3/4/04
Sawadee Krup dudes, dudettes and other furry monsters…
Well, we are currently sitting in an internet cafe on Rai Leh Beach in Southern Thailand after a gruelling 26 hour trip from Ko Chang Island near the Cambodian border where we have been seriously chilling for the last few days…
…Yep, the last few days we’ve been festering our arses off slumming in beach bungalows only meters from the waters edge, snorkeling, getting $6 massages and living totally on prawns and squid which has been really COOL and very relaxing….
…although I reckon that if we hear any more Bob Marley on this trip, our pubes are going to start to grow into dreadlocks….
Anyways, we reckon we totally deserved a bit of a dreadlock holiday since traveling through Cambodia completely shagged us senseless!!!
Don’t get us wrong, we really, really enjoyed Cambodia but the poverty, the constant begging and the haemorrhoid busting roads totally made travelling around really emotionally draining and gave us a sore ar’se at the same time…
In fact Cambodia would be one of the poorest countries we have been to with the exception of Nicaragua…
Like Nicaragua, Cambodia’s a bit of an unusual country since it’s not only the people here who are poor, but the entire infrastructure of the country is poor as well…
Because of the civil war, there is very little upkeep of the buildings and roads and even the main national highway is basically a pothole filled dirt road in places so we literally busted a vertebra everytime we travelled between towns…
Not only that, but there is a certain lawlessness here since there hasn’t been a government in power for the last 6 months… Apparently, whoever becomes popular usually gets assassinated by the Khmer Rouge badarses who are still in power… so that kind of sucks….
Even the roads are lawless and somehow the Cambodians are able to make 10 lanes out of 2 lane street… in fact, the traffic is so scary, that we passed urine almost every time we had to cross the road…
Eventually, we figured the only way to face our fears was to get some motorbikes and fang around southern Cambodia for 3 days which was TOTALLY cool… and fortunately we found that there are only 2 road rules that we needed to know to survive…
1) If there is something on the road which freaks you out like chickens, pigs or people that don’t swing their arms when they walk…. then beep at it and you should be fine….
and…
2) If it’s bigger than you then get the fuck off the road…
We survived OK and our mate Greco only got run off the road twice so we figured those rules were pretty good…
Despite all this, the people in general are wonderful and the place is very cool…….. with the exception of Phnom Penh that is…
Phnom Pehn didn’t really turn us on that much as it was a bit of a depressing place to see…. partly because the usual touristy thing here consists of seeing the Killing Fields where there are tattered clothes and human body parts all over the place from mass graves that have been exhumed…
…but also because for some stupid lamearsed reason, we thought we would take a break from the usual backpacker crowds made up of buff bronzed fit European boys and girls and try one of the upmarket hotels…
However, instead we ended up in an expat brothel area made up of poor young money hungry local girls and fat, balding old western men with shrivelled penises who obviously can’t even get a paid shag at home…
…hmm… perhaps I’m being a bit harsh… I guess they weren’t all balding…
Fortunately however, running the small medical clinic at the school for disabled children restored our faith in westerners….
The school was built by a Australian christian brother and the kids were so grateful to be getting an education that it was really heartwarming…
I only treated 4 kids with simple things like wounds and epilepsy and malaria advice, but it was one of the more rewarding things I have ever done… even more rewarding than being able to unwrap a freddo frog wrapper in one piece so that’s saying a lot!!!!
Even Avril was able to help out by giving them advice on how to build a beehive which was a super power that even I didn’t know she had…
Well anyways, we were going to finish off this email with a few pictures of us slumming on beautiful white sand beaches with turquoise waters lapping at our feet, but we figured that that would make most of you vomit with jealousy, and since vomiting chunks onto your keyboard is not only socially embarrassing, but also bad for your teeth…. instead we decided to send you some pictures of us EATING BUGS…!!!
Last night we were fortunate enough at some night markets for a lady to sell us an 80 cent bag of assorted bugs. We got some crickets, larvae, grasshoppers, wasps, beetles, ants and worms. The only problem was that Avril had to return hers since there was a fly in hers….. hmm…. OK that joke sounded better at the time….
It was pretty funny because we sorted the bugs and laid them out on a table in the dimly lit room of our hotel and then dared each other to eat one as we went around the table… Just like a in a drug cartel…
…Anyhows, they are served with soya sauce and pepper and other than having different degrees of chewiness, they all taste like that shrivelled little black chip that is always at the bottom of a potato chip packet…
But although we got most of them down… those darn massive crickets and water cockroaches were impossible to swallow without crushing them up first. It’s like my brain was saying bite down but my jaw went… NO WAY!!!
We actually reckon that eating bugs is really COOL because you not only get to imagine the larvae crawling around in your stomach, but you also get to find insect legs in your poo the next day!!!
….How COOL is that!!!!… In fact they can be so darned addictive that we would recommend that all parents should teach their kids to “Just say NO to bugs!!!!!!”
Anyhows, gotta go… tomorrow we are off to do some rockclimbing… last time we were here we mainly climbed on the land, so this time we are going to see if we can rent a boat and climb some of those limestone pillars off the coast of Thailand so that should be cool… and after that, it’ll be a few more days of beaches and then back to home with a quick stopover in Hong Kong…. so if anyone wants to catch up, we’ll be back by Easter…
Lots of love and smoochies….
Bug Girl
Larvae Boy
Aphid Man
PS Check out the Thailand and Bug and Cambodian Pics Here.
Leave a Reply