discover the torture centre of S-21 and the now famous killing fields at Choe­ung Ek.

Though his career has taken him to countless places, a big part of Roland’s heart remains in Cambodia where he returns frequently to photograph. He currently has a couple of projects on the go. One is a photographic travelogue on Cambodia called Beyond Angkor. The other is a book of war stories and photography from around the world.

The Fall of Phnom Penh book is available at leading bookstores in SE Asia or can be purchases directly at www.asiahorizons.com with PayPal.
For information on purchasing prints Roland can be contacted at rolandneveu@gmail.com

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Roland Neveu: The Fall of Phnom Penh

In 1979, a group of Cambodian villagers fled from the invad­ing hordes of Vietnamese sol­diers, taking refuge in the jun­gles of Rattanakiri province in the country’s northeast. There they remained for the next 25 years, fashioning clothes out of leaves and bark, laying traps for wild pigs and civets, and mak­ing weapons from the fallout left by American bombers alongside the Ho Chi Minh Trail. To ignite cooking fires, they rubbed sticks of bamboo together.

Only recently did local authorities discover the four fam­ilies and they finally came out of hiding.

This story, published by President Airlines’ in-flight mag The Cambodian Scene in 2005, is easy to believe when the plane bumps and shudders to a halt on the dirt runway in the tiny, provincial capital of Ban Lung. The arrivals hall is a dust-choked, wooden building with the façade of a Buddhist
temple. Inside, the doors are unhinged and ragged children run amok;
but tourism has made so few inroads here that the kids do not even beg
for money.

What the province may lack in modern amenities, it makes up for in villages belonging to 12 different Khmer Loeu ethnic minorities, a gem-mining shantytown, all sorts of eco-adventures and rivers like the Sre­pok, which was the source of inspiration for the foreboding waterway in Apocalypse Now.

Our first stop on this press junket, organised by Diethelm Travel Asia, is a Kroeung village. Out of the province’s population of 120,000, around 70 percent are composed of native tribes, with the Kroeung being the third largest. This community is a loosely arranged collection of a few dozen wooden houses built up on stilts in order to provide a shady re­treat from the sweltering sun. Hammocks hang beneath the houses. Piglets wander around as chickens peck at the dirt. And a strange si­lence pervades the area – not a TV or radio within earshot – as if the community exists in a state of suspended animation, cut off from the modern world. In fact, there is no electricity in any of these villages and a few of the group bitch about having to drink warm Cokes. Some of the Kroeung, believing in the animistic creed that photographs steal your soul, flee from the camera.

But one beaming old man, living in a thatched hut with a beehive hang­ing from the roof, is perfectly happy to pose for pictures. He even pulls out his bamboo instrument to play us some tunes composed of melodies sounding like bird trills and the sighing of the wind.

The most photogenic, centerpiece of their villages, however, are the “bachelor houses” made out of bamboo. The young man’s dwelling is built up on stilts about four- or five-meters tall, so he can entertain prospective brides in another house built closer to the earth, perhaps signifying the inequality of the sexes within their society, or the Earth Goddess symbolism inherent in animism. Once the couple is married, these temporary shelters are dismantled.

As part of the wedding celebrations, a buffalo is ritually sacrificed, says our guide and translator, Rin Samnith, who goes by the nickname of Nith. “For important festivals, or when people get sick, they sacrifice animals for the spirits,” he explains.

Driving to the next village on the bumpy, unpaved road, full of dips, turns, and gear-grinding hills (the road flanked by thick forest broken up by swathes of forest slashed and still smoking), we see a sight that flips the pages of my memory back to reading National Geographic as a boy: Walking beside the road is a bare-breasted woman carrying a rattan basket full of firewood on her back. Before you get your hopes or anything else up, O lusty gentlemen travelers, it seems that the only half-naked tribal ladies you see up here are middle-aged. One of the few passing vehicles conjures up a phantasmagoria of red, dust devils, and the woman quickly fades from view.

Past a rickety suspension bridge hanging over a tributary of the Se San River, lays the Kreung village of Ta Veng. From here to the border with Laos, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, is only about 10km or so. Through the Terres Rouges Lodge, where Nith works, and where we’re staying, he takes guests for treks along the supply line which the Viet Cong used to bring food and ammo to their troops in South Vietnam. Pol Pot, his wife Khieu Ponnary, and their other comrades-in­arms from the Khmer Rouge also used the trail to meet with their Vietnamese allies when the tyrant had a secret base of operations up in Ratanakiri in the late 60s. Many villagers, if not killed by the illegal, US bombing campaign, were shanghaied into fighting for the Cambodian commu­nists and ended up as cannon fodder. “The Khmer Rouge treated the local people like animals,” says our 25-year-old guide.

Some of the hikes (including sleepovers in tribal villages) can be quite arduous, the lodge’s co­owner, Chenda Clais, tells us later. “The trekkers come back and they walk like old cows,” she says, laughing.

All the men in Ta Veng are either out fishing or hunting, but the women and their children slowly and shyly cluster around us. One of the little boys carries a toy gun made out of the trunk of a banana tree. With Nith as a conversational go-between, we manage to speak with some of the friendly, smiling ladies, who say they don’t mind visitors coming up here. Still, one of the other travel writers expresses that commonplace lament, “It’s like a human zoo.” To which I reply, “Yeah, sure, but to them we’re just a bunch of albino gorillas, and it’s probably the most exciting thing that’s hap­pened in this village for the last few weeks.”

Once again, nobody begs or asks for anything except a po­lite request that we send them prints of the photos we’re taking.

Even with a tightly packed itinerary, there’s still leeway for some unexpected adventures. On our way to explore a field of lava that turns to scarlet at sunset, and is bordered by caves once occupied by tigers, we see a commotion bythe roadside, where a blaze is devouring a shack. Near the road, a large family looks on forlornly. Nith finds out for us that the fire was caused by a cooking accident.

Sitting in front of them are the family’s few worldly pos­sessions: a bundle of clothes, some pots and pans, and not much else.

Nobody complains about the warm Cokes anymore.

Khmer Pastoral

The Terres Rouges Lodge stands out as an opulent, French colonial counterpoint against such a dusty backdrop of deprivation. Once the local governor’s residence, the 14­room lodge has sumptuous wooden rooms (US$30-50 dol­lars) decked out with sandstone sculptures hearkening back to the Angkor Empire, and Thai textiles, while the main restaurant has spears and a chandelier from Bali.

Chenda and her husband, Yves-Pierre, started up the lodge. While doing his military serv­ice as a paratrooper in France, he came to Cambodia as a peacekeeper for the UN-sponsored in 1993. A jack of all travel trades, Pierre has worked as a guidebook writer, and a waterski­ing instructor and the captain of a junk on the Mekong River. As a guide he takes visitors on trips straight into the province’s Heart of Darkness.

On guard duty at the lodge are two playful Doberman pinchers. “Local security guards sleep 24 hours a day,” Chenda explains, “but Cambodian people are very afraid of dogs.” Not so afraid that they won’t allow them on airplanes, however. Since there is no vet in the prov­ince, when the dogs get sick, they put leashes and muzzles on them and bring them along on the plane to Phnom Penh.

On Day Two of our excursion, we head out to visit a Kroeung village where the main, homespun tradition is on public display: women weaving textiles on looms under their houses, or out in the shade, because the sun is sticking to its scorched-earth policy and there’s barely a whisper of wind. None of the weavers has a sales pitch for us; it’s nothing like the crass commercialism and hard-sell tactics that can spoil a visit to many hilltribes in Thailand.

After a while, the villages seem like variations on a minimalist theme, but with different splashes of local color: children smoking tobacco wooden pipes; a well under a jackfruit tree pregnant with fruit the size of cannon­balls; women carrying their babies tied to their backs with swatches of checkered cloth.

And these tumbledown hamlets are peopled with a cast of fascinating and sociable characters like an old man in an army uniform. He’s proud to show off his woven rattan baskets and one of the homemade knives that takes him two full days to pound into shape.

In Cambodia, you’d be hard pressed to find any older person who wasn’t scarred by the country’s decades of civil war, and the widower solemnly speaks of losing his whole through battles and afflictions. It’s a shock to find out he’s only 55, though; I would’ve guessed closer to 70.

Conversing with him, using Nith as the code-breaker, is a lesson in humil­ity: One’s usual gripes about inflation and computer glitches are reduced to trivial conceits.

By the time we get to the town of Bokeo, heading towards the frontier with Vietnam, and the area’s most totemic graveyard, this lesson has seeped in to everyone’s conscience. So what can we do to help? Ideas are tossed around. Everyone chips in some cash. Then we buy a bunch of aspirins and some pens and drawing paper for the kids. Not that I’m acting as Satan’s surrogate or anything, but I pick up a dozen packs of cigarettes because Nith says the local men appreciate them.

Another journeyman writer asks, “What about buying some condoms for
the tribal ladies?”

“You’ve been living in Bangkok for too long,” quips his friend. And every­body cracks up. On these sorts of tours, the other travelers you’re stuck with
are either half the fun or the majority of the misery. In this case we’re fortu­nate enough to have a generous and witty crew along for the ride.

There’s not much to buy in Bokeo’s market: fruit and vegetables, farming tools, cheap clothes and more expensive sarongs. The locals seem more amused by our presence than anything else. One of the young female vendors bursts into giggles when a fellow traveler calls her “beautiful” in Khmer.

She’s wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt; another teenager has his baseball cap
on backwards, but not yet sideways; in the wooden restaurant near Bokeo’s
main road, where we sit knocking back some high-octane, Vietnamese-style
coffee, served in a bowl of water to keep the glass cool, there’s a dog snoozing
on the dirt under our table and a larger-than-life cardboard cutout of Jackie
Chan pimping an energy drink.

These signs of celebrity culture’s encroachment in Ratanakiri steer the con­versation into familiar territory – whether or not mass tourism erodes tra­ditions and unravels the fabric of society – which begs another question
rarely considered by purists. Are all cultural traditions necessarily worth
preserving? Will future historians one day lament the passing away of polka
music, Super-8 film, “pet rocks” and Fear Factor as great bastions of Western
culture?

Let’s hope not.
For the time being these are blurry issues in the province, not likely to come
into sharp focus for a few more years, especially since Nith tells us we’re now
heading for some places few other tourists have ever explored before.

The gems of wrath
Our next stop is a gem-mining shantytown with an aura of foreboding. On
either side of the dirt road leading down through the ad-hoc town are holes
dug out by the miners with buckets and ropes. Pieces of plastic draped over
wooden frames serve as shelters for families while tree branches are used
as clotheslines. Scott Murray, the Bangkok-based writer and editor, says,
“This would make a great setting for a kind of John Steinbeck novel like ‘The
Grapes of Wrath.’”

He’s right. And there are a few glints of wrath in the miners’ eyes as we walk by. But you can’t blame them for being suspicious. Ratanakiri (“Jewel Mountains” in Pali) has a long history of being pillaged for buried treasures, ever since the French came to dig for gold a century ago. In the 90s, it was the Americans. But nowadays a Korean company has a concession for this area, known as the Three Districts.

“We dig for sapphires and rubies,” says one miner, who lightens up the somber mood by playfully throwing a rattan tray full of mud in our direc­tion and laughing.

He’s standing waist-deep in muddy water, sifting the gems from the mud by smashing the rocks with a stick, and then swirling the tray around in the water, grinning and smoking all the while. Once everyone else has moved on I go over and offer him and his friend a couple of smokes in return for answering my questions. Unbelievably, the man with the tray reaches into his plastic water bottle, pulls out two little rubies-in-the-rough and hands them to me. Employing two of my three words of Khmer, I say, “Aw khun. Lee hai – Thank you. Goodbye.”

Both of the miners grin and return the pleasantries.

Totemic River

Along the banks of the Se San River, we board some dugout canoes with mo-tors and rudders, in the form of wooden poles, on the back. The only other vessel is loaded up with a few locals and a man sitting on a motorcycle. They are going to be the last people we see on the river.

Flanking both sides of the waterway are forests, where tree-spotters can have a field day picking out flame and mango trees, gigantic dipterocarps and shoreas. Here and there the jungle is blackened by hack-and-torch farmers, but mostly it’s imbued with the same deep green hue as the water. There’s not much wildlife or waterfowl to be seen, save for a lone kingfisher arcing across the sky, before banking sharply, and diving down in search of a meal.

As Paul Davies, the Regional Head of Communications for Diethelm Travel Asia, muses, “The view along here seems like it hasn’t changed for the last thousand years.”

Infant islands are reborn during the dry season, one of them acting as a floating picnic bench for our lunch break.

Another half hour down the Se San, near the Vietnamese frontier, is the boneyard for the Jarai tribe. In the midst of a bamboo grove craftsmen have carved wooden totems for grave markers. The first one we come across is the final resting place of a helicopter pilot; it’s dressed up with streaks of color and a toy-sized helicopter on top of a pole. Deeper in the jungle, the other totems are more basic: a pregnant woman, a foot soldier with a gun on his shoulder, and another figure with its hands raised to its cheeks like Ed­vard Munch’s, The Scream. To be walking around on such hallowed ground seems like sacrilege, but Nith reassures me that the Jarai don’t mind.

The village of 200 people is a 10-minute hike through the jungle. As the Jarai gather around us, our guide breaks the ice by handing out sweets to the chil­dren. Since none of them can read or write, and the nearest school is back in Bokeo, he decides to save the pens and notepads for another ethnic tribe. Nith also has to explain to one of the teenage boys, who is wearing feathers in his baseball cap, that the aspirins must be used in small doses.

Mas Leu, the nephew of the village chief, lost an eye, several fingers, and part of his arm to a landmine. But he’s still grinning, still laughing, and there’s no bitterness in his voice when he says that the village doesn’t receive any assistance from the government or any NGOs.

Some of his eight children are clinging to his legs, a pig foraging on the ground beside him. When asked how many tourists have visited this village in the last year, he says, “About 40.”

There are not many destinations left in Southeast Asia that have been so un­tainted by mass tourism. In spite of all the hard roads one has to travel in the province (both viscerally and mentally), this is Ratanakiri’s true allure.

Heart of Darkness

A few nights later I’m sitting on the terrace in one of the restaurants near the riverfront in Phnom Penh. A young Cambodian guy sits down at the table across from me with blood pouring down his T-shirt from a head wound. A few other people finally convince him to go to the hospital. As he walks out to the street, I see the back of his T-shirt, which is plugging a local bar called the Heart of Darkness, where statues of Angkor-era kings and idols are bloodied with red light, and where foreign sex pistols gun for local cock-holsters. Once he’s out on the street, the man says somebody drove by him on a motorcycle and smacked him across the back of his head with the lock on a bicycle chain.

By comparison, the tribal villages of Ratanakiri seemed much more peace­ful, and far less primitive, than the country’s capital.

Check out Diethelm’s website at
www.diethelmtravel.com for information about
their Ratanakiri tour on “Tour Ideas”
under “Cambodia”.

The Terres Rouges Lodge has a website in
French at www.ratanakiri-lodge.com.

WINGING IT
President Airlines has three weekly flights (Mon, Wed, Fri) from Phnom Penh to Ratanakiri, departing at 9:35am, or the other way around, leaving at 11:10am. If you book and pay for the flights through their website
– www.presidentairlines.com – the roundtrip fare from Bangkok-Phnom Penh-Ratanakiri is only Bt8,760. It also pays to inquire about their special package deal, which includes accommodation at the Terres Rouges Lodge.

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Gems of Wrath

Not far from Cambodia’s Ang­kor temples is the workshop of IKTT (Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles). Located in Siem Reap and founded by Morimoto Kikuo, IKTT provides work to 300 women making textiles, and in a simi­lar way as it took the American Jim Thompson to rescue Thai­land’s silk industry, Japanese native Morimoto Kikuo could be called Cambodia’s equiva­lent silk savior.

Besides reviving an industry rejected and wiped out by the Khmer Rouge, today, in two wooden houses on the outskirts of this small town, the women who work here have found refuge and rebuilt their lives. Morimoto’s goal is to help impoverished Cambodi­ans resurrect traditional silk production. His project is also aspires to a broader purpose. By reviving this industry, Mo­rimoto is laying the groundwork for a larger rejuvenation of his adopted country.

The Ikat technique of weaving, which is called Chong Kiet in the local Khmer language, is a complex technique which involves the tying of partial sections of the weft yarn with fiber for resist dye­ing that creates patterns on the yarn before weaving. Morimoto ar­rived in Cambodia in 1995 as a textile consultant for UNESCO, and so devastated was the countryside after years of war that he could hardly find a person who knew anything about the old techniques for making cloth – not even a map to take him to a village where people might have preserved the craft.

“Where silk-worm raising or the use of natural dyes are concerned, normally, answers by villagers to my questions would be ‘I stopped 25 years ago…’”he explained. “Back then one of the greatest challeng­es was the infrastructure and finding someone who would take me through baron landscapes. One day the road would be safe, another day I couldn’t find a driver within a 5-mile radius willing to take the risk. The first six months of my research were spent traveling through potentially dangerous territory, meeting dormant artisans and drawing up a map as I went along.”

Undaunted, Morimoto has devoted years to reviving the ancient Cambodian silk industry and wherever he goes, artisans wel­come him into their homes. During those uncertain times when a stranger wasn’t to be trusted, Morimoto experienced warmth and generosity. It was an aspect of his research that clearly still touched Morimoto as he spoke of it during our interview earlier this year, and as he showed me the collection of tools he had gathered along the way – now on display in Siem Reap – Morimoto’s expression was enough to tell me each piece had a fascinating story behind it, had I only a few more hours to spare and hear the full accounts.

Morimoto learned the art of yuzen – silk dyeing for kimonos – in his home town of Kyoto. It all began 1971 with an apprenticeship as an artisan of dye­ing, and so began his love affair with all things silk-related – from the raw materials used to obtain the dies, to the final product. From thereon he pro­gressed throughout the industry to become a company manager, a teacher at refugee camps and UNESCO consultant.

In 1980, when Morimoto was working in Thailand supervising the local operations of a major textile concern, he discovered Cambodian silk and was very impressed by its incredible quality. Three years later he moved to Thailand, teaching people in the rural communities and refugee camps the techniques of how to naturally dye and hand weave cloth. Since then he has forged friendships and shared knowledge with those who fled the Khmer Rouge to Thailand, taking with them their silkworms, heritage and skills.

During the year when he was contracted as a textile consultant in Cambo­dia, the scope of his findings was so broad and enticing, Morimoto knew he wouldn’t be able to walk away. Cambodia had been stripped bare of not just the skills and knowledge, but of the vital raw materials to produce both silk and natural dyes. When the research project came to an end, he started on his own project, initially around Phnom Penh, to restore the silkworm culture of yellow cocoons, re-importing a single silkworm from his contacts in Surin, along with seeds to replant mulberry bushes.

In 2000, Morimoto moved his workshops from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, a real “village laboratory” close to the countryside, to better apply and posi­tion his rural renewal idea. Fifteen years later, Morimoto’s vision is already providing livelihoods in silk weaving and dyeing to more than 400 Cambo­dians, weavers and farmers, many of them are young women who would otherwise be begging from rich tourists at the nearby temple ruins or fol­lowing less salubrious professions. He recruits trainees from rural areas with priority given to those from poor families, handicapped and orphans.

The move brought out yet more knowledge, including a weaver who has now been cycling over 40 miles a day for the past two years to share her skills with him. Offering wages between US $30 – $80 a month, instead of US$ 5 -10 elsewhere, this is enough to keep a family together and allow children the opportunity to go to school. Today that weaver is able to work from home.

Walking around the workshop I met generations living and working side-by-side, children sleeping and playing amidst the therapeutic rhythms of looms, the clacking of bobbins, hush of thread and songs. I was introduced to Chan Peth from the Takeo province. At 65 years old she is one of the old­est survivors sharing her knowledge with Morimoto’s mission. In the work­shop, master weavers reproduce new textiles from old textile designs with skilled weavers as apprentices. There are currently four senior weavers who are working as master weavers at IKTT.

Next to Chan Peth sits Das Sosase, 55 years old. Forty years ago she bred silkworms near Phnom Penh, but stopped everything during the civil war. She migrated to Siem Reap in 1969 to sell fish and vegetables. Today, work­ing for the IKTT she feels secure, perhaps for the first time in her life. Her husband has a small shop, also in Siem Reap, where he resells medicines (herbal medicine) that he buys in Phnom Penh.

While the showroom and workshop represents the hub of the action, the core today can be found 25km outside Siem Reap at the related Project of Wisdom from the Forest (PWF), which began in August 2002 when the site was barren and trees had been cut down before they could even grow big enough for firewood.

“We had come to the point where our mission to restore traditional Cambo­dian textiles could not be accomplished without restoring the natural envi­ronment that supports the textile villages, more specifically without rehabili­tating the forests. PWF’s plan is to reforest where trees have been cut down and create villages elsewhere.

“At first the road to it was no different from an animal trail. About five years later the trees had grown at least twice the size, turning the barren landscape into a grove. In ten years it is likely to be a small forest. To accelerate the growth of the trees, we clear the weeds at ground level and remove things that prevent the trees from growing. We truly practice growing a natural forest,” Morimoto tells me, as we wove our own path through the workers and children.

The PWF site currently has 23 hectares of land, twelve of which are used to nurture trees and to rehabilitate natural forest. The remaining 11 hectares of land are used for plantations of mulberry, cotton and indigo trees. It is also used to grow plants used for dyeing, as well as fruit trees and vegetables, making it almost self-sustainable for the 35 families who live there.

With more than 200 people, including children living in the PWF’s village there is also a small schoolroom, and a grocery shop will soon be opened, which will be followed by the installation of wells for water and electricity supply. Solar panels are already installed to generate electricity.

“It was only through the PWF’s natural forest rehabilitation project, that I began to realize how rich Cambodia’s natural dyeing in the past was. We learned from the villagers about plants that can be used to produce natural color dyes. Even some trees that we were previously unaware of used to be significant plants in the world of natural dyeing in Southeast Asia.

“This illustrates for me the rich co-existence of the world of trees used to produce natural dyes and textiles. Moreover, in the distant past, before the sericulture industry came to be known, in Cambodian forests there were insects that reeled wild yellow yarns. Probably during those ancient times, clothes were woven using yarns taken from these cocoons.”

Cambodian woven material is dyed using five basic colors: yellow, red, green, blue and black, and the country has long produced natural dyes for those colors. The oldest example of Khmer silk hangs in the Smithsonian Museum in Seattle, which experts date at around 150 years old. “The most basic red dye is made from the nest of an insect called lac. The nests are collected after lacs have moved from one tree branch to another during the breeding season in December. Our indigo and red dyes made from lac are not as rich as the colors I saw in that antique example. Even today, its evident the natural dyes have held their color. Machine work and synthetic colors will never be able to survive in such a way,” explained Morimoto with a warm glint in his eye, and an engaging smile.

We finish our tour where we began, in the painting class. At first glance it may appear to be an activity centre out of place, but once again Morimoto has gone to the root of the cause. “Education finishes at such a young age in Cambodia, there is no school of art, no opportunity to learn appreciation for fine art, drawing or tap into sensitivity towards color and beauty.” Every day, a group of young girls are paid to paint and never allowed to sell a piece of work, “they can’t do it to earn money, they will never develop a love for the arts if money is exchanged at such a young stage” remarks Morimoto.

Whether these budding artists-in-residence go on to become textile design­ers, colorists, dye experts or branch into a totally different career, Morimoto is planting a seed and laying the groundwork in a community willing and able to nourish the arts and crafts industry, hopefully for many years to come.

INSTITUTE FOR KHMER
TRADITIONAL TEXTILES
No. 472, Viheachen Village, Svaydongkum Commune,
(Road to the lake, near the crocodile farm)
P.O. Box 9349, Siem Reap Angkor,
Kingdom of Cambodia
Phone: +855(0)63-964437

http://iktt.esprit-libre.org/en/

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Silk Revival

During the Khmer Rouge regime over 12,000 Cambodian were tortured and bludgeoned to death in Toul Sleng prison. Only 12 survived. George Walsh recalls meeting Cambodia’s most famous artist and survivor of Toul Sleng prison, Van Nath.

As a young boy Vann Nath dreamed of becoming a painter not necessar­ily a famous one but like many of us he wanted to be able to earn a living doing what he loved. Today he is unarguably Cambodia’s most famous painter but known more for the gruesome images he paints of life with-in a prison and his performance in Rithy Panhs award winning documen­tary, S21, The Killing Machine, than for his work as an artist.

I first met Nath in 2007, I had long been a fan of his and could not believe my luck when a close friend told me that he had a restaurant on Kampuchea Krom Boul­evard in Phnom Penh and I was more than welcome to stop by when I had free time. I had free time anytime to meet such an amazing man.
In our first meeting together I was surprised to meet such a lovely and dear old man – he reminded me of my grandpa who used to buy me meat pies before we picked strawberries together. Nath and I however, talked for about two hours about his experi­ences under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and his arrest.

Vann Nath was arrested in December 1977 in Siem Reap province, he was told he had been chosen to join a co-operative harvesting rice but was instead taken to a wood hut, chained and shackled. He still has no idea why he was arrested. He was from a poor family in Siam Reap and barely made ends meet before the city was evacuated in 1975. After his arrest he was taken to Toul Sleng prison by a truck, in the dead of night, blind folded and shackled together with another 20 men. When they arrived they were stripped down to their underwear, but Nath like many others had no underwear so was stripped naked and taken into a room where they would remain shacked together with only a few spoons of rice porridge to eat per day and little water, they had to ask permission from the guard to move. Every four days a guard would come in with a fire hose and bath the prisoners from the doorway. Van Nath was accused of betraying Angkor, tortured and electrocuted in the hope to get a confession out of him, but he did not confess as he had no idea what he had done wrong.

After a month of living in the hell that was Toul Sleng, a former school turned torture centre, his name was called. He was un­shackled and taken to meet Duch, the chief of the prison who asked him if he could paint a picture of Pol Pot. Nath painted the picture and Duch liked it and kept him alive to paint more pic­tures of Pol Pot. Though he was lucky to be kept alive life was not pretty or easy for Nath. He saw and heard the interrogation, tor­ture, brutal treatment and starvation of thousands of men who would later be taken to Chueng Ek to be killed. He remembers very clearly his shock when he saw two white men, blindfolded in their underwear being taken into one of the interrogation rooms.

When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 he managed to escape the Khmer Rouge and worked for the new Vietnam­ese Government, returning to Tuol Sleng to paint what he had witnessed in his year there. Researching prison documents he found his name on an execution list, under­lined in red ink Duch had written “keep” be­side his name, everyone else on that list had been killed. More than 12 000 men were tak­en to Tuol Sleng, interrogated, tortured and then killed. The chief of the prison, Duch, lived freely until photojournalist Nick Dun-lop discovered him in 1999. He was working for an NGO called ARC in Cambodia but soon turned himself in to the authorities. He is now on trial in Phnom Penh, charged with crimes against humanity.

Nath now lives with his wife and has opened a gallery in his restaurant, displaying his paintings. He will appear on Rick Steins cooking show Asian Odyssey which will air this year as well as another documentary, The Genocide Forgotten, by American professor Tim Sorel that will also be released this year to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Khmer Rouge. He is a humble man and tries not to think too much about his experiences under the brutal Pol Pot regime. In his spare time he enjoys painting landscapes and the Cambodia he remembers as a child.

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Portrait Of An Artist

Vieng Xai, a dust bowl village in the remote northeast province of Hua Phan isn’t the easiest place to reach. Narrow lanes tracing a mountainous terrain slow our bus to a snails pace through a landscape of lush vegetation, precipitous valleys and bamboo villages. Looking out of the window it’s hard to believe this province was once at the epicenter of what remains the largest and most expensive paramilitary operation ever conducted by the US.

From 1964 to 1973 the US military rained down 1.9 million metric tons of bombs Laos, or over half a ton for every man, woman and child. Their aim was to break the will of the Pathet Laos Army – the communist opposition to the Laos Royalists and strong supporters of Ho Chi Mihn’s Viet Cong Army. In their failure they left Laos with the dubious distinction of becoming the most heavily bombed nation, on a per capita basis, in the history of warfare. Vieng Xai – Victory City – stood as the command center of the Pathet Laos resistance and today bears the scars of an illegal war that bought a nation to its knees.

Victory City is a grand term for what is essentially a mud track village boasting a few crumbled, concrete buildings and a central market where vendors struggle to afford transport to the provincial capital, 29km away.  A small airfield and a few barracks painted ochre and green announce my arrival. In the center of town flies swarm around a meat market that looks out to a statue depicting a soldier, a worker and a peasant, their hammers, rifles and sickles hoisted in the air, their feet crushing bombs inscribed USA.

Reminders of America’s nine year Secret War against the Pathet Laos are etched into the psyche and landscape of this province. Rising above the pot marked rice fields are limestone karsts riddled with caves that were used as the people’s only form of defense during Uncle Sam’s nine year onslaught. From 1964 to 1973 over 200 caves were utilized as shelter and barracks for over 30,000 citizens and soldiers. Amongst them was a bakery cave, a bank cave where liberated zone banknotes were printed, a circus cave and even a Chinese Embassy Cave – surely the ambassadorial posting from hell! The daily bombardments halved the population of Vieng Xai and even today, 35 years on there’s a ghost town air about the place.

As I enter the district headquarters to arrange a tour of the caves a couple of bureaucrats are busy gathering dust. When I introduce myself they immediately start arguing over which one will take a few dollars to guide me through the caves.

“Quickly, follow me,” says the older man who nominates himself tour guide over his grumbling colleague. At 35 years of age he was too young to fight the Americans but old enough to remember taking shelter with his family. “My name is Wit, welcome to Cave City” he says as we climb onto a couple of rusty old push bikes and cycle up a mud track. “We’ll visit our leader’s cave first, his name was Keysone.”

Tham Than Keysone was the Pathet Laos chief for the duration of the war. When the Americans retreated he held presidency of Laos until his death in 1992. “The Americans could not kill him,” Wit explains as he leads me 140 meters into a cave that for nine years was his home. Tracing a long tunnel we peer into a series of dank bedrooms and recreation rooms, a now empty library and a meeting room distinguished by a bust of Lenin and a portrait of Che Guevara presented by visiting Cubans. Of more practical use is a large iron oxygen filter donated by the Soviets and placed in a sealed room. On the wall of the nearby cabinet room, history is frozen in time as a map reveals a plot to attack the now infamous Long Chen air base – an American installation once so secret the CIA deceived the US Senate for years about its existence.

“As a child I lived in a cave with over ten families,” Win explains. “Everyday we could hear the airplanes and bombs. When they came my mother would make me sit at the back of the cave.” From the front of the caves soldiers would take aim at streams of US fighter planes that would fly over Vieng Xai on a daily bases, turning to dust the villages and towns of northeast Laos. “Anyone who was out in the fields when the Americans flew over was a target. My uncle died in his rice field. An American dropped the bomb on him. After that my father would only work the fields at night.”

From 1964 onwards the US military ratcheted up the attacks to an intensity never known before and as the US public became fixated on the war in Vietnam the pummeling of Laos went on almost unnoticed. Unnoticed because the CIA imposed a ban on reporting an illegal war that targeted a neutral country, thereby contravening the terms of the Geneva Convention. To borrow an infamous quote about Vietnam from US General Curtis LeMay, Laos was “bombed back to the Stone Age.”

Stepping out of the cave it’s difficult to imagine the carnage that Win grew used to. The scent of jasmine and frangipani trees has replaced the stench of cordite while the only sound today is of children playing.

Cycling through a rice field we circle three bomb craters now full of shrubbery and wild flowers. “This is the Hospital Cave,” Wit explains as he pushes open the thick steel doors, “where my father died.” Inside are the shattered remains of a 100 meter long ward with blue washed walls. With only a gas lamp we step cautiously into the ward. The smell is rancid and all that remains are a few broken beds once tended by Cuban doctors and under foot a sea of crunched glass; broken vials of medicine and things I try not to focus on. “You are lucky,” Win explains as we leave, “usually we don’t take tourists into there, too many ghosts.”

The following morning I share a few cups of thick black Laos coffee with Win. “Changes are coming to Laos” he says with an air of optimism. “There are more tourists and the Chinese pay for everything – new roads and shopping centers.” When I suggest that means they’re colonizing the country he replies, “That’s okay, Laos can’t move forward on its own, too much corruption.” There’s a few caves left to visit so we drink up and cycle off to the cave of the Red Prince, as Wit mysteriously phrases it.

One of the tragedies of the war was the pitting of Laos factions against one another. The Hmong hilltribe people were armed and trained by the US to fight the Pathet Laos. Tens of thousands were killed and still face persecution today. Prince Souphanouvong, known as the Red Prince, turned his back on his own family and a system he believed to be a puppet regime for imperialist powers to join the Pathet Laos leaders in the caves of Vieng Xai.

An elderly woman scales the outside of the cave to pick wild berries as we climb the steep steps to the caves entrance. The generator is down so again it’s by the light of a hissing gas lamp that we enter into the cave. “The Red Prince lives here,” Wit whispers. Lives or lived I wonder as I keep my eyes peeled for ghosts. The cavern had been divided into wooden partitions creating bedrooms for the Princes ten children. Born into the lower echelons of the royal family and destined to play a secondary role to his intellectually inferior brothers the Prince fell in love with an innkeepers daughter from Vietnam and committed himself to the communist cause. “The Red Prince, he was murdered after the war; no one can speak about it.” Wit explains, adding fuel to my curiosity but refusing to comment further despite being bombarded with questions. When a rat the size of a cat emerges from under the princes bed Wit jumps out of his skin and tells me it’s time to go. “Reincarnation,” I suggest to a grimace.

When the war ended the Pathet Laos leaders built houses in front of their caves and many remained in Vieng Xai. It’s not difficult to see why. The landscape is stunning and the houses are adorned with wild flowers, fruit trees and fish ponds born from bomb craters and known today as peace ponds. Heaven might look like this region northern Laos and in the eyes of a tourist it may be just that. But look a little closer and the legacy of the nine year secret war and the failings of communism are everywhere to be seen. The average wage is around 1 US$ a day. The markets are threadbare and you need never look far to see limbless mine victims wheeling their way through the streets with a tin in their hand. Not just war veterans but young people also. Thirty years on the landscape remains littered with UXO. The mine clearing foundation Minetech International estimate every month at least one person in most of Laos 17 provinces will lose their life to US UXO – the number could be much higher but deaths aren’t recorded in Laos. Most of the victims are farmers but many are children collecting scrap metal for village merchants.

“So many things in Laos are made from the steel of bombs,” Wit explains. Cluster bomb casings can be transformed into attractive pot plants if turned on their side. Stood upright they can be used as fence posts or pillars for rice barns. Scrap aluminum is often melted down and fashioned into items of everyday use such as cooking pots and spoons. “I even know people who used the aluminum from exploded bombs to build false legs,” Wit laughs, painfully aware of the irony.

When I ask him what he thinks of the Americans now he replies, “I forgive them, it was a long time ago, but even now I think they should clear our land of the mines, after all, they put them there.”

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Cave City

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and no intent on arriv­ing,” Lao Tzu, became the motto of my long and adventur­ous journey back to my home in Bangkok from my home in the United States.

Upon arriving for what was meant to be a short lay-over in Tai­pei, Taiwan passengers aboard the red-eye flight to Bangkok, Thailand via Seattle, Washington were devastatingly notified that the connecting flights to Suvarnabhumi airport were de­layed due to violent government protests. While protestors held the airport and thousands of travelers in Bangkok at a multiple day stand still, thousands more were stranded in various parts of the world en route to tourist and final destinations throughout Southeast Asia.

As terrifying rumors spread like wild free amongst the nervous passengers, nationality and like native language groups as well as international cliques began  to  form. “Birds of a feather flock  together,” as they say. I quickly joined  the huddle of  fellow Americans conspiring  in  the lobby and found comfort  in meeting,  “The Newlyweds,” as  I at first  referred  to  them; who lived  in Western Washington only  three hours  away  from my  rural  farm town.   The unknown was nerve  racking!   How  long were we going  to be held  over  in Taiwan?   Where would we  stay?   Will we have  to  pay  for  a hotel?  How will we get information from the airline?  Why do we have to surrender our passports?     Why can’t  I have my  luggage? We continued asking each other unanswered questions. I felt helpless and frustrated.  After hours of tedious paperwork, the collection of passports by the airline staff due to customs regulations and a forty minute bus ride we finally arrived at a hotel; hungry, exhausted, without  luggage or any indication of how long we would be stranded in Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Although a bit annoyed with the delay of my arrival home I couldn’t help but look on the positive side of things, I was in Taiwan!   A country I had never been  to before! It was almost like winning a free trip, as visiting Taipei was never on my  top  ten  list of places  to  see. As  the hotel  staff  assigned rooms and dispersed meal vouchers I secretly began collecting sightseeing brochures displayed at the concierge desk.  In an earlier announcement from the airline staff all travelers were advised not to leave the hotel considering we had all surrendered our passports, I on the other hand saw this as an exploring opportunity ft for a risk-taking rebel. The travel brochures boasted day tours, half-day tours and night  tours  filled  with  stops  to monuments, memorials, temples  and markets.    Although  somewhat  entertaining and informative, none of the tours appealed to the adventurous newlyweds, Jackie and Adrian or myself.   Te one sight  that caught our  immediate attention was  the Taipei 101 building, having been compared to New York’s, Statue of Liberty and Paris’, Eifel Tower it was evident this was a Taipei must see!

Without even looking over our shoulders for supervising airline staff Jackie, Adrian and I rebelliously exited the ho­tel lobby and hailed a cab to downtown Taipei, destination, Taipei 101 Building. The thirty-minute commute flew by, as we were entertained with chaotic scooter traffic, neon lights as well as massive amounts of colorful buildings and signs. In the distance we could faintly make-out the tallest building in the world, however as we drew nearer it van­ished as if it had been swallowed by the bustling city that surrounds it. Suddenly, out of nowhere the amazing sky­scraper appeared. Standing 1,670 feet tall the steel struc­ture comprised of eight canted sections, 380 concrete piles sunk 80 meters into the ground and vertically supported by 36 columns with eight mega columns circled around. We stood in awe as we admired the sheer size and amount of twisted steel used to erect a spire structure, which sym­bolizes the axis mundi: a world center where earth and sky meet and the four compass directions join.

According to the literature provided by the Taipei 101, Asians say, “we climb in order to see further,” eagerly the three of us Westerners purchased our tickets and boarded the world’s fast­est elevator in the world’s tallest building to see as far as we could see. At maximum capacity the elevator doors shut and the multilingual tour-guide began her rehearsed speech in four different languages. At 3,314 feet per minute we traveled less than 30 seconds up to the 89th floor. The speed of the elevator made our stomachs do flips and our bodies feel weightless, taking into consideration an airline pilot ascends a plane at only 1,000 feet per minute. About that time I looked over to see a mirrored look of excitement coupled with a bit of fear on both Jackie and Adrian’s faces; I mischievously grinned and nervously giggled, so did they.

The indoor 89th floor observation deck provided a 360-degree panoramic view of the lively city below. Through the mist and the fog we saw not only temples and monuments but also mesmerizing, winding rivers that slithered under the many bridges of Taipei. We stood looking out towards the lush green hills and imagined hiking up to the hot springs of Seven Star Mountain and into Yangmingshan National Park, perhaps even visiting the Taipei Zoo; the largest in Asia a home to animals from Australia and Africa. We mean­dered through the indoor observation deck listening to the narrations of the sights we saw below us while we admired the jade jewelry stands as well as the stuffed Damper Babies in the souvenir shop. The Damper Babies were cartoon figures named after the largest steel pendulum in the world that hung inside the tower between floors 92 and 88. The steel damper is used to offset and damper movement inside the building due to large gusts of wind.

Upon completion of our self-guided tour our brains and bodies craved food and a more mindless form of entertainment.  As luck would have it we managed to hail the most out­going and informative tour-guide in Taipei in the form of a taxi cab driver. Eager to show off his English speaking skills the driver narrated the entire thirty -minute route back to Taoyuan. He pointed out the Zhinan Temple, Liberty Square and the picturesque Dan Shui riverside cycling path while explaining in detail about the Chinese Dynasty and the importance of the monuments that stood in its honor. En route to the night market he talked about Taiwan’s high-speed bullet train and the many routes tourist take to arrive at the waterfront in the south.

Scooters lined the entrance to the night market as shops filled with colorful and graphical­ly stimulating helmet stores welcomed us in. The crowded market was filled with bizarre yet interesting items, from mysterious looking meats to creative fruit treats, exotic animals such as baby pigs in shopping baskets and stingrays in tanks in the pet store. Neon colored hats, sequenced tube tops, multi-colored purses and topless mannequins wearing skinny jeans lined the noisy path. Loudspeakers blared a mixture of techno and hip-hop music as unfamiliar smells filled the air. Hyped up from the day’s events we walked back to the hotel in an effort to allow our thoughts to settle and provide an opportunity to reflect on what we had experienced. As we entered the hotel restaurant for a night cap of hot tea we noticed the sign posted over the “raw” fish warned….. “digestive distress for the unaccus­tomed,” ……a perfect closing thought to our adventurous day out in Taipei.

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Stranded in Taipei and Pleasantly Surprised!

As I walked into my deluxe room in the Anantara Resort and Spa on Koh Samui, my frst impression was that it seemed a little small and Spartan. But then I noticed there was a monkey sitting on the bed. It had been folded out of towels, the red eyes and mouth formed out of rose petals.

Reappraising the room, I now saw all the strik­ing and artistic details, like the batik-pat­terned cover adorning the bed, which sat atop the wooden platform, and a platter of Chinese pears and wedges of Thai sweets rich with co­conut. Out on the balcony there was a love seat built into the railing for sun-basking during the day or star-gawking at night. From that vantage point, I drank in a slice of sea and a slumbering dragon of an island in the distance.

Checking out the bathroom, my eyes alighted on the big ter­razzo bathtub, the woodcut painting of a red and gold Siamese fighting fish on the wall, a phone beside the toilet, and then the two bottles of mineral water in little rattan containers. There were also some other little surprises and flashes of humor, like the sign above the mini-bar that read, “Need ice for a drink? Dial 6 and we’ll be there in a blink.” Not exactly Paradise Lost, but one doesn’t expect attempts at rhyming couplets from ho­teliers. And that made me wonder if they had a poet-in-resi­dence to compose these lines as well as sonnets for the guests. (Note to the resort’s courteous General Manager Bodo Klin­genberg: If the position is still open I’m your hack for hire, but please, no requests for iambic pentameter.)

Without all the clutter that can crowd an upscale room, all these little touches had the space to stand out more.

But the Anantara also has all the amenities any upscale trave­ler could hope for; a luxurious spa, two on-site restaurants (Thai and Italian), a classy cocktail lounge, as well as an infin­ity pool that affords sea vistas. The resort is nicely situated on Boh Phut, with the rustic Fisherman’s Village just a 10-minute stroll down the beach.

The pool, surrounded by Fiji fan palms, is another watershed of artistry. On the bottom are colorful mosaics of different sea creatures. The undulation of the waves makes it look like they’re swimming along right beneath you. Dotted with two little islands and monkey statues spouting water, the pool has a bar at one end, so you can swim right over for a cocktail or fruit shake, while the other end looks over the beach and ocean. At night they set up tables on the beach for seafood barbecues.

The big  stone archway  leading  into  the  spa gives onto a  wooden  walkway  surrounded  by  water  lilies. Once again,  it  was  the  little  details  that  impressed. In the changing rooms the metal taps for the sink, flled with glass stones, were shaped like silver lotus blossoms. Beside the sink was a tiny gong they told me to bang when I was  ready, briefy  allowing me  to  live out my Chow Yun-Fat/Chinese  emperor  fantasy.  Come  hither  yon
sultry, Oriental handmaidens. (I promise to modernize the poetry on the job, Bodo.)

For  any of you guys who haven’t been  converted  into true  metrosexuals  yet,  here’s  a  sentence  of  advice: Choose your spa-going underwear carefully. I made the mistake of forgoing my usual Tai silk boxers for a pair of shorts emblazoned with the flaming skull logo of the recent Nicholas Cage vehicle Ghost Rider – a garment more beftting a forklift operator than an emperor – and boy did I feel infantile. However, the amiable and attentive spa ladies were kind enough not to have a fit of the giggles when they saw my ludicrous boxers.

The spa’s signature treatment is the three-hour “Culture of Anantara.” It begins with a four-handed massage that really rubbed me the right way. It’s particularly pleasurable when  one  therapist  is massaging  your  feet while the other works on the nape of your neck, resulting in a  full-bodied  treatment  that  includes  elements  of five different massage styles: Tai, Shiatsu, Lomi Lomi, Balinese and Swedish. For  shining up  lackluster muscles and giving the gleam of life to dull skin, the masseuses have  the  Midas  touch. This  treatment also  includes some skin-polishing clay and sea salt scrubs, along with a mud steam bath.

The  spa  has  six magnificent  suites.  Each  is  equipped with floor-to-ceiling windows,  looking out on  lagoons and gardens,  lush with  foliage. But  there are plenty of other treatments to choose from, like the “Elemis Aroma Stone Terapy Massage,” and  even manicures and pedicures and an assortment of elemis facials.

No  less  impressive are the on-site restaurants: the Full Moon which seems to float above the pool and sea, and the  High  Tide,  overlooking  the  lavishly  landscaped grounds  designed  by  the  award-winning Bill Bensley. At  the  latter  restaurant,  I would vouch  for  the Caesar salad, prepared right by the table, and a gourmet pizza, which is big enough to feed a couple, or a single Sumo wrestler.

Another ace in the Anantara’s deck is their “Wine Guru,” Jirachai Sethisak­ko, who writes a blog of the same name on the resort’s website. Jirachai, who speaks both English and French with wit and élan, is a true connoisseur of the grape. His recommendations for a white wine with the salad and an Ital­ian red with the pizza were impeccable. Unfortunately, the wines proved to be so intoxicating that I still can’t decode the hieroglyphics I scrawled about their names. (Don’t worry, Bodo, I’m working on my short-hand now).

It’s also worth noting that the restaurant is one of only eight bars and eateries in all of Thailand that has been awarded a certificate by the well-respected Wine Spectator magazine for its extensive list of 150 wines.

Meetings, weddings, daytrips, sunset cocktail cruises, or even deluxe meals served on your terrace, the grounds, or even up on the roof, are all on the menu at this boutique resort that, besides some 80 Deluxe Rooms, also boasts 18 Suites and six Royal Suites, if you’re really in a Chow Yun-Fat kind of mood.

When I returned to my room for the final night’s sleep, I found another little surprise waiting for me. Next to the elephant sitting on the bed that had been fashioned out of towels and rose petals was an actual leaf. Written on it with a white crayon was: “Tomorrow’s Weather. Sunshine.”

The poet-in-residence had struck again! And topped me once more with his or her minimalism whilst I was gushing purple prose in praise of Italian vineyards.

A member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World Group, which also in­cludes close cousins in Hua Hin and Chiang Rai, the Anantara Resort and Spa proves that sometimes smaller is better – and a whole lot more hospita­ble – even when you’re the hack with the Ghost Rider shorts.

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

The Angels Are In The Details

A three-hour drive north from Kuala Lumpur and high in the Cameron High­
lands awaits a haven of tranquility and a magnificent landscape. Once a retreat for the Europeans to escape the oppressive heat of the lowlands and now attracting nationalities from across the globe, it still has all the charm and setting reminiscent of an English village.

Cameron Highlands was named after William Cameron, a British surveyor who stumbled across the plateau in 1885 during a mapping expedition. Failing to mark his discovery on the map, the location of the plateau was fi­
nally confirmed by subsequent expeditions. Having been there myself, I can understand why William wanted to keep this wonderful place a secret!
Due to the acidic and rich mineral content of the soil, the region is abundant with tea plantations and strawberry fields. Cameron Highlands is also a leading producer of flowers in Malaysia; be prepared for a brilliant explosion of flowers you won’t see flourishing elsewhere else in Malay­sia! Drive up as high as 1,500 meters above sea level to the peaks of the main range of Peninsular Malaysia and enjoy temperatures as low as 18°C.

Flushed and ready to brew
Nicknamed ‘Malaysia’s Green Bowl’, the Highlands possess all the right attributes of prime cropland – moderate tem­peratures, high altitude, abundant rainfall, long hours of sunshine and well-drained soil.

BOH Tea Plantation is a must-visit place when you are in Cameron Highlands; Scenic, tranquil, cool fresh air, edu­cating and a refreshing brew to quench the thirst. The road journey to the BOH Tea Plantation is an adventure in itself with its narrow and winding road.

Narrow roads aside, the view of green rolling hills with neat rows of tea plantations is simply breathtaking. The Sg Palas ‘ummph!’ BOH TEA Plantation offers free, guided factory tours of how the tea leaf is processed, topped off with a tipple of your favorite brew in the recently ex­panded Tea Rooms. The actual tea factory is still left intact in its old condition – white painted brick walls with red window panes. Inside, while most of the machines have been modernized to cater for the increasing demand, you can subtly feel the old world’s era of tea making. It is as though you were being transported to the day when the scent of freshly picked tea-leaves from their first and second flushes – tea terminology for harvest – were interspersed with the bitter smell of the fermented ones.

Last year Boh opened a tea centre at the plantation with a tea cafe to mesmerize even the most buzzing bee! Exquisitely named tea blends such as Gunung Chantik, Palas Supreme and Bukit Cheeding are featured on the menu, along with Boh alternative range such as Jasmine Green Tea, Chamomile, Peppermint, Lemon Myrtle, Passionfruit Orange, Stawberry Raspberry as well as the Seri Songket flavored teas like Vanilla, Passion Fruit, Clove & Cardamom, Cinnamon, Earl Grey with Tangerine, Lemon with Mandarin, Lychee with Rose, Lime & Ginger and Mango. The choices are plentiful and offer something for everyone.

Narrative posters are arranged along the pathway to tell the history of Boh Tea Company and the natural environment of Cameron Highlands. There is also a video room where visitors can view short documentaries about tea processing and the heritage behind it. Tea Inside-Out

As I discovered on my visit, there is more to the tea bush than meets the eye or simply quenches the thirst. When it was suggested I gave my body a celestial spa seasoning by bathing in the brew, I was surprised and curious to say the least.

My research after visiting the region unveiled studies published in leading medical journals de­claring that tea is a potential heart tonic, cancer blocker, fat buster, virus fighter and cholesterol detoxifier; it also helps to stimulate the immune system and soothes arthritis. Not bad for a lowly shrub.

If all those are what a cuppa can do for you on the inside, then just image what it might do for you if you bathed in it. The antioxidants, hydrating properties, caffeine and fluoride found in tea mean that you need never feel guilty about reaching for the teapot and in The Spa Village at Cameron Highlands Resort, they offer it in tubs for you to soak in.

The Spa Village has fully embraced the natural resources of its immediate environment and taken it a step further to offer guests health benefits from the surroundings, taking visitors beyond their expecta­tions with the spa menu choices.

Signature Spa Treatments
Fresh Strawberry Escapade begins with a Strawberry Tea Bath, a beautiful sensual aqua experience with a difference. While relaxing music via earphones soothes frayed nerves, tea bags resting on the eyes will ease away tension and stress, leaving the body rehydrated and the mind rejuvenated. Following this is the refreshing body buff made of fresh strawberries, yoghurt and crushed oatmeal. The combination con­tains natural alpha-hydroxy acids that help soften and refine skin texture. Finally, the treatment rounds off with a scented massage treat to enhance sensations of pleasure and wellness to deeply heal the mind and body, soothing the soul as it does.

The Semai are the indigenous people of the State of Pahang where Cameron High­lands is located. In their culture, every forest product has a specific use. This cor­pus of knowledge accumulated though generations are not recorded, but within the minds of the elders who have mastered the skill through practice. It appears there is no ailment that cannot be cured using plants and their parts gathered from the jungle. Benefiting from this knowledge, The Spa Village has created Jungle Secrets of Anti-Ageing for Her and the Tok Batin Mystical Tradition for Him. Both provide three hours of bathing, massage, wraps and scrubs treatments incorporating these indigenous practices. These healing therapies are offered in the tranquil environment of one of the six treatment rooms here. Other than the six treatment rooms, there are eight tea bath tubs, two outdoor cabanas and a fully-equipped gymnasium.

The Cameron Highlands Resort also organizes guided day-treks into the jungle that are very informative and ensure you wont be wandering the hills the wrong way leaving you with three days between villages! This is where Jim Thompson mysteri­ously disappeared and was never found despite sending out the SAS troops. Off the tarmac road the paths require good walking shoes and you get a first hand oppor­tunity to learn about the fruits of the jungle and medicinal properties of plants. For the less adventurous who seek a stroll and exercise, the 18-hole golf course is just across the road.

For more information visit
www.cameronhighlandsresort.com, www.boh.com.my

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Just The Tipple!

History has lent a turbulent ride to this proud city. After 73 years seething under French occupation along came the Japanese to grasp a steely grip on the city from 1940 to 1945. Upon their fall Ho Chi Minh declared independence from Hanoi’s Ba Hinh Square. But again the breath of freedom was short lived and for the following eight years Hanoi struggled
with the French, finally casting them aside to be met with the prospect of managing a country split in two along ideological lines.

And in 1964 along came Uncle Sam, fortifying the south in a war that would last over ten years, bringing the city, and the country to its knees. When the Americans finally flew home Hanoi was a crippled victor; like a starving soldier emerging from a war zone with no food on the table. The following twenty years of international sanctions would leave the city in a hollow of depression, reliant upon Russian food and with little outside contact.

The country’s great liberator, Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, long before the end
e war but his memory lives on and even today his legacy can be seen
ughout the city. In the Old Quarter where modern, international restau­
ts and fashion stores attest to the emergence of a cosmopolitan capital his
ge is ubiquitous. In fashion stores you’ll find his portrait splashed across
hirts, in side street cafes he’ll be looking down at you from an old glass
e, in the city’s numerous art galleries his portrait remains a favorite sub-
for today’s artists and on every bank note he’s still there. Communism
y finally buckle and break under the capitalist surge that’s finally breath­ing life into this city but the burning legacy of Ho Chi Minh, Uncle of the People will take a lot longer to fade.

No one is waiting for things to happen in Hanoi. Stop for a moment and street hawkers will swarm around selling everything from banana’s to flesh colored Christ’s that glow in the dark. Hanoi gives cities like Singapore and Bangkok the appearance of sleeping giants. Communism may hold the reigns of power in Vietnam, but it’s capitalism that feeds this city and sets the pace. This may seem like a marriage made in hell, but when I ask the owner of my guest house what he thinks of the idea of democracy in Vietnam, he laughs and replies, half jokingly “You live in Bangkok. Look at the mess democracy has left you with. We’ll have democracy one day, but not yet, people are too busy making money and taking care of their families.”

Hanoi is essentially a city with strong roots in culture and traditions. The people are proud of their music, art and literature. A stroll through the narrow streets of the Old Quarter will reveal a vibrant art scene. Galleries and craft shops are as common as 7-11’s and massage parlors in Bangkok. Some of the streets open up, while others narrow into a warren of alleyways where the occasional scent of freshly baked croissants could fool anyone into believing they’re following a picture book tour through the backstreets of Paris. Turning a corner can be like spinning the globe as you find yourself at the entrance of a Chinese temple dating back to the 15th century, and beside that an internet café packed with school kids playing computer games, forging ahead, for better or worse into the 21st century.

‘The Rapid Leap Forward’ that Hanoi has achieved in economic terms has naturally fil­tered down to the lifestyle of young people in this very traditional city, often creating a fractious relationship with the older population. When the late afternoon sun casts shadows across the tree lined streets of Hanoi, the people brace themselves for another night of moonlit activ­ity. Neon-lit bars serving fashionable drinks and playing an eclectic mix of modern tunes are springing up in growing numbers. Hidden away in the backstreets of the Old Quarter, some are surreptitiously finding ways to defy the orders of the police (known mockingly as ‘the fun police’) who order that all bars close by midnight on weekdays and 1am at the week­end. However, to make the most of a night out in Hanoi, it’s best to encom­pass all aspects of this ancient city whose roots trace back to the Neolithic period, and whose legends speak proudly of victory and survival.

Night Tour

Hanoi is a night city with a strong fusion of European styles reflected in its cuisine, music and architecture. One fine example of French fusion is the Hoa Sua restaurant where a string quartet plays Mozart and Bach in a courtyard dwarfed by a spiraling staircase. Not only will you get great value for money here, you should also feel no guilt while stuffing yourself with frogs legs and Cognac.  Hoa Sua is a successful goodwill project that takes in and trains a steady stream of disadvantaged kids for a culinary career. Like Oliver Twist of old, they’ve been rescued from the streets so enjoy another cognac, listen to the music and steady yourself for the next stage of the night
tour.

Traditionally, Vietnam is known for its strange food. For those seeking a ‘walk on the wild side’ of Vietnamese cuisine, it’s possible to test your gut control with beaten dog meat, duck embryo, field mice, buffalo penis and crickets. For guys who feel the need to prove their masculinity, king cobra could be the ideal tonic. Difficult to find but notorious in their existence are ‘snake restaurants’. For around US$30 per person they’ll kill a venomous snake before your eyes, cut out its still beating heart, feed it to you with a cup of the serpent’s blood and tell you it increases your potency.

I choose to save this particular treat for a future date and instead wave down a taxi to take me to a bar on the edge of the Old Quarter called Highway4.

Highway4 is a dimly lit drinking den swimming in the mystical, medicinal and intoxicating qualities of Vietnamese rice liquor, known to locals as Zio. Zio is the liquor that was drunk by the emperors of Vietnam and many of the bar’s 25 different recipes come served with anecdotes relating to ancient Vietnamese rulers. Enter with caution as your first sight will be a row of huge glass containers filled with various shades of pale amber liquid and crammed with herbs and plants that bring to mind an episode from The Triffids. There’s one glass container voluminous enough to encapsulate a child within which is coiled a snake large enough to consume an adult.

Try not to catch the eyes of the cobra as you walk past and up a narrow, rick­ety staircase to the rooftop terrace where the serious business of drinking begins. Curiosity killed the cat but not before it got drunk so I settle down, cross-legged, at a twelve-inch high bamboo table and follow my fingertip down the drinks list.

Among the several blends there are a couple that catch my eye: Ong Den; made from the rare black bee, recommended for its earthy honey taste and Ran Ngu Xa; blended with venomous snake, powerful and sprightly as it coils a passage around your taste buds.

For those seeking an aphrodisiac, there’s Minh Mang, named after a Viet­namese emperor who ruled from 1820 to 1840. Notorious for his uncount­able concubines, legend has it he fathered around 300 children. Having died before the age of 40, the mind boggles at this guy’s work rate. I soon find the answer in the menu; Nhat Da Ngu Giao, the most potent of rice whiskies. Drink enough of this concoction and the claim is you’ll be producing four children per night. Marvelous – if you’re not suffering from brewers droop.

After a night in Highway4 you may find yourself struggling to walk let alone procreate. But if for you the night is still young, there’s the newly opened Roots drinking den that’ll thrash out quality music into the early hours. This is a favorite of ex-pats and locals alike. The ambience is friendly, open and rough edged. Canvasses painted in a style to please no one but those with an eye for ‘the creative’ hang from the walls, while the music of The Prodigy and Arctic Monkeys assures a clientele who understand music.

By the time I leave Roots the stars are fading and it won’t be long before the sun once again wakes up the city. But for now it’s silent, the only disturbance coming from an elderly man remonstrating with his son for returning home late and drunk.

Sweet dreams, Hanoi.

Published by Traversing The Orient Magazine. You want to make an online travel business? Please go to www.web.com.

Postcard From Hanoi