I have made it back to Thailand. I am writing from the beautiful town of Chiang Mai.
From the capital of Laos, Vientiane, I took a short bus ride north into the mountains and stayed in a small backpacker's town called Vang Vieng. There are some amazing limestone cliffs overlooking the town and the lazy Nam Cha river winds through. The main bus center of town is on the massive airstrip, built by the American Military "to perpetuate countless crimes." Taking a page from the Southern Missouri's Beer-Drinker's Handbook, tubing has become a popular pasttime. My first day there, I was shuttled about 3km north of town, given a tube and hopped in the Meremac of Northern Laos. Along the way, people have set up little bars serving the excellent BeerLao and other enticements such as rope swings, tree jumps, caves to explore and so on. The next day, I joined a kayaking trip. This time, we were shuttled 20km north of town and stopped at several caves and jumping spots as well as facing the occasional class 2 rapids. My evenings I spent at several establishments in town, drinking cold BeerLao with some Canadian lawyers, sampling the "happy" garlic bread and avoiding the restaurants with episodes of "Friends" playing 24 hours a day, no joke.
From Vang Vieng, I took the breathtaking 7 hour bus ride way up into the mountains of Northern Laos. It was amazing to see how people live along the thin mountain roads. They build their houses on stilts hanging over the side of sheer drop-offs and even carry on some kind of agriculture even though the mountainsides are all over 45 degree angles. The views from the winding road was incredible. Finally we came back down and entered the World Heritage former capital city of Luang Prabang. It is renowned for its French architecture and beautiful temples. The night market was one of the best I have been to--a long street filled with high quality fabrics, scarves, lamps, clothes and the highly sought after BeerLao T-shirts. Most importantly, the sellers did very little hassling, you were free to browse without any pressure, and the crowds were minimal. I spent the day there bicycling around, locating a waterfall not too far from town and having a nice swim, then coming back to relax a bit before climbing the large hill located in the center of town and watching the sunset from a Buddhist temple with views of the town and the majestic mountains in the distance. It was at this point that I realized I had asked myself the question upon arrival in Luang Prabang, "why is this a World Heritage city?" Looking at the town and all the surrounding temples among the pristine mountains, I got the picture.
I made the decision to make it all the way from Luang Prabang to the Thai border at Huay Xi, Laos. To do this in one day would require use of the suicidal, unsafe at any speedboat previously seen crossing from Cambodia into Laos. It was going to be a 6 hour trip up the Mekong river. This time, we were provided with life vests and crash helmets. Despite the deafening engine, I somehow managed to doze off a few times, only to quickly awaken paranoid that I would somehow slump over into the Mekong which was flying by us at about 70 km/h, most likely decapitation to ensue. Arriving in Huay Xi, I was told I could cross the border before it closes and have enough time to catch a 5 hour bus to Chiang Mai in Thailand arriving at about 11pm. With a healthy supply of sleep-aids legal in these countries, I happily agreed and was whisked across the Mekong one last time. I must have slept through a rather powerful thunderstorm in the car, but was delivered safe and sound the the jewel of Northern Thailand, Chiang Mai. I will attempt a 3 day trek/raft/climb/meethillpeople/barbeque/waterfall/elephantride/feedthemonkey/cowtipping adventure in the mountains here before heading back to Bangkok for a mini-Fingerhut reunion of sorts.
My trip count so far: 5 days in Bangkok, 11 days in Cambodia, 9 days in Laos, Chiang Mai - 1 day and counting.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The long road from Phnom Penh to Vientiane
For about the last 5 days, I have been making my way north from the capital of Cambodia to the capital of Loas. It's been an arduous, but surely interesting journey on the backroads and the Mekong.
The first step was a 5 hour short-bus ride north to the small city of Kratie. There was no leg room and my left arm got terribly sunburnt because there wasn't room for it in the bus. In Kratie, me and this geologist Brit John took a short boat ride to see the endangered freshwater Iyerwaddy dolphins in the Mekong river. The next day after falling victim to conniving Kratie driver/transportation system, we set off for Stung Treng. We were guaranteed only 3 people in the back of a taxi for the 4 hour ride because we paid an extra 6 bucks. But sure enough, as soon as we rounded the corner, another guy jumped in. Fleeced again!
In Stung Treng, we boarded a small canoe-type raft with a Toyota car engine attached to it. Needless to say, we flew from Stung Treng to the Cambodia/Lao border crossing. When we left Stung Treng, it was a very sunny day. As we made our way further up the Mekong, it became apparent it was gonna rain. Our tiny boat was unsheltered. As the wind kicked up and our boat driver kept the speed up, we were battered with rain, although it might have been glass shards. Finally, it let up and as we approached the stilted shack known as Cambodia immigration, the super-duper immigration officer got out of his hammock and put on his shirt. He stamped us on our way and collected his "official" $2 overtime fee. Although we thought we paid for transport all the way to Laos, we were then charged another dollar to get to the Laos immigration office across the river. Happy to be out of Cambodia for the time being, we got stamped in Laos, paid the overtime fee there and headed for town as it began to get dark.
We were set on getting to the bungalow/backpacker town of Don Det, located in Si Phan Don, or 4,000 islands area. Here, the mighty Mekong diverges into countless channels creating many islands and picturesque waterfalls. We were able to stay in a nice riverside bungalow for a dollar a night. We spent the next day strolling a couple islands, checking out mile-wide rapids and falls, wading through flooded paths, enjoying the extra-happy menu of the local restaurants and like the Lonely Planet suggests, recovering from Cambodia. On Don Det, I believe I have recovered evidence of the fist ever Ducken--the ducks and chickens of the island have a very good relationship. Recovery complete, we reserved a seat for the next leg of our journey.
Pick it up from my journal entry:
The journey from Don Det to Pakse was an interesting one. John and I got on a Lao truck/bus thingy at 8:40am and told we'd leave at 9am. People were loading bags of all sizes onto the truck. One guy got on, opened one of the bags, pulled out a few frogs and ripped off one of the legs of the still-living thing. Sure enough, we felt the other bags and there were animals of some kind in there. Six Spaniards got on and objected as more and more bags and baskets were loaded on. It got to be 10am, we were still there and the Spaniards weren't happy. One guy displayed his expertise in Spanish cussing. "Joder! Tu puta madre!" Me too. They got off and got there money back, setting off on foot. Finally we set off. On our truck, there were about 20 people, several bags of rice, several bags of animals: species unknown and in various stages of near-death, 2 large pots of fish swimming in Mekong River water (one of whcih fell off onto the road spilling the water and depositing the fish onto the hot pavement), baskets of unknown groaning animals and finally a large wicker cage containing about 40 chickens all crammed together and shitting onto aforementioned bags/baskets/passengers. We happily got off the Farmyard Connection in Pakse, Laos.
John and I recovered with a few of southeast asia's best beers, BeerLao. He was off on an overnight bus to Vientiane, while I was getting a morning bus (the VIP, no farm animals) to the town of Savannakhet. Savannakhet is a town on the Thai border which was heavily bombarded by American troops around the time of Vietnam. I checked out an amazing Buddhist temple then checked out the local Museum. Most of it was an homage to national communist heroes and pictures of farming and Laos' burgeoning "industry" as evidence of its place in world communist powers! Yeah, I was the only one at the museum. Upstairs they had a few old bombs left by America and a few pictures with captions like: "U.S. imperialists and puppet soldiers use Savannakhet Airfield for perpetrating countless crimes." Good stuff. Outside there was an old US fighter plane and some cannons on display. There were a group of teenagers sitting and talking on the fighter plane. One guy was laying on one of the wing flaps. As he got up, the flap turned and he tumbled to the ground. Ah, sweet victory! Vindication! Go USA!
I opted for an overnight bus to Vientiane("local" = no animals, just bags of rice piled 2 deep in the aisles and from floor to cieling in the rear). I managed some good sleep on the bus despite the Loatian karaoke hits blasting all night and rain blowing in the windows in the middle of the night.
So now I am here in Vientiane, not much going on here. I think I will go to Vang Vieng tomorrow, where I here they have some good tubing. Can't wait...
The first step was a 5 hour short-bus ride north to the small city of Kratie. There was no leg room and my left arm got terribly sunburnt because there wasn't room for it in the bus. In Kratie, me and this geologist Brit John took a short boat ride to see the endangered freshwater Iyerwaddy dolphins in the Mekong river. The next day after falling victim to conniving Kratie driver/transportation system, we set off for Stung Treng. We were guaranteed only 3 people in the back of a taxi for the 4 hour ride because we paid an extra 6 bucks. But sure enough, as soon as we rounded the corner, another guy jumped in. Fleeced again!
In Stung Treng, we boarded a small canoe-type raft with a Toyota car engine attached to it. Needless to say, we flew from Stung Treng to the Cambodia/Lao border crossing. When we left Stung Treng, it was a very sunny day. As we made our way further up the Mekong, it became apparent it was gonna rain. Our tiny boat was unsheltered. As the wind kicked up and our boat driver kept the speed up, we were battered with rain, although it might have been glass shards. Finally, it let up and as we approached the stilted shack known as Cambodia immigration, the super-duper immigration officer got out of his hammock and put on his shirt. He stamped us on our way and collected his "official" $2 overtime fee. Although we thought we paid for transport all the way to Laos, we were then charged another dollar to get to the Laos immigration office across the river. Happy to be out of Cambodia for the time being, we got stamped in Laos, paid the overtime fee there and headed for town as it began to get dark.
We were set on getting to the bungalow/backpacker town of Don Det, located in Si Phan Don, or 4,000 islands area. Here, the mighty Mekong diverges into countless channels creating many islands and picturesque waterfalls. We were able to stay in a nice riverside bungalow for a dollar a night. We spent the next day strolling a couple islands, checking out mile-wide rapids and falls, wading through flooded paths, enjoying the extra-happy menu of the local restaurants and like the Lonely Planet suggests, recovering from Cambodia. On Don Det, I believe I have recovered evidence of the fist ever Ducken--the ducks and chickens of the island have a very good relationship. Recovery complete, we reserved a seat for the next leg of our journey.
Pick it up from my journal entry:
The journey from Don Det to Pakse was an interesting one. John and I got on a Lao truck/bus thingy at 8:40am and told we'd leave at 9am. People were loading bags of all sizes onto the truck. One guy got on, opened one of the bags, pulled out a few frogs and ripped off one of the legs of the still-living thing. Sure enough, we felt the other bags and there were animals of some kind in there. Six Spaniards got on and objected as more and more bags and baskets were loaded on. It got to be 10am, we were still there and the Spaniards weren't happy. One guy displayed his expertise in Spanish cussing. "Joder! Tu puta madre!" Me too. They got off and got there money back, setting off on foot. Finally we set off. On our truck, there were about 20 people, several bags of rice, several bags of animals: species unknown and in various stages of near-death, 2 large pots of fish swimming in Mekong River water (one of whcih fell off onto the road spilling the water and depositing the fish onto the hot pavement), baskets of unknown groaning animals and finally a large wicker cage containing about 40 chickens all crammed together and shitting onto aforementioned bags/baskets/passengers. We happily got off the Farmyard Connection in Pakse, Laos.
John and I recovered with a few of southeast asia's best beers, BeerLao. He was off on an overnight bus to Vientiane, while I was getting a morning bus (the VIP, no farm animals) to the town of Savannakhet. Savannakhet is a town on the Thai border which was heavily bombarded by American troops around the time of Vietnam. I checked out an amazing Buddhist temple then checked out the local Museum. Most of it was an homage to national communist heroes and pictures of farming and Laos' burgeoning "industry" as evidence of its place in world communist powers! Yeah, I was the only one at the museum. Upstairs they had a few old bombs left by America and a few pictures with captions like: "U.S. imperialists and puppet soldiers use Savannakhet Airfield for perpetrating countless crimes." Good stuff. Outside there was an old US fighter plane and some cannons on display. There were a group of teenagers sitting and talking on the fighter plane. One guy was laying on one of the wing flaps. As he got up, the flap turned and he tumbled to the ground. Ah, sweet victory! Vindication! Go USA!
I opted for an overnight bus to Vientiane("local" = no animals, just bags of rice piled 2 deep in the aisles and from floor to cieling in the rear). I managed some good sleep on the bus despite the Loatian karaoke hits blasting all night and rain blowing in the windows in the middle of the night.
So now I am here in Vientiane, not much going on here. I think I will go to Vang Vieng tomorrow, where I here they have some good tubing. Can't wait...
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh
Yesterday, I returned to Phnom Penh from Sihanoukville. This is a little beachside town on the southern coast of Cambodia. I relaxed for 2 days on some excellent beaches and hopped on a scooter to explore a nice waterfall.
After returning to the capital yesterday, I decided to check out 2 places that most tourists visit when in Cambodia. First, I went to the Tuol Sleng Museum. In 1975, the genocidal Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces took over this high school and made it a detention compound and interrogation center. The aim of the Khmer Rouge was to rapidly create a communist state, to undergo its own "Great Leap Forward". Many intellectuals, people who knew foreigners and sometime people who simply wore glasses were rounded up form all over Cambodia and sent to prisons like this. Here they were interrogated, tortured, beaten senseless until they gave name of friends, family members and anyone else they knew to be traitors of the state.
After thorough torture, the prisoners were loaded into trucks and taken about 20km outside the city to The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I made the very same trip on the back of a scooter after visiting the museum. Here the remains of 8985 people have been unearthed. There is a memorial pillar with many of the skulls and bones stacked inside. As I walked around the fields, there were many holes, some with signs saying things like: the remains of 420 people were found here or 166 bodies of women and children were buried here - without heads. As I walked, I looked down and was amazed to see bones still protruding from the dirt. I brushed my hands across them in disbelief and was further amazed to see clothing, worn by the victims on the day of their execution, sticking out from the dirt.
On a lighter note, I continue to meet very interesting people: A former Canadian Football player who now works on oil pipelines in western Canada, on vacation until the roads freeze again and he can drive on the ice; A young Japanese kid who has been bicycling through Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. "I love to bike," he says; A former English teacher in Japan who has opened his own shop in Phnom Penh. His business: loading up peoples' ipods with albums for $.75 per. I got 10 bucks worth.
Keep checking back here, I will head to Northern Cambodia tomorrow then into Laos soon after.
After returning to the capital yesterday, I decided to check out 2 places that most tourists visit when in Cambodia. First, I went to the Tuol Sleng Museum. In 1975, the genocidal Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces took over this high school and made it a detention compound and interrogation center. The aim of the Khmer Rouge was to rapidly create a communist state, to undergo its own "Great Leap Forward". Many intellectuals, people who knew foreigners and sometime people who simply wore glasses were rounded up form all over Cambodia and sent to prisons like this. Here they were interrogated, tortured, beaten senseless until they gave name of friends, family members and anyone else they knew to be traitors of the state.
After thorough torture, the prisoners were loaded into trucks and taken about 20km outside the city to The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I made the very same trip on the back of a scooter after visiting the museum. Here the remains of 8985 people have been unearthed. There is a memorial pillar with many of the skulls and bones stacked inside. As I walked around the fields, there were many holes, some with signs saying things like: the remains of 420 people were found here or 166 bodies of women and children were buried here - without heads. As I walked, I looked down and was amazed to see bones still protruding from the dirt. I brushed my hands across them in disbelief and was further amazed to see clothing, worn by the victims on the day of their execution, sticking out from the dirt.
On a lighter note, I continue to meet very interesting people: A former Canadian Football player who now works on oil pipelines in western Canada, on vacation until the roads freeze again and he can drive on the ice; A young Japanese kid who has been bicycling through Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. "I love to bike," he says; A former English teacher in Japan who has opened his own shop in Phnom Penh. His business: loading up peoples' ipods with albums for $.75 per. I got 10 bucks worth.
Keep checking back here, I will head to Northern Cambodia tomorrow then into Laos soon after.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Holiday in Cambodia
I just finished up 3 days in Siem Reap and I am now in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. The first 2 days I spent checking out Angkor's countless ancient temples and crumbling structures. I opted to get shuttled around to them by a guy working at the guest house I stayed at on the back of a scooter. His name was Phech Sopaul, or just Paul. I also met 2 lawyers from CO who met in the courtroom (facing eachother)and have been engaged for over a year.
By the third day, I was pretty much tired of seeing the temples, so we did something a little different. There is a huge lake in the middle of Cambodia and of course many people who live on the lake fishing and raising alligators. I shared a boat with a Brit banker who was on his way back from working in Bogota, Colombia. We checked out the floating villages and I was the only foreigner to jump into the muddy, flooded canal with the Cambodians.
Then Paul took me to what he called the killing fields. It was a site at which many people were massacred during the Khmer Rouge's regime and institution of communism. Today, it is a Buddhist monastary complex. There was still a pile of bones as a memorial along with pictures and diagrams of different ways in which people were killed. As I began to feel pretty emotional thinking about this, I strolled over to a classroom where there was a foreigner teaching english to a classful of young adults. I stepped outside and there was a Buddhist funural service going on. There was the body in a concrete pyre and men began to put burning wood inside to cremate the body. I saw some women and kids crying for the deceased. It was an amazing place with so many real things happening.
I then asked Paul if I could go to his house. He lives in this tiny, one room shack with a hammock for a bed and a dirt floor. He cooked me a little food he usually eats and his mom brought over a special dish too. We strolled around the neighborhood and talked to a few people, one guy who makes genuine engravings like the ones at Angkor Wat and sells them to hotels and rich tourists. Last night, I paid Paul more than what he asked for for the 3 days. He was pretty happy and invited me to drink with him, some other co-workers, the guest house owner and the owner's family. It was great fun an we raised our glasses every 2 minutes to drink Anchor Beer poured over ice. I did the usual foreigner thing of repeating funny Cambodian phrases to everyone's amusement. I was sad to leave Siem Reap this morning, giving Paul my e-mail and a recieving a promise that he will ask me to invest in a new guest house he wants to open.
Land mines are a part of everyday life all over the country. Millions of mines were laid in the decades of war in the 60s to the 80s and they are still a huge problem today. I visited the Siem Reap mine museum. This small one room building has tons of old mines and bombs gathered by the museum's creator, Aki Ra. He was a child soldier for the Khmer regime and he actually placed many of the mines when he was a child. Today, he works on locating and disarming the old, but still active mines. Several children live at the museum. They are all amputees or are blind. Being in Cambodia, I have seem so many people walking or crawling around missing legs, arms, or everything. There is really no reason for these terrible devices to exist in the first place. Most mines are created by the huge powers: Russia, China or the good old USA, and end up in extremely poor places like here and Laos. About 90 Cambodians are victims of land mines every month.
More to come from Cambodia...
By the third day, I was pretty much tired of seeing the temples, so we did something a little different. There is a huge lake in the middle of Cambodia and of course many people who live on the lake fishing and raising alligators. I shared a boat with a Brit banker who was on his way back from working in Bogota, Colombia. We checked out the floating villages and I was the only foreigner to jump into the muddy, flooded canal with the Cambodians.
Then Paul took me to what he called the killing fields. It was a site at which many people were massacred during the Khmer Rouge's regime and institution of communism. Today, it is a Buddhist monastary complex. There was still a pile of bones as a memorial along with pictures and diagrams of different ways in which people were killed. As I began to feel pretty emotional thinking about this, I strolled over to a classroom where there was a foreigner teaching english to a classful of young adults. I stepped outside and there was a Buddhist funural service going on. There was the body in a concrete pyre and men began to put burning wood inside to cremate the body. I saw some women and kids crying for the deceased. It was an amazing place with so many real things happening.
I then asked Paul if I could go to his house. He lives in this tiny, one room shack with a hammock for a bed and a dirt floor. He cooked me a little food he usually eats and his mom brought over a special dish too. We strolled around the neighborhood and talked to a few people, one guy who makes genuine engravings like the ones at Angkor Wat and sells them to hotels and rich tourists. Last night, I paid Paul more than what he asked for for the 3 days. He was pretty happy and invited me to drink with him, some other co-workers, the guest house owner and the owner's family. It was great fun an we raised our glasses every 2 minutes to drink Anchor Beer poured over ice. I did the usual foreigner thing of repeating funny Cambodian phrases to everyone's amusement. I was sad to leave Siem Reap this morning, giving Paul my e-mail and a recieving a promise that he will ask me to invest in a new guest house he wants to open.
Land mines are a part of everyday life all over the country. Millions of mines were laid in the decades of war in the 60s to the 80s and they are still a huge problem today. I visited the Siem Reap mine museum. This small one room building has tons of old mines and bombs gathered by the museum's creator, Aki Ra. He was a child soldier for the Khmer regime and he actually placed many of the mines when he was a child. Today, he works on locating and disarming the old, but still active mines. Several children live at the museum. They are all amputees or are blind. Being in Cambodia, I have seem so many people walking or crawling around missing legs, arms, or everything. There is really no reason for these terrible devices to exist in the first place. Most mines are created by the huge powers: Russia, China or the good old USA, and end up in extremely poor places like here and Laos. About 90 Cambodians are victims of land mines every month.
More to come from Cambodia...
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Greeting from monsoony Cambodia.
Yesterday morning, I boarded a bus in Bangkok and set out for the Thailand's Eastern border with Cambodia. This was a smooth 4 hour drive. Despite arriving at the border and already possessing a Cambodia visa, I waited in a line for a good 2 hours for 2 stamps in my passport. After the nice a/c bus and the paved roads in Thailand, Cambodia was not quite there. The road from the border to the nearest big town of Siem Reap was about 130km of muddy, potholed, washed out slop. We set out from the border at about 4pm and arrived at about 12:30am. Plus, I was in one of those temporary pull down seats in the aisle on our short bus.
This morning I woke up and hopped on the back of a motor-bike with my new friend Paul as my guide. This nice young Cambodian man proceeded to drive me 80km East to the ruins of an ancient Khmer temple. There was no one around there, I had the chance to explore the crumbling stones in the middle of the jungle for several hours. We repeated the same incredible journey back to the city, speeding down the muddy red roads thourgh rice paddies, dogs laying on the road, naked kids waving as a white man passed by, women bathing near the well in mid-afternoon and dump trucks trying to avoid us.
Every time I open my eyes, there is another photograph I am sure I have seen as I paged through our monthly National Geographic as a kid. The culture here is just so amazing. Cambodia is a very poor country and people do what the can to make some money. Cattle are the means to bring crops to the market, sharing the busy roads with scooters and 3 year olds on full sized bikes. Need some gas? Pull over and buy it by the liter from soda bottles recylced as gas containers.
This evening, I walked the grounds of Angkor Wat. This is perhaps the most expansive structure I have ever been in. Oh, and it's 800 years old. I have taken so many pictures the past 2 days and I can't wait to share them. I will spend the next 2 days exploring Angkor Wat and countless other ancient Khmer temples in the area. Stay tuned.
Yesterday morning, I boarded a bus in Bangkok and set out for the Thailand's Eastern border with Cambodia. This was a smooth 4 hour drive. Despite arriving at the border and already possessing a Cambodia visa, I waited in a line for a good 2 hours for 2 stamps in my passport. After the nice a/c bus and the paved roads in Thailand, Cambodia was not quite there. The road from the border to the nearest big town of Siem Reap was about 130km of muddy, potholed, washed out slop. We set out from the border at about 4pm and arrived at about 12:30am. Plus, I was in one of those temporary pull down seats in the aisle on our short bus.
This morning I woke up and hopped on the back of a motor-bike with my new friend Paul as my guide. This nice young Cambodian man proceeded to drive me 80km East to the ruins of an ancient Khmer temple. There was no one around there, I had the chance to explore the crumbling stones in the middle of the jungle for several hours. We repeated the same incredible journey back to the city, speeding down the muddy red roads thourgh rice paddies, dogs laying on the road, naked kids waving as a white man passed by, women bathing near the well in mid-afternoon and dump trucks trying to avoid us.
Every time I open my eyes, there is another photograph I am sure I have seen as I paged through our monthly National Geographic as a kid. The culture here is just so amazing. Cambodia is a very poor country and people do what the can to make some money. Cattle are the means to bring crops to the market, sharing the busy roads with scooters and 3 year olds on full sized bikes. Need some gas? Pull over and buy it by the liter from soda bottles recylced as gas containers.
This evening, I walked the grounds of Angkor Wat. This is perhaps the most expansive structure I have ever been in. Oh, and it's 800 years old. I have taken so many pictures the past 2 days and I can't wait to share them. I will spend the next 2 days exploring Angkor Wat and countless other ancient Khmer temples in the area. Stay tuned.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Banned in Bangkok
Greetings everyone. For the first time, I am blogging from the road. I am currently sitting in an internet cafe just off Kao San Road in Bangkok. Today was my third day here. I arrived Thursday night late and was lucky to find a room. I made sure the room had a fan--more of a jet propellar. I was defintely cool but mostly slept in the fetal position in case it worked its way loose off the cieling.
These 3 days I have mostly spent walking, strolling and working my way around the little free city map I picked up at the airport. I must say, I've covered a good portion of it already. I made a few purchases--a medium sized backpack for shorter excursions, a pair of sandals to avoid doing sock laundry and a pair of pants in order to properly enter the buddhist temples(all fakes, of course). Yesterday, after a long day of walking in the heat, I rewarded myself with a movie in a cavernous, frigid theater. I watched "The Island". It was classic Michael Bay/Armageddon type stuff (Joey, you love it) but the action was pretty good and it served its purpose for about $3.75. After that, my adrenaline was pumping, so I hopped on a TukTuk, a 3 wheel taxi vehicle. The driver was whipping in and out of traffic and I couldn't help but laugh as I held on for my life.
I also moved to a different guest house yesterday, slightly cheaper and a cool place to relax and watch some pirated movies on the first floor. I've arranged for a bus ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia--I will leave Tuesday morning. I plan on working my way through Cambodia, then north to Laos, the back to northern Thailand. Bangkok is most defenitely interesting, but I'm ready to get out. As far as food goes, mostly been eating Thai or Indian, but tonight I had to have some pizza at this one place. I kept walking by and the smell brought me in. I had some amazing Dragonfruit today. Just a few interesting things I've noticed the past few days: tattoo parlors in the back of vans, an abundance of white people but a noticeable lack of American accents, a family of 4 on a scooter on a busy street--no helmets, standing for the Thai national anthem before a movie, old dogs laying and chilling anywhere even in traffic.
This is just a start, but hopefully the next time you hear from me will be in the heart of Cambodia. I'll see if I can't get to a beach while I'm there. Out.
PS - I was in a scavenger hunt in Tokyo a while back. My friend Brooke just sent me the link for some of our pictures. Check 'em out. You'll notice, I'm the guy whose feet are off the ground in each of our team's 3 pictures. Classic.
These 3 days I have mostly spent walking, strolling and working my way around the little free city map I picked up at the airport. I must say, I've covered a good portion of it already. I made a few purchases--a medium sized backpack for shorter excursions, a pair of sandals to avoid doing sock laundry and a pair of pants in order to properly enter the buddhist temples(all fakes, of course). Yesterday, after a long day of walking in the heat, I rewarded myself with a movie in a cavernous, frigid theater. I watched "The Island". It was classic Michael Bay/Armageddon type stuff (Joey, you love it) but the action was pretty good and it served its purpose for about $3.75. After that, my adrenaline was pumping, so I hopped on a TukTuk, a 3 wheel taxi vehicle. The driver was whipping in and out of traffic and I couldn't help but laugh as I held on for my life.
I also moved to a different guest house yesterday, slightly cheaper and a cool place to relax and watch some pirated movies on the first floor. I've arranged for a bus ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia--I will leave Tuesday morning. I plan on working my way through Cambodia, then north to Laos, the back to northern Thailand. Bangkok is most defenitely interesting, but I'm ready to get out. As far as food goes, mostly been eating Thai or Indian, but tonight I had to have some pizza at this one place. I kept walking by and the smell brought me in. I had some amazing Dragonfruit today. Just a few interesting things I've noticed the past few days: tattoo parlors in the back of vans, an abundance of white people but a noticeable lack of American accents, a family of 4 on a scooter on a busy street--no helmets, standing for the Thai national anthem before a movie, old dogs laying and chilling anywhere even in traffic.
This is just a start, but hopefully the next time you hear from me will be in the heart of Cambodia. I'll see if I can't get to a beach while I'm there. Out.
PS - I was in a scavenger hunt in Tokyo a while back. My friend Brooke just sent me the link for some of our pictures. Check 'em out. You'll notice, I'm the guy whose feet are off the ground in each of our team's 3 pictures. Classic.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Sayonara, Japan
In about 48 hours, I will get on a 1-way flight to Bangkok. I will leave Japan after spending 3 years here on the JET Program. There's so much I want to say about Japan and my experiences here. Perhaps I should only say this: To everyone I have met, worked with, jumped off waterfalls with and to Japan as a country, Thank You.
I'll be in SE Asia for about 2 months before heading back to the states. I can't wait to get to Thailand, a country I have heard so much about but never been to. I'll try to keep updating this when I am travelling, but it could be spotty. Feel free to e-mail me to sey hay. Stay tuned for more Champon Adventures...
I'll be in SE Asia for about 2 months before heading back to the states. I can't wait to get to Thailand, a country I have heard so much about but never been to. I'll try to keep updating this when I am travelling, but it could be spotty. Feel free to e-mail me to sey hay. Stay tuned for more Champon Adventures...
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