The Flight of Bats

I'm sitting on a wall in front of a Cambodian graveyard. The graves are mounds covered sparingly with coloured paper streamers. A little girl comes and sits next to me, which makes me nervous as children in close proximity usually results in a request for money.

It's nearly sunset, the clouds are closing in. The little girl chats to me about where she lives. She sings songs to me and stops every ten minutes to say 'you're really beautiful...' I ask her if she likes animals.

"Yes. I like animals.'
"Do you like the bats?"

She nods her head and we both look towards the jagged gash in the mountainside. We can hear thousands of them chirping inside waiting to burst out into the sky.

I keep thinking that it will be like an enormous cannon ball, and the bats will explode into the sky as one evil-looking shape- but in fact they emerge slowly- just a few at first and then a steady stream emerges, getting thicker and thicker as though a dam has been released.

My driver shuffles up and tells me there's another place we can see the bats from. I say my goodbyes to my little friend (who presents me with an origami pigeon as a gift) and then zoom off to a nearby field.

From here it's more dramatic- I can see the black miasma snaking into the distance over the rice paddy - off to do its evil bidding.

I stand there for a long time until the driver starts looking awkwardly at the road as the night creeps slowly in.

Beautiful Decay

After my tuk tuk tour around Angkor, I decided to bike there the next day.

The temple complex is only 8km out of Siem Reap and you can hire a bike fore $1. It seems like a great idea until the 38degree heat starts to pick up and you realise that there's next to no shade. No matter; I'm armed with 5 litres of water and some suncream so thick it's like smearing mayonnaise onto your skin.

The temple I really want to see is Ta Prohm, known informally as the 'Tomb-raider" temple after the movie that was shot there. It's a ruin choked by enourmous mangrove trees, the roots strangling the efforts of man as though the forest got annoyed at the intrusion and decided to eat it.

As I walk up the entranceway I get excited as I see my first mangrove; it's about 25 metres high and stuck in the middle of the flagstone courtyard, feeling it's spindly roots between the gaps in the stones. I get momentarily mobbed by tiny Khmer children trying to sell me magnets and postcards for a dollar. There's some restoration work going on in the centre of the complex, the scaffolding shielded by bright green nets. This work is being partly funded by the Indian government.

As with many places on the Asia tourist trail, my experience at the temples of Angkor is blighted by Chinese tourists. At the daily alms-giving to the monks in Luang Prubang, busloads of them turned up to shamelessly crowd round and photograph the monks from two feet away, reducing this traditional ceremony to a fairground spectacle.

In Ta Prohm temple they crowd around any possible photo-spot, flashing V signs and silly poses in complete  ignorance of anyone trying to view the temples, trees, or waiting to grab a photo themselves. Every corner I turn there is a great horde of them crowding a particular spot; I end up having to take a roundabout route to dodge them and escape. There's no reverence in their visit or respect to their actions. It's all just a big hilarious spectacle to be photographed.

I cycle irritably to the next sight on my hitlist- Bayon. This turns out to be my favourite of the Angkor temples, and it's the only one where I am really impressed with my surroundings. Bayon is a nice mix of ruined and complete; enourmous grey faces smile enigmatically from the towers and resident bats chirp from the spires. Climbing the numerous stairs to reach the main part of the complex gives it an air of drama, and I'm happy to see some working Buddhist shrines wafting sandalwood incense from some of the corners.

Angkor Wat is famous for its completeness (despite some very obvious dodgy cement-work), and you can fully appreciate this after seeing the other ruined temples. However in terms of raw beauty, what it is missing is that stamp of nature; the green tinges of moss, the spindly decoration of trees and the pockets of intruding light that truly highlight the beauty of stone. Also the desertedness that can return the sense of reverance and dignity to what is viewed by some as merely a photo-op.

Sunrise at Angkor

I arrive at Angkor Wat at five in the morning in blackness, amongst a convoy of lighted tuk-tuks. 

''Okay. We here. I wait for you outside when you finish.''

I wave my driver goodbye and walk along the uneven flagstone causeway. I can just make out the pointy towers of Asia's centrepiece looming in the darkness ahead.

I follow a steady line of tourists through the gatehouse; thankfully some of them are carrying torches to light the oppressive passageways. There is a real adventure element to following the dim lights through the dark caverns of ancient stone construction. Carvings of dancing "Apsara" grin dimly from the walls as we tread carefully along ancient stones.

The morning light is creeping in as I reach the other side of the gatehouse. I can see the three iconic Angkor columns against a background of murky blue. Tourists crowd the lawn on the left side of the causeway, by one of the great square ponds. I suspect this is the best place to grab that much coveted perfect photo. 

As the sun rises I am once again confronted with the classic 'world monument anti-climax' that hit me at Machu Picchu. I think the reason is this: films spread the lie that every sunrise involves a spectacular lion king style orb of yellow rising majestically against a background of shocking red. Your spectacular world monument of choice will be silhouetted against this masterpiece of nature and you will live smug and satisfied that you have experienced something truely unique and amazing that you will never forget.

At Angkor Wat, the sky makes a slow transition from murky blue to shocking pink. While this is not on a par with the lion king, the temple silhouetted against this pink results in a beautiful photograph, and I admit that the sky was ethereally beautiful.

I wait eagerly for enough light to filter through to explore the inner recesses of the temple. For me it's much more about nerdy exploration than magical experience, and I can tell these temples will not disappoint.

Welcome to Cambodia

Rubbish. Everywhere. Plastic bags, bottles, paper plates, straws; all strewn at the side of the road for miles and miles and miles. This is the first thing I notice about Cambodia.

As the bus lurches out of the immigration checkpoint I can see the ruins of half-finished casinos; a border frontier development project that never took off. The bus pulls into a service station for a lunch stop. Immediately, young children and old women crowd the doorway with begging bowls (the same plastic bowls used to flush simple squat toilets). There's obviously an agreement that these people cannot enter under the tarpaulin roof of the canteen; as we sit down to eat they linger at the threshold watching for movement.

As the bus continues to Phnom Penh I watch long stretches of arid fields dotted with a few skinny cows, lakes clogged with weed-like lilies. The houses are on stilts - I am guessing that this flat land is prone to wet-season flooding.

The social disparity in Cambodia is obvious; there's something very suspicious about the Cambodian People's Party, whose sign is always the accompaniment to a gloriously lavish out-of-place mansion.

The bus parks up onto a ferry to take us across a lake to the capital. I get a good look at the people surrounding the gaps between the cars. In Cambodia they don't wear pointy hats like the Vietnamese; the national hat here is a wide-brimmed straw planter's hat. I can see a lady in one of these hats carrying a large platter of deep-fried beetles. A young man points at a few and she cheerfully scoops a heap of them into a plastic bag.

The other main thing that you notice is the smiling. The people here, even the begging children, are the most smiley people I've met so far in Asia.

Understanding Anger

I have no photographs from the war remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City.

I met Mif in the shade of the foyer, the backs of my knees dripping from 36 degree heat. I had taken a wrong turn out of one of Saigon's many leafy parks and walked the scenic route through blistering concrete to the museum. The enourmous US helicopters and tanks displayed in the courtyard provide a dramatic entrance to a museum which actually largely consists of photographs.
 
Of course, with the former name of the museum being 'The Museum of American War Crimes" you expect that you may have to take the exhibitions with a pinch of salt,  however the museum steers away from propagandaist explanations, preferring instead to use photographic evidence.

In the first gallery that Mif and I enter, the first image I am confronted with shows a ditch full of murdered villagers, mostly women and elderly people, their bodies contorted and bloody. Then an image of two little boys shot dead in a road, the eldest no more than 8 and shielding the younger. Then a large stone well displayed in one corner. The plate reads that a villager's family were discovered hiding in it, shot, and disembowelled. A chilling photograph shows a GI setting fire to the roof of a wooden house. Three GIs grin next to pictures of dead Vietnamese on the floor. Mif has to walk out to catch her breath.

As we slowly shuffle through the galleries, another displaying the evidence of debilitating birth defects as a result of contamination with agent orange, I begin to understand some of the anger held up in this country.

As evidenced by the photographs, and understood by the Vietnamese, the country's landscape was completely burned, contaminated and permanently scarred by the use of illeagal chemical warfare. It seems that the US used the country as a testing ground for a new generation of vile chemical weapons, the liability for which it has not accepted.

A gallery on the second floor entitled 'Requiem' is relieving in that it does not continuously point the finger of blame. Its focus is on photojournalists, non-combatants, who documented the war on both sides. Many of them died in the field. The image that haunts me here is that of Dickey Chapelle (American photojournalist) being given the last rites as she lies dying on the ground. Larry Burrows (who himself later died in a helicopter crash) documents an American GI crying after a tour in the storeroom. . Again there are murdered civilians, terrified civilians. A lady wading through a river carrying a British stamped supply crate reminds me that my own country is not exempt from the conflict.

After a couple of hours we leave the museum emotionally drained, and agree that a stiff drink is required. Seeing this museum makes a lot of Vietnam make sense. The older generation have worked incredibly hard to get their country where it is. The cosmopolitan, friendly and affluent city of Saigon does not seem like a place that has horrific suffering lurking in its living memory. The North seemed unfriendly to me, but if people there are still pissed off at the rest of the world, I totally get it.

Our tourist restaurants (that Vietnamese can't afford to eat in) are irritating. Our insistence on people speaking our language is irritating. Our tourist-only beach resorts and binge drinking are irritating. Tourists it seems, never step lightly on the world; some people in Vietnam would rather that foreigners don't stick their noses into their business.

On the way back to my hostel I am approached by some university students in the park. They say that they are practising English and I indulge them for a while. They are apparently studying tourism. After chatting about Vietnam and England for a while, I say my goodbyes and they present me with a small woven scarf as a gift. It's my final image of Saigon.