Loco

In 5 days time on December 1st 2008, the Australian youth delegation will reach icy-cold Poland in time for the UN Climate Change conference. This week, we hear their tales from South-East Asia as they crossed Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam on a diet of frogs, crickets and a mysterious ‘black liquid’. Be sure to check back next week for the final installment, and for updates from the Climate Change conference.

Thailand

Oil palms give way to rice paddies and banana trees, while corrugated-iron huts stand in contrast with magnificent temples. An abundance of tropical fruits (dipped in salt, sugar and chilli), with dogs and Siamese cats roaming the street between vendors. 30 Baht (about $2.80) buys a freshly cooked, nutritious, vegetarian version of the national dish, Pad Thai… Long live the great king of Thailand, and condemnation to the corrupt President Thaksin.

Welcome to Bangkok – a place of abundance, colour, happiness, and the centre of south-east Asian tourist culture.

We were greeted at the station by a fellow young environmental advocate known simply as ‘Big’ (Being about 6 foot tall, he truly is very big for a Thai!) who was to be our guide for the next few days. He showed us how to catch local buses (and therefore removed our need for bartering with the tourist-oriented taxis and tuk-tuks), took us to the best local places to eat, booked us into our hotel, introduced us to his friends, and generally made us feel extremely welcome. Big thanks to Big!
Environmentalism in Thailand takes a different form to in Australia – they are not a high-greenhouse emitting nation, they have amazing natural places now being explored by tourism (to great economic benefit), and fertile earth to grow the abundance of food, which is affordable even for society’s poorest.

The political situation and culture (as across much of south-east Asia) is such that open, public criticism of government decisions is not widespread, and in some cases is even physically dangerous for the person issuing the critique.

Environmental issues in South-East Asia include flooding (resulting from rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers and increased downfalls in the wet season – such as when we arrived), sanitation (the water is nowhere near safe to drink), energy efficiency, future water shortage (when those rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers disappear, which would be in only a few decades under business-as-usual scenarios) and material waste.

On waste:

The Malay-Thai area is the original home of the banana leaf-wrapped rice-cake (Mmmm! Delicious!), but ‘modern’ foods are packaged in amazing amounts of one-use, disposable plastic – especially in the tourist areas. A bottle of freshly-pressed mandarin juice will come in not only a bottle, but in a small plastic bag so you can carry it more easily, and with a straw. With a grasp on the language that is limited to even less than a standard phrasebook (’Sawadi-Ka’ = Hello, ‘Kawp-Khun-Ka’ = Thank You), it is beyond my reach to explain that excess packaging is not necessary.
It is important to remember that every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today. Even if plastics break down into ever-smaller pieces, their chemical composition remains stable for hundreds of thousands of years. Small, algae-sized pieces of plastic are now more abundant in the temperate ocean ecosystems than algae itself (See Alan Weisman’s ‘The World Without Us for a graphic depiction of this), and we have no idea what the effects are.
Long live the banana-leaf wrapped rice cake – a completely sanitary, biodegradable, sustainable, convenient and interesting packaging option, rich with local culture. More of it!

Cambodia

Cambodia captured our hearts, but unfortunately not our bodies for anywhere near long enough.

Recovering from a history of landmines after the American invasion, recovery from French colonialism, and ongoing problems with traffic in drugs and child sex abuse, this beautiful country is by far the most ‘real’ place that our journey has taken us through – from the silver skyscrapers of Singapore, levels of poverty have increased up to this point, and will decrease again from here on out as we move towards Europe. It is to the people of Cambodia, and other least-developed countries, that we have the greatest obligation to act to prevent further climate change, which will only exacerbate their already unfair poverty.

This overland journey is somewhat like a chocolate sampler box of the world – we get to try every country once, but if we find a flavour that we like, you don’t have the option of staying to try some more. We have to keep going – to get to Poland by November 28th, in time for the Conference of Youth (COY) before the UN negotiations start on December 1. It’s very easy to forget as we wander through South-East Asia that we’re on our way to icy-cold Poland.

Waking up in Bangkok at 4:30am, we caught a taxi to the local train station and got on the packed six-hour train to Aranyaprathet in Thailand’s North-East. In our carriage there were easily one hundred people, maybe more. At every station, Thai street vendors jumped on the train and wandered through the carriage, offering rice and meat, or a boiled egg, or some chopped up fruit with Chilli-salt, for a few Baht each. After crossing the Cambodian border (which is a whole othr story in itself), the quality of the roads changed dramatically (or, looking at it another way, dropped suddenly to zero.) The five of us crammed into the back of a sedan for the 110km taxi-ride along badly pot-holed roads.

After settling into our hotel, and with our bellies grumbling, we set about finding somewhere to eat – this turned out to be the most memorable night of our journey so far. We were clearly in the non-touristy part of town, and the only place open at this time of night seemed to be the hang-out for taxi drivers. With even less grasp on the language here than we had in Thailand (read ‘zero’), we found ourselves a table in the near-darkness, wandered over to the barbecue, and pointed to the most vegetarian-looking options that were available. With two strict vegetarians and two freegans (’I’ll eat meat if it would otherwise be wasted.’) in our group of five, the meal was quite an adventure: rice and eggs were standard, but the adventure aspect came from a mini-shrimp salad (which Ollie mistook for grated carrot), frogs (just eat them whole), roasted crickets (actually quite tasty if you shut your eyes – very crunchy), an unusual black syrupy spirit (distilled from some random local fruit), and cigarettes which the taxi-drivers offered us. They laughed at our facial expressions as we wondered how we were meant to eat all this stuff, and toasted us repeatedly, continually filling our glasses with the mysterious black liquid. All up, the meal for the five of us was less than five Aussie dollars. Accommodation for all five of us was less than $15 for the night.

The next morning it was on to Phenom Penh by (a very hot and sweaty) bus, where we had planned to stay overnight but instead shot through to Vietnam (on a air-conditioned bus full of Chinese businessmen) that evening, allowing two days in a row to be spent without transit in Saigon. The speed at which we moved through Cambodia was upsetting for some of our crew – it was by far our most ‘local’ experience, escaping well away from the tourist route. Maybe next year, when this journey is repeated for the Copenhagen Climate Convergence, we’ll take our time more, and take a different route through Siam Reap so that we can see the temple complex at Angkor Wat, and then float down the Mae Khong (Meekong River) in a boat to Vietnam.

Vietnam

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh we had the luxury of three nights in a row in the same city. Time to explore and relax a little.

We were staying in the tourist district, with Italian restaurants, bikes for hire, and tour operators galore offering ‘local experiences’ in the Vietnamese countryside.

On our second night, on recommendation from some other tourists we’d met, we wandered down to the Mae Khong and were presented with a dazzling array of dinner cruise boats to choose from. We picked the one with the horrendous high-school marching band out the front and along with about 400 other diners, Vietnamese and tourists, had a delicious feast, accompanied by a violin-guitar duo, while the boat cruised up and down the river. This seemed a world away from eating crickets in the dark with taxi drivers in Cambodia only two nights earlier.

You can read past blog entries here.

It’s that time again! It’s time to be transported 1000s of miles to the heat, the bustle and the ‘motorised beasts of burden’ of Vietnam. This is the last leg of Lara and Tom’s South-East Asian stint, as they have recently set sail on a container ship to the United States of America.

Vietnam. I lie on my bed in the sweltering Saigon heat, a rusty old three-bladed fan slowly revolving above me. My mind conjures up images from the film Francis Ford Coppola’s and others like it, movies with which I’ve grown up, shaping my visions of this enticing land… My visions are disturbed by a strange buzzing noise. As I awake from my reverie it grows louder and louder, as though thousands of bees are heading back to their nest, somewhere under my bed.

Drawing back the curtains I’m brought rudely back into the present, looking out onto a typical street scene in downtown Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). The source of the noise is not apian but human - I gaze down upon a street full of motorbikes and mopeds, moving in a constant stream, tearing up the street like a conquering army, sweeping all before them. Honking Hondas, yapping Yamahas, screeching Suzukis, even moaning old Russian Minsks. It’s like a kind of oriental Quadrophenia.
Here in Vietnam the two wheeler is king.

Their size suits the Vietnamese - we’ve seen whole families crammed onto one bike - two adults and two kids - another, a little Honda, carried no less than five grinning teenagers. Motorbikes also function as a kind of motorised beast of burden, deployed to cart the family’s food home or carry around the tools of their trade. These doughty little vehicles seem to be capable of withstanding a sizable load - a very sizable one: pots; produce, even pigs, all trussed up in wicker baskets and heading for market.

It doesn’t matter how big you are, or how many bags you are carrying. They made easy work of my 6 foot frame, 50 pound backpack and numerous other accouterments, squeezing us all on board and zipping along the Saigon streets like a ballerina on speed.

As we tore up between the serried ranks of riders, I dug into the drivers shoulder blades and thanked the gods that helmet-wearing has recently been made a legal requirement.
But pity the poor pedestrian. For here in Ho’Ville the sheer volume of traffic makes crossing the road a risky business.

You hover nervously on the pavement, eyes squinting in the bright sunlight, trying to perceive a slight gap which might allow you to squeak across. When one appears you’re in there, dashing into the road, pausing midway to finding another gap in the other direction, praying that some evil knievel doesn’t ram into your large Western behind.

Once again, our Western frailties are exposed. We look clumsy and awkward, like babies groping for their parents. By contrast, the locals don’t find these bipedal menaces a problem; indeed they seem nonplussed at it all, casually sauntering across busy streets. A Ho‘Viller slowly strolls into the maelstrom, with barely a glance at the hordes of horsepower heading rapidly their way, and wanders out, without a scratch, at the other side.

This seems to be a blueprint for survival in Vietnam. We therefore adopt it as we board a bus heading north, pushing deeper into this this manic nation. South East Asia, as we somewhat lazily refer to it, has long been a favourite holiday destination for Western tourists.
So much so that, contrary to our experiences in China, Japan and Russia, the region has, at times, almost felt like a home-from-home, such are both the numbers of Westerners we have come across and the facilities the tourism-savvy locals have put on for their visitors.
From the dirt roads of Laos to the temples of Cambodia, from the streets of Saigon to the jungles of Thailand it is not unusual to meet a fellow Western tourist, be it backpacker or package holiday.

They travel a well-trodden path or, increasingly fly in a crowded sky, on new budget airlines (unaware of the connection between their plane flight and the damage increasingly wreaked by climate change on the places they visit).

Short on time and long on regrets, we join the herd whizzing between the main sights (albeit sticking to surface transport). Many become seduced by the places they visit and linger just a little longer, shortening their stay at their next destination, perhaps canceling it altogether.

Some, a few, don’t seem to leave at all.

We’ve come across them, Retired from the West, attached to the East. Way back, in the 70’s or 80’s they visited these places as tourists, two weeks out of Europe for a holiday in the sun. They returned home but the places they visited stuck to them like the resin of a Jackfruit.

Their lives lacking something in the West, they returned once again, to the beaches, the temples, the people, for another heady rush of the scent of the East, and became hooked. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and before they knew it they were applying for temporary residence here, renting an apartment, meeting or even marrying a local, starting up a small business. I’ve lost count of the number of guesthouses here, or tour operators owned by a German, a Frenchman or some other European.

Some of these people really go to seed in the tropical heat, driven half-mad in the by the extreme change in their surroundings, sometimes overindulging in cheap beer, cheap drugs or cheap love.

Something pops in their head as a result of the alterations to their existence and they remain suspended, neither Western nor Eastern. All have leathery skin, and a long look in their eyes…

You can read past blog entries here.

The time has nearly come again for the UN Climate Change conference.  Youth delegations from all corners of this earth will be traveling to Poznan, Poland for December 1st, to address the biggest challenge of our generation, and to try to create an effective post-Kyoto climate agreement. Although the talks are a couple of weeks away, some youth delegations are already en route.  We join the Australian youth delegation on day 39 of their epic 6 week journey, across 22,336 km from Australia to Poland, as they discuss a Singaporean delicacy; vegetarian meat….come again?

It tastes like meat. It looks like meat. It even says meat on the menu. A new wave of vegetarian restaurants has swept over Asia, but you’d be forgiven if, at first, you were confused.

If you are a vegetarian travelling through cities like Singapore, Hanoi and Beijing, you ought to ask yourself one question: If meat grew on trees, would you eat it?

Last night in Beijing, I took a trip with the gang and our guides to a local vego place. It took some convincing (I’m still not 100% sure about it), but the meat on my plate was doing its very best to be like meat without actually being meat. Unlike so called NotMeat™, the cunning cuisine on my fork actually tasted like real meat from a real dead animal.

Although, we had observed the same phenomena in Singapore and Hanoi, a few of us were still sceptical, not least of all Ollie and I, who have had people we trusted say “This isn’t meat. Honest.” To their hilarity we believed them, and we weren’t about to be red-faced again.

China, with a fifth of the globe’s population (1.3 Billion) is getting richer, whilst meat is more fashionable, more popular and increasingly in demand. Watts reports that since 1980, the average consumption of meat in China has gone from 20 kilos to well over 50 kilos per person, per year. As a country, that is “more than 60m tonnes of meat a year, roughly equivalent to 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens.” Change in meat consumption on this scale has significant consequences, but China’s taste for flesh is more than just a status symbol. Chinese naturally want a better life for friends and family, after all, 60 years ago tens of millions of Chinese people died of starvation under Mao and even 30 years ago families struggled to eat.

We, the wealthiest, live in a carnivorous world. Interestingly (perhaps expectedly), Americans eat 128% more and Europeans 83% more meat than the average Chinese not to mention other developing countries. Meat consumption is an issue of equality, but the earth simply cannot afford to have everyone eating at the high, meat-everyday end of the current consumer spectrum.

China’s demand for meat is growing and may require imports to meet demand in the near future. As comparatively self sufficient as China is, feeding a fifth of the world on less than a tenth of the arable land, most countries are expecting imports to increase in the future, adding to the food crisis and the looming food emergency.

Other well published negatives of meat consumption are already taking effect. The health effects of the fast food lifestyle are rapidly developing in China, already a major health concern in countries like Australia. Enormous quantities of costly resources, such as of arable land, water and fossil fuels are currently required to produce meat. What’s more, the growing populations of ruminant animals (particularly ones that ‘Moo’ and ‘Baa’) pose a great threat to climate stability. The meat industry is significantly responsible for anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions, the most potent greenhouse gas. As Professor Ian Lowe clearly points out, “There is not doubt that reducing consumption of meat, especially red meat, is one of the most effective things the individual can do to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution.”

So, in answer to my original question, I would have to say yes. I will eat meat from trees. After all, it tastes like meat, it looks like meat, it is called meat, it is even priced like meat! I have nothing to lose and everything to gain from my patronage of the new wave of restaurants flouting plants as meat, vegetarianism as the new black and changing the course of accelerating Juggernauts like China in sustainable directions.

More of it!
I’m off to lunch
Nic

You can read past blog entries here.

So, it’s time for another installment from Lara and Tom. This week, they have some useful advice for us regarding possible entry and exit strategies for crossing Cambodia’s borders. Entry into Cambodia, it seems, includes an official guide who accompanies you to safety…

Aranya Prathet, Thailand, to Poipet, Cambodia
We crossed the border into Cambodia at Aranya Prathet, one of Thailand’s five land border crossings. It was a very confusing process with little information and scams a plenty. Have your wits about you and don’t trust anyone.

Having been warned against taking the ‘direct’ bus from Thailand to Siem Reap we made our own way to Aranya Prathet. It feels like the end of the road with little in the way of accommodation and the dredges at the bottom of the culinary barrel (including frog, lizard and bush meat).

The border is open from 7.30am to 5pm and you can buy your visa at the border. The tuk tuk journey from town (6km) should cost no more than 50 Bhat, and make sure your driver takes you to the border and not to the ‘Cambodian Consulate’. The Cambodian Consulate is a scam. The sign and building certainly look legitimate and they do sell Cambodian visas, but after one too many “sure brother’s” we got suspicious. Only it was too late; as we had handed over $30 for a visa that we later learnt should cost only $20. The best place to buy your Cambodian visa, if you haven’t got one in advance, is from the visa booth once you have gone through Thai immigration and customs. Cambodian immigration and customs are then a straightforward stamp and enter.

Poipet is an unnerving and unwelcoming entrance to a country. After the relative ease, cleanliness and smiles of Thailand, Cambodia throws dust, ragged children and deformed adults at you. Women pull carts through a cesspool of a road piled high with rubbish and mud. Going through the Angkor towers gate into Cambodia felt like walking through a portal in to another world.

Moving on from Poipet to Siem Reap or anywhere in Cambodia is a chore. The Cambodian authorities claim to have made it easier to avoid scams by providing their own irritating touts and escorts across the border. Whether you like it or not, they’ll accompany you from Aranya Prathet to Poipet and put you on a free bus to the tourist bus terminal (about 200m), where you pay corresponding tourist prices.
It is a slow roller coaster ride on red mud, about as bumpy as the roads in northern Laos, but it is also a fascinating introduction to Cambodia. Dazzling fields of rice stretch as far as the eye can see with water buffalo wallowing, children playing and men fishing with nets all up to their waists in water. Given the country’s history it feels tropically eerie. These feelings were offset by the surreal as a man on motorbike went by with two rigor-mortised pigs, trotters pointing towards the heavens, strapped on the back.

The last part of the trip is finding your guesthouse in Siem Reap. On the city outskirts the taxi driver passes you over to a tuk tuk for the final leg of the journey. Make sure you have a hostel reservation, or pretend you have one, and insist on being taken there and not to the one where the driver receives commission. The tuk tuk ride is included in the taxi fare. Another irritating ‘official’ rides with you trying to sell tours of the temples. Ignore him too. Once settled Siem Reap is definitely worth the hassle, and the journey there is an unforgettable and unique part of the Cambodian adventure.

Bavet, Cambodia, to Moc Bai, Vietnam
Leaving Cambodia is a doddle in comparison to entry. The road from Phnom Penh to Vietnam is good and there are direct buses from Phnom Penh to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) that take six hours ($12).

There is little more to say about the crossing. It was easy. You give your passport to the bus staff and they get the exit stamp for Cambodia while you are eating lunch and admiring the bling of Bavet‘s casinos. You then get off the bus to go through Vietnamese immigration and your bags are scanned at customs. Back on the bus and you’re in Vietnam….

You can read past blog entries here.

We can’t remember exactly how it started. We can’t even recall when. It was probably on another holiday and over another pint when…I proposed the idea for our next trip: “how about going on a wee jaunt around the world…” Lara screwed up her face “…without flying?”. Her eyes lit up

Having traveled across Europe, through Japan, China, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, we join Lara and Tom as they take their first steps in Vietnam. They have traveled 17,063 miles, on 46 trains, 10 buses, 6 boats and 11 cars. (You can read previous blog entries here) Their journey into Vietnam was a doddle compared with what they faced departing Thailand for Cambodia, and so, while we wait for news of their slow travel adventures from the rice paddies and floating markets of Vietnam, we back-track a little to the Temples of Angkor, early sunrises, monsoon rain, and the trials-and-tribulations of slow-travel Cambodia style.

Crossing the border from Thailand into Cambodia it soon becomes apparent we’re in a different country. Not everything changes of course: the tropical heat is still intense; the writing just as squiggly; the large paintings along the roadsides of their monarchs with medals similarly blinged-up.

The friendly demeanor, the enticing smiles may continue, but we soon find out that these two countries share more differences than just the ongoing border dispute, (a nasty little row which has recently spilled over into out-and-out, albeit small-scale, fighting.) This current conflict is most certainly not good for business, at least in Cambodia’s tourist epicenter, Siem Reap, much-needed tourist dollars are down as visitors are scared off, leaving guesthouse owners and tuk tuk drivers like our own, the curiously-named Mr Pea, competing with too many others for too little business. Unlike Thailand, this is a country where crushing poverty is endemic and the recent past is very dark indeed. This starts to become apparent the moment we cross the border: hassle from hawkers increases; begging becomes commonplace.

Any westerner is a potential meal ticket and the locals go to great lengths to prise the much-valued dollar out of your willing hands (in Cambodia, the mighty Greenback is King; the local Rial currency used only as small change). At times it becomes just plain uncomfortable. Riddled with guilt from a day spent batting away beggars in rags and scrawny waifs we sat down for dinner at a café on the street. Within minutes they had zeroed in on us, trying to flog us their pitiful wares, surveying you with hungry eyes and making each mouthful feel unjustified. The tuk tuk drivers are incorrigible, following you into your guesthouse in a bid to secure the next day’s business: “where to tomorrow sir? Killing fields? Market?”. They usually draw the worst of my ire, but whilst you can bat them away with steely eyes and caustic curses it’s hard to deny those in greater need.

Whilst all this hassle this is often distressing, leaving you feeling powerless at best, and more often than not a cruel, cold-hearted, exploitative Westerner, there are also moments of light relief. Top marks have to go, in a very tough field, to the young lad who tried to sell us his wares whilst stood in water up to his knees in Siem Reap’s bus station during one of the frequent torrential downpours. There was no stopping this indomitable little chap. He had us in his sights and, in the pouring rain he bounded over, umbrella in one hand, fruit in the other. He danced up and down on the spot, every inch of him sodden wet yet still bearing a massive grin on his face, “Pineapple sir? Banana?”

You can read Tom and Lara’s full blog entries here.