via Khmer NZ News Media
June 26, 2010
Lifeline ... fishing in the Mekong. Photo: Reuters
On a cruise through Cambodia and Vietnam, Jewel Topsfield ponders a fictional affair and countries in recovery.
I'm not even hungry the day I eat a tarantula. The Cambodians were - starving, in fact, when they were forced to eat spiders, crickets and water beetles to survive the hellish years of the Khmer Rouge. These days, however, arachnid cuisine is part of the tourism experience at Skuon - or Spiderville as it has become known - a fly-speck market town between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh famous for giving arachnophobes the heebie-jeebies.
Little Khmer girls with liquid eyes and impish grins paw at us as we are disgorged from the bus, imploring us to buy bags of pineapple or deep-fried tarantula, known as a-ping. Terrifyingly, not all are dead; the girls pluck at docile spiders sitting on their chests and furtively put them on our arms, giggling maniacally. Our expressions are priceless as we nibble gingerly at the hairy, fist-sized arachnids, deep-fried with garlic flakes. Apparently, the flesh tastes like chook but I am too chicken to venture past the crispy legs.
It is impossible to travel in Cambodia and Vietnam without realising how much of the present is haunted by the past. The dark days of the Khmer Rouge revolution and the Vietnam War - unsurprisingly known in this part of the world as the American War - are still writ large.
Sixty-five per cent of the population in Cambodia is aged under 25 because so many people were killed during the civil war. The poverty is palpable in the countryside - most of the dusty stilted houses that hem National Highway No.6 have no walls or furnishing other than hammocks. There is no electricity in most homes but the enterprising younger generation has found a way to watch television: their sets are powered by car batteries, which are collected once a week and recharged.
We are travelling in Cambodia and Vietnam with Blue Sky Holidays, an Australian company that specialises in customised tours. After a night in Siem Reap, our bus takes us to the Tonle Sap River, where we board luxury cruise ship La Marguerite, which will take us all the way down the Mekong River to Ho Chi Minh City. The ship is named after the French novelist, Marguerite Duras, whose memoir, The Lover, describes the clandestine relationship between a French girl and a wealthy Chinese man in Vietnam in the 1930s. Wooden panelling and quaint tiles onboard reference the French colonial era in which The Lover is set and the elegant vessel in which Duras returned to Paris in 1932. Indeed, when we visit the former home of Duras's wealthy Chinese paramour, Huynh Thuy Le, in Sa Dec, Vietnam - now a museum - the intricately patterned tiles are identical to those on La Marguerite.
The ship's moodily lit cabins have delicate orchids, white linen, old-fashioned telephones and a balcony nook. I sit here between excursions, hypnotised by the gentle thrum of the engine and watch the parade of pastel apartment blocks, flowering frangipani trees, corrugated-iron shacks and waving children float past.
Each night, a different cocktail is served in the Saigon Lounge: potent concoctions of rum, pineapple juice, Malibu and grenadine, or peach juice and gin with names such as River Scents and Mekong Blossom. This is generally the cue for our cruise director - universally known as Mr Smiley - to burst into a Vietnamese folk song, which segues into a rousing rendition of Elvis Presley's Only Fools Rush In.
The four-course dinners are more French-inspired than Asian, with complicated sauces and classic desserts such as baked Alaska, described whimsically on the menu as ''Omelet surprise''. After dinner, sipping icy beers, we float under a velvety sky in the swimming pool, feeling mildly guilty that we're keeping the barman awake.
The days develop a rhythm; we watch the sun rise on deck, have a smorgasboard breakfast; depart for an optional shore excursion; return to La Marguerite for a buffet lunch, another excursion or activity and then more of those Mekong Blossoms before dinner. Life on board La Marguerite is rarefied but we are also exposed to the realities of life in two countries still coming to terms with their bloody history. While docked in Phnom Penh, we go to the Killing Fields, a former longan orchard, where 17,000 people were murdered between 1975 and 1978. Most were bludgeoned to death to save on bullets. It is not the sanitised sightseeing we are used to in the West. Some of the communal graves have been disinterred; others are left untouched. Fragments of clothing protrude from the dirt while human bones crunch under foot. Other than skulls piled into glass boxes that look like fish tanks and some cursory signposting, there is little explanation of the genocide that occurred 30 years ago.
We are fortunate to have La Marguerite's Cambodian tour guide, Pharoth Sok, who tells us of his family's life during the dystopian Khmer Rouge regime. Pharoth is 27, born during the baby boom after the civil war. He had two uncles who disappeared and his mother was forced to work in the fields from 4am to 7pm, her only food a watery rice porridge. ''One night while they were having dinner, two security guards touched the shoulder of my mother's friend and said: 'We would like to bring you for re-education because this afternoon we saw you steal a mango from the field,''' Pharoth says. ''The next day, she saw the body of her friend lying in the field.''
Pharoth believes the legacy of the horror has been what he calls a ''short-term mentality'', with many Cambodians unable to look to tomorrow. He says tourism is a lifeline for Cambodia and urges us to share his personal experience and encourage others to visit.
That night, we watch an after-dinner screening of The Killing Fields - an account of the Pol Pot regime from the perspective of three journalists - through fresh eyes.
The next day is a change of pace after the gruelling Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng genocide museum. One of the two scheduled activities is a surreal towel-folding demonstration. Mr Smiley, assisted by two shy crew members, pummels the ship's monogrammed bath and hand towels into an elephant, a monkey, a cat, a turtle and, the piece de resistance, two kissing swans forming a heart in the space between them.
''Be prepared yourself for today's excursion or you will be attracted right away!'' trumpets the program for our second day in Vietnam. We are sceptical - how interesting can a tour of a brick factory be? But Mr Smiley is right: the brick kiln near Sa Dec, an architectural triumph that resembles a giant orange beehive, is fascinating. Nothing is wasted. The clay and baskets of rice husks, which are used to fuel the furnace, come from neighbouring farms. Once the bricks are baked, the ash is returned to the farms for use as fertiliser. Workers at the brick factory earn between $US4 ($4.60) and $US5 a day.
A Mekong river cruise is a fascinating blend of indulgence and eye-opening experiences. The riverside market in Sa Dec, with its pungent smells and trussed skinned frogs - their pounding hearts clearly visible with the skin removed - is too visceral for one tourist. She covers her face with a handkerchief and careens through the market, nearly crashing into a pig's head collecting flies.
Some of the Americans on board La Marguerite seem to prefer their Asian experience unadulterated by heat and dust and insects, opting out of the twice-daily shore excursions. ''Was it hooooot? Did it smell? I woulda hated it,'' they drawl when we return from our expeditions.
But there lies the beauty of life on La Marguerite - the opt-out clause.
If the watermelon-carving demonstration or the visit to the floating fish farm doesn't appeal, there is always a massage, a beer, the pool and the mighty Mekong.
Jewel Topsfield travelled courtesy of Blue Sky Holidays.
FAST FACTS
Seven-night cruises on RV La Marguerite cost from $1695 a person, twin share, with departures from Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City. Packages from Australia cost from $4395 a person, twin share, including international flights, two nights' accommodation at Siem Reap and touring at Angkor Wat, a seven-night cruise and two nights' accommodation and touring in Ho Chi Minh City. The next departure is September 3. Phone Blue Sky Holidays on 1300 665 109,
see blueskyholidays.com.au.
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