Best of Asia (so far): Markets

Carrying on with our favorite stuff in Southeast Asia we are going to skip a few and move on to 'best markets.'  I've always been a sucker for a good market - particularly the kinds of markets where the floor isn't crawling with rats and slick with animal entrails.  And while there are a lot of gross out markets in this part of the world there are some truly amazing ones too.

The Russian Market in Phnom Penh is labyrinthine maze where I'm pretty sure you could buy literally anything you needed - from a new hose pipe or used stereo to your weekly grocery shop and designer clothes (made during an illegal third shift at one of Cambodia's many textile factories).

The weekend market in Kuching is a wonderful outdoor affair (particularly if it isn't raining) where you can buy fresh green peppercorns for a few cents - it also has the most impressive range of fresh and dried chilis that I've ever seen.

Vientiane has lovely markets too, entire warehouse sized rooms that are literally overflowing with leafy greens, herbs, rice, onions, ginger, and coffee.  Beyond food, you can buy large bundles of silk, handwoven longyi, scarves, quilts and more. Prices are so low as to almost be offensive.

Solo in Indonesia has a terrific antiques market that is full to bursting with local handicrafts such as shadow puppets, Javanese-style masks and clay tea sets. Not to forget the amazing selection of Indonesian coffees  - I think we came home with two kilos of beans.

However, the overwhelming winner in this category is the weekend walking market in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Late afternoon on every Saturday and Sunday the
centre of this city of 160,000 people is pedestrianised and out come the vendors.  The entire city centre is transformed into a huge market covering several square blocks.  Locals and tourists alike ply the streets in search of a bargain - clothes, scarves, old jewelry, new jewelry, paintings, sketches, trinkets, textiles you name it.

Forming part of Northern Thailand's 'Golden Triangle' Chiang Mai is a hub for many indigenous tribes to come and sell their goods.  Perhaps the most well-known group is the Hmong People (who are spread over the mountainous border areas of Thailand, China, Vietnam and Laos). The Hmong played a significant role in (unsuccessfully) fighting the Communists in Laos in the 1970s - many received asylum in the US where they have formed small Diasporas - particularly in Minnesota and Northern California.


I digress. Hmong culture in Northern Thailand appears to be alive and well and they produce some truly stunning products.  I swore that Chiang Mai was not going to be a shopping expedition, but how could I pass up this beautiful bedspread - painstakingly hand-dyed with blocks?  $60 well spent, methinks.

Oh, and there is food. Lots and lots of really, really good food.

Back to Indochina: Vientiane

Anyone who has read the Great Railway Bazaar (or for that matter browsed the most recent edition of the Lonely Planet) will be familiar with the way in which Paul Theroux once famously described Vientiane: 'the brothels are cleaner than the hotels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium easier to find than a cold class of beer.' The cleanliness of the hotels is still up for debate but the heady days of post-colonial Vientiane in the 1970s is very much a thing of the past.

That isn't to say that Vientiane now lacks charm, but like Phnom Penh, the tourists have arrived and happy days are (economically anyway) here again. I had high hopes for Vientiane, visions of it having all of the charm of Phnom Penh but with fewer tourists. I was dead wrong. Vientiane, and for that matter Laos, is firmly on the Southeast Asia backpacking route. Fortunately - and in spite of the explosion of posh coffee shops, bars and cafes; the locals seem utterly unperturbed - even a bit aloof. Vientiane is so laid back and utterly unpretentious that at first it was quite inconceivable to me that this was a capital city of an entire country.

We set our sights on one of the few actual sites to see in Vientiane, Pha That Luang.

Pha That Luang is the most prominent national monument in Laos. The building seen today only dates from a French reconstruction in the 1930s, but there has supposedly been some form of temple present on the site from the 3rd century. Unfortunately, Laos has been invaded - a lot - so stuff gets destroyed - a lot.

Our first day was happily spent wandering Vientiane on foot and taking in the sites, mainly temples (interspersed with frequent Beer Lao beverage stops.)

We spent day two exploring some of the local markets a bit further afield and were richly rewarded. Not only did we return home with bundles of lovely Lao coffee and fresh green peppercorns, but the markets are almost completely devoid of tourists. All the usual South Asian fare was available: bananas, mangoes, rice, chillies of all shapes and sizes and a few oddities as well, courtesy of the French I suspect.

Vientiane has large ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese minorities, so Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing. Some friendly 20-something Vietnamese - who either didn't speak a lick of English or were far too intoxicated to remember how to do so, stopped us on our market crawl and force-fed us beer and coconut sweets. I'm sure they would have had us all evening, but we were on a motorcycle and had to make a gracious escape. We also encountered some young kids doing a Lion Dance through the market.

One of the very best things about market shopping in Laos is that while there is indeed all the usual junk - Laos has an absolute abundance of really lovely (not made in China) textiles. The amount of silk is astounding and I resisted the urge to buy some absurdly exotic silk wall-hanging (a lesson learned the hard way some years ago in Morocco when I came back with two silk rugs for the home I still don't have.)

My only real complaint - and this is coming from someone who enjoyed a truly delicious steak (for a whopping $7) at a nice little Belgian bistro - is the food. Or more specifically, the lack of proper Lao food. Burgers, pizza, pasta, sushi are all available to no end - but, except for the odd noodle-soup stand, good local food is far too difficult to come by. There are a handful of street bbqs and a few upscale Lao-fusion restaurants, but on the whole the selection is rather disappointing. We did try a sausage from one of the street food stalls, it was delicious, but we both paid for it a few hours later.

Cambodia: Phnom Penh

You'll forgive me for not getting round to this earlier, but no sooner had I sorted the photos from our trip then I was (and still am, now on day 4) struck down with a viscous stomach bug that Cambodia was kind enough to give me as a going away gift.

Dysentery aside, we had a wonderful trip.

We flew in Phnom Penh, expecting a hectic, dirty, still-recovering capital of a desperately poor country. The city is neither dirty (I think it's significantly cleaner than KL) nor is it particularly hectic. I can't quite put my finger on it - or think of a better way to articulate it, but there is a certain 'lift' that is nearly automatic when one departs and Islamic society and arrives in a Buddhist one. Even in the face of pestering tuk-tuk drivers and begging children, there is an undeniably laid-back aura that in my experience is simply non-existent in peninsular Malaysia.

I did a lot of reading about Cambodia before we came, and poor, very poor though it is (the average annual income is around $480) it is already difficult to grasp how far Cambodia has come in the past 30 years. Phnom Penh is teeming with excellent local restaurants, bars and cafes (no chains - yet, get there now!) and the Royal Palace, National Museum and other main city attractions and monuments are in tip-top condition.

Save for the number of street children and a very visible UN presence (child protection, land mine victims, human trafficking, world heritage and of course the ongoing Khmer Rouge trials) it would be just about inconceivable that that just over 30 years ago this was a country that lost 1/7th of its population to the Khmer Rogue, had more bombs dropped on it than were dropped in all of WWII, and that Phnom Pehn itself was nearly entirely evacuated, ransacked and looted.

Indeed given Cambodia's tragic recent history, we made the obligatory trip to the Killing Fields of Tuol Sleng. One of the most striking things about Tuol Sleng, like Auschwitz, is that, it is just a place. A place where people live and work - it's largely surrounded by rice paddy, and rural winding lanes; it is just such an ordinary place. Unlike Auschwitz, none of the buildings still stand, however, it does somehow feel less sanitized than Auschwitz.

The only real monument there is a tall narrow pagoda which has been filled with unearthed human remains and clothes; otherwise it's an area not much bigger than a large backyard by American standards, that has several pits and rather crude wooden signs to point out and describe atrocities or asking you, 'please do not walk through the mass grave'. They have not even paved the path around the Killing Fields - nor have they exhumed all of the mass graves (roughly 10,000 people died here) so that when it rains, bits of clothing, bone and teeth frequently come to the surface.

It was heartbreaking and grim and about all we could take. You can also visit the prison in Phnom Penh, Prison S-21, the most notorious of the Khmer Rogue and where most people who were eventually executed (not so much executed as bludgeoned and beaten, they did not want to waste the bullets) at the Killing Fields were first held.

Having done our duty and soured our morning, we headed for the Russian Market. Like most markets in Asia - it's dank, cramped, sprawling, and full of junk - it's also full of really, really, really cheap clothes. If you look through your wardrobe, you'll probably find a fair few items are 'made in Cambodia.' And if you are prepared to dig, bargain and take a chance that it might not be a perfect fit - you can walk away with a lot of top end designer goods - for literally 90% of the regular retail value. Ian came home with $400 worth of Lacoste & Ralph Lauren shirts (real ones) for $40.00.

We also packed in a trip to the royal palace, had a nice stroll around town, a few drinks at the Foreign Correspondents Club and ate plenty of delicious food (avoiding the platters of deep-fried spiders though!) The food in Cambodia really is terrific and in Phnom Penh you really are spoiled for choice.

A growing trend in Cambodia at the moment seems to be 'charity restaurants' - which are really brilliant - they are proper restaurants, in fact usually very, very nice restaurants. The idea is that they take in street children and rehabilitate them teaching them how to cook, serve, host etc. All profits go to the child rehabilitation programmes and the food and service were outstanding; although, the nicest part was that all of the children (mostly teenagers) seemed really pleased and really proud to be working there - it lacked entirely that horrible patronizing, post-colonial feel.

So went our time in Phnom Penh, we both really would have liked another full day there but everyone and everything we read was so down on it that we thought a day and a half would be plenty. I suppose coming straight from the West one might find it a bit of a shock, but considering we live in KL and my last holiday was to Chennai and Delhi, Phnom Penh was indeed relaxing by any account.

I shall wrap up there, plenty more to come on the temples at Angkor . . .