Chiang Mai and Cambodia

Hello all - I am sorry for not posting sooner. I have been travelling continuously and without internet access, so I hope that the next couple posts will catch everyone up.

On June 30, Kathleen arrived from India and the next day we left for Chiang Mai, a moderately sized city in Thailand's Northern region. Unfortunately, Kathleen got sick the day after we arrived and we didn't get to do much in Chiang Mai. I was able to go to a evening Thai cooking class, which I thoroughly enjoyed. For those who are wondering, the secret ingredient in Pad Thai that American Thai doesn't use is Tamarind juice, and it makes all the difference.

After we returned to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, we spent a day or two getting Kathleen well again. We then took a bus to Damnoen Sudak, a small town two hours away from Bangkok and home to Thailand's famous floating market. Once there, we hired a boat for an hour and perused the miles of canals, looking at souvenirs, eating coconut pancakes (made on a boat), and passing by various longtail boat vendors.

We returned to Bangkok for the night and left early the next morning for a strenuous trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Angkor Wat is a famous town that is home to hundreds of 10th and 11th Century Angkor Temples, known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We began our trip by taking a 5:55 AM train to Aranyaprathet, a Thai town on the border of Cambodia. The train does not have A/C and the windows are simply cut out from the walls of the train. Also, the ride was about 7 hours and we arrived at around noon in Aranyaprathet. From there, we took a Tuk-Tuk (open three-wheeled taxi) to the Cambodian border. We had to buy a Cambodian visa but got cheated by the border police into paying with Thai Baht, thus overpaying by $10. Once we crossed the border, we were in the Cambodian town of Poipet. The guide book told us to hop on whatever transportation is available to get to the transportation depot and take a bus to Siem Reap, the town next to Angkor Wat where everyone stays. Immediately upon crossing the border, there were about ten men who were telling us to get on the free "Government Bus" (which had a company name and logo on them) to the bus station. Everything in my body was screaming scam, but we simply had no other option and everyone told us to get on that bus. We asked taxis around and they even told us to go on the bus. The bus took us about 5 minutes away to a "bus station" which was really the office of this company. The station also had an extremely overpriced store and a money exchange office with terrible conversion rates. At this point, Kathleen and I were almost sure that it was some sort of high priced monopoly scam. We walked out of the bus station and asked a share taxi (another form of transportation to Siem Reap) to take us, but they all refused - a very unusual occurrence. So we grudgingly went back and bought two bus tickets for $10 each with the company.

At this point, it was 2:30 PM and the bus company told us the bus would leave in 5 minutes. Also, they said that the drive is about three and one half hours (the trip is 140 KM - about 90 miles). We boarded the bus to discover all foreigners (another ominous sign - Kathleen and I were the only tourists on the $1.50 train in Thailand). The bus ends up waiting another 45 minutes before leaving, and then stops 15 minutes into our trip to tell us that we are going to wait for more people. We wait another 30 minutes until two more passengers arrive, and then they tell us that they are going to switch buses, which takes another half an hour. We finally are on our way when the driver finds reasons to stop about three or four times, including hitting a truck in front of him, having to use the restroom, and things that they staff couldn't even really explain. We then take a one hour stop in a town 50 minutes from Siem Reap to eat and use the restroom. We arrive in Siem Reap at the guest house owned by the bus company (unsurprisingly) well after dark.

This is a classic bus scam. Aside from charging us about double of what it should cost, the goal is to make the trip as unpleasant as possible so that the passengers don't want to venture out in a new town and stay at the appropriated guest house. Kathleen and I were nothing short of furious and knew exactly what was going on, so we got out of there as quickly as possible and went to search for a place to stay. This part of our journey was really aggravating and unpleasant. However, Kathleen and I did not realize the extent of this scam until we spoke to our share taxi back to Poipet, which cost $7.50 each, was a private car just for us, and took one and a half hours. Our driver told us that the company that runs the bus scam/monopoly was run by the Cambodian Mafia (nonviolent). The reason that the other taxi drivers refused to pay us is because if they circumvent the mafia, they won't get any passengers anymore. Also, the mafia takes about one third of the profits. They really have a well-run monopoly and ensure that anyone who bypasses the system will not be able to make money in the future.

Once we arrived at Siem Reap and escaped from the bus scam, things immediately got much better. Siem Reap is a really nice town with friendly people, good food (although Cambodian food isn't as good as Thai food), and interesting street vendors. Kathleen and I were angry, exhausted, and frustrated. We went to the guest house that we chose in the guidebook but it looked pretty bad for $14 a night. We then went to another two that weren't great either, and found ourselves at another nice guesthouse that had drilling and power machinery construction outside all night. Upon driving into Siem Reap, we had noticed at least ten extremely pretty, luxurious hotels that all were completely empty (it is the low season right now). We noticed a couple of these close by and decided that we should ask how much they were. Most ranged from $50-70 a night, which was too expensive for our budgets. However, combined with our new discovery that one can bargain over hotel costs, Kathleen and I landed a Mediterranean style villa resort called the Terrace Des Elephants for $100 for 3 nights. The rooms typically range in the hundreds of dollars, but we bargained down to $50 a night plus buy two nights and get the third night free and free breakfast. The room was simply incredible. We had a full Angkor style fountain in our room that emptied into a large moat, with a Angkor style bridge that leads over the moat to the shower. We had satellite TV with two CNN's, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and HBO, not to mention the atypical amenities of air conditioning, hot water, toilet paper, towels, blankets, and a flushing toilet (all of which we have had rooms without). The room was on par with a five star hotel, and it will probably be the nicest room that we can afford for a long, long time.

For the next two days, Kathleen and I explored the Hindu and Buddhist temples and ruins of Angkor Wat. Each was more stunning and elaborate than the next, and it was absolutely magnificent. We hiked through ancient temples that weren't much more than ruins, left the same way as when they were discovered hundreds of years ago. We also had some great food and some not so great food. One Cambodian dish, called Laab, stood out particularly. Laab is a stir fry of a meat (we chose chicken), sweet basil, chillies, lemon juice, bean sprouts, and garlic. It sounds really good, but unfortunately each flavor was so overpowering that it made the food almost inedible. It tasted like someone stir-fried chicken along with half a can of Lysol. Once again, Kathleen and I decided that our favorite food was the street food.

My overall impression of Cambodia is much more positive than I first expected. However, it still is a developing/third world country and contrasts starkly with Thailand. The roads are pretty bad, the border guards corrupt, and land mines still abound in the countryside. For as much as the sex tourism in Thailand is overt, the sex trade and child sex slavery is underground in Cambodia. I found it really hard to think about what occurred in the country in the past 40 years. During the Vietnam War, the United States repeatedly carpet-bombed Cambodia. Driving around, it was weird to consider that we bombed this country a couple decades ago. Furthermore, the Khmer Rouge tormented the Cambodian populous for years. We unfortunately did not have time to go to Phenom Penh and visit the killing fields, but it is something that I want to do in the future. The legacy of the Khmer Rouge remains. One of our waiters, who eventually told us a little about the war that he had lived through in Cambodia, told us that he was very old (he was 28).

Our return to Bangkok was much easier and pleasant than the trip to Siem Reap, albeit 12 hours. We had a day or two to relax and then we left for the Krabi province of Thailand, which I will leave for another post.