January
25, Friday: First day in Bangkok Siam
(no, Thailand
everybody needs a new name once in a while).
We started the day by going to the extensive fresh flower shop area of Bangkok. Then a great Thai meal, lunch at The
Riverside, a boat tied up on the east side of the River Chao Phraya, the main
large river flowing through Bangkok.
Then a long boat tour through the 150 old canal maize of Thonburi (this
is the local name for the part of Bangkok
west of the river).
The broken down shanties on the canal side
gave me the feeling I was in Rangoon,
though I have never been there it just the mental picture I have. Along the way
we stopped at the Kings Barge museum to see some of the royal barges. These are
very long narrow boats, up to 150 ft, powered by 40 50 oarsmen and very
ornately decorated with jewels and gold on the exterior. They are used on the river at the time of
major national celebrations, perhaps every 5 years. Also visited Wat Arun.
For the mechanically minded only: the canal boats,
there are hundreds all alike, are long narrow craft with exaggerated turned up
canoe-like at the bow. The length allows
them to go fast without planning, while the turned up bow honors the king and
is a place for the dragon to ride. They are powered by large diesel truck
engines with a novel mounting and drive.
The propeller is at the end of a long shaft, maybe 15 feet, angled down
to the water far behind the boat and apparently connected directly to the crank
shaft of the diesel. The entire assembly is mounted on a vertical-horizontal two
axis pivot under the center of the engine with another rigid “handle” sticking
forward, which the pilot uses to swivel the whole assembly for steering. I’ve seen miniature versions of this on the
Amazon with Brigs & Straton engines, but doing this with a big diesel is a different
affair.
January
26, Saturday: After a great
breakfast we visited the Grand
Palace, residence of the
Kings of Siam since 1782 until the early 20th century, and the
location where Anna schooled the many children of King Rama IV, later giving
inspiring the play and movie The King and
I and later versions of the same story.
This has to be the high point of a first
visit to Bangkok
with many fine Jeweled temples and assorted other buildings, one temple housing
the emerald Buda. Can it really be emerald? When the Tsar visited in the 18th century
the King of Siam
offered him anything he wanted. The Tsar
chose the emerald Buda, which confounded the King, how could he keep such a
promise. But before delivery the Tsar
made the mistake of offering the King anything he wanted ……!
King Rama V was first to travel the world
and return to initiate many new freedoms for the common people of Siam and
begin construction of modern infrastructure, transportation, communication,
water supply systems, public education, etc.
Thailand
is now a constitutional monarchy under Rama IX who is quite old and
incapacitated by back pain we were told.
In late afternoon, as the rest of the OAT
travelers went on an optional tour, I was picked up by Ravee and her daughter
June, Thai friend of my neighbor back in Redondo
Beach. Together
we visited the Marble
Temple (Wat
Benchamabuphit Dusitvanaram to locals) and Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (Marble Hall). The latter is a large “castle” used by
royalty for special entertainment events and containing notable mural large paintings,
and Thai art, but was closed so we saw only the exterior. The other OATs visited the earlier and were
very impressed, so I may try to get there on the next pass through Bangkok. Then to the White Orchid, a large river boat
for buffet dinner and show of Thai dancers.
Bangkok seems a very
clean and modern city with clean, quiet, courteous people. It have lots of modern and wide streets, limited
access tollways, and lot of traffic in rush hours. Seems a strong contrast to India and China in absence cleanliness and
absence of bicycles and car horns. The
girls are slim and beautiful as reported.
The Buddhist architecture is much finer than in
northern India, China and Mongolia, like a fine jeweled watch
compared to a gaudy Seth Thomas. Thailand (freeland), unlike all of surrounding
Indo China,
was never colonized, perhaps because they never took sides.
January
28, Monday: Yesterday was spent
traveling northwest to a tent camp in the lower southern mountains. In the country side, the people are poorer
and, though the roads are good, most construction is more modest and older than
the city, more like the Malaysian or Mexican country. The agriculture is very prevalent with
cocoanuts palms, sugar cane, tapioca, and many uniquely Thai fruits, rose apple,
longan, longon, rambutan, breadfruit, jack fruit, durian, pomelo, mangostein,
along with all the tropical fruits we know in the US. We stopped at the floating
market and learned to peal and got a taste of each. They are all delicious. Durian is a bit unique, about 3 times the
size of a football with an appearance like breadfruit and a rather sweet stick
meat when you open it. However, when
eaten (opened) in a closed space it create an unpleasant odor that is not at
all obvious when eaten outside in the open.
Some hotels have a sign on the lobby door, “no durian.” Next stop was the famous WWII bridge on the
river Kawi’ (Thai’s say Kawe) where we all crossed on a tram and I walked
across. Perhaps 200,000 POW’s (and
conscripted civilians from Thai, Vietnam,
Australia and Cambodia) forced to work on the Thai to Burma railroad
by Japanese, died on the project – only about 300 Americans, however. This was to be the Japanese supply route from Singapore through Malaysia,
Thailand , Burma sand India
to Europe for the Japanese. Our camp, Hin Tok River Camp near
Kanchanaburi, is on the little Kawe, while the bridge is on the big Kawe. The forest is reportedly populated with
elephants and tigers, but we have seen no signs on the Sunday trip. Today we made short, but strenuous in the
jungle heat, hike through Hell
Fire Pass,
one of the most difficult cuts through on the rail route. Then spent some time learning about the
agriculture in the area, rubber, tapioca, and numerous fruits.
January
29, Tuesday: Today was a long day on
the bus traveling from our river camp in the relative southwest through the
rice bowl to Phitsanulok, which is near the center of the main Thai
landmass. The main events of the day
were education about rice farming and a stop for a boat-ride lunch on a rice
barge at Uthaithani. Unlike most American
farmers, Thai rice farmers live in the local village and travel to their land
for the work day – watching rice grow isn’t very hard work so I am guessing
many days they don’t go there. Rice fields become infiltrated with snails, which the
farmers used to export to Taiwan, but for unexplained reasons the Taiwanese
stopped importing them. The solution –
among the rice farms are duck farms. The
rice farmer calls the duck farmer on the right day and the ducks are brought
and released from a truck, then at day’s end magically called back to the
truck. Next day the rice farmer plants
his new crop. Now, does the duck farmer
pay the rice farmer for feeding his ducks, or does the rice farmer pay the duck
farmer for cleaning up? Another
interesting stop today was at the “star food” stand. Rats seem to sometimes be a problem in the
rice fields, so what to do about that – eat em!
So try spelling “rats” backward.
Ya bought a couple, but I hope he’s taking them home. And I thought the height of adventure travel
was drinking mare’s milk in Mongolia.
Rice barges were used in days past to
transport rice to market, but today modern highways make transport by truck
more economical. Our previously abandoned
rice barge has been restored as a floating restaurant and over lunch we cruised
the Sakae Krang River
enjoying the scenery of locals living in raft houses along the shore line and
their more affluent neighbors on the shore above. For dinner, guide Ya took us to a well
recognized restaurant that I thought was just OK, but afterwards we went by a
very popular street shop (even visited by the Princess) and had a sampling of
fried water bugs, silk worms, grasshoppers, etc.
January
30, Wednesday: We moved north about
200 km to Phrae, the indigo town, stopping for a visit at Sukhothai along the
way. Thailand is not quite all as
advertised, low cost, loaded with exotic young girls, and with nearly everyone
speaking English. Tonight in our hotel a
lot of teenage rugby players don’t. I walked a mile or so up town Phrae and
approached about a dozen people looking for someone speaking English, and found
only one halting candidate. And after a
whole week here I have only seen about 8 – 10 girls that look like those in the
Thai and Singapore Air adds, and none of them even giving me the time of day!
February
1, Friday: After driving to Chaing
Rai yesterday, visiting a school and having lunch with a country village Thai
family we arrived at the Golden Pines Resort for the night. Today are exploring the Thai “hill tribe”
peoples and Golden Triangle area. We
mainly saw the Akha, and the long-neck tribe.
The latter place heavy spiral copper ring devices around the neck of
girl children and add more as the children grow to adults – eventually
approaching 1 -2 kg and never removed until death. This appears to make a very
long neck, but some scientists spoiled the whole effect by finding it just
pushes the rest of the body down. This link has
pictures and discussion of same (similar) tribes in Burma. The Akha are really short and all the older
ones smoke – women smoke pipes. Next the
Golden Triangle, at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong
Rivers, and at the join borders of Thailand, Laos,
and Burma (Myanmar). This area has long been known as the opium
source for the world accompanied by some legendary stories. There is an opium museum, and a very new
impressive huge gold “leaf” Buda.
February
4, Tuesday: Saturday Bussed to
Chaing Mai. The important stop of the
day was the White Temple (Wat
Rong Khun). So many temples, the
descriptions become repetitive. This is
near the top of the list in splendor with the Grand Palace, while in general
Thai temples are far more elaborate, like fine jewels, than I have seen in any other
Buddhist country. Our hotel, Lanna
Mantra is very quiet and away from the tourist busses overlooking the Ping River. It’s quite comfortable but a little unusual
because when you come in the front door you are in the large bath. In addition,
the bath has windows looking into the bedroom, as though the bath was
originally the entire room, then the bedroom added later! It’s comfortable though and has a great river
view.
Our guide, Ya, (short for
Parinya) is a real number. He is very
knowledgeable about all the surrounding, plant, animal, history, religion,
politics, everything Thailand. He talks a mile-a-minute and nearly every
minute too, but talks so fast and accented that I can only get about 50% of
what he says – but that’s usually enough.
In any case it’s hard to get in a word edgewise to ask a question.
Sunday went to an elephant camp and rode
elephants, talked with the mahouts and saw the elephants perform in many ways
including, painting, playing harmonica, logging, collecting money from the
crowd, picking up babies, etc.. This was
much more sophisticated than the simple ride I had in Africa
a couple years ago. Asians say Asian
elephants are smarter and the experience supports that. Of course in Africa
we saw hundreds of elephants in the wild.
In the evening we went to the Thai Smart
Cook school and cooked our own dinner.
We made clear soup, very simple, and “pad thai”, a rather complex stir
fry. Very good though, we have had it at
several restaurants along the way. Thais
use “fish sauce” as Americans use salt and Chinese use soy sauce.
Monday morning we went to a temple and had a
long meeting with a monk. He was very
articulate in English and shared a lot of information about Thai (Indochina)
Buddhism, which seems to be significantly different that two other versions
found in China/Mongolia and another region I can’t remember (maybe Nepal). Here they operate big schools and some
colleges and do community work ……….. better than what seemed to me as slavishly
spinning prayer wheels and chanting, as was my perception in these northern
areas. Later we visited Wat Phrathat Dol
Suthep (white elephant legend temple), high on a mountain overlooking Chiang
Mai, again with so much gold and splendor as to rival that at the Grand
Palace. When we returned to the hotel
in went looking for someone to help me set up skype on my Galaxy S III. Didn’t have to go far as turns out the very
cute tiny Thai lady in reception, Nim, has an S II
and was willing to help. First se got me
started on Tango til I found you can apparently only call Tango people. After working a while longer she got skype
working too. I was quite surprised this
girl would be able to have such an expensive phone ……….. which she kept wanting
to trade for my S III! By the way, if you’re keeping up, I think I
saw this lady in a Singapore Air add.
Finally, today we visited a Thai home for
dinner, set up by OAT.
Today we flew back to Bangkok on Nok Air, they
have pretty nice young flight attendants too!
I explored around the hotel and Lumphini Park
area in afternoon and in the evening we had the farewell dinner (one night
early) while cruising the River Chao Phraya on our own private more than 100
year old teak rice barge – exotic!
February 5, Wednesday: Started
the day in a temple (Wat Traimit) with
the 5 1/2 ton solid gold Buda, 18 carat, i.e., 75% gold, so about $225 million
at today’s price. Then passed through
the Chinese market for a long time seeing everything you have ever eaten and
ten times more. Then the reclining Buda
Wat Po, followed by a tour of the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson was a legendary character who
worked for my hero Wild Bill Donovan in the OSS during WW II. He returned to Thailand to revive the silk
trade in Thai silk and build a lavish teak
house that we toured. In the 60’s he
disappeared mysteriously while visiting the Cameron
Highlands of Malaysia, giving rise legends about to a tiger
attack or an OSS
“elimination” because he knew too much.
Following this, enough to fill a
day already, I went off to become a native alone. First I took a tuk tuk to the Marble Hall (Ananta
Samakhom Throne Hall), which I had missed two weeks ago (above). I learned that when the tuk tuk operator
spots you as a tourist he lowers the price a lot if he can take you by a
clothing or jewelry store for a stop along the way. I let him do this, it cost me 10 minutes (a
bit like the time-share sales pitches we know).
After enjoying the Throne Hall I tried it again, but the deal
came apart. After getting abusive
tourist quotes from a couple tuk tuks and taxis I decided to try public
transit. While asking directions and
taking a bus to get to the elevated rail, I learned enough about the bus to
just take it home – worked fine for me but astonished the others in our travel
group – cost me 10 bhat ($.35) instead of the 400 – 600 quotes I was getting
from tuks and taxis! Next I decided to
have my light dinner from one of the street vender carts.
How is Thailand so
rich? Not oil! They import about 75% or more of what they
use. The highways are as good as I’ve seen in any
country, bar-none. We encountered few
pot holes and very little construction.
To cap off our Thai visit, a couple of the more adventurous went over to
Patpong district in Bangkok,
this was the favorite bar & brothel R n R hang out for GIs during the
Vietnam War.
Vietman
February 8, Friday: Yesterday we flew to Hanoi and transferred to our Hotel May de
Ville which seems very adequate. Today
(Uncle, they all call him) Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, the Hanoi Hilton and a few other
sights around the city. The “Hanoi Hilton” is now a museum honoring
the Vietnamese who resisted the French in earlier times and threw them out with
help from the Japanese in WW II. The little
mention about American prisoners is presented as the heroism of Vietnamese
bringing down many B52’s (with Russian supplied missiles) and the excellent
treatment of prisoners. A video shows
how well they were treated, this must be an old war propaganda release. Ask John McCain or Lee Ellis. We are here for Tet (Vietnamese new year, Lunar new year) so the
city is very festive and there is just sea of small motorcycles with lots of
people in the streets. The Vietnamese
came form southern China
centuries ago, but relations with China across their northern border
are strained at best – hence they name the Chinese New Year differently, though
it is the same time.
February 10, Sunday: I’m
writing this while relaxed in my state room on a boat in Ha Long Bay. From the exterior the boat looks like it might
sink, but inside it has everything but WiFi.
Very nice wood finishings and dining room, comfortable for our 11 OAT
travelers. Ha Long
Bay is a very scenic area off the
coast 100 miles northeast from Hanoi and Haiphong and is a UNESCO
World Natural Heritage Site. Yesterday we visited a small village isolated on a
peninsula by the river called Tho Ha where people live in a very primitive
state by “farming” pigs, making rice paper and such. The pigs are housed in shallow basements of
their house. There is one street wide
enough for motorcycles, but the others are only wide enough for walking, but
remarkably inside the house we visited for lunch the food was OK? And the fixtures were more elaborate than
expected. The master of the house played
instruments and sang and was over complemented by some in out group.
I am learning to eat ‘eastern’
food with chop stix three meals a day now – even breakfast! They are not very good at bacon and eggs, but
do know how to make their own food delicious.
There are so many stupid sensitivities today that it takes a while to
choose among ‘eastern’, Asian, oriental, etc., etc.
Tuesday after visiting the usual
half dozen temples and tombs we had to go to an orphanage operated by some
Buddhist nuns. That was after we went to
another nunnery for vegetarian lunch – which by the way was quite good. Our travel agency, OAT sponsors The Grand
Circle Foundation which does some good around the world from some of the
profits augmented by donations from travelers.
One such good work that they sponsor, to the tune of $53 thousand so
far, is the Minh Tu Orphanage at Hue
at the nunnery. Since I don’t do kids I
wasn’t really looking forward to this couple hours. But, to my surprise, I
found the kid here quite enjoyable and had a fun time playing and discussing
their lives a bit. The kids from 6 mo to
18 years all seemed extremely healthy and happy and just fun to be around –
though clearly our visit was a special treat for them to practice English and
see someone unusual. I give this
operation a high grade!
February 13, Wednesday: By
bus today from Hue to Hoi An, passing by Da Nang and famous China Beach
along the way. Hoi An is a very small
old town originally founded by Japanese in he 14th century and today
a hot tourist spot, maybe like Central City, Colorado. The old town was built up by the
French in the early part of the last century and all the old building are
preserved while nothing new can be built higher. For dinner we went to a Vietnamese cooking
class and were thoroughly entertained as well as gastronomically satisfied by
Hoi An’s iron chef. With his help we made Vietnamese spring Rolls,
squid salad, and fish grilled in a banana leaf, and again expecting a dead
evening, OAT came through and left me feeling rewarded.
The group: we are 11 travelers,
(soon to be seven when we enter Cambodia), one redneck, two “nuns” on canes,
well walking sticks, and only three of us
eating with chop sticks in this land of chopsticks. Indeed, the food is one of the major treats
of a southeast Asia visit but half the group is missing it for one reason or
another. “Please no onion, no fish, no
seafood, no chili, no, no, ….” One is a girl
farmer/rancher from the eastern slopes of Colorado – the youngest (~ 26) OAT traveler
ever. Several who are not only taking
thousands of pictures but will stand and take six pictures of the same child of
vegetable vendor. However, in general a
pretty good group to be traveling with! But we are sooo lucky, one person I
talked to in a hotel is in a group of 38!
Several are school teachers – thanks to those generous public employee retirements. I am oldest, but most of the time feel like
really the youngest. Looking for an OAT
trip where cameras are forbidden, sometimes hard to take pictures of anything
but tourists taking pictures - at least in Africa
the lions kept them at a distance. On
Thursday we visited the My Son Temple ruins in
central Vietnam. Wait till you hear
about the monkey King and the Champa …… I think these guides get all their
stories from the internet! Then with my
free time in the afternoon and evening I rode a bicycle a couple miles from Hoi
An down to the beach on the South China Sea all
around Hoi An. This beach near Da Nang was a popular
hang out for US troops during the war. The town is a live with celebration of
New Year and Valentines Day all together with hundreds or Chinese lantern
figures and streets mobbed with motorcycle cruisers and people walking about. Very enjoyable to share and have a couple
beers.
February 15, Friday: By
Vietnamese Air from Da Nang to Nha Trang a
modern beach town in a beautiful harbor with several small islands, think Airlie Beach
… or Ipanema. Saturday we went out to an
isolated, but crowded, beach on one of the islands in the harbor ………. Later I
looked up a windsurf rental place but the wind was on-shore, about 4 – 5 ft
shore break, and their small selection of equipment 25 years old and obviously not
recently used. Dinner on our own tonight,
so I found a little place for steamed clams with ginger, crocodile curry, and a
couple beers.
It’s ironic that we are here in
a communist country with many restrictions, but in a way more freedom. For example, to cross the street you just
walk slow and steadily out through the sea of motorcycles, some cars and buses,
and they just go around you. Back in the
US
we have all those red and green lights taking away our freedoms. Our hotel, conveniently located down town and
near the beach in Nah Trang, we are told is government owned. Seems like it was built nice and is
relatively new, but nothing works. Plug
in an electric cord and it falls out on the floor, only a trickle of water
comes out in the sink, breakfast buffet is sized for 25, but 150 are eating. Worst hotel on the OAT trip so far.
February 17, Sunday: We went
by our tour bus perhaps 150 miles and 5000 ft up in the mountains in the center
of Vietnam
to Da Lat, a resort town built up by and for the French prior to WW II. I went
out looking for a bike to ride/rent.
Could only find bicycle-built-for-two so I cajoled the sales lady to
take the back seat and we had an hour ride around the attractive mid-town lake.
Seems all the women in Vietnam wear ugly
face masks, especially when riding motorbikes of which there are still
millions, which don’t do anything for their otherwise frequently beautiful
appearance. Nobody seems to know why –
dust, air pollution, religion, sun protection?
Two ladies I have asked say sun protection, but they wear them in the
rain and at night too so that doesn’t figure.
Tuesday we flew from Da Lat to Saigon. By some
fluke of luck our tour guide stumbled on tickets for the Grand Primiere of
something called AO
Show Saigon at the Saigon Opera House, so on Tuesday night we all got to go
to this unexpected treat. It was a great
show with lots of dancing and acrobatics, maybe like circ du soleil, done with
Vietnamese basket boats and other baskets etc as props. Earlier this evening our guide also took us
by the dog BBQ. Says they don’t eat
pets, but rather farm raised dogs.
February 20, Wednesday: Mekong
Delta day. Saigon is sliced through by
the Saigon River
and a canal about 45 miles in length connects it with the Mekong River
in the delta to the southwest. Incidentally,
Ho Chi Minh City now refers to the big 50 mile
radius population center with the dense center still called Saigon. First of the usual rest room breaks on the
way to the delta got us a chance to also watch a cock fight. Cocks armed with steel spurs fight to the
death and these are illegal, but unarmed cock fights are OK. At the Mekong River we rode a (not swift)
boat on the river and walked about on shore to see many primitive activities
including transportation and marketing of many farm products on the river –
rice, bannas, tapioca, sweet potatoes, many fruits. Also the manufacture of candy pieces
individually wrapped by hand, popped-rice (that we call rice crispies), rice
paper, fish sauce and numerous other things.
Thursday we rose early to take
the 2.5 hour bus ride to the Cu Chi tunnels.
The extensive tunnel system many miles in extent was dough by the Viet
Minh after 1945 in their Ch Chi guerilla war against the French. Later, the fighters called Viet Cong
(communist) fought the puppet government in Saigon and the US from these
tunnels in the 60’s. For 30 years the
guerillas fought from these tunnels, only the last 10 against the US. Most of the guerrillas were young women and
communist-sympathetic men were in the North Vietnamese regular army. We had a delicious lunch in the area at a
family home, that was also attended by two local communist officials who
through our guides interpretation, participated in a lively “no holds barred”
discussion of Vietnam, US, politics, economics, etc. In with free time in the afternoon, I walked
to and went up to the 49th floor sky deck of the Bitexco Financial
Tower, tallest building in Saigon. The building has a unique lotus shape
with a heliport projecting off the side.
Communism: I believe we
Americans got our impressions and ideas about communism more specifically from
Russian communism. In this era
everything was done by government, shoe making, bread baking, farming, etc.,
etc., were all done in government facilities with government employee
workers. Here advancement, incentive, ambition
and rewards were non-existent. In
addition, though maybe not admitted, this was a dictatorship. Millions of people were killed over 5 decades
for no more than political reasons. That system failed as it should. Maybe about the same exists today in Cuba and North Korea and are probably headed
for the same destiny. Vietnamese
communism seems to be concentrated in politics, but most outward signs it
appears the economy operates about like ours.
It appears, in my short observation, that the communist government
controls about the same things that our government controls – public
infrastructure, defense, transportation, education, albeit the party and not
the public has control of all these things.
I was unable to learn much about how aggressive taxation is. Instead of “failing” perhaps, the Vietnamese
communist system evolves, like China, to be more democratic like ours, while
ours is evolving to be more socialist, like theirs?
Cambodia
February 23, Saturday: Yesterday
we flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and wandered around down
town. Our guide, Vang (Wayne) is the best we have had so far on the
trip. It’s not just the command of English, but the delivery. Others were good enough at English, but accents,
intonation, mannerisms, make them hard to understand. Today Vang took us to a killing field and
to a Khmer Rouge prison. It is the saddest
and most emotional day I can remember. I
can’t begin to tell all here and nobody wants to read it anyway. Vang had his own personal sad story (ask
about the gold in the well), but there are more than a million such. Under
leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge established 167 prisons in school,
hospital, etc. buildings, 343 killing fields, and 1.7 million, one third of the
Cambodian populous, were killed in 1976 -
78, more than 8,000 killed at Choeung Ek killing field that we visited. We also visited the Sleng Genocide Museum at the
cite of the S-21 prison. When you went
to prison, if you confessed you went to the killing field, if you didn’t, you
died – 7 people are known to have survived – 2 alive today! In addition, Duch confessed, thousands of
innocents including women and tiny children were killed in the most brutal
manner – because the Khmer feared that someday they would remember and seek
revenge! More at onedegreeforward.org. In Khmer Rouge, the
French rouge, red, refers to their communist politics, not their dark
skin. We also visited the palace of the Cambodian
King (ask about this guy). Cambodia used
American dollars more than their own money – only foreign country where you can
get dollars from the ATM.
Couple nights I walked down to
the local bar-pool hall, had a beer and played a few games of pool with the
local young Khmer girls that seemed to be hanging out there. They show up every night so they get a lot of
practice and play pretty well. Sunday we
departed Phnom Penh early for the 200 mile drive
to Siem Reap (means defeat Siam)
on the rickety old bus that OAT put us in this city. Along the way we stopped to dig up some tarantulas,
defang them, and deep fry them in hot oil for a morning snack before
lunch. Not bad, kind of like potato
chips or something prepared in this way.
Must have been 18 little kids Khmer between 4 and 8 years helping us and
immensely fascinated by the hair on my arms, as they have none.
Cambodia
is extremely flat between mountains of Thailand
and Vietnam and having a
large Tonlé Sap Lake in the center. The Great
Lake is unique that for much of the
year it drains down to the Mekong and is
relatively small. But in monsoon season
flow from the Mekong reverses to fill the lake
to cover an area about three times as large – so is drained and filled by the
same river. On Monday we visited one of
the floating villages on the northwest perimeter of the Great Lake.
In the afternoon, again I rented a bicycle $1/day and explored all of the Seim
Reap downtown area getting back to the hotel Anchor Paradise
after dinner and well after dark.
Each country on this adventure
is getting poorer, Cambodia
being worse, as one might expect just emerging from the regressive Khmer
Rouge. Its roads are poor, however, food
and drink are cheapest here. Its tourist
temples are least interesting, but seeing the people live in various primitive
conditions is most interesting.
Yesterday we saw three people cutting a small field of rice with
sickles. Sometimes they transport hogs
in a cage on the back of a motor bike, but in more primitive cases on an ox
cart towed by water buffalo. Angkor Wat
is the main tourist visit in the nation.
It is very large, but otherwise unimpressive excepting the fact it was
lost in the ‘jungle’ for several hundred years and found by the French in
1800’s. It was built by 500 thousand
people, half the population at the time, over about 30 years; has a HUGE moat
surrounding, maybe 1000 ft wide and several km in length all excavated with 12th
century hand labor. Kajaharo in India makes the
claim of being lost for centuries also, found by an English military officer, but
I found it much more impressive. Our
guide said Angkor Wat used to be one of the 7 wonders of the world, but they
had an internet vote to choose, and only 3 people in Cambodia have computers
…………….
February 27, Wednesday Our trip is nearing an end …….. I will have
to learn to eat with knife and fork again.
We went out for an ox cart ride visit to a poor village near Siem Reap
this morning as our last activity with OAT.
Next fly to Bangkok
for the night, then to LA tomorrow. So
many experiences they are all becoming a mushed together jumble. Chinese, Thais, Champas, Khmer, Where did I
see that? Prices lowest (dinner for $4
and a beer for $1 or less) in Cambodia. Thailand
next though Vietnam a close third
despite predictions from Thailand
guides that Vietnam
prices would be high. Girls long haired,
slim and lovely in Thailand,
with North Vietnam
a close second. So much history and current
everyday experiences with people who live and think differently – a wonderful
education and experience – I hope to return.
And here it is 4 weeks later (above)
and just having my first flight of Thai Air.
It’s all the adds say, flight attendants from heaven, complementary
cocktails and real silverware, dishes and glasses in coach – too bad I have to eat
this delicious meal with bamboo chopsticks.