Abbey's Road

Our experience with Cambodian means of transportation began as soon as we crossed the border from Thailand. I should first mention that on our 2 1/2 week trip we used taxis, 2 kinds of tuk-tuks, planes, a train, motorbikes, bicycles, buses, a car, the back of a pickup truck, songthaews (pickup bus, or baht bus), mini-buses, boats and our own two feet. The most hair-raising ride, though, had to be the 3 hour cab ride from the border town of Poipet to Siem Reap, our final destination in Cambodia. The road, in spots that term is used quite loosely, was sometimes paved, but more often a mix of dirt and gravel and in a continous state of construction. Driving on the right is recommended though not strictly adhered to. I can only imagine that the cabs that regularly run this route (about 140km) must have to go in for suspension repair every couple of months. It would definitely be a good business to be in in Cambodia. We were prepared to pay the $50 fare the extortionists at the border were asking, but we lucked out when a young couple decided to forfeit the $12 they paid for the bus that was going to show up "soon", so it only cost us $30. They had already been fleeced out of a lot of money by the "tour bus" scam from Bangkok to the border, but decided to pay the extra money and get to Siem Reap a whole lot faster. I should say I lucked out because I got the front seat by myself and poor Tracy was crammed in the back with the other two. In that 3 hour cab ride, I think I lost all the benefits of 3 Thai massages over the previous 5 days.

Over the next week we marveled at what Cambodians can transport on a bicycle, pickup or motorbike. I swear I counted over 25 people on one pickup truck, not to mention their belongings. I think our college car-stuffing team would've had a hard time competing with these people. I wish I had pictures of everything we saw, but since we never knew when to have the camera ready and were usually in shock or hysterics, my weak attempt at describing what we saw will have to suffice. After a while, nothing really surprised us, but the pickup truck with the (live) horse in the bed did amaze us. So did the 2 motorcycles strapped on top of a whole bunch of luggage in the bed of another pickup. Some other things we saw - 3 50lb. sacks of rice on a motorbike with one between the driver's legs and 2 stacked on the seat behind him, which his buddy was balancing on top of; dozens of dead chickens tied by their necks to boards running across the back of motorbikes; 2 dead pigs on a board on the back of motorbikes; guys on bicycles with 12' long 2x10s, or thereabouts, strapped lengthwise along the frames; 2 guys carrying a car door on a motorbike; several blocks of ice on motorbikes; families with the father driving, a kid between his legs, his wife on the back carrying a baby, all, of course, with no helmets or any straps of any kind; all kinds of stuff strapped across the back of motorbikes which seemed to defy the laws of gravity and, at the very least, required a very wide berth. I wish I had taken video! The other cool thing were the "gas stations". Actually, they were mostly used by motorbikes and tuk-tuks cause they did have regular gas stations. Along the roads you would see metal racks filled with bottles (soda, old liquor bottles, etc.) containing around a liter of gas. Perfect size for a motorbike. I was wondering what the heck they were when Tracy finally realized I was puzzled by them and said "Gas stations". Why not?

If you've read this far, you probably have a nagging question in the back of your head - "Why Cambodia?" You probably also have realized that Tracy and I don't go to "normal" places. Two words - Angkor Wat. It's believed to be the world's largest religious structure, built in the 12th century if I remember right. At least, that was our initial motivation, but as we read more about the country we just felt it would be more intriguing than Thailand and that there would be more of a need there. We were right on both accounts. Things kept popping up on our radar screen regarding volunteering in Cambodia before we left and we hooked up with a woman named Ponheary Ly our first morning there. Which brings me to our second harrowing experience in Cambodia. Ponheary had no sooner picked us up when she collided with 3 kids on a motorbike. Her car just got a broken headlight, but the kids got a bit scraped up. We learned an interesting thing about accidents in Cambodia - that you have to settle things before the cops get there, otherwise you have to help "pay their salary". A nice way of saying that they don't get paid enough so if you don't give them some money they will impound all the vehicles involved. Ponheary, of course, had no money with her so she first asked us for $10 for the kids to get medical help, which they definitely needed. Then, she asked us for another $5 to placate the cops. She planned to pay us back, but we said no thinking that her money was better spent elsewhere.

Let me back up a bit. We had actually arranged a meeting with her by email first after finding her organization (www.plf.org) on the internet. She helps Cambodian kids with supplies and uniforms for school. The school is free the first 6 years, but the supplies and uniforms are not. Many kids can't afford the $20 it cost for a year. When she asked us what we wanted to do, we warned her that we weren't teachers. Her response was, "Well, you speak English, don't you?" "Well, yes." "Great. That's all you need." We soon realized why. It was the first year the school had an English program and we figured out real quick that of the eight teachers who taught English, 3 could speak it OK and the rest didn't come up with an excuse fast enough to get out of it. So we spent 3 days, 7-11am and 1-5pm, in 95 degree heat with 98% humidity, with no A/C, with classes as big as 40+ kids trying to teach English using a book that was written for Euro teens in the 90s. Do 10 yr. old Cambodian kids really need to know what country Leonardo DiCaprio comes from or that Anna Kournikova is/was a tennis player? After the first day I wanted to quit. And Tracy had a hard time trying to come up with a good argument why we shouldn't. Mostly, we didn't want to fail after just one day so we went back for more punishment the next day. And by the 3rd day we were getting the hang of it despite the horrible book we had to work with. We were also totally exhausted at the end of each day. Thank God (or Buddha) for the 2 hour lunch breaks and for the great margaritas we had after we finished on the last day. But, I think both of us would do it again in a heartbeat. I don't think we'll ever forget 35 kids yelling "Teacher, me! Teacher, me!" when we asked them to come up to the board or answer a question. There were some shy and quiet ones, but most of them really wanted to learn.

Back to those two words - Angkor Wat. Siem Reap used to be a dusty little city with nothing, but now huge hotels are all over the place. You can find a $10/night guesthouse or you can pay upwards of four or five hundred dollars for a luxury place. Actually, there's not just one temple, there are whole complexes of temples with the "jewel" being Angkor Wat.

It started out as a Hindu temple when the Angkor empire was Hindu. Then in the 16th century or so it was used as a Buddhist monastery. Today it, and all the ancient temples, are ruins, though many quite well-preserved, and are used mostly for tourism. Some people spend a week going through them all, but we hit the highlights in a day. We didn't want to get burned out like with castles or cathedrals in Europe, not to mention that it was brutally hot in the middle of the day. Angkor Wat is amazing not only for its sheer size, but also for all the detailed stone carvings it contains. My favorite temple, though, was Ta Prohm, which some of you may have seen in the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie. Guys may remember it because Angelina Jolie was in it. Anyways, this temple has been overrun by the jungle and the trees now seem to be as much a part of the temple as the stone it is made of.

Not far from Siem Reap is one of the largest lakes in SE Asia, Tonle Sap. It is the lifeblood of central Cambodia. There is actually a large community of people that live in a floating village on the lake. Well, they do in the dry season when the lake level is much lower. In the rainy season the water level can rise as much as 30 feet or so and the lake is about 2/3 larger than in the dry season so the people have to move inland. We really wanted to go out and see it despite it being a bit touristy and harder to get to since we were late in the dry season. Another week or so and I don't think the boats could've gone out of the harbor that we went from. Some of the boats were already getting stuck. It's pretty funny though. They have most everything a normal village does - gas stations, restaurants, schools, a basketball court, and even a Catholic church. It just all happens to float.

There is also a place called the Flooded Forest where the water rises so high that all but the highest branches of the trees are covered during the rainy season. It was an hour's boat ride up the lake but being out on water on a hot day seemed like a good idea so we checked it out as well. The village near it is all built on stilts so they don't have to move in the rainy season, though they do have to get around in boats then. The water was so low that we had a hard time getting up the inlet where the village was and we were the only tourists in the village that day. Before leaving we decided to eat lunch in the village at a place our guide took us to, rather than wait another hour til we got back to the floating village. It certainly wasn't your typical restaurant. No menus. Our guide simply asked us what we wanted - chicken or pork. Then he showed us through the house to our table, which shared a room with some beds. A while later, after we had drinks, he asked us how we wanted our chicken cooked. We realized that the cook had to go out and kill the chicken first. We heard a lot of chopping and commotion in the kitchen, and after what seemed like forever, a woman appeared with a plate of food that smelled great. A closer look showed us that it was chicken alright, but it was all the bones, neck, back, etc. chopped up. Hardly a piece of meat to be found. Then, out came another plate so we thought, "Oh, here's the meat." It was fried chicken, but again hardly any meat. Luckily there was a lot of rice. When we asked how much we owed (no menu, no checks) we were shocked when the girl said $15! You have to realize, that would've been the most expensive meal we had our whole time in Cambodia. We usually had dinner for two, even with a beer, for $8-13. We settled on $10 and got out of there. I think they were trying to make up for the lack of tourists.

On our last day, we hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us to an orphanage that we had seen while touring around the temples. We thought it would be a good place to deliver the dolls. A young man showed us around the 2 room building that housed about 50 kids. He was 21 and had grown up in an orphanage himself, but still looked like he was one of the kids. They had a kitchen, toilets and a generator for electricity, but they used the lake across the street to bathe. The kids mostly slept on mats on the floor. We had brought a doll that a Cambodian girl had decorated with traditional Khmer clothing. She was an orphan in Cambodia but was adopted by the sister of one of Tracy's friends. The kids eyes lit up when they saw it and heard the story.

They were so excited to get all of the dolls, even the boys. In fact, one of the boys claimed the Cambodian doll for his own. Within minutes they were playing with the dolls' hair and changing around their clothes and stuff. It felt really good to see their smiling faces. I wondered if we should've stayed longer and played with them, but it just seemed like they were engrossed in the dolls and it was better to let them play on their own. The need is so great in Cambodia. Only the poorest of the poor children can come to this orphanage, but it is growing and there are others as well. The kids all go to school and you can tell they are loved.

The next morning we took a cab back to the border and were entertained by all the crazy things we saw on the way - horses in pickup trucks, pigs on the back of motorbikes, each thing more unbelievable than the last. I almost forgot to mention the traffic in Cambodia. I wish I could put into words how the traffic flows there. It really is something to sit back and just watch for a while. You have to realize, first, that there are as many, if not more, bicycles and motorbikes on the road than there are cars, and they often don't stick to their side of the road. At an intersection it's like a dance, or a weave, or 4 streams coming together. There's no neat orderly progression of vehicles waiting for their light to turn green. In fact, most of the time there's no light. From the outside it seems like chaos, but it's not. And, it works...somehow. If someone coming the other way is turning left and you're going straight, they don't wait for you to pass. They turn as if you weren't there. And you don't slam on the brakes and hit the horn. You simply go around them to the left, or further to the right if that works better. If you're crossing heavy traffic, you don't wait on your side of the intersection for the other traffic to clear. You venture out into the middle and the cross traffic veers around you - on the left or right - until you reach the other side. The key is, for the most part, everyone keeps moving. If you were carrying 30 chickens to market on the back of your motorbike, you wouldn't want to stop either. I know I'm not doing it justice. Next time I'll have to take a video.

Back in Thailand, the bus ride to Bangkok was far less entertaining. We looked forward to one last Thai massage at the airport hotel before our long journey home. At $11/hour we felt like we were being cheated a bit, but we had to remind ourselves that $11 would be dirt cheap in another day or two.

You can also see more pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23798449@N04/sets/

Posted by Ed at 11:05 PM | Permalink

After we decided to go to Thailand and Cambodia in April, we found out it was the hottest month of the year in both countries. Staying with the heat theme, we already knew the food could be quite hot as well. What we didn't know was that we would see a temple (aka wat) what seemed like every other block. The Catholics have nothing on the Buddhists when it comes to building places of worship and filling them with statues. I think Buddha would be a bit shaken if he were roaming the earth these days. Then again, the current king of Thailand has his picture plastered just about everywhere imaginable, so maybe the Buddha wouldn't mind seeing his likeness everywhere he looked - at least not with the ones that are flattering.

After a long journey (which wasn't so bad since we had first class seats from SF to Tokyo thanks to Tracy working for United and her good travel karma), we arrived in Bangkok around midnight on the first day of Songkran, the Thai New Year festival. Like many festivals these days, what started out as a low-key religious festival has turned into a 3 day party full of lunacy. The original idea, which you can still see being practiced if you stop in at your neighborhood wat, was to sprinkle yourself, others and statues of the Buddha with water as a cleansing ritual and to gain merit for the new year.
Now, you walk through the streets eating and drinking and tossing, throwing, dumping, squirting or otherwise soaking people with water while getting soaked yourself. Actually, Bangkok wasn't too wild except in the area our guesthouse was in, near the backpacker ghetto of Kao San Rd. So when we told the taxi stand at the airport the address, they all started smiling and apologizing, especially the driver when he dropped us off and bid us "Good Luck". Our guesthouse was down an alley, which he couldn't drive down of course, and at the head of the alley were a bunch of young kids who were completely soaked and were holding down one of their friends and drenching her with a hose. Happy New Year! We managed to get by, with all of our luggage, unscathed. We later noticed that there was an unwritten code of compassion, for the most part, for people who weren't carrying a super soaker (I think more of these are sold in Thailand that week than any other country in the world at any other time of the year!) or already wet. If you weren't obviously "in the game", they were pretty nice to you. On the other hand, people in Chiang Mai, our destination the following day, did not subscribe to that same code in the least. CM is definitely the epicenter of Songkran in Thailand and all the crazy Songkran devotees make a pilgrammage there each year. We took the night train out of Bangkok to CM that night and, lucky for us, arrived there in time for the last day of the festival. Once we found a guesthouse,
we wandered around town and proceeded to get soaked. Luckily it was in the high 90s so it didn't matter too much, but after a few hours of this it got old. The amazing thing to us was that people didn't get tired of it and noone got mad or got in fights. They just laughed and smiled. I wish we had pictures of the nuts, and there were tons of them, riding around in pickup trucks with garbage cans full of water in the back soaking anyone within reach. But we didn't dare risk our camera getting wet.

With the first few days in Thailand being filled with Songkran and getting over our jetlag, we finally felt like we got going on our second day in CM. We signed up for a "Flight of the Gibbons" tour up in the mountains. It's basically a canopy tour on zip lines in the jungle, just like the one I did last year in Costa Rica. Tracy had also been on one before, but it was still pretty cool. One of the guys in our group was an Australian who was about 6'6" and over 300lbs, and he was a bit afraid of heights. I was more afraid that the cables would break, but they held up admirably, and I felt like they were well-tested when he went before me.


One of the things you read about on TripAdvisor and other travel forums is that all the hotels and guesthouses will hound you to take tours, for which they get commission, of course. We had wanted to go to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, but we were told it was very expensive and very far. They offered us a "better" option of going to a different elephant center for only 75 or 80 bucks which included lunch and a tour of an orchid farm. We passed on the deal and went to the conservation center on our own. When we got to the bus station, everyone wanted to sell us a ticket to wherever we were going. We were a bit skeptical, but the price was good and they guaranteed us the driver would drop us off at the center even though it wasn't a regular stop. We were a bit worried we would end up in Bangkok, but were relieved when the bus pulled over to the side of the highway just as we saw the sign for the place. We wanted to go here because they help rehabilitate sick or injured elephants and they also train mahouts (the elephant trainers), and supposedly don't make the elephants do silly things like play soccer. Besides, they also make and sell elephant dung paper and it's not every day that you get to see that. One hokey thing they do during the show is have 2 elephants paint pictures. We were assured, however, that the elephants really enjoy it. Maybe they find it therapeutic and stress-relieving. What do I know! I did like the flower painting, but I wasn't crazy about the abstract the one elephant did. I clapped for both of them, though, not wanting either elephant to have a lower self-esteem. Some of the highlights of our visit was seeing the baby elephant, bath time and watching a chained-up elephant leaning his whole body over and swinging his trunk out just far enough to steal hay from his neighbor, who was quite clueless.

The most interesting part of the day, though, was the ride home. The guide books never really explained how to get back to CM from there, but a few people said you can take a bus that runs regularly, but you have to ask to find out where to catch it. Well, after asking several people we felt quite certain that a bus would come along at some point, and we were pretty sure we were waiting in the right spot, but after waiting for 45 minutes or so were beginning to wonder. I finally said to Tracy, "If we were in Chiang Mai or Bangkok, about 50 people would have asked us 'Where are you going?' by this time." (more on that later). Sure enough, about 5 minutes later a guy walked up to us and asked the question we would hear hundreds of times during our trip, "Where are you going?" Turns out he was going back to CM with his family - all 8 or 10 of them along with their belongings in a pickup truck. The difference between him and most of the other people who asked us that was that he didn't want any money to take us there. After he reassured us it was fine with him, and the rest of his family, we agreed and hopped in the bed of the pickup with him, his dad and his brother. We realized after a time that he was just a friendly Thai guy who wanted to practice his English. It's not easy carrying on a conversation in the back of a pickup going down the highway, but we managed to have a modest cultural exchange. In any case, it was better than an orchid farm and the whole day only cost us less than $20!

We had read great things about getting a Thai massage, and we were not let down. After riding in the pickup truck for over an hour we decided it was time to indulge ourselves. We were talked into spending an extra $2.50 to get a 90 minute massage instead of the typical 60 minutes for $5. A few days later we found out that 60 minutes for $5 was just fine, but figured you can't always get the best deal. Thai massage is quite different than what most people in this country know as massage. First of all, you're fully clothed (unless you go to one of the seedier places and get a "happy ending"). Second, it's intimate in the sense that they use their feet, arms, elbows and sometimes most of their body weight to stretch, bend, pressure and twist your body farther than you thought imaginable. Third, it can actually hurt and is certainly not relaxing during the process. But, when you're done, you FEEL like you've had a massage. Closer to the truth, you feel more like you've gone through your first day of boot camp, but it feels GOOD. And we happily found out that repeat customers only have to pay $4!! I had a hard time deciding if that, or if a lemon shake for 33 cents was the best deal on the planet. For the uninitiated, a lemon "shake" is more like a lemon ice or slushee. But on a hot, steamy day (or night), there's not much that satisfies better than a nice, tart lemon shake no matter how you call it. Needless to say, we took full advantage of lemon shakes and Thai massages in Thailand. Good thing because we never really found comparable equivalents in Cambodia.

Another thing we had looked forward to before the trip was Thai food in general, and taking a Thai cooking class in particular. Food, in fact, was a big part of our adventure, whether it was finding some really weird stuff or tasting some amazing culinary delights or trying to figure out what the heck that weird-looking fruit is.
There must be a dozen cooking schools in CM. We picked the one that our guesthouse manager recommended and we were confident that she picked a good one in the end. We went to the market, cooked, and ate for 6 hours and even I was stuffed and fully satisfied at the end of the day. Truthfully, I think the meals we cooked were some of the best meals we had on the whole trip. It wasn't too hard when you had someone telling you exactly how and when to do everything. Now, however, Tracy is a Thai food fanatic and we've already found a bunch of Asian markets in Denver. It's a little harder without our teacher watching over us, but we're actually getting pretty good. It also helps to have the right equipment, which is why I got Tracy a new wok for her birthday. So if you visit us in the future, you're likely to get Thai food more often than not.

CM is famous for it's night market and it's Sunday market so we did do a little shopping, but to my liking we didn't do a real lot of it. Tracy did manage to find some nice tops for a great price, a pair of traditional Thai pants for $3 and a scarf for $3 too, and I got a silk elephant tie for $3 but got ripped off on a pair of shorts for $5. I just couldn't bring myself to bargain with the guy at that price. We also rented motorbikes one day and took a ride out into the country to check out some handicraft "factories". The motorbikes were fun, though a bit scary on the busier roads, but the handicrafts were a bit of a letdown.

A big part of the motivation for this trip was to be able to deliver some handmade ragdolls to orphanages in both countries. Tracy makes them and, with the help of other ladies, decorates them and then delivers them to underprivileged kids in developing countries. Through the lady at our guesthouse we found an orphanage in CM that was within walking distance so one afternoon we took the dolls over. Unfortunately, they decided to put the dolls in the kids bedrooms at a later time so we didn't get to see the kids when they got them, but we were able to stay and play a while. We also managed to come back another morning, but there weren't many kids out at that time and there were other volunteers playing with them too. The Cambodian orphanage turned out to be a more rewarding experience, but that's for the next entry.

To get to Cambodia we had to head back to Bangkok first and then go on from there. Getting around in this part of the world can be quite adventurous. Not in the same way that riding in a NY city cab or driving in Boston is adventurous. More in the sense that everyone - the taxi drivers, the tuk-tuk drivers, the touts working for a hotel or tour company - wants to take you somewhere so they can make some money. The hardest part is figuring out who is, and isn't, trying to scam you. Sometimes you can't walk a city block without being asked if you want a ride somewhere. So, we were quite disappointed when we found out the night train to Bangkok was fully booked and we had to take an overnight bus. We should've had a clue that it wasn't a public bus when they said someone would pick us up at our hotel 30 minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave. It turned out to be the bus ride from hell. What do you expect when you pay $20 for a 12 hour bus ride, but in our defense, the night train was only $25. To make a long story short, we started nearly 2 hours late waiting for some mystery person who never showed up and the A/C worked about as well as it does in a 12 year old car that has never had it recharged. Needless to say, we didn't sleep much and when we got to Bangkok there was no way we were getting on another "tour" bus to Cambodia. We paid (too much) for a cab to take us to the bus station and took a public bus to the border. Later we would find out from some tourists who got scammed real badly, that it was definitely the smart thing to do despite the A/C not working all that well in it either.

You can also see more pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23798449@N04/sets/

Posted by Ed at 12:17 PM | Permalink