Look Expensive But Not

It is interesting to see how Angkor is slowly turning into Disney World. They have done a lot of "improving" since my last visit with new walkways, "this way out" signs and ropes at every turn. There are even plans to install electric cars to run a loop through the complex. The only benefit I see in such a scheme is a reduction on pollution which I'm sure is adding to the destruction of the structure and bas-relief at the temples. It is certainly a wonder worth seeing, I'm just glad I have the frame of reference from visits over the years.

We went in to buy our passes in the evening and to watch the sun set over Tonle Sap (if you buy a pass after 5pm you get a "free sunset" and your pass begins on the following day). The usual steep and treacherous path up to Phnom Bakheng (such an adventure!) was roped off and we were forced to use the manicured trail which circled and slowly climbed the hill. There were approximately 3000 people at the summit. On the way down we decided to be daring and hopped the rope to our near deaths down the forbidden, steep decline. During the dark descent, Jessica was stung by a scorpion or some such creature and had to pull it's wriggling body from her foot. I'm sure she's eager to tell you more if you're curious.

Our first day we took a moto to Angkor Thom and concentrated several hours in that walled section. The second day we decided it would be super fun to rent bicycles and pedal the complex ourselves. We set out at dawn and enjoyed a peaceful ride into the park with the sun rising over our right shoulders. Speeding past the hordes at Angkor Wat we biked into Angkor Thom and out again, through the east gate. The air was cool and all was quiet except for the whirring of our tires. We sped to Ta Prohm, a favourite destination within the park. It was almost completely empty and we enjoyed some relatively tranquil wanderings among the ruins and towering trees with their massive root systems.

After that we were feeling pretty good, despite the fact we had stupidly eaten nothing before setting out. We decided it would be possible to bike the entire Grand Tour before lunch. Idiots. We backtracked through the eastern gate of Angkor Thom and headed up through the north gate. Five hours and thirteen temples later we were completely exhausted, famished and scorched. We collapsed into a couple of restaurant chairs and ordered a feast. In all we biked around 70km that day and felt like super heroes at the end of it. Very stupid super heroes.

Our final day we hired a tuk tuk to bring us to Angkor Wat for sunrise. This is always thrilling; walking across the moat bridge and through the gates in the darkness, watching the sky brighten behind the silhouetted peaks of the temple. Always a stunning scene and worth waking up early.

A couple of days of recuperation later, we took a hellish bus ride to Battambang. We should have listened to the agent at the hotel in Siem Reap who advised "you should really take the boat". I always warn others about the conditions on the #6 road and then find myself on it clinging to a vinyl seat with the sun in my eyes, inhaling red earth by the bucket load.

Battambang is lovely and quiet. We took motos to Wat Banan, an Angkorian temple on a hill (translation: up 200 stairs). This day trip also included a ride on the bamboo train, a perilous contraption that speeds along the tracks for several kilometers narrowly avoiding people and animals who walk beside it. There is word it will soon be made illegal because of the danger.



Having now ridden on it, I can not object.

On to Thailand...

you, how many kilograms?

I want to catch everyone up, because I've been zooming about and not getting online too much.

I really can't even describe Angkor. It's not something you can't put into words. It's one of the seven wonders of the modern world. There's good reason for that. Speeding on the back of a motorbike into the temple's domain at sunrise, rosy mist hanging above the calm moat waters. Making your way carefully over the broken stones that make up a 500 meter walkway to the inner wall of the complex. Finding your personal viewing space amidst the crowds. Watching as the sillhouette of the wat becomes more and more defined, until the day has truly begun. It's magic.

I'm concerned about the land and temples being preserved. It seems inevitable that the area will be marketed until each stone is worn into the ground. Go there.

Kip and I had our last meal together at Chhouk Rath (chook wrath!), a restaurant we'd been frequenting with such diligence that they knew how Kip took her spaghetti. The next day we would be separating. She, heading back to Bangkok, I, to Phnom Pehn. She was an awesome travelling companion and made my trip that much more enjoyable. Plus she's funny as and kept me smiling even when I was vomiting and bleeding. What more can you ask for? Our goodbyes in the morning weren't too sad, as we'll be seeing each other in a week!

I took the speed boat to Phnom Pehn. It takes 10 hours on a bus but only four on the boat, so I couldn't really refuse the speediness due to former bus rides from Hades. The "Friendship", as the vessel was called, was rather frightening. It was just a tin can, but luckily it floated. The scenery was astounding. I had been to the floating village before, but as we got out onto the lake and rode near the shore you could see that people live on these rafts, floating houses and boats all the way around the lake.

I settled into a guesthouse on Boeng Kak lake once in Phnom Pehn and went on a little walk. That turned into a big walk, all the way to Tuol Sleng Museum. I had been planning to go there on my second day, but there was just so much time left in the day I thought, why not.

On the 15th April 1975 Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, invaded Phnom Pehn. He took control of a local high school and turned it into a detainment center called Security Camp 21 (or S-21). He divided some classrooms into small cells, barely big enough to squeeze into. Others were kept as large multi-prisoner cells. 1000's of prisoners came in and out of those doors. 17000. He detained former Cambodian army leaders and anti-Khmer Rouge revolutionaries. But he did not just capture the men he thought were against him. He took their wives, their children, newborn babies. They were all kept under horrible conditions, tortured, beaten and ultimately brought to a patch of land 15 km away to be killed. They were mostly all bludgeoned to death, to avoid wasting ammunition. This happened over the course of about four years. When the Vietnamese army stormed in to liberate Phnom Pehn, remaining prisoners at the camp were beaten to death. Seven people were alive when the Vietnamese arrived. They were the only detainees out of the 17,000 to survive their stay at Tuol Sleng.

The grounds of the museum are dotted with frangipani trees. The rooms are full of sunlight. The lawns are tidy and green. Children play at the back of the buildings with balls and nets. You can hear them laughing as you walk from room to room, looking at the meticulously documented photographs of the people who were held here. Row upon row of young men, elderly monks, young girls, toddlers, babies in their mothers arms. Black and white faces with modern designs on their t-shirts and bewildered, battered looks. Ín another building you can see the rooms containing nothing more than beds where people were brought to be tortured and where the final victims were found after their hurried and horrific deaths. A picture hangs on each wall of the body as it was found; mouths open, skulls crushed, chests bloody, arms dangling. It was a terrifying place to visit on my own. And after careful consideration of my state upon completing the tour, I opted to skip the killing fields (where the detainees were brought to be beaten to death en masse) and head out of Phnom Pehn the next morning.

I took a bus south, to the ocean. We tangled ourselves in the mountains and untangled again at the sea. I'm in Sihanoukville; a pretty, undeveloped seaside community that I'm lucky to see before the high-rises and resorts arrive. I got in with time to see the sunset last night and it made me silently cry.

Thus Far

Japan was a really special stopover and I'm so glad I decided to add it to my itinerary. Getting to Oita Shi (city) where Shauna lives was quite a task. I arrived in Osaka in the evening of the 10th December. I had a mere twenty minutes in Osaka to grab my backpack, head through immigration and customs, head out of the international terminal and into the domestic one, check in and race down to the END of the gate to catch my flight to Fukuoka. Once I arrived there I had to figure out how to get from the airport to the subway to the bus station and then get on the right bus! There is not a lot of English on the signs, so buying a subway ticket was a challenge. Somehow I made it in time to catch my bus to Oita. As we left Fukuoka I counted about 15 Starbucks before I gave up and tried to rest. (I thought of LIsa, Danica and Nicole and how happy they would be with the abundance of coffee). I knew that once I got to the city I would have to figure out the correct stop. Shauna had given me some landmarks, but of course they were not visible from the bus. I didn't realize I was at the right stop until the bus was pulling away... I shot to the front of the bus and tried my best to explain my need to exit the bus. This included a good deal of hand motions and gestures. Finally the driver pulled over and let me off and then Shauna rode up on her bike. Good timing, Shauna...

The rest of that trip was smooth sailing. Her apartment is in the hills and the view looks a bit like Hollywood. There is no central heating and so we had to heat up the water for the "shower", which was really just a big tub that you scoop water from to douse yourself with.

Since there are not many westerners in Oita, everyone was fascinated with us. A pair of older ladies stopped us on the street and started singing to us, explaining to Shauna (who speaks remarkable Japanese after only four months) that I looked like an American singer and she looked like a movie star. That seems to be the opinion of all fair haired visitors to the city. We also got a lot of attention when I joined Shauna for a day of work at a junior high school. I acted as a teacher's aid for the day, helping the children practice their English. Knowing how difficult a language English is to learn I was amazed by these children. They were preoccupied with asking me about my hair and about Harry Potter, but their vocabulary and pronunciation was phenomenal.

I was in Japan for only two days, but Shauna made those two days filled with Japanese culture. We went to an onsen (natural hot springs heated by the volcanic rock) in the hills of Beppu, to a kimono dressing class, had a traditional Japanese dinner and rode all around the city on bicycles, their major mode of transport.

On the 14th December we left for Bangkok. Bangkok is a crazy, crazy city. For anyone who has been to New York City, you have only seen the tamest part of Bangkok. Two days was not enough time to see the whole city, but it was all that Shauna and I could take! We rode about mainly on tuk tuks (a kind of motorbike with a carriage on the back). The first day we arrived was obviously the wrong day to be taking tuk tuks as we could not find any that didn't want to take us shopping. It was some kind of promotion day where they were getting a good deal of commisions just for bringing shoppers, even if they were just looking. The good part was the ridiculously low price for the rides. About 25 cents for an hour of riding from wat to wat. Hard to argue with that. We saw many of the major wats in the city including the Golden Mount, Wat Pho (with the massive reclining Buddha), Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn)...

Early on the 17th December we lef t for Siem Reap, Cambodia. We knew it would be a long and difficult journey, but we were excited to see Cambodia. Making it from Bangkok to Aranyaparthet (Aran-ya-patay), the border city, was no trouble. We stop here to arrange for visas and have some lunch. Then a pick up truck drove us to the border. As soon as we got out we were surrounded by tiny girls and boys, all begging for baht. Some of the little girls had babies hanging from their necks in sling-like carriers. They would come very close and let the comatose babies rub against you. Of course, being so fond of children, this was a depressing moment for me.

Once on the Cambodian side in the town of Poipet we boarded a cramped minibus where we waited for almost two hours for a couple who had trouble with immigration. Finally around 3 pm we started out for Siem Reap. We past shack upon shack, small stilted houses, aluminum shelters. Amputees and starving children. Grazing cows with prominent ribs. All this from a bus with absolutely no shocks on the most horrendous road that even the post winter potholes of New England can not be compared to. It was dirt almost exclusively and there would be holes in the middle of the road that would drop us nearly two feet. This constant dropping motion did not end for over seven hours.

In Siem Reap we checked into a guesthouse called Beng Melea. It was clean and cool and quite a relief after that journey! Peup, the boy who showed us the room spoke excellent English and told us about Siem Reap, and his family and how it was torn apart by the Khmer Rouge (Ka-may Roov). His brother had been a scholar and spoke French fluently and was killed in the early eighties by the army. His mother wasted away over nine years and died of what I understood to be a broken heart. He told us how in just the last four years since the civil war ended in 1998 the country has been rebuilding and healing. We agreed to let him take us around the next day, though we had been planning on just spending one day at Angkor Wat and returning to Thailand.

The next day he took us to the zoo, the killing fields memorial, the Landmine Museum and the floating village on Tonle Sap. The Landmine Museum was quite moving. Aki Ra, who runs the "museum", lives on this small piece of land just outside of Angkor Wat and collects thousands of landmines that he has found and dismantled. The UN estimates that the Khmer Rouge left around 10,000,000 land mines all over Cambodia. Aki Ra, with his volunteers and with help from former Khmer Rouge members, has cleared over 60,000. Along with his family, his home is one to several children who have lost limbs to landmines. The Cambodian government has taken him to court to try and close down his museum because they see it as a negative influence on the travel industry they are trying to promote since the end of the war. He now runs the display as a "closed museum" where you are basically visiting with Aki and his family.

Many people who visit stay to volunteer translation services, promotional services (such as producing educational films or pamphlets), or even help with mine hunting. There is a site at http://www.landmine-museum.com/ where you can read about his history and that of the museum.

Riding out to the floating village and then taking a boat around the communities was also interesting. We rode out to Tonle Sap (the large lake in the center of Cambodia) and chartered a private boat that took us past the countless houses on bamboo rafts, boat houses, schools, churchs, markets, and fish and crocodile farms. Most of the people living in this area are Vietnamese, as we could see from the many big umbrella style hats.

It was on this day that we realized Shauna's plane ticket was gone and we asked the hotel to call the bus company to see if the driver or either of the restaurants had spotted it... more on that later.

The next day was Angkor Wat day. We knew that one day wasn't even close to enough, but we were going to see as much as we could. In total we visited seven wats, tombs and monastaries. We started with Angor Wat, the main wat, and watched the sun rise behind it. Then we climbed what was left of the stairs, while clutching a loose handrail, to the top spire. Not for the faint of heart, but the view was worth the effort! One of the other wats we made it to was Wat Phrom, the Tombraider wat! It had massive Banyon trees growing on the walls and pillars. They looked as if they had started up on the walls and grown down towards the ground. The last thing we did at Angkor was climb a huge hill, which led us to a temple with hundreds of steps, which finally led us to the view of the most unreal sunset. There was a full view of Siem Reap and beyond. We also watched the full moon rise over Angkor Wat.

The next day we set off for Thailand. We decided to brave the same road once more, because it was the least expensive and, surprisingly, the fastest route (not including a flight, which was out of our budget). They had done some work on the road so it was a much smoother ride this time. We were making great time when we made our first stop. Our second stop was for lunch and Shauna asked the driver, who also worked for the hotel, to write out a receipt for her to try and claim some expenses on her insurance for her lost ticket. It was then that he informed her someone at the last stop had found her ticket. What a convenient time to tell her! He offered her the option of taking a ride back to the restaurant with a man who wanted to charge her 50 dollars (it had cost us about 10 roundtrip from Bangkok to Siem Reap) or hitch-hiking and then taking a bus back the next day. That seemed kind of dangerous so Shauna tried to make arrangements for the company to pick up the ticket and deliver it anywhere in Bangkok. We shall see if that works out. We are not heading back to Bangkok for several more days...

Overall, visiting Cambodia was a humbling and magical experience. If I hadn't made that journey I honestly don't think this trip would have been fulfilling for me. All I can say is if you have the resources and the desire to alter your outlook on life please go to Cambodia. The people were unbelievably friendly, the scenery was astounding, Angkor Wat was a storyland of mystery and majesty. You may, however, want to consider flying into Siem Reap or Phenom Phen instead of taking the overland route. That will definitely be my path the next time I go!

We didn't want to spend another night in Bangkok so we tried to take an overnight train to Chiang Mai right away. Only standing room was available, which was out of the question for a 14 hour trip. So we took the train to Ayutthaya that night, spent the day riding about on bikes, and then caught the train to Chiang Mai the next night.

We are in Chiang Mai now and I love it! Thailand is a mixed bag (just as that shopkeeper in Bar Harbor said, Mum!) and I had been getting a lot of bad nuts. Chiang Mai is changing my whole experience of Thailand. It is cooler, being up in the mountains, which is nice. Last night Shauna and I went to a restaurant off the beaten path where no farang (foreigners) seemed to tread. It was a spicy, authentic meal. We had been subjected to the Thai take on western food or the western take on Thai food for so long this was a relief. We then stumbled upon a night market (separate from the night bazaar) that is only open on Sundays. There were children doing traditional Thai dance and playing music. I really enjoyed myself. Chiang Mai is considered the cultural and artistic capital of Thailand. This is probably why I was drawn to it and why I am enjoying myself here. If I were to live anywhere in Thailand, this would be the city for me.

The old town of Chiang Mai (which is the inner square, surrounded by rivers) is small enough to walk around, but big enough to be interesting. Shauna went to the hilltribes and elephant grounds today, so I'm on my own and have been wandering all day. Being by myself has been a lot of fun and I've done a lot of people watching (which I love). I opted not to do the elephant/hilltribe trek because I have been talking to a lot of people about how farang disrupt the cultures terribly. It seems that many tribes have become addicted to opium because there is such a high demand for it. They harvest it and sell it to trekkers and become addicted themselves. Even though I wasn't planning to buy any opium(!) I still didn't want to support the whole industry. Hopefully I didn't make a mistake and miss something really remarkable.