Poverty Porn III

One of the few snaps we took on the infamous Poverty Porn cruise in Si Phan Don, southern Laos, last month.

Odette grabbed his phone and snapped this one of E@L after he had voiced his disapproval once he realised that they were entering, not just a tourist trap, but the murky treacherous realm of 1st-World perversity. It was sold to us as a sunset boat-ride, however the solar action was behind us all the time. Sunset? Wah? Ah no, there was another agenda. Perhaps we were supposed to get it?

Yep instead we were expected instead to watch and take photos of people who were nearly naked, the children certainly were [you couldn't help but think 'pedophile alert'], as they engaged in their daily wash.

It was in the river, yada yada, ooh wow, but it was their daily fucken' ablutions. After a minute of not being sure what the fuck, E@L refused to look let alone take any Kodak moment memories.

But they looked at us as the boat slowed down, cruised past. Their looks flung back were a mixture of reluctant toleration and seething disdain, as we had been receiving for our whole time in Si Phan Don - not just "Get the fuck out of my bathroom," but, "Get the fuck off my fucken' island!"

And E@L fucken' well agrees with them.

As would you, should strangers people came into your shower and started taking pictures of you soaping up your nethers. Even friends!

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E@L is not feigning that decidedly unimpressed mien. He was feeling bad, angry, disgusted with everyone, not excluding himself. You can almost see him writing that post in his head.

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Yada yada, tourist money, gradual improvement, fine but not this cultural pornography. Laos would not be in such a state if we had not dropped millions of tonnes of bombs and incendiaries, intentionally and specifically to set children on fire.

Children like this. "Yay," they said. "Burn the gooks!"


E@L

[I thought I had a Flickr thingummy at the side, seems to have disappeared. Here is the link to Flickr if you are interested in seeing what a crap photographer I am.]

Laos Trip - And Cambodia or Not?

Early next year The Croatia Backpacking Team (TCBT) (+1) are planning on a reunion tour of Cambodia and Laos. Izzy and The Tall Man will be crashing at E@LGHQ over New Years Eve.

I am concerned about the timing of this however, as it means I will be out town for close to 6 weeks, from the week before Xmas in Australia (at home with the FLOs), OK, NYE in Singapore (yawn), then there is the Indochine trip, and finally I am booked (and paid up) for a ski trip to Sapporo over Chinese New Year.

Yes, I hear you crying for me. Life's a bitch for Expats.

In order not to upset the people who pay me so outrageously, I have been thinking that I really should be available at least sometime in that period, so I was pushing lips close together, scrunching up my shoulders and 99% decided to be somewhere near the office in the first week of the year. This means that I would be forced (by my own decision) to skip the Cambodia section of the tour and only meet up with the TCBT in Luang Prabang in southern Laos on the 10th. Have never been to Laos, so...

Part of my reasoning for not being too concerned about missing Angkor Wat, etc... is that I had a holiday in Cambodia 11 years ago. We (my friend Homey and I) had a mildly happy pizza, stayed at the Sharaton[sic] hotel and I paid way to much for a worker in the AEI from the 'Disco Club' in the basement (immensely gross and amusing story about this), and we had a great time overall. Got a $5 shopping bag of dope, looked for AK-47s in the market but didn't see any, were stunned into silence by the horror, the horror of the Tuol Sleng museum.

At Siem Reap we were hijacked from the airport by a taxi-driver called No-one (his parents were killed in the Killing Fields, no reason to dispute this, and he was never named), and I say hijacked as I saw, as we drove away, three other cardboard greeting signs with my name on them. This was back in 2000, just as the new tourist hotels were under construction. We did the usual circuit of temples with No-name as a guide, stared the Bayon faces, stood next to the wall swallowing roots of the giant figs. In those days elephants were walking across the bricks of certain temples, you had to clamber up muddy slopes and grasp at exposed tree roots to get up to the Wat across the way from Angkor, the road across the river was only partly restored and Angeline Jolie hadn't yet raced through the non-existent water-market on a jet-ski (or whatever)...

But I'm having second thoughts about my conscientious inclinations, my loyal employee guilts. This is because I have been re-reading the notes from a friend of mine who did an extensive trip into Cambodia and Vietnam in August. Due to work commitments (new product cross-training, couldn't avoid it!) I missed his 50th birthday party in Sihanoukville. He had a great time, met his current girlfriend in Vietnam, and did some fascinating travel writing - he loves his food in case you don't notice - and this has whet my appetite for repeating the trip to Cambodia after all. (As has looking back at the astoundingly poor quality of my old photos - nts: bring the good camera this time!) And then there's something about the prospect of 50c beers and $1 massages...

So, sigh, thinking seriously of dropping the idea of the lone week at work after all and taking the entire month off for a trip with my dearly beloved TCBT.

E@L