Friday, September 30, 2011

Living the Dream in Bali (no, this is not Eat, Pray, Love)

(September 2-September 9)

Bali welcomed Jillian and I with a daunting task. First, we had to get around without Kayleigh. Secondly, we wanted to fit the same adventures we had over three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, into one week in Bali. Luckily, this little island made the second part easy for us.

Bali is a unique little island, even to the rest of Indonesia. While Indonesia is mostly Muslim, Bali is actually Hindu, and is never ashamed to show it. Processions often roam the streets, blocking traffic at random times, and offerings are put out every day in every home, guesthouse, restaurant and store. Though our stupid guidebook taught me how to say thank you in Indonesian, the locals actually speak Balinese to each other, though also know Indonesian for immigrants downtown, and English for their immensely growing tourist population. Tourism is their biggest industry, fueling rapid development all over country, and is growing more popular thanks to that dreaded book, Eat, Pray, Love.

Now that you’ve gotten the first paragraph of Bali from Wikipedia (I actually wrote that myself, from memory of reading the Bali page on Wikipedia so many times) let me tell you how different the locals are from our previous Southeast Asian experiences. Jillian and I got off the plane, took out 2,500,000 rupiah from the ATM (which sounds exciting, but is only 300 dollars) and went to catch a cab to Ubud. As expected, we got bombarded with taxi drivers, asking outrageous prices for the hour long cab ride, prices we could never attempt to barter to close to what we wanted. One guy kept pestering us, saying out here we’d have to pay more. Then he saw Jillian’s computer, and asked if we were students. Out of habit, we said yes (I still fill out my occupancy as student on all my departure forms) and he said, oh, students! Follow me! He rushed us through the crowd of taxis and took us to the official taxi stand that would only charge us 200,000 rupiah for the ride, exactly what we wanted to pay. Then he disappeared, after bidding us good luck in his country. Bizarre. So we met our taxi driver, who asked every person we passed if they knew a cheap place to stay in Ubud. He wasn’t very conversational on the ride there, just telling us it was Ramadan, and Bali was exceptionally busy, which didn’t really made sense since Bali has only a very small Muslim population. When we got to Ubud, he drove us to three places, going up first to ask what the price was, and reporting back to us. What service! We weren’t getting the prices we wanted, so he took us back to the first place, and we left him an unexpected tip for being so helpful.

In the morning we set out to find a cheaper place to stay, after free breakfast at our resort with a swimming pool. We went from paying 35$ for the night, to about 15$ for an adorable little guesthouse with the most adorable staff. Everyone along the way sees a foreigner and asks, where are you from? Where do you stay? Things like that. It apparently comes from a long tradition of tribal greetings, always asking what tribe you are from. It gets a little over the top when this is brought into tourism. As two young girls, it was intimidating having everyone know where we were staying. We got the same greetings at our new place, Teba Guesthouse, but they were adorable about it. Once they showed us our room, one guy came over to bring us coffee. He sat on our stairs and asked where we were from, how long we were staying. He was so sad to hear we were leaving Ubud tomorrow. He wanted to know what we wanted to see in Ubud. And how we were getting to Ahmed tomorrow. Did we want motorbikes? We could rent them from him. Do we need to leave our stuff there? We can leave it with him if we come back to Teba. And they do all these things without getting a tip a lot of the time.

After getting settled in at our new place, and getting some laundry done (finally!) we walked into Ubud’s downtown. Ubud is an artisan town, filled with crafts, artwork, clothing, jewelry and just tons of shopping. Not much to do unless you want to spend a fortune. We visited the monkey sanctuary on Ubud’s main road: Monkey Forest road. Thank goodness we didn’t stay at one of the many hostels on this road, because we soon found out that Jillian is terrified of monkeys when one jumped on her and tried to take her camera, thinking it was food. I had a bunch of bananas with me for defense, and we briskly toured the sanctuary, as monkeys climbed on me to steal my bananas without even asking. They were mean little monkeys.

We browsed some of the stores with somewhat feigned interest, then continued to walk out of town to see some of Bali’s famous rice paddies. We had a direction we wanted to follow, but most roads in Bali don’t have names, so we got horribly lost. I could see we were heading in the entirely wrong direction when people stopped asking us where we were from and instead just look at us, their expressions saying, what are you doing here?! But we did see some amazing rice paddies, as well as many artists working on carvings, and kids flying kites. I was pretty exhausted from all the walking around, so we had an early dinner on the second floor balcony of a little restaurant, attempted a couple drinks at a rooftop bar with live music, then had to head home. We had a big day in the morning to go see some beaches!

For a little more than $5 a day, we rented two motorbikes that would get us around the island. We woke up early(ish) for our drive to Ahmed, which, with only a couple stops included, took us the whole day. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the beach (fried rice, fried noodles, and Balinese iced coffee, yum yum) and at a beautiful water palace we had no idea existed. It was at one point royal grounds, but now open for views of rice paddies and a (small) palace over water, with the ocean in the background. Gorgeous. The rest of the way to Ahmed was on a coastal, poorly maintained road. It was obviously built for motorbikes; a full sized vehicle would take up both lanes. I haven’t decided if this was my fault for being a bad motorbike driver, or my bike’s fault for being flimsy, but every time the road turned to gravel, my bike was a little unhappy, and I scraped up my knee pretty nicely. It was quite an embarrassing wound, only because every person I would pass after that would look at my knee and say, oh! Motorbike! (My favorite remark was on the beach, a guy asked what happened to my knee. I shamefully responded that I fell off my motorbike, to which he exclaimed, it’s better to fall in love than to fall off motorbike!) It seemed like we were just taking random roads; at every intersection, it was a true guess in which direction we should continue on. We passed through many villages, and you could tell from how friendly people were that they don’t get many tourists, because as soon as we got closer to Ahmed, people were a lot less friendly, and a lot less excited to see us pass by. We managed to make it to Ahmed (I don’t know how) just as the sun was setting. We stopped here and there looking for the cheapest accommodation, hopefully with a dive shop attached. One resort caught my eye thanks to the “budget rooms” sign. I slowed as we biked by, and the guy sitting out front asked me how much. I said 200, since that was what the last place had told us and I still don’t know how to bargain, and he said yes, we have rooms for 200 (meaning 200,000 rupiah, roughly $22). I told him we’d come back, and we kept biking. Well the guy chased us down on his motorbike, telling us to come see the rooms, and we wouldn’t be disappointed. Pretty ballsy of him. So we checked it out, and they were definitely gorgeous. He wanted to give us the deluxe room, with a queen bed and a single (we needed Kayleigh!) with ocean front views of the sunrise and sunset for 150, so we took it. Later we found out that someone had already booked the room, but hadn’t shown up yet. Silly man, he could have given them the room at a much higher price than we went for. But we were happy to have the luxury room on the hill, with free breakfast, hot water, and a patio overlooking the ocean. We also got more than we bargained for because we had a big spotted lizard that hid in the room and only peeked out from behind the dresser at night. Sounds scary, but he was adorable.

For dinner that night we biked to a place called Wawa Wewe. The sign outside boasted live music, which caught our eye, but we got our days mixed up, so it was just a regular restaurant that night with decent prices. I tried the fish satay, and fell in love with Balinese satay. Still not as good as Dad’s, but I like their style. Mid way through dinner, we found ourselves swarmed with Balinese guys, each one introducing themselves, asking our names, where we were from, the usual. It was somewhat intimidating, being two young girls (we needed Kayleigh!) with all these guys interested in talking to us. It made me feel better when we saw them speaking to an older French couple with the same interest that they spoke to us. They asked us about our “program”, meaning our agenda while we were in Ahmed, and we realized this is because they wanted to be the ones to take us to the diving school or to get snorkel gear because they can get commission from it. All in all though, they were really sweet boys, and really wanted to practice their English. One of them even offered to take us to Mount Agung for half the price the tour groups would take us for. The boys also introduced us to Arak, Bali’s liquor of choice. It’s not terrible stuff, probably because they take it with honey which masks the flavor. One of the most popular cocktails is Arak Attack, but they like to just drink shots from BinTang beer bottles. Arak really comes in beer bottles, oddly enough, even at all the bars.

The one creepy thing about being bombarded by all the guys is that they all asked where we were staying. It took us a while to remember the name, but of course they all know all the places in the area. So we wake up in the morning, about to take off for a dive shop, and two of the boys are waiting for us outside Beten Waru! It was harmless really, they just wanted to take us to the dive shop, so they can make some commission off of it. It took them a while to back off and realize we’re too unorganized to know what we’re doing yet, and want to just drive around, so they let us be. We started with snorkeling. There is a great reef just down the hill from our resort called coral gardens. There is actually a lot of artificial coral in the area because the coral got ruined from WWII blasts. This was actually probably artificial coral, because it was surrounded by dead coral. Other than that, I would have no way of knowing it was fake. We spent quite a bit of time on that reef, and got to see a bunch of huge blue starfish, lots of parrot fish, a puffer fish, and a LION FISH!! Coolest fish I’ve ever seen. After that, we biked up to Tumbalen, the next town up the coast that has a lot of great dive spots. Tumbalen is only 20 minutes up the road, but you would think you had been driving for hours after seeing the change in landscape. Ahmed is very lush with fruit trees all over the hills, but Tumbalen was like a desert. And just as barren, with just a scattering of dive shops and lousy accommodation. We weren’t really finding a good price for a dive, so we settled for lunch on the beach, and biked back to Ahmed to book a dive with one of the local dive shops there. Jukung Dives, a Dutch dive shop, signed us up for two dives for the next day, and told us the history of how they branched off from the evil Euro Dive, who dominates the dives in Ahmed. A lot of the people trying to get us to dive, including the owner of our resort, had tried to get us to sign up through Euro Dive, and I’m glad we didn’t. They seem like jerks.

To finish our day, we headed to the other end of Ahmed to snorkel the Japanese shipwreck. The wreck is really just offshore, and it is beautiful! There are reefs all around it, and just 10 meters in from the shore is the wreck. You don’t even need to dive to see the whole thing, you can see it all from snorkeling. The only thing that made the Japanese shipwreck slightly less cool was the lack of giant blue starfish. We spent a fair amount of time there as well, going back to the shipwreck twice before hurrying home from the beach. A little hungry, and definitely needing a beer, we stopped at a little shop on the way home. We were just going to pick up a couple of BinTangs, but the woman at the shop had some home cooked Balinese food on display, and it looked amazing. She made us a quick little package of rice, suckling pig, roasted peanuts with greens and coconut, and some spicy sauce for less than a dollar. We took it home and devoured the entire thing before the sun even set. It was by far the best food we'd had in Bali. We took our time getting showered and dressed before heading out for a light dinner. As we were walking down the hill, we heard a couple guys from a motorbike yelling “Hey hey!! Remember us from yesterday!?” It was Wayan and Ben, two of the nicer boys from the restaurant last night. They invited us to live music at another Wawa Wewe (apparently it's a franchise). We thought, why not, so we headed to the cute little beach restaurant. We got fish satay to share, and had some Arak as the rest of the boys started coming in, some that we had met the night before. I had to smile when I saw that the table we were sitting at had “Ahmed Boys” sloppily etched into it. They must hang out here often. The band was actually pretty good, playing of course mostly a selection of Bob Marley songs with some originals mixed in there. The bassist was the best, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, facing away from the band in his own little dread-lock world. I felt a little better when some other tourist friends of theirs came in and sat with us, but it was really strange that only the Balinese boys were hanging out with us, and not the girls. I had asked Wayan why they don’t hang out with more Balinese girls, and he didn’t really have an answer. He just said there aren’t many girls in Ahmed. There is a weird divide between the genders that I don’t understand, and I don’t really like. The girls are very laborious, and seemingly unresentful about it, but it’s still weird. Jillian and I exchanged our code word to get out of there after the band finished up, and we quickly went home.

We had to get up early in the morning to go for our dive, both of us grumbling about Arak as we tried to get our things together. Jukung Diving picked us up at eight, and drove the bumpy, windy road to the dive shop, making us feel sick in the backseat. We met a couple of other divers and headed over to the site in Tumbalen. As we were getting our gear on, eager to get in the water to kill this hangover, another dive instructor, said “hey I saw you girls last night!” Oh god. “Yeah, you were at Wawa Wewe! So where’s the party tonight?” We totally didn’t recognize him, and thankfully had no idea where the party was tonight, as we would be avoiding it. He laughed at us when I told him we were hung over from too much Arak. Ugh, Arak.

It felt great to get into the water again, and I had missed diving so much. Our dive master was great. Through his mask, he looked furious at us, but as soon as we got to the surface, he was all smiles. Kind of how our scuba instructor in Thailand always looked like he was surprised. I wonder what I look like through my mask. Jillian looks the same. Our first dive was around the Liberty Shipwreck. It’s an American ship from WWII that got wrecked by a Japanese submarine. The ship had made it to the shore in Tumbalen, but got washed out to sea when Mt. Agung erupted in the 60’s. So now its just a few feet off shore, and a very popular dive site. We circled the ship, looking in all the crevices and at the coral that has grown onto the wreck. As we were approaching the shore at the end of our dive, we saw these crazy garden eels, that stick out of the sand like shoelaces, and swaying back and forth with the waves, with one neon eye peering out the tops of their head. They're creepy little things. After an hour rest period, we went back in for our second dive through the inside of the wreck! There is less going on inside, not as much coral growing, so not as many fish. But it was really cool and totally eerie swimming through the boat. I felt like I was in the Titanic, though this ship cannot even be compared to it in size. The only feature you could really make out on the ship is the huge steering wheel. Before we surfaced, we saw this enormous school of jackfish, making a whirlpool with their movements. We paused for a minute looking up at the swirling school of fish, with the sun rays piercing through their whirlpool. I wish I could take pictures underwater.

They gave us a free lunch at the end of the dive, and we got to talk to the other divers and compare what they saw. It would help if we knew the names of any fish so we could pretend to know what we were talking about. The two Germans invited us all out to have dinner at a beach side restaurant they had eaten the night before. So we took a long afternoon nap, with a quick snack from our new favorite little shop, then headed to the restaurant. We made sure to wear different clothes so we could go past the multiple Wawa Wewe’s without being noticed. The restaurant was great, and we were with the two Germans, and two Spaniards, again all speaking in English. It was a totally polar opposite night from the night before, and we had a very mellow night with calamari, and some card games with the Europeans. Fact: scuba divers make more friends.

In the morning, we were happy to leave Ahmed. Though I love this little fishermen’s-village-turned-tourist-town, it was a little too small to spend too much time there. I think everyone in the town knew where we lived (we had to start telling people, we’re at the resort two hills in that direction). We didn’t trust that our new friend Wayan would take us to Mt. Agung for half price, so we went out to climb it on our own. Sorry Wayan. We hopped on our motorbikes, and tried to find our way to Selat. It didn’t take long, and we ended up on the road that takes you halfway up the mountain. We drove to the end of the road, being stopped by an old man who prayed for us, splashed some holy water on us, then asked for a donation. We obeyed, and continued on our way to the top. We hiked up 100 stairs to the temple, and looked at the rest of the volcano mountain teeming over us. In the morning, we would climb to the top. On our way back into town we looked for a place to stay the night. We followed signs to a place called Great Mountain View. Sounded promising. The signs took us through these tiny roads in a tiny village, and into a paradise resort. The place was very expensive, and we would have to hire his tour guide, but he lowered to half the price for everything because we hesitated on it for so long. We did save some money by not hiring a tour group from Ahmed or Ubud, but not much. It was worth it though, for the great staff, and the great mountain view. Nyoman, the owner, had two cousins getting married that day, so he asked us to put on sarongs and join him, if we wished. The ceremonies were beautiful, the first an untraditional couple. They were in their forties, the man from Bali, the woman from Sumatra who couldn’t even speak Balinese. They fell in love over the phone, and he sent his son to get her from Sumatra. They had a Brahma priest who conducted the ceremony on her gold pedestal, and then she had to walk across the village to the second ceremony. At both, we were greeted with such respect and intrigue, and offered many fruits, sweets, coffee and roasted pig skin. I felt a little silly carrying around a handful of mango, snake fruit and apples, but they just kept handing us more little treats. The second ceremony was more tightly orchestrated, with places for everyone to sit on these bamboo slabs under a tent, and a gorgeous young couple very done up. The groom looked like a prince. With a lot of makeup on. They went through the same procedures as the last couple, walking up to the temple, standing in front of the priest as she rang some bells and splashed holy water on them. The whole thing was very lackadaisical, and it seemed like no one knew or cared what was going on, but were all excited about passing around the food and coffee.

We got back to Great Mountain View for a dinner on the patio looking over the rice paddies with Mount Agung in the background, completely cloud covered. Despite the gorgeous foods, we had to head to bed early that night, because at 1:00 AM, we had to get up to get to the volcano! The owner drove us to the temple where we waited for our tour guide. It sucks that you can’t get to the top without a tour guide (since they are all so expensive!) but I can see why we would need one. We started the climb in the pitch back, following some indistinguishable trail through a forest. We climbed seemingly straight up for two and a half hours, the landscape changing from forest to volcanic rock. It took over an hour to get above the trees. We got to the top just as the sun was rising. Perfect. Of course we had been warned that it was cold at the top, but we didn’t have any warm attire with us, so I’m shivering at the top in my shorts and sweatshirt. Our tour guide brought hot water for some Balinese coffee. We took heaps of pictures of the clouds below us, the sky changing with the rising sun, and some monkeys that were hanging out in the crater. We started back down the volcano, the landscape having completely changed in the daylight. If I hadn’t recognized the way the path snaked around, I would never have thought we had taken that way up, and for the first time could see a clearly defined trail that we had been following. The volcanic rock were all sorts of colors along these sheer boulders, completely open with no trees or soil in sight, and we could see the clouds really thickening up as we approached the forest, then the entire second half of our hike down was immersed in clouds. Our tour guide was of really no use to us in the end. He could barely speak any English (though the whole time he was practicing the phrase, may I help you with your bag), and he had to take breaks often. We still made it down fairly quickly, and got a ride back to our resort. Then, after a quick, delicious, banana pancake breakfast, we were on our way back to Ubud.

I think we really started to get the hang of the motorbike thing (well, really just I got the hang of it, Jillian already had it). The road to Ubud was very well paved, and we were only delayed behind one procession, but we made great timing to Ubud, flying by other amateur tourists along the way. This was our last night in Southeast Asia, and we treated ourselves like royalty. We (accidentally) got the deluxe suite at Tebu House, did some last minute souvenir shopping, got massages, some happy hour mojitos, and to top off the night, CRISPY DUCK! Best thing I have ever tasted (since Thailand). With satay, green beans, rice and some other Balinese treats. And in the morning, we were off to New Zealand.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Hello Cambodia

Getting to Siem Reap is a true nightmare. I knew that hundreds of tourists make the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap daily, but I was still petrified to do it. I had read every guide and travel tip available, and had the whole thing calculated out in my head, but the whole thing still made me nervous. After the overnight bus to Bangkok, and a four hour bus to the border, we arrived at Aranyaprathet to a parade of tuk-tuks, loading all the bus passengers into their vehicles, without a word of where we’re going or how much it would cost. They demanded a hundred bhat from us, and dropped us at an unofficial building to get visas. We luckily got out of there without paying, leaving other frazzled foreigners left to get scammed (sorry guys! We met up with one of the couples later that had ended up paying twice as much for their visas as they should have). We got kicked out of the building for refusing to get the visas with them, and looked around helplessly for the border. It was really only a short walk away, and we were able to get through Thai customs and make it to the Cambodian border where we could process our visas for the actual price. Getting across the border was such a relief, and it was basically cake after that, since the stupid Cambodian tourist agency has a monopoly on the transit from Poipet to Siem Reap, so we had no options and no bartering to get to Siem Reap. We had to pay the monopoly price for a bus, which was really only 9 US dollars.

The whole thing was kind of dumb and made me feel bad for Cambodia. First, they have to deal with all these tourists that can’t, and don’t even make an attempt to try to speak Khmer. I made it a point to learn hello and thank you in Khmer so I could at least be respectful of the people at the border and the stupid tourist agency, and everyone was surprised I could say thank you! Does really nobody else say thank you to you in your own language? And secondly, because so many tourists go to Siem Reap, they hardly use their own currency. They use mostly American dollars and give you change in their currency, Reel, and they also take bhat! I watched our tuk tuk driver one day give a store US dollars for gasoline, and get change in bhat. That is a lot of currency conversions, and I really don’t trust that they’re doing it right. I wonder what its like on the Eastern side of the country. I hope they don’t have to deal with American currency over there too. That would be quite sad. Also, the whole Khmer Rouge thing in Cambodia is incredibly overlooked in world history. How many Americans do you think know that Cambodia had basically a holocaust only 20 years ago? I certainly didn’t know much about it, and I study Asian history a lot.

So anyway, we arrived in Siem Reap fairly late at night. As we gathered our things off the bus, a tall, fairly built Cambodian introduced himself by saying “Hello, I am your tuk-tuk driver”. He was so cool! He showed us to his cute little tuk-tuk, and took us straight to our guesthouse. The tuk-tuks in Cambodia are a little different than Thailand; they’re just little carriages attached to motorbikes. He dropped us at the guesthouse, and asked if we needed a driver for the next day to see Angkor Wat. What a professional! So we hired Tull for the next day, without even thinking to barter with him, cause we loved his style. And that was the third guy Jillian fell in love with this trip.

After dropping off our belongings, we went to explore the streets of Siem Reap. It’s a pretty cute town with a lot of shops and restaurants very close to our guesthouse. As you can imagine, it is full of tourists, and everything is in English. It’s so weird to talk to Cambodians, Spaniards, Germans, everyone in our language, knowing their all using their learned language. And even if they weren’t talking to us, the Europeans talk to each other in English. It’s so strange and kind of off-putting. But I guess that's why I was hired to teach English in Thailand for a year. So being in Cambodia for the first time, we opted to try Cambodian BBQ. It’s pretty much a Korean BBQ/hot pot kind of deal. There is a raised grill to cook the meat, above a moat of broth to boil the vegetables and noodles. It’s served with a side of rice and was pretty tasty except for the gross Italian dressing they supplied on the side. Yuck. I don’t know how authentically Cambodian that really was. If it is authentic, I don’t think I care for Cambodian food. I missed Thailand already.

The next day was our introduction to the city of Angkor. It’s hard to really describe the amazingness of the ruins, and though the pictures don’t do it much justice either, it’s probably better than me trying to explain how beautiful it all is. Basically, Angkor Thom, or the Great City, was the last capital city during the Khmer empire. Established in the 12th century, Angkor Thom is now a city of ruins, having been abandoned sometime in the 1600’s. The city is most known for Angkor Wat, or the Temple of Angkor, though the entire city is an endless spectacle. We started with Banteay Kdei and Sra Srang. Kayleigh, Jillian and I adopted an unspoken ritual of exploring the temple at our own pace, finding our own way around, and somehow finding each other in the end. Our system worked surprisingly well, as we found out with this first temple. We split up almost instantly, and reconvened at the end, telling each other what we saw. Kayleigh bought some beautiful artwork, Jillian ate some yams with an old man and his son, and I had hired a tour guide to tell me about the temple. I didn’t really hire Sao. He just started following me around telling me different details about the temple, like all of the Buddha’s heads are missing because they were taken by the Khmer Rouge, he showed me the dancing halls where the Upsara would perform their political dances, pointed out a huge, grotesque spider, and showed me where the French had tried to restore some of the structure with cement. The coolest thing was the types of rocks used (you know I love my geology). They had used two types of rock: sandstone for carving, and volcanic rock for building blocks since volcanic rock is much harder to carve than sandstone. Sao told me he was in school for engineering and wanted to continue his studies in either history or engineering. He was adorable. Jillian said he probably made those things up, which he probably did, but I liked his little facts and I’ll pretend that they’re true. Who really knows if they’re accurate or not, they may as well be truth.

Exiting the temple we got bombarded with little kids trying to sell us shirts, sodas, artwork, anything. They were adorable, but sometimes a little evil. Each one greeted us saying, hello, where are you from? When we answered America, the typical response would be: "America. Capital Washington DC. President Barack Obama. He has two daughters and one dog named Bobo." And this was their routine for any tourist that passed their way. They could also count to ten in more languages than I could name. I saw a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, trying to sell postcards in Japanese. And they were relentless. We got swarmed at this temple and had to disappoint every single one of them by not purchasing anything. The little girl that bugged me, Tanika, got really upset with me, and gave me this dark look saying, you’re a bad tourist. You didn’t buy anything from my store. Her voice was scary enough to give me nightmares.

After Sra Srong, we explored Pre Rup, Eastern Baray and Eastern Mebon before stopping for lunch. We invited Tull to have lunch with us, which I couldn’t really tell if he wanted to do. But we asked him to help us with the menu, and he was delighted to do so. Without really asking, he ordered Amok for me, curry for Jillian, soup for Kayleigh and fried chicken for himself. It was actually delicious. My Amok was served in a coconut, and is almost like a light curry, with a ton of dark leafy greens. Yum yum. After lunch we went to the coolest ruin we had seen all day, Preah Khan. The grounds were huge, with endless halls to explore, rubble to climb and pictures to take. We walked in different directions, from one end to another, and all came back with stories of where this wild flower garden was, getting lost in halls, climbing on top of the rubble, it was really a huge maze. I think we could have spent an entire day there. But that was the last stop of the day, and we were quite temple’d out.

That evening we headed back out to the center of the Siem Reap night life. Jillian and Kayleigh were craving pizza, and the international food in Siem Reap is supposed to be quite good, so we scouted a place in our guide book called Happy Herb Pizza. The description was hilarious, saying something about the pizza being great, and the questionably legal ingredients will be sure to have guests leaving happy. So we found the restaurant, and when you order you pizza, they ask if you want it “happy”, and of course we said yes. I think their secret ingredient was really just oregano. Didn't feel a thing. After happy pizza, we headed to the night market. It is exactly what you would expect of a night market in Siem Reap. A lot of Angkor Wat shirts, some "I love Cambodia" shirts, wood carvings, Cambodian silk scarfs, and other great souvenirs. I bought a hammock for my house in Sukothai.

Day two in Cambodia, Tull picked us up at 5 in the morning to see the sunrise in Angkor Wat. Since we were in Cambodia during their wet season, it was really no surprise that the sky was covered with clouds and all of the sunrise we could see was the changing light in the sky. But we took our time exploring the famous temple with less crowds than we would encounter later in the day. It is still amazing though that there were still maybe a hundred tourists at Angkor Wat at 5 in the morning during their wet season. The actual temple was actually not that amazing, compared to all of the other amazing sites the city of Angkor has to offer. I think because it is the most famous, it is the most well preserved and restored temple of the lot. The unkempt ruins, in my opinion, have more character and authenticity.

After some coffee and breakfast at one of the many food stalls nearby, we explored the rest of Angkor Thom, starting with Bayon, which marks the center of the city. The rest of Angkor Thom that we wandered through included Baphuon, Phimeanakas, South and North Kleang, Preah Pithu, Tep Pranam and Preah Palitay. We took a break from temple hopping, and headed outside of the Angkor city back to Siem Reap for lunch in a butterfly garden. The food was crap, but the ambiance made it worth it. The tables are spread through a garden, with butterflies all over. When we returned to Angkor, we visited the last temple on our agenda, Ta Prohm, where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed. Jillian had the genius idea of us all French braiding our hair so we could take a picture, Laura Croft style, at Ta Prohm. That was possibly the best picture we have of the whole trip, except for maybe the picture I took of Joe with a flower in his hair. Ta Prohm was another really cool temple that I liked more than Angkor Wat. This temple has been left to nature for the most part, with some restoration happening, but its mostly been left for the jungle to take over. There are huge trees growing on top or on the sides of walls, their roots now reaching to the ground, tearing down the sides of the temples. It’s really an amazing thing to see how nature just demolishes these carefully orchestrated structures. We took too long in Ta Prohm, that we nearly missed the sunset. Tull sped us over to the hill across from Angkor Wat that we had to hike up to see sunset. By then the clouds had rolled in, so it was okay that we were late to miss the sunset we wouldn’t have been able to see.

For dinner that evening, we went to explore a quieter street behind the hubbub of Siem Reap. We found this adorable Khmer food restaurant with the goofiest staff, which was an anomaly to the serious service we had been getting. The waiters were kind of spastic, and joked with us, making sure we knew that cocktails were buy one get one free. The best part is that they serve you free popcorn when you sit down. That’s really what won me over, and their Amok was pretty good too. Following dinner, we had to try drinks at the bar named “Angkor What?” The bar was totally goofy, and attracted us not because of the 50 cent draft, but because of the name. Towards the end of the night though, the bar turned into a total tourist party scene, and it was time to get out.

Our last full day in Cambodia, we decided to skip the city of Angkor, and try something different. The problem with trying something different, of course, is money. We wanted to see Tonle Sap, SE Asia’s largest lake, but to do so was going to cost us a fortune thanks to Cambodia’s lovely monopoly on tourism. Tonle Sap, as I had learned under the great instruction of Dr. Robert Mason, fluctuates massively in size throughout the year. During the dry season, there are roads and forests that are covered by the lake or tributaries during the wet season (now), as it expands to about four times it’s size. The forest and villages around Tonle Sap morph into the “Floating Village” and the “Flooded Forest” during their high season. I talked to the staff at our hostel about getting a ride to one of the tributaries to the lake, Kong Gneash. He said one of his drivers could take us there for 6$ round way, but it would be hard because it’s flooded. In my head, I said yeah duh it’s flooded, that’s why we want to go! Thinking he was talking about the flooded village. Well we came to find out he was talking about the road to Kong Gneash being flooded. It was a mess! This was a fairly busy road in Siem Reap, and must get flooded often, because some shops and homes were set up for the flood either by putting their store on stilts, or blocking the river-road off with rice bags. It was insane. Several times our tuk-tuk driver got stuck, and we would have to get out and wade through the knee-deep water until he could carry us again on the tuk-tuk. By the time we got to the port of Kong Gneash, this mean tourism police guy told us it would cost us $150 to take a boat to Tonle Sap! Lies. It should really have only cost us 80$, max. We walked away, and tried to find another port. Our tuk-tuk driver kept saying no, no, the police will stop you, to which I replied, good. This is a scam and I want to talk to the police. Well the police did stop us and told us we had to pay the mean guy at the port if we wanted to get to Tonle Sap. Bummer. So our poor little tuk-tuk driver led us stupide tourists back through the flooded streets to another port about an hour away so we could pay the stupid tourism authority half price, and our tuk-tuk driver double, to take a smaller boat half the distance to Tonle Sap. At least we know the money goes straight to the tuk-tuk driver. Who knows where our money to the tourism authority go. When we got there, luckily our tuk-tuk driver told the police how much he had told us we would have to pay, meanwhile the Australians ahead of us paid double cause the tourism authority just make up prices, won’t barter, and there’s nothing you can do about it except watch the boat drivers not get paid their fair share. Cambodia is wacky.

All in all though, the trip to Tonle Sap was really cool, flooded street included. Our little boat driver didn’t say a single word, but he took us along this river that would have been a street during the dry season. Our tuk-tuk driver, who came along for the ride, tried to explain some things to me in his broken English, like how much the boat driver gets paid (less than half), that there’s snakes in the river, and that during the dry season, you can drive to the village on this river. We passed rice paddies, the floating village that was constructed entirely on stilts, and the mangroves. Finally we made it out to Tonle Sap, that looked as big as an ocean. We sat on the lake as we watched the sky change from perfectly sunny to incredibly ominous as a huge storm approached. We started heading back up the river, but barely made it off the lake when the sheet of rain reached us. The storm was intense. We stopped at a floating restaurant for cover, where we met a boy, younger than us, who was a radio DJ in Siem Reap. He gave us his facebook information, and hoped that we’d tell our friends about him. He also showed us his catfish farm, which many homes along the river have to sell to Siem Reap merchants. Once the rain subsided, we made our way back to the port, shivering all the way back to Siem Reap.

That night, our last night in Siem Reap, we went out in style. We decided to treat ourselves to really fancy BBQ at a cute restaurant with linen napkins. With two mojitos each, meat skewers, noodles and some BBQ squid, we left with very happy tummies with a whopping balance of $23 total for the three of us. We headed down to pub street to sit at a bar and play cards. I had spent some time with the Cambodians at the hostel learning their card game that was supposedly very difficult (it was really just Gin Rummi), and we rotated between that, Thai Rummi, Gop Don Gop Dang (Thai Ten) and Kang. We were probably there for quite a while, and left once we realized we were the last ones there around 12:30. But, just across the street, Angkor What?! was just getting started, so he hopped over for some dancing with a bunch of European tourists. They really do party a lot, those tourists.

In the morning, Kayleigh and I were not feeling great, though Jillian was somehow not a pinch hungover. And we had a full day of bussing back to Bangkok. Great. Even though we weren’t too crazy about our hostel at first, the little place had grown on me, and I was kind of sad to leave those guys. The owner set us up on the minivan, while everyone got on the bus, insisting the mini-van would get there quicker. How much quicker? Someone asked. About 10 minutes was his response. One of the guys helped me put my bags on the bus, and said I should stay here for a year, and he would find me a job at a hostel, so I could come play cards with them. Tempting, if Cambodia wasn’t a wacky country. We got to the border before the bus, crossed over into Aranyaprathet, and waited for the rest of our ride to Bangkok with only white stickers on our shirts as evidence of our bus tickets. Well, we beat the bus from Siem Reap alright, by over an hour, then had to wait for them! We waited and waited, seeing people with purple stickers, green stickers, red stickers, pass us by and get on buses to Bangkok. I asked a guy leading green stickers around why we still had to wait, and he just looked at my shirt and said, white sticker, you wait over there! I can never tell if they’re making these things up, or if they are really that organized. I guess I shouldn’t doubt them, because as soon as the rest of the white stickers showed up, so did our bus to take us to Bangkok.

We found a hostel for the night on the infamous Kaosan road, otherwise known as backpackers road. It’s a total mess. It’s pretty close to central Bangkok which is nice, and there is a plethora of hostels to stay in, though compared to what we’ve been paying they were quite pricey. I really don’t know why it’s backpackers road. It’s so trashy! There’s a bunch of stores that line the streets, selling a variety of tee shirts, jewelry, fake diplomas, and other odds and ends. There is also plenty of food vendors to compete with the Subway, McDonalds and KFC that populate the street, but all the carts were pretty much only selling Pad Thai. It was an interesting scene. When we met up with A-Dtaw and A-Fung that night, A-Fung’s eyes went wide when I told him we were staying at a hostel behind the Subway on Kaosan street. He said, you know that Kaosan never sleeps! But A-Dtaw was excited for us, saying we need to experience it. I think he wanted to join us. We had an amazing dinner with crab curry, roasted duck, tom yam pla and shrimp. A-Fung kept us amused with stories of his friends winning tons of money in Las Vegas. When he told us his one friend lost 35 million US dollars, Kayleigh said what a waste! He could have given that to me to take back to America! And A-Fung said no, no no…that’d be too heavy! You wouldn’t be able to carry that all! Then A-Dtaw and A-Fung spent the next 5 minutes discussing in Thai how many suitcases that would fill up. They decided on ten. As we got to the end of our meal (seemed like an eternity with all that food!) A-Fung was trying to make us eat the last few pieces of shrimp and vegetables, telling us that the person who takes the last piece of food will have good fortune finding a boyfriend (but I think he was just saying that to get us to eat more). Jillian took the last shrimp, and A-Fung pointed to the last vegetable and said, Kayleigh, this is your last chance! So she took the last vegetable. Funny little A-Fung. We caught a cab back to Kaosan street, and hit the street for last minute souvenirs. After scanning all of Kaosan, we headed to a reggae bar. Of course it was packed with drunk Europeans, and had the most expensive drinks I’ve ever seen in Thailand. I really don’t understand why Kaosan is supposed to be for backpackers, they must be quite posh backpackers. Surprisingly the bar closed at 1, but as we made our way back to our hostel behind Subway, we saw a whole new set of vendors set up on the street. Luckily our room was tucked away from the party scene, so we could sleep soundly through our last night in Thailand.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Temples of the North

(August 25-August 27)

After leaving our dear friends in the hills of Chiangmai, we only had a few days left in the north before Cambodia, where we had to sneak in a trip to Chiang Rai. Pong and Charin treated us to a lovely northern dinner of sticky rice, pig skin, papaya salad, sausages and a bunch of sauces I could never attempt to name. We helped Charin pick out our dinner items at the market down the street from their home, having street whisky shots and road beers on the way, in true Charin style. Who knew that there were vendors in the street markets that just had a couple stools to sit on, and whisky! Charin was so excited for us to try a street shot, so we all got a shot of the generic whisky, as the guys sitting at the table joked about us Fralang. That woman does love her whisky. After dinner, we treated Pong and Charin to drinks at one of the local riverside bars, which are quite posh, and very popular in Chiangmai.

In the morning, we caught a very early bus to Chiang Rai, about a 3 hour bus trip north. If we had more time, I would have loved to see the border between Laos, Burma and Thailand, but because time was short we had to skip the golden triangle, and focus on the temples in Chiang Rai. We found a very cheap guesthouse (100 bhat a person), rented motorbikes, then went exploring. Since we had a large portion of the day left, and really no agenda, we explored Chiang Rai in a very lackadaisical manner. We had missed Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, so we made it a point to see the Wat Phra Kaew in Chiang Rai, home of the “Emerald Buddhe”. The whole story behind the Emerald Buddha is kind of comical. The original Wat Phra Kaew was built in Chiang Rai. In the 1400’s, the temple was struck by lightening, and the Emerald Buddha was exposed. They then took the Emerald Buddha to Bangkok, and built the new Wat Phra Kaew that everyone visits in Bangkok, to see the original Emerald Buddha. They restored the Chiang Rai temple, and made a fake Emerald Buddha out of Canadian jade to replace the original. What’s funny about the whole story is that no guide book or brochure explains why the Emerald Buddha is so precious, except for one sign at the temple that shows a timeline of where the Emerald Buddha was smuggled to over the years between Thailand, Laos and Burma. I still don’t know why. So we walked around the gorgeous temple grounds (best grounds I’ve seen yet, maybe because of the pond of turtles and coy fish), then ascended the dramatic stairs to the main temple where the Emerald Buddha lies. What an odd disappointment. The Buddha was 4 inches tall! And the interior of the temple was lit with green neon lights. Totally bizarre. I’m glad we missed out on spending the 350 bhat to see the original in Bangkok. I bet tourists in Bangkok are frequently disappointed with a huge temple dedicated to that tiny little Buddha (I guess unless they read the description in the guide book, where it clearly states the epic statue is 4 inches tall. I missed that detail). What was really cool was that the temple was lined with paintings showing the stealing and warfare around the Emerald Buddha over the years. Each frame told a short sequence from the story of the silly little Buddha, where it would be stolen, then worshipped, then fought after, then stolen again. If you “read” the painting, it has multiple stories within one painting that are shown chronologically from left to right. So each painting would have two or three Emerald Buddhas, because it was showing different parts of that story. That was the coolest.

After Wat Phra Kaew, we drove outside the city on a search for Buddha caves when we saw signs for waterfall, 11 km away, in the opposite direction of Buddha caves. We said why not, we're on motorbikes, let's give it a whirl. And it was probably the coolest thing we would see all day. This park was hidden away from the rest of the world, and we found ourselves wandering through winding paths with no one else around. Though we had just seen a ton of waterfalls in Chiangmai, waterfalls never really get old. After our secret waterfall, we went back to find these Buddha caves. Even though our guide book said it wasn't really worth making the trip for, who wouldn't want to see a temple that had been carved into a cave?! So we did it, and loved it. It was totally eerie, because once again there was nobody around, and we walked up to this cave with bats, that smelled like rat droppings, and was pitch dark. The only way we could navigate around was with the light from the candles illuminating the Buddha statues. So creepy, but so cool. The funny thing about Chiang Rai, and the reason for us being the only tourists there, was that the wet season makes all these cool spots so hard to get to. At this temple and Ta Thum, we had to walk through pretty much a river from all the flooding. Ta Thum was just as cool as Buddha caves, but even creepier!! There were some monks hanging out, and a beautiful Buddha that had been carved out of the cliff, and, no doubt, a creepy cave to explore. We had to wind up through a flooded staircase that led us through the trees into the cave. Unlike Buddha caves, there were no candles lit. It was just pitch black except where some sun peaked through holes in the ceiling. We could barely see the Buddha hiding in the depths of the cave, so climbed further along another set of stairs that took us to a lookout of the grounds. We couldn’t see much, since the trees blocked most views, so we headed back down to our motorbikes, passing decrepit buildings on the way out, that we guessed had been used as monks’ living quarters in the past.

We’d had one more temple on the agenda for that day, but gave up trying to find it with no map and dinnertime approaching. We had gotten very lost and ended up approaching the hill tribes. We started seeing signs for Karen Village, the village we had stayed with in Chiang Mai, so we knew we were really lost, though hopeful of maybe running into Joe again. On the way back to our guesthouse in Chiang Rai, we took a brief tour of the city (really we just didn’t know where we were going so drove around until we found something we recognized). We found a cute little night food market, with fruits, fried chicken, skewers, fish, and sticky rice galore. Since Chiang Rai is so far north, they say there is a lot of great Chinese food in some areas of the province. I don’t know if this is the case for the actual city, but we did find a mediocre dim sum restaurant that we tried out for a before-dinner snack. We got the usual dumplings, but it was not as good as Philly’s dim sum. From the restaurant, we had a great view of the clock tower that marks the center of the city. The thing is so ornate and gaudy, and gets even better at 7:00 when they have a light show, illuminating the clock tower with neon colored lights. What a tacky, yet pleasant, surprise to our dim sum snack. After returning our motorbikes, we headed to another night market, this one dedicated to souvenirs, clothing, and other useless collections of goodies. I am still so impressed with these massive markets that set their stations up every day or night, with their huge array of items. After thoroughly browsing the market, we looked for dinner. The night market options were obnoxiously boring: tempura, sushi, hot pot, or French fries. Where were we?! Definitely would never know Northern Thailand. So we hit the streets in search of something more Thai, and found a great street vendor with chicken noodle soup. I think it was the best noodle soup I’ve had in Thailand, with a dark broth and parts of the chicken they usually leave out for tourists, like the feet, and the proper arrangement of spicy condiments.

In the morning, we had to head back to Chiang Mai to spend one last day with Pong and Charin before our next destination. We sat at the bus station, playing Thai Rummi, keeping our eye on the Swedish bakery Jillian had found, waiting for it open. Finally, 15 minutes before our bus was to leave, the bakery opened and we ran to it ready for coffee and pastries. We filled a bag with chocolate croissants, cookies and danishes, got three coffees to go, and ran back to the bus station. The bus driver glared at us when I knocked on their door as he had just put the bus in reverse to leave, and we ran to our seats, giggling like kids with our load of delicious smelling pastries. I think everyone on that bus hated us.

When we got back to Pong and Charin’s house, we found them terribly hung over from Pong’s high school reunion the night before. Charin had made rice soup, the perfect hangover cure, which we had a small serving of as they told us how much money they spent playing cards last night. They napped while we packed up our things, then Pong was nice enough to take us to the bottom of Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai’s most sought after tourist temple, that shares a name with my dad. I was determined to see the temple that had my dad’s name! We had to hire a driver to take us up the hill, because Pong said the drive would make him sick. I can see why. The taxi took us up these winding paths that made us want to throw up, I can’t even imagine how that would feel with a hangover. At the top of the mountain, we had to climb a hundred-something stairs to the temple. From the top, you can see all of Chiang Mai surrounded by mountains, clouds casting shadows over the city. Entering the temple is blinding from all of the pristine white tiles and the shimmering gold chedi. There were prayer rooms on two sides of the chedi, one with a monk reading a newspaper as people would come in, kneel down to pray, and exit. I’m still very curious about the monks in Thailand. Our trip to Doi Suthep was short lived, and we headed back down the dragon banistered stairs, having more questions about the temple than answers, as was common on our temple tour. I wanted to know how the heck people got to this temple before the scary windy road was built in the 40’s.

That night we had our overnight bus ticket to Bangkok from Chiang Mai. Charin cooked us our last Thai meal, Northern style fried noodles and fried rice, before we got on our first bus on the long journey to Siem Reap in Cambodia.