Welcome to the Kingdom of Cambodia

11th August 2012

 

This building at Phnom Penh airport welcomes travellers to “Cambodia, Kingdom of Wonder”.

Although we arrived in Phnom Penh three days before the beginning of our tour, we were still met at the airport by a tour guide, and driven to our hotel in a pleasantly air conditioned car.

I mention this, as stepping out of the airport terminal was like jumping into a hot, damp oven.  Our senses were further bombarded by blazing sunlight, the beeping of horns and clamour of traffic, and the amazing sight of hundreds of motor scooters carrying up to four people or enormous loads of vegetables or other products – all on (for us) the wrong side of the road! 

We arrived at our hotel on the riverfront in a state of disbelief, so seeing we had had very limited sleep on the plane, decided a short nap would be in order.

Three hours later, after both of us being totally dead to the world, we decided we should push ourselves to go out.  In hindsight, we should have slept a bit longer – at 4pm, it was still extremely hot.

 

 

On our surreal drive from the airport, we passed this statue of an elephant man, which didn’t seem at all unusual.

 

In fact, Phnom Penh is very liberally elephanted – here’s Pat with one just across the road from our hotel.

 

Crossing the streets was quite terrifying at first.  Not only do you have to negotiate the traffic, but the roads are lined with street vendors’ carts. 

Here is Pat beside a cart of large grapefruit-like citrus which Pat had first come across in Tahiti under their French name of pamplemousse.

 

Also notice the overhead wiring which I’m sure would not pass Australian Workplace Health & Safety standards.

 

We walked past the Royal Palace, home of King Norodom Sihamoni, the present King of Cambodia.

 

It didn’t take us long to decide that we had walked far enough, and needed to stop for a drink.  We settled ourselves onto the upstairs balcony of the Khmer Saravan cafe, from where we could see boats going by on the Mekong, and people walking beside the river.

 

Some Buddhist Monks stroll by the river.  As it grew later (and cooler), there were many more people, mainly locals, walking along or sitting by the river.

 

I hadn’t even had one drink before I photographed this menu so badly that I missed the prices, which was why I photographed it in the first place.  But as you can almost see, beers were US$2 or less each.

As it was Happy Hour, we had two glasses at $US1 each.

 

I didn’t do any better photographing the cocktail menu – cocktails were US$2-$3 each.

 

My Singapore Sling.  Pat pointed out that I could have had about 15 of them for the price that he paid for me to have just one at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore two years ago.  I thought I showed great restraint in having just the one. 

We also had some dinner there.  Pat had a chicken curry, and I had Cambodian sour soup, which featured tamarind, as well as other delicious ingredients.  

 

One of our waitresses.

 

Meanwhile, more boats passed by.

 

Boats with many people…..

 

…..or just a few.

 

Finally, we dragged ourselves back into activity.  The street was busy with tuk tuks and motor cycles.

 

These people were being much more active than we were.  There were also groups of men playing a kind of badminton where instead of using a racquet, they kicked the shuttlecock to each other.

 

Street vendors, like this lady with an enormous tray of peanuts on her head, wandered up and down, selling food and cold drinks.

 

Here, the setting sun is reflected off a building on the other side of the river.

 

Walking back to our hotel (there’s Pat on the left).  Now that it’s getting dark, there are a lot more people about.

 

There’s the Khmer Saravan, where we had drinks and dinner.  It’s the lighted balcony to the right of the picture.  

 

Cambodian silhouette.

 

Now the boats on the river have their lights on.

 

I had never heard of the World Toilet Association, or Mr. Toilet Public, for that matter.  They do say travel broadens the mind.

 

Mekong twilight, from our hotel window (finally).

Being hot and tired by now, we attempted to take a shortcut to our hotel through another hotel, only to find the way blocked off at night.  Consequently, we had to retrace our steps, quite a long way, carrying some cheap but heavy drinking water we had acquired at what we thought was near the end of our walk home. 

Thus we arrived back at our hotel very hot and tired, and fell into bed at about 8.30pm (although in our defence it was 11.30pm Australian time).

So that was our first day in Phnom Penh.

Flying to Phnom Penh

11th August 2012

Flying in to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia from Kuala Lumpur, I took some shots of Phnom Penh and the mighty Mekong River from the plane window.  Makes the Brisbane River look like a bit of a trickle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phnom Penh is built on the intersection of four rivers – the Upper and Lower Mekong, and the Tonle Sap and Tonle Bassac.

 

Chroy Changvar Bridge was originally built in 1966. The bridge was damaged during the Pol Pot regime, and the citizens of Phnom Penh were expelled from the city by Khmer Rouge forces in 1975.

The provincial and municipal population came back to live in Phnom Penh after the liberation on 7th January 1979, and the government began to repair the infrastructures in Phnom Penh that had been damaged by the war and desertions.  In 1995, the Cambodian government received a contribution from the Japanese government to repair the Chroy Changvar Bridge, and Japanese engineers supervised the renovations.

The bridge is now also known as the Cambodia-Japan Friendship Bridge.

 

Tea at Harrods

11th August 2012

The last place I expected to see at Kuala Lumpur airport while we were waiting for our connection to Phnom Penh in Cambodia was a Harrods!  So of course I had to have a pot of tea there.  I am holding the cup in my left hand for the photo so you can see the “H” on it.


All the Harrods china.


A full-on Harrods.


A Harrods carriage of teddies.


Kuala Lumpur airport manages to combine being ultra modern and luxurious with a definite feeling of Asia.

From Kuala Lumpur, you can travel to such diverse places as Kathmandu, New Delhi and Christmas Island.


Suggestions of Batik.


Muslim influences, perhaps?

Alice Springs 2

8th – 13th June 2012

 

On the morning after our Central Australia tour, I dragged myself out of my cosy bed at the Desert Rose Inn, in the zero degree freezing pre-dawn, and up ANZAC Hill for my last Central Australian sunrise – but I think it was worth it. 

 

ANZAC Hill War Memorial, sunrise.

 

Heavitree Gap, from ANZAC Hill.

 

MacDonnell Ranges, from ANZAC Hill.

 

War Memorial, ANZAC Hill – it’s a bit after sunrise now.

 

I took a walk around the town in the early morning.  This didn’t really help me work out where I actually was.

 

Pedestrian bridge over the Todd “River”.

 

Todd River:

 

 

 

 

 

The Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world's first air ambulance, was founded in 1928 by John Flynn OBE (1880 – 1951).  This building was opened in 1939.

  

John Flynn Memorial Church, Todd Mall.

John Flynn OBE (1880 – 1951), an Australian Presbyterian minister, dreamed of a cathedral within Central Australia where people of all faiths could worship. After his death, his friends across Australia built one in his memory. It was opened in 1956, and its design was a result of a national architectural competition incorporating passive cooling, with local and national symbolism in its design.

 

Built in the 1920s as the Australian Inland Mission hospital, Adelaide House was the first hospital in Central Australia. Designed by the founding flying doctor Reverend John Flynn, it now displays photographs and implements of pioneering medical practice. At the rear of the building stands a small shed housing the original ‘pedal radio’ invented by Alfred Traeger.

 

In the late 1800s the Adelaide to Darwin Overland Telegraph Line was established to bridge the isolation and communication gap between Australian towns and cities as well as Australia with other countries. The Telegraph Station was the first site of European settlement in Alice Springs where it was in service for 60 years before becoming a school for indigenous children.

The station is now part of a historical precinct which consists of a number of telegraph related buildings, some of which have been restored.

Until 1933, the town’s official name was Stuart. Alice Springs was the name given to the waterhole that was discovered and named by Government Surveyor W W Mills in March 1871, whilst exploring the MacDonnell Ranges during the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, after Alice Todd, wife of the Superintendent of Telegraphs, Sir Charles Todd. The Alice Springs Telegraph Station was built adjacent to the waterhole. However, this dual naming created such confusion for administrators in Adelaide that in 1933 the township of Stuart was officially gazetted Alice Springs.

 

The Alice Springs School of the Air is a primary aged correspondence school that utilises various communications technologies to have daily contact with students, home tutors and teachers. The first broadcasts were made from the Royal Flying Doctor Base in Alice Springs in 1951.

 

Pub with no beer.

 

Stuart Town Gaol 1909 – 1938.

When this goal was established in 1909, Alice Springs was known as Stuart.  This is one of the oldest buildings in Alice Springs, and is now a museum.

 

Built in 1927 as a government residence, the Residency currently displays history of the region, and is a reminder of Central Australia’s brief administrative independence.

 

I hate to admit it, but this train in the Railway Museum looks very like the one Carol and I travelled on, in 1970, from Port Augusta (just north of Adelaide) to Alice Springs.

In those days, the road between Port Augusta and Alice Springs was more like a bush track, inclined to peter out or be obliterated by the wind, so we thought it safer to put ourselves and the car on the train.

On that trip, we were planning to visit Uluru, but that didn’t happen.  Now, 42 years later, I finally made it.  It was well worth waiting for.

Alice Springs 1

8th –13th June

“Impressions of Alice”

“The township of Alice Springs rests between the parallel folds of the MacDonnell Ranges like coloured gems in the wooden carrying bowl of a giant Aboriginal hunter.”  (Bill Harney, 1963, an Aboriginal man who lived in Alice Springs for a while and was the first ranger at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.)  From a sign near ANZAC Hill.

 

I arrived in Alice Springs the afternoon before my Central Australian tour, which was to begin very early (i.e. still dark and absolutely freezing) the next morning.  I had been warned that Alice Springs was potentially unsafe, with an alarming crime rate, so instead of wandering around on my own to explore, I booked myself onto a hop on/hop off bus tour, to be on the safe side (and set a good example to my children.) 

 

I must say that I found the town cleaner and more attractive than I was expecting, and never once felt unsafe.

 

The Todd River is more like the Todd Park, and I found it much cleaner and greener than I expected.  Casually and vastly bisecting the town, and studded with magnificent eucalypts, it gives a relaxed and open feeling to the area.

The Henley-on-Todd Regatta is probably the only boat race in the world which has to be cancelled if there is water in the river.

 

First stop was at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre, which advertises itself as “home to the largest reptile display in Central Australia” (I’m not sure if there actually are any others).

This young girl single-handedly took the money at the door, set up chairs, then gave a very competent and entertaining talk on the residents.  Co-incidentally, a French couple who were there, were also on my tour the next day.

 

“Terry” is an Australian saltwater crocodile about 20 years old.  He’s about 3.3 metres long and weighs about 200 kg.  We were assured that his tank was strongly reinforced.

 

Lions’ Walk, ANZAC Hill.

The bus driver suggested I might like to take this walk up ANZAC Hill, which was quite near my hotel.  I nervously enquired if it was “safe” and he assured me it was.  In fact, I ended up on the top of this hill four times during my brief visit to Alice Springs – three times walking up the track and once on the bus tour several days later.

 

Alice Springs, from the top of ANZAC Hill.

Alice Springs was much greener than I had expected.  The town’s water comes from a groundwater aquifer, and there are no water restrictions.  However, pumping water from underground rocks is expensive and energy intensive.  “Water moves slowly though rock and extracting it is like trying to drink a thickshake with a narrow straw.” (www.nretas.nt.gov.au/natural-resource-management) 

Since pumping at the Roe Creek aquifer began in 1964, the groundwater level has dropped 60 metres, from 90m to 150m below ground level.

 

As well as the Australian flag, on the top of ANZAC Hill, the flag of the Northern Territory was also flying.  It features the Southern Cross and a desert rose, the floral emblem of the Northern Territory. 

Now I know why my hotel was called the Desert Rose Inn.