I'm now in Dalat, a quiet mountain town. Yesterday in Mui Ne, I got a windsurfing lesson. I thought it would be another weird thing to do. I don't know anything about windsurfing. The only association I have with it is our French teacher in school telling us we should say we enjoy windsurfing in our exam to show off that we knew the French word for windsurfing. "Moi, j'adore la planche a voile. C'est chouette!" she would hiss. Of course this was utter nonsense to a class of suburban teenagers from Ballincollig, all of whom I suspect had never even seen a windsurfing board in their lives let alone go on weekend excursions to the south of France to ride the wind or whatever it is windsurfers do. In any case I can confirm that the activity was an overrated disappointment and that windsurfing actually sucks. "Moi, je n'aime pas la planche a voile." I say this not because I happen to suck at it (which of course I do) but simply because there's far too much physical exertion involved. Trying to balance on the board is the easiest part. Then you have to remain on the board while you lift the whole mast and sail out of the water and point it at the wind and then remain standing while the wind tries to blow the sail back into the water. Unlike regular surfing which involves several minutes of swimming in return for several seconds of exhilaration, windsurfing involves about an hour of pulling and heaving in the hot sun in return for a disappointing "that's it?" kind of drifting. Most of that time is actually spent on the board rather than in the water which means, in the space of one hour, my beautiful milky complexion had turned an alarming burning red. This means that I am unable to wear a backpack and today I carried it in my arms rather than subject my tender shoulders to the agony of chaffing straps. The experience of windsurfing was not helped by the instructor who was an uncouth, highly-strung eastern European man of indeterminate nationality with a well shaved head and a poorly shaven face, from whom a string of hilarious obscenities were emitted in broken English at anyone who happened to be in his vicinity. He couldn't understand why I kept falling in the water and would scream unhelful, unintelligible and ultimately distracting commands at me constantly, most of which I wisely ignored, much to his frustration. Bottom line - don't bother windsurfing.

Far more enticing is the location in which I am currently perched, namely Dalat, a town with such a high elevation that my ears popped several times before I got here. It's so high that the temperature actually feels like August in Ireland and is far more comfortable. Air conditioning is unnecessary and I can finally wear long pants and a long-sleeved shirt again! I've even seen some children wearing coats! Coats! The shady cocnut trees have been replaced by even shadier pines and I am astounded once again by the veritable cornucopia of landscapes that is Vietnam. (I've been waiting to use veritable cornucopia all summer.) The roads to get here were very steep and windy and narrow and the bus had to labour all the way. The buses here like to drive in the middle of the road even when it's a perfectly wide road and sometimes they even like to drive on the left just for kicks. They also like to hoot arrogantly at any traffic brazen enough to actually want to travel in the opposite direction. I am so sick of the hooting here. Drivers of all vehicles hoot their horns constantly and for no reason whatsoever. It's not like their horns make a pleasant noise although many of them play a merry little tune which is even more annoying. This habit makes sleeping on buses rather difficult and as soon as I get to the next city I am switching to trains. I was very glad to finally arrive in Dalat after six gruelling hours. The alpine environment is favourably reminiscent of beautiful Cullowhee in North Carolina only cooler and with a resort town smack bang in the middle of all the forests and mountains. As I write this in my hotel lobby (which has TV in the bedrooms with English channels and a hot shower for only $6 a night!) the rain fizzes outside and the receptionist sings a little song to herself. She has quite a nice voice. One downside to Dalat is that it is apparently a bit of a honeymoon destination and full of couples and could be quite a sickening place to be single. With local tourist attractions bearing nostalgic names such as "The Lake of Sighs" and "The Valley of Love" it remains to be seen whether I will be regurgitating my breakfast tomorrow when I go out to explore the countryside. A friendly waitress with rather poor English in Mui Ne who was attempting to make small talk with metried to warn me about this and asked if I was going with my girlfriend. I, thinking she was just flirting, explained jocularly that I had left that position vacant as having a girlfriend in tow made picking up pretty Vietnamese girls intolerably inconvenient. Naturally she didn't understand what I said which was just as well because she was merely expressing surprise that someone would go to a place like Dalat on their own and trying to prepare me for the kitch to come. I haven't encountered any such kitch thus far, not having actually explored the town yet but tomorrow we'll see whether it's really as soppy as she made out. In the meantime, here are two more photos for ye: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gctrionaem/sets/72157601549952373

I'm in Mui Ne! I arrived here at 1AM last night and stumbled into the hotel that was directly in front of me. I promptly plonked myself down on the bed and stayed there for the next nine hours. The hotel was right on the beach so I was gently lulled to sleep by the slow snoring of the South China Sea. When I woke up this morning I was pleasantly surprised by where I was. This was a damn fine hotel for $6. There was a cool refreshing breeze blowing in off the sea. The water was lovely and warm and the coconut trees provided shade if needed. I went for a walk down the street and didn't take two steps before I was propositioned by a moped driver. More of them kept pulling up and asking me to ride with them. They didn't seem to understand the word 'no' in any language. They actually started queueing up to harass me. What was the guy at the back of the queue thinking as I was rejecting all the others? That I was just playing hard to get? That I did in fact want a moped ride but was just waiting for the right one to come along? I went from saying 'no thank you' to nearly strangling them. I couldn't walk down the street! Was it really so unreasonable to want to go for a walk? I reluctantly returned to the hotel and resigned myself to spending the rest of the morning on a deck chair under a straw parasol on the private beach where I wouldn't see a single Vietnamese person unless they were serving me ice cold drinks. I think this is what it must feel like to be a rich person who goes on holiday and cocoons himself in luxury and completely cuts himself off from the reality of the country he has paid lots of money to visit. This is not my idea of a holiday but when you're constantly on the move for so long, you need to take a day or two here and there to just relax with a book...I couldn't do it. In the afternoon I got a sand dune tour in a jeep. I saw so many strange landscapes I had never seen before. We started with a barefoot stroll down a warm shallow stream which was fringed by unusual rock formations and sand dunes with little rivulets flowing down into the stream, mixing up sands of different colours into a snakeskin pattern on the soft riverbed. We were accompanied by a bunch of little children who were our unwanted 'tour guides' who we knew would want money when we finished. Technically it wasn't really begging since they had to learn some rudimentary English in order to make small talk with us so there was some educational value for them in what they were doing. We passed a shack in the middle of nowhere with chickens running around it and crap Vietnamese pop music blasting out of it. There was an old guy dancing around with a microphone in there singing some atrocious karaoke.

After that we drove further inland and the landscape changed dramatically. It looked more like the middle east than Vietnam. It was just sandy scrub with a few free range goats wandering around aimlessly. We pulled in at a little grove of pine trees in the middle of the desert. There were kids tearing around on scrawny little ponies and trying to rent sheets of plastic with ropes attached to use as sand sleds. We got a few and started sliding down the huge dunes. The sand got everywhere. The desert is fun for a while but I would not like to live here. Sand blowing all over the place gets old fast. Then we visited yet another strange landscape - a big red mountain full of canyons that we clambered through. I felt like I was on Tatoonie (a fictional desert planet from Star Wars) with the strange rock formations rearing up on either side. I kept expecting Tuskan Raiders to jump out and shoot me. The view of the bay from the top of the mountain was spectacular. At dusk we went to visit the fishing village and saw all the brightly coloured boats bobbing in the bay with little lights. In conclusion, I'm quite pleased and unsurprised with myself for squeezing every last drop of activity out of another day. I am quite happy to have seen so many strange and beautiful landscapes in one day. Naturally I took lots of photos and due to aforementioned technical difficulties, I am uploading them here for the time being: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gctrionaem/sets/72157601549952373

I've returned to Saigon for one more day before I go to the little fishing village of Mui Ne. Below are some random observations on Vietnamese life.

Life here is so different to Cambodia and Laos, not quite as backward (from my perspective.) In Cambodia, marriages are often arranged and wives are always bought. The cheapest one you can get is about $500 but they're crap. If you want a good one you have to fork out at least $3000. Knowing them beforehand is not necessary. There is no courting ritual of any kind in Cambodia. Girls don't go out at night unless they're ''ladies of the night''. Vietnam seems much more western. Teenage couples drive to the local park on their mopeds, with the girl clinging amourously to the boy. Then hundreds of them just park their mopeds in the park and sit on them and talk and drink. At least they have some social outlets.

A strange effect of constant travel is that you acquire a much more accurate conception of space and the distance between places in the world but in exchange for this understanding, you completely lose all sense of time. Because I'm always on the move and everyday has so many new experiences packed into it (unlike an ordinary nine to five life) I have no idea how the time is passing. Things I did last week seem like a month ago because I've done so many other things since. I don't wear a watch here. If I really need to know the time I can turn on my phone. I never have any idea what day it is because it really doesn't matter what day it is. Life is one big long weekend. I have to make a point of checking the date now and again to keep track of my progress and travelling speed so I know whether I need to move faster or dilly dally some more. At the moment, I'm not sure. I've got a month and I think at this semi-leisurely pace I can probably cover Vietnam in about three weeks and the little corner of China I'm doing plus Hong Kong in the last week.

One strange slightly sinister thing about all the south east Asian countries I've been to so far is that all the hotel owners ask for your passport when you check in. Some of them insist on keeping it while you're staying. Others are content to photocopy it or take down all the details in it. The seem to be required to do this by law. They have official forms they have to fill in for every guest and presumably they're sent to the country's government so they can keep tabs on our movements. I suspect the purpose of this mechanism is twofold. Firstly, if I get in a fight and kill a guy or walk out of a hotel and forget to pay, they'll find me that night when I check into the next hotel. Secondly, if I should suddenly disappear and they've got the Irish embassy demanding answers, they know where I stayed the previous night so they can start the search from there and put out an APB to every hotel in the country for my passport number. Frankly I don't like it. It's very Big Brother, and I don't like being monitored like that.

Apart from that though, the Vietnamese really know how to treat us white folk - like royalty. They're really too humble. Everytime I'm brought a cup of tea and I ask for milk they look really worried because they think they have failed me as a waiter and they usually can't understand what's wrong. I very politely ask "Is there any chance of a small drop of milk for the tea when you get a chance?" and their brows furrow with anxiety and they stare blankly. After about five minutes I manage to explain what milk is and when they finally get it they they say "aaaaah" and apologise profusely for their lack of foresight in soft broken English. Then they scream something scary in Vietnamese at someone in the kitchen who quickly runs out with a little eggcup of milk. If I were to translate the gist of what they're saying I imagine it would be something like this: (To me:) "I'm terribly sorry sir. It is extremely embarassing to me personally that I have failed to serve you in exactly the manner that you desire. Please accept my humble apologies and allow me to rectify this unfortunate error immediately." (To cook:) "You idiot! He wanted milk! Why didn't you bring him milk? Run and fetch it immediately before I invite our honoured guest to publicly flog you." Of course this is only what I think they're saying. For all I know they could be shouting in Vietnamese at the cook: "Another bloody foreigner wants milk in his tea. What's wrong with these people. There's always something wrong with everything we serve them. Would you ever go and get this wanker his bloody milk before I punch him right in the face...and feel free to spit in it first!" I'd like to believe that the former dramatisation is the more accurate of the two though.

The internet is so slow in Vietnam that it is nearly impossible to upload photos so I probably won't be able to get them all up from now on. Finally, allow me to conclude by remarking upon how devilishly handsome the great Ho Chi Minh was in his day with that dashing little silvery goatee that's just made for stroking thoughtfully. I must say I'm quite jealous of it. I can only ever dream of a goatee like that...and I do. Every night I fall asleep with a 10,000 Dong note bearing his image on the pillow next to me, and I gaze longingly at it. Goodnight crazy world.

I'm currently on a three day tour of the Mekong Delta. This is the vast mouth of that magic Mekong river as it finally unburdens itself in Vietnam after a long journey through seven countries. The result is a series of islands at its mouth, on which little communities live by fishing and growing coconuts. They don't see as many tourists here as they do in Saigon so everywhere we've gone, we've been stared at and waved at and greeted enthusiastically by little children. Today some children, still in their school uniforms, ran after our boat right along the riverbank laughing and waving and shouting ecstatically with the mad excitement of youth.

Our tour began under the scorching sun of the city of Mytho which means 'beautiful woman' in a mixture of Chinese and Khmer. We travelled mostly by boat as this was the most practical way of getting around the Delta. We were taken to a series of islands named after symbolically significant animals, Dragon Island, Unicorn Island, Phoenix Island and Turtle Island. On one of these we visited a coconut toffee factory and got to eat some fresh off the stove. They made everything from coconuts here - even whiskey. There was also a whiskey fermented in snake - the snake was still inside the bottle and some of the bigger bottles also had scorpions in it. Then we went for an indescribably relaxing, beautiful and leisurely cycle around the island's narrow paths. The sun shone mercilessly but we were cool underneath the shades of the tall coconut trees that stood to attention on either side of the path. The islanders smiled and waved at us as we passed. The stereotype of the Chinaman with the conical hat is very accurate here (except that the wearer is Vietnamese here rather than Chinese). All the women wear them to prevent them from getting tanned which is a sign of being rather common and ugly, while at home, transluscent Irish women burn themselves trying to look brown! Women! They always want what they can't have! Back on the boat, we passed floating markets, women washing clothes in the filthy water, children swimming in the filthy water, women rowing boats with eyes painted on the bow, and little rickety footbridges made of thick bamboo poles. As dusk beckoned, four of us were picked up by a local farmer who was going to put us up for the night at his house. We puttered along in his little boat as night fell like ink into water. A fingernail moon hung in the sky, staining it a smoky blue. Bats darted to and fro chasing after beautiful fireflies and the unkempt coiffs of tall palms were black shilouettes against the navy sky. Little lamps hung above the creek, casting glittering reflections onto the water below, and hundreds of mosquitoes whirled mindlessly around them in a mad kamikaze dervish. As the environment became increasingly remote, we became increasingly worried about the kind of place we would be staying in. We needn't have been because it was the most enjoyable night I've had since I left home. The farmer's house was  big and spotless. We were greeted shyly by the whole family. There were three little girls, a little boy, a grandmother and three other young women whose respective roles were unclear. We were served tea and a big supper of rice, noodles, spring rolls and fish that had been caught from the river that afternoon. Then the children put on a little show for us singing dozens of Vietnamese songs complete with adorable actions. Then they insisted that we all reciprocate with songs from our countries. I knew I couldn't compete with that kind of cute but I did my best, delivering a passable rendition of "I'll tell me Ma when I go home." Then all the foreigners attempted to sing a few together. Our shoddy medley included Yellow Submarine, Hey Jude and of course Bohemian Rhapsody. The little girls even convinced their old Dad to come out and sing one for us although he resisted bravely. His charming (if utterly baffling) song was even accompanied by an endearingly awkward little shuffling dance. After talking late into the night, I slept soundly on a mattress in the living room as little geckos skittered across the ceiling and the children on the bed in the other corner made soothing little noises in their sleep.

We were up the next morning at six! We had to get to the floating market early before everything was gone! Like we were really going to buy vegetables anyway! Unlike the one in Bangkok, this floating market was far more authentic, with very few tourists. Selling vegetables off river barges really is a way of life out here. Then we visited a rice noodle factory on one of the islands, which rather worryingly, also doubled as a pig farm - a very noisy pig farm. We also visited a honey factory - which was really just a restaurant with some beehives. We had tea with honey in it and I got to play with the restaurant's python. Every restaurant should have one! It was unnervingly strong. I could feel it's powerful muscles clenching around me as it tried to wrap itself around my throat more times than I was comfortable with.

Today, we visited a crocodile farm where thousands of crocdiles were kept in tiny enclosures until they were big enough to be killed and skinned to make belts and handbags. Then we climbed a mountain and from the top we could see Cambodia in the distance.  At the base of the mountain was a Mahayana Buddhist monastery. Up to now all the Buddhist monasteries I've seen have been Theravada Buddhists. They're the ones who wear the orange robes. They are found in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. However, in Vietnam and China, Mahayana Buddhism is far more prevalent. These monks wear baggy grey Chinaman suits. They also have nuns. Unlike Theravada Buddhist monks, they can't quit the monkhood - once you commit, you're in for life. They also believe in far more deities than their Theravada counterparts. You learn something new everyday! Tomorrow night, it's back to Saigon. There are some photos from the Delta up here now: http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Vietnam/

Today I went out to see the underground Cu Chi tunnels where the Viet Cong used to hide out and pounce on unwary Americans. On the way we stopped at a Caodian church. Caodism is a weird fusion religion between Buddhism, Taoism and Confuscianism. They somehow manage to squeeze a bit of Christianity in there too. They believe in Moses and Jesus and many many more! They also worship a former Vietnamese poet laureate and French novelist, Victor Hugo. But how is this possible I hear you ask? I haven't a clue quite frankly. I went to mass there. Everyone is dressed in white robes except for the priests of whom there are about a dozen. They are dressed variously in Yellow, Blue and Red robes symbolising Buddhism, Taoism and Confuscianism respectively. It's just like mass at home - all the men are on the right side of the church and all the women are on the left. That's where the likeness finishes though. They have a little traditional Chinese orchestra and choir up in the balcony who play a very long song for about an hour while the congregation all face the alter on their knees and do little bows. After about half an hour of this baffling display, I left. The church itself was huge with no pews. Everyone sat on the floor. The ceiling was painted with clouds and stars and held up by big pillars with dragons coiled around them. It was definately the strangest church I've ever been to, including Methodist!

Then the bus took us to the tunnels where we had to crawl through the tiny little spaces like ants. I got out of there as quickly as I could. It's hard to believe that a whole army spent 5 months living down there with NO AIR CONDITIONING or light. We were shown a series of elaborate pit traps that the Viet Cong used to dig for American soldiers. They all had spikes at the bottom and some had little spikes that would spring into you on the way down. There was one booby trap in particular that was designed to stick spikes in a man's groin. That is cruel and unusual!

Tomorrow I am going on a three day tour of the Mekong Delta which should be pretty. Once again I am unable to show you today's photos due to more technical difficulties - doncha just love em! I'll get them up by the end of the week.

I am renting a small, dark but ultimately adequate room above a tiny silk shop for a few days. It has a hot shower which is a luxury. Accomodation prices are significantly higher here than in Cambodia or Laos. This place is $5 a night and it was the cheapest I could find. The last month is going to make a big dent in my budget. I had a really fun relaxing day today. I went out to the suburbs to a great waterpark. Saigon has loads of waterparks which seem like such an amazing luxury to me after Cambodia. The thought of having a waterpark in Cambodia is as ridiculous as a biker bar in Montenote [FEN: rich part of Cork]. This place was way better than anywhere we have in Ireland. The Vietnamese are just as friendly as I expected them to be. Several lads at the waterpark engaged me in lighthearted conversation, jumping at the opportunity to practice their English. Little children laughed at me making a fool of myself on the slides and shouted out their English phrases "What you name? Where you from?" I have seen little children tugging their parents trousers frantically and pointing at me with a mix of trepidation and awe. It's remarkable that they see so few white people. I vaguely remember a time when I was about their age and I reacted the same way when I saw a black person in Cork city but those days are long gone now. Most people I pass smile at me as they stare and say hello. One guy asked me during a conversation why I came to Vietnam. I didn't know how to answer. Why not? Better than staying at home? Just to check it out? Another asked what I thought of Vietnamese people. I replied that I had only been in Vietnam one day and wanted to reserve judgement for another few days. As an afterthought, to humour him, I added that their women were rather fetching though and he seemed happy enough with that answer.

I can't get over the traffic. I've never seen so many mopeds on the road at the same time, even in Bangkok. They tear around in sync like a shoal of glittering fish who all seem to know how to go the same way at exactly the same time, instinctively darting around indecisive coral pedestrians trying to cross the road. New York move over - Ho Chi Minh City is the city that never sleeps. Every roundabout is like a mini Times Square only busier. Tomorrow, I'm getting out of the city and going to visit the network of tunnels that the Viet Cong used to hide in during the American War (as they logically call it here - it's specific enough if you're Vietnamese.) There still seems to be a little bit of latent tension between North and South Vietnam. Their dialects are completely different which makes things a little difficult but there seems to be a light-hearted enough Corkman/Kerryman contempt between the two parts of the country. The last of the Cambodia photos are up at http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Cambodia/

and the first of the Vietnam photos are up at http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Vietnam/

I'm in Vietnam, in my old buddy's city - Ho Chi Minh City. I left Phnom Penh and Cambodia behind this morning. Before I left I visited an orphanage in the city out of guilt. I bought a big 50kg sack of rice for $30 to feed the children because I'm just such a good person (and also cos I fell guilty having so much money.) I'd never been to an orphanage before and I expected a high-walled gated institution. I was quite surprised when we pulled down a little lane into a ghetto full of tin shacks. Children were running around naked everywhere. I rode right into the orphanage on a motorcycle with my big sack of rice like I was some kind of knight in shining armour come to save all the children. After I saw how they were living, I rode out with my tail between my legs realising it was going to take a lot more than a bag of rice to save these kids. I was given the grand tour by a 15 year old girl named Sophia who was staying at the orphanage. She showed me a classroom which while frugal, had benches and desks and a blackboard. She showed me the 'hospital' which was a dark room with a bed without a mattress and nothing else. She showed me the girls' bedroom which was a tiny low-ceilinged room with lino on the floor. They all slept on the lino en masse. There were nearly 200 children there with over 20 voluntary Cambodian staff complimented by transient English-teaching backpackers. The children learned English, Khmer and Japanese during the day and in the evening they learned traditional Khmer dance or Thai Boxing. The most amazing part was that the place was run entirely on voluntary donations with no funding whatsoever from the government. It's a miracle the place even existed even in the condition that it was in.

The next morning I began my journey to Vietnam. I watched Cambodian life go by the window. We passed through a small market town full of rusted tin roofs. Every shack had a huge television aerial that was more like a mast, with several wires tying it steady to the ground. When you looked out across the roofs of the town it looked like some kind of futuristic electric spiderweb, receiving invisible signals like neverending ripples intersecting dizzily with each other. Some guy was driving a moped with a huge chest of drawers strapped to the back of it. He looked utterly ridiculous but nobody even blinked. If you saw that at home, heads would be turning and fingers would be pointing. The bus stopped at a river to wait for the ferry and I decided to step off the bus for a few minutes to get some air. Bad idea. I was engulfed by a gaggle of Cambodian girls in conical straw hats determined to sell me cans of Coke. I didn't want any Coke. I concluded that the air was fresher in the bus anyway and fought my way back to the bus. The harpies grasped at my clothes and nearly tore the shirt off my back in sheer desperation, with one little girl being dragged right onto the bus. Now I know what it feels like to be Elvis. I was nonplussed by her melodramatic display and conveyed this sentiment by delivering a scathing glare, complete with cynically raised eyebrow. Then I saw that one of them was selling barbequed snakes on sticks so I got off the bus again to buy one off her. I figured I had to try snake before I left Cambodia. There were even some little snake eggs attached to it. They tasted like chewy baked beans. The snake itself was as hard as a rock. It was all skin and bone with no meat at all on it. The tiny little bit of meat I managed to prise out of it tasted like liver...possibly because it may have been the snakes liver. Not a gourmet meal by any standards.

When we rolled into Saigon I was in awe of what I saw. This place is the bomb! It's the first real world city I've been to since Bangkok. It's bigger than my whole country! It's far more afluent than Cambodia, far more aesthetically pleasing and the architecture seems notably more Chinese. It's a city with a wildly racing, throbbing pulse that dares you to keep up. It's a huge neon anthill with infinite, dense, fast-flowing streams of moped-riding youths. Nevertheless, it has not lost it's old-world Asian charm as one might accuse other large Asian cities (I'm looking at you Singapore!) Surprisingly, Vietnam has a sizeable Catholic minority (nearly 10%) and I've seen lots of churches already. I saw one behemoth built in a blend of architectural style between a western church with steeple, and a multi-layered concrete pagoda lit up by blue neon. I think that really sums up Vietnam; it's a fusion between east and west, old and new and on first impressions at least, it seems to work just fine. I can't wait to get out there and explore it!

I'm in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. It's not a bad city. About Dublin sized but slightly dodgier than anywhere I've been before. There's a lot of poverty smacking you in the face everywhere you go and it's quite depressing but a bit uplifting to see how everyone gets on with their lives with those beautiful smiles on their faces despite it all. Today was a particularly depressing day for me for personal reasons - in fact it's the only day I've been noticably down since this whole voyage began which I suppose is in itself marvelous. This depression was compounded by what I saw today in Phnom Penh.

Today I visited the killing fields where thousands of Cambodians were brutally masacred by the Khmer Rouge less than 30 years ago. I say masacred because they weren't even executed. They wouldn't waste bullets on them. They beat them to death with blunt objects...women and children, by the thousand. They trained children to be prison guards so that they could condition them to be comfortable with brutality before they developed a conscience. I saw the holes where they were heaped on top of each other. I saw the tree where they were tied and beaten to death. They have constructed an ornamental glass and conrete tower with dozens of shelves reaching up into the sky. On the bottom shelf are heaps of clothes and children's sandals that were discovered on the bodies. On all the other shelves are thousands and thousands of human skulls, composing a huge bone monument that will never let us forget what happened. It is visited by Cambodians as well as tourists. I was walking slowly between the pits when I heard a little voice calling ''Hey Mista!'' There was a little girl pressed up against a chain link fence outside the field. I strolled over to her and she engaged me in pleasantries, asked to have her photo taken and then predictably asked for money. I was so disarmed by the whole upsetting experience that I just gave her some money. As I left the so-called ''genocidal centre'', two little boys ran up to the tuk-tuk and begged for money. The driver ignored them and started to pull away. They grabbed on to the back of the tuk-tuk and ran after it, keeping up for quite a while. They weren't doing it for fun either they were really desperate. You could see it on their faces. It broke my heart but I was afraid they would be pulled under the wheels and didn't want to encourage them to hang on any longer by reaching for my wallet. Eventually, one boy peeled off exhausted and shortly afterword the other boy gave up too. I didn't know how much more of this I could take. Then I went to the prison where they held Cambodians accused of being opposed to the communist revolution. It used to be a school but they closed it down and turned all the classroom into cells and torture chambers. Now it's a museum. I won't describe the torture that went on there as it is unspeakable. Suffice to say that I was stunned that humans could be capable of such cruelty - and to their own countrymen - not even people they hate. What affected me most of all about it was that it happened so recently - less than thirty years ago. Anyone over thirty was there and most people under thirty have parents who were there. Most Khmer Rouge soldiers were just ordinary people who were forced to join or they'd be killed. One woman's testimonial told how the Khmer Rouge came for her son and ordered him to ''join the revolution''. She said ''OK but can't he finish his lunch first.'' It sounds funny but he actually wasn't allowed to finish his lunch and was forced to leave immediately. Many of these Khmer Rouge soldiers have since been imprisoned for war crimes while the high ranking cadres who gave them orders deny any knowledge of the atrocities and have got away scot free. Pol Pot was sentenced to house arrest for life, which is something most people his age were sentenced to by nature anyway. He died a fat old man in his own house in '97 I think. As I was leaving the museum, I was surrounded by land mine victims, men with stumps for arms, or only one leg. One one-eyed man's face was a bloody pulp - like something out of a horror movie and they surrounded me and followed me begging for money, telling me they couldn't afford to eat. I bought them all some fruit from a cart and felt like crying. I know it's hard to believe when you hear all this, but Cambodia really is a beautiful country with beautiful people and it's so sad that they are reduced to this. The UN is here and they try to help but it's never enough. I talked to my driver about the whole thing and he tried to explain what it was like to live through all this. He was only four during the Pol Pot regime. Now, Cambodia is supposed to be democratic but he said the current regime has been in for years and always get 100% of the vote even though there's a lot of opposition. He doesn't even bother to vote anymore because he knows it's all a sham. The UN monitored the elections but there wasn't much they could do about it. He says Cambodian people just don't care anymore because they know there's nothing they can do about it and they just want to be left to get on with their lives as best as they can with as little interference as possible. This is easier said than done. The people in Lao were very poor but they all had enough food to eat. That is not always the case in Cambodia.

To cheer me up after all this doom and gloom and went to let hell loose in a government-run firing range. For ridiculously large sums of money (even by Irish standards) I got to unleash a wide range of military weapons and I was assured that my money was going straight to the Ministry for Defence who would spend the money on giving soldiers an education. The nature of this education was not specified and I suspect it just means teaching them how to kill people but I just wanted to let off some steam so I did. I couldn't believe the kind of weapons they were offering me. Grenades, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns...most of the heavy stuff was out of my budget though. I settled for the following: Colt '45 (1 mag), AK 47 (1 mag), M16 (1 mag), pump-action shotgun (5 shells) and an M60 machine gun (a belt of 60 rounds). I had a great time playing with these, cocking them and pumping the shotgun to make the used smoking shell clink onto the ground. While I was shooting them though I was torn between the harsh dichotomy of the gun as a thing of powerful beauty and a thing of unspeakable ugliness. This was not a problem I had in America or Australia because they were nice consumer weapons which were all shiny and pretty. These were dirty, greasy military weapons though and it was all about functionality, just like most machines in south-east Asia. As long as they could kill people, it didn't matter how attractive they were. Ironically, I found that these weapons actually jammed regularly and I wouldn't want to rely on them in a war. I've uploaded videos of me firing some of these weapons as well as some very chilling photos onto http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Cambodia/  for your discomfort. My time in Cambodia is already coming to an end and I hope to be in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) by tomorrow evening. Vietnam is supposed to be a bit wealthier than Cambodia so hopefully I won't feel as guilty being rich there. I think I will be forever changed by what I saw in this country though. I think it has made me a more compassionate person.

What a day! It's only 5 o'clock and I'm wrecked! I was up at the ungodly hour of 5AM (yes there's a 5AM) well before the sun and I blearily stumbled into my pre-booked tuk-tuk to go see the sun rise over Angkor Wat. My driver for the day was Mr Vannda, a most obliging gentleman who acted as my personal chauffeur for the day, driving me around to all the temples. If you're ever in Siem Reap and need an honest lad to drive you around the temples email tuktuk_vannda@yahoo.com because he's a lovely lad altogether. I couldn't believe the amount of people who were up and about at 5AM. The streets were full of Cambodian joggers!!! Who the hell pops out of bed at 4 in the morning to go for a nice jog in the middle of the night! I know it's hot during the day but this is just madness! When we got to Angkor I was shocked to see a whole convoy of tuk-tuks with their little lights shining like a long glowing centipede through the forest. I was dropped of by Angkor Wat's huge moat and followed the slow stream of tourists across the big stone bridge, half of which was crumbling. We were like zombies with cameras all slowly walking to the same place. We dutifully waited for the sun to rise over Angkor Wat and then started crawling all over it. It's in remarkably good nick for a 1300 year old temple. It's also huge. On the outer edge of it, I encountered a troop of raucous monkeys travelling through the jungle en masse. They came right up to me and then scampered off into the undergrowth screeching indignant protestations. I continued on to the next temple. I must have seen dozens of temples over the course of the day. Each one was surrounded by a platoon of determined six year old salesmen, intent on selling their wares at any cost. They were exceptionally tenacious and they were everywhere. The word ''no'' meant ''ask me again'' to them. I reluctantly acquiesced to buy some stuff I didn't really want of some little girls and their brother begged me to buy some postcards I really didn't want for a dollar. I was sitting in my tuk-tuk about to be driven away and his sisters had got theirs and he was the only one left without any sales and he really looked like he was going to burst into tears. I could see the tears forming in his eyes and it was just too much for me. I guiltily thrust the measly dollar at him and told him to keep the postcards and he almost cried with happiness. His struggle was over and he could cradle his precious dollar tenderly now. When I was dropped off at the next temple and the hoardes of hungry children began to close in on me, I bolted and ran as fast as I could. They all laughed and screamed and chased me around for a while. It was probably the only chance they had to play all day. I ran into the temple and they stood far back, unable to follow. There was a line on the ground a few metres back from the temple and they were not allowed to sell anything beyond it. I had found their Achilles heel! I got to see the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed and it was exactly like it was in the game but with more realistic graphics and with tame Chinese tourists instead of wild savage wolves. Huge trees with giant twisted roots draped over walls, slowly squeezing them into rubble. Later another little boy asked me to take a photo of him and then when I obliged he asked to be rewarded with something. "You have candy? You have a pen? Some money?'' I felt so so heartbroken that I had nothing in my pockets I could give him (except money which I wasn't going to give him on principle). I normally have a biro but I had left it in the tuk-tuk. I often have sweets but they don't have any decent sweets in this part of the world. I should really buy some and carry them around for little beggar children but I so rarely see sweets being sold anywhere. Further on there was a little girl trying to sell postcards which I still didn't want. She insisted that I did want them. "Mista! You wan buy postcard!'' I told her I didn't have any money. She said "Yeah right! You from Ireland. You rich!'' She was fierce cute altogether. She had figured out where I was from from my Cork jersey and my accent. She started counting off the number of postcards she was willing to give me for only a dollar (10). She counted in English, she counted in French, she counted in German, she counted in Italian, she counted in Spanish. I was genuinely impressed. She could count in more languages than me and she didn't learn how to do that at school. I thought I'd be cute and I started counting in Irish. I shut my mouth quick because no sooner had I reached ceathair when she started chanting ''ceathair, cúig, sé, seacht, ocht, naoi, deich!'' I was speechless. Her pronounciation was better than most Irish children her age. She had done her research. I asked her why a smart girl like her was out selling postcards instead of being in school. ''I go to school Mista but we on holiday now.'' I told her to keep her postcards but gave her the equivalent of 10 cents (enough to buy several fistfulls of sweets here - it seems like it's a lot more when it's a paper note with 500 written on it) and told her to stay in school so she could get a good job when she grew up and she wouldn't have to sell postcards anymore. What a patronising twat I am! Sometimes I amaze myself by how far my head has lodged itself up my backside.

After an exhausting eight hours of tomb raiding, we headed north to the land mine museum. Unsurprisingly there were loads of land mines there as well as rockets and grenades and displays on disarming land mines. There were cartoons of little Cambodian children broken into little bits and bleeding and people holding the parts and crying. There were photos of amputees and people screaming in ''painfullness''. The museum was owned by a former Khmer Rouge child soldier who had laid more mines than he could count and had dedicated his adult life to finding and disarming mines. There was a display explaining the whole Pol Pot regime and the shockingly recent history of Cambodia. Basically, Pol Pot's philosophy was let's kill all the smart educated people until I'm the smartest person in the whole country! Wow, what a great ''social experiment''. I find myself feeling a strange affection for the people of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. They're generally really friendly people who scrape a living with smiles on their faces and would give what little they had if they thought you needed it. The thought of them being taken advantage of by foreign powers with agendas or politicians with crazy ideas really makes me angry. I actually feel quite protective of them. One tuk-tuk driver today rold me that the police are corrupt and that they demand unreasonable ''fines'' from Cambodians when it suits them. Tuk-tuk drivers get fined at a police check in Angkor if they're not wearing an official driver's ID. Apparently these are quite difficult and costly to acquire. The driver told me that the police are actually afraid of white tourists for some reason - that they are like kings here. I liked the sound of that. He said when my driver was checked I should give out to the police and tell them to stop this practice. He said tourists have real influence here. It sounded like a load of rubbish to me but I agreed to do it on the condition that if I was put in jail, he had to pay my bail. When we got to the checkpoint a cop checked my driver's ID and walked all around the tuk-tuk to try to find something wrong with it. All the while I gave out to him and wagged my finger and told him drivers have to work hard for their money. My driver was loving it. The cop just smiled sheepishly and waved us on. The other cops were smiling at me too and waved at me. I'd say they hadn't a clue what I was blathering on about but I got a kick out of it anyway. Tomorrow I'm off to the capital Pnomh Penh. My time in this country is short. After Pnomh Penh, I'm going straight to Saigon. I want to spend several weeks in Vietnam because there's a lot of towns to see there. I haven't got a chance to upload the many photos I took at Ankgor Wat but hopefully by the time you read this at least some of them will be up at: http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Cambodia/

 I'm in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was a gruelling two day bus ride but I'm finally here. When I last wrote, I was still in Laos on that unfortunate island on the Mekong. I say unfortunate because all it did for two days and two night was rain NON-STOP! I didn't get to see or do anything there. Turns out the rare Irrawaddy freshwater dolphin has more sense than me and gets the hell out of there during monsoon season so I couldn't have gone to see them even it there wasn't a torrential downpour. Instead I spent the best part of two days swinging gently in a hammock and reading. I allowed the hammock to subsume me entirely so that I was wrapped completely in it. Now and then I pulled back the cover to confirm that it was still raining. On the upside I now have a fervent love for hammocks and am determined to get one. It's actually shocking how relaxing they are! This hammock was in the restaurant and guesthouse of Mama Tamon who is what we would call in Irish, a bean mór grámhar [FEN: large affectionate woman]. She's always smiling and has a huge family. I hung out at her place with two English lads and a Canadian girl who had been there for almost four weeks, almost spending the entire duration of her Lao visa in her house. The food is great but you have to literally fight off a large dog and several scrawny cats to swallow it down before they steal it off you. There was a baby there who seemed endlessly fascinated and delighted by everyone she met. I've put a few photos of her up here:  http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Laos/

The morning I left, as I was eating breakfast there, Mama came up and tied a white piece of string around my wrist "for good luck". Lonely Planet explained: "...the 32 khwan (guardian spirits of the body) are bound to the guest of honour by white strings tied around the wrists (you'll see many Lao people wearing these)."

And so myself and my 32 guardian spirits strapped on my backpack again and off we went to Cambodia. It was quite a ride. I couldn't believe it was the actual official border crossing. Incidentally it's the only border crossing between Laos and Cambodia so it's not as if everyone else is on a big road. I was just really off the beaten track. Even Lonely Planet says that no one goes from Laos to Cambodia. We were taken down a tiny dirt road full of huge potholes that made the little lane behind my house look like an autobahn. It was in the middle of dense creeper-choked jungle and there were no other vehicles. At one point a car came the other way and we had to pull into the jungle. If a tree branch fell on the road it was left there and you just drove off the road. We had to get out of the van and walk the few hundred metres between the two countries' customs and it felt so cathartic to step out of the mud of Laos and onto the gravelly tar of Cambodia. I almost wanted to hop back and forth across the line and chant "Now I'm in Laos, now I'm in Cambodia" bud I decided that I was way too mature to behave in such juvenile behaviour and continued in my usual dignified manner. I had no problems with the border cops after paying the requisite 'administration fees'. We began our long journey through the most remote part of Cambodia not knowing just how arduous our journey would be. I was accompanied by four Germans, two Belgians, two Dutch, a Chinese and a hard-as-nails American woman who'd been  around the world more times than she could count on one hand and she didn't suffer fools gladly. She wasn't the only one who kicked up a fuss then when the cheap ass Cambodians tried to cram the little minibus beyond capacity. They try to squeeze every last penny out of you and there's just no such thing as an empty seat. They don't leave until they're overflowing with passengers. We were hours behind schedule and the worst was still ahead. I've been on a lot of roads but I think it's safe to say that I will never ever see a road that was worse than the one our backsides had to endure yesterday. Even calling it a road demeans the word. I don't have any words to describe to you just how bad this road was. Potholes were the least of our worries. We would actually have been better off going off the road and driving across the fields if they weren't all flooded. The 'road' was just huge ridges of mud that you had to weave around and not get stuck in. It was completely unfit for use by vehicles. I think even a 4x4 would have run into trouble. At dusk we crawled past a lorry with a broken axle which had two of it's wheels up in the air and was leaning dangerously to one side. It was propped up with a big log and about twenty men and boys were struggling to push the wheels out of the mud. It was an impossible task. We barely squeezed past them. If we broke down here, then that's where we would stay - miles from anywhere with electricity in the dark with no food. Several times the driver had to get out to check that the van was still ok. We passed some amazing sights on the way though. Cambodia seems to be the dirtiest place I've been so far. There are mountains of rubbish everywhere. It seems to be the poorest place I've been so far - begging is prevalent (almost unheard of in Laos), and many children run around with no clothes. Nevertheless, a lot of the houses seem to be of better quality than those in Laos with lots of tiled roofs. The change in architectural style is quite drastic - you'd know you were in Cambodia. Oxen draw carts, transporting grandmothers, wizened farmers and huge struggling pigs on their backs with their feet tied. I even saw one lad on a moped with two sows balanced  on the back seat. For the first time, I saw little ponies with feathers on their heads pulling unsophisticated traps. People stared at us as we bounced by. They obviously didn't see a lot of white folk. Children's jaws dropped and then they beamed, shouted hello and waved frantically. I was very surprised to see little Muslim villages on the side of the 'road'. There were little wooden mosques and the call to prayer rang out as we drove past. I did not expect to see Muslims in Cambodia. Cambodia seems a bit dodgier than Laos too. You wouldn't feel quite as safe here at night on your own. When we finally pulled into the little town of Kampung Cham where we were to spend the night, we were exhausted and ready to sleep. Unfortunately, there were about three conventions on in the town that night and there wasn't a bed to be found. It was nine o'clock and the whole town was closing it's doors. There wasn't a bar or restaurant to be found open after nine. What do these people do for fun??? We spent an hour wandering around the dark rubbish-strewn streets with furrowed brows being turned away from every door we approached. I was scoping the place out for somewhere secluded to curl up and sleep because it was warm enough to sleep outside but not safe enough. We were being stared at by dozens of opportunistic eyes who knew we were in trouble. One Cambodian businesswoman who spoke fluent English and saw us in the lobby of a full hotel tried to call her company's director to get permission to let us sleep in one of their conference rooms but she couldn't get through. In the end we had to submit to the mercy of a tuk-tuk driver who said he knew a place with beds just outside town. We let him take us. He came through. It was the worst place I'd ever stayed and not worth the $4 I paid but it was better than having my throat slit on the street. My room was a box with no windows and a foam matress. The walls were just wooden boards with cracks in between seperating the rooms. Privacy wasn't an issue because the light from the weak little lightbulb didn't even reach the corners of the room. There was a big hole in the roof beside the bed but luckily it didn't rain. I didn't hear or see any rats, cockroaches or mosquitos though so it was adequate. The next day, we embarked on the second leg of our journey and were glad to see the back of Kampung Cham. It was a completely different story. The road was sealed and smooth. The bus was wonderful and probably as good as any bus you'd find at home. There was one person per seat, air conditioning and instead of playing DVDs of Thai karaoke, they played Jackie Chan's Rush Hour 2 and Bruce Lee's comic The Return of The Dragon. Although they were both in Lao, I had seen them already so I knew what happened. It was far more entertaining to hear Chris Tucker speak Lao in a high-pitched voice. Of course it wasn't quite as funny in The Return of The Dragon because the English overdubbing in my copy of it was too hilarious to be surpassed. We passed by a row of Buddha statue factories where little men squatted on their haunches and chipped away at big blocks of granite until they became Buddhas. The landscape changed completely in the centre of the country. There were miles and miles of bright green paddy fields as flat as a pancake, peppered with tall palms like organic aerials as far as the horizon. I felt like a little insect surrounded by an infinite vista of dandelions. When the bus pulled into Siem Reap Bus Station, the sight outside was quite disconcerting. Dozens of tuk-tuk drivers surrounded the bus and banged on the windows brandishing signs from guesthouses. As soon as I stepped off they all went for me (it's the white skin). They all grabbed me and shouted incomprehensibly in my ear and stuck their faces in mine. I was a bit dazed. I had to physically push them out of the way to try and get to the boot of the bus and get my bag. One of them implored me "If you want this to stop then please come with me now and they will stop bothering you." I felt so sorry for them. I was like a piece of meat being torn apart by vultures. I guy was waving a sign in my face offering to drive me anywhere for the equivalent of 2 cents. I grabbed his arm and allowed him to lead me out of the mellee. They make their money by taking you to guesthouses which pay them a commission if you stay there so they can afford to drive you for 2 cents. In the end he said I could keep the 2 cents because I was happy to stay at the guesthouse he took me to. I got a clean room with two windows and a fan and I haggled him down from US$4 to US$3. The currency here is Riel. There are 5000 of them in a Euro but most prices are quoted in US$ which are accepted everywhere and you can get by fine without having a single Riel in your pocket. I prefer Riel though because it means I can haggle for denominations that are worth less than a dollar. Siem Reap itself is beautiful because it's full of tourists and they want to keep it nice for them. There are stone sculptures of Naga or snake people everywhere and the stone streetlights are carved into the shape of what appear to be snakes. Tomorrow I will get up at 5AM to go see Angkor Wat at sunrise. It's a whole abandoned city of temples some of which date back to the eigth century. It used to be the capital of Cambodia until the Siamese (what we now call Thais) invaded and ransacked the place. In it's heyday, Angkor had a population of one million back when London was just a town of 200,000 people. It will take the whole day to explore them tomorrow because it is a whole city, and a lot of it is still standing eventhough it's surrounded by jungle now. I'm particularly excited about visiting the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed which has walls covered in vines. The place is being reclaimed by the trees! I agreed to allow the tuk-tuk driver from the bus station to be my guide tomorrow. I'm paying him $25 but he has to get up before sunrise and drive me around all day until after sunset and he will cover nearly 100km in that time. I need to get an early night's sleep tonight. I'll take plenty of photos for ye tomorrow. The few I've taken so far in this country are now up at: http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb178/gctrionaem/Cambodia/