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| Morning traffic: Bangkok |
Six years ago I had the pleasure of working in Singapore for 6 months; at
that time I had visited Bangkok, Cambodia
and Vietnam amongst other locations in SE Asia.
Bangkok was a noisy hotbed of debauchery with easy access to drugs,
prostitution, girly boys and cheap booze.
It was the most similar location to India I had ever been, so I had
warned Katy to be ready for some restless nights.
We got off the plane into the clean new Bangkok airport, and were greeted
by smiling faces of locals pointing us to customs. While waiting we all stared at enormous LCD
screens giving instructions on the various ways to get to the city center, and
opted for the new sky train. Next we
boarded the sky train in air conditioned comfort and were ushered toward the
city. The train was impeccably clean;
the patrons on the train were well dressed.
We mistakenly got off at the wrong stop and were immediately helped by
employees pointing us in the right direction. I was in shock from the vast difference
between the Bangkok I remembered and this place we were now in, but the one
thing that still rang true was the heat.
It was HOT with nearly 100% humidity and it was only 9 in the morning.
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| Thai Royal Palace |
Over the next few days Bangkok became a stop for trip maintenance. It was cheap, it had great food to offer and
with the sky train just down the road from our hostel, we didn’t even need to
bother with tuk tuks or taxis. To be
more specific, there was a group of food stalls that set up at the end of our
street every night offering various delicious noodle dishes, pad thai, cashew
chicken, and curries for about $1.50-$2.00 each. Katy declared that I was to start a weight gain
program due to the pounds I had shed from India and Namibia. The program generally involved eating
additional curries, and drinking beer with the occasional ice cream thrown
in. I highly recommend it.
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| How times have changed... |
When we were able to get away from the food stalls and embassy row we hit
up some of the biggest and best temples Thailand has to offer seeing the Royal
Palace and many of the Buddhist temples (Wats).
Bangkok hosts some of the largest and most valued Buddha’s in the
world. We saw one made of solid gold,
one emerald and one Buddha about the length of a football field.
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| Need a Budda? |
Aboard a train we left Bangkok to see Thailand’s original capital,
Ayutthaya, just one hour north. The city
is surrounded by a river and much like Bangkok, is renowned for its
temples. The next day we rented bicycles
and toured the town in the extreme heat.
More temples, more tasty food, and a look at the King’s retreat home
outside the city all while working on a good sweat. Even in the evening, the temperature didn’t
go below 80 with the humidity making any thoughts of escaping the heat
laughable. In that kind of heat taking a
shower only acts as temporary relief. As
soon as you leave the shower and put clothes on you break out in a sweat.
We did find relief from the heat when we arrived in Chang Mai, a touristy
town at higher elevation further north.
Mind you temperatures still reached the 90’s, but it was below the
miserable temperatures we suffered further south. The tradeoff was that the air quality took a
serious nose dive as we went further north.
We were in closer proximity to the rice growing region of SE Asia and
they had just entered ‘burning’ season. It’s
cheaper and easier for the rice farmer to clear out old rice stalks by just
burning the fields instead of using machinery or manual labor. This happens across Thailand, Laos and Vietnam
for a few weeks causing the skies to cloud over and ash to drop to the
ground. The people respond by wearing
face masks around town.
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| Thai cooking 101 |
Chang Mai held up the culinary reputation Bangkok and Ayutthaya had
set. In fact we found ourselves in a
private (the luck of the draw) cooking class just after we arrived. A slightly eccentric former teacher /
politician / farmer / economist asked us to select what dishes we wanted to
cook that day and then showed us to the market.
First we were to purchase everything, do the prep then finally cook. While we were given close instruction and the
occasional helping hand, this was what happened. Cashew chicken, pad thai, red and green
curry, even spring rolls were made throughout the day, and they were close
enough to pass for the real stuff. We
were also given a book with the recipes for all these tasty dishes and due to
the influence of the Irish manager Western substitutions were given for every
item you can’t find when you don’t have a Thai market just around the corner.
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| Spring Rolls by Katy |
While exploring the culinary opportunities in Thailand, we found a fruit
smoothie stall that was constantly packed with customers. We discovered that ‘Tipp’ had a great thing
going on, with simple fruit smoothies, no sugar, no additives, just fresh
fruit, ice, water, and the company of a hard working single mom making cheap
delicious smoothies. It was like
watching a cooking show, she always had an audience, three blenders going and
could slice up a mango or pineapple at rapid speed. We quickly became regular customers, sometimes
making two stops a day (she made a muesli, fruit, yoghurt breakfast for $2.00).
We also elected to get our teeth cleaned while in Chang Mai, as it cost
about $20 per person. A mean game of
rock, paper, scissors resulted in Will being the first subject. I walked into a room with four Thai women
ready to clean my teeth. They shortly
‘prepped’ me by covering his face and eyes and probing in his mouth. Before I knew it, it was done, told to spit and
out the door. The entire experience took
maybe 15 minutes and I think Katy was done quicker than I was (I’m guessing because
our oral hygiene is above average for the Thai market). None the less, it was painless and we
survived with all our limbs and teeth too!
We then journeyed north into Laos. Laos is relatively untouched by tourism;
it is a country of adorable children, and incredibly laid-back, friendly people.
The lack of safe and reliable transportation
is hands down the biggest drawback to Laos. When we arrived to Lang Nam Tha in Northern
Laos, we had left the comforts and commercialization of Thailand. We were dropped on the side of the road,
after hours of bumpy, windy mountainous roads all while being driven in a
minivan at breakneck speeds. In return
we were given a dirt road (Main Street) running through a town with more
chickens than tourists. Nestled just
20km from China, the people who had traveled to this portion of Laos broke the
mold that we saw in Thailand… no Americans, mostly the well-traveled Dutch,
British and some NGO members looking to do some work in the neighboring
villages.
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| Downtown Luang Nam Tha (Laos) |
We rented bicycles and it only took us a matter of minutes before we were
being chased by toddlers screaming ‘Sai-ba-dee!’ (hello in Laos) through the
streets. The people were real, and
weren’t asking us for money or candy or any handouts. Instead they smiled genuinely and waved. On our way back into town we found a local
food market. The typical food market in
Asia had raw meat, wiggly-jiggly seafood things, vegetables and fruits –some of
which we recognize, some of which we didn’t.
But this market was dark, hot and absent of any tourists. We saw the fare, but what caught our attention
was when we saw squirrel and moles for sale.
This country had personality.
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| Village life- Laos |
We found an adventure outfitter in town and next found ourselves doing an
aggressive trek in primary jungle. We
started in a village without any sales gimmicks, and then entered a preserved
forest by walking straight up. When we
weren’t going straight up, we were going down, and then back up. In the morning it had rained, so the trail
was wet and unforgiving. By the end of
the day I was falling over literally due to exhaustion, (Katy was doing fine
FYI).
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| One of these is not like the other... |
Our last day in Luang Nam Tha we volunteered to teach English at the local
college. We met the teacher, whom we
could only understand half of the time, then we were given minimum instruction
and given a class of 20-30 students each.
Katy had 3rd year students, Will had 2nd year and
we had a total of three hours. It was
fantastic, the 2nd year students knew vocabulary but wanted to hear
a native person speak the words and pronounce.
Will was able to work on pronunciation with them and make sure they
understood the significance of musicians like the Beatles. Halfway through the night we switched. Katy was then given textbook made for
American high schoolers and asked if she could teach grammar to the 2nd
years, while Will took her 3rd year students. The text we had to work with were horrible,
clearly not written for students of developing or third world nations; the
concept of a fashion model or going to the health club was lost in translation. At the end of the night, two of the students
offered to drive us home on the back of their motorbikes; it was a great
evening.
The trek from Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang, on the other hand, was not a
pleasurable experience. We were piled
into a minivan along with a group of Koreans in matching outfits and the van
jetted out of the parking lot. Our van
was piloted by a racecar driver racing through the mountainous terrain and it
seemed as though his job was to drive at an uncomfortable pace regardless of
conditions. The roads in Laos were often
unpaved and windy with limited visibility.
Every time a truck or other vehicle passed us, our driver made it a
point to tailgate them and then pass, only to immediately stop at the next
market for him to do his personal shopping.
When we drove through villages and children and livestock were in the
streets, the driver floored it. The
driving seemed to be erratic, especially when accompanied with the constant
stops for him to smoke or urinate next to the vehicle. The drive took roughly 2 extra hours over the
quoted 8. When we arrived at the bus
station we got out of the van and kissed the ground… we were in Luang Prabang.
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| Commuter traffic |
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| Joel: every hotel should have one! |
It was a drastic change from Luang Nam Tha: the streets were littered with
tourists and colonial architecture. We
had landed ourselves in the ‘Niagara-on-the-lake’ of Asia. Our guesthouse had a 3 month old puppy named
Joel, and he made this town worthy of a visit.
We found another opportunity to teach English with a non-profit
organization where children and monks came to meet with volunteers on a
one-on-one basis to work on their English.
These kids had a stronger grasp on the language due to the frequency of
encounters with English speaking tourists.
Some of the participants were clearly motivated. One of the kids we worked with explained that
he would bike into town in the evenings to go to the market, just to meet
tourists and work on his English. He
would risk getting jumped by bullies who would steal his bike on his way back
from the market as they assumed he had just made money selling things to
tourists.
Our last full day in Luang Prabang we were up before dawn scurrying over to
one of the main streets. The streets
were alive as we walked through the pitch black. Locals were setting up the morning market,
some with flashlights and some working in the dark. People set up their fruit and veggie stalls,
others hauling out cages with chickens and ducks ready for an early morning
sale. We continued over to the closest
temple to watch a time honored tradition.
Every morning in Laos monks walk the streets of their town and receive
donations of food that the locals place in their rice bowls as they walk down
the street. This is supposed to bring
extra blessings to the people that give food to the monks. Unfortunately this
has become a tourist “to do” attraction. While Will and I stood on the sidewalk across
the street, dressed modestly and watched from afar, we were horrified to see a
Jeep driving down the road with windows open and flash photography going off paparazzi
style.
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| Monks being pious |
Our next stop brought us to the party capital of Laos, Vien Vang. A river runs through the city and the main
tourist activity is to grab an inner tube and ride the river while visiting the
series of bars as you ride down the river.
The activity is also internationally renowned, and the subject of a
recent Dateline Special because every year at least one tourist dies from doing
something exceptionally stupid while partaking in this event… in fact they sell
t-shirts in the city saying ‘I survived Vien Vang’. So due to a combination of the river flowing
at a low level and common sense, we elected not to participate in the tubing,
and instead found ourselves biking into the villages and exploring some caves…
it was equally thrilling and weren’t forced to explore the Laos medical system
(that came in Cambodia).
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| Row, row, row your boat... |
The first night we spent in Cambodia Will woke up in a cold sweat. I was absolutely freezing, and yet Katy
insisted I was burning up. We read
through the guidebooks health section on Tropical diseases. Fever, aches, light headedness… the symptoms
matched ‘Dengue Fever’ exactly, so before the end of the day I was off to the
hospital. Fortunately we were in Siem
Reap, the most touristy spot of the entire country home to an ‘international
hospital’. At the hospital the nurse
outfitted in a bleached white dress, white tights and paper nursing hat
attempted to take my temperature by sticking the thermometer under my arm after
being in a Tuk-tuk in the 100 degree heat for the past 30 minutes. Shockingly the result was grossly inaccurate
(I had taken my own temperature minutes before we left for the hospital), and
when we informed her it was an inaccurate way to take one’s temperature she
said ‘that’s okay, we’ll just add 0.5 degrees.
The rest of the experience was only semi-dodgy and blood work showed a
miscellaneous bacterial infection. (The
needles were clean, although no one ever asked if I was on any medication). A few pills and hours of sleep later and I
was back in fighting shape.
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| No look, its a monkey...and you're a monkey |
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| Nobody nose... |
To explore Angkor Wat you need to be in fighting shape. Angkor Wat is one of the world’s largest and
most spectacular temples, but the real attraction are the surrounding temples that
go on for miles in every direction and take days to explore. All the temples are outside, so you are
subjected to the extreme heat and humidity like in southern Thailand. For many (hundreds) of years, no one knew
these temples existed, Cambodia has a long history of being no man’s land, and
the Vietnam war did nothing to aid in making the area accessible. It wasn’t until the 90’s that borders started
opening up and the tourists who risked the occasional landmine got a peak; now
the area is considerably safer and the tourists arrive by the bus load, and
rightly so, it’s well worth a look.
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| Landscaper called out |
The real highlight of Cambodia came after when we stumbled onto the website
LazyBeachCambodia.com, advertising an island off the southern coast that is
secluded with thatch roofed huts, white beaches and almost no people. We were on a boat for two hours taking us away
from the Russians and jet-skis that lined the main beach and eventually arrived
on an island with nothing but green and blue clear water. The huts were basic, no fans or a/c, limited
electricity, but they did have hammocks and looked directly at the ocean. Our reservation for two nights quickly
extended to three, then four nights, and we only left then because they shut
for a Khmer holiday.
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| Lazy Beach- Cambodia: $40/night! |
It didn’t take long, but after we arrived into Vietnam, the nationality of
our travel party went from ‘Can-Am’ to straight up Canadian. We quickly found the people to very jaded
toward Americans and were quick to swindle us out of our money compared to elsewhere
in SE Asia. Previously agreed taxi fares
of ’15,000’ dong magically became ’50,000’ when it came time to pay. We made sure to visit the war museum to learn
about the “enemy Americans who failed to decimate the unified Vietnam nation”. The Vietnamese side of the history clearly
varies from the US textbooks, still some of the contradictions were
fascinating. An entire exhibit was dedicated
to defaming Senator Bob Kerrey (not John Kerrey), who had firebombed a village
of women and children, and yet in the states he was a recipient of a medal of honor
for the same event.
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| Another day another dong |
When walking through this country, red flags flew on every corner. Vietnam being one of five countries (Vietnam,
Laos, China, Cuba and N Korea) in the world that claims themselves to be governed
by a communist party... and yet corporations have a very strong presence
throughout the country. Walking down the
street we saw KFC’s, North Face jackets and commercialism at every corner… just
under the red (communist) flag. It seems
that the government has a strong presence in all dealings, elections are fixed,
and big business is conducted through the government, but people are
predominately more concerned about making a buck now than supporting the party.
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| That's right I'm a biker bitch |
We made our way north through Vietnam visiting more temples, eating way to
much soup (pho), sweating, wandering around towns and doing the general tourist
thing including visiting some of the underground caves where the Viet Cong had
hidden during the war. We were able to
get some clothes tailored while in Hoi An for extremely reasonable prices
(pending how the winter clothes hold up) - the ladies were shocked that Katy
wanted the pants lined all the way to the bottom…”so hot, it is too hot if we
do that”). We also took a tour of Hue
which is near the DMZ and had seen a lot of conflict. Our tour guide was an ex-translator for the US
Military. His English was great especially
the over use of the F-word, it was clear where he had learned his language
skills. We rode around the countryside
on the back of a motorbike and saw temples, old arenas where they would have
tiger vs. elephant fights, and some local landmarks. It was a really good day. We finished up the S.E Asia leg of our trip
in Hanoi. Off to Sydney, Australia…but
first a 12 hour connection in China.
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| ...only $40 a night! |
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