Touring Bangkok...and a new travel rule

The next morning I once again treated myself to some of the Nescafe in the room. I really hate to admit it, but it is not all that bad. We had a nice hot breakfast at the hotel before we were off to see some sights in the city. Our tour guide met us in the lobby, and we left to see a little bit of the city. We picked up 3 other tourists, a husband and wife from Northern Ireland and a young attorney from New Zealand moving to London. Some of the sights included Wat Pho with a giant reclining Buddha (see picture insert) and incredibly ornately tiled pagoda's, Wat Benchamabophit with it's marble temple and ornate ceiling, and Wat Traimit which contains a 3 meter tall, 5.5 tonne, solid gold Buddha image. While we spent only brief amounts of time at each temple, it was only a half day after all, we then spent a considerably longer amount of time at the Government Gem Sales Store. There was a 12 slide-projector show demonstrating the current state of strip mining of the verdant landscape to gather the gems. Following that, we were were taken by the gem cutting and gold smithing works. Afterwards, we were then whisked into the giant sales area with finished jewelry and unset stones. Adjacent to the jewelry was myriad silk items and other bobbles. I asked if there were any stones in the rough for sale, but alas, there weren't.

From the Gem Factory we made a stop at a tailor shop which I am sure was giving our guide a commission for either just bringing us by or they would cut him a commission for anything we bought. After trying to be polite for a while, I eventually drug Vince outside to let the others fend for themselves. Not surprisingly, they quickly joined us. We were then taken back to the hotel and Vince and I ventured out into the city. We took the elevated train most places. While we were looking around, we also checked out some shopping malls to see what they had for sale. One store that initially seemed to have just glittery bling had some real finds on a couple of aisles. We got some paper embossers as well as various sized pencil bags.

While at that shopping center we ate at the Greyhound restaurant. It served traditional Thai dishes, and I had the fried fish and vegetables with shrimp paste and clear soup. Very yummy. I washed it down with a watermelon, pineapple and orange juice drink. The waiters and waitresses were wearing a tuxedo type shirt with stenciled messages in English. One guy's shirt read, "I may not look cute, but I recommend good dishes." I can only imagine that the one who wears that shirt is doing so to instill public humility for dropping a tray of dishes or something of the sort. We ultimately wound our way back to the hotel and collapsed.

The next day after Nescafe and breakfast. We headed south from the hotel, nearly ignoring the calls of "Mister, Mister I need one minute." I replied that I didn't have a minute, and we just continued putting distance between him and us. Our intended stop was the Pratunam market. Once there, it took pretty much no time to realize that there was nothing of interest to see or purchase, and that's saying alot for me. As we continued walking we ducked into another shopping mall. After looking around a bit, we then decided to go upstairs. As we left the moving sidewalk, I thought "BINGO," a supermarket. We had a fun time perusing the aisles and I picked up some things to bring back, not the least of which is some durian toffee.

From the supermarket, it was off to lunch. We looked for one restaurant in the guide and when we got there, the whole city block was bulldozed. We then took the elevated train to the next stop, headed out to the second restaurant on our list. We arrived, looked in the door to a disheveled establishment and then were greeted with, "We are closed, our other location has been open for 2 years. It is 3 km away, you'll need to take taxi." Not to be deterred we stopped at a nice Thai-Italian fusion restaurant we passed, between the internet cafe and the Starbucks. Food at last.

Oh the new travel rule, get the business card of the tour guide. That way if he is excellent (like in Cambodia) you have a way that others can contact him when they go, but if he is little better than a tout (like our Thailand guide) you have a means to identify him to the travel agency. It might not do much good with the high art quid pro quo, but I can wishfully think, can't I.

Keep your core temperature down

I'm going to wimp out here for a second. I have no idea really what to blog.

The websites have it as 97 °F / 36 °C here in Bangkok. However, as we were trying to find our lunch spot, it felt much hotter. Sweat was pouring off of us like we had just emerged from a pool. But we finally found a place that look good and had a "Lemon Juice with Soda". A lime aid of sorts and let me tell you, they were very good. They've helped us keep our core temperature down even now, nearly an hour after we had them.

I'm sitting next to Mark and I'm seeing that he's hitting a number of the highlights.

Let me backtrack and cover some things that we didn't put in earlier blogs.

For Cambodia, the Dry Season is Marriage season. The wet season is planting / farming seasons. And something about that you might not get your money's worth. I'm not sure if our guide said with regards to the wedding or with regards to the wife. The air conditioningioning, though blissfully efficient, sometimes obscured his lessons. So everywhere we went, there was a wedding party taking pictures, we saw a hall in preparation for a wedding dinner, or we would hear wedding music waft through the jungle. In fact when we were at Phnom Bakheng, we could hear the wedding music off in the distance. The drum/gongs just faintly in the distance. The mist and clouds finally clearing to where we could see the sun rise. Amazing. Utterly amazing.

Also, our tour guide took as on a tour of the monasteryry around his house, the school his kids are at, and the shrine of his mother. Through the trees and garden plants, we saw a monk meditating in a sitting pose. We tried to speak very softly after that. He said that for the school, people pay what they can. The rich pay more, those that are poor don't pay as much. Each as they can. And all are taught equally. Can you imagine? Texas could learn a few things from these people! It was also very kind to show us the shrine of his mother. We feel very honored.

Between the increased physical activity, the heat, and the jet lag, we're conking out very early. Like around 21:00 - 22:00 local. That works for us as neither of us are pub crawling night owls anymore.

I think that's it for now :) Take care all.

It's been a couple days

So we've left Cambodia and have now arrived in Bangkok. It's like we've gotten two trips in one. So to catch up to speed. The cashew fruit...not so good. It has a very aromatic, sweet fragrance but it is rather tough although juicy. It has a plain to sweet initial taste then a "cat tongue-y", alum like finish. Mmmmmm.

The last day in Cambodia we went around a few other temples as well as a Buddhist monastery and school. From there, we saw Artesians d'Angkor. A French group has organized teaching Cambodians traditional skills. Some things taught include gathering silk from silk worms, processing it from the cocoons, making thread, weaving textiles and creating final products. There are also stone works with intricate carvings as well as wood carving. Lacquering is also taught. The foundation has is now privately held by the students and money from sales are put back into the school. Some of the artisans are deaf and "mute" and so they are able to work whereas they would have not had a means of supporting themselves otherwise.

I must be honest. I was feeling a twinge of frustration because I was anxious to get to the market, whereas our guide kept showing us things around town. After I arrived, I then knew why. It had to be one of the more (most) primitive markets I've seen. It exceed Lima, Peru. While it did not have a dirt floor, it did have a very low ceiling that served to concentrate any and all aromas that would waft up and along the walk ways. To be more specific, food aromas. Once again I found myself seeing something for sale and immediately thinking, "NO WAY!!" It was precipitated when I saw the bag of red ants and the bucket of red ant eggs for sale. I'm not quite sure how they would have been used in the food preparation process, but they were available. It was nice to have our guide around to point out different foods of interest and to give a glimpse of how different items were prepared. Did I mention the flys.....lots of flys.

After the market, we went to the airport. We had our larger luggage scanned while we carried through our day packs. We then collected our larger luggage, went to a much larger room to queue to get our tickets (during that time we could have transferred dangerous items from the big luggage to the carry-on) and then off to waiting for our flight.

We saw a woman, who had been staying at our hotel, take the flight before us. When we finally arrived the driver started boisterously saying, "Why you not call when you have different ticket" "Why you not call!!!!" Well, it seems that they issued us a 8:40 PM ticket (later flight) but our itinerary said that we should have arrived in Bangkok at 8:40 PM (earlier flight). The woman we saw had been waiting in the airport all that time (having taken the earlier flight). I basically got rather emphatic myself and showed him the ticket that the tour agency (his agency) had issued us from the very beginning. They had then printed out an incorrect itinerary (a copy of which and from which he had been working). Upon realizing it was something his company had caused, thus losing considerable face, he became much more placid.

We made it to the hotel surrounded by high ceilings and lots of decorative marble. Very nice.

The Human Element

Many of the guide books we have reviewed continue to caution leaving well beaten trails. Apparently there are unexploded landmines around the country left over from their civil war. Because of the human toll exacted by the mines, the people left maimed were unable to work. A few years ago UNESCO gathered those who sustained mine injuries and who were left to beg on the streets. They then taught many of them to play indigenous musical instruments. We are encountering them playing for tourists at the various archeological sites. It provides for great ambiance while you tour the ruins, hearing the music in the back ground, and it once again gives them an opportunity to work for a living. The surprising thing to me, which I had not noticed until Vincent pointed it out to me, is that we have seen no people begging for money. Believe me, it is not because they have been keeping us away from the poverty. Granted, we have been approached many times and asked to buy various items, but no begging. This is in considerable contrast to China, which is supposedly a communist nation. When we were in Beijing we saw many people begging on the streets, even with it's roaring economy.

On the education front, many children attend school. Those that can't do a full day do at least a half a day. The school day runs from 7AM to 11AM. They will then break for lunch from 11AM to noon, and they will then finish up afternoon classes from 1PM until around 5PM. All this goes on for six days a week, leaving Thursday off from school so the kids can work.

Exploring the food some more

On of the things that we did this morning after breakfast was to head to Banteay Srei. That complex is much smaller than many of the others we have seen, but the carvings are done much more deeply into sandstone and as a result are much better preserved.

As we drove along some of the jungle, there was a group of people harvesting lychee (see the red spiny fruit). The driver stopped and we purchased some from the people. The tough outer skin gives way with a little effort, although there is a small amount of spray when it does. The fruit can be expressed from the skin and is very flavorful. Having not grown up on lychee, it's interesting trying the different foods we encounter.

Speaking of food, we also keep passing guys on motor bikes with pigs tied to the back. The pigs themselves are inverted, lying on their backs and according to our guide will remain sedate even while they are bumping along the road.

We also stopped by a spot where some of the locals had extracted palm juice. They would take a special portion of the tree, crush it between two sticks and then cut off the tip of what they were crushing. Out would run the palm juice. They would then heat it over a long period of time, I'm guessing so it became a super saturated solution, and they would then stir it to make it thicken further and crystallize. The resulting palm candy tastes and has the consistency of pralines. We tried some that was still in the liquid form, and it reminds me of dulce de leche.

At the same stand with the palm candy, they were selling cashew fruit. Who would have thought it was a fruit. The nut that we think of as a cashew is attached on the top of the fruit, contained within a shell (see picture of the yellow fruit). There is a sweet fruit which extends below the nut. I can't comment further on the fruit itself, but there are two of them upstairs in the fridge.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat

We left the hotel around 5:30 AM so that we could scramble up the steep, dilapidated steps of Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was nice to be still and silent with the cool--relatively speaking--morning breeze wafting by. The temple complex itself had 108 towers constructed on different levels. Many have been reconstructed although many others are still in disrepair.

The roads here are actually quite good although narrow and being shared with everything from cars, trucks, motorcycle pulled rickshaw like carriages, and bicycles. If the windows were open on the van we could reach out and touch the riders they are traveling so close to the vehicle. The cars have the driver on the right side of the vehicle (similar to Great Britain) but they drive on the right side of the road. That means that the passenger and the long sliding door on the side of the van opens in to the stream of traffic. Needless to say, you look both ways.

As we toured Angkor Wat yesterday, I forgot to mention that there is a small echo chamber. The superstition goes something like this, you stand against one wall and hit your chest, the echo reverberates and the sickness is then absorbed via your back into the stone, thus making you better. To be prophylactic, we did the hitting your chest thing although more so to hear the cool reverbs.

I have broken a few food rules, but it seems that it is very difficult to follow them to a "T". The chili peppers that are available to be sprinkled on the various dishes and the prolific basil leaves find their way into everything. Yes I have visions of cysticercosis in the back of my mind. We also have been drinking non-carbonated water. Hummmmm. What we have been drinking--that I haven't purified myself--is labeled as reverse osmosis as well as ultraviolet and ozone treated. Let me just say, so far so good, because we've needed the water with the warmth of the day and the high humidity.

On an aside, our guide tells us that the main tourists are Japanese and Korean, followed by French and then Americans. We both had a chuckle when we were having breakfast in the hotel, and a Japanese boy was wearing a shirt that said, "My dad is stranger than your dad."

I hope I am doing this right

I'm at a timed internet station at the hotel. The funny thing is that IE is transmitting that the default language is ... I think ... Japanese. So, we'll see if this posts correctly :)

I really think that Cambodia is underrated in so many ways.

The food has been equisite.
The service amazing.
The inscriptions and the details of the carvings on the temples that were practically swallowed by jungles is indescribable. It make all the inscription of the European cathedrals that we've seen look like something done in playdo.

And pictures just can't convey the scale of some of these temples. They must have been stunning to see when they were new and pristine. As they are, they're still amazing!

Well, still 6 minutes left. I better see if I can figure out how to post this blog :)

We Made It And Then Some

That was quite the flight from Dallas to Bangkok with transfers in San Francisco and Tokyo. We finally got to the hotel in Bangkok around 12:30 AM and after looking over the materials that the travel ageny left, it was 2 AM before we got to sleep. Then it was up at 5:30 AM to catch the flight from Bangkok, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The Thailand to Cambodia flight was quick, one and a half hours. We arrived around 9 AM and then hit the ground running.

Come to find out the travel package included a private guide, who speaks very good English and is historically very knowledgeable. He is accompanied by a driver who has carried us around to the various temple complexes. Our guide learned English in Siem Reap and was helped further by a British archaeologist. Apparently various countries will give money to help with the restoration of the historical sites. They are then allowed to send archaeologists in that help with renovation and restoration of the various sites. Our guide's sister was one of the workers on a restoration project and she put him in touch with the archaeologist who helped him further with his English.

We started our touring at what is called the Roluous Group. The ruins that we saw there, Preah Ko and Bakong are some of the earliest, permanently build temples by the Khmers circa 9th century. Our guide pointed out two of the commonly used rock which were used in their construction, sandstone which would be carved with ornate designs and inscriptions with a foundation rock of "Latera" stone. It is interesting to me how designs and materials from older structures make there way into more modern structures. For example, the "Latera" stone used in the temple construction seen at the Roluous Group and others is used in various parts of the hotel. Later in the afternoon we traveled to Prasat Kravan as well as Banteay Kdei and Sra Srang. The later construction was made on a small island in the middle of a large, constructed reservoir measuring 800 m by 400 m. Today the reservoir is drained and over grown.

Today we headed for the massive Angkor Wat, as large as the forbidden city in Beijing it covers 91 hectares. It is surrounded by a moat 190 m wide and 1.5 km by 1.3 km on a side (1600 m or 1.6 km equaling one mile). Our guide took us around the outer, covered colonnade which is carved on all sides with detailed Bas-Reliefs. He took us slowly along each side explaining the significance and history of each to include the Battle of Kurukshetra, Army of Suryavarman II, heaven & Hell, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, Vishnu Conquers the Demons, Krishna & the Demon King, the Battle of the Gods & the Demons, and the Battle of Lanka.

Later today we will be seeing the ancient Angkor Thom and watching the sunset over Angkor Wat.

The thing that has surprised me about these various temple complexes is that they are all initially constructed in a Hindu motif. Apparently it wasn't until later that Buddhism supplanted Hinduism.

Apart from the piles of rocks we have seen other aspects of Cambodian society. We've seen several weddings with lots of food and loud music, which continues for 3 days. Believe me, bridesmaids dresses are no different here than in the States, you'll have no use for them after the wedding.

From a culinary perspective, the food is as I would have expected. I guess the best way I can think of how to describe it is like Thai food but less spicy. I encountered a new fruit which they call "Dragon Fruit." It has a heavy scaled, red skin and the flesh is white with multiple black seeds inside. It has a similar flavor to kiwi fruit but it is much less tart. We have come by meals easily because breakfast and lunch is included at the hotel and we dine in the city in the evenings, also prearranged.

I Did the Calculation

After accounting for the time changes, total travel time will be on the order of 26 hours and 45 minutes.....give or take.

Some Helpful Travel Web Sites

When it comes down to some prep and information items for a trip, I've found these websites to be particularly helpful.

• Lonely Planet
  
• Weather information at Wunderground
• Traveler health topics at the Centers for Disease Control
• U.S. Department of State for travel advisories
• Google News for the latest headlines at the destination
• World Time Server to help with time change calculations
  

Getting Ready

The tickets, hotels, you name it is completed, and the vaccines are done. Call me a little paranoid but it never hurts to be prepared.