ask yourself this question: what would you do if everything you heard…every radio, loud speaker, cell phone ring, supposed-to-be-entertainment-on-long-bus-rides “music videos,” EVERYTHING, besides the noise of incessant honking or rain patter, sounded like the beginning to “hopelessly devoted to you” on the Grease soundtrack?
(need a quick reminder? here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJpyG3PXoKw)
(more…)
pictured below: tri’s family, waterpark, ridiculous traffic, snails, housing, ice coffee.
(more…)
It’s been far too long since our last blog post, and a lot has happened. As I type this Lindsay and I are once again on a bus, once again leaving a place we’ve had the pleasure of calling home the past 13 days.
13 days ago we left the Kingdom of Cambodia and entered Vietnam and passed through imigration without (much) issue. Lindsay’s passport and VN Visa somehow ended up being stamped for entry on the third, as apposed to the second which was when we actually were entering Vietnam so we had to pay an extra 10 USD to get in. After passing through imivration we had a humorous customs experience. Everybody was supposed to pass their bags through a metal detector but lots of people just walked right past the inspection station. The gaurds were somewhat more adiment with Lindsay and I so we put our luggage through, but not before taking out a large bag that contained my film and other electronic gear. The guards didn’t even bother looking through the stuff I took out, so the moral of the story was to make sure you take out your bombs, guns, and drugs before giving your bags over for customs inspection. Maybe you had to be there to enjoy the humor of the situation.
(more…)
a few weeks ago while in phnom penh, i happened across an article talking about a man who has devoted his life to trying to help save cambodian children’s lives. through the article, i found out that every saturday, this man performs a concert, under the stage name “beatacello,” where he provides information on medical statistics in cambodia, and asks for money or blood donations to help keep the hospitals running, and blood available for those who need it.
(there is a chance i might get carried away here as i tend to do sometimes when i feel strongly about something.
i’ll try to be concise, but i’m not promising anything :))
well,
RANDOM.
kevo gots a haircuts.
going for another shrimp plate at shabbi shu.
someone’s excited about their food…
elephants in the market.
avid bike rider. 49km yesterday! woo hoo!
Ok, so this may not be a particularly epic post, but I’m going to lay down the facts with my less than perfect grammar and sentence structure.
First, as of now Lindsay and I are in Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a gigantic step up from Phnom Penh as far as we are concerned, and from the second we got into Siem Reap we both felt very positive about it. Though Lindsay’s two previous posts may or may not have given the impression, we had/have mixed and even negative feelings towards aspects of Phnom Penh (there wasn’t much to do, it was pretty expensive, it rained every day, etc) and our traveling souls were starting to feel traveled out. Siem Reap is a breath of fresh clean air and has lots to offer.
A few highlights, in no particular order:
1) Our guest house is called Bou Savy, and is in the Northern part of Siem Reap. It’s 13.50 USD a night and includes AC, a TV, free water, and free breakfast. This isn’t super cheap however the free breakfast and great location makes it a steal for us and we feel very positive about it. The people are incredibly nice and friendly here – plus there are two puppys that eat breakfast with us in the AM. Lindsay and I love the puppies.
2) There are a bunch of volunteer opportunities around here. OK, I hate the words “volunteer” and “opportunities” next to each other as to me personally it sounds cliche and canned, so I’ll call these things, “places you can work at.” But whatever you may call them, there are a bunch of them here and they seem to be well organized and generally attractive. Tomorrow Lindsay is meeting with a teacher from a school she is hoping to help out at, and I’m meeting with a guy who builds and installs water filters for poor people. Our general plan is to stay in Siem Reap until our visa expires at the end of the month.
I can’t speak too much about Lindsay’s volunteer program as neither of us know much yet other than she’ll hopefully be going to a local school to help out in a classroom with English related topics. I don’t know much either, but I know that I’ll probably be doing mainly manual labor, washing gravel I believe. The filters that this organization builds are actually something of an open source design I believe (feel free to google open source :)) and are used around the world in a bunch of third world countries. They are cheap the build ($45 USD will build 1 filter) and easy to maintain. They process around .6 L of water a minute. Basically they are 3ish foot tall cement structures that have several layers of different materials (gravel to filter some stuff out, sand to filter some smaller stuff, a section of specific bacteria which kill 98ish percent of harmful “biomass”, etc) and while I’m not going to kid myself or you and say I’m going to be doing anything romantic (installing these things amid shouts of praise from the village kids who smile and splash each other with clean bacteria free water after I’m done with my noble work!!) I am looking forward to doing SOMETHING physically demanding and hopefully it will help somebody out along the way.
3) Today we saw Ankor Vat, and a bunch of temples around the area. This is perhaps worth a post of it’s own, and certainly deserves some photos which we’ll post later, but for now I’ll say that it was incredibly impressive and yet hard to appreciate. Honestly this series of temples and ruins was probably one of the most amazing things I’ve EVER seen, probably at least in the top 10. (My) Words can’t do it justice, basically there are beautiful temples and ruins in beautiful forests. Big temples. We’ll post some photos later (see my next point).
4) For my fellow nerds, let me tell you how terrible the internet connections over here are. the computers themselves have been anywhere from incredibly terrible to ricer XP installs with Vista skins to actually pretty newish computers, but the internet connections have been universally terrible. I’ve been testing my connection speed everywhere I go and the FASTEST sustained download I’ve managed is 25ish kilobytes a second. More regularly I’m seeing 10-15 kilobytes down and 10ish up. This wouldn’t be a big deal as I don’t spend a ton of time on the computer, but call it a crime to humanity or not, I have been downloading podcasts and things for long (5 hour +) bus rides and trying to upload full resolution photos to flickr for archiving purposes and it’s impossible to do. More shamefully I want to give the iPod Touch 2.1 firmware a trial run, and have converted all of the latest season of house to iPod Touch format via VNC at home and uploaded it to webspace to download. Plus I lost all of my music last firmware update a month or so ago so am trying to replenish my collection somewhat. But generally I’m getting things like this:
5) Food is cheaper here then in Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh Lindsay and I were shopping at a supermarket the last few days which was actually pretty nice but that was in part because the food was pretty expensive there (10 bucks or more normally for a meal). Here we’ve been eating for less than 5 bucks for the two of us.
6) It’s illegal to rent a motorbike as a tourist in Siem Reap, but Lindsay and I rented peddle bikes today/yesterday and have been putting on a few miles. Yesterday was 48.something kilometers, today was around 39 or so. My legs/knees actually hurt a bit today, but whatever doesn’t kill you…
Ok, my neck hurts and I’m off to drink water.
Miss you all back home!
Much love,
kev
thus far, cambodia has been somewhat of a hard place to travel. not for any real reason, besides the pace is so much slower than Thailand, and the people seem so much poorer. we’ve been staying in Phnom Penh, and for the life of me, i can’t wrap my head around the fact that this is in fact a CAPITAL of a country. people beg on the streets all day, everyday. í know it could be just a gimmick, but it’s been extremely hard for me, knowing full well that no number of riel that we could possibly afford to give would really help all that much. it’s tiring. for the last few weeks, i have resorted to carrying around carrots and various other food items in my pockets to hand out to the street kids that beg for food (i would carry around a backpack chock-full of food, but we’ve recently heard about a large upsurge of bag-snatching, both in broad daylight and at night; in crowded streets and deserted ones alike. the victims are almost entirely western women riding in tuk tuks or on motorbikes, so i’m sticking to carrying stuff in my pockets! :)). giving money (or so i’ve heard) makes them extremely vulnerable to explotation, which is expected. it’s hard. Phnom Penh alone claims to house 40,000 street kids. 40,000! it makes me sad, frustrated, helpless and angry every time.
the other day, we visited Tuol Sleung Prison (s-21), which was about a block from our guesthouse. the prison was once a highschool which was converted into Cambodia’s most important and secertive prison in 1975. More than 14,000 people were tortured here before being killed at the Killing Fields south of Phnom Penh; only 8 prisoners made it out alive. what really made it disturbing for me though, was the fact that this prison is truly in the heart of Phnom Penh’s suburbia (if you could have ever called it that). apartment buildings and shops surround the walls of the old highschool, just as they would in any major city. the fact that 14,000 people were tourtured among streets bustling with street vendors, shop keepers and city residents blows my mind. it’s sick. really makes you wonder what’s happening in your own backyard. oh, not to mention that it happened almost within my lifetime. it’s one thing to read about hitler in history class. it’s another to see tourture rooms still stained with blood, the thousands of battered mug-shots on the walls, and the men and women, who could be my parents, on the street, knowing full well that they are probably survivers of a horrific genocide which happened less than 25 years earlier. it’s things like this i know i must see to truly know what a country is all about. it leaves a mark though, for the good or for the bad, and is something i know i’ll never forget. it makes me angry.
(i’ll post pictures when the internet connection isn’t so slow).
Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump is located in southern Phnom Penh, in a district of the city of the same name, Stung Meanchey. it is a part of the city with low-income neighborhoods and slums. the dump itself covers about 100 acres, or almost 6 hectares. it’s flanked by private property on which rubbish pickers build makeshift huts and are charged extortionate rents by landowners. roughly 2,000 people, about 600 of which are children, live and work there. it’s nicknamed “Smoky Mountain” because of the miasma of smoke that the dump constantly gives off. It is literally on fire; the waste creates methane as it rots and the methane burns. in monsoon season and throughout much of the rest of the year, the surrounding area is swamped and the children live and play in fetid water.
most of the rubbish pickers at Steung Meanchey are either from Phnom Penh or came to Phnom Penh looking for work and ended up in the slums. many of the approximately 600 children have parents or relatives who also work on the dump and look after them. some of them go to school, but most do not – at least not on a regular basis -and it is safe to say that virtually none of them ever completes a primary school education. the school fees are too high and their families need them to collect rubbish to contribute to the family income. adults earn, on average, 4000 to 5000 riels (US$1.00 to $1.25) a day; children earn on average about half that amount. (source: The Centre for Children’s Happiness ) it makes me angry.
we’re leaving tomorrow for Siem Reap (home of the infamous, Angkor Wat) for a few weeks before we regroup, and go visit Tri in Vietnam, which frankly, we’re really looking foward to. i’m planning on volunteering at a school teaching English in one of the Angkorian temples in Siem Reap, which i’m really quite excited about. i’m calling the principal tomorrow to confirm everything, but it looks like it’s going to work out. i cannot wait to see how a classroom is run, and experience something new.
the internet joint is about to close, so i gotta jet.
love and miss you all. xxxlgt
The one thing Cambodia has to offer right away is dirt. Red-orange dirt. Loads of it. I had read about this. Countless rants from countless travelers. Nothing I could have read though could have prepared me for just how ridiculous the dirt, coupled with the potholes could be. Hilariously ridiculous. Tears streaking my now orange cheeks, coughing uncontrollably, driver laughing hysterically -we pull into Pailin. We jump off, and the Julia wannabe explains in KhmerEnglish that he is going to find us a taxi to take us to Battambang, where we were planning on staying for a few days. Perfect. Turning around, we are surprised to see a whole group of people have assembled around us, laughing and trying to speak to us in broken English. Amused, we take out our tattered phrasebook, and try to indulge them by speaking some no doubt, terrible Khmer. Just as we had gotten past the formalities, Julia is back introducing our “taxi” driver.
This is where the fun begins.
Ami (that’s his name) is adorned in a full hunter green military getup, complete with terrible acne, pants tucked into black lace-up boots, a frown, and a military cap. After drawing the payment required for the trip to Battambang on the dusty window of his rusty Honda, he throws a cell phone in Kev’s face and says, “talk.” While I’m laughing with the other 20 people standing around watching this transaction take place, Kev, looking totally freaked out and annoyed, keeps saying, “what? Uh huh. Yes. What? I don’t…What? 1200 Baht? Yes. Yes….” while shooting me “stop-laughing-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you” looks. (In my defense, no matter how hard I try, it seems Cambodian men refuse to do any sort of business transaction with women, at any time.) Finally, Kev hands the phone back and the man opens up the trunk. We throw our stuff in, say our “aa gohns (thank yous)” and jump in. Turns out, the guy on the phone wanted to be sure that Kev had actually given him 1200 baht to take us to Battambang. Fishy right? This was not a certified cab, and despite his military appearance, Ami was not a member of the military. Just a guy with some wheels. We were not on the road more than a minute when Ami’s phone goes off. Looking more pissed than ever, he pulls over and starts honking his horn relentlessly. Soon, a man appears at the window, and he hands him some money. No smiles. No thank you. No nothing. Just a debt paid. I think during our 3 hour trip, Ami’s phone went off 6 times. Which meant: 6 more headache-inducing honking sessions, 6 more unfriendly payments to 6 more unfriendly people, NOT on the way to Battambang.
Just after the first debt was paid, it started to rain. Nay. POUR. It’s funny to think back to when I complained about the rains in Thailand. Thailand doesn’t understand crap about rainstorms. They don’t have dirt roads. Or potholes. The best thing about the rain here is that even though the cars can hardly make it down the road without stalling out, and even though there are 10 year olds swimming up to their necks in the streets, there is still dust. There is still dirt. Not mud (although there is plenty of that too), but dust. I can’t explain it really. It’s one of the craziest things, but it’s true. Anyway, so there we are, driving along. Ami skillfully swerving around the road trying to avoid the potholes (well, every 3rd, anywayJ), my arm fat jigglin’ to a song I didn’t want to dance to. NOTE: There are a couple of things that tell a girl she needs to start doing some pushups. 1) driving down a Cambodian road. 2) doing the Chicken Dance at wedding parties. Let me just be clear. I did 20 pushups that night before bed.
So back on the road, we end up picking up a few more passengers. Naturally, with 6 bodies now packing the car, the windows start fogging up. It is still pouring rain. Pouring. The windows must all stay up to avoid drowning in the car. Now, I swear to god, you CANNOT see out of the windshield. The guy sitting on the stick shift is wiping off the condensation every 30 seconds for our irritable, sweaty driver. All you can see are black blobs slowly passing in front of your eyes. Oh! There’s a cow! Oh! There goes a truck! Oh! There’s a kid playing in the water!
We almost hit cars. We almost hit dogs. Chickens. Children. Even though Ami could see no better than my driver with cataracts on the first leg of the trip, he had one thing the first driver didn’t. A horn. Even though we couldn’t see a damn thing, we kept our 30km/hr pace, flying over potholes, gripping the safety handrails to avoid smacking ourselves into a concussion, horn wailing non-stop for over 3 hours, all while watching orange water fly over the top of our windows.
That is, until the car broke down.
Yes, a little transmission problem! That’s all! Stalled in the dead center of the road, everyone piles out of the car to stand by some cows, while a now seriously cranky Ami phones his brother to come pick us up. Luckily we didn’t have to wait toooo terribly long, and soon we were all loaded into his brother’s car. We left Ami with his rusty Honda in the middle of the road. Ha. Poor Ami. September 3rd was just not his day.
Anyway, the guesthouse we sought out was owned by an Aussie and his Khmer wife, who promised to be an open book for all the Cambodian questions one could ever think of. That sounded great to us, as we could hardly pronounce “hello” correctly at this point. Too bad he turned out to not be all that cool, and mainly seemed to be working us at every angle for more money. Just the same, the rooms promised A/C, which was quite welcomed after our hot and humid trip there. Just as bed is starting to sound nice (around 10pm) the power goes. Within 15 minutes I am literally dripppppping with sweat. I have slept in many a non-air conditioned room since we’ve been here. No problem. In fact, I can count the number of times we’ve had A/C on one hand. Trouble was, the man neglected to put screens on his A/C room windows –which was perfect considering we are in the Malaria capital of the world. Since we were too cheap to get Malaria pills at home, it wasn’t a risk we were willing to take, and our window stayed shut. So, I resorted to getting up every 15 minutes in attempts to cool myself down with a cold shower. It is so dark I truly can hardly feel my way to the bathroom. It’s kind of
scary. I get Kev. There we are. Laying on opposite sides of the bed, refusing to touch each other, window closed, in pitch darkness, sweat pouring out of every crevice on our bodies. Disgusting is the only real way to put it. After an hour of incessantly trying to ignore the heat and will myself to sleep, I am just about there. Floating above my body, aware that I’m still awake, but barely. It is at this point–3 in the morning, 5 hours since we lost power–that the worst possible thing happens. The manager’s 10 month old baby starts crying. Nay. Not crying. Wailing. The wailing of an over-tired kid who is so hot, and so sticky, and so uncomfortable that they couldn’t embrace sleep if they were knocked unconscious. I’m sure our parents can remember such a cry. Nothing you can do will make them stop. They just have to cry themselves into an even greater exhaustion until they fall asleep again. And that’s seemingly, just what his parent’s decided to let him do. 2 hours later, he finally stopped. 5-something in the morning, and a million cold showers later, I set myself back to willing myself to sleep.
The next morning, we woke up starving. Thankfully, the power had turned back on around 6:30am, so we got a couple hours of good, non-sweaty sleep. When we walked downstairs at 10am, we encountered quite the sight….
Sound familiar?
Long story short, we ended up partaking in a wonderfully drunken birthday celebration for a 68 year old British English teacher. The bomb technician worked for the government, and bought us COUNTLESS (read: too many) drinks. As it turns out, his truck had just run over a land mine an hour earlier, on the way to our guesthouse to buy his friend some drinks for his birthday, blowing it to pieces. He acted like it was a pretty common occurrence. Not too shaken up about it, crazy enough. Although we tried to fend them off, the man proceeded to buy us more “doubles” than one should ever drink, let alone at 10 am on an empty stomach. It was an awesome time. Story after story. Hour after hour. I kept pushing my drinks to Kev (he kept taking them every time I got up to pee or talk to anyone) and needless to say, by 5pm we were drunk. Very drunk. Kev though, was a little more than very drunk. It was hilarious. He maintained this goofy grin on his face for close to 4 hours, and kept babbling on about, “how great of an experience this was,”as only he could. For some reason, unbenounced to me, he decided to involve us in a late-night poker game with some of the regulars. Still drunk, he lost his money within 5 hands, while I managed to stay in for an hour or so before losing. Overall, it honestly was a really fun, if not a terribly unproductive day.
And now, we’re in Phnom Penh. I’m exhausted. There’s a lot to write about here, but I’m just too tired to do it now. I don’t understand why I always decide I should write a post late at night on this damn ipod. You’d think I’d learn.
On an entirely random note, I bet I almost step on 10 cockroaches on any given night. They’re everywhere. And big. Easily as big as a small gerbil. Not that I mind really. At least they’re not spiders.
Also my Crest toothpaste has about one more use left, and then it’s time for the no-brand Asian stuff. Again, it’s not a big deal, just weird to think about having been here long enough to have gone through an entire tube of toothpaste. And toothbrush, for that matter. My toothbrush is in rough shape. But that guy was in rough shape before I even got here. I like them broken in. Like, bristles flattened to the plastic, broken-in. That’s the best way. Plus, if you use it down that much, it makes getting a new one that much more exciting. Teeth brushing has always been a big thing for me. I like clean teeth. Over here, I find myself brushing them 3-4 times a day (which I know isn’t even good for them) because of all the dirt flying around. It seriously feels like the Wizard of Oz. Yes, if you can imagine the dust storm in the Wizard of Oz, coupled with rain, you can imagine Cambodia. By the end of the day, you’ve been crunchin’ on dirt particles for 10+ hours. For the orally fixated, it’s cheaper (and maybe healthier) than cigarettes or gum, I suppose.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I think my toothbrush may have brushed its last tooth. Tomorrow may be the day for a new one.
Hope the roads aren’t dusty where you are.
Miss you all.
xxx
Lgt
A good title (also true) I had to put to pen, but Lindsay is hungry so I’ll have to fill this with content a bit later… sorry for the lack of posts all!!
miss u all,
kev
I just had to share quickly, last night was awesome as Lindsay and I went to an internet cafe to do some Cambodia research, and what should I find but a few fellow DotA players! DotA, being a somewhat obscure video game I play (not enough? too much? I’m not sure..) back at home. Anyway, it was great to see such a familiar, “important” thing to me in such a distant place, being played by guys who couldn’t even speak english. It was pretty awesome.
I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible no-good very bad day.
Once one’s head hits the pillow for their midnight Bangkokian slumber, it becomes extremely apparent within the first 30 seconds that their rickety old ceiling fan (circa 1800) on “high,” from their $4.50/night room just ain’t gonna cut it. Within the first minute, the frugal tenant comes to terms with their cheapness and prays for a morning where their face doesn’t look like they smeared it with Vaseline per their nightly bedtime anti-wrinkle regiment. They also pray they won’t slip-n-slide their greasy way out of bed in the middle of the night and break an arm. When prayers aren’t enough, they buy soap. Plenty of sudsy shower soap.
I have never hailed myself a clean freak. On the other hand, nor have I bragged about how few of showers I had taken in any given week (*cough KEVIN*cough*). That said, soap is what gets me through the hot sweaty nights. Soap is what makes me feel a little less like the skuzzy traveler I know I am, and bit more like the skuzzy CLEAN SMELLING traveler I know I can be (albeit for the first 20 minutes, anyway). When I dropped my soap this morning, my ONLY hope of smelling (and feeling) even remotely clean all day, down the squatty potty….a squatty potty which looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in well over a month (see that lovely ring?), in (once again) a $4.50/night room, with cockroaches…within the first 10 minutes of my day, I knew it was going to bed one of THOSE days. A day when just looking at me the wrong way may constitute a punch in the face.
Now, I recognize it might seem a bit drastic to deem a day “rotten” within the first 10 minutes simply because I won’t be able to degreasify my body. This may, I understand, to those unknowingly basquing in the ordinary comforts of an air conditioned home, seem drastic. But let me assure you. It’s not. Do you ever just have one of those days when you wake up grumpy? Maybe you slept funny, or couldn’t find your blanket for 1/2 the night, or MAYBE you went to bed grumpy, and therefore, woke up that way? Unfortunately, that’s what happened to me. Last night, around 2am I decided having a clean, non mildew smelling pair of shorts to workout in would make my new step-aerobic friends more likely to want to stand by me (did I mention I’ve been doing step aerobics in the park with the gay men, and little old ladies? Well I have. And it’s awesome. But that’s for a happier, less “woe is me” kind post. Stay tuned:)). So, I got out my trusty little bar of soap, and went to work. Once all my workout clothes had jumped up a few notches on the clean scale, I had a second wind, and thought, “Hell! While I’m here, I might as well do everything!” I should mention that a few days ago I bought some new (read: used) clothes off the street for 50 baht that I LOVE. 2 cute shirts, and a pair of green cutoff shorts. I’ve been wearing them everywhere. So, I scrubbed and scrubbed, and close to an hour later, thrilled about saving the money by washing everything myself, but exhausted from all the hard work (thank god for modern day advances), I started to hang up everything to dry outside my 5th story balcony window.
So just as I’m hanging my last sock, I swear to god, the only gust of wind Bangkok has felt in 2 months comes swirling by, and knocks my favorite new CLEAN pair of shorts off the line, down 5 stories, into a muddy gutter way above anywhere I could reasonably reach without a 40 ft extension ladder.
So I may have misspoke when I blamed my day going wrong when I dropped the soap in the toilet at 9am this morning. Come to think of it, I had a hankering my day would be a little less than perfect around 3:30 am staring over my balcony at my shorts. My favorite new CLEAN shorts (man, there seems to be a clean-theme here I didn’t recognize before this!!).
I’m sorry that you all might be getting a little bored with my little sob-story. I don’t care. It’s not done yet. It’s days like this where I feel totally justified complaining about everything and anything…but wait a second! There’s nothing new with that, now is there!!! 🙂
Okay. So lunch. I was starving. Must have been all those step aerobic workout moves, but I’m pretty sure my stomach would have eaten all of my other organs if it could have. For some unknown reason, I have this uncontrollable craving for “Seafood in Sticky Gravy Sauce,” a dish I tried one of the first few weeks here, and really loved. So, Kev, being the trooper he is, ignores my mood, and brings me to find what I’ve been craving. I order it. It looks great. Exactly as I remember. It looks like this:
Yes. Noodles covered in sticky, mucus-like gravy….uh oh. Sick. Just as I’m about to take a huge delicious bite of the one meal I have been craving…the meal we have spent over a hour looking for, I am reminded of an episode of “Dirtiest Jobs” that we watched with our dear friend Nick in a hotel room in Seattle one night on our way out west. Sick, slimy, disgusting mucus-expelling sea slugs. A Japanese delicacy. The sea slug mucus is exactly what is covering my noodles, and I can’t take my mind off it. Why then? Who knows. I’ve eaten this meal before. Fate was against me. I try singing a tune. I try playing “Expando” on Kev’s iPod. I can’t shake the sea slugs.
Lunch: ruined. I stomach a few more bites not to totally annoy Kev too, and leave, vowing to never again to watch “Dirtiest Jobs.”
Skip forward to much later in the day (I’m sure lots of reeealy annoying things happened in between there, but it’s getting late, and my tiredness is overriding my need to vent about the previous 24 hours:)). In an effort to get me in a better mood, Kev takes me to see Mamma Mia! which I have been ecstatic about seeing since we saw the preview during Death Racer. Lame, yes. I was thrilled just the same. Thrilled until I noticed the lead was the same chick from Mean Girls. Thrilled until Pierce Brosnan started singing. For the record, Pierce Brosnan should never sing. I don’t know where his agent was on this one, but if I was her, I would tell him to look for 2 things: movies where he can just sit, flash his pearly whites and look pretty, or movies where he can choke on half-chewed pieces of shrimp in fancy restaurants. Too bad I’m not getting paid the big bucks–I would have just saved that man’s career. All in all, the movie was terrible. Just kidding. Kind of. I can’t be too hard on it. It was terrible, but at the same time, any movie where you can watch Meryl Streep shake what her momma gave her in gogo boots can’t be all bad. Also entertaining? Looking down your row at all of the men singing, “Dancing Queen.” Tonight being the opening night, and ours being the first showing, I expected to see a lot if girls with their mom’s or girlfriends. Nope. Quite the opposite, actually.
Score for tonight’s events:
Movie:5.2
Entertainment:9.5
So we left the movie. Walking quickly enough to make the last run
of the Skytrain. It’s 12:09am. One step from under the Skytrain’s aunning… lightening. CRACK! Thunder. Torrential downpour. Look at each other. Laugh. Taxi? Bah. Can’t stop a bad day set in motion. Just gotta let it run it’s course.
Total expenses trying to get me in a better mood (food, entertainment): 735 baht
Total travel costs to get me in a better mood: 180 baht
Walking for an hour through crazy downpour, getting the best shower (with or without soap) Bangkok can offer: PRICELESS.
Rant: I still don’t have my shorts.
Rant: I hate the traffic here. After 2 months I still don’t have a clue which direction it’s going to come from.
Rant: I hate the bugs who bite your legs and leave SCARS! I have 22 unknown bites on my legs, and look like I might morph into a leopard from the thigh down. Kev’s feet are worse. Terrible picture, but you get the idea.
2:52am. Almost 24 hours exactly to when my “terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day” began.
Here’s dreaming of a happier day tomorrow….and soap.
xxxlgt
Well, we’re in Ayutthaya at the moment, but tomorrow we’re heading off to Bangkok. It’s 11:30 PM here.
Tonight, as sad as it sounds, was almost ruined by two terrible meals. First was at a place called the Moon Cafe. I ordered “chips and cheese with salsa” for 100 baht, which I figured would be a cool thing to eat, considering I haven’t eaten any sort of chips in the last month and a half. But, I ended up getting Dorritos (sans cheese) on a plate with a bit of salsa (which actually wasn’t bad to be honest) for 3 bucks. The second bit of food was the same sort of thing.
The night was made better by a trip to seven eleven down the street where I found a bottle of goats milk, which I bought and drank and was very very happy with.
I really love food.
Also, just FYI I posted a few photos on Flickr. I’d post them here as well for those of you who don’t feel like clicking on a link, but I have 1 minute left before the ocmputer shuts off.
much love to you all, miss you!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoelessone/
500-ferry-kohphangan-koh tao
Taxi-200
400-big blue lodging
Internet-50
Indian food-400
Sandwhich-50
—-1600—–
————–
100-Thai lunch-res
30-mango shake
200-lodging
320-dinner
30-banana pancake
50-beer
20-soap-711
3600-diving-big-blue
—-4350——
————
120-breakfast-2egg-sandwhiches
270-dinner-coconutsoup-gingerchicken-rice-frenchfries-icecoffee
1356-tickets-koh-Tao-champhon-kirikah-boatbustrain
400-rooms
60-smoothies
50-cake
30-lemon shake-street
—-2286—-
————-
120-breakfast sandwhiches-res really good double decker
10-ice 711
40-soup for lindz-street
40-soup for kev-street
120-dinner-friednoodle-padthai-iced coffee-tip20b-res
35-cholate nuts and soymilk-shop-trainststion
500-hotel in kiri khan
—-865—-
————
500-hotel
90-breakfast at hotel 4 eggstoast
90-umbrella
100-rice for kids
35-ice cream and cake
20-crazy drinks
60-soup at stand
15-coconut
10-monkey food
100- foot cream
110- laundry
490-dinner ouch-lindz=300
70-food market @10icecream
—–1690—-
————
90- breakfast
30-711 ice coffee
45- coffee and desert
80- monkey feeding
500- rooms
40-pad Thai street
40- chicken soup street
5- dumplings street
15- egg and meat stick
40- ice cream
20- kow neo- sticky rice with custard
24- toilet paper and H2O
—–929—-
——–
100- nice lady breakfast
10- rice and sugar in bamboo
10- noodles on train
12- ice cream
28- pruat kiri Kahn – hua hin
88- hua hin to Bangkok
470- rooms at not such a nice place w cold AC and no adjustments
10- water
70- taxi from train station
80- Internet
110- Internet
50- pad Thai
32- batteries
—–1070—-
——–week1—–
470- rooms
120- may kaidee
13- yogurt at 711
20- fresh guava from street
5- water
12- needless giving
6- 3 statue guys
30- Internet
50- pad Thai
10- water
30- sky train
109- gormet shopping orange juice and milk
15- chocolate puff
240- movie
80- taxi
70- mango and 1.5 hours Internet
—-1280—–
————
8-3-08
70- taxi to siam from khoason
12- bread for Lindsay
11.75- yogurt at fancy store
470- rooms
70- cipro
12.75- yogurt from fancy store
6- water from gormet store
20- curry naan from mall
12- Japanese custard pancake
70- taxi to khoason road
100- stuff
50- dinner
22- 711 stuff
20- pop
—–1196.5—
—————-
15- Internet
90- taxi from khosan to suk11
800- nice rooms at suk11
453- crepes+50 baht tip
40- internet
50- BTS
60- 50 iced coffee
40- BTS
—–1548—-
—————
160-Internet
85- lunch
1222- 2x train from bkk to chiang mai
70- taxi from nana to train
100- dinner at train station
60- beer and water
80- train junk food – bun, dognut, etc
—–1777—-
—————-
6-8-8
550- rooms- hollanda montri
100- tuk-tuk to rooms from train
650- sushi
–1300———-
——————
550- rooms
90- food at street stalls
1200- visa run
1000- border crossing to Burma
280- mikes burgers
400- deposit for cooking class
40- internet
60- shake and leomanaide at border
—3620———
——————
1400- cooking class
130- 711 shampoo, razor, batteries
550- rooms
25- giving
–2105———
—————–
550- rooms
60- lunch
144- dinner
75- Internet @ 20b/hr
—–829——-
—————-
180- rooms darets
20- giving
40- drinks
29- gas station
25- sushi
20- dumplings
10- fish desert
30- sushi
300- scarves
30- sushi
40- games
69- coffee + custard
80- Internet
60- wallet
10- earings
50- postcards
5- water
20- kow lahm
110- purse
200- shirt
20- games again shooting targets
—-1348——–
—————–
180- rooms at darets
300- bike for 2 days
70- breakfast
90- gas
60- wat entry
150- prison backrub
40- prison coffee
20- kow neow
70- lunch
150- umbrella
300- dinner at da stafano
45- mango shake and lassi
—–1375—–
—————-
180- rooms
74- breakfast
80- fuel
225- dinner
40- street food
100- ice cream at mall
20- video game
5- pen
20- coconut shake
135- Internet
15- guava shake
49- tea at grocery
——-943——-
——————
180- rooms
400- bike x2 days
90- breakfast
492- dinner
80- gas
—–1240—-
—————-
180- rooms
60- Internet
240- dinner
38- desert at street market
110- paper market
199- helmet
70- fuel
90- breakfast
15- soap
18- almond thing
—-1120—-
————–
180- rooms
75- breakfast
400- bike
600- haircuts
40- desert
20- video game
10- massage chair
250- shoes
565- dinner on the boat – riverside
12- water
—————
676- ticket to ayuttaya
180- rooms
80- drinks
77- breakfast
70- gas
100- bike
150- dinner
128- buds ice cream
80- Internet
15- ducttape asprin
————–
+++27793+++
16 day average:
///1737B///
54.20 USD
————————
asia.shoelessone.com
(from iPod Touch)
As of 6 tonight, I “bit the bullet…” “went all out…” [add other ridiculous little phrase here] and got cute shoes AND bangs!!! Okay fine, my shoes aren’t really all that cute. In fact they’re knock off, $4.50 Birkenstocks, and my bangs, well…without a blow dryer, curling iron, or straightener, you could say they’re looking a bit funky, air drying with all this crazy humidity…but I will not be discouraged!! Kev actually was first to get his hair cut earlier this afternoon, and after watching him get a (seriously, no lie) 10 minute head massage and shampoo, I decided it would be a crime if I didn’t get one too (right?!). So, I found a cute little picture of a hair cut I liked, and showed the guy what I wanted. Obviously there is a BIT of a language barrier in this joint, but when he saw the picture I liked he said…”Oh! You want Asian girl hair! I give you straight Asian girl hair!” (this is what I THINK he said, by the way.) l smile and nod my head, and adjust myself in the really sticky pleather chair. Now there are two things I should mention at this point. One. While, yes, I picked out a picture of an Asian woman to copy my hair after, there were absolutely NO magazines of any white girl haircuts to choose from (not that I initially minded). Two. As I mentioned earlier, my hair’s been runnin’ with this whole humidity thing, and has left me with quite the crrrazy do’s these days. My hair is thick. I am white. Unfortunately, no amount of hair product will leave my hair as straight, slick or shiny as any of the girls’ here. I figured the man would recognize this. But decked out in his pink Lacoste hat, matching polo sweater vest, tight leather pants, and enormous diamond encrusted cross necklace and earrings– it was obvious, this man was on a mission. Almost 2 hours later, my “trim with bangs” was completed. Looking down at the floor, I laughed at the 1/2 of head of hair laying on the ground. This poor man truly could not handle the wave in my hair. Every time he cut and released the hair he was holding, my hair would lay with a slight wave. I watched as his face tensed up, and he grabbed the thinning shears, trying to thin my hair down to a point of no wave. When he could thin-no-more, he resorted to the hair wax, and methodically attempted to tame my hair into the “Asian hair” style he promised. You could almost read the profane words of frustration coursing thru his brain, mixed with the lack of understanding on “why it won’t lay flat!!!” In the end, afraid of losing any more hair, I finally stopped him, and just told him I liked it just like it was. He smiled, and whipped his hand across his forehead with a sigh of relief, and then proceeds to say, “You the first white girl hair I ever cut! Not like Thais, it hard!” Ha. My poor hair has been through so much over the years. It’s a wonder it doesn’t fall out just to spite me. I walked out looking like a drowned rat, while yelling at Kev for laughing at my “special new hair cut.” It was quite the trip…but now I’m one step closer to “fitting in”…right?! 🙂
I just bought a bike helmet. It was 199 baht, a bit less then 6 bucks. I bought it because it has a visor, and I’m tired of my current loaner helmet which doesn’t have a visor (makes driving in the constant rain difficult), plus my current helmet smells terrible.
Well, I'm writing this more to serve as a record of our trip then an
interesting read, but here goes.
I don't know what I types last, but after Suk 11 in Bangkok Lindsay
and I took a night train from BKK to Chiang Mai. That involved
spending anentire day in the BKK train station (lots of cards, lots of
reading, etc) which wasnt all bad. I had gotten into my book "Bone
Mountain" which was about Tibet and Buddhism and the Chinese making
life difficult. Anyway, very good book and it gives some picture of
Tibet and its religion, somewhat accuratly. Plus it gives some idea of
what the whole "free Tibet" thing is all about.
Anyway, I digress, I think. We ate some dinner in the train station
with a fellow north American (quebec actually, however you spell that.
Lindsay says this is correct but the iPod doesnt like it), then jumped
on the train Around 7:30. This time around we had a second class air
conditioned car, the only train available on that particular night (we
had a reservation the next day in Chiang Mai) which was actually very
nice. It was a bit pricey at 611 baht a person (~18 USD) but again it
was the only option and Lindsay and I both much prefer taking the
train to the bus, which is generally filled with tourists, not to
mention making more stops. I should point out that I realize we are
probably no better than other tourists, but its still nice to not see
them.
The train itself was nice, we were surprised and pleased to find out
that we were provided with dinner (similar to airplane food, a bit
less in quality, but similar and actually served in the same manner)
as well as breakfast of sorts in the morning (a bun filled with berry
jelly stuff). We read until 11 or so then watched "Hitch" on my ipod
before *trying* to sleep. Neither Lindsay or I slept very well, and
when we arrived in Chiang Mai at 7:20ish (12 hours on the train for
those of you who don't have access to a calculator) we were both tired.
Enter Chiang Mai, a very popular place for tourists with a bit more
time and perhaps interested in getting out of the touristy tourist
(note the extra tourist) areas of Thailand. While there are still Many
tourists here there are also a lot of ex-pats and it doesnt feel at
all "made for tourists," at least not in general. Just as an example,
the popular night markets are popular to lacal Thais as well as
tourists. Anyway Lindsay and I needed to get to our guest house so we
hailed a tuk-tuk (our first! We have a video we'll post sometime) and
paid 100 baht to get to our place the Hollanda Montri. The rooms were
500 baht per night, not particularly cheap bit doable – plus there was
AC and a TV (only channel in English was the Russian news station
which turned out to be interesting as the big Russian/Georgia conflict
started the day we arrived) and hot showers, etc. Hollanda Montri was
heavily recomended by the people of the Internet and we were quite
happy with it, though as you'll read we decided later it was not the
place for us.
We slept for a while that day until later in the afternoon when we
walked around the city to get our barrings. I find that while it is
exciting to first arrive to a totally unknown and new city, it can be
difficult to get oriented and it is nice after s few ssys of wxploring
to get a sense of direction/space/layout of a city. The first day (and
in fact the first 4 days) we used our legs as our sole means of
transportation. There are no metered taxis here (almost) so tuk-tuks
and songathews (red/yellow trucks that sort of travel in routes around
the city) are the only means of public transportation, and seeing as
they require bartering to figure on a price and even still can be
quite expensive they are not the best for exploring a city. We walked
a long way our first day, and in each successive day as well.
The city is sort of broken into two parts, an old city and new city.
The old city is basically a square bordered by a moat (a real moat at
one point I might add) with 8 gates at various points around the moat.
At this point in time the gates are not really gates but a bridge (the
moat isn't exactly a flowing river) although there is one actual gate
still around. To be honest I can tell a HUGE difference between the
old and new city, until you her a ways out of the city center things
are fairly similar (street markets, restorants, etc). Anyway I'm not
sure why I'm typing all of this if you really care about the cities
layout check out wikipedia or wikitravel.
The "first part" of our Chiang Mai stay was a mixture of three or four
things:
1) me getting a bit sick (not too bad)
2) going to Burma for a "visa run"
3) a cooking class at Baan Thai
4) walking
5) eating
I'm typing all of this on an iPod so I'm not sure how much I'll
actually write about each, but Lindsay (who is sitting across from me
reading) just informed me she wouldn't write much about this stuff so
I'll try.
1) I was a bit sick, which sucked, but it was just a day and we had AC
and a TV so it wasnt too terrible. I watched a lot of the same war
footage from Georgia (S. Ossetia) and heard a LOT of the same Russian
war corospondants say a lot of the same things.
2) I seem to remember already typing something about this but to be
honest I don't remember and at the moment I don't have Internet access
to check so hear goes. Our 30 day tourist visa expired on the 11th of
August and everyday after that we stayed cost us 15$ USD so we had to
do a visa run -basically leave Thailand and then come back in (I feel
deja-vu writing this). The closest country being Burma/Myanmmar we
took a bus to the border, crossed over, and came back (ok not I'm sure
I've written this before). Sort of silly I suppose. The bus ride cost
us 600 each and the visa to Burma was 500. We met a wonderful woman
named Susan and talked all day. We also had good fried food in Burma.
It was sort of a long day and expensive, 11 hours or so in a bus.
Actually a van. That night we went to mikes which didn't help with the
budget (more on that later). Anyway now we can stay until September
something.
3) Baan Thai cooking class was quite wonderful. I wish Lindsay would
write something about it as I'm sure I will not do it justice here.
The class was all day(ish) from 9 am to 4 pm. It was exactly what we
wanted (pretty much) and really well run. One of the best parts about
the class was the people we met. We had a couple from France, a couple
from Isreal, a woman from New York, and a brother/sister from
Singapore/London. Those were just the people we sat with.
You sit on the floor on matts around a table and are provided with tea/
coffee when you first arrive, plus water pitchersa. Basically it was
just very warm and hospitable. First thing we chose which dishes we
wanted to make, there were six to choose from on total. I won't list
them all but I chose a red curry paste, kohsoi, sticky rice and mango,
spring rolls (just because they sounded good), and a prawn and coconut
soup. Lindsays dishes were different though generally similar.
Basicaly we each had one of each "type" of food (1 curry paste, one
stir fry, one desert, etc).
After choosing our dishes we went on a market tour which was quite
spectacular. We walked around a "wet market" and purchased all of our
ingredients, as we went t
he girl who led the tour explained
everything. You could tell they went there daily as they picked up raw
ingredients (for instance shaved coconut used in the process of making
coconut milk) to show us. That is not to say that this was a tourist
market, it was very much a "real" street market which made the
experience all the better. After buying the required ingredients we
were happily surprised to be given 15 minutes to walk around the
market finding things to ask questions about. Bonus: the guide would
buy things we were currious about, out of Baan Thais pocket, so we
could try them. Once the tour was over we headed back to the cooking
school where they put together a rather nice looking spread for each
of us with all of the foods that we picked out at the market,
including fresh mangosteen and dragon fruit. It was a nice way to
start the cooking class.
The actual cooking was very fun. It was slightly less "intensive" then
I would have liked, but that isn't really a complaint, just a personal
preference. For each dish we moved to specific stations depending on
what we were cooking. For the most part the ingredients were mostly
prepared and cut, except for say, an onion and a tomato and perhaps
some lemon grass. Then you basically put everything into a wok in the
prescribed order and ta da! Food! There was luckily a little more to
it then that, you learned little things like about Thai ginger, how
you dont take the skin off of Thai garlic, etc.
In the end it was lots of fun. We had fun making the dishes and were
very full all day, plus we met lots of great people, including the
brother sister combo Kai Wing and Wei Yee that we ended up going out
to dinner with that evening (which was wonderful and amazing – thanks
again!!).
It was 900 baht per person (yikes!) well spent!
4) not much to say about walking. In the interest of saving money
Lindsay and I walked a good 10-20 kilometers a day. It's nice to walk
as it gives you a better feeling for the city I think but at the same
time when the city is somewhat large walking can be somewhat limiting.
5) food. I love food, as some of you may know. Here we've had some
spectacular food.
To start with what was certainly the most extravagant meals of our
trip so far (certainly on par with lindsays birthday sushi) was the
meal that Kai Wing and Wei Yee treated us to at a resturant called The
Whole Earth. There have been very few meals in my life that I have
been treated to that have such a spread – fish, curries, palek paneer,
an egg dish, naan, dimpling "things", normally I remember exactly what
was served at any given meal but this meal was too big. Even better
than the food was the company. Kai Wing worked and lived in Singapore
and Wei Yee worked and lived in London. Wonderful people, very well
traveled and interesting to talk with. To top it all off they payed
the bill (which was substantial I'm sure), which while making us feel
a bit guilty, was a very nice treat. Thanks again guy!
Edit – OOPS! This should be in the next post as we are not at darets
yet in this post!!****** All of our meals at our guest house, Darets,
have been great. I especially apreciate the scrambled eggs on weat
toast that are a welcomed break from Thai food. Plus the 20 baht mango
shakes. Lindsay has been eating cashew nuts and chicken (for
breakfast, which drives me crazy by the way) and "Lassi shakes" which
are homemade yogurt and ice blended together. I normally love a good
lassi but I'm not a huge fan of these. She loves them though, even at
25 baht! 😉
Near the public park in the south west corner of the old city (which
in itself deserves a post – let the record reflect that I just nicely
asked Lindsay if she would be willing to write something small about
the park, she replied, "no, do it yourself!" – though to be honest she
was [partially] kidding and she has been a most perfect traveling
companion and I think we are both really happy to be traveling
together) is a street that is covered with street food vendors. This
is not at all special or unique as most streets are lined with street
food vendors at one time or another, but these food stalls were top
notch and a few of them were unique to this area. For instance, sushi
stalls with decent maki sushi (rolls) for 5 – 10 baht a piece. Fried
home made dumplings, fresh iced coffee, roasted nuts, buns shaped like
fish with custard in them, and so on. Street food in general is great
but Lindsay and I liked this place enough to come back twice. The
environment at night makes it all the better, the park across the
street is sort of like a city park combined with a carnival combined
with a state fair, only much smaller and more condensed and with less
crap. But still enough crap that people like me can play the games
where you shoot darts out of a gun at stuffed animals to win prizes. I
won a stuffed mouse-thing for Lindsay. There are also beatiful orchid
displays all over for orchid judging competitions, kids painting
statues (10 baht! I wish izzy was here!), and even a somewhat run down
and miniature ferris wheel. Not to mention people all over serving ice
cream for 10 baht (30 cents). Oh, and a small stage where we watched
several local boy/rock bands perform. A wonderful place.
Last but not least (as far as food is concerned) is Mikes Burger. This
is a great place that is very very popular for good reason. They serve
American style hamburgers, French fries, shakes, etc. It great not
only because the food is very US American but also because it looks
and is run in avery American way. People wear gloves when handling
your food, your given "real" napkins, a bill, etc. Plus you sit on
bright red stools at the counter, facing in, while behind you is the
traffic of Chiang Mai whipping by your back. The food is really good
and would satisfy anybody missing a real cheeseburger.
Well thats about it for part 1. It has taken me two days and several
hours to type this all out on my iPod. In reality this post only
covers up to four days ago, we've been at our new guest house for over
4 days but I wanted to split the blog post into two parts to keep
things somewhat focused.
Miss you all!
Kev
————————
asia.shoelessone.com
(from iPod Touch)
