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Friday, July 10, 2009

Connect Four with Ladies of the Night (Phuket, Thailand)

Moments after sunrise, we were back in Mr. Nehm's fold, racing to the Siem Reap airport. For a moment, we felt we noticed an error in Nehm's execution. We should have stopped ourselves before correcting our godlike Tuk Tuk driver, because Nehm knows not mistakes. He started to pull into the Angkor temple complex, much as we had done for two days prior. We moved to correct him, "No, Nehm, we need to go to the airport." He knew this of course. He smiled. Nehm was utilizing a scenic shortcut, just another superb showing by a man of few words and grand gestures, the greatest Tuk Tuk driver to ever walk on red soil.

Kristin was wearing an all Cambodian outfit on our trip back to Thailand. Her shirt and pants were both purchased at the Angkor Night Market for a total of $5, and we probably were even ripped off. All in all though, for a cheap country, Cambodia is a pretty expensive place to visit. The flight to Siem Reap is about $300 and, at about 35 minutes long, is almost $10 per minute. One also has to pay $25 to get in and $25 to get out of Siem Reap airport. It may be cheaper to enter elsewhere in Cambodia.

We had another terrific meal on our super smooth, 35 minute Bangkok Airways flight. After landing though, the sweat began to pour. We had one hour. Our landing was at the international terminal, and we would need to pass through immigrations, customs, and race to the domestic terminal to board our flight from Bangkok to Phuket. Things got hot between Kristin and I. Words were exchanged, mainly, "Hurry up you slug," and "God your an idiot (that was after I accidentally almost went in the crew entrance to domestics)," but our differences were erased when we arrived at the terminal, with time to buy 3 cold waters.

Too call the passengers of Bangkok Airways PG924 a bunch of stinkers would be to engage in extreme niceties, at least relative to the truth. These people smelled, and it was not of elderflower and jasmine. The stench of body odor tickled the poor smell receptors of our nostrils into a frenzy, and we fought hard to hold onto sanity. We faded noticeably several times, always wading back to reality through the thick stench of an onion like cloud to fight again. We made it to Phuket but not without a concessions. These concessions being those of comfort and tolerance, maybe a dash of understanding of other people and their reason for bringing their air about so carelessly.

The hour long taxi ride from the airport exceeded our expectations of time by about 45 minutes. Phuket is bigger than it looks in google maps, much bigger. What appears as just a sliver of land in the Andaman sea, is in fact a long island teeming with mountains, sand, trees, and the occasional elephant. We saw an especially hairy little guy that appeared to be hitching even. Upon our arrival to the Hilton Phuket, we were united with my old friend Dave. Dave is currently living in Malaysia, and decided to meet up with us for some diving in the Phi Phi island area. After Dave and I went through the motions that old friends must do of readapting and calibrating contexts to the old friendship levels among changed people, we all hit the beach. We rented boogie boards, and for Kristin, this was bittersweet. She shagged a few waves with really a garbage board. Literally, it looked like a piece of old cushioning from a long narrow couch, left to bake and harden in the sun. It gave her an awful rash. Dave had a pretty quality board and took to the waves like a seasoned pro, even riding one completely to dispersion, only to pick up another that delivered him to the sands of Karon Beach. My stabs at boogie boarding were amateurish and pathetic, and since I was using the good board, I unfortunately had no one to blame except myself. Whats worse, for some odd reason, my butt itched for the remains of the day.

We had a cab drop us at Patong Beach for dinner. We ate at an excellent restaurant, but paid a princely sum to do so. In our defense, the menu had no prices. We should have known better though, as we selected live beasts of crustaceans from the salt water tanks. Mine snarled and growled, bucking the air like a king of the rodeo, begging to return to the shallows of his own private Bangladesh. It would not be so, for Kristin and I would dine on lobster tonight. Thankfully, we had the foresight to share a lobster, and this cut down on costs considerably. Dave ordered tiger prawns, each the size of a Maine lobster. Our food shined, the service was considerably uneven, and at one point, Dave and I both would have probably exchanged our souls for another sip of our finished watermelon fruit shakes. The lobster was damn good, but I would return for the fruit shake.

Since we were in the infamous Phuket, we had to at least check out the girly bars of Bangla Road. This is where western men, incompetent of dating successfully, come to find their future wives and girlfriends. Or something like that. I know that our readership includes a few younger ears, so I will not delve into intricate details of these sort of social arrangements. I will tell you how the experience went for us. We had a few creep outs, a few drinks, and eventually we ended up at a bar playing Connect Four (seriously) for an hour with the ladies of Bangla Road. They were worthy adversaries at this simple game, and I cannot think of a more surreal way to end a long day of traveling.

Me and Nehm, who I am pretty sure used to be the Stig on Top Gear,

we miss you man

Bangkok Airways Meal

Landing in Phuket

Karon Beach, which is just south of the more famous Patong, but

more relaxing and wide

Beat the crowds

Dave and Kristin

The waves were nice

Dave and I, we sent a stunt body in for me on this one, did not

want to intimidate the readership with rock hard abs

Checking the air for conditions

Not exactly storm of the century material, but nice ride

Sizing up the surf

A wave that knocked me good

A couple of goons

Dave - Nice backdrop

Home base

Sunset

One more to drive the point home

Slide at our pool

Utilizing the facilities

Lobsters

Seafood

Our lobster hanging off the plate

Tiger Prawns

Bangla Road

Walking through bars, absorbing the shock

Lights

Red light

"Bonkers" bar

Bangla Road Shrine

Connect Four with the ladies

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Children are the future (Cambodia)

We woke up at about 8am this morning, and found our tuk tuk driver, Mr. Nehm, waiting for us outside of our hotel with a floodlight smile and an honest eagerness to spend the day hauling us around. He would end up driving us around from about 8:30am until a little after 10:00pm. The cost for such a service? 15 U.S. dollars. That is some solid value. He even has a paranormal knack for finding us easily and quickly whenever we even think about needing him. It is pretty wild. We would be walking down the road, and sort of wonder aloud, "Where is Nehm?" Moments later, he would pull up to a screeching halt, ready to whisk us away on our next adventure. Nehms is the man.

We decided to take in breakfast at a hut just outside of Angkor Wat. On our way in, some little kids charged us and proceeded to tell us our national and state capitals, our "prime minister," and then try to sell us postcards as well as beads. These kids here are definitely the future for this country. They have an entrepreneurial way about them that will probably help to drive Cambodia to be a more modern country. They sell with charm, hustle like champs, and all of them speak about 3 languages. The kids are everywhere and they know exactly what they are doing. They hustle like their lives depend on it, and I suppose to some degree that may be the case. We told the little charmers that we may be back after breakfast. I ordered pancakes and a fruit dish that defied expectation. Kristin had an american breakfast. While we were eating, one of the kids delivered a letter that he had written to me. In this letter, it stated that, "I have a very pretty girlfriend and that he is sorry for bothering me..." among other things. It was pretty nice and so of course we got suckered into buying bracelets.

After our breakfast, we decided to check out Phnom Bakheng. This particular temple was originally used as a state capital and affords probably the best view in Angkor. Generally, people flock to this temple late in the day for a spectacular and dramatic sunset over the jungles of Cambodia. In fact, so many people flock to this temple at sunset that it is causing structural damage to the foundation. I would wager that Unesco will probably put an end to that sooner than later. We decided to go in the morning so that it would not be too busy. The climb to the top was a labor of love. Sweat in our eyes, deet mixing with sunscreen to create a chemical fragrance that burned with each breath, it was about 95 degrees outside, and it felt much much hotter. If pressed we probably could have cooked egg's on our forearms. Kristin sniffed out a few shortcuts, all of which were exciting, one of which was full of spider webs and dangerously steep. We probably shaved a few minutes off of our ascent with these shortcuts, which in the brutal heat translates to a great success. The view from the top, impeccable, you could see most temples, and all the way to Tonle Sap lake, the biggest lake in southeast Asia. We really like how, "at your own risk" everything seems over here. For instance, the stairs up to the summit of Phnom Bakheng are ridiculously steep, and there are no warning signs or ropes to balance with. You just have to know well enough to be careful. In the U.S. or Europe, or anywhere with a modern legal system, this could not exist due to lawsuits and idiots falling all over themselves.

Our next stop, Bayon in Angkor Thom, is a temple famous for its many faces. It has numerous (216) carved faces, and on most pillars, there are 4, each one individually symbolizing either love, compassion, sympathy, or community. This is according to a guide that threw himself at us and we later had to pay 4 dollars. He also told us that the wholes in all the stone bricks at the temples were drilled so that the elephants could carry the stones on each side of their large frame from the quarry about 50 km away. We visited a few more temples, and decided to head back to the hotel for kids meals. At this hotel, the food is pretty expensive, so we have taken towards ordering room service off of the super affordable kid's menu. It is our way of getting around the system without having to leave our room. Nehm was downstairs ready for round 2 when we exited our hotel following our brief reprieve. The grounds of Angkor are filled with tons of temples, but each is a pretty decent distance apart from eachother. Since there are extensive roads throughout the entire temple complex, you need either a driver or a bike and incredible stamina for a solid temple touring day. This is why Nehm is such a crucial addition to our crew. He makes the sights happen. We visited a lesser known temple sort of on the outskirts that Nehms suggested, and an older lady invited us in to pray with her. She gave us 3 incense sticks for an offering and led us into the temple. We said our prayers, and afterwards I asked Kristin what she had prayed for. "Life, Love, and Lou," she replied. Lou is her handsome 3 year old golden retriever. Towards the end of our day, we visited Banteay Kdei, another temple complex. We decided to hang out across the street with some local kids for a minute. Kristin met a little girl named Pau. She was a village girl who spoke 3 languages (English, French, Khmer), and she learned each not in school, but from talking with tourists. Kristin really liked Pau and they took a few goofy pictures and had some laughs.

For the evening, we decided to leave the camera at home and go out for a nice dinner. As Nehm was speeding down the road, we noticed a small French-Khmer (=Cambodian, Khmer is the language and ethnic term for Cambodians) Cafe called La Malraun. Our meal was the best of our trip, and my favorite dish was my banana flower chicken salad. It tasted both spicy and sweet, with some bites providing a hint of anise or even peanut sauce. It was a clever little dish. We also shared a dragon fruit, banana, orange, apple, and papaya shake. Our waitress brought a dragon fruit out for us to fondle. We later went back to the Angkor night market to spend our cash dangerously close to 0.

We both feel very comfortable and at home in Cambodia. The people are all very nice, and the kids are simply amazing. Tomorrow we leave for Phuket, Thailand.