Posted 2:50 AM by Gobbler
Yes, dear richard, i believe you are right. intelligence suggests that the dirty bomb is indeed a weapon of Ass Destruction. how clever of you to have noticed.

I'm quite annoyed today. i missed the co chi tunnels again today as my wake up service was ineffective. she claims that she knocked on my door and i said i was awake but i dont remember it.

it means ive wasted two days, two days that i dont have. Added to that i feel very groggy at the moment due to the inactive days. ive dont the museums i want to do and looked around the town a good deal. it means two less days elsewhere, and ive really had my fill of saigon. its a splendid place, but you gotta keep moving. i'll try the tunnels again tomorrow, but thats my last chance. i'm booked on the seven o clock train to dan ang which i dont intend to miss. from there its strait to hoi an and the next session of jollies.

So yesterday was the war crimes museum, now called the war remnants museum. there was the unexpected treat of an m 48 and an m 41 tank there, as well as a few big guns and bombs; it was definitelty a bonus, i had only come to see the bottled foetuses deformed by agent orange.

if the foetusses were disgusting, the deformed children were appalling. they looked unreal, impossible. like when you go to the hall of mirrors at the fairground and your image gets twisted to impossible dimensions. that is what they looked like. add to that the odd limb missing.

after that i went to notre dame cathedral. i'd had enough agent orange action for one day and wanted to remind myself that whenever a big country 'protects' a small country, it doesn't just shred the indigenous population. Notre dame was beautiful and there was a mass going on. just like in england the congregation was on average the same age as the priest. unlike in england the priest looked about 30. i listened at the gate to the jibberish for fifteen minutes until i could see big jc more than the spawn of agent orange, then returned to my cyclo to play chicken with the traffic and roll home.

Posted 6:58 AM by Gobbler
its blogger time. doo do do do do, da doo do, da doo do. doo do do do do, da doo, da doo do.

and now, where do i begin? a few quick pictures today.

'I took a tuk tuk tour in Bangkok'

I took a tuk tuk tour in bangkok once. in fact it was about two weeks ago. the guy who wasnt called wai or pai but Chai was a splendid fellow, who professed extreme interest in showing me all the delights of Bangkok for the excellent price of 30 baht (50p). However, as it turned out, Chai's views of what constituted the delights of bangkok differed incontrovertibly from my own. i got a couple of buddhas, or buddhai, the standing buddah, the laughing buddah, the sitting buddah, the jade buddah, but from there our opinions changed direction. apparently i really wanted a suit or three, and he wanted his fuel coupons that he would get for taking me there. the suits looked lovely, but, i considered, impractical for travelling round the world. however, i did my bit and looked at the brochures, examined the fine cloth, and expressed an interest in the taylors fine handiwork. Even then it was not much of a struggle to resist buying a suit.

Sensing that he was never going to succeed in getting me respectably dressed, our man Chai changed tack. Perhaps, after such a long and gruelling tuk tuk temple tour, i would like a soothing massage from an excellent parlour he happened to know. No thank you mr chai, im plenty soothed already. oh, says mr chai, in that case surely a quick ping pong show in pat pong would be more to my liking; i looked like that sort of mister. No thankyou mr chai, im all ping ponged out for today. Perhaps the dart show, the candle show, the razor blade show, the tinsel show? Maybe mister like to do that? Gosh mr chai, again, youre making a very tempting offer, but actually just for the moment, and this will come as a shock, im not really a razor blade kinda guy.
Mr chai, a resopurceful fellow and very keen to satisfy his customer, (after all thailand is the land of smiles) changes tack. Perhaps maybe sir is travelling elsewhere in s.e. asia? Why yes mr chai, i surely am. I was thinking of going to laos, how king of you to ask. Maybe sir would like to buy his train ticket now, and would like to go to the train station? Hey, nik, you buy train ticket now. No thanks chai my man, not today, but thanks for the offer. Now wheres the next buddah. im sure the skipping buddah is around here somewhere. Skipping buddah shkipping buddah chai informs me, what i need is a lady. despite assurances that she is a 'very ni' lady and 'very chip', and after being shown the brochure of what indeed look to be very ni and impractically clothed ladies, i find myself more amused than anything else.

Chai became worried at this time that he was not doing enough for his new favourite customer, and wondered if i would like to get some food. Well yes mr chai a little nibble would be delightful thank you. within minutes we are in some local cafe where the locals look at me bemusedly and i search for white faces unsuccessfully. The karaoke is in full swing, and an untalented aging man hammers out the tunes with dedication. After my chicken pad thai, which in the event turned out to be somewhat chewy but perfectly sumptuous pigeon (ya ya, it no chicken, it koo koo pigeon hee hee hee) i considered it might be time to go back to khao san where i can safely get ripped off in the comfort of the throngs of farang, but chai has a better idea. what mister needs is a couple of the ever interesting chang beer. Why yes mr chai, do you know i think you night have something there. wing me a chang. A charming waitress called Mai comes to sit next to me. before i have understood the hazey translation my chai, it appears that she wishes me lots of good luck, and in return i have asked if i could buy her a drink. Wonders never cease. i thought i had said 'chai, i better be getting off' Before too long, but after lots of proffered good luck, mai kidnaps the mike off the old guy and rolls through a couple of love songs for me. 'Hey nick, she sing song for you, she like you, think you very ni' After another chang it transpires that she would very much like to go upstairs with me. No thanks dear, im married, gay, got a girlyfriend, nt interested, celibate, training for the preisthood. Thankfully this one didnt get too mistranslated, but she still wished me a whole lot of good luck. very king of her i must say.

then her mother turned up. I know it was her mother because she said 'hey sir my daughter like you, you like her, so you take her upstair.' it was time to leave.

In short, tuk tuks are great if you dont really mind where you go, or dont ming going to three other places first.

MESSY BUSINESS AT THE SAIGON CAFE

it was a quarter to three in the morning, the night before last. i was sitting alone in the cafe, on the edge of the street, awaiting the return of some chums who had dashed back to their rooms to liberate some more dong from the coffers. It was a shady ten minutes.

I had a beer in hand to keep me company and i hugged it lovingly as interesting night creatures began to circle around me. An old guy with interesting teeth, an insane grin and in all likelihood and unwise mixture of drugs in his system was trying to sell me opium cigarattes, five for four pounds. Or coke, or hash, or heroin, or something else. by the look of him he clearly practices what he preaches on a regular basis, if not continually. On my left sat an outstandingly beautiful prostitute. I drew out the beer and kept up fascinating chat with the crazy old drug fiend to avoid finding out a price from the girl on my left until my friends returned and we sped away.

It seems to me that most of the native girls here can be split into two categories. If you are a western man, they are either prostitutes or they want to marry you. either way they want your dollar and a better life. hence the hordes of forty or fifty something men with their ten or twenty wsomething ladies who sit there not talking but staring blankly. You cant blame them of course, but you do wonder.

In other news, i went to the war crimes museum today but missed the tunnels as i was not woken up - i will try again tomorrow. much to say on the museum but im all typed out for now.

Posted 6:00 AM by Gobbler
DAMN!!!! i just deleted an extensive and riveting blog that i had been labouring on for the last 40 minutes. Essentyial material lost forever!!! ARSE!!!

To briefly recap...

Left Pnom Penh in a comatosed haze after only 1 hours sleep on a chair. Easy Tiger, a top bloke, charged me 20 dollars less than he should have done for my stay at top Bananas, the best guest house in the world. Not a lot of money in the great scheme of things, a small fortune in these parts. Nearly got married off agin in Pnom Penh to a charming cambodian, but i escaped relatively unscathed. Last night met up with Matt in Saigon, where i am now. Its been raining very ehavily here for the last three hours or so and the road is now a river and the internet cafe a makeshift flood plain. I am waiting for thecafe to short circuit and kill us all in the ensuing conflagration. Matt has set aside 100 dollars so that he can fire a bazooka in Cambodia. I am uncertain as to whether he intends to blow up a cow. The bars in saigon do not close and tonight is going to be positively toxic in all likelihood, as it is matts last night

Met some more interesting punters. Six Brits, one irish, one yank, one Norwegian, a swede and a dane, who is great and called Stig. Stig and the scandinavians have gone up to Hoi An , central Vietnam and i plan to meet them there in acouple of days.

Highlights in thisk part of the world include the war crimes museum featuring preserved foetusses of babies mutated by agent orange, the Viet Cong tunnels to the north and some charming landscape that was specially modelled by our young cousins the americans with a delightful and carefully balanced symposium of high explosive, napalm and agent orange. My thoughts on that when i have done my bit for the tourist industry in that quarter.

Other delights include the Mekong delta with its floating markets and beauty, Notre Dame Cathedral, (mini version built by the french. quite tempted to go to mass. I'm clearly not drinking enough) a couple of other museums and the revolution palce or whatever its called. Twice bombed and thrice christened, a fascinating testament to the turbulant recent history of this 'hood.

Its going to tkae me a little while to do all this however. Tonight, as i say, I'll be popping pool balls away, getting flustered on the table football (AGHHH, why am i playing so badly today?) and causing havoc and possibly injury with ill aimed darts. I got home at a quarter past five this morning, and i left early. Saigon, party on.

A big thankyou to all those who made me tapes for this little escapade. I'm in the process of coining individual thankyou's, but theres never enough time. Current special favourite tunes are the theme from zulu and the theme from Where Eagles Dare. Thanks punks you know who you are. Evil Uncle: who are you!? This is an outrage. Its enough to have to deal with Dr. Octagon without having his insane relatives roaming the land as well. did you get hit by a frisbee too? Or did you fashion the frisbee that fell dr o all those moons ago? Not Very Evil But Really Rather Nasty Dan: You dont fool me pal, you are quite obviously just Dan with a couple of silly prefixes. Not Dr. Octagon material at all. Laura: dont desert me; i may continually make disastrous fashion blunders, but that is exactly why you are so essential to the cause. Dr. Octagon: you may remain at large, but let me assure you that the day of judgement is near, your secret research facility, codenamed SUFFOLK, in the very heart of the Icy Core, will never succeed in its current research objectives. Ha!, pigs might fly. Rich: iggle biggle squiggle squaggle, oinky bonk bonk ding dong doo lally mc jibbidy job. Ah hear me now, good time mister, best pwi, no no! No twi before you bi. Silly mister. (sent in code as Dr Octagon and Evil Uncle are monitoring this) Dan, James: Can you give this site address to christian por favor. Hope the works going specially and all, hope preps for Edinburgh are on track. Christian: if youre already on, really great. Maybe you can get on your bicycle and come over to saigon and maybe we can have some coffee, maybe have a little bit of a shmoke, and then ride around the townscape on our bicycles a ring aringing our belmashter 3000's. Ho ho! Those crazy wacky zany off the wall extraordinary and i think maybe even possibly bonkers Vietnam peoples, they will be liking it very much when we will be playing the Dutch National Anthem very loudly all over the places. Maybe they will sing along with us, and stop playing their ridiculous Karaoke all over town... Everyone else: you are not punks today, lucky you!! Any info on dr octagon much appreciated. I heard a rumour he was in Hoi An, so im going there next. Mr Glaser: are you receiving? POOOOOOO!

Posted 12:13 AM by Gobbler
Monday
First of all, mike: that message you sent me was damn funny. It sounded like err, like a train. In the distance. Damn funny. Message received and understood.

In Pnom Penh for one more night only. Stayed on a little extra time because i'm waiting for alex, sarah and holly to turn up. Seen neither hide nor hair of them, not even a message in the last couple of days. Just my luck thwey'll get here tomorrow, when i leave for ho chi. And matt will have left ho chi by then. Matt, if you read this, where in gods name are you man.

Today the main plan is to go to the market to pick up a t shirt or two. I have come tothe conclusion that im going to need more than one teeshirt for this trip. Apart from anything else it isnt terribly exciting wearing the same one all the time, and i must concede at this point that in spite of the very best nick goulden washing exploits, it aint as white as it once was. I want to get a heart of darkness shirt. that wont mean diddly squat to most people but believe me it is a top special thing to have.

Last night i frequented the heart of darkness bar once more. Not so busy, quite top special. I found out what SPRITE stands for, but im not going to say as some of my dear readers may consider it to be in bad taste, though i consider it to be quite an informative ditty. Also became enlightened as to the true meaning of FANTA and a few other non-alcoholic beverages. Quite exciting you will im sure agree.

This particular blog is not turning out to be as rivetingly exciting as i had anticipated. It occurs to me now that i have little new to report, and such a situation does not lend itself to amusing blog action. Went to the famous martini bar last night. Didnt seem all that great to me, but nice to have gone. Went out just with easy tiger and Lee, a guy from Leeds who arrived on saturday. We met a few interesting peoples down there but i wasnt feeling too top special and so was unable to banterise fully. In the end i was glad to get home and to sleep, though it wasnt til quite late in the end. It appears i am getting old.

No evidence evident of the evil Dr. Octagon. If he was in The Bodia, he's not here now. Informants have suggested that he has fled to 'Nam, and its there i now journey. I remember fighting side with the good doctor, as he then was, during the Tet offensive way back in '68. This was before he was hit on the head by an octagonal frisbee which hurt a lot and made him turn to evil... The case continues. Rich, if you have any more data on this subject, chalk it up.

Well, dear reader, whoever and wherever you are, i dare not detain you longer. I will just mention that i met a yank a few days back who had been to Burma/Myanmar. He had taken the bus from Rangoon to Mandalay. However, being a yank he did not reciprocate my amusement at him taking the Road to Mandalay. Even my spirited attempt at a little sing along failed to rouse a spark of interest. Oh well.

Laura: say hello to newbury for me; Mike: damn funny; Bertie: did you manage to post thiose cards?; Steve: I say old bean terribly sorry to bother you and all but are you receiving this rather fascinating blog or not? And where oh where is my tea?; Dave: HELLO DAVE; everyone else: punks.

Posted 6:06 AM by Gobbler
Another blog.

Another blog to be sent to blogland. There are many blogs here. Some are small and rubbish, others are collosal behemoths of the literary world. It is to blogland i go.

Still haunting the streets of pnom penh. Yesterday went to Killing fields and the rifle range. An interesting combination, theyve really thought that one through. As soon as i had chugged through a magazine of the good stuff with the AK 47, i was possessed with some crazy ideas anhd felt disposed to rip through a clip on an M 16. Thats what i call gunnishment. Heh heh, he gonna die like a dog. Was very tempted to splash out onj a hand grenade, but i had run out of money by then, so had to forgoe the pleasure. Quite tempted by the rpg luncher and the bazooka and the anti aircraft gun, but again economic constraints meant that idea too was forgone. You can even buy a cow in some places and watch it being blown up/mown down by your weapon de choix. Theyd probably let you demolish a couple of blocks of pnonm penh if you payed enough. Bizarre. After the adrenaline pumping intrigue of the shooting range, my driver, mr B, whipped me off to the next destination, the Killing Fields. Difficult to explain just how it felt to go from a shooting range to a field where at least eight thousand men women and children were slaughtered by the 'Pol Pot clique', where skulls stacked 30 feet high (work it out james) demand attention from every directionj in their mausoleum monument; where bits of bone and clothing still poke through the earth where the exhumation pits were dug; where a tiny child stands in front of me demanding that i let him take my photo with my camera for 100 reill, show i can show everyone back home. I gave him a thousand, didnt have anything smaller, but at least ive gt a nice photo of me smiling at a site of mass murder. At least he didnt try to give me a tour.

After that zipped off to the national museum. Its no British Museum, but it was quite interesting. I wanted to see some of the statues from angkor. Almost all the statues etc have either been stolen or removed from angkor.

Went to S 21 detention camp on Friday. Thankfully no one even tried to take my photo. For those who dont know, its an old high school used as a detention/interrogation camp where political prisoners were taken to propperly consider the crimes they had committed and the evils they had wrought upon the world, with the aid of the whip and electric chair, they all saw the error of their ways in the end. Specially selected kids were put to work in the camp aged just 10, to learn about the evil people they were helping to remove. Once condemned, those prisoners who had not died during interrogation were tyaken out to the killing fields for removal. There, an old tree stands by the graves. It served the useful purpose of being a solid surface upon which the evil and condemned babies could be beaten to death. It saves a bullet.

After S 21 on friday i went with some mateys Eric and Jenny for a Pnom Penh delicacy, the happy pizza. We got a large one, and Eric took the liberty of volunteering us for the 'very happy' treatment. Its the sort of thing that should come with a health warning and for all i know actually does. Managed to send off a couple of emails, get back to the guesthouse and play a couple of games of cards before oblivion consumed me for the next 14 hours. Well, i was quite tired. So that was another bizarre day. Death camp in the morning, happy pizza in the afternoon. All in a days work.

Last night went out with top banana and cohorts to the heart of darkness bar. Nice enough place but nt really my cup of tea any more. I cant be bothered much to reside in a jam packed bar shouting at people just to communicate. It wasn't so bad maybe, and in any case i didnt get back til dawn.

Off to Ho Chi Minh either tomorrow or teh day after. Alex, Sarah and Holly are on my trail and might be in pnom penh tomorrow. on the other hand, matt is now in Ho Chi and wont be there for much longer, but i'm bit exactly suer when. Also, havent got all that much time to play around with, need to put my skates back on. Still, Pnom Penh is a great place to be, and in fact the bodia has been quite marvellous all round, if quite bizarre. The two things the pace is famous for, Pol Pot and Angkor, are not obvious partners, but both are being flogged to the tourists in a mad bid to earn valuable dollar. A crazy world. Wacky, bonkers etc.

Mike: not going to kratie mate after all, no boat today apparrently and not reall enough time anyway; mum: hello there; Alex: this one special just for you mister; Ben and si: top special; everyone else: thou art punkoids.