The Dark Museum Off

When I started travelling, I considered museums essential destinations. I'd always had a passing interest in ancient history, so the art museums of Florence, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the charmingly run-down Egyptian Museum in Cairo took me on a fascinating journey backwards through time.

I didn't visit many museums after that, at least not many mainstream ones, as curiosity led me to develop a taste for something more niche. Over the past 18 months, I've made a hobby of tracking down museums that are sometimes sinister, mostly morbid and definitely dark.

A harrowing day out

Last time I visited Cambodia I didn't get much beyond the 15th century when retracing its history, with the exception of a small shrine I came across housing jawless skulls and other assorted bones. This time around there was no hiding from the legacy of the Khmer Rouge regime, with the country's biggest Killing Fields memorial and execution centres just a short drive from Phnom Penh.

I'd been looking forward to visiting these places, partly out of a sense of obligation to spare a thought for the very unfortunate but also, admittedly, because I wanted to see what lengths they'd gone to in jazzing things up for the sake of tourism. It's impressively plain.

While Seoul's Seodaemun Prison combines wax dummies with Halloween sound effects to help visitors imagine what being water-boarded might have felt like, and Hanoi's Hoa Lo Prison distracted me with its blatant propaganda and covert anti-American sentiments, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek Killing Fields have been left pretty much as they were found by the Vietnamese invaders, albeit with most of the dead stuff tidied away.

This cookie tastes funny

I didn't travel to Nimbin for the drugs. I was content to continue being an extraterrestrial observer of strange human customs in foreign countries and not break my non-interference directive, plus there's that arrogant part of me that likes to confound expectations by not following the crowd and doing the obvious things. Also, I don't know how to roll those funny cigarettes, it looks delicate.

But when I boarded the cramped, sweaty bus of day trippers heading from Byron to Nimbin on a cannabis cruise, an English guy started talking to me and it turned out we were the only ones who were actually staying overnight in Nimbin, and in the same place. His goal was to get as stoned as humanly possible, and it would have been impolite to just abandon him, right?

I didn't actually toke da reefer [this means "smoke any cannabis"], because smoking's pretty horrible, and the couple of times I might have tried it in university it did nothing for me. But when we wandered around Nimbin's single retail street and got harangued by dealers every five metres, I was intrigued by their mention of 'cookies.' Like when one of my flatmates made vodka jelly, the idea of eating myself stupid seemed quite funny.

I don't want Si Chang the world

I'm a sucker for an unnecessarily time-consuming challenge (examples here, here, here... actually just this blog in general), and when Thailand's wet season started to trickle away and I headed out to visit more islands, setting foot on all of them seemed like a satisfying and doable task. Then I found out there are 1,430 of them and it didn't.

I have all the time in the world, which in practical terms means as much time as a 30-day visa waiver gives me each time I come in and out of this country for the remainder of my mortal lifespan. Forever doesn't seem so long any more, especially when you take into account that I like to broaden my horizons and do different things now and again with this finite span.

All things considered, I've probably only got eleven or twelve Thaislands left in me. I'd better make them good ones. Koh Si Chang was a pretty good one.

Say Hoa Lo to my little friend

Sometimes you can learn too much about a country and lose those initial, innocent, ignorant impulses you might have had back when you weren't burdened by knowledge and experience.

I was in South Korea for over a month before I remembered 'oh yeah, this is that place they're supposed to eat dogs,' and it wasn't until my sixth day in Vietnam when I visited Hoa Lo Prison - which the incarcerated United States Air Force POWs sardonically nicknamed the 'Hanoi Hilton' - that I recalled 'oh yeah, there was that whole war thing...'

It's not like I hadn't seen 20,000 terrible films about it, all admittedly from the American perspective (though rarely with a positive outlook about the whole thing). So I was keen for the chance to redress the balance and see events portrayed from the other side of the conflict.

Though I wasn't quite prepared for the level of selective editing involved. This museum's white-washed trip down memory lane is the most darkly amusing cover-up I've seen since I visited the Korean DMZ and learned about the North's childish excuses when they were caught digging infiltration tunnels to the South. I may not be a historian, but my dad's a farmer and I know the smell of bullshit.

The tale of Mr Toilet

심재둑 was born in a toilet.

The other children used to tease 재둑, calling him 'Mr Toilet' and worse names that are much too rude to write down in a children's book.

'From toilet originated; you be faeces!' one cried.

'Will show them!' sobbed Mr Toilet. 'I am becoming Suwon mayor and be construction house in shape as toilet. At I am died, Mr Toilet Museum is be special legacy.'

So Mr Toilet did become mayor, and he did build a house, and it was the most toilet-shaped house in the whole world! (Until Dubai decides to build one, like they ruin everything).

And when Mr Toilet died in 2009, his house was converted into a museum where it stands to this very day.

Mr Toilet's body was not flushed down the toilet. That would be inappropriate, have some bloody respect.

Buk, Buk, Bukchon

I failed again today. It's nice to be back on form after the uncharacteristic success of the used panties vending machine quest and Geisha hunt. That thing I said about Korea not being the easiest country for tourists is holding up - they're even going to the length of closing down tourist spots without letting anyone know. That's commitment!

So I didn't get to visit the egg-di-frying ('edifying') Museum of Chicken Art in Bukchon today, but as I'd already worked out that egg-cellent ('excellent') pun title in advance, ei (that's German for egg) had to find something to make the trip worthwhile (like a worthwhile egg. Watch Histor's Eye for more desperate egg puns).

Despite signs like this one, I couldn't find the museum anywhere in the neighbourhood and the pretty waitress in the cafe nearby told me it had recently shut down. Who'd have thought that basing a museum entirely on poultry-related art wasn't a recipe for success? This waitress was also one of two people who told me I was a 'very handsome guy' this afternoon, which is probably more times than this has happened in my entire life before, so I recommend that any single men visiting Korea don't bother shaving for a month, don't comb their hair and walk around in a slightly sweaty T-shirt, it seems to do the trick.

Though she did specifically single out my big nose and big ears as particularly attractive features, so maybe she was taking the piss. Or maybe these women are bored of preened Korean men and want a bit of rough? Whatever the reason, I was too chicken to do more than just laugh about my bad Korean and bid them 안녕히가세요.

Speaking of chickens, here's what you can do in Bukchon when the museum's clucking closed.

A childish day out again again again again again again again again

In retrospect, this looks less whimsical and a lot creepier than intended

I didn't have any kind of plan when I took the JR train to Ueno, feeling restless and assuming there'd be something to occupy me there.

It didn't take too long before I ran into some critters that inspired me to visit my sixth zoo in a year and a half (not counting sanctuaries and wild critters). By myself. With lazy beard growth and wearing a T-shirt of an infectious parasite. I wonder why all the parents and school group supervisors were making sure the kids kept their distance? Just courtesy, I guess.

Another totally disgusting museum

Another ghastly blog you shouldn't read if you're squeamish or were planning on eating today, about another macabre museum I urgently needed to visit as soon as I read about it.

The assorted tapeworms and other organisms displayed at the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo aren't as shocking as the deformed baby corpses and crushed skulls of Bangkok's Siriraj Medical Museum, but this research centre still probably isn't a place to take your kids on a family day out in Tokyo. Unless it's me as a kid.

Eye Kandy

Despite receiving a typically bad first impression of taxi drivers in Sri Lanka when a driver charged me 100 rupees to retrieve my own bag from his vehicle (to be fair, I had left it on the seat and he'd had to drive back around the corner again to find me, but still - prick), and generally having to shoo away more relentless taxi touts than mosquitoes in this country, I gave them a second chance by arranging a tour of Kandy and the surrounding area with a more reputable driver.

I was hesitant because I don't feel comfortable having my own dedicated driver, the same way I don't like people serving me in restaurants (you can cook the food, but at least let me do the washing up). But I wanted to see as much as I could in as short a time as possible, so as with Siem Reap and Jeju Island I ticked off a week's worth of blog material in one day, giving myself plenty of free time to lie around in my pants reading novels about Benedictine monks and eating ginger nuts. Makes you wonder why I complain so much, doesn't it?

This was supposed to be a day tour, but because I'm an efficient, unfeeling android with no interest in lingering in places beyond the time it takes to collect sufficient photos to document their existence in this blog (and because I passed up the factory visits after experience in Egypt taught me most of this time would be spent politely declining samples in the stores) we were finished by lunchtime.

My wife loves your city

If there was anything worth showing you in Colombo, you would have been spared that terrible joke. Unfortunately, there really isn't.

There are some quite attractive colonial buildings that seem symbolic in their decrepitude, and it's always nice to see colourful back-street temples demonstrating the diversity of religions, but it's nothing I haven't seen before in Malaysia. I didn't enjoy the compulsory sightseeing walk-about as much as usual, as I often had to make a choice between walking in the crazy road or walking through actual shit and around dead birds being eaten by their friends. Plus, this is Sri Lanka, so there were people pretending to give a shit about me because their brother owned a car rental company.

Staying in the Little India areas of Malaysian cities and Singapore gave me a taste (sometimes literally - yum, yum) of what South Central Asia might be like, but if it's this bad in Sri Lanka I'm now almost convinced I don't want to go to India. As remarkable as its jungles, crumbling ruins and wildlife would be (my idea of India is a little outdated and is largely based on The Jungle Book), I don't know why I'd choose to subject myself to more terrible cities like this when I could be relaxing on some pleasant island or something instead. I have the choice.

At least spending the morning in Colombo made me appreciate my little resort town more, relentless touts and all. And I did enjoy the train journey along the coast - even cheaper and more rickety than Thailand trains - which makes me optimistic that I might get away with never having to use the roads while I'm here. Yeah, right.

Siamese twins

When does a model village stop being a quaint tourist attraction and require its own postcode? When does a doll's house stop being a creepy kid's toy and become a viable dwelling requiring planning permission and a broadband connection?

I'd heard about the Ancient Siam open-air museum on previous visits to Thailand, but I wasn't prepared for the scale of its reconstructions of significant historical landmarks from around the country, which in many cases are 1:1. When you build a faux-dilapidated facsimile of a temple or shrine as close to the original structure as possible, what prevents that from being equally revered? The virtues of age and location?

I was a fool to spend two months travelling around Thailand last year, when I could have just cycled around the world's largest open-air museum and ticked off the sights in one afternoon. Plus, some of them are painted in gaudy colours, which is more eye-catching than just loads of old brown. Bo-ring!

I've made it even less hassle for you - you just have to look at my photos and you've basically done Thailand. Is there a difference? I don't understand anything any more.

Bye bye baby

I'm back in Bangkok for a bit, before taking another flight at the end of the week. For all its faults, Bangkok is a much better place to kill a few days than Kuala Lumpur, where I would have been otherwise, and this at least gave me the chance to tie up a loose thread from my last visit here in November, when the morbidly fascinating Siriraj Medical Museum was closed following the flooding. It was worth the wait.

Bangkok is many things to many people - for some it's a sex tourism paradise or a convenient place to get a realistic-looking driver's licence without having to go through the tedious process of learning how not to run people over. In my case, it largely serves as a Deep Space Nine-style spaceport connecting my trips around various parts of Asia - a Bangkok Nor, if you will. If you're such an irredeemable nerd that you understand the reference.

This city isn't so renowned for the quality of its museums, but what they may lack in educational value and dinosaur skeletons they make up for with a commendably non-squeamish approach to death and deformity. Readers of a sensitive disposition and pregnant women (or anyone who doesn't really like seeing dead babies) might not want to read more. Seriously, this could be a bit upsetting.

Well, Fukuoka too!

Fukuoka Tower: an extended middle finger across the Korea Strait

I like Douglas Adams, but I never got into his 'Meaning of Liff' thing, which tries to appropriate existing place names to stand for a feeling or mood. It always felt to me like a radio show's novelty phone-in segment that went too far. But of all the places I've visited these past 18 months, Fukuoka comes the closest to encapsulating the experience in the name.

When I get back on board the Beetle ferry and the harbour fades into the mist, it would seem entirely appropriate to exhale an exhausted, drawn-out 'Fuk-u-oka.'

As soon as I arrived I was interviewed at length by customs, which hasn't happened since Israel. They even went through my notebook (what next? Checking through this blog? I'm screwed) and laughed at some of my pathetic attempts to copy kanji writing. I think they were just keeping themselves busy, really - there were only two other foreign arrivals on the boat and they were just boring Koreans, not exotic like me. But combined with the rain and getting lost down confusing alleys (even by Asian standards), I didn't have a particularly warm welcome in this country. Which was a shame, as I'd been looking forward to visiting for a long time.

Unless things turn around, it's looking like Japan will be one of those 30-day countries, rather than a let's-hang-around-as-long-as-the-entry-stamp-lets-me-so-I-don't-have-to-make-decisions one. I miss my Korea and my Koreans.

A childish day out again again again again again again (again)

If you're a white person, you might find it difficult to tell the age of people from East Asian countries, with their clear skin, cherubic complexions and more conservative style of dress compared to the wrinkled, sagging monstrosities you get back home.

I've met a lot of Koreans recently, who not only looked young, but bloody were, thanks to the Korean government offering extremely discounted rail travel to encourage foetuses to explore their country during study breaks. After a year and a half spent mostly in hostels where I usually represent the mean age, it was a bit of a shock to realise none of the people around me were even a glint in their father's cōleī when I was already at the height of my writing career. To rub it in, one person I met was even called 'Im So-young,' which is like a poor quality racist joke that actually happened.

If you're looking for ways to feel like a strange old man, I strongly advise hanging out with people seven years your junior. At least in Korea you have the advantage that age is counted differently than in Western countries, so when someone tells you they're 21 you can pretend they're actually 21 (and just on the border of socially acceptable), and not actually 19. If the alternative is spending my time with racist, out-of-work English teachers my own age, I'll take the local kids every time.

Gyeongju glad the banana's gone?

Another week, another increasingly unpronounceable Korean city. After the limited appeal of Jeonju's Hanok village, Gyeongju's abundance of mountains, valleys, forests, lakes, tombs, temples, grottos, shrines, pagodas, pavilions, parks, monuments, museums, villages and archaeological sites was a little overwhelming, especially as I'd originally only planned to come here on a day trip from Busan. What a naive, handsome fool.

I only managed to see about half of what I wanted, but I guess that's just more reasons to think about returning to South Korea in the future - always leave 'em wanting more. Or at least take advantage of my borderline obsessive compulsive need to catalogue everything.

Hanok, knock. Who's there? Jeonj. Jeonj-who? Correct

Jeonju (전주) then - another historical Korean city, another nice morning of sightseeing and another tedious afternoon bent over my laptop and a crumpled tourist map double-checking whether 'Gyeonggijeon' has a double 'g' with my increasingly poor eyesight and wondering why I didn't just go to Wales or something. Oh wait, that would be even more frustrating - at least the Korean language has vowels.

Jeonju was the capital of the Hubaekje Kingdom (900-936 AD), making some of it very, very old. Hanok Village is the nice bit, filled with old-style slopey houses (in an architectural rather than a racist sense), optimistic art shops and nice hills with occasional dead stuff. It's sort of the Malacca of South Korea, and like that Malaysian city I ended up killing more time here than my patience would have preferred, as I couldn't afford to leave. There are worse places to get stranded.

Seoul survivor

I didn't spend all that much time in Seoul - certainly not as long as the inexhaustible supply of Seoul/soul/sole puns would allow. But while I was here, I had to check out some of the city's bleaker historical sites, if only to counteract the torrent of cute cartoon optimism in every shop window.

The DMZ made me angry and frustrated, but Seodaemun Prison made me feel depressed and (this is the strange part) like I was back in the UK (specifically England), more so than anywhere on my trip so far. This was probably due to a combination of the first snow I'd seen in two years and the functional architecture resembling my secondary school. Which was also built to imprison free spirits and torture independence activists - ha ha ha ha ha! No seriously, my school was a Japanese labour camp.

oh! NO~

I was a little surprised at the existence of Jeju Love Land on Korea's favourite holiday spot, Jeju Island - though the focus of this sculpture park and 'museum' is pretty much squarely on titillation (particularly penisillation) rather than anything too extreme. Despite their reserved manner, Koreans aren't compulsively puritanical, and this attraction isn't any more outrageous or corruptive to the young than the average British joke shop or seaside tat stall at Blackpool - until it dawns on you just how heterosexual the whole thing is. To a fault.

For a place so obsessed with cocks and presenting a softcore smorgasbord of sexual practices from around the world, the very notion of same-sex love or activities is glaringly omitted to the point of denial or ignorance here - as in pretty much all aspects of Korean life and culture. The light-hearted yet confusing and potentially offensive sign pictured above is practically the only admission that these sort of practices exist, and the caption doesn't seem particularly flattering. Though the inclusion of a heart confuses matters - are they admitting that romantic love accompanies this disgraceful act, or was it just a lazy choice for fig-leaf-style censorship?

(To avoid ambiguity, other signs depicting 'hilarious' sexual incidents all featured both a man and woman, the latter of which can be identified by being pink and having long hair like all women do).

Jeju - The Isle of Wight of South Korea

The language barrier and ethnic homogeny clearly delineate South Korea from Great Britain, but in other ways this East Asian republic isn't a million miles away from England (actually, only about 5,400 miles). Take a look at this scene from Jeju Island, for example:

How am I managing to survive in such an alien environment?

South Korea is also roughly the same size as the UK and even its coastline doesn't look all that different, with South Jeolia jutting out to the south-west like some kind of Cornwall, and South Chungcheong basically being Wales. I guess that makes North Korea the Scotland of Korea? I can't see any problem there.

That means idyllic and slightly backwards Jeju Island, the southest you can get, is an ideal candidate for the Isle of Wight of South Korea - not its Hawaii, as the tourism industry wants you to think. Anyway, what's Hawaii got that the Isle of Wight hasn't? Exactly. Stop talking, I already said 'exactly,' which closes the debate.

Here's more stuff from Jeju.