Traveling is hard work, so sometimes it’s nice to take a vacation, and do nothing. That’s what we did in Pokhara for an entire week. The typical day went something like this:

8:00 am - Run to toilet for morning diarrhea
9:00 am - Breakfast of muesli fruit curd at the Lemon Tree. Read newspaper.
10:00 am - Trip to toilet for mid-morning diarrhea.
11:00 am - Drink huge tub of fresh orange juice for $1. Read book.
12:00 pm - Cheese sandwich at a sandwich shop.
1:00 pm - Browse bookstores.
2:00 pm - Afternoon snack of a dubious baked good. Read book.
3:00 pm - Check email.
4:00 pm - Read book.
7:00 pm - Meet up for dinner.
10:00 pm - Read book.
11:00 pm - Bed (no nightlife in Nepal).

It’s amazing how fast the time goes when you do nothing.

Towards the end of our stay we asked about flights to Lhasa, and to our horror, discovered that China has totally closed Tibet due to SARS. Strange, since there are no cases there. This threw me for a loop, since I was going there next.

Back to Kathmandu. An excessively large dinner at Fire and Ice. We managed to spend $17, an impressive feat. I ate so much I was bloated and ill. Plus there’s my continuing stomach problems. I went to a doctor and pooped in a cup. Apparently, I don’t have Giardia. I did have white blood cells in my sample, so the doc thinks I have a bacterial infection, and gave me three antibiotic pills. I’ve taken two so far, and still feel ill.

I spent some time thinking about where I would go next. Then I remembered that my original plan was to return to South East Asia. A couple months there, then hopefully SARS will have blown over, and I can go to China. It’s easier to visit Tibet from inside China, so this could work out better in the long run. It stinks that I wasted $30 on a Chinese visa though, since mine will have expired by the time I go, so I’ll have to pay another $30.

So I bought my ticket to Bangkok today, and leave on the 11th, four days before my Nepal visa expires. I can’t believe I spent two months here. I look forward to returning to Bangkok. Delicious food, Thai massages, and the monsoon await me!

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Durbar Square

Time for an update on the state of my gastrointestinal tract. The situation is grim, and the odds are against me. The pills, which ended up costing me $65, did nothing. But now, I have the additional problem of having to run to a toilet every time I eat something. The constant need to be near a toilet makes travel difficult, so I’ll have to see a doctor again in Bangkok. Hopefully the third time is a charm.

Another annoyance is that the cold I’ve had for two weeks won’t go away. My nose is amazingly snotty. Every time I blow my nose with the toilet paper I’m forced to use here, the huge volume of snot overloads the flimsy material, and sprays all over my face. It’s not pleasant.

Even with my convalescence, I managed to make two early morning forays. First to Kathmandu Durbar Square at 6:30 am. The place was tourist and wanna-be guide free, so it was pleasant just to sit around and watch life go by. Lots of Hindus were making their morning puja offerings.

Terry the Monk

Today I got to the big Boudha Tibetan Buddhist stupa at 6 am. Hundreds of people were circumambulating the structure, while working prayer beads, and spinning prayer wheels. And once again, the place was tourist and guide free. Being an early bird pays off.

There’s nothing stopping anybody from buying a monk’s robes, so the place has its share of bums dressed up like monks, begging for alms. I stopped at a store to do some shopping. I tried on the monk’s maroon “skirt,” yellow belt, funky yellow vest, and maroon cowl. Tibetan monks are certainly better dressed than their South East Asian counterparts. After a little haggling, I got a “special price” of 900 rupees, about $11. Now I can be a monk too. Om mani padme hum!

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I’m glad to be out of Kathmandu. No more dodging cars every time I walk down the street, or being mobbed by Tiger Balm/hashish guys. Unfortunatly, it’s a bit more humid here. So much so I’ve already soaked one shirt in sweat while looking for a room. Khao San Road seems dead, probably due to SARS, but nobody would bargain with me. So I’m paying $10 for an AC room with shared bath. Ouch.

After three-and-a-half months in two of the world’s poorest countries, coming back to Bangkok is like coming back to the twenty-first century. There are skyscrapers, huge lit-up billboards, McDonald’s, Mercedes Benz dealerships. Even the vendors packing the sidewalks have tables and racks for their wares, instead of just throwing a blanket on the ground.

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I'm typing this from one of Bangkok's many Starbucks. That's right, I've finally bought myself the laptop I've been hankering after. I headed for the legendary Panthip Plaza to do some shopping. It's a geeks dream; a seven story mall selling computers, any kind of hardware you could want, and of course, pirated software, CDs, and DVDs. After verifying that the prices weren't tooexpensive (about $200 more that what I would have paid at home), I bought myself a Fujitsu Lifebook S. It's a bit bigger than the microscopic P model that Mike "Vagabonding" Pugh carries, but it has a usable screen. On subsequent trips to my new favorite place, I had the Thai keyboard replaced with an English one, picked up an anti-theft cable that plugs right into the case, and stocked up on software. Want Microsoft Office? $2.50. Every program that Adobe or Symantec has ever made? $2.50. Pro/Engineer or AutoCad? $2.50. Of course there's a chance they'll sell you blank or scratched disks, but you get what you pay for. There are even dodgy guys lurking about offering to sell me "sexy movies." It's funny when little old Thai ladies accidently look at a table of pirated hard-core porn, then just move on non-chalantly to the tables of pirated music. Even the monks were stocking up on software.

So I've been giving a lot of thought to where I will go next. I had to pay a 7% VAT on my laptop, which I can only get refunded to me if I fly out of the country. Flying to Vientiene, Laos doesn't make much sense to me, since I still want to visit Chang Mai some day. Plus, I don't think I'm up for Laos. I want to hit that country hard, like I did Myanmar. So I think I'll go to Cambodia for a month instead, and take it easy. Just spend a week in Siem Reap, Phenom Phen, and at the sea.

In the meantime I've been managing to keep myself busy, between shopping for computer stuff, clothes (everything I'm wearing, except my underwear, was purchased in Thailand), eating a mix of spicy Thai food and familiar Western food (Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts), and watching movies. So far I've seen the new X-Men and Matrix movies. I saw Matrix on opening day, and didn't get to the theater early enough. The only seat left was in the "VIP Theatre," which cost double the price ($5). This turned out to be a small theater with big fluffy reclining seats. It also seems to be a popular place for 50-year-old white guys to bring their 20-year-old Thai dates. The movie was difficult enough to follow, and the guy talking on his cell phone next to me didn't help. I was forced to shush him.

Scam Averted

During one of my trips to Panthip Plazza, I had a strange encounter, which I'm pretty sure was a scam. Going down an escalator, a guy started singing a song in English (weird), which got my attention. He asked where I was from, and when I said America, he got all excited. He asked me to come to the A&W with him (weird). I figured I'd go along to see what would happen. We sat down, but he didn't order anything (weird). In good English (weird, for a Thai), he said he had a neice in the US Navy at Camp Pendalton (weird). He also asked alot of stupid questions, like he was deliberatly playing dumb. Then his wife came in, who spoke perfect English, and seemed very intelligent. The whole conversation was very forced, since I just met them 5 minutes ago. Then the guy said his sister was going to the US, and they wanted me to come talk to her to "give her advice." I immediatly had a few problems with this:

• I don't know what kind of "advice" I would be able to give.
• Why doesn't he ask his neice, in the US Navy, for "advice."
• In order to speak such good English, they both must have talked to many Americans.
• Doesn't the sister have a say? Is she always standing by, waiting for advice?

There's nothing I would like more than to spend time with a Thai family, but given the weirdness, I made an excuse, and fled the scene. Thai scams aren't life-threatening, and don't involved violence, but are elaborate schemes to separate tourists from their money. I'm sure there was no sister. They just wanted to get me to an apartement, where perhaps a card game would be going on. They would invite me to play, then show me a secret way of winning all the time. Then I'd hear about the rich guy from Singapore, who's in town and plays cards. They'd draft me so they could try to scam him, but then I'd lose all my money in the "real" game. Or maybe they have some jewelry I can buy for cheap, and sell for a huge proffit at home, but it would turn out to be junk. There's a whole section in all the guidebooks devoted to this stuff. I don't want to be so paranoid that I have no contact with locals, but it's pretty easy to size people up. If they want me to go somewhere with them, or want someting from me, or are just being too friendly, it's probably a scam. And the chances of having contanct with the locals in a busy place like Bangkok are pretty low, unfortunatly.

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• Sending weeks with people, becoming great friends, then never hearing from them again after you go your separate ways.

• Having to share a bed with a backpack and its scattered contents.

• Frequent packing, and always wondering if I will get everything to fit.

• Twelve-hour bus rides.

• Constantly having to figure out where I’m going next, how I’m going to get there, and where I’m going to sleep.

• Always having to deal with aggressive touts and salesmen.

• Not having any role in society.

These are a few of the reasons I grow weary of traveling. Don’t get me wrong, there are still many places I want to go: China, Mongolia, Russia, Europe. And some day I’d like to go overland from Cape Town to Cairo.

But I love what I’ve seen of Bangkok so far. Once you get beyond the awful Khao San Road, where everyone wants to sell you something, Bangkok is a big, exciting, bustling, vibrant city. It has all the modern comforts of home, but beneath the modern veneer of air-conditioned shopping malls and movie theaters, it is foreign, mysterious, and exciting. I want to spend some time here, and have some ideas. I can study meditation and Thai cooking for awhile. If I still like it, I can study for a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification, then get a job. If that works out, I could try for something more lucrative. I have several vague ideas, which I won’t go into yet.

But first, Cambodia. I have to fly somewhere for my $200 VAT refund, so I spent $200 on plane tickets. Yeah, that may not make much sense, but I do kind of want to go, and even though it was expensive, I found a good travel agent who got me a good price on a series of tickets. First to Siem Reap, then to Phnom Penh, then back to Bangkok. This way I can be a posh traveler, and avoid long bus and boat rides. Even so, I’m only sort of excited at the prospect of seeing Angkor Wat. When you’re not excited about seeing one of the world’s greatest feats or architecture, you know you need a break from traveling.

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The flight to Phnom Penh was practically empty. I’m guessing that between SARS, and the recent anti-Thai riots, not to many people are going to the Kingdom of Cambodia. This will be great, since I should have Angkor Wat to myself.

I took a moto into town for $2. A moto is the main form of transport in Cambodia, which I’ll have to try to get used to. It consists of a guy on a Honda Dream motorbike, a.k.a, the “workhorse of Asia.” Needless to say, helmets are not provided. Even though I’m not a big fan of motorbikes ever since the “incident,” the bikes are so underpowered it’s not too scary.

After all I heard about Cambodia, and after seeing the recent Matt Dillon flick set here called City of Ghosts, I thought Phnom Penh would be a bombed out shell. It actually looked pretty nice. The place is way ahead of Yangon, with internet cafes and mobile phone stores, but light-years behind Bangkok. It was pretty quiet too, when I came in at 10 pm. We did pass a colorful-looking nightclub.

I made a special effort to get to Siem Reap ASAP, so I fly tomorrow morning. Now, I’d almost like to check out the capitol a little. But I’ll be back in a week.

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Just like in Tomb Raider

An early start to catch my plane. The city looked totally different in the morning, and unlike any city I’ve seen. The population was already awake at 6 am, and zooming around on their Honda Dreams. I look forward to spending some time here.

But for now, off to Siem Reap. I thought Mike said to stay at Guesthouse No. 9, so I asked one of the moto kids at the airport if he knew where it was. He said “yes,” but seemed confused. I knew what was coming, but was too tired to care. Once on the bike, he started apologizing about not knowing where the No. 9 is. Of course he had his own place, which seems alright, so I’ll probably stay here due to inertia. Despite his deception, which is to be expected, I’ll let him take me to the sites tomorrow morning.

Having a room, and feeling tired and unmotivated, I slept for three hours. Then I rented a bike for a buck, and rode around in search of food. I was really surprised at how nice the town of Siem Reap is. All green and leafy, with palm trees everywhere. Lots of modern buildings, which are inevitably hotels and restaurants, and none of the grime of Phnom Penh. Even though it seems to be a real Cambodian town full of Cambodians, it’s also a tourist town, making big bucks off of us, so I won’t draw any conclusions about Cambodia as a whole, yet.

Then at 2 I rode to the Angkor site, for my first view of Angkor Wat. I coughed up the $60 for a seven-day pass. My first impression was “wow, it’s big!” But the view was spoiled by all the renovations going on. It was still impressive, though, just not photogenic. First you cross a big causeway (covered with green tarps) to the wall, then proceed down a long road to the temple (covered with scaffolding), for the famous view of the five towers. Immediately inside the temple is a series of highly detailed bas relief’s, immediately setting Angkor apart from Bagan. The temples of Angkor get more interesting the closer you get, while the opposite was true in Bagan.

The beauty's in the details

In the central courtyard you can climb up to the top of the pyramid. That’s another difference from Bagan, whose temples were often closed off. You could climb wherever you wanted on this one. Like all other ancient temples, the stairs were narrow and incredibly steep. But it wasn’t too high, so wasn’t particularly scary.

I was right in my guess that there wouldn’t be too many foreign tourists. I only saw a few. And according to my hotel’s guest register, I’m the first person to stay there in a week. But it was packed with Cambodians. Angkor Wat is a huge source of national pride (it’s even on their flag), and as such, Cambodians get in free, while I have to pay $10 a day. It’s also the place to get married in Cambodia, and there were several wedding parties, complete with Khmer karaoke!

The Khmers

The Khmer people look as distinct from the Thais as Tibetans look from the Chinese. They also speak a totally different language, easily distinguished from Thai, as “kha” is not every other word. On a superficial level (the level you experience as a tourist), they seem happy and friendly, not unlike the Thais.

Keeping it Riel in Cambodia

Cambodia has its own currency, the riel, so I bought $40 of it. But it turns out everyone wants good ol’ US dollars. Then when you buy something that costs less than a dollar, you get change in riel (1000 riel = 25 cents).

Whatever the currency, so far Cambodia ain’t cheap. I’ll have to be careful not to go broke in one of the world’s poorest countries. But I’ll also have to try to get rid of all my riel.

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The amazing Bayon

My first full day at the temples. I got up at 4:30 for the sunrise over Angkor Wat, which proved to be non-existent, due to clouds. After that, my moto boy, Chan, took me to about seven more temples, including the Bayon, with its famous towers with a giant, strangely grinning face on each of their four sides, and the so-called “jungle temple,” with trees growing out of the buildings. I liked the jungle temple a lot, since it was very atmospheric.

When it came time for lunch, I told Chan I wanted some real Khmer food, not the tourist stuff. He told me about some of his favorite dishes: curry dog, curry cat, fried cat, steamed cat, and curry mouse. I said I’d stick to the curry chicken. In a way it’s good that people eat cats and dogs here. These aren’t the cute, cuddly pets you’re used to, but disgusting, dirty, rabid street vermin. The poodles have it pretty good, though, since they get adopted as pets.

By 1 pm I couldn’t stay awake, so had Chan take me back to the hotel, where I slept for three hours. Then I wandered around in search of cheap food. Last night I had an Indian dinner, which was excellent, but cost $6. Tonight I found a street stall selling tasty crispy fried fish and a Coke for $1.

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Ankor girls

Today I rented a bike. I visited the Bayon again, and checked out the rest of the temples in the ancient city of Angkor Thom. Then I took an unpaved road to where I thought some minor temples would be. It turned out to be villages filled with smiling people saying “hello” as I road past. With so many friendly people, I couldn’t help but smile.

The villagers were a nice change of pace from the restaurant ladies and the postcard kids. They’ll have a row of ten identical restaurants by each temple, with nothing to distinguish them except for their comically aggressive proprietors: “You want cold drink, sir?” “You want something to eat, sir?” When Japanese people walk by, they’ll shout “Oni-san!” Since I’m usually the only foreign tourist around, I’ll get all their attention, and there will be a chorus of shouting. One time I used the “eany-meany-miney-moe” method to pick one, since they are all exactly the same. I don’t think they got the joke.

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Main Street

Now that I’ve seen all of Angkor’s temples (well, all the more interesting ones; if you were truly psycho, you could spend another week seeking out all the minor ones), it was time for something different. Since my guide book says “no visit to Cambodia is complete without a trip to the Tonle (pronounced tone-lay) Sap Lake,” it was time to head out there. I wasn’t too excited, due to the high cost ($8 for a one-hour boat ride), the low water, and the fact that it sounds pretty touristy.

It turned out to be really great, a high point for Cambodia, so far. I find I like observing people, rather than buildings, and even the mighty Angkor Wat doesn’t excite me. Sights and monuments are just excuses to go places to look at people. Going to the Tonle Sap was a chance to watch, too briefly, some strange and fascinating people, living in a strange and fascinating place.

The moto ride took me down one of Cambodia’s terribly bumpy dirt roads, past some of the poorest villages I’ve ever seen. The villages were just tiny bamboo huts on stilts along the road. The dirty women and children lazed around in them, which are totally open to the outside, and the men played billiards on tables with only a corrugated-steel roof over them, and no walls. Garbage was everywhere, and the smell of rotting vegetables almost made me wretch. It was the most shocking poverty I’ve seen so far. Unlike the poor people I met on my bike ride through the countryside, these people did not smile or wave at me. In fact, they didn’t seem too happy at all.

Ankor monks

As interesting this was, it got more pleasant once I paid my $8 and got into the longtail boat. I had read about the “floating villages,” but didn’t really think about what this entailed, so seeing it was quite amazing. Everybody lives off of fishing in the great lake, and has their own boat, so there are hundreds of boats, moored to form makeshift streets. In addition to the house boats, there are school boats, police boats, store boats, karaoke boats, and fish farm boats.

It was fascinating watching the people go about their business, lounge about on their houses, and drive around in their longtail boats. Unfortunately, the place is spoiled by tourism. I took some angry-looking kids’ photo, then they put their hands out for money. Luckily we were speeding by, and didn’t stop. Nobody was glad to see me, or even looked twice at me. And instead of stopping at a real fish farm, we stoped at the “tourist fish farm,” a clean boat (making it stand out like a sore thumb) with some tiny aquariums filled with big fish that have nowhere to swim.

All told, I’m glad I did it, and it was a good change of pace from the daily grind of looking at thousand-year-old temples. In fact, I didn’t even go into Angkor today.

Scam Averted

Perhaps this will become a regular feature. One of the guys on the boat described the “fishing exhibition,” and said their was a $3 charge. It sounded lame, and I said I didn’t want to see it. So he asked how much I would pay. I said $1, and didn’t budge, so he said OK, pay me. I asked why do I pay him, and he said it was “easier.” Uh huh, I said, I’ll just pay them, thank you. Sure enough, it was free, and I only had to buy a Fanta. This time, I was in the unique position of being able to discuss the scam with the potential scammer. He actually seemed embarrassed. I asked if anybody pays, and he said some do. It really depresses me when people try to rip me off like this. When we got back to shore, the crew high-tailed it out of there, leaving me on my own to climb across the other boats to get to land.

Ankor sunset

Conservation

I can’t help comparing the conservation efforts here and at Bagan, in Myanmar. The efforts here, done by conservation NGO’s, seem to consist of cleaning bas-reliefs and lintels, and putting them back together. The latter task must have been monumental (pun intended), since there are huge pile of rocks lying around, each with a portion of a sculpture on it. Somehow someone has put some of these puzzles back together.

At Bagan, they are totally rebuilding the temples. When a tower has collapsed, they just rebuild it with new bricks. So you end up with temples with a mix of old and new bricks. They’re also gilding towers in gold. Imagine if the Egyptians started repairing the Pyramids. It would be a tragedy. That’s what’s going on in Myanmar. The other goofy stuff going on there are all the ugly new temples they are building, and the plans for a new observation tower. At least here they just fix what’s there, instead of building new stuff.

Democracy in action

While Myanmar provides an example of an absence of democracy, Cambodia provides an example of democracy gone wrong. I’ve only started reading about Cambodia’s messed-up politics, and don’t fully understand the situation. But in a nutshell, after the Vietnamese deposed the genocidal Pol Pot, they installed an obscure lackey called Hun Sen. He’s been in power ever since, despite the fact that he has lost and rigged several elections. Not surprisingly, he’s a corrupt strongman who uses the police to do his dirty work, executes journalists who write bad things about him, and has thugs throw grenades into demonstrations against his regime.

It happens that there is an election next month, and there are signs everywhere for the three main political parties. Chan said he doesn’t like Hun Sen. But at one of the temples there was a big meeting. A couple kids said it was a Cambodia People’s Party (Hun Sen’s party) campaign meeting, and there was a crowd of a couple hundred excited villagers waiting for the free gifts the campaigners give out. I asked the 17 year old kids, to young to vote, who they liked, and they loved Hun Sen. They enthusiastically described how he deposed the Khmer Rouge (the Vietnamese did), and how great the “Hun Sen School” was in their village (image if George W started opening “George W Schools).

Chan explained that the people in the country have no source of information, so they believe whatever the CPP tells them. So who’s better off, the Burmese, with their corrupt, oppressive government, or the Cambodians, who are free to vote for whoever they like, as long as they vote for their corrupt, oppressive, government.

The Jungle Temple

“Would you like a happy pizza?”

A Westerner cannot live on rice alone, so I went for lunch at Happy Herb Pizza. The waiter asked if I wanted a “happy pizza.” I had to ask him several times what the hell he was talking about, until he finally came out and said marijuana. Right, I had forgotten what country I was in!

Mister Boom Boom

One of the moto drivers who keeps trying to pick me up as a I walk around by myself at night only know two words of English: “boom,” and “boom.” He’ll always drive up with a big smile on his face and ask “boom boom?” This cracks me up, so he won’t go away, and will follow me for a block, reminding me every few steps that he is a source of “boom boom,” using his limited vocabulary. One time after he left, I stopped at a street vendor to buy water, and there he was again. “Boom boom?” he asked hopfully.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of Cambodia

Even though this is the rainy season, it’s only rained once since I’ve been here. Without rain, there’s nothing to lower the temperature, so we’re talking 40C days, and a relentless, profoundly, breathtakingly hot sun between 11 and 3. It’s impossible to do anything for those four hours without getting drenched in sweat, and dreaming of AC. I’ve established a routine of starting my excursions at 7 am while it’s still bearable. At noon I stop for a long lunch, then a siesta in the hammocks the Khmers always have handy. By 2 pm I can get back to work.

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