November 2008 Archives

Internet access here in the Phang-nga region north of Phuket is a little on the dodgy side.  Hard to come by and frequently affected by power outages, but still an enjoyable little town.  Not much to share other than photos I can't post because this computer lacks the horsepower to read memory cards (apparently) and the fact that renting a little 125cc scooter and driving it into town is fun, but reversing those 20km in driving rain with insane military truck drivers and twisty roads is a little more... "thrilling" than I would have expected.  No elephants to be ridden since "riding" them consists of sitting in a box on their backs here - no amount of bribing will get me anything else.  A day of recovery in a luxury hotel that costs less than a motel six back home and then it's an hour back to phuket, 12 hours killed on last minute trinket finding and 24 hours of flying home.  Thankfully the folks trying to overthrow the government here seized control of the bangkok airport and left the farang to come and go as they please out of the south.

It's been a strange day.

I came back from the uber mega market that goes every weekend in a park to the north of bangkok - pretty nice, found some interesting stuff, including some nazi artifacts (probably fake) - and had the whole gambit of "scam the tourist" experiences thrown at me in the span of maybe 5 minutes.  I stopped by a little stall to pick up this wizened old man statue I'd seen before, asked how much, 400 baht (which is, granted, only $15, but it's the prinicipal of the thing) when there are other statues (not the one I want but much larger) sitting below it with price tags of 100 or 125.  The man won't bargain - clearly it's the farang tax.  Disappointed I went and stood to find a tuk-tuk to get home when I was approached by a "friendly" man "from the tourism beuro".  he'd forgotten his badge that day (so sad) but said it would be very difficult to get to the area of town I was headed for because lots of people were going there today since it was "budha day".  Uh-huh.  He grabs a pen and draws a little dot on my map saying that there's a "lucky budha" there that's only open today.  The circle he's arbitrarily drawn is about 100 feet from my hotel and I have a strong desire to tell him the lucky budha must be located inside the red dragon coffee shop because that's the only thing other than a hotel that's on that street.  Before he can start into how he has discounted tickets to see said lucky budha a tuk-tuk pulls up and I negotaite a quick fare.

The route to the hotel is quite complicated.  Follow the road we're on until it ends.  Stop. I get out.  The tuk-tuk man takes off and after a few blocks suddenly veers left off into side streets, then wildly careening around a college campus sort of flailing behind him (I think he's asking for either money or the map) until he swings around and asks some students how to get where I had pointed on the map.  They tell him to get back on the road (presumably) but he'll have none of that and takes nothing but back streets the entire way home.  It's kind of fun, actually, except that he doesn't appear to live by the standard tuk-tuk give and take code of the road - for him it's all take.  Incidentally, the tuk-tuk code - and most of driving in bangkok really - is quite similar to my theory that when you need to merge into traffic and there aren't any openings you just pick someone with a nice car and start merging in front of them.  Chances are they'll value the shine on their vehicle more than their spot in traffic.  Sure enough, if you want in or around anything here whoever has the shittier mode of transportation seems to win out about 95% of the time.

Anyway, off to phuket now (flight in a few hours) for some "sun" (current forecast is mixed sun and thunderstorms) with maybe some scooter riding and rock climbing mixed in.  Left my PADI certification at home so diving may be out of the question, we'll see.

Oh yes, and the shirts I had made came back inside out.  Sweet.  We'll see if silk screening can cool-ify some of them but it may be just a moderatly expensive lesson to learn.  No green suit though, they wanted $150 for it and I couldn't haggle any lower than that, just not worth it.  Sorry to disappoint J and Twig.

I wrote this yesterday after a mind numbing day of walking.  I don't really feel like editing it so you get it in all of its raw glory.  probably no pictures for a while since my memory card managed to get viruses on it at the last place and I'm loathe to stick it in any more places.  hehe, I've still got the mind of a 12 year old.  Anyway:

Well I went all the way to hither and fuckin' yon today.  I took a cab out to this electronics mecca place that was full of guys trying to sell less-than-legitimate DVDs but who wouldn't bargain (there was no way I was paying $3 for a movie, $1.50 or less tops, that's what it was in cambodia).  Anyway, wasted a few hours there then off to find the tailor Scott's old boss knew about.  I found him but he was a little used-car-salesman-y so I went a few doors down to another place where the guy only tried to sell me pants a little and otherwise was quite nice.  He'd been in business for about 30 years too so he can't be awful.  Anyway, I've got 10 shirts coming which are either going to be awesome or going to be inside out.  I brought along one of my shirts from Buckle on this trip just so I could show them how I liked the shirts to fit.  They said they could copy it no problem, make the collar stand up a little better and the cuffs a tad shorter and all would be good.  It occurred to me on my walk home though that if they COPY copy it then I'm going to get 10 shirts with stitching on the outside (Buckles was being all trendy and whatnot) so we'll see.  After that I took the sky train down to the end of the line and was planning on taking a water taxi home (long boat) but the travel time was like 30 minutes so I get the great idea to WALK the 15 or so miles home through downtown bangkok.  In rush hour traffic.  That's the hither and yon I was referring to.

It was actually kind of nice - though the last mile or two started to suck on the old calves - I ended up wandering through a couple of areas that clearly no tourists were supposed to go, or at least rarely went.  All of the Tuk-Tuk drivers stopped shouting at me to get a ride and figured if I was walking I must have a good reason for walking (whenever I crossed into a touristy market area they'd start back up again then die down when I left).  I passed an actual honest to god tailor - with sewing machines and everything - instead of what all of the places english speakers go (they're basically just fitting shops).  Then there were a couple of really run down looking guys huddled around an overturned bucket playing checkers with bottle caps.  They were having a blast though so I stopped and watched for a while.  Just before getting into china town I saw a really quick taxi transaction that had a pretty older looking white dude escorting a young thai girl into the back and taking off - that really can't be good.  Chinatown after dark (it took a while to walk home) was sort of interesting too, everyone was just cleaning up all of the cheap plastic crap and making plans for dinner.  kind of cool.  But I'm "home" now so I can rest and drink a coke with actual sugar in it (no high fructose corn syrup out here).

In case you can't tell this is totally stream of consciousness, not enough brain juice left to format it into really readable sentences.  It's been quite strange actually, I keep forgetting where I am.  I mean, country wise.  I know I'm someplace foreign but I really keep expecting it to be a different city.  I was bored the other morning so "read" a french magazine I found in the lobby and I swear to god when I looked up I expected people to be speaking french, it took a while to readjust.  Then today while killing some time during the tailor thing I partook of my long standing solo travel tradition and saw a movie that's been out of the theaters for a while in the states (Traitor in this case) and enjoyed the AC.  But again, as the movie ended I was really expecting everyone outside to be speaking italian or something, it took me a second to readjust.  It's been very strange.  Oh yeah, and before the movie the had this tribute thingy to the King of Thailand and everyone (all 15 people or so) stood up while it was playing on the screen. Crazy.

The journey to bangkok itself was a good example of what to expect to be different between Cambodia and Thailand.  Siem Reap had been essentially a 4 road town, two of which were major national streets (the other two were constantly under construction/repair).  We elected to take a taxi from Siem Reap to the border crossing since - it being a total of about 100 miles - the taxi would be substantially quicker at only three hours.  I've wracked my brains to think of a suitable analogy for the roads but really the best I can come up with was that I didn't ride in a car, I rode in a tumble dryer cleverly disguised as a car.  Of the 100 mile stretch probably about 15 miles were actually paved (rough pavement but paved none the less) while the rest were a mixture of rock, loose sand, pot holes and wandering cows.  Our taxi driver tried his best to shorten the trip by flooring it whenever there was a relative short spot only to have to break suddenly to go down and through a river rather than over a bridge current being repaired or built for the first time.  It was exciting to say the least.

The border itself turned out to be pretty effortless.  I'd been prepared to have to bribe an official so that it would take a manner of hours instead of days to get through (this was Hank's experience the last time he was through) but sadly they've since cleaned up the system so a bribe - or technically "elevation to VIP status" - was no longer in order.  It was still entirely possible to be stuck in no-mans land though, the cambodian hut to get your passport stamped on exit was cleverly disguised as nothing (Hank had detailed directions so we managed to find it) and we made our way through to the BKK bound train.

The difference in countries was obvious immediately.  Everything was paved and a good portion of the building had lights on during the day (a needless expense).  The train was still, quoting hank here, worse than even the cheapest train in china but it was functional and that was saying something.  More akin to an above ground subway car the six hour ass numbingly long ride went smoothly, I got to get glimpses of the country side between sleeping and sharing food with random thai folk.  It felt pretty similar to normal pastoral countryside until you'd see someone standing in a marsh picking (I assume) rice or a water buffalo or something.  There was much sleeping.

Now in Bangkok I've spent a day getting a rough bearing of the city.  I'm staying conveniently close to the Amulet Market (which sells disappointingly few occult amulets and many many budhas).  I found my way to china town where I saw far more plastic piece of crap than I thought could exist in the world, ate some form of fried corn and maybe a meat or vegetable (hard to tell) from a nice woman with a giant meat cleaver, and completely missed "little india".  It's been a little difficult adjusting to a place where I don't have to take my shoes off before entering the hotel and there aren't a thousand people screaming at me "hey mister, you buy!".  They're content to just wait until you start looking before descending upon you.

Today I'm off to the electronics mecca of bangkok, followed by a couple of good leads on quality suit makers.  I've decided that for shirts and whatnot - things I want to actually wear - I'm going to go at least a little upscale and maybe they'll last.  When researching I found this little gem in the Thorn Tree (lonely planet's forums):

Finally, I did leave out one other great thing you can get from the cheap tailors. If you've ever wanted anything absurd: a bright green coat for St. Patty's Day, a suit in the colors of your team, or a great vampire costume, this is the place to get it made.

I hadn't considered a lime green saint patrick's day suit or a purple and gold sports coat until now, but they do have a certain appeal...

Not many interesting pictures from the wandering or the train so thing to post, I'll see what electronics mecca turns up.

So the bike ride didn't turn out quite as I expected it to.

First off, the bike - or rather the second bike.  After having seen some folks struggling through the mud the day before on a fixed gear thin tire road bike I'd decided to rent from one of the two little shops that also had mountain bikes.  Off I went on a bike way too small for me.  Not too bad except that about 4 blocks later the chain broke and left me spinning useless peddles in traffic.  I found the chain and hauled the bike back to the show where the little lady apologized profusely and gave me another bike that fit me much better.

Bike #2 - the noisy blue bastard as he's come to be known - had three working gears that I dubbed "punishing", "falling down slow", and "rusty".  Since I wanted to move and conserve my legs for the 30k rusty it was.  Rusty wasn't so bad speed wise but he had a tendency to skip teeth every now and then and scrape the chain against the bike frame - still, for $2 a day it's not that bad.

After about 10k I stopped at the first temple and was really starting to loath rusty.  When the inevitable gaggle of children approached proffering t-shirts, water, and various nick-knacks I threw them a curve ball and asked if they had any grease or oil.  All but one little guy and his determined water profiteering sister immediately wandered away.  The boy asked me to spell out the word in the dirt - which I wrote in huge capital letters "GREASE".  "Oh! Grease!" he said.  "Yeah, grease, do you have any?", "No, I don't know this word.. but I want to learn, what is it?"  Inquisitive little fellow, I tried explaining that I wanted things to move smoothly.  that didn't work so I tried rubbing my hands together slowly and then saying grease and rubbing them together quickly.  The littler girl took off and came back with some hand soap - I'd forgotten about that universal sign (and my hands were filthy from writing in the clay).  I tried drawing a picture with two blocks sliding back and forth across each other and finally brought out two notebooks and slid them together.  None of those things seemed to really convey the concept but all of a sudden he shouts "OH!" then makes a spray can gesture (and "tshhhh" sound) while "spraying" along the chain.  perfect!  He says he'll get me some if I also buy his map - fine, sure whatever - and off he goes on his bike.  I decide to check out the little temple while I wait.

The temple itself is nothing spectacular but sitting in the shade is nice and I overhear some folks from down south talking to their guide about where they're from.  "Louisiana, New Orleans, You probably know about it from Katrina a few years ago".  No comprehension on the guide's side and so they go into a long history of the storm and how exactly it had come within 5 blocks of their house - how it had been huge world wide news.  When I left they were still trying to convince him he knew where they lived.

Back out to the bike the little boy had returned with a water bottle with about an inch of black used motor oil in it.  Not quite the WD-40 I was looking for but it would do the job.  I spent 10 minutes messily oiling the chain and sprockets to end up with an oil covered hand and a slightly better working bike.  A failed attempt at washing my hands in sand (not to future emergency bike repair folks, that doesn't work) and I was off again.

I stopped at a few little places beside the road and climbed to the top of an incomplete temple (it had been struck by lightning during construction, much bad juju) and finally got to the tree temple again.  And nothing.  It just wasn't happening.  there were about a half dozen giant tourist busses and so many people in the complex you could barely move.  A little down cast I went and grabbed some spicy chicken and talked with one of the vendors before moving on (turns out sunday is the busy day).

I made a few more stops before starting the 8k leg home and right about the time I was coming off of the panoramic view hill the thunderous downpour started.  I mean this was a ridiculous amount of rain - soaked to the bone in about a minute.  Riding blind through the construction zone was a little freaky but other than that it was a pleasant if ridiculous ride home.  I noticed along the way that the singing frogs seem to start back up just before the rain stops.  they got it wrong a few times (it would lighten but not stop) but generally speaking a handy indicator.  I returned blue bastard in better running shape but caked in red mud (I was  similarly caked) and headed home where I quickly passed out for a few hours.  Night market, feet cleaning fish and average curry commenced.

now I'm just trying to book my flight from Bangkok down to Phuket and once again bank of america has decided it must protect me from myself and shut off my credit card.  time to make an international collect call and let my ire be known.

So we didn't end up seeing the sunken forest, instead we went off on a little "tuk-tuk" ride up and down the side of the main river here - down to a little mountain in the center of the lake.  We stopped by a school that teaches folks how to carve wood and stone in the older traditions so they can make a living building kitchy stuff for tourists and/or tiles for the big hotels being built here.  Kind of sad but really pretty positive overall.  the poverty down south was staggering though - but still the folks seemed to soldier through it.  We had whole fried fish, some sort of licorice chicken soup and frog for lunch, it wasn't half bad actually though the frog was a little oilier than I would have enjoyed (like croc actually).


Yesterday as the Angkor complex and dear god was it amazing.  Angkor Wat (the most well known area) was interesting enough, but it was extremely cleaned out and thousands of people everywhere so not as enjoyable as I would have thought it to be - Allison and I left the guide with her dad and poked around on our own and found a little ancient gardener's shed for lack of a better term.  Out back of the main temple and sort of run down, it was really cool - workers that maintained the grounds seemed to use it still so that was kind of amusing.  After that we went off to a place (still in the angkor complex) who's name I can't remember but was featured in the Tomb Raider movie - it's the one where there's a giant tree growing down over one of the doorways, it's fairly iconic if still relatively obscure.

That place was from another world.  Sort of went off on my own to go poking around and there was a long boring run down little hallway that turned and opened into what can really only be described as a tiny city sitting inside the ruins.  Fallen stones and moss and vines and everything it was almost too much to take in - I loved it there.  I kept exploring for about an hour and just hit saturation, I couldn't absorb any more.  That's why today I'm going to go rent a bicycle and go back to the complex while the other three take a 4 hour "extra bumpy" ride into the jungle to go see some lesser known ruins.  I may miss out but I really want to go back and take in more of this place.

After the saturation we still went to a few other places but none of it really stuck, I'll probably try and visit them again today.  Came across a little budhist shrine that was in active use and there was a group of monks casting out the evil spirits of a man who'd had a bad fortune told to him, another monk was blessing a car.  We asked the English guide what was going on and he sort of half heartedly explained it until we asked if we could partake of the ceremony.  That really brightened him up, and he talked animatedly about why the water was being thrown in this way and why four monks were required.  We bought offerings (incense, candles and cigarettes!), did the appropriate bowing and then were set down on a set of worn marble steps and had water thrown on us for a good 15 minutes.  As much as it's possible to throw water "hard" this monk did - we had to earn those blessings I guess.

It was pretty interesting though, afterwards walking around all soaking wet probably about half of the folks that usually try and push cheap trinkets or t-shirts on you took on a whole new outlook - they'd laugh or smile and one old lady and I had a "conversation" wherein she pantomimed how to spread out some of my soaked possessions on a certain portion of the stone still heated by the sun to dry them more quickly.  A few others kept on like nothing had changed though - business is business.

So now I'm trying to find a post office so I can mail off the post cards I've been hauling around for two days.

Random snippit from the notes - Allison is talking to a little boy at the outside gates of Angkor Wat:
Boy: What do you do?
Al: I make coffee, I work in a cafe.
Boy: And what does he do?
Al: Uh.. he works with computers.
Boy: Oh! He very rich!
Al: No, not very rich.
.. a little later zack gets hungry for pineapple the boy is selling ..
Zack: How much for the pineapple?
Boy: *smiling like the devil* A doooollar (cleary 10 times what any sane person would pay for pineapple)
Zack: yeah, sounds fine.

No cow explosions yet.

I've got a little time to kill this morning before we head out to the flooded forest (or flooded city, wasn't real clear on that) so I decided to head to the "main street" area of Siem Reap.  Most of it is under construction but there are still shops a plenty trying to sell shoes or bits of statuary or the occasional stuffed crocodile. This is all well and good but I'm curious what's down the little dark passageways that lead into the unexposed core of the shopping block.  Turns out this is where the locals buy their pigs heads.  Not kidding, there are plenty of meat vendors (in addition to rice and vegetables) but there's also one gal who seems to be devoted to selling nothing but the head of the pig sliced off just behind the ear.  It's a little startling to see just after 8 in the morning and it thoroughly convinces me I'll probably opt for the jug of water instead of the cow...

... earlier last night (just after having landed) Hank was extolling some of the more outside-the-norm things you can do in Cambodia if you're bored.  "For $5 you can fire an AK-47 into a chicken," he says.  "what, like hanging from a rope?", "Nope, a live chicken just pecking around on the ground." Ah... "Yep, if you want to spend the big bucks for $50 you can fire a rocket propelled grenade into a cow".

It took a little while for that option to sink in.  Desiccating a chicken with a fully automatic weapon is a small loss of meat but destroying an entire cow with an RPG seems a tad on the wasteful side even for $50.  Al figures maybe you pay $50 and get a single shot with the rocket and you may just not hit it.  The proprietors are counting on you having horrible aim and that one cow will last through a few firings - who knows.  I'll admit I'm tempted to shoot a shoulder mounted missile but I think I'd rather fire it into a giant tub of water or mound of earth or something - the thought of aerosolized cow just doesn't do it for me.

Overall I think I'm going to enjoy the temples more than anything else here.

al and I finally have our boarding passes for the last led of the flight to Cambodia which has been complicated up to this point by the fact that united seems to have halfway lost her electronic ticket (mines the old fashioned kind). Up until now it's been a process of me showing my ticket an them fiddling around in the computer. The funny thin is that at each leg they keep asking for our luggage claim tickets as some sort of final proof that we both really have seats. Seems like am awful lot of trust to put in a little sticker.

Not much really at this point but it's sometime in the evening right now and the Korean airport has free wifi so this seems like as good as strategy as any to stay awake and thereby adjust my clock. Then again al is currently asleep on the bench so maybe I'm trying a little too hard.

Sent from my iphone so horribly formatted

To go along with the wagering for honor and little plastic trophies that the election tomorrow will bring it was decided that we needed a cake.  Plans were drawn up for a giant united states shaped cake, carved out with each state iced individually.  This was quickly downgraded to a moderately sized US shaped cake.  The natural progression continued to uncarved but still individually outlined, and finally to the monstrosity of frosting that you see below.

The cake is still made from Red Velvet and Blue Velvet (blue food coloring is surprisingly easy to procure in obscenely large bottles, provided you know where to look) however it is no longer individual states stuck together and is instead just two big cakes stuck together.  Lesson learned, large cakes don't cook evenly: the red half of the country is a little crispy on the outside.  Regardless, it was fun and will provide entertainment if not actual sweet enjoyment tomorrow.

Bonus picture - Donkey and Elephant fight over a field of cattle.  Canadian hockey vanguard stand at ready in the background.