I would gladly have given my last saved up week of vacation...

...to see this.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1120AP_Cambodia_Buffalo_Race.html

Random Cambodia Stuff

A few things I forgot to mention in my earlier posts:

Monkeys:
We saw several monkeys out in the wild, and got as close as we dared to one of them. Looked a lot like the guys I worked with in college, Macaca fascicularis, the Crab-eating Macaque. The one we saw was a male, and just hung out at Angkor Wat (maybe waiting for someone to toss him some food?) He gave the impression of being used to people, but in our lab in college, we considered them quite dangerous, so we kept our distance. (Ask me what the four rules of working with non-human primates are.)

Monkey army:
One of the reliefs at Angkor Wat is a depiction of the battle Prince Rama had with the demon king (whose name I don't remember). Prince Rama sent his monkey army (MONKEY ARMY!!!), headed by his general, the monkey god Hanuman, to battle the demon army. Lots of monkeys carved in stone, in full armor with weapons. (MONKEY ARMY!!!) This really was a lot of fun to look at. My knowledge of Hindu mythology is laughable, but now I really want to know more. Why aren't there monkey armies (MONKEY ARMY!!!) in western mythology? Huh? Why?

Birds:
There aren't any. This bothered me for awhile until I realized what was missing. Angkor is at a very favorable latitude, with plenty of rain. The jungle here should be a bird paradise, but you hardly see any. I expected to see dozens of species I had never seen before, and I only saw two new (to me) birds. And not many of those. Looking at the ruins, and the surrounding terrain, you really would expect the ruins to be covered in a foot of bird poop. But, they were quite clean (there are some bats, which we saw, and a little bit of guano.)
I suspect, but without more research can't prove, that in addition to the millions of tons of bombs we dropped, we sprayed rather nasty defoliants all over the country. Our stated purpose (well... stated once congress forced Nixon to confess that we were indeed in the midst of an illegal war on the country) was to keep the VietCong from hiding out in the jungle across the border, so I suspect that defoliants were used just as much as bombs. One suspects the ongoing chemical burden is supressing the bird population. Disappointing, since I was looking forward to seeing what a country so much closer to the equator (with so many more calories per square meter of insolation) could support in terms of bird population. Seriously, there were way fewer birds than Seattle.

Toyota Camry:
When you get into the country, and ask for a taxi, you don't say "taxi", you say "camry", and everyone will know what you are talking about. This is becuase every single car here, bar none, is a ten year old Camry. There are some SUVs, and I once or twice saw a sedan of a different brand. They all run on natural gas. I discussed this (mostly in that universal langugage, gesture) with the taxi driver, and he indicated that gasoline was way too expensive. I tried to convery to him the price of gas in America, and I now realize I told him the price per gallon, but he thought I meant price per liter. So, he thinks that gas is 10 or 12 bucks a gallon here. (Let's hope this comes true.)
If riding this road in a Camry does not convince you that your next car should be a Toyota, nothing will. I can't imagine a Ford or GM truck lasting a year on this road, and I can't imagine one of their sedans lasting a week. This Camry of his had 120k miles on it, assuming the odometer hadn't been messed with.

Currency:
The de facto currency of Cambodia is the American dollar. As such, you should show up with dollars in your pocket. The guidebooks warn you that you will get any change in the local currency, the riel, but what they mean is change in the coin sense. We always got even dollar change in dollars. I wouldn't bring too many 50s or 100s, but 10s and 20s will be just fine. Eventually, you'll get a pocketful of riel from the non-even dollar change, and this is also legal tender. Get together 4000 riel, and you have a dollar, and can afford a bottle of water.
Everything here tends to cost an even dollar. As I mentioned earlier, a bottle of water that would cost 5B (about 17 cents) in Thailand is a dollar here, and you aren't nearly as confident in its quality. It doesn't taste nearly as good as the water you get in Thailand. It claims on the label to be filtered, ozonated, and UV-treated, but it still doesn't taste so good. You don't realize it until you spring for a western or Thai brand, and realize how much better it tastes. Carefully check the seal when you buy water from the kids at the temples - we found it's possible to open the cheap local brand and not break all of the little connector thingys. Which means you can replace the cap, and have a few of them unbroken, which makes it look good. (We also bought water from them that we could not open with our sweaty hands, it was so well sealed - it's not all bad.)
Thai baht is also widely accepted here, and you may want to use it, as it's a lot easier to get hold of than American dollars. I didn't try any ATMs in Cambodia, so I don't know what they dispense. But your card should work fine in Thailand. Bring some baht with you. They will give you an exchange rate that is about 5 percent off from the real rate (they gave us 40B/$, instead of the proper 37B/$).

Malaria:
According to all the guides, the cities in Cambodia (including Siem Reap) aren't a concern for malaria. Just in case, and just in case you wind up in a more rural area on your trip, go to your doctor ahead of time, and buy some anti-malarial medicine. (Group Health in Seattle has a dedicated travel nurse who was quite helpful.) The new new thing in anti-malarial is called Malarone, which is a commercial combination of some chloro-quinine derivative, and something else I can't remember. It's about 5 dollars a pill here. You need to start taking it the day before you go to the malaria area, and keep it up for a week after you leave. The alternative, which most of the world takes, is doxycycline, which is pennies a dose, but has several side-effects, the two most interesting of which are: increased sensitivity to sunlight (this is a big deal here), and increased risk of urinary tract infections. Spring for the expensive stuff - you can afford it.

Transportation:
You'll need to get out to the ruins somehow. It's about 6 km from the town to the outskirts of the ruins. You could walk it, but it's a bit of a hike. You can also rent a bike for not too much money. If you want a tuktuk, especially if you've just come from Thailand, you'll be a little shocked at the price. You would think there will be a large number of tuktuks just waiting for you at the ruins, trying to get you to ride back to town with them, but there aren't. The thing to do here is hire a driver for the whole day. This will cost about 10 dollars. Consider hiring the taxi you rode in with - our driver offered us 25 bucks for two days, and we told him no since it sounded so expensive. You would think the market would solve this problem, and that people would be pestering you for rides everywhere. Anyway, if anyone offers this service to you, see if you can talk them down to around 10, then if they've been nice, give them a few dollar tip at the end of the day (it's a lot of money here, and will mean a lot more to them than to you.)
I'm not sure (I meant to ask our driver, who was quite happy for our custom both days, but never got around to it) if these guys tend to own their own tuktuks, or if they're working for someone else. These rigs aren't exactly tuktuks like in Thailand. The Thai ones are actually tricycles. The Cambodian ones are two-wheel trailers attached to the back of a motorcycle. I have loaned money through Kiva to several Cambodian entrepreneurs to purchase their own rigs (and so should you.) I imagine (hope) that in a touristy town, this is a path to self-sufficiency.

Siem Reap
This is pronounced "SEE-em ree-EP". Not "seem reep". Just so you know. It's not like you would be asking to go anywhere else from Poipet, so the chance for confusion is minimal.

Holiday in Cambodia

The Cambodian portion of our trip was in many ways my favorite, and I wished I could have more time (I particularly wished for my sick day back.) But, it was also easily the most frustrating portion of the trip. Cambodia is fascinating and infuriating.

It has such an incredibly tragic history, with the people getting betrayed right and left by bad actors all around. From the French colonizing to their King (Sihanouk) constantly switching sides in the political struggle (he’s in as deep with the Khmer Rouge as anyone) to America using them as a pawn to poke at Vietnam, a country we by all rights should never have heard of.

The international community has finally developed some long overdue sense of shame at how Cambodia has been treated, and is now falling over itself to demonstrate just how sorry it is. There is aid money pouring into Cambodia at present, from every agency you’ve ever heard of. And it seems to be following the typical western development aid model – bring in well paid outside consultants to dream up giant infrastructure projects, without really consulting the locals. This is the model that development aid has been following for 50 years, and the developing world is still developing. Cambodia has many large damming projects of the Mekong on the drawing board that will be paid for by western governments. The locals aren’t getting a lot of say in this.

You see large SUVs fighting for space alongside scooters on the streets of Siem Reap, mostly driven by Cambodians. It would take 100 years of the average Cambodian’s salary to purchase a Toyota SUV, but this town is lousy with them. When you’re making that much more than your neighbors, I think it’s a sure sign something has gone wrong somewhere. In defense of the traditional development model, Cambodia was stripped of all of its technical skills, and maybe they really do need western experts. But, people don’t need education to understand the basics of the market economy they are trying to develop – I think the idea of a market is something in our genes. Letting the locals have more say in how they spend their resources strikes me as a more sound idea (on the other hand, the locals keep electing the Cambodian People’s Party, headed by former Khmer Rouge member Hun Sen.) Meanwhile, there are kids driving cows through rice fields, instead of sitting in school learning math and science, and other kids being sent out to beg on the streets.

One of Ev’s roommates from this last summer is working in the development field, and she tells stories of people working on fat contracts for NGOs in the developing world, rich enough to afford large houses, with full staffs of servants, and not speaking a word of the local language when their tour is finished. I realize I’m biased to see a disinterest in language unfavorably, but how much can you say you understood about this culture and its needs if after a few years living in a country you haven’t made that basic effort? How much of the money that donors gave ended up in the local economy, and how much in the expert’s bank account? The development community is a racket, and it’s shameful.

There has to be a better model than the Big Idea model we keep pushing. (If you’ve been forced to listen to me drone on about this, you know that I think microcredit is a really interesting idea for helping locals get access to credit, one of the key components of any market economy) But I’m not an economist, and I’m sure this isn’t the only “radical” idea that isn’t getting much interest from the development bureaucracy right now. Surely there are many other things we haven’t tried yet.

Meanwhile Cambodia is again left to all the darker impulses we westerners can dream up. Massive, ramshackle development will overrun the ruins. Child sex tourism is apparently enough of a problem that there are signs up warning about it – we saw large signs with a painting of an infant, and text reading “Not for sale!” I’m convinced that things are better in Cambodia now than they were 20 or 30 years ago, but I don’t think they’re out of the woods yet. Even a rich stable economy like Thailand next door has troubles with democracy, and I can’t imagine that Cambodia has a more stable base on which to build democratic institutions.

Anyway, like I said earlier, the ruins are fascinating, and the country is, too, if more in a train-wreck sort of way, and we really only barely scratched the surface in our two full days here. Well worth the visit, as soon as things shake out in Thailand.

Angkor Wat

This is the largest religious building in the entire world. I read somewhere that with satellite imagery, they are discovering that there are even more ruins hidden in the jungle nearby, but this building itself is the most well known and probably most well preserved in the whole area. This is one of the only noteworthy buildings not built by Jayavarman VII, from the last post. It was built some time later by Suryavarman II (the “varman” means king or leader – they’ve all got it in their name). SII was Hindu, so this is a Hindu temple, but it’s been turned into a Buddhist shrine, with pilgrims coming from all over to pay their respects.

This is one of the odder aspects of traveling over here like this – you are wandering through people’s actual place of worship. The monks we talked to don’t mind – they are happy you’re interested, and even encourage picture taking (with helpful posted guides as to etiquette.) But, still, when you’re looking at what to you is (as Ev says) yet another giant golden Buddha (they really do grow like weeds here), you are stepping around people engaged in worship. I don’t pretend to understand exactly what is it they’re doing, and they don’t seem to mind our presence, but I’m not sure they would tell us if they did. It’s difficult to imagine gangs of loud tourists wandering through your church during actual services. Another thing completely lost in translation.

Anyway, if there were no other ruins in the area, and the admissions were ten times as much, Angkor Wat would still be worth the trip. I was feeling a lot stronger this day (after another day of about 12 hours of sleep, I think the bug has finally cleared my system. Still no interest in food, but I’m addressing the lack of calories with Gatorade), so we got to see everything, and explore many more temples afterwards. Plan on three or four hours at this particular one.

First, walk through the gates, and watch the kids jumping into the moat and going swimming. Then down a long elevated sandstone promenade. Walk the entire perimeter, and see scenes from Hindu mythology illustrated in the famous bas-reliefs. These are in quite good condition, and you can buy books which have a continuous picture of the whole thing – there are 8 different stories illustrated, two per side. One or two might be of historical events, I lost track, but the rest are well known (to Hindu scholars, presumably) myths. That will take you an hour or so. Notice also the apsaras that appear on the exterior of all the columns, facing out toward what was the city. Apsaras are female singing angels of some sort (and now we know where Salman Rushdie got the name of his singing heroine in The Ground Beneath Her Feet – funny how something obscure and exotic sounding can be so mundane if you’re in on the secret. How cheesy would we find it if a western writer had named such a heroine Siren or Angel?) Anyway, they’re all very pretty, and not in such great condition. There is an ongoing German project to restore and conserve what’s left, with signs up everywhere explaining what they’re doing, and how they do it. Much of the restoration work is actually to un-do an earlier restoration project.

A lot of this stuff is made of sandstone, which isn’t so much for longevity – be careful not to lean against or touch anything – you’ll find a little bit of sand on your hand afterwards – you’ve just eroded something. You can also see lots of flaking damage around the bottom of all the columns, where water has run down. I suppose the remarkable thing is that 1000 years haven’t completely erased all traces of human habitation. Turns out an attempt to seal the sandstone in the 1970s only sealed the top layer, allowing water to accumulate in the sandstone behind this layer, eventually accelerating the flaking process.

From Angkor Wat, we had a further intinerary of smaller temples, scattered around the two main complexes. Again, these were very pretty, but by the end, we were starting to fall victim to the Glacier Park syndrome (yawn, another temple.) Day three of your visit would be a good day to go see something else, like the lake, to take a short break from the temples.

We were also getting really tired of the kids that haunt the entrance of all the smaller temples. The big temples have adult salespeople trying to sell you cold drink and so on (unless you’re going to carry 2 or 3 liters of water each, you need to patronize these.) But the smaller temples are left to the kids. These children are often beautiful, and clingy, and really smart. They have a standard routine – they ask you where you are from, then tell you what the capital city is “America, capital Washington d.c.” is a phrase I must have heard a dozen times at each temple. If they are selling postcards, they will they show them to you, naming each temple, then they will count them for you, to prove you really are getting ten postcards for your dollar. Then they will recount, in every language you can think of. A boy, maybe 6 years old wandered up, and counted off 1 – 10 in English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and one other I couldn’t recognize (Portuguese, maybe). He was beautiful, and a great conversationalist in English. He took me, and a little girl took Evelyn, all around the temple (rather, we wandered around, and they wouldn’t leave us.) Once he figured out I wasn’t buying anything, there was a pause in his patter, then: “Got any candy?”
“No, I don’t have candy.”
“Got any coke?”
“No, no coke either.”
“Pens?” (apparently, they really like pens – if you come, bring a supply of cheap pens and little notebooks.)
“Ummm” (checking my pockets), “no I don’t have any pens.”
“Paper?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe, you could go and buy a coke, and then give it to me."
“No, coke isn’t good for you, candy isn’t good for you.”
(Pause while he processed this) “Coke isn’t good for other people, but it doesn’t hurt me.”

This went on and on – I think Ev’s conversation with her little girl was similar. I gave them both 500 riel, and told them to give it to their parents, and made them promise not to buy candy or coke (this is about 12 cents, and everything here costs exactly one dollar, so I don’t think they would have been able to anyway, but I’m sure the spirit of my instructions were gleefully violated.)

While this pair was charming, the kids at the next place we went to were very aggressive, and while they were basically nice to me, really pissed Ev off. One little girl, on learning we were buying water from another kid and not her, told Ev, “I hope you get sick from your water.” (On inspecting this water, we saw that the seals were broken, so we poured it out.) This was at the very end of the day, and kind of cast a shadow over things. I don’t know why things turned ugly all of a sudden – it was the end of the day, and sales hadn’t been good maybe. Kids were begging on the street later when we searched for a place to have dinner. One little boy walked with me for many blocks, asking for food.

The problem is knowing how to deal with all of this. Was the kid actually hungry? Was he sent out to beg by some adult, and would have taken me to that adult’s restaurant for an overpriced meal? Considering how little these amounts of money mean to me, should I care? Being around this is pretty stressful, and will wear you out. You go back to your hotel and watch bizarrely incomprehensible kung fu movies on your satellite teevee (badly dubbed from Chinese into Thai) and kind of just shudder.

Angkor Thom

This was our first day at the temples. Wow. This temple complex is amazing. The amazing thing is that it’s survived so long. These temples were all built by about 1200 AD, and were semi-abandoned at some point (though apparently modifications happened through the 1700s). I keep using the word 'amazing', but I'm not exagerrating. You will walk around here with your mouth open, wondering if you're making all of this up.

These complexes are vast – this one is a square 3 km on a side. It was built by King Jayavarman VII, as his capital. Each new king seems to have moved the capital slightly – 10 to 30 km one direction or the other. But, this one was so well defended, with an 8m wall forming the entire perimeter, and a 100m wide moat around that (that was populated by crocodiles!) that subsequent kings couldn’t or wouldn’t move it. Since the capital has to have a royal temple in the center, and each king has to build his own, they had to keep modifying Jayavarman VII’s. This temple is called The Bayan, and is a mixture of historical styles (J-VII was an ardent Buddhist, so all the symbology was Buddhist. Subsequent kings were Hindu, so tried to change J-VII’s temple to suit their own religious persuasions.). It’s huge in itself, about 150m square, with a large number of towers that reach 30m tall. Many of these towers have now collapsed, with the stones lying all around, but you can explore most of it. Some portions are roped off for conservation work. Japanese and German archaeological teams are trying to restore or stabilize as much as they can. I talked about the huge painted mural at Wat Phra Kaew depicting various battles. This has something like that, except the entire thing is carved in stone, telling the history of the Kingdom.

Besides the main temple, there is the royal palace, the terrace of the Leper King, the Elephant Terrace (surrounded by bas-reliefs of nearly life sized elephants!) and much more, including one very high pyramid that you can climb at your own risk. The view from the top was... um... amazing!

You can read far more comprehensive details about this and other ruins at Angkor elsewhere, but the main thing is that you should see this as soon as you can. The local town is getting developed in a hurry, now that the shooting has stopped. It will be Disneyland in ten years. It’s already a pretty expensive place to do things, relative to other places we’ve been on this trip (of course, this is all relative. Our air conditioned room is 12 dollars a night. But, a bottle of water that was 5B in Thailand is a dollar here. The tuk-tuks are very expensive.) At some point, someone in what passes for the government will pull his head out of his ass, and rebuild that road – it’s 120 km to the border, and could be a one and a half hour drive if it were modern. There are massive resorts being built all up and down the street, and you can pay anywhere from $3 (non-air-con hostel room) to 700 dollars for a room. The bottom end of the range is heading up, and soon some of the ruins will no doubt be privatized (the admissions are already run by a private company, which spends a whopping 10 percent of revenue on conservation. 75 percent is returned to the Ministry of Finance, where it lines someone’s pocket.)

There’s only one of these in the world, and it’s going away soon. Make the flight into Bangkok, then to Siem Reap. Plan to spend a week – the two days we budgeted weren’t nearly enough. Tonle Sap lake is also right nearby, and is supposed to be a pretty neat boat ride – you can ride down the lake and river all the way to Phnom Penh, and from there on a boat down the Mekong all the way into Vietnam, which I think would make a really fascinating trip.

It’s hot here. A lot hotter than Bangkok, in my opinion. I think it was at least 40 on the stone ruins, and this was my first day out walking around a lot since getting sick. I ran out of gas in a hurry. We managed to look at every thing in the Angkor Thom complex, and go to one other ruin, called Ta Prohm, which was a temple J-VII dedicated to his mother, a few km away (before returning to the hotel about 4PM, where I took a shower and collapsed on the bed.) Ta Prohm is overrun by jungle, and there are lots of trees that are growing through and over the walls. Lots of areas were roped off for conservation work and/or danger.

Fruited Plains

Cambodia. Wow. This is a whole ‘nuther world from Thailand. We really are in the third world, all of a sudden, just by crossing a line on a map. The way to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is located) is to fly. If, however, you didn’t plan far enough in advance, the plane tickets are very expensive, and the best way is to take a public bus to the border in Thailand, then after an hour’s worth of immigration silliness in Cambodia, hire a private taxi to take you to Siem Reap. This costs 50 dollars to hire the whole thing. If you can find others to split the cost with you, it’s still 50 bucks total. This is what we did.

Tips for immigration: take several passport photos with you when you travel. We managed to get some at a photo place down the street from our hostel. Take four or five extras with you when you travel, as many government agencies love them, if only so that they can “fine” you for not having them. LP Cambodia says this fine should be $1, but the people we wound up sharing the taxi with paid $5. The Cambodian government is corrupt to the last person, and will ask you for more all the time, but won’t really follow up much if you refuse. The official fee for a visa is $20 or 1000B (which is about $27 – take US currency with you). They will ask you for more, or for baht instead. Just keep pointing at the sign that says, clearly, “USD 20”. You might not get away with it, but we did. Our taxi-mates paid $50 each, somehow. They got screwed. As you walk from section to section of the border crossing (there are about 4 different lines to stand in), there are free buses that take you from place to place. The organization that runs these buses acts like the Tourist Police, but I don’t think they are. I think they are trying to funnel people to the taxi services. But that’s what we wanted anyway, so we didn’t mind so much.

Anyway, eventually, you’re down a scary dirt road, well into Poipet, the border town on the Cambodian side, and you wind up at some sort of bus depot. There you can hire the taxi. We found two other white people there, with mad faces on. I asked the guy behind the desk how much a taxi is, he tells me $50 (after making sure how many people – it’s the same price no matter how many people, so I’m not sure why they bother). I asked the white woman what the problem was, and she had paid for a bus to Siem Reap, that was supposed to leave an hour ago, but still hadn’t, and with only two people interested in riding, probably wouldn’t until the next day (she was mad.) I said, hop in our taxi, we can split the cost. She took a few minutes to get over eating the cost of her tickets ($30 each), yelled at everyone at the bus stop (and they yelled back), then grabbed her husband and joined us.

Astrid and Alex are from Belgium. They speak Flemish as their first language, which surprised me (I knew half the country spoke Flemish, but was expecting them to speak French anyway). They also both spoke excellent English. As I said, Astrid was pissed, and tried to vent at the taxi driver as well, who (lucky for him) spoke little English. She didn’t get any happier when I told her what the visas should have cost. They had just flown in from Brussels, immediately got on a bus in Bangkok, then all the way to where we were, so I think a little grumpiness is forgivable (they had been traveling for at least 24 hours at that point.)

Anyway, this part of Cambodia is flat. You can occasionally see in the distance an outcropping of rock, but it’s mostly just rice fields as far as the eye can see in any direction. The rice is that most beautiful shade of green that new growth in plants has. And it contrasted with a cloudy (sometimes dark thundercloudy) sky. I don’t think any of my pictures will turn out well, due to the road.

The road from Poipet to Siem Reap is the worst road in the entire world. Angkor Wat has the potential to be one of the top tourist attractions in the entire world, so you might think this road would be first on the list for repair and upgrade. There is a rumor, reported in LP, that a certain airline which flies into Siem Reap, has remitted a certain ‘fee’ to a certain government agency to move this particular road to the bottom of the list.

Potholes in this road are patched with what looks to be 5-inch-minus gravel. (That’s not a typo – I don’t mean 5/8’s minus. I mean cobbles which average 5 inches in diameter.) It’s something you’d have trouble walking on.

Most of the roads in the country were last paved in the 1960s. Then they had the eastern part (not this part) of their country bombed back into the stone age by America (this bombing campaign is estimated to have killed 600,000 people, roughly a third of what the Khmer Rouge later killed. And we weren’t even at war with them.) Then they had a communist revolution, the brutality of which is now legend, but many of the people you see on the street somehow lived through. Then they were invaded by Vietnam. Then they spent a few decades having a civil war (during which we funneled weapons and funding to the Khmer Rouge, just to annoy the Vietnamese.) They now have a government of sorts, with elections, even. But, the only people building roads are western relief agencies doing it with western aid dollars. The Khmer Rouge systematically killed anyone with any kind of technical skills (they practically killed everyone who could read) so the need for western specialists is probably legitimate. And the UN bureaucracy is happy to provide, and shamed western governments sign the checks.

Considering this country’s history, it’s a wonder they don’t just shoot Americans on sight, or slip poison into our food. But, the locals are for the most part quite friendly. The rest of the world seems to be a lot better than we are at separating out the actions of a government from responsibility on the part of the citizens of a country. Perhaps this is because we actually feel a sense of participation in our government, and assume everyone else does. I have a feeling most of the world feels they have very little involvement in what their government is up to, and assumes the same is true of you.

"Rumors of a military coup refuse to die"

Nothing to worry about, aparently, but this is the headline we saw in the english language Bangkok Post yesterday. "Ummm..." we said. "What?"

Anyway, there's some sort of ongoing political crisis going on in Thailand, which this article hints at.

FYI, Thaksin is the telecom billionaire who won the first free elections held here about 5 years ago. Thai Rak Thai is the party he helped found (literally means "Thais love Thais".) Apparently he's under political attack, and there are rumors of a military coup (there have been 19 coup attempts since the one that took power from the King in 1932, 11 of them successful.) Looks like it's nothing, but still a disturbing and exciting headline to see across the room on a newspaper.

Quick update

We're in Chiang Mai now (way north of Thailand, and a hippy backpacker mecca), having just ended our 28 hour or so trip back from Cambodia, through Bangkok. I have much already written about Cambodia, and will post it when I have a better inet connection (weirdly, there are ADSL connections in Siem Riep, Cambodia, but our guest house didn't have one.) I have only 3 days here, and on the third night (Friday night) will take the overnight train back to Bangkok, since I have an 8AM flight back to the states on Sunday morning.

Ev will stay on and do several things up north here. First, if she can get in, is to take a Thai cooking course, which looks really neat from the brochure. The second is to go to Elephant Poop Farm. This isn't actually the name of the place, but it's what we've been calling it since we discovered it, figuring that elephants do a lot of this - they're actually a rehabilitation center for mistreated elephants, and she paid them some money for the privelege of volunteering there for a week.

I'll let her post about this, but it will be a while, since I'll be bringing the laptop back with me, and she'll need to write it up when she gets back to Seattle on about October 1st.

sick day

I knew this was coming eventually, but didn't realize just how bad it would be. The local bugs have finally caught up to me. We were scheduled to get up early for the bus to Siem Riep (the Cambodian town near Angkor Wat), but we had to instead see if the hostel can accommodate us for another day. I've done nothing but lay here and sleep and go to the bathroom since about 4 this morning. I'm just glad it didn't come on after we were already on the bus. Up until this point, I've been quite healthy - feeling better than I do at home, most days (if tired out from travel.) I am feeling better as the day goes by, so we'll see how I feel in the morning.

I brought lots of immodium, which I'm eating like candy.

Gives us both a chance to catch up on posting, anyway. Not sure what can be done to avoid this kind of thing, and still enjoy your vacation. Go to a resort and never step off the grounds, I suppose. We've been pretty careful about drinking the local water, etc, but something was bound to get through.

Karon Beach

So, Phuket is an island on the Andaman coast of Thailand. It’s a huge resort spot. Most of the wealth in Thailand is controlled by people living in Bangkok or Phuket, I’ve read. Despite that, Phuket town itself is kind of crappy. On getting off the bus, we decided to wander around a bit before finding our way to the smaller coastal community of Karon beach.

So, a few notes for future travelers:

1. Lonely Planet’s map of Phuket town is crap. A modest example: there are two streets in town called Thilok Uthit, called Tilok Uthit 1 and Tilok Uthit 2. No idea why this is the case, they aren’t really all that related to each other. But, LP's map only shows one of them, and doesn’t indicate that there’s a difference. This cost us an hour of wandering around with our bags (“Okay that street sign says Tilok Uthit, so that’s right here on the map, so we need to take a right and walk down that way…”). The map we subsequently bought (for 300B) at a very nice bookstore we found is also crap. It shows essentially the same things the LP map shows. The best map by far was one given out for free by the TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) – it’s very detailed and will get you anywhere you want to go.
2. LP also mentions erroneous prices for cabs and tuk-tuks to the surrounding communities. The prices they list for cabs (about 20 – 30B one way) are actually for the public bus, which runs every half hour in the daytime. A cab or tuk-tuk will run you several hundred baht (on getting back to Bangkok, I checked the full LP Thailand volume, and they do get this one right – it was just lost in the condensation for the Southeast Asia book.)
3. Finally, LP, which is usually pretty good about listing vegetarian options (they do appeal to hippy backpackers after all), completely fails to mention that there is a Chinese temple to some vegetarian deity or other, around which are clustered 5 or 6 restaurants that are all veggie or have veggie options. (To be fair, LP does discuss the annual vegetarian festival, which has something to do with this and several other temples, but spends less then a paragraph on it. Also, this is from Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, not from the full Thailand book, which we decided not to carry with us.)

Okay, on finding the public bus (we really are cheap bastards), we sat in it until the previous bus making the island circuit pulled in behind it. This is a truck with benches down either side in the back. We were the only white folks on board, and weren’t really sure where or how to get off (turns out you push a button in the ceiling, then jump out the back, and walk around to pay the driver.) And the beach communities of Kata and Karon beach are close enough together and small enough that it doesn’t really matter that much where you get off.

I might someday see a beach more beautiful than Karon beach, but if I don’t, that’s okay. This may well be a perfectly ordinary beach for this part of the world, but it’s the nicest I’ve ever been on. The sand is so fine that it actually squeaks when you step on it. You look out at the Indian Ocean, which is not quite the temperature of bath water.

I really wanted to go snorkeling while here, but at this time of year, there is a dangerous riptide that prevents this (apparently, drowning is the number one cause of death among foreigners here). While swimming, we could feel this tide, it really does drag you south and to out to sea – you’re frolicking around in the waves at about chest height for a few minutes, and you look up and notice that your beach chair is 10 or 20 meters up the beach from you. So, no snorkeling. Oh well. Frolicking in the surf was plenty of fun (and is the very best way to cool down after a run, I’ve decided. Just pay attention to where your shorts are, as the waves will strip you naked if you aren’t careful.)

The town of Karon beach is very touristy, but since it’s the rainy season right now, more or less deserted. You get a sense that the place is pretty ugly in the high season, though. The bars are geared to white guys meeting Thai women. It’s nonstop loud sports bars with football and rugby on the television, and (this time of year) bored looking, dressed up Thai women sitting around, and occasionally calling out, trying to get you to come in. Three quarters of the couples you see here are a middle aged Australian guy and a Thai woman 30 years his junior. I’m exaggerating on that percentage, but it’s prevalent enough that when you see a western couple walking on the beach, you think “oh, he brought his wife – how nice!” Oh well, I guess I don’t really begrudge the Australian guys their fun, and the locals gotta pay the rent. Just made me a little uncomfortable, is all.

Our guesthouse (like almost every one here) consists of a bar on the ground floor (populated by the aforementioned bored Thai women), and four floors of rooms above it. Our room is a decent size, with its own bathroom, and air conditioned. All for about 9 bucks a night. It has a refrigerator and satellite teevee (with 42 channels in about 8 different languages – we had fun watching a Korean soap opera last night.)

After three nights here, we headed back to Bangkok, on an overnight bus this time, then on to Cambodia.

Trip down to Phuket

We decided to take the overnight train down to Phuket, in order not to lose a day to travel. Since we were catching the train at 745 that evening, we checked out of the guest house, but left lots of our bags, and tried to find interesting things to do in Bangkok for the day in the meantime. Not far from us on the map is the Chatuchak weekend market, and since it was Saturday, we thought it would make a nice walk.

This market makes the night markets in Taipei look silly. Seriously, this market was a good ten times the size of the market at Shilin. It’s amazing. It’s every shopping mall you’ve ever been in, combined, and crammed into a tiny space. One of the staff members at the guest house told us there are something like 4 or 5 thousand stalls. And on Sunday after 4pm, they let vendors in who haven’t registered for a permanent stall, and they set up shop in the walkways. Of course, we were typical tourists, and didn’t bargain over anything (but, on the other hand, most prices were listed in writing, so we at least weren’t getting the white price). You could go in here with 100 bucks, and not be able to carry out everything you buy. We saw lots of other westerners, but the crowd was still 98 percent Thai. It’s a combination shopping trip and social event, I think. I don’t like shopping. Actually, I hate shopping. But, this was fun. After a few hours, I was tired, but it was still fun.

We also went to a Thai department store that’s near the guest house, called “Big C”. That was fun, too. Evelyn fell in love with these miniature washing machines they sell which have a small washing chamber on one side, and a centrifuge on the other, for really getting the moisture out of the clothes. Nobody here seems to have a dryer – they just hang clothes out to dry. I don’t think this scheme would work in Seattle.

The train trip down was brief for me, really long for Evelyn. We got second class tickets, which means an air conditioned car, with a sleeper bunk for each seat. We got top bunks, which were a little cheaper (and all that was left when we bought the tickets – about 700B each). This ticket was from Bangkok to the town of Surat Thani, which is little more than a train station in the middle of nowhere.

Our original plan was to take a train all the way down the Malay Peninsula, ending up at Singapore. In the interest of time, we’ve scratched this plan – too many things we want to do, and not enough vacation to do it in. So, we decided we wanted some time on the beach, but also to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, which everyone recommends. Anyway, after much research and debate, we settled on Phuket for the beach part of this plan, over other places like Krabi or Koh Samui. We were told that it’s the rainy season in Phuket, but we decided to take a chance.

Anyway, not long after leaving, the steward comes along and folds each set of seats facing each other in to a lower bunk, then folds down the top bunk from the ceiling. There are curtains for privacy, and a little light for reading. The entire trip takes about 10 hours. I figured I would read for awhile, but immediately passed out (I can sleep anywhere, especially while traveling, which wears me out.) Evelyn was awake the entire time, as she can’t sleep in strange places. (So much for saving a day by sleeping while traveling.) The steward had to wake me up when we got close.

On getting off the train at about 7AM, we had to find a bus to Phuket. This wasn’t hard to find, and cost 200B. We were afraid we were being ripped off on the ticket price (anyone is allowed to sell a ticket here and take a cut – even though it’s a state run train, I don’t think there are any state run ticket booths.) But, every ticket agent quoted us 200B, and an old Thai man sitting across the aisle from me bought his on the bus for 195B, so not that much of a markup. There were touts everywhere trying to help people figure this out (this involved walking across the street and buying a ticket.) If anyone offers you a taxi ride, or tuktuk ride, etc, just say no, or better yet, ignore them and keep walking. This bus trip was supposed to take 6 hours, but only took 4, and let us off in Phuket town.

How to pronounce Phuket? This is a fun one – there’s a restaurant in Seattle called Phuket, which everyone delights in mispronouncing “fuck-it”. I’m not sure they’re even aware they are mispronouncing it. If you read my previous thing on Chinese pronunciation, this ties right in. The “h” after letters like p, t and k indicates aspiration. No “h”, no aspiration. So, since we normally aspirate p initially, this “ph” sounds just like our “p”, not like our “f”. And since there is no “h” after the “k”, you have no aspiration, so what will it sound like to our ears?

That’s right, it will sound like a “g”. So, the closest we’re going to come to pronouncing this properly is “pooget”.

Ayutthaya

As far as I can tell from listening to the locals, this is pronounced “ah-YOU-tee-yuh” (you spend all this time figuring out how the vowels are pronounced, then they get pronounced differently when they’re in different environments – stressed syllable vs. unstressed. I so much prefer consonanats.)

This is the ancient capital of Thailand. The Thai king established the capital here in about 1300, and it lasted until the Khmers conquered the nation in about 1700 (these dates are off the top of my head, I’ll look them up to see if they’re accurate, but I might forget). It’s an island in the confluence of several rivers, and had great natural protection from invaders as a result.

There are ruins of at least 30 impressive Wats here, many of them not maintained. The truly impressive ones are maintained (or at least have a fence with a tickert-taker around them. You’ll nowhere else in the world see a tourist attraction so impressive for 80 cents.) LP suggests visiting the following three, which we dutifully did: Wat Phra Si Sanphet, Wihaan Phra Mongkhon Bophit, and Wat Phra Mahathat. The Bophit one was restored in the early 1900s, and is still being kept up, after a fashion, with help from a grant from the queen. It has a really big seated Buddha image. The other two are in ruins.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet was the king’s private temple, and was huge. It was overrun by school children on a field trip when we were there. These kids had an assignment from their English teacher to find an English speaking tourist, and interview them, so I was interviewed twice. They asked basic questions like “where are you from”, “do you like Thai food”, and “what do you think of our King?” (If you are asked this question, the answer is “I like the King!” – it’s actually illegal here to insult him, and would be very bad form, as all the people seem to genuinely adore him – he is the longest serving monarch currently in the entire world – 60 years. He also doesn’t have any actual power, which is left to an elected government, since 1997, and the military before that, but he does have a lot of power over public opinion.) Their English was… not so good, but they got their point across, and the other boys who weren’t actually interviewing me would stand around us in a circle and tease and push each other, and give prompts to the interviewer.

All around the island are the ruins of Wats, many without any signs, and you’re left to guess at what it might have been. We also went to the Ayutthaya Historical Study Center, which is funded by some Japanese-Thai friendship society. This was also overrun by schoolkids, but was really interesting, and worth the 100B admission price. There was a fair bit of information about the history of the place, and a display of a traditional Thai home from the period, which was an interesting contrast from all the talk about royalty.

This is a great side trip from Bangkok, and a really nice relief from the crowds and stink and noise of the capital. There are still taxi and tuk-tuk drivers pestering you, but only for a few blocks after you get off the ferry. You take a local train for 20B up. It takes about an hour each way, and you can easily spend the whole day looking at neat things. I recommend renting a bicycle – Ev’s not a biker, and so we probably walked 10km. We were good and tired at the end of the day.

Wat Phra Kaew

Bangkok is full of Wats, or Buddhist temples. The whole country is heavily Buddhist, and there are about three hundred temples in the city. These usually consist of some sort of Buddha image, plus a building to house it.

Wat Phra Kaew is the biggest wat in Bangkok. It houses the Emerald Buddha. This is not a terribly large image, but is made entirely of Jade. Nobody seems to know when or where it was manufactured, but at some point, it was covered in plaster (no doubt to hide it from an invading enemy). It’s called the Emerald Buddha because the abbot of the monastery where it was housed noticed the plaster flaking of the nose, saw the green color, and decided the treasure was made of emerald. On notifying the King, the image was transferred to a much more important wat in the then capital, Ayutthaya. This capital was attacked many times in the last 500 years, and when it finally fell (either to Khmer attackers or Burmese attackers, I can’t remember), they trundled off the Emerald Buddha to their own capital (and melted down the gold covering all the much larger images in the capital). When the Thais regrouped from their new capital of Bangkok, many years later, and conquered this other Kingdom, they took the image back, and built a new wat in Bangkok to house it. This is the Wat Phra Kaew.

The entire complex has much more to offer than the Emerald Buddha, though. It’s contained in a much larger complex which also houses the Royal Grand Palace, where the King lives at least part of the time, and several other exhibits. Outside the complex there is the usual assortment of hawkers and con artists, but once you make your way through them, and an assortment of people who want to be your tour guide just inside, you’re fine, and everyone leaves you alone. One story we heard a lot is that we needed to buy a ticket (this actually happens deep inside the complex), and that we weren’t properly dressed – you have to have your legs covered, and your shoulders covered. Short sleeve shirts and sandals are okay, but shorts and tank tops are not. But, they’ve thought of this, and know that tourists wear shorts, so they have a whole collection of clothes to loan you once you get inside. They’re happy to take a 100b note as collateral, and you get it back afterwards. So, I got some long pants, we paid something like 300b each for the ticket, and we were in.

The only touts inside are people trying to sell themselves as tour guides. This might actually have come in handy (and unlike most tourist predators, they all spoke moderately good English, and seemed pretty nice), but we ignored them. Immediately inside the wat, and along the entire outer wall, is a giant mural the depicts various scenes from, I presume, Buddhist mythology. There are all kinds of really detailed battles between people and these demon-dog type things, who were usually green. Sometimes the battles were between two groups of demon dogs, some green, some other colors. Occasionally these guys were flying through the air, and people we throwing spears or arrows up at them, and occasionally, there was some sort of giant monster or demon, who was many times the size of the others. Here’s where the tour guide might have been useful. This went on and on, for the entire inner wall of the wat. I would guess it was half a kilometer in length, and was pretty intricately detailed the entire way. It wasn’t all battles, sometimes there were just ordinary looking court scenes in castles or wats. And sometimes ordinary court scenes, where a battle was just breaking out!

The mural was in places in ill repair, and there were craftsmen and women busy touching up scenes with gold paint. There were also a few who were tracing the murals onto paper.

The rest of the grounds of the complex held a few other smaller wats, and the palace, which we only got to see one end of.

In all, it was a much nicer experience than our first day in Bangkok. We took cabs instead of trying to walk, and we found a sanctuary from the stink of traffic. Afterwards, we weren’t far from the district with vegetarian restaurants, so we tried another one out. This one was called the Corner Café, and it was pretty hippy-backpacker-ish. I had a headache, so probably didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. It may deserve another trial.

No photos... sorry

So, we're photo taking fools over here at Team Discovery Channel (we needed a team name, and that's the one that's sticking.) But, even though I went ahead and purchased a premium flickr account, that doesn't work with blogspot. Blogspot is owned by Google, Flickr by Yahoo. Not sure why I thought that would work. So, pretend you're looking at photos that are (in this order) pretty, interesting, funny, or weird. Whichever you prefer, we got 'em all. I'll find some way to get them posted (probably just post them on my home server) when I get back.

I don't understand why the various blogging services don't make better offline tools for users of their blogs. Seems like if you had a composition program that looked just like the online one, with the photo placement and everything, but could upload the post slowly over a crappy connection and just let you know when it was done, that would be a big selling point. And it would take a real web programmer a few hours, seems to me.

Initial impressions of Bangkok

So, on landing, and finally shaking the funny Japanese guy who was in the seat next to me (more on him below), I walked out into the bewilderment that is Don Muang International Airport.

(Kazu, the guy next to me on the plane, quickly figured out that I’m American, and delighted in trying out his English on me. He wanted to know everything. He was particularly interested in American table manners, such as how to act if he should be entertaining potential American business clients. He specifically wanted to know about the “put down the knife and transfer the fork to the other hand after cutting your meat” nonsense we do. And whether anyone would be offended if he didn’t do this. I told him it was unlikely anyone would notice, and that Europeans and younger Americans didn’t bother with this, and just ate two handed. He was perplexed by the phrase “not uncommon”, which as I was explaining it, I realized that it didn’t make much sense. It kind of means ‘common’, but kind of not. Kind of a way of equivocating, and saying both and neither. “I’ve heard rumors this happens, and I may or may not have seen it, but don’t quote me on this.” Anyway, he was vary eager to continue the conversation, and gave me his phone number. I may or may not take him up on his offer to show us around.)

So, on getting out of the terminal, you can go in either of two ways, and there are no directions either way, suggesting a direction, which makes it hard to meet someone later, as I had to do – I had to run back and forth between possible meeting points until I found Ev. Either way you go, you face a gauntlet of people wanting you to take their taxi. Lonely Planet (hereinafter LP) warns you that these guys charge 600 – 700 baht for a ride into town. Whereas if you walk another 50 meters, you can get a metered taxi into town for about 200b. LP suggest this, but goes on to suggest taking a bus for less than 100b, if you really want to experience the local flavor. Then they tell you if you really, really want the experience, you’ll cross the street to the train, which costs 10b. Guess which one I decided to try!

This is the train that ordinary people take in Thailand. Stepping on, the stairs smelled strongly of piss. Hmm, I thought, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. (Turns out the stairs are right next to the bathroom.) After walking up and down a few cars, I find a seat, and the train leaves. The train is really basic – the windows are open, and there are bench seats everywhere. Looks like it’s been around a while. At this point, I realize that Kazu took all of my prep time (well, the time that wasn’t spent watching “Lucky Number Slevin”, which I recommend if you like a thriller with a twist – great movie), and I didn’t have a really strong idea what to do from here. I pulled out the map, the guidebook, my printed instructions with the address. The detailed map that Barnes & Noble had sold me wasn’t that detailed, actually (it turns out our guest house is just outside the downtown area that is really detailed on one side.) I did have instructions that if I was coming by train to get off at a certain station, so I start searching for that on the map. I finally find it, and then I realize that my command of the Thai alphabet is still pretty tenuous, especially at train speed, looking for landmarks. I start wondering if I’ll be able to pick out “Sansem” in the Thai for “we are now arriving at Sansem station”. Finally, I do figure out a few landmarks we’re passing, and relate them to the map. Okay, I do manage to get off at the correct station. And the train leaves, and things look pretty bleak. I appear to be in the middle of nowhere. There’s not another tourist in sight, let alone a sign in English. Time to try out my phat thai skills. (Yes, I’ve been saving that one for awhile.And my Phad Thai skills are indeed excellent) I find a group of cab drivers, and try out the address. Blank stares. Shit. Um, I hand them the address, they put on reading glasses, and all stare at it. Finally one of them hands it back, and mutters something, and looks away. I stand there awhile, not sure what just happened. Finally, after a few minutes of nobody talking to me, I figure I’ve been dismissed. Why didn’t I just take a cab? I wonder. I find a group of tuk-tuk drivers and try again. A tuk-tuk is a step below a taxi – it’s a three wheeled motorcycle with a bench seat in the back. I figure I’ll try this in steps. People don’t recognize the address, so I ask to be taken to the area (this is bullshit, I just say the name of the area – those are my skills so far). And they guy says, let’s go! So, I go on a fabulously harrowing ride through rush hour traffic in a tuk-tuk (they are named for the noise them make – I guess this is Thai for ‘putt-putt’). I get delivered to the main shopping district for the area, pay the driver way too much (100b for a ride that probably could have been negotiated for 40), and consult my map. Still can’t figure it out, so I find another group of tuk-tuks, and say the address. This time something clicks, and they start bidding for my services. 45! several say. One guy says 40, and the rest all look at me, and nod their heads, and point to him. He finally delivers me.

So, my moment of panic dying down, I check in, take a shower, have some dinner in the guest house restaurant, do some writing (finally giving up on waiting to upload photos, and just publishing all the Taipei backlog), and get some advice on getting around from the front desk. Going to get Ev at the airport at 2100 and getting back is a lot easier, except the finding her part.

So, Bangkok:

Bangkok smells. Bangkok is 33 degrees centigrade, and while the sewers are technically closed, they run pretty close to the surface, and when you step over a storm sewer grate, it’s attention-getting. And the smog is also impressive. All those scooters in Taipei got nothing on tuk-tuks. Ev doesn’t like the smell, and she’s not talking about the exhaust or the sewage. There’s some other smell she’s able to detect, but I can’t smell it, so I’m not sure what it is.

Bangkok is crowded. There are a lot of people here, and they tend not to live in the 10 story apartment buildings that the Taiwanese live in. Makes for a different feel for the city.

Bangkok is the center of the entire world’s sex industry. This makes you a little suspicious of any middle-aged white person you see in town. Most likely, they’re here for business, but you never know. Every block, there’s a massage parlor. After an epic journey today, we found the vegetarian restaurant we were looking for – an entire menu of veggie dishes. The proprietress just assumed we were there for the massage parlor she also runs upstairs. There is such a thing as an innocent thai massage, it’s actually a traditional Thai medicine, I think. There are official schools that teach it and everything. Seriously, though, every third business, whatever they do, also offers massage. Foot, head, or body, it how it’s typically advertised.

Bangkok has enough tourists (sex tourists and normal tourists), that there’s a real tourist industry here, with all the attendant problems. Taipei was certainly friendly to tourists, but apart from a few taxi or bus company shills, had no population of people preying on tourists. Not so here. You can’t walk down a street without taxis and tuktuks honking and pulling over to try to give you a ride. The taxis all want to avoid pulling down the meter, and just quote you a price that’s so far been about twice the correct price. People see you looking at a map, and try very hard to suggest a place to go. We don’t doubt that some are simply friendly, but many are trying to steer you to something.

More later. We need to do some research on where to go next, and get the front desk and LP to give us some advice on how to accomplish this. The guest house has an impressive collection of guide books that people have left behind - the owner claims there are 200 of them, including ones in Norwegian and Russian. His policy is that if it doesn’t mention his establishment, it’s crap, and you’re free to take it with you.