Siem Reap, Cambodia, 29 January 2007

Initial impressions, so I can read over them later and muse.

The difference between Thais and Cambodians:

The Thais will try to sell you their grandmother if they think they can. They will put her in a sack and get the sack into the back of your truck and tell you that whatever is in the sack is potatoes/ elephant souveniers / diving equipment.

The Cambodians will put their grandmother in a sack and get the sack in the back of your truck but they will actually tell you that their grandmother is in the sack, and they will also tell you why you want to buy her - very politely and very persistently. (Even the fact that you already have two grandmothers is appears to be a good reason to buy one more.)

So, in Cambodia, you come away with a grandmother, but you also feel that there is some value to her.

Everything is priced in US$, this makes things easy and difficult. Easy because you don't have to master your 4000 times table. Difficult to bargin when you can only move from $1 to $1.50. I wondered aloud what one should give beggars, Cambodian Riel or US$. I was told "they accept both".

Also, there are two Cambodians beers Angkor and Anchor. The second is pronounced An-ch-or.

Haven't made it to Angkor Wat yet. We have ambitious plans to visit it at sunrise tomorrow. Still recovering from yesterday's bus journey.

Extract from my Elephant Book (27 Jan 2007)

- "On a highway made of red dirt in the middle of Cambodia. As you cross the border the GDP per capita drops by US$6000. Everywhere there is dust: the road, the buildings, the fences, my clothes, my hands, these pages. Outside the land is flat as far as the horizon. Unsown fields, not green nor picturesque, but empty dry grass.

There is the blare of a hooter and a car passes us from behind. I haven't yet worked out whether Cambodians drive on the right or the left side of the road. It doesn't appear that they have reached a consensus yet either.

We rattle along the road to Siem Reap (which, roughly translated, means "that time we thrashed the bastard Thais into the middle of next century and we have the temples to prove it").

Another hooter. The windows have no latches and as we jolt they work themselves open. This lets in air but it lets in the dust too. I close it, again. We pass two men on bicycles laden with tins. I read the signs along the road; " Cambodian People's Party", "Administrative of Police Post", "Austcare, Australians caring for refugees", a billboard advertising condom use.

A bus, unseen, sweeps past us and fills the bus with dust through the window which has jolted open, again. We reach for the water to wash our tongues clean.

Are they dust devils in the distance or the smoke from small grass fires? As the light dims the fires flicker on the horizon.

Our driver begins to play chicken with a truck. The truck wins. We slow to a brief stop to give it some distance and let the dust settle. The sun is red and the dust is red and my finger prints on these pages smudge red across these words." -

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 17 January 2007

We spent one last night in Sukhothai, mentionable only because we had dinner with an Irish couple we met on the bus (who turned out later not to be a couple, much to Alastair's and my excitement because they were both pretty hot and we had already agreed that if swinging was what was required, swinging was what it was going be) (not really) (ok, maybe). Thanks to the Rough Guide, a veritable travel bible, we found this tiny little restaurant hidden in a shack over looking the river and had some of the best food we've had in Thailand and about 20 beers each (as I mentioned, they were Irish).

Highlights of the evening include the part where we found out they weren't a couple and weren't sure if they were just pulling our legs about sleeping in twin beds ("because you go to hell, you see"). Also the part where Alastair told them an Irish joke, in an Irish accent (liberally peppered with 'BeJeysus's', 'tinks' and 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph's'). Eventually the restaurant staff refused to serve us any more beer and kicked us out.

And now we are in Chiang Mai and I am in love (not with the Irish couple). It's a beautiful, characterfilled city-around-a-moat, full of bookshops and restaurants. Every meal is an exploration and I got to spend 3 hours in a book shop yesterday (these are all second hand bookshops where travellers swop their books for new ones, so classics and great reads abound). Currently reading the "Time traveller's wife" which is light hearted and, so far, a commentary on age and love (mostly age).

Al is ill at the moment and this keeps him holed up in the guest house. When he's well we'll do a Thai cookery course ( I ate at the restaurant that runs this course last night and had the tastiest Mussuman curry) and possibly visit the Elephant Nature Park (which houses and rehabilitates elephants which have been abused and mistreated) and Al wants to spend 3 days doing a meditation course at a temple so while he does that I'll take a trip out to a dam east of the city and do some more climbing.

Very satisfied with life right now. The only hardship is preventing myself from buying books or presents for everyone because I won't be able to lug them through Cambodia and Vietnam.

On Thai tourism, the shades of a spectacular country

On Sunday Al and I did a tour, the package kind, up to Chiang Rai to renew our visas by crossing into Burma, turning around and crossing back into Thailand.

We didn't know that our tour included a visit to a Hill Tribe village (usually one visits a 'primitive village' to see how these 'tribes' live 'untouched' by Western influences - the inconsistencies of this practice not apparent to thousands of tourists a year). Had we known we may have refused to go (as we did in Kanchanaburi where the tour included a trip to Tiger Temple - where tigers are kept caged in a quarry by monks and, reportedly, drugged so visitors may touch and take photographs with them).

But here is the rub:

The 'Hill Tribe' in question are Karen, refugees from persecution in Burma where they are an ethnic minority. The Thai govt permits them to stay but does not afford them any basic amenities such as running water, electricity or schools and the refugees have to be in Thailand 20 years before they may gain citizenship. These refugees make their living almost entirely through tourism. We pay to visit their village, traipse through it, take photographs of the women and their neck dresses (these are long necked Karen http://www.csmngt.com/400%20long%20neck%20women.jpg) or of their grass huts and buy souveniers (scarfs, more photos, figurines - few made by the villagers, most bought from neighbouring towns). As we approached the first hut a small girl dressed in traditional clothes ran alongside us with a 'donation box' saying 'money, give money please'.

Reading an article on the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami (it is important to note the difference in the scale of destruction suffered in Thailand, 5 300 deaths, and Indonesia, 230 000 deaths, or Sri Lanka) I noted that the Tourism Authority of Thailand considered running 'Tsunami Tours' whereby tourists could be bussed between each area of destruction. Also availible were photos and DVDs of the footage of the Tsunami, including 'Tsunami T-shirts'. Both of these commodities were shortly withdrawn in the face of public disgust.

The Buddha

Standing Buddha,
sitting Buddha,
standing and sitting Buddhas in a square.
Walking Buddha (as seen only at Sukhothai)
Reclining Buddha (about to reach Nirvana).

Gold plated Buddha versus gold leaf Buddha,
plaster Buddha with a yellow sash.

Disdainful Buddha in the Ayutthayan style.
European Buddha seated in the half lotus.

Buddha contemplating.
Buddha who has reached enlightenment.

Hidden Buddha in a box, in another box, under a Wat.

None of these fat.

Kanchanaburi to Ayutthaya up to Sukhothai, Thailand, 12 January 2007

Difficult to believe it has been almost two weeks since my last post.

Ko Lanta Island, despite the less than proverbial New Year, provided much scope for travelling (as opposed to tourism). Spurning the beach in deference to Alastair's infected toe, we rented motorbikes and took the jungle road over the crest of the island (one cannot call it a mountain) down through paddy fields and past relatively untouched fishing villages, had a beer or two and then came all the way back. Scootering is next to godliness (a few burns to the ankles and a minor scrape keeping us in awe of Him).

We took an overnight bus back up to Bangkok (and Mr. Tam, Jon, Kate and a Ping Pong show that... left us all wondering). At about 630am we were picked up by a tour bus and transported to Kanchanaburi. Thai tourism and Thai tourist operators are not big into itineraries or briefing speeches and as a result being on a tourist bus involves being shouted at in broken English everytime we stop somewhere. We were also a little hung over.... and jaded (re ping pong show).

Kachanaburi is famous, not because any Thai monuments or history is associated with the place, rather because of the Bridge over the River Kwai and Death Railway, so called because of the number of Allied prisoners of war died building these during WWII. As a result the Thais are not as proud of the area and are impatient about the monuments and sites associated with this bit of history. We were taken on a whirlwind tour to the cemetery (vast and very moving), the WWII and JEATH Museum (much to my irritation, see previous comment, this museum is not a museum at all. Rather a private family seeking to capitalise on the museum hype have flung together some arbitrary relics and called their building the WWII and JEATH museum reflecting the Thai disregard for copyright. The real JEATH museum, the one that has actual academic merit, was 5km down the river), hustled on the train to ride Death Railway.

We spent 3 days and two nights on a house boat while doing a series of package tours around the region. Some of them were great (Erawan waterfall) and some a little bottled (rafting down the river at a snail pace). We DID get to meet a lot of interesting Australian and Dutch people on our tour and the parties on the house boat in the evenings were very cool.

We left Kachanaburi and travelled north of Bangkok to Ayutthaya which was an ancient capital city of Thailand and once a major trade centre in SE Asia. It was an odd little town with wide roads and stately houses now too large and expensive to be up kept interspersed with ruins of various Wats (Temples) spanning 7 centuries of trade and activity (until the capital was moved downstream to Bangkok). We stayed in a guest house that was one such stately house and explored each of the ruins by bicycle for two days. The history of Ayutthaya is punctuated by raids by the Burmese or the Khmers (Cambodians) who would come in and sack the city necessitating the building of another Wat once the invaders had left. Really, really interesting from the perspective of seeing the changes in the architecture with each progressive Wat.

From Ayutthaya we took a bus up to Sukhothai, which was the Thai capital in the 14th Century before it was at Ayutthaya and Bangkok. Like Ayutthaya, Sukhothai is a city around ruins and we have spent the day cycling around these. We are quite curious about the influences of early Hinduism on the monuments, for instance Sukhothai is unique for the Walking Buddhas (complete with breasts, nipples, flowing cape and sometimes more than one pair of hands...). It turns out that Thai Buddhism is a strangely syncretic faith - Buddha and Buddhism insures a Thai for the next life, but most Thais also appeal to a strange mix of Hindu gods and animist spirits for more immdeidate problems (for instance, all buildings have an accompanying spirit house). According to the Rough Guide, sophisticated Bangkokians and illiterate farmers alike fine no inconsistency in these practices and often its a Buddhist monk who is called in to to exorcize a malevolent spirit!

This would be so much better if we were sleeping with eachother

We're staying at Chaw Ka Cher Tropicana Resort, which caters to honeymoon couples and rich Scandanavians (with dreadful children). A LITTLE on the pricey side but necessary in order to stay on Ko Lanta over the New Year.

Also necessary in order to stay on Ko Lanta over the New Year was a 'compulsory New Year dinner' to the tune of BHT1500 (AUD45, GBP22). To give you some perspective, your average meal in Thailand will cost you BHT150 - BHT250 (less than BHT100 if you have the pad thai and a pineapple juice). So we figured, 'yay, we'll be able to drink the other BHT1200' since alcohol is ridiculously overpriced in Thailand.

Not so.

Our compulsory dinner was a boarding school servings style buffet and included one glass of medium range Argentinian wine. The other BHT1200 went towards 4 hours of traditional Thai dancing and music. Think of the bagpipes playing gregorian chant and you have traditional Thai music. The dancing may not have been so bad, had it not been performed by 10 year olds and was a little out of time. Plus, in 4 hours you can only do so many moves in sparkley costumes.

We finished our glass of wine and ended up watching Home and Away in Thai. Sneaking out proved too difficult because the Maitre D' kept coming around to check we were having a good time and was there anything else we might like (although not from the bar, unless we'd like to pay for it).

Happy New Year anyone!