Two faces of humanity

My dear all!
Yesterday was a day of two extremes, of two faces of humanity, it was quite an experience...
We started the morning at Tuol Sleng prison (also known as S-21), a place I thought I would never set foot, and yet there I was, facing the thousands of scared faces, black and white, people looking into their horrible deaths after being imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge soldiers...
Between 1975 and 1979 over 2 million people (a quarter of the population) perished under the regime of Pol Pot. I had read about it for my course of Culture, Violence, Trauma and Reconciliation and the horrible stories and testimonies I had read all came back to me while I was standing between those walls of Tuol Sleng. After my visit I wrote a few words, that now sound very strong, maybe too strong, but still I think I want to share them:
"My heart aches, my eyes want to shut themselves, my feelings do not want to feel.
How dare these gardens be green and how dare the birds sing? Why have they not forever turned grey, dead, in honour of those who perished here?
Why does the sun still feel warm and the breeze soft? Why do we whisper, why do we not scream?
How has this city gone on after this? Is it forgotten, forgiven or forbidden memory?
My stomach turns with pictures I do not want to see, no, I want to see, no, I don't...
How can these doors, of tiny cells, now hanging open but once definitely shut, have something almost beautiful about them in the light shining through barred windows? How dare they?
How can these gardens have something peaceful when they once have been filled by screams of which even the memory can chill to the bone?
Is this a place to keep in your heart with compassion, forgiveness and respect, or is it a place to expel from your heart forever?
Is accepting and forgiving legitimate?
I. Don't. Know..."

However depressing it was, it is part of this city, part of this country, and part of the world. People have done the most horrible things to each other...they still do...But what is so incredible about Cambodia and about Phnom Penh is that it is only 30 years ago and yet the city is an exotically and lively center of life...The most bizarre smells drift by, varying from the odor of my dog when he has rolled himself in a since long dead animal, to incense and spices. On the market colorful and beautiful vegetables mix with half dead fish on metal plates, pieces of meat full of flies, smelly durians and big piles of eggs! Through all this dogs sniff, kids play, scooters pass by and people bargain. Above them one pole sustains thousands of electricity wires that in more and less secure ways provide electricity to this city. Scooters beep, cars and trucks snore, tuk-tuk drivers shout "Lady? Tuk-tuk?", tourist answer "no thanks!", kids beg "lady? postcard?" tourists turn their heads away and say "no thank you". Mobile phones ring or play the last hits on that characteristic high pitched tone, and somewhere the calm figure of a bright orange monk moves through the chaos. And somewhere in the back of your head you think: 30 years ago this city was dead, literally dead...

But yesterday night we saw the other face of humanity: We went to a modern Apsara show. The Apsara dance is the very elegant and traditional classical dance of Cambodia, but the place we went combined this with shadow theater and circus, it was absolutely AMAZING!!!! I haven't been completely mesmerized by a dance before, but this was really really good! Not all the performers were exceptional, but some of them really were :) The elegance, the strength and the way they moved...I would go again every night of this week if only they performed :)
And so it came that we rode home (I still love tuk-tuks!) with a big smile, wondering how something so beautiful and fragile has survived with so much strength.

This morning we dipped into the horrors again visiting the killing fields were too much people were killed with an ax in their necks, hands tight behind the back, knees on the dirt in front of a mass grave and blindfolded. Children were hold by their legs and smashed against a tree...
How? Why? Questions without reasonable answers...

But the city carries on with her busy life and we dived into the so called Russian Market to stroll through mini corridors packed with people and goods, happy to be in Cambodia in 2010 and not in the 1970's...
Tomorrow is our last day in this city of contrasts, Tuesday we say goodbye to Ilse who flies back while we venture by bus into the next destination: Vietnam!

Much love for you all!

Phnom Penh traffic :)

Phnom Penh from a rooftop

Royal Palace

Sterre being Zen in the tropical rain

Tuol Sleng Prison

The doors of the cells now hanging open but once definitely shut

Modern Apsara

Horrid killing fields

Russian Market

Pictures!

Tuk-tuk!

Bayon Temple

How exotic...

Nature taking over...

The beautiful Angkor Wat

Walking through Cambodia's countryside you see wonderful things

In the river at Kbal Spean

Lady? Tuk-tuk?

Lady? You want tuk-tuk? I make special price for you! Not today? Tomorrow then?
Lady? You wanna buy a scarf? Lady? You wanna by postcards, 10 for $1...
Lady? You wanna by bracelets? 5 for $1...ok 10 for $1...ok 15 for $2...
Lady? Cold water? Lady breakfast? Lady...? Lady...? Lady...?

Welcome to Cambodia!

All I knew from Cambodia was its dark past, the cruel things people did to each other here...I arrived in a sunny friendly country, with mega polite people, always with a smile, also toward each other. It gets me wondering how superficial that smile is, or whether Cambodians really succeeded in moving on. Today I heard the first reference to killing fields and the Khmer Rouge, I've been here for more than four days.

The last three days we have been busy visiting the temples of Angkor. Driving around in a tuk-tuk, or rather being driven around has become one of my favorite ways to pass the time. The rather warm and humid air turns bearable while sitting in a tuk-tuk, you can look around and never get bored, things don't go by too fast, but also not too slow and most of all...it gives the real Asia feeling!!! We had a very nice driver: Bun who brought us everywhere we wanted. The first day we visited the old city of Angkor Thom with the beautiful Bayon Temple. After that we visited several other "smaller" temples, gazing, mouth open around every corner. The heat and all the new impressions and the prospect of an early morning made us dive into our beds early. The next morning came at 4.00 o'clock as we wanted to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Although it was cloudy and there was no actual visible sunrise it was beautiful to discover Angkor Wat as it got lighter. The other positive part was that there was barely a soul inside the walls at that time. Angkor Wat is impressively big, though other temples are at least as beautiful and less intimidating :) I kept wondering how it had looked in its full glory, but somehow that seems too much to imagine...it must have been magnificent!!! (If only I had a time machine!)
When it got really warm (9.00) we got back into the tuk-tuk and Bun drove us to the Tonle Sap (Lake) which would become a special though also a bit uncomfortable experience. Vietnamese immigrants, landless and jobless, inhabit the so called floating villages on this lake. In the dry season, when there is not much water, the villages are concentrated on the lake, but in the wet season (now) the water in the middle gets too deep and they move their houses/boats to the fringes of the lake. This means that they change places and thus also neighbors at least twice a year. From the anthropological perspective I thought this is incredibly interesting and I could immediately see many possibilities for research there...but from the tourist point of view I felt terrible...sitting in a boat, being navigated past all these houses I felt like a big intruder, staring into peoples houses and into people's lives, into what I consider people's privacy. I had not really been prepared for that...
Still, it was impressive to see how these people organize their lives on and with the water. Floating goose cages were the max I thought...but also floating fish nurseries, floating toilets, floating everything!
At the end of the day we climbed a mountain to see the sunset around the temples of Angkor, something a considerable number of other tourists had done as well...

Yesterday was my favorite day! We went to a temple farther away, which means: longer in the tuk-tuk! :) just that would have made my day...but it got better...somewhere half way we had a leaky tire...Bun kicked us out of the tuk-tuk and went looking for a new tire. You might ask yourself why this is good, but it meant we had to walk for 20 minutes and that was an entire new way of being in the countryside of Cambodia! Everybody greets you with a questioning look, children wave and shout "hello" and you have time to look around, and see that ox carriage you would have otherwise missed...it made me feel like taking a month to hike to Phnom Penh (though that would be a little warm...)
We then went to a beautiful little temple called Banteay Srei. Though very touristy as well I enjoyed looking at the rich and beautiful reliefs in the red sandstone.
But the best part was Kbal Spean. The river Sien Reap runs through this mountain before getting to the temples of Angkor and the village. In some far distant past people carved gods into the stones in the river, making the water holy before it gets to the temples. It was a beautiful hike, rewarded by beautiful reliefs and the freshness brought by the closeness of the water.

After another nice tuk-tuk ride we got off again at Angkor Wat to cast a last glance at a, once again, practically deserted Angkor Wat, it was beautiful!

Today we have a day of rest, which we really need after three days of getting up early and ignoring the warmth, exploring temple after temple... tomorrow we retake the streets to see some nice stuff in and around Siem Reap and I think that wednesday we will make the journey to Phnom Penh, in search for the awful remains of Cambodian history, the remains that here seem to be silenced by the magnificence of the past before 1975...

This internet connection is too slow to upload photos, so that will follow as soon as possible...

Australia seems already a world away, although you all seam already much closer to me (in time and in space)!

Much love from a warm and sticky but beautiful and impressive Cambodia!

My final decision is maybe

Sun, sea, increasing warmth, gorgeous beaches, hours behind the steering wheel and camping in little towns: I'm on the East Coast!!!
With our Wicked Campervan that displays "My final decision is: Maybe" on the back we have been driving up the East Coast, from a rainy and cold but beautiful Sydney, to a warmer Byron Bay and further up, chasing after the sun! I won't make it too long here, but the summary is:
- Camping on nice little campgrounds, or in the wild
- Having breakfast, lunch and dinner on beaches along the way
- Seeing dolphins and wales in incredibly blue water
- Making campfires on the best campground ever
- Watching the sun rise from the ocean
- Singing very loud in the van, saying hello to all other wickets and truck drivers
- Putting fuel in the van every 300 km's because the fuel meter is broken :)
- visiting the Witsunday Islands and snorkeling between blue, pink, yellow and green fishes
- Enjoying life very much!!!

And now only a few days left until Cambodia, that feels very weird...especially the idea of leaving Australia after all this time! However economically it will be a relief to our purses :) And it is also an adventure we are looking forward to!

Cheers to you all and here are some pictures!

Sydney Opera House by night

Botanic Gardens and Opera House by Day

Sunrise in Byron Bay

Dolphins!!!

Sunny Byron Bay

More Beach

Camping

Our Camper Van

Witsunday Island

One month of Northern Territory

Dear all,
Such a long time ago...I'm sorry...but now, finally I found some time to write a blog about the past month!
Where to start...I might start at the beginning: 5 hours delay when flying from Melbourne to Alice Springs. But is that the beginning? Maybe I should start with all the stress of the last week and all the saying goodbye...but that is boring :)
So, the 5th of June Sterre, May and I flew to Alice Springs. On our way to the hostel we met Eveline, a girl from Switzerland who would become our 4th team mate. Together we hired a car in Alice Springs and drove down to Uluru, almost 500 km trough the outback. Driving through the outback was wonderful! Long highways, through a slowly changing landscape which, to my surprise, was not boring at all!
And then there it was, the big red/brown monolith, rising from the ground in the middle of nowhere, it does give a special feeling when you see it, suddenly, after a random curve in the road. Sunsets and sunrises give the rock an incredible, though very short, moment of splendor! We took a day to walk around Uluru, which was a beautiful hike in the shadow of that big red rock, although it also felt a bit intruding after all the things I learn about Aboriginal issues and Aborginal relationship to country and sacred sites. The following day we went to Kata Tjuta, less known, but at least as beautiful, a group of rocks where you can also hike and be amazed by the landscape, the colors and even some camels (!) in the distance!!!
On the 10th of June our ways parted, May went back to Melbourne, Eveline stayed in Alice, Sterre took the bushbus to an Indigenous art project north of Alice Springs and I took the plane to Darwin, to go wwoofing for two weeks.
I stayed with a lovely family, with four kids aged 2, 4, 6 and 8. There I picked pawpaws, planted zucchinis, eggplants, tomatoes and basil, played with the dogs, got completely pierced by mosquitoes, escaped a few dangerous snakes, lived together with frogs, spiders and cockroaches, played nanny, learned how to operate a wipper snipper and gazed at the sky completely loaded with stars until the mosquitoes drove me back into my caravan. Two weeks of warmth, hard work, lovely people and peace in my head, exactly what I needed after a busy semester in University.
On the 26th of June I met Sterre again in Darwin as well as Sissel. So nice to see them again! We chilled in the park, enjoyed the warm weather and exchanged stories. On the 28th Sterre and me went on a 3 day tour to Kakadu National Park which was absolutely fantastic!
During those three days we camped under the stars, cooked on the fire, hiked to waterfall tops to jump in there for refreshment, saw crocodiles, birds and of course a lot of mosquitoes and enjoyed beautiful landscapes! It was absolutely relaxing and exiting at the same time!

I was not looking forward to go back to cold Melbourne after that month of warmth everyday, but once I arrived there I felt so at home...I didn't realize I had made myself so much at home in that city until I felt how normal it was to sit in the train again, to walk those streets, see certain people, go to certain places...I almost felt like I could start a new semester there right away...but then...it was cold, there were too many plans and I'm too much looking forward to go back to Holland to even consider the thought of staying there!

And then, on the 5th of July Ilse arrived! At 5 o'clock in the morning I was trying to stand strait up on the airport to welcome her in the city that I have been calling home. The next days were very busy with everything Sterre and me wanted to show Ilse and also still wanted to or had to do ourselves before leaving. Days flew and before I realized my nose was glued to an airplane window after Holland jumped to the finale on the world cup, hoping to see a last glance of Melbourne, a glance that was stolen from me by the clouds that might have wanted to make saying goodbye easier by painting Melbourne in an unattractive grey but who only succeeded in making me sad.

Sydney was here to welcome us next, with a dazzling urban landscape, I think the prettiest I have ever seen, especially by night, when all the lights seem to mirror a sky full of stars, with the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge majestically gazing over the deep and dark waters of the bay. Although the rain pours down almost every hour of the day we managed to see the botanic gardens, visit the world press photo exposition, go to a modern art exposition on Cockatoo Island, walk through the CBD, and, of course...go to the Opera in the Opera House!!! That was really very nice :)

Today we bought a guitar and tomorrow we get our campervan, the road trip can begin! We'll try to get north of Brisbane in a few days, like birds traveling after the warmer weather, in search for sun and the good life...

Love to you all
Sara

Uluru by sunset

Walking around Uluru

Kata Tjuta

The farm

Being Nanny :)


Croc in Kakadu

Beautiful wetlands

Campfire

Top of a waterfall

And bottom of another one!

Winter in Melbourne

My beloved skyline for the last time!

Last weeks Melbourne - a combi of everything!

And than suddenly there's only a few days left, you are selling your dear guitar, thinking what to send home, what to take, what to leave, making exams, finishing papers, being ill, organizing cars, hostels, a wwoof farm, vaccinations; saying goodbye to friends and attending a whole range of interesting activities linked to Reconciliation Week...crazy!
The past weeks have indeed been quite crazy, but apart from me having quite a bad flu/cold and feeling a little stressed about organizing the coming months, I did really nice stuff!
For example, I went with Sterre and Julie to Wilson's Promontory, a national park, 2,5 hours drive from Melbourne. Incredibly beautiful! The weather was really nice, and we did a few nice short hikes, climbed a hill top, went to squeaky beach (were the white sand (quartz) makes a squeaking noise under you feet) and saw a whole bunch of kangaroos! It was really good to be away from the city and from all the uni work for a day!
And then, last week was Reconciliation Week and on friday Sterre and I went to a hip-hop thing, with three bands, all young people rapping about reconciliation, racism, and the sort! One of the bands was really good, with the guys doing incredible beat-box, dance, freestyle, etc, it was quite amazing! And monday we went to a poetry evening, with poets, singers, theater writers and our poetry-slam-performing tutor (from the indigenous course at uni). I heard beautiful things there, very powerful language, almost a bit confronting at times, but I guess that's the point of it all...I love Melbourne precisely for that, for the fact that if you feel like doing something, the only thing you have to do is look around, there's always something going on!
And well, friday my laptop goes on a journey home, three months before I follow him. It's going to be weird...we have never been apart for such a long time since we met! Hopefully our relationship will survive the separation :) But I'm going to mis him for sure...and that means that it will also be harder for me to keep in touch with you! I will try to keep my blogs going, but email/skype/facebook are going to be on low activity levels...
Well, I guess this is where the real adventure begins!!!

Cheers
Sara

P.S. Here are some pictures from Wilson's Promontory National Park


View from the hill top



Julie, Sterre and Sara enjoying the view



The hill top



This really looked like a fairy forest, because the bushes looked like trees and were around 1,5 meters high, I could practically see the fairies dancing around there :)


Squeaky Beach jump


Kangaroo family!


CUTE

Autumn in Melbourne

Wednesday, the 11th of May.
The train makes its way through Melbournian suburbs while I write something I will later type out for you if I happen to like what I wrote. The sun finds its way to the earth through big high clouds that happily spill their rain on this dry country. While the rhythmic cadence of the train makes the passengers doze off…lost in their worlds of iPhone music and window staring, trees that turn more red everyday seem to try and underscore the message the increasing cold has been trying to get through to us: the winter is coming. Besides that rather depressing message, they carry another one: three and a half weeks to go and semester will be over. Three and a half weeks…can you imagine that?!!! The downside is that I find myself swamped in essays and exam preparation. 24 hours a day do not seem to be enough to get everything done by the time trees have lost most of their leaves…
But I do fun stuff too, believe it or not! Almost two weeks ago, with a few other girls we hired a car and made a trip to Phillip Island. This island is about 2,5 hours driving from Melbourne and famous for its cute little penguins. We managed to pick the finest weather in weeks to spend a day out and thus got a lot of sun to recharge our batteries. The honor of driving was entirely mine and after my first apprehension with driving on the “wrong” side of the road, and thanks to my fabulous co-driver, I had lots of fun! It was good to drive again!
The island was prettier than I had expected it to be, so we enjoyed green cliffs, sleepy koalas, an incredibly blue ocean and gum tree forests crowded with birds and wallabies. At the falling of the night we were delighted with the slightly overrated but even though good fun coming ashore of world’s smallest penguins who, defied by intimidating seagulls and hundreds of people staring at them, gather enough courage to march over the beach and make their way into the sand dunes to spend the night. (It’s absolutely prohibited to take pictures of them, so you will have to use your imagination on this one!)
Furthermore, last Monday I had to fulfill a participant observation task, seemingly compulsory for every Melbourne-visiting-human-being: A Footy Match! Footy is Australian-rules (American) football and consists of an oval field with a lot of players who try to shoot a very unhandy bouncing ball through some poles, thereby being aloud to hit one another practically however they like, something that contributes to wild cheering of the crowd. Although the constant scoring of points (especially because one team was way better than the other) made it less exiting, in my eyes, than soccer, I ended up amazing myself with wild cheering (especially on the fights) and with having a great deal of fun during the almost 3 hours such a game takes!
Besides that, my life is colored by occasional parties and dinners, working at Lentil as Anything, some rare but beautiful sunsets at the beach, the friendly smile of my coffee makers every morning, the letters, postcards and emails from the other side of the world, my guitar, Sterre’s return from Fiji this weekend, and traveling plans!

This is how the future looks now:
May: battling towards the end of semester
June: Uluru, Kakadu National Park and two weeks of WWOOF
July: Road trip on the East Coast with Sterre and Ilse
August: Cambodia (with Sterre and Ilse) and Vietnam (with Sterre)

And this is some visual material for those who think images say more than words :)
Cheers to you all!


Sunset at the beach



Chilling on some friday afternoon



Walking around on Phillip Island



Sorry, I just have to keep posting Koalas :)



And a Wallaby!


The crew!



Beautiful coastline



And amazing weather!



Waiting for the penguins...



Sara driving Left!!!