Friday 5 September 2008

2000 Asia & New Zealand (Part 1)

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After returning back to Holland from Israel I was keen to go overseas as quickly as possible. So I went to the UK after a few months at home. Living in London I managed to save enough money for another trip around Asia. This time I was going to spend a lot of time in South East Asia and China. Being in the area I thought it would be best to book a flight to Australia to visit some friend. There I heard about the New Zealand beauty so I thought to have a stab at trekking there as well. All in all it was one of the best trips and the longest to date.

I flew into Bangkok to travel anti-clockwise around Indo-China.

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The Royal Palace

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Thai monks

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Laying Buddha.

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Some interesting food. Can you recognise it?

Besides flying to Angkor What in Cambodia near Siem Reap you can travel over land. Always my preferred option. The only thing is that back then the road was so bad, it took something like 12 hours on the back of a Ute (pick up truck). Luggage in the tray and the passengers on the edges.

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Gets a bit dusty.

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Not the only one though.

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Angkor What. The main temple of the old city of Angkor which used to house over a million people some say during the Khmer Empire approximately between the 9th and 15th century. The city is littered with temples numbering over a thousand but this main one was built in the 12th century. At the time the city was the largest pre-industrial city in the world with an urban sprawl of 400 square miles. You could spend days here.

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The jungle took over the city when the people left.

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Some of the decorations.

The other lasting impression of Cambodia is the S21 interrogation/ torture centre/ prison of the Pol Pot era in Phnom Penh. Leader of the Khmer Rouge. It's now turned into a museum as a reminder never to let this happen again.

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The size of the cells.

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Some of the torture methods.

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Some of the 'tools'.

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Pol Pot 'recruited' children a lot and a lot of them were involved in the activities in S21. Remarkably, S21 was a converted school. A visit here is a must but it’s not for the faint hearted. I've left out some of the more gruesome images. The Khmer Rouge is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million people while the world just watched and did nothing.

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A monument of the atrocities filled with the skulls of some of the victims.

The next stop would be Vietnam. I was interested to see the country after is just opened up to the west after being in isolation since the 'American War'.

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Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). The city hall.

Ho Chi Minh city is an interesting place. As punishment to their collaboration with the Americans some very educated people were banned from performing their profession. So you can find yourself being taken around in a rickshaw by a former judge, or Ph.D. graduate, etc.

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The former American Embassy with some of the equipment left behind. It's now a museum.

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Plenty of rice paddies.

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The famous tunnel systems.

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Pretty hard to spot.

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It's not easy to move around in them if you're 6 feet.

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Asians love their karaoke and the Vietnamese are no exception.

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Vietnamese town street scape.

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Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi where his remains are for public display.

From Vietnam I made my way to Laos where the highlight of that trip was the trekking though the jungle. First time I'd been in a jungle.

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Jungle village.

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The rugged mountainous scenery of Laos littered with unexploded ordnance. Laos is said to be the most bombed country per capita in the world, with a ton of bombs per head of population having been dropped there. Amazing considering it has never been to war.

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Poppy production is a big problem there.

From Laos I travelled back to Bangkok where I took my flight to Australia. After hanging around there for a while I flew to Christchurch in New Zealand where I was going to do a few weeks of tramping as the kiwi's call it. It's the most beautiful place I've ever been to if you get the right weather. I lucked out in that department.

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From New Zealand I went back to Australia to jump onto my flight to Bangkok. In Australia I decided to travel back to Europe overland through northern Asia. The most obvious starting point for me was Hong Kong, having always wanted to go there. So in Bangkok I booked a one-way to Hong Kong where I would be able to organise a visa for China.

Hong Kong was an eye opener.
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The English left overs.

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Iconic Nathan Road in Kowloon.

The visa came through in 3 days which was enough time for me in Hong Kong. So into China proper I went, where the idea was to stick to the south and the western part of the country.

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First port of call was Yangshuo near Guilin.

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The area is littered with these beautiful lime stone peaks.

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The famous Longsheng rice terraces carved in the side of the mountains.

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This little known town was a complete surprise because of it's beautiful bell towers and idyllic setting. It's a bit off the beaten track because of the remoteness. I travelled for parts of it on the back of a truck.

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From here I headed for Yunnan province on my way to Szechuan and the foothills of the Himalayas for some Tibetan culture as large parts of Szechuan used to be part of Tibet.

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Dali in Yunnan

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Lijiang, largely rebuilt after an earthquake.

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The tiger leaping gorge on the Yangtze River. 60km from Lijiang.

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Lined with little villages like this.

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When I arrived to this village, they were distributing clothing donated by an Australian charity. It was quite amusing to see the distribution of this after having given old clothes to charities for years.

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Chengdu is famous for it's Panda sanctuary.