A little behind

I cannot tell a lie, I am writing about history and not exactly the recent past. I am currently in the Hong Kong airport (thank you free wireless) on my way back to San Francisco. The adventure has ended, and I'm a lot sad about it.

On to the next chapter right?

Well, on that note, I'd like to let you know that I will be back to my old tricks...walking for Cystic Fibrosis on May 5th in Crissy Field in San Francisco!
Please join me or just donate to the cause!

Here's the Great Strides Page

Oh and don't worry, there are still about three trips or so to talk about, and some fun Indian idiosyncracies....

Yes, we did make it to Temples

I realize I named the last one a bit prematurely--but Siem Reap, while known for it's temples, has a lot more to do than just that. So, as with most things I do, I got sidetracked.

Anyway, the next day we woke up for temple hopping. We grabbed a tuk-tuk that could fit all five of us (it was a bit of a squeeze) and headed to the Angkor Wat complex.

Our driver seemed super sweet, and knew what he was doing--which was fortuitous. We stopped to pay and get our photos taken for our passes, we bought three day passes so we could go back as much as we wanted. And with the Lonely Planet South East Asia and our driver as our guides, headed to our first temple.

First stop: The temple with all the faces--Bayon.

Pretty cool. Really big faces. But it was hot, and covered with tourists--mostly b/c this seems to be the first one everyone goes to. We were looking for the terrace of Elephants, but it was tough. We did see this long cool walkway thing to a temple that was currently closed for renovation. Interesting.

Then we saw the Terrace of Elephants. As you would be able to tell from many of the things I bought here--I like elephants a lot, so this was a fun one for me--a whole wall of them--it's where the kind used to look out on his victorious army or something.

Next we headed to what was definitely one of my favorite temples, the jungle one or umm, Ta Prohm. They left it as the found it (or mostly) so there are these amazing trees growing out of, around and through the temple. Beautiful. Also, it's being 'restored' with the help of the Indian Governmnent--Go India.http://picasaweb.google.com/asudow/TinTinAuCambodge/photo#5182328067644368498







Not bad right?

You might be asking why we didn't go see Angkor Wat right away--I mean, that's what we were there for right? Well. The thing is, we were saving it. We had grand plans to see Angkor Wat at sunrise, because apparently that's what you are supposed to do. And isn't that when all those beautiful paintings you see all over Cambodia are painted? With the red and yellow sky and the stones just glowing in the early morning light? Yeah, saving it.

I think we went to one more temple that day, just a bit off the beaten path and well worth it. We felt like we had the temple all to ourselves. AND We got to have a nice little lunch in a field.

That's me having the temple to myself.

Thing is, at all these temples there are these little girls, women, boys, everything, selling postcards, books, Khmere scarves, handicrafts, bottled water. They've all got the same sales pitch. They call you lady, ask if you want what they are selling, shove it in your face, ask again, when you say, no, I want to go to the temple, they say 'lady if you buy, you buy from me?' And then somehow you get away. And then, when you walk back out of the temple, there they are as promised, selling what you apparently promised to buy only from them, because their Khmere checked scarves are somehow better than the one of the not as cute girl who was also selling them. In true Jason and My fashion, they'd have fun with the girls. My would be sweet and ask their name and age, and the girls would love the attention.



Jason on the other hand would jokingly mess with them. They'd ask his name, he'd ask theirs, they'd try to sell a scarf, he'd tell them he could buy it for 1/3 of the price somewhere else. And for this reason, since the girls had so much fun with them, they followed us across the street to where we had lunch, and watched us eat for a while...

The other great thing about being in almost English speaking countries is their spelling. Most signs. menus etc are in English (and sometimes Cambodian and French too), since most tourists speak English, and a lot of the Cambodians do too.
So, sometimes, the English translation is just a bit off...'Think you somach!'


And this is why, conversly, I don't want to buy one of those shirts with cool Chinese/Cambodian/Thai writing on it unless I am with someone who will tell me (without lying) exactly what it says!.

That concluded day one of temple hopping. After the sun, walking around and just being out all day, we were pretty beat. We headed back to the guest houses to freshen up, sit for about 12 min, and decided it was worth going to see the sunset from another temple--on one of the people at the ticket booth's suggestion. Bad idea. Or rather, good one, but too many people had it. The walk up to the temple was so crowded it was like being on the streets in India, only without the cows and autos. At the top of the temple, it was just so crowded with people ready to see the sun sink behind the forest, that you could barely have a place to sit--or any peace and quiet. Plus, Let's be honest, I've seen sunsets before, what I wanted was the sun setting against the stones of the temple and the way it makes them glow...well, the sun set over the forrest, and while it was pretty, I could have benefitted just as much from watching it from a balcony in town with a cold beer in my had away from the masses.

We were all, as I mentioned, beat. We headed to the guest house once again and thought about what sounded good for dinner. Meanwhile, Priz had caught a tummy bug of sorts and was not ready to join us :(

Our foursome headed to town and realized that we'd had enough noodles and lok lok...somehow we all were thinking the same thing in our heads, PIZZA! Wow--can you get good pizza in Siem Reap or what. We found a little Italian Trattoria and feasted.

We needed our strength as the next day we were planning to get up before the sun to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. Well...Only Jason, My and I made it--and for me, the photographer, it was worth it. Talk about magic light time...and, on top of that, unlike the sunset experience, the temple wasn't totally overcrowded as I assumed it would be.


..and so I played with light







but wait, there's more! After rest and breakfast we headed out again--even 'further afield' as the Lonely Planet says than Bantey Samre the day before. Bantey Srei is the women's temple, and Hindu. But before we saw that, we drove about 2 hours on a dirt road to a place where you take a 45 min 'hike' to some rock carvings. And, as with most of that day, the journey was more interesting than what we walked to. We saw cool lizards, had fun with each other, and got to be in the woods.
See how much fun we're having?
The carvings, well, they were a bit, umm, underwhelming...


After lunch we piled back with Buntuhn in the tuk-tuk and headed down the dirt road to Bantey Srei. We saw small villages, lot's of nakey babies and goats and cows!

this is probably my favorite pic of the trip.

Bantey Srei, while small, was really impressive. Intricate carvings depicting Hindu gods Ganesh, Vishnu and prolly some others if I was better at knowing my Hindu religious facts. The other interesting thing about this temple (I overheard a tourguide say) was that there are bullet holes in it. The reason these temples weren't destroyed during PolPot's regime was that they were used as army forts. So, people shot at them. Wow.

Ok, so at this point I bet you are getting a little templed out? Yeah, me too. Priz and I hopped off the Tuk-Tuk about a km from our guest house to walk thru a small village/slum along the water. We'd been driving through it every day and wanting badly to shoot it. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. Everyone smiles, everyone asks where you are from, and the pictures...well, see for yourself.







We headed back to our place to get ready for a night on the town. In talking to the guy at our guest house we found a great way to surprise Jason and My....Dinner would not only include feeding ourselves, but also some crocodiles the restaurant keeps in the basement!


Dead Fish (yes, that's it's name, catchy right?) was also just a really cool restaurant--lots of different levels and platforms. You sit on the floor on cushious and can kind of see all the other levels--we had our level all to ourselves! We also got to see a traditional Khmere dance--it was like half vegas showgirls (they were dancing for us on a raised platform above the bar), half high school dance recital (they were fully clothed and looked about 16).

We headed to another bar for a few more mojitos, and happily headed home!

The next day we slept in a little, I saw Angkor Wat again--with the lazies that couldn't wake up at dawn, and then headed to town for some shopping, aux byciclettes. Fun times. It's funny to bargain when you are paying in dollars, things feel like they cost more simply b/c it's not like monopoly money!

The only thing I couldn't get just right at the market was the Tin Tin au Cambodge shirt--luckily Tay was there the next week and picked me up a sweet one ;)

Temples temples and some more lok lok

Siem Reap, where all the temples that make up the pride of Cambodia are located.

We arrived in the evening and headed to our guest house, Rosy's, just outside of the main area of town. Great spot, nice rooms, friendly staff and a cool upstairs sitting area, with hammocks! Hammocks are totally the thing in Cambodia. They have them everywhere, restaurants, roadsides, patios, and at any given time, you can usually find someone sleeping in one.


After dropping our stuff we headed into town for dinner--nice walk along the river on to crowded 'town.' At once we were bombarded by tuk-tuk drivers asking if we needed a ride (don't they realize we just walked 15 minutes and now only have two more till we get to dinner on a street thay can't drive down?), women (umm, girls) asking if we want massages, and tourists everywhere. We head to pub street and walk into the first restaurant we see, mostly b/c we are pretty hungry and it had a cool roof balcony area. My got super excited because they had Vietnamese food on the menu, so combine that with lok lok and some other goodies and you've got quite the meal (don't forget the super fruity fruit shakes-mm watermelon).

On the way home we thought it would be stellar to have a massage--after all, as Jason says, we deserved it-it had been a rough day of shopping and hopping from one city to another. Now, knowing that sometimes Cambodia can be kind of sketchy in this area, and wanting to make sure we did not get, umm, taken advantage of, we made sure to go into the most established looking massage place on the street--or so we thought. Let's remember though, it was about 11:30pm, anything is sketchy at 11:30pm....

So we walk in, we ask for just head and shoulder massages, and we are told to have a seat. My, Priz and I sit down in the foot massage chairs, and as Brian is about to sit down the boss says, no, you, sit over there. Commence giggles and bickering in Khmere from the massage girls in the corner. Hmmm. Five minutes later the boss comes and says, we need to go across the street. Why? we ask. 'Upstairs here is...umm, well, it's occu-busy.' right.

Across the street we go, upstairs, a bunch of mattresses. 'Change.' Into what? (mind you, there are five of us, together, they did not separate out the boys as they'd hoped, 2 boys, 3 girls. 'Change!' they say again. No no, we just want head and shoulders, no oil. The girls massaging Priz, My and I acquiece, we can keep our shirts on. However, the girl massaging Brian persists. 'Sir, Change!' she says forcefully. Brian asks, 'do you want me to take off my shirt?' Yes she says, change. Brian does as he's told. Jason begins to follow suit until My says, also forcefully, 'J, don't take off your shirt.'


So here we go, massage. You coud tell someone had sort of told them what a thai massage was like, and they tried, but mostly it was a lot of a girl sitting on my butt trying to rub my shoulders and crack bones that should not crack, ie, not a good massage. Well, there was also a peanut gallery. Brian's forcefull sargent began asking if Priz was his girlfriend, no we both giggled, and then she just asked, do you want to go to sleep with me? umm, NO! 'You me, go make baby?' NO...giggle giggle with the girl next to her massaging Priz. This keeps up for the full 45 min we are being massaged.

After they asked if we wanted tea. We said NO thank YOU. And ran out of there as quickly as possible.

The walk home, while we laughed about the whole experience, it was also kind of saddening. How old we these girls? They really looked like they were no more than 15. And do most people walk into the VIP Massage looking for sex instead of an actual massage? Do all these places do that? The sex industry Taylor leads a trip about suddenly became very real. It was just so in our faces.

We stayed away from massages the rest of the trip, we didn't really feel like, 'Taking the memory home.'

Tin Tin au Cambodge

Yes, that's right, on trip 5 to Bangkok airport we were en route to Phnom Penh (after spending two days in Hyderabad and one night in that comfy bed of mine in the guest house)...why might you ask did we have such a quick turn around time (or TAT as we would say at Google), don't ask.

Anyway, Google India had a long weekend, so we took full advantage by spending 5 days in Cambodia. We went to Phnom Penh for one night, two days. After a nap in our hotel, Indochine 2, we headed to lunch, I don't remember the name of the place, My took us, as it was one of her favorites when she was living there--comfy red pillows, Elephant coffee pots--sadly not the size of elephants

...and Lok Lok.

Lok Lok was definitely my favorite Cambodian food--stir fried beef in a really good sauce--I am down for that. Esp in this beef deprived body.

After lunch we tackled the depressing part of the day and the trip. We headed to S 21 and the Killing fields. I learned so much in that afternoon about Cambodia's recent past and why it is the way it is now. Basically, Pol Pot came to power, told everyone they should be rice farmers and killed all the people that were educated and into art and culture. He was kind of like Stalin in that if he didn't trust you, he killed you. And, if he thought you knew something, he tortured you. Pol Pot took people from the cities and brought them to prison--we visited one such prison-It's now called Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a primary school converted into a prison and interrogation center. Classrooms were used as cells, some were divided into multiple cells. It was eerie, in some rooms there was still blood on the floors. And Pol Pot and his regime took pictures of all their inmates. So lining the walls and rooms full of black and white headshots of cambodians young and old who spent what were for many of them, their last days starving in harsh treatment in this prison simply because someone thought they were traitors. Really harrowing. The other thing that was harrowing to me was that the structure of the school and how much it reminded me of the second school we visited in Chiang Mai, where all the girls were happy and in their uniforms smiling and telling us what they were learning about. How could a happy place with so much hope become a prison for people who didn't do anything wrong?

Well, After that happy trip, we headed straight out to the Killing Fields. A site outside the city where they brought people to dig their own graves, and then bludgeoned them to death--this was of course to save ammunition. Again, harrowing, and scary how much it reminded me of the way the Nazi's killed the Jews on death marches at the end of the Holocaust. How can things be so planned, so methodical? And how can it happen in many places all over the world with different dictators.

...I never said all my entries would be happy. If you're depressed keep reading, it will get better.

Exact numbers of how many people were killed during Pol Pot's reign are uncertain, anywhere from the high hundreds of thousands, to over a million. Most people assume it was about 1/3 of the Cambodian population. That's a lot. (I didn't say it would get less depressing right away).

So what was left? Well, the Cambodian people feel a strong tie to their Khmere heritage, they are proud of the Angkor Wat temple and palace complex and are some of the friendliest people you'll meet. So now they are working on recovery. After all, this only ended about 20 years ago, and it took some time with UN occupation and unstable leadership. It also doesn't sound like the current leader is the most, umm, straightforward of leaders.

The rest of Phnom Penh was spent seeing the city, meeting a few of My's expat friends from her time working for Pepy Ride. There is a large expat community in Cambodia and especially Phnom Penh b/c there are so many NGOs that have come in to try to solve the problems in many different ways: Teaching kids and women how to make money from the local crafts they make, teaching them to be waitors and waitresses, leading bike trips across the country to raise money for schools and the environement. A pretty big range, most of them focusing on using what makes the Khmere the Khmere to make money--I like it.

We went to the FCC for drinks. FCC stands for Foreign Communications Center (I think)--it's where all the journalists used to hang out and write and file their stories. The newsie in me was a big fan, especially of all the photojournalistic pics on the wall. The french fries with aioli did not hurt either ;)

On to the Friends Restaurant. One of the NGOs both teaching waiting skills as well as handicrafts. Decent meal, but worth it b/c you knew you were doing good--and the waiters were great and trying so hard to impress!

The next day in Phnom Penh was spent at a long breakfast with 16 coffees among the five of us (yeah, we like good coffee when we can get it), and wandering around the markets before hopping on our plane to Siem Reap. Shopping is fun.









Fattest fat monkey hangin out in the park

Bangkok Airport

Yeah, that's right, I said Bangkok airport. The crew has now been in the Bangkok Airport 6 times without actually going to Bangkok, yes, one of the times I had a Whopper from Burger King and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This was all within about 6 weeks....Sewatee Kaaaah



The weekend after Dubai we headed to Koh Samui. Beaches, hammocks, Mai Tais etc etc. Not so bad right?



Fun times. I can't even remember now--there were floaties, there was a boat, there was a shark...or two. No don't worry, we didn't see the shark in the Ocean, we just ate him for dinner. The strange thing was, as we were eating delicious grilled shark steak (and baracuda as well) Sharky's head was hanging out on our table. yeah, that's right, Brian, Jason and Steven had picked out which shark we wanted to eat, and then watched as they separated the head from the body (ie chopped it off). They then proceeded to take pictures with sharky's head. They had such a hard time parting with sharky, they asked the butcher (is that what you call someone who cuts fish?) if he could bring the head to our table. Low and behold, he did.


Well, the next day, we hadn't had quite enough shark. So when Priz was bargaining for a charter boat to take us around some deserted islands (doesn't sound so bad right?) The boys bought her a special present...


This was just in case anyone needed help swimming...Sharky was there to save them. He came with us on the boat and took up most of the space in the hull.

That's why we all sat up front...and you could feel the waves better up there!


You know I never liked snorkling untill I did it at Koh Samui. The water was warm, I didn't feel like I was coughing up salt water, and the fish would swim right up to you! I even followed around this rainbowy fish for a little as it hopped from one coral to another.

We also had our own private lunch on an island with the boat. They just kept bringing us food, it was amazing. Thai food is pretty good, especially after being in India for so long (please read Chiang Mai entry for more details).

who doesn't love fried shrimps?


We also got to hang out on our own private beach. Sadly this part of the day was cut a bit short because our captain seemed to think a storm was coming...Umm, or he just wanted to get back home in time for dinner. But, nonetheless, he had a cute kid and took us to a beautiful beach that we didn't have to share with a single soul!



On our last day we decided to do a litte Island exploring. Saw a really big buddha, did some shopping,
and ate our way through the local town we walked through.


So while I quite enjoyed Koh Samui, it was beautiful, and we ate great seafood, got a tan and saw beautiful fishes and beaches, I do think I've learned I quite like the exploring and seeing the 'real' version of a place, instead of being a tourist in a resort...We'll file that away for next time.