London with Mark

After a platform full of hugs from Nana and Keith, we boarded the train into London, Vauxhall Station. We were to meet Mark at 6pm, the waiting was very cold. the whole London area has been hovering around 0 degrees for days. Mark arrived and we all had some quick hello shenanigans, before dropping our bags at his flat and heading out to a comedy night: "Four Kiwis walk in to a bar ...".


We were a little late and managed to get guided to the last table available, right at the front, while the MC had a few laughs at our expense. We were within licking distance of the MCs shoes!

MC: Why are you late?
T: Ur, I'm from New Zealand and got lost !?
MC: Haven't you got an A to Z yet !?!
...
(Should just keep our mouths shut and smile...)

We caught up with Cat, one of Toolmans' mates from Wellington at the first intermission. She had told us about the night on facebook. Was a crowd of about 80% Kiwis, and the rest were Aussies, South Africans and only a few locals. There was a lot of Ponamu and Paua jewelery in the room.

(start of part 2)
MC: Hey!? where did the 4th person come from on that small table... Did you meet her at the bar ?!?!
T:
...
(Don't give them any bait... )

Was really great to be around so many Kiwi voices again. Great to see you, Cat! Toolman's friend and first flatmate ever (Ben Hurley) was on stage and on form, as well as lots of other talented Kiwi comedians. Very funny! Like Cinderella, we had to leave at 11.45pm as the tubes stop at midnight. Would have like to have mingled a bit longer, but we were super tired by now anyway.

We met up with Toolman's mate Jono in Camden Town and looked around the markets. Jono was looking for possible wedding presents, and we were just looking - the conversion rate is killer on NZ$ !

We lunched down at the cheap markets food hall, then went for a look through Hamleys, a huge toy store in London. As it was just before xmas, the place was busy. Its really cool how there are lots of demonstrations of the toys so you can try before you buy. We also looked around the huge Mac store and fondled all the new electronics... mmmm. We had a coffee under St. Pauls Cathedral, and planned to meet up again in Amsterdam. Jono has a few kiwi friends living there, always great to know some residents :)

So yes, this leg of the trip is all about seeing friends who are living in London. We met up with one of Toolman's old workmates, Dan and his wife, Nikki. He is now working in London building web applications, so geek conversations were inevitable. Had a nice lunch in Covent Garden, which has no actual gardens, all you antipodeans! After lunch we nipped around the corner to the SANZA shop (South African NZ Aus) which has all our favorite snacks ...



Except one! Luckily we got sent some Pineapple Lumps from back home - thanks! After loading up on Perky Nanas and Squiggles, we ended up by going down Tottenham Court road looking for a video-Skype capable laptop (for the xmas Skype calls...)



Awful photo but its the only one of all of us! We looked in lots of shops and most shops laptops were pretty similar in price/performance. After much deliberating, Toolman finally chose one an Acer 3680 laptop. It is a factory refurbished new(esque) laptop with Windows Vista, 1G ram 1.6MHz Celeron and a one year warranty, and it cost about £350 incl VAT. Very cheap really! Princess will inherit it once Toolman buys a nice new iMac 24" (When he has a job).

Toolman also got in contact with his cousin* Cristy and organised to meet up for a meal. She chose an awesome restaraunt: Eat and two Veg
on Marylebone (like the Monopoly street!). We met at the tube station and Cristy brought her friend JJ along too. The all vege menu was excellent, as were our faux-cheeseburgers! After an afternoons chatting over our meals, we had walk in the park in the quickly fading sunlight. We ending up needing to jump a fence to get out!

* We talked about the technical relationship and its tricky: Toolmans step fathers' cousin is what relation to Toolman? Step-second-cousin? Meh, close enough.

We stayed up very late the next day (xmas eve) talking to family and friends on Skype, and eventually the clock rolled over to midnight. That meant that technically it was xmas, and we were late by NZ standards who are 12 hours ahead. Therefore, most Kiwis were well on their way to xmas lunches and drinks! We ripped open goodies that had been posted by our families and friends - thank you all!



There is lots more photos of us presenting our pressies if you click on a photo, you will go to the photos website (As always). So many goodies!



Mark surveying his many treats.



Toolmans awesome xmas tee shirt. Merry xmas and thanks everyone!

We planned a massive xmas lunch ourselves, but Sainsburys closes at 6pm xmas eve and we were a little late in the actual preparation. Thankfully the convenience store had Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes! We got up xmas lunchtime and prepared a feast of roast potatoes, Yorkshire puds, veges, and some chicken for Princess and Mark.



Yummy! The afternoon flowed with more eating, wine and duty free vodka, shenanigans and ...



... and some emailing. Princess looks tougher, somehow, in this picture?

We also met up with Katie, our old flatmate and previous caretaker for Boswell (who has since retired to Napier to live with Princess' Mum, Sue)... twice. The first time Mark and us met Katie and we all went through the Tait modern gallery. The Art was nothing to talk about, but the view from the cafe was pretty!

The second time just us 2 met Katie for a meal out in Putney Town. A nice Italian meal. She has just started a new job at Network Rail. Hope its going good! We talked about how cute Boswell is, and about Katies' secret business plan. All we can say is: you customers out there, get ready!



Some pizza, some pasta and a bottle of wine later, we all walked back to the train station in the cold. Back to our warm beds. Staying with Mark was so convenient, we managed to catch up with so many people!

We also met up with Emma and her partner Ray at Covent Gardens, and had a nice lunch. Emma is one of Princesses' Uni friends. As we are all Kiwis we decided to (re)visit the SANZA shop - Chambers bought some Marmite, Perky Nanas and Burger Rings, and we stocked up on Squiggles. We then went to bar called the Walkabout (yes Aussie bar) and had a Snake Bite for the first time. A Snake Bite is is raspberry cordial and beer mixed together, not too bad, but we don't drink much beer anyway.

We both wanted to go to Abbey Road to look at the Beatles old studio, and check out the famed zebra crossing. Emma and Gabrielle, friends of Princess from Auckland, were keen to come along.



So we met up with them! Inside the shop behind was all manner of Beatles memos: Cups, postcards, pens, books, caps ... you can imagine... Toolman grabbed a coffee from the shop and we headed around to Abbey Road.

The first thing about that crossing is that every other tourist wants the same photo as we did - there were lots of tourists waiting. The second thing is that there is lots of traffic on Abbey Road wanting to get past. They must get frustrated with endless groups of 4 posing in the middle of the road. Oh, and its the middle of winter so, unlike the album cover, theres no leaves on these trees.



We quickly abandoned hope of the picture, and instead settled for a quick snoop about outside the studio. This was what we saw on the wall outside:



This is the post outside Abbey Road Studios graffiti and all. Not sure how often it is repainted, but I think that it gets pretty heavily graffitied, so probably quite often.



This is the studio. We didn't see anybody famous coming in or out, and didn't feel stalker enough to hang around for anyone. Who would be recording there nowadays anyway? We ended up looking around London and having lunch ...



... near Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus, in a backstreet pub. This self portrait is typical of the artists style. Its great how London has high street shops and back streets with all the pubs and cafes etc. We chatted over a quality pub meal and a bottle of wine.

We went with Mark to the Science and Technology museum to look at all the interesting stuff. This below is one of the first generation Apple computers in its wooden box. Look how happy Mark is - he doesn't know that it can't run OSX!



There was collections of all sorts of technology: from white ware to computers, cars to space rockets. One of Toolmans favorite exhibits was ...




... this - A very famous mk1 Mini demo car. It comes from the 1959 car show, the year the Mini was first released. There were 4 floors of interesting exhibitions.

That night we went out to a farewell party for one of Princess' friends, Trudy, who has been living in the UK for the last couple of years. Trudy and her boyfriend are now heading to live in Australia. It was good to catch up with her, as well as a couple of other friends from Wellington: Alesha and Jess. We had a few drinks and a nice catch up on a bar in Fullham before heading home to meet Mark.

For New Years we ended up just having some drinks at home, and heading out to one of he bridges overlooking the London Eye to see the fireworks.



London's streets were thick with people, and the banks along the river were busy. As new years arrived, we cheered and yelled ...




And then we went to bed. Tired! What oldies we must be.



We went to see Westminster Abbey, and Big Ben and the parliament buildings.



No photos were allowed inside the Abbey, but it is beautifully architected and decorated. The floors are inscribed with tombstone messages and memorials for many royal, saintly and noble people.



Toolman snuck a single photo. The stained glass was beautiful, and many tombs had beautiful carvings on top.

Ali, Marks flatmate, had a birthday early in the new year. Toolman tagged along with Mark. After a warm up round at a vodka bar, we had some lovely Thai food, and a good time was had by all.



Toolman had to leave early as we flew out the next morning - next stop: Amsterdam!

Lancing, England - Nana!

This post is late in the making, but as of post time, the countries between Laos and Amsterdam have already been visted: Laos, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, (back to) Thailand, India, and so the story picks up on the plane from New Delhi. We are now in Amsterdam.. will be up to realtime, and fill in the missing countries asap...

Having finally made it aboard a flight to London, we sat back and played with the new planes media screens in front of us. The plane had an index of 50 odd movies that you could look thru and watch, pause, ff and rewind as you pleased!. Very cool, and lots of new releases: The Simpsons movie, Transformers, Ratatoullie. Apparently the plane was only a few weeks old, so it was all new and shiny. Very nice.

As we were getting closer to London, Toolman mentioned to the indian guy he was sitting next that we were going to Lancing, and he offered us a lift from the airport out to Crawley, which is quite close. Saved us lots on public transport, as well as time. We have been up for about 30 hours, so navigating unknown public transport can be hard work. It was also incredibly cold, so it was nice to be able to sit in a nice warm car with the heater going.

So thank you Gerdeep from Gatwick airport Engineering division, your lift was very useful :)

After arriving late to nana Wins house, we slept in the next day to recover, and emerged around time for the sunset - gosh its early in London! It starts getting dark around 4.30pm, even earlier some days.



We managed to catch this sunset, which was beautiful. I think Nana got a picture on her camera too. We also headed down to the local supermarket to get some groceries...



...only to find that they sell V! Couldn't be found anywhere in Asia that we saw, but we have been missing it. Just look at Princess' excitement!

We also spent some time with Catherine and Keith, who took us out shopping down a high street with lots of charity shops. We managed to score some cheap clothing, and we needed it because it is soo cold here! We both got winter coats made in Vietnam, but posted them to Marksy in London, so we haven't picked them up yet! The shopping was really useful (Thanks). We might have frozen otherwise!

Nana asked us to get down the decorations from the attic and decorate the lounge, so we set to work preparing and decorating the tree and walls. Streamers were hung, lights were strung and the tree was tinseled, baubled and set!



And here is Toolman and Nana surveying the result!



The whole family had an (early) xmas dinner feast, including roast, chops, pies, veges lots of roast potatoes (for Toolman and Keith) and we rounded it off with a flaming xmas pudding and custard.... mmmm!



We passed around a couple of presents, and took the obligatory group photo: say cheese everyone!



Catherine and Keith also brought over a computer so that we could watch the pictures and videos we have taken on holiday so far. We spent lots of time looking at the pictures available on the blog (and flickr), and other videos yet to be put online.

The 5 days we spent in Lancing were really welcome after the madness of India. The simple joys like making your own food exactly how you want, and not having to move rooms is a welcome change! It was also really nice to spend time with Toolman's Nana, as well as getting time to spend with Catherine and Keith.

Cambodia: Phnom Penh Day 1

Leaving Saigon with the Dutchies , we took a bus to Phnom Pehn in Cambodia.



As we crossed the border, the landscape and road got a bit rough. Much of the highway was mud.



The rubbish in the towns was bad. There are lots of accumulating piles on the side of the road and in the waterways. The bus dropped us off in the middle of town, and we spent the rest of the afternoon finding suitable accommodation to relax in.



The next day, we hired a taxi to take us to an important Museum in Phnom Phen.



The local taxis around the city look like this: A motorbike and a 4 seater trailer. The motorbikes have very low torque, so are very slow to take off, The bikes braking system is inadequate for such a large weight so the ride can be hair raising!



This is the destination; Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.



This former school was used by the Kymer Rouge to imprison, torture and kill their own people. If you haven't heard the story, here is an abridged quote from Wikipedia:

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people or 1/5 of the country's total population (estimates range from 850,000 to 2.5 million) under its regime, through execution, torture, starvation and forced labor.

Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society — a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 1.75 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to eliminate anyone suspected of "involvement in free-market activities". Suspected capitalists encompassed professionals and almost everyone with an education, many urban dwellers, and people with connections to foreign governments.

The Khmer Rouge believed parents were tainted with capitalism. Consequently, children were separated from parents and brainwashed to socialism as well as taught torture methods with animals. Children were a "dictatorial instrument of the party" and were given leadership in torture and executions.

1/5 of the population killed in 4 years, with young children being indoctrinated into the killing. The original ideal was to killing the Bourgeois class to return to an agrarian country - A very twisted view on Marxism. This killing degenerated into near indiscriminate killings. Again, Wikipedia article:

During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who had the potential to undermine the new state (including intellectuals or even those that had stereotypical signs of learning, such as glasses) and killing many others for even minor breaches of rules.

This prison served as one of the torture and prison facilities for this atrocity. This is the entrance on the ground floor.



The room had brickwork forming small cells.

Each room was very small, and had no amenities at all.

"The pain of Mans inhumanity to Man is unbareable (unbearable)"

-- Wayne --

There was evidence of the violence that went on here.

The next floor had wood cells, but was still the same sad story.

Woefully small and bare cells.



The top floor, which used to be a holding pen now has photos and stories of people who lived through the horror.

The top floor also looks over the grounds.

From this main building, we headed down and walked around the grounds.



There are memorials marking the loss of life suffered here.

This annex room housed one of the last unfortunate victims.

The room still has the same equipment seen in the picture on the sign. These bed were used as torture racks for waterboarding, electric shocks and other cruel and inhumane things.



This room also has a picture of how it was found. Awful.



The final rooms we visited were a museum of the pictures kept during the Persecution and Genocide.



The Khmer Rouge kept detailed photos and documentation of the prisoners. There were many walls of montages bearing witness to the scale of the atrocity.

Words to not convey the sadness of this insanity. The only thing we can do is never forget the history and learn from it.

The Museum was interesting and horrifying in equal doses, so we decided that we needed recover by going for a nice walk through some of the parks and temples in the center city.

Still with the Dutchies! It was a really hot day, and the midday sun is particularly warm.

This park fronts a large temple, which looks quite cool.

Up close, the temple is ornate.

The trees surround the temple, and the shade is welcome given the heat!

For the afternoon, the Dutchies left us to it.

This is outside the the Royal Palace, a garden and building complex denoting the royal abode of the Kingdom of Cambodia. We queued up in appropriate attire, as it is a holy site.

We got into the Garden complex. This is the Chan Chhaya Pavilion, the same building as shown in the previous photo. This photo is taken from the other side.

The gardens were well maintained.

The gardens were also very pretty, with lots of manicured plants.

Tricky!

Balls.

Beautiful flowers.

This is the Throne Hall, the official seat of power.

The back of the Throne Hall.

In the foreground, a small model of the Silver Pagoda which also resides in this complex. Behind it is a large Buddhist Chedey - the same thing as the Thai Chedi seen in many temples.

The Enlightened One who sits under a tree and meditates.



This impressive altar has a lotus flower at the top.

It also has serpent dragons guarding the base!



There was also this model of the Angkor Wat. It was a mini version of the whole temple complex that we were going to see in the flesh when we travelled up to Siem Reap.

Thats an impressive model, the real thing is going to be spectacular!



Phew its been a challenging and hot day - Toolman looks pooped!

On the evening menu for Toolman was one of Phnom Penh's specials: a Happy Pizza. It ended up being a novel precursor to Amsterdam.

Stay tuned for Day 2.