More Cambodia

April 21, 2008

I took a little while to relax in Siem Reap before moving on. I’d gotten a rash from the heat in Kanchanaburi, and was trying to get that cleared up before I moved on. The heat and humidity really doesn’t agree with me, though I’ve been careful enough to not have any serious problems. I got the VIP bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. The road was paved the whole way, and it was a nice air-conditioned bus, so it was a comfortable trip. The guesthouse I was staying at in Siem Reap called ahead to get me a reservation at a place in Phnom Penh, so there was a driver there to pick me up when I arrived.

I booked a tour through my guesthouse that went to all the main sights around Phnom Penh for the next day. The morning was spent visiting the Choeng Ek killing fields and the S-21 prison. I remember when the movie The Killing Fields came out in the 1980s. It was the first I’d heard of the Khmer Rouge and what they had done to Cambodia. It’s still hard to grasp.

The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 after years of civil war. They were going to turn Cambodia into a peasant society. The cities were evacuated, and the people sent to the countryside to grow rice. Anyone who was educated was at risk of being executed. The ruling regime was very paranoid, and imprisoned and executed thousands of people. It’s estimated that up to 2 million people, almost a fourth of the population at that time, were killed before the Khmer Rouge was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979.

This was only one of many fields that were used for mass burial of executed prisoners. I kept thinking of the Holocaust memorials that I have visited, and the slogan “Never again” that is so often used when referring to that genocide. But it keeps happening again and again in other parts of the world. It’s taken a while to be able to write about visiting these sites.

The S-21 prison is a former school that was turned into a prison. Almost everyone who was held here was executed, except for a few who were still alive when the Vietnamese army entered the city. Some were tortured for months first, some were killed almost immediately. It has been kept pretty much as it was when it was in use.

There was a spot under a stairwell where people had left messages with their feelings about what they had seen there. It was graffiti that did not feel like vandalism, but that people felt so strongly that they had to share those feelings.

The afternoon was less traumatic. We visited the Russian Market, which is a very large covered marketplace. Since my bag is getting full, and shipping is expensive, I didn’t buy anything but took the opportunity to find a nice air-conditioned restaurant for lunch.

Then we visited the Grand Palace, which contains several beautiful building, including a shrine with a silver floor.

There were a lot of restaurants and bars along the riverside, so I went there in the evening for dinner. One type of restaurant that I’ve seen quite a bit of around this part of the world is the “happy herbal pizza” place. And the herb referred to is not oregano.

I really liked Cambodia. The people there were some of the most friendly, outgoing people I’ve met while traveling. I had some fun conversations with teenagers that wanted to practice their English. Speaking English and Japanese or Chinese is the key to getting a good job in the tourism industry, and that’s where a lot of the well-paying jobs are now. I want to see more of the country, but between the heat and travel fatigue, I hit the wall in Phnom Penh, and took a flight back to Bangkok so I could head to the beach in southern Thailand.

Posted in Cambodia 2 Comments »

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

April 9, 2008

When I was planning my trip, I picked out a few locations that I really wanted to see, and based my itinerary around those points. Angkor Wat was one of my anchor points for the trip, and it did not disappoint. The Angkor Wat temple complex is near the town of Siem Reap, in Cambodia. I did the trip overland from Bangkok, which was quite an experience. I’d read some horror stories about bus trips from hell on this crossing, so avoided the travel agents in Bangkok, and used information from the Tales of Asia website to do it myself, and it all went smoothly. I got a bus from Bangkok to the border in Thailand at 8:30am, and was met at the bus stop by tuk-tuk drivers so it was easy to get to the border. I’d got an e-visa in advance, so I was able to avoid the scammers trying to overcharge for Cambodian visas on entry, and walked through the border crossing with no problem. Once in Cambodia, there was a free shuttle bus to a travel agency that arranged onward travel. There were a couple of guys there traveling alone, so the three of us agreed to share a taxi. They started out trying to charge us $20 each, but we got them down to $35 for the entire taxi by the simple method of standing around and not going anywhere until they brought the price down. We were also waiting to see if a fourth person to share the taxi would show up, but no one came, so we decided to head out after 20 minutes or so. The road from the border to Siem Reap is terrible, which is one reason the bus is not recommended. The bus is also much slower and may not be air-conditioned, and since most of the road isn’t paved you’d probably look like you had a mud bath by the time you got to Siem Reap. We made the drive in 3 hours, and I was sitting at my guesthouse having a beer by 6:00pm.

I’d arranged to have the tuk-tuk driver who’d taken me to my guesthouse come back the next day to drive me around the temples. He spoke good English, and was very nice. Most of the other people I talked to were also enthusiatic about their drivers. I think the Cambodian people in general are very friendly and outgoing, though there’s a fair amount of corruption to deal with.

I didn’t have an agenda for the temples, so I let my driver plan it out for me. He spends all his time driving tourists around Angkor Wat, so he knew what would make a good route. Passes for Angkor Wat are available for one day at $20, three days at $40, and 7 days at $60, so it’s not a cheap place to visit. I opted for the three day pass. When you buy your pass, they take your photo and print out a pass with the dates and your photo on it. Each time you enter a temple, a guard checks your pass, and there’s a $30 fine for trying to enter without a valid pass. Those figures are the actual prices, because although Cambodia’s official currency is the riel, the US dollar is what is actually used. The riel usually gets used as change, so if you buy something for $4.50 and give the clerk a five dollar bill, you’ll get 2000 riel back in change.

The Angkor Wat complex was built between the 8th and 13th centuries, and were rediscovered by Europeans during the 1800s.   Many of the temples have been reconstructed, but a couple have been left in a sort of managed state of being overtaken by the jungle.  One of these is the temple of Ta Phrom, which was used as a movie location for Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie.

This spot was the only one that had a fence, so I’m guessing it’s a movie location, though I don’t remember the movie well enough to say for sure.  They may just have wanted to keep people away from a dangerous area, though they usually just put up signs.  There were plenty of places that had wooden supports holding up walls and ceilings.

On the third day, we went to two of the more remote temples.  Banteay Srei is a small temple about an hour away from the main group, but it’s one of the most elaborately carved ones there.  It was also the most crowded one I visited.  We ran into rain on the way out in the morning, for only about the fourth time on my trip, so I didn’t have any rain gear.  My driver, Letgo, gave me his rain poncho, and then stopped to get a couple more when we went past some shops.  It quit raining by the time we got to the temple.

Then I wanted to see the Roulos group of temples, which is another remote group that are much less visited.  Letgo asked if I wanted to take a shortcut that would be over a bit of unpaved road, and I said sure.  The carriage behind the motorbike was  actually pretty well sprung.   Only the main roads in Cambodia are paved, the rest of them are dirt, not even gravel, so they’re very rough.

The main temple there was very interesting, but I was templed out after three days.

This little group of local kids was climbing around the  temple while I was up there.  Quite a spectacular place to have in your back yard as a playground!

It was getting well into the hot and dry season while I was there, so I was getting started by 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning, and going back to my air-conditioned guesthouse by 2:00 or so.   I spent a fair amount of time sitting in the shade contemplating the temples while I was out there as well.  There were a lot of locals with shops selling souvenirs and cold drinks.  At the less busy places, there would often be 2 or 3 women sprinting towards you when you arrived offering drinks or food.  Whoever you acknowledged first had dibs on your business while you were at that temple.   They weren’t allowed inside the temples themselves, so you just had to get through the vendors on the way in.  Having cold water for sale everywhere was a life saver, though, so they got a lot of business from me.

They had good restrooms there, too.  Many of the tourists are other Asians, from China, Japan and Korea, so they’ve got a sign warning them not to squat on the Western style toilets.  The feet spraying sign is because Asian bathroom all have a sprayer next to the toilet for cleaning your bottom.  Between the way I was sweating and the dust I was walking through, my feet could have used a good spraying down!

I went down to Pub Street most evenings for dinner.  There were cheap foot massages available in town too, which felt wonderful after a day of tromping around over rough ground.  I’m going to miss cheap massages and facials when I get home!  There are more pictures in the Cambodia gallery, so take a look there if you’re interested.

Posted in Cambodia 3 Comments »

Shopping and Playing With Tigers

March 26, 2008

I took the night train from Vientiane to Bangkok, which all went smoothly. I bought a ticket from a travel agent in Vientiane that got me transportation to the Thailand border, which is about 10 miles away, and from the border to the train station in Thailand, as well as the train ticket. I got a piece of green tape to stick to my shirt so the various people picking up and dropping off the group along the way could find everyone, and made it to the train station without a problem. I had an air-conditioned car this time on the train, and actually I ended up pretty cold that night, so non-AC might be better. Or else I need to take my jacket to bed with me.

I spent a couple of days in Bangkok, mostly shopping and not buying much. I’d been there during the week before, and missed the huge weekend market, so I made a trip out there on Sunday. I’m still not big on city buses in strange cities, so I got a taxi to Siam Square and took the Skytrain from there. The Chattuchak market is near the end of the line, so it was easy to get to. I spent a couple hours walking around there, until it got too hot. They sell just about anything you can think of there, from furniture to t-shirts to pets.

Then I took the Skytrain back to Siam Square, which is the main shopping district in Bangkok.

You can see the railway line and the elevated walkways connecting the shopping centers in the area. In the center of the picture is a shrine that’s in front of the MBK shopping center. It seems like most businesses have a shrine near the entrance for good luck.

It was actually pretty entertaining wandering through the shopping centers. The fountain is in front of the Siam Paragon shopping center, which bills itself as the pride of Bangkok and contains stores like Cartier and Valentino. I think the Starbucks was the only shop I could have afforded to buy anything at.

The Siam Discover Center is where all the teens hang out. They even have a DJ, whose booth is in the picture above. They also had very cute signs for the restrooms. Check out the knees:

My next destination was Kanchanaburi, to see the bridge on the River Kwai, famous from the book and movie of that name. I must confess to having a bit of a bus phobia, which isn’t a good thing for a traveller. I’m always afraid I’m not going to be able to communicate with the ticket seller or get on the wrong bus, and end up in the middle of nowhere with no way to get back, which is kind of silly, because if buses go there, they also go back. But I still don’t like buses. However, it’s much quicker to get to Kanchanaburi by bus than by train, so I bit the bullet and went to the bus station. The Bangkok bus station was really nice, with lots of shops and places to eat. Each bus route had it’s own ticket booth, and the platform the bus left from was printed on the ticket. Kanchanaburi was the last stop so I didn’t have to worry about missing it. It all turned out to be pretty trauma-free.

The bridge on the River Kwai is part of the railway built by the Japanese during WW II to carry supplies from Thailand to Burma, using prisoners of war for labor. It’s known as the “Death Railway” because of the number of people who died during its construction. The British had surveyed the route earlier, and decided that it would be too difficult to build. The Japanese built the railway in 18 months, but at the cost of the lives of 16,000 POWs and 9000 Asian laborers.

The bridge is still in use, with about three trains a day crossing it, but it no longer goes all the way to Burma. It’s possible to walk across the bridge, but there isn’t a pedestrian walkway, so you have to walk between the tracks. There’s plenty of room to fall on the outside edge of the tracks, and since I’m not very good with heights I didn’t walk very far out onto the bridge.

I got a picture of the motorcycle taxi stand near the bridge. Motorcycle taxis are just that - hop on the back of the motorcycle and hang on to the driver as he whips through traffic. I’m not that brave, but they’re very common in SE Asia.

In the afternoon, I booked a tour out to the Tiger Temple. It’s a Buddhist temple that became an animal sanctuary in 1999, apparently when the monks were given a tiger cub rescued from poachers. One of the volunteers told me that there are now 23 tigers, most of them born there. They’re in the process of building a large natural area for the tigers, but for now they spend most of their time in cages. They’re brought out in the afternoons for tourist visits. That’s nap time for tigers, and most of them were asleep. They’re on chains, and you are taken around to several tigers to have your picture taken.

They also had a couple of 3 month old tiger cubs that I got a chance to pet.

When it was time for the big cats to be brought back from the visiting area, they brought the cubs over to an enclosed area for us to see, to keep us out of the way while the adult tigers were walked from the visitor area back to their cages.

After that long day out in the sun, I was glad that I’d sprung for a guesthouse with a swimming pool. It was a particularly nice one, too, with flowers planted all around. Not bad for $20 a night!

And then I finished up my day watching Dirty Dancing 2 dubbed into Thai with English subtitles while mending my underwear.  The romance of travel!  Usually there’s CNN and an English movie channel on TV, but for some reason the only English language stations here were the Golf channel and Bloomberg, which is all stock market reports.

Posted in Thailand 2 Comments »

Vientiane, Last Stop in Laos

March 21, 2008

My last stop in Laos was Vientiane, the capital city. It’s fairly small as capital cities go, just over 200,000 people. It really shows the French influence as well, from when Laos was a French protectorate. Much of the architecture looks French, and there are a lot of French restaurants around.

I hadn’t made an advance reservation, but I’d looked up a few places, and asked a tuk-tuk driver to take me to my first choice. He asked if I had a booking, and when I said no, he said they would be full. I had him take me there anyhow, and of course he was right and they were full. The drivers in Laos are much more likely to be honest than in other areas where I’ve been traveling. The place next door was full too, so I asked him if he knew a good place nearby. He took off, and we went around several corners and down a few blocks, then up an alley. I was wondering what kind of joint I was going to end up at, but the guesthouse was quite nice, so I took it for one night, figuring I’d find a place a bit closer the next day. Then I went out to look around, and after the manager showed me the pedestrian walkway next to the guesthouse, I discovered that I was only a block and half from my original choice. It was the one way streets that made the trip by tuk-tuk so long. They actually had a comfortable bed (hard beds appear to be the norm in Asia), so I stayed there for the three days I was in Vientiane.

I ran into a couple of people I’d met on the boat from Thailand to Luang Prabang, and one of the women from the cooking class. It’s funny how you meet people in different places, but the tourist areas can actually be relatively small. I joined up with Sally for a trip out to the Wat Pha That Luang, which is on the Lao currency.

The place to be in Vientiane is along the Mekong River for sunset. There’s quite a collection of bars and restaurants there, as well as hot air balloon rides, and a lot of locals riding up on their scooters.

There’s a tradition of removing your shoes before entering temples or people’s homes in much of Asia, but in Laos you must also remove your shoes before entering guesthouses and many places of business. Many shops have a shoe rack in front of them. Internet cafes usually have a heap of sandals piled up out front. Most local people wear flip-flops that are easy to kick off as they come to the door. I have a pair, but my feet would be in agony if I walked more than a few blocks in them, so I’m wearing sturdy Chaco sandals. They’re great, but they strap on firmly, and it gets annoying taking them off so frequently.

Posted in Laos 1 Comment »

South to Vang Vien

March 15, 2008

I booked a ride on a minibus from Luang Prabang for the five hour ride to Vang Vien. The minibuses make getting around very easy in this part of the world. They hold about 11 passengers, and go to most of the major tourist destinations. You can usually book one through your guesthouse, and they’ll pick you up right at the door. While I was waiting to be picked up, the grandmother of the family who ran the guesthouse I was staying at performed a baci ceremony for me. She didn’t speak any English, but her grandson told me it was to wish me good luck for my journey. The baci ceremony is unique to Laos, and consists of tying white string around both wrists, while reciting wishes and blessings.

The bus was completely full by the time they picked everyone up, and they decided to split us into two other minibuses that weren’t quite so full. Unfortunately, I ended upwith a group of six young Israelis traveling together, and no other passengers. They spoke English and were perfectly polite, but I felt like the odd person out.

Vang Vien is rather notorious for being an example of what Laos doesn’t want tourist development to end up like. It’s a small town, and the reason for visiting there is to see the incredible scenery, and to visit the caves and go tubing on the river. It’s also become kind of a party town, full of bars.

I stayed in my cheapest hotel room to date, at $4 a night. The places I checked when I first arrived were all full, so I ended up at a rather shabby guesthouse on the main street. I was going to move to something a bit nicer the next day, but it was clean and pretty quiet, so I didn’t move since I was only planning to stay a couple nights. Unfortunately, I got hit with a bit of diarrhea the next day. Not too bad, but I ended up relaxing at a bar next to the river instead of going tubing.

I’d met a Belgian couple before they split up the minibuses in Luang Prabang, and met up with them again for sunset at the Smile Bar by the river both evenings I was there.

I booked a seat on the VIP bus to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, rather than a minibus, since it was a bit cheaper and a shorter trip. I thought the VIP bus was a large coach bus, but this one ended up being a small 28 passenger bus with seats that folded down into the aisle, so it was pretty crowded. We were all complaining until we made a rest stop and the large passenger bus stopped just before we left. They had over booked that bus, and had people sitting in the aisle on backless plastic stools.

Posted in Laos 4 Comments »