O, the storms

Waiting for the camp to begin in Phuket, with Camila from Brazil/the United States:

• It is raining and windy and has been for two days. It is not supposed to do this on a tropical island which rich and not-so-rich people spend very much money coming here.
• At night its like the whole town of Patong is one big, insane go-go bar.
• Often we are playing cards and watching HBO in our tile-floored hotel room.
• I don't much like this island, not that I've really seen much, but I'm just spiteful (at myself) that I didn't find time to go to Krabi earlier. That said Krabi in these storms would really be no more entertaining than here. At least here we can pose for photos with topless post-op transsexuals in the middle of the street.
• Bring on the 19th.

Hangin' with Cambodian kids on the riverbank, Kampot

(in totally seperate news: I now have my first ever internet 'wishlist', which is a hilarious concept I'm sure you will agree, and you can see this tribute to consumption here)

Bokor Hill Station

On top of this quite significant mountain, surrounded in dense jungle, overhanging the southern coastline of Cambodia, sits Bokor Hill Station, a once-upon-a-time luxurious and expensive retreat location for French colonialists wanting to escape the hot temperatures of sea-level Cambodia. Sometime since the 1920s however, this whole place was abandoned and fell into disrepair, and crumbled, and grew bright red fungus on the walls. In the 1970s the whole ghost town was of great strategic importance during the Cambodian wars and was one of the last points of Khmer Rouge defence during the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, when the Vietnamese were shooting from the hotel below at the Khmer Rouge guys, who were hiding out in the old Catholic church about 500 metres away.

Perched on the hillside are many many old, falling-apart buildings (including an unfinished royal Palace, a casino, a police station, a post office...), some overgrown with jungle, some (like the watertank) looking all science-fiction and weird and others, the Shiningesque hotel especially (someone had even grafittied REDRUM on a staircase wall), genuinely spooky, even in the daylight hours.

The old settlement, scattered over the hilltop:

Bokor Palace Hotel:

the old ballroom:

Catholic church:

The view from the hotel:The old watertower:

Now I’ve made my bed, I’ll lie in it

back from Cambodia.
From Kampot (Cambodia): car (2 hours), boat (4 hours), motorbike (15 minutes), [walk across border], minibus (20 minutes), another minibus (1 hour), big bus (3 1/2 hours) -> Bangkok, all lit up and steamy. Slump onto my rock hard mattress in the bright flourescent white boxroom that smells like mildew.

Now, I am just waiting here, waiting for the IPP, truely doing nothing but waiting.

I can't BELIEVE Miss Iceland won Miss World, this is truely spectacular news. I only wish I had put money down on that race. (Although I am surprised that Miss Trinidad and Tobago didn't take the crown after her heartfelt steel drum rendition of the Titanic song during the talent section. Ha!, and hee!)