Rompingground

Current Location: Hue, Viet Nam

I must say that I didn’t set out to do a six day trip by motorcycle upon entering Da Lat but the one day tour around Da Lat was a lot better than I could have imagined and he gave me a price that was better than I had expected so I figure I’d spend mom and dads Christmas gift on something that would take me off the beaten track.  As I often bemoan the typical backpacker circuit this would be a surefire way to get off the path and see some things authentically Vietnamese.

We left Da Lat promptly at 8:30a and proceeded to hit the countryside stopping as we went along to see what people were up to.  It took me a while to get used to this as I feel like we were intruding but it genuinely seemed like people were happy to sit and talk for a while to the guide and stare at me for a while. I met tons of locals at parks and things who were keen to have their picture taken and share a little rice wine or fruits as I walked along.  Not much else is said besides “Hello, How are you?” by both sides but it’s still fun and they usually get a kick out of saying anything in English.

This experience was very similar to the one day ride I did through the countryside of Battenbong where kids would smile, wave, and shout hello as the bike zoomed by often with me waving back.  It’s quite charming to see them all smiling on the side of the road.  My favorite experiences were those that felt fairly organic, often he would stop the bike and I would walk a kilometer or so just to stretch out my legs and I would often run into people on the side of the road, we’d both motion to each other and ‘converse’ as much as we could… I left each of these encounters smiling.

It’s nice to take a break after 6 days of running around Viet Nam on the back of a motorcycle.

I spent a few days resting in Hoi An and really enjoyed the place.  It’s easy to see why it has UNESCO World Heritage status with all of the old buildings down by the waterfront.  They shut down traffic at night and it becomes walking streets and you can almost pretend that you are back in time at that point, you just have to ignore the hundreds of tailor shops that inhabit Hoi An.  Other than that they have some wonderful regional food there that was extremely cheap and you could always find people to chat with.  I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the back alleys that wind their way past houses and have the occasional well driven in the middle of the path.   Definitely a must if you make it to Vietnam.

Last thing I did before leaving Hoi An is to visit the Marble Mountains, a suggestion given to me before leaving New Zealand by Terry.  It was worth the trip as the area isn’t heavily tourist and it’s basically left out of the Lonely Planet. Huge caves and lots of sculptures in there make it a neat place to visit, that along with being able to climb to the top of the mountain for a great view was awesome.

I’ve posted the first set of Viet Nam pictures

Christmas Decorations, Vietnamese style

Current Location: Unknown, Viet Nam

A quick note to wish everyone a merry christmas, I’m not sure where I’ll be when this posts so I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

I’ll be in the middle of doing a 6 day motorcycle tour from Da Lat to Hoi An through the central highlands of Viet Nam.

Last thing, I posted the remainder of the Cambodia pictures.

Temple Guy

edit: So I thought I could be fancy and schedule when this would post, but that didn’t work as planned… oh well.

Current Location: Saigon, Viet Nam

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cambodia since I left there, it left quite an impression on me in a few different ways. I would say that the most compelling feeling is the sense of hopelessness for the poor there. Every facet of any form of government is influenced by corruption, a frequent topic by Martyn and I. Cambodia is probably one of the greatest examples I’ve ever seen of the have’s and have-not’s, we would often see huge Mercedes or BMW’s cruising around the streets and at the very same time we could see the rest of the people just trying to get by on their bicycles. Because the corruption is so pervasive we couldn’t see a way out of the struggle, I certainly left with a sense of despair for whats to happen to Cambodia.

The second thing I did a lot of reflecting on is the history of Cambodia, namely the figure of Pol Pot and his influence on the history of Cambodia. I’m ashamed to say I had only heard the name Pol Pot before getting to Cambodia, I honestly didn’t know what he was responsible for. On my last day in Phnom Penh I visited S21, the site where he had thousands of educated Cambodians tortured and killed. It was a place that held a lot of gravity and many stories were told that shed a light on what happened there less than 30 years ago. The records kept included pictures of a lot of the inmates killed there, one in particular showed a woman holding her baby with her head slightly tilted, it rocked me to my core. The expression on her face is very powerful, that combined with the rest of S21 made for a very heavy last day in Cambodia.

I then caught a ferry to Chau Doc, a small border crossing on the Mekong river. The crossing was fairly uneventful and Chau Doc turned out to be a nice little intro into Viet Nam. I spent my day and half there walking around just wandering. First thing I noticed is that the women in high school wear the outfits seen in ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ it’s amazing they keep the dresses pure white with all the dirt and grime around, along with the cycling they do. It’s stunning in effect with the white dresses and the black hair. Other than that I got stopped a few times by random people on the street to have conversations about this and that and one guy had me write down a few words and phrases in English.

I now find myself in Saigon for the last few days wandering around once again. It’s pretty unremarkable except for the sheer amount of mopeds running around. One statistic I’ve heard is that there are 4 million people in Saigon and there are 3 million mopeds running around on the streets. The only advice I was given by other travelers is to close your eyes and cross the street, praying as you go. I haven’t tried this tactic yet as the traffic hasn’t been that awful yet, I do think that Hanoi will get worse.

Running around to the different museums in town it’s quite easy to get depressed about being American. The museums are quite well done with lots of photographs and stories told. Otherwise there are more temples or pagodas to visit or just people watch. I’m moving on to Dalat tomorrow, hopefully for a little colder climate.

Pictures to post when I get a chance.

Current Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

After spending a few days in Battenbong trying to get a glimpse of rural Cambodia I find myself in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.  Rolling into town on a bus I was caught off guard at how different this place is from Siem Reap and Battenbong.  It could almost be mistaken for Bangkok or a moderately sized asian city.  This mistaken idea comes from the idea that all the other towns I passed through and visited don’t even come close to the modern feel this place has.  I find myself staying the backpacker district which makes life pretty simple, $4usd gets me my own room with a bathroom attached which is quite a luxury from the dorm I was staying in Bangkok.

Battenbong is the second largest city in Cambodia yet it doesn’t get touristy like the rest of Cambodia due to the fact that there is not a whole lot there to see.  I found myself renting a tuktuk for a day to just take me around the country side to see what is out there, probably the most common thing to do in Battenbong.  It was a neat day riding around, quite charming to have kids run to the road to wave and shout hello at the passing tourist.  That was certainly the highlight of the days ride along with seeing yet more temples and completely random things like fruit bats, absolutely massive, and a jars full of snakes.

It’s strange to say that I’m staying in the backpacker quarter of the city, just seeing it seems quite contrary to the idea of backpacking, it almost takes out all of the challenge.  Though I must say that the benefit of staying in a place like that is the ability to meet other backpackers quite easily since we are all grouped together.  It’s certainly one of the joys to be able to meet so many different people, it’s sort of like college again except without the homework.

I spent the last few days running around with the folks I met at the guesthouse, first to an orphanage that an Aussie girl was teaching at for the last month.  The kids are absolutely adorable and really appreciate being taught.  It was fun just chilling out playing with toys with the kids for an hour.  After that I tagged along with a Kiwi who is playing at being a photojournalist.  He was headed to the municipal dump to see if he could visit with a community that lives on the fringes there.  We all spent a few hours wandering around meeting the people.  Not much was said that either could understand but the kids laughed a lot and the parents smiled.  It’s a fairly voyeuristic concept to do something like that but I guess that comes with being a traveler.  Derek admonished me last year for not taking more photos of people and that’s a concept I’m still not fully comfortable with.  It’s the idea that treating these people as if they were part of a human zoo is quite demeaning to them.  I try anyway, treating them as people instead of the background is what I try to focus on.

I’ll not get self-righteous and say that what we have as Americans is shameful compared to what some of the Cambodians live in.  But I will say that it certainly gives you a new perspective with which to look at life and what is important to have.  The kids living in there are quick to smile and laugh with us, an infectious behavior for all those involved.  I can’t say I know how the parents feel about living there, it would be quite presumptuous of me to say that they would want to be elsewhere, for all I know they could be quite content.  For a people who have been downtrodden on as much as the Cambodians they are surprisingly good matured.  They probably have every right to hate the falang but they treat travelers quite well.

I can see why some travelers have a hard time leaving Cambodia, it’s got a lot of charms without the chaos of Thailand and from what I hear Viet Nam can also be a challenge.  I delayed in getting my visa for Viet Nam by a few days and that has almost set me back a week due to a holiday and the weekend sneaking up on me, but I honestly can’t complain.  Phnom Penh is a nice place to get stuck.

Added a couple of pictures of Angkor Wat.

Long Hall

Current Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Crossing the border into Cambodia for the second time wasn’t any easier than the first, probably due to the fact that this time I was part of a group and got wrangled into paying an extra fee for getting my visa done with them instead of handling it on my own as I did the first time. Other than that little hiccup it was an uneventful ride through to Siam Reap, although I did see a couple of cycling tourists on the Thailand side which made me miss the cycle again.

Walking around town the first night to get my bearing I was astonished to find the downtown area so flash. I’m staying at the Happy Guesthouse in the backpacker district and it’s still on a dirt road, the guesthouse itself is very nice, 3 story hotel-ish building, while the downtown area could be mistaken for anywhere USA with all the trendy bars and restaurants all packed to the gills with falang tourists. It certainly feels like a tale of two cities because once you leave this district things immediately become evident that this sort of opulence doesn’t belong here.

I knew coming into Cambodia that the economy runs on the greenback but it’s still strange to go to an atm and pull out a wad of Jacksons. Officially the currency is the Rhiel, conversion 1usd = 4000rhiel, which instantly makes me a millionaire! Technically the currency might be the Rheil everything is quoted in USD. Foolish me I was swayed at the border to change what Baht I had left into Rheil after being called unpatriotic, I must learn to trust my instincts. Now I have 300,000 Rhiel to spend somehow.

I spent the entire day yesterday in the Angkor Wat area. I rented a cycle, a very ill-suited one I might add, for $1 and hit the road at 7am. Angkor Wat is as grand as I could have imagined and then some, and it’s not hard to see why it’s considered a wonder of the world. I’m not entirely sure people should have the kind of access they have to the area as lots of people touch the sandstone carvings, the sandstone can’t stand up to being groped all the time.

It did have the level of authenticity I was looking for in the Thailand temples, everything looks and feels untouched for the last 1000 years. I could take 1,000 pictures and still not capture 1% of the grandeur of the area. The level of detail is constantly astounding.

I think I managed to fit in 7 temples yesterday in the 10 hours I was wandering around the area, didn’t even bother stopping for lunch of a bathroom break (it’s so hot I drank 6 litres of water), cycling from temple to temple. I’ll not suffer you but maybe 20 pictures out of the hundreds I took yesterday. It’s something that needs to be experienced, pictures do it little justice.

For the amount of tourists in the area it was still possible to find quiet moments rest at some of the lesser travelled temples. Notably I got a 30 minute siesta at the top of Ta Keo, 50meter vertical climb that many people weren’t keen on doing, listening to the insects thrum and wondering how long it took to construct these temples.

The last temple to visit I heard was at the top of a hill that overlooks Angkor Wat, Angkor Wat is a particular temple, not the area, to catch the sunset. I got there a little bit early and there was already a massive amount of people. After a while I decided it wasn’t worth the chaos of crowds there and decided to hike it back and head into town where I’d treat myself to a pizza and beer after a long day. On the way down I met several more bus loads of people, good luck to them… I hope they got to see something after the long hike and vertical climb up to the top of the tower.

It was a fun day especially since I got to ride again, though it made me miss my saddle and I know now why I spent as much as I did on a Brooks. Lots of climbing vertical steps and walking, fending off touts.

Great day.

Getting around in Thailand hasn’t proved to be as much of a challenge as one would think it could be.  Since arriving here I’ve managed to take every conceivable mode of transport available.  I’ve taken trains, cabs, moto-taxis, bicycles, boats, buses, canal boats*, tuk-tuk, elephants, and my favorite bi-ped.

This will be my last post from Thailand for at least a month and a half, the plan at the moment is to spend about a week or a week and half in Cambodia and a month in Vietnam followed by a few weeks in Laos (gotta see the plain of jars.)

My impression of Thailand has changed since first blush quite considerably.  I enjoy Bangkok now that I know how to deal with it appropriately and I tend to take it in small bites otherwise it’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all.  It was fairly naive to have the impression that the smiles given here have nothing behind them, what I didn’t think about is that capitalism lies behind the smiles.  Everything here revolves around money in some form or another.  It is still a developing country so this attitude has to be understood to make it bearable, otherwise I’d feel taken advantage of at every corner. That being said I still plan on coming back here for a few more weeks at the tail end of SE. Asia and give the wwoofing here a shot to see how that goes.

*canal boats are a frenetic little boats that fly along the canal that crosses through the middle of Bangkok.  Used mostly by the locals I’m typically the only falang (foreigner) on the boat. They stop for fractions of a second at each pier where people disembark and embark at a pace rarely seen.  I stood confused the first time I got to the pier until the attendant hastily pointed a finger at a spot on the boat.  After that it’s an invaluable  resource for me to get around the city, since 99% of the rest of the time gridlock grinds the city to a halt.

I added 5 pictures a few days ago, notably of a me and a tiger.

Nice Smile

Current Location: Kanchanaburi, Thailand

It’s been a long week, at least it feels that way.  Hanging out in the hostel in Bangkok for a week waiting for things to arrive kinda slowed me down.  Fortunately for me the people at the hostel are really cool, watched a bunch of movies and basically chilled out for a week with them.  I got back on the road yesterday catching the train up to Kanchanaburi, infamous for where the bridge over River Kwai was built.

Short history lesson stolen from a guide book.

About 60,000 Allied POWs were shipped up from the captured Southeast Asian territories to work on the link between Thailand-Burma, these were later augmented by 200,000 conscripted Asian laborers.  By the time it was completed, after 15 months, it had earned the nickname, the Death Railway; an estimated 16,000 POW’s and 100,000 Asian laborers died while working on it

I was keen to see this re-created bridge along with the animal sanctuary here, where they let you pet tigers (how crazy is that.)

On a down note, I was traveling with a girl yesterday who was leaving from the same hostel I was up here.  We got here just fine and rented a couple of bicycles to get around town.  They had baskets in the front of the bicycles where we stuffed our bags, a couple of guys drove by on a motorbike and snatched her bag.  Spent half the day with the police sorting everything out.  Lesson learned to never take the backpack off the back, and invest in a money belt.

Heading back to Bangkok to spend the weekend with some friends of my cousins hopefully.  Then off to Cambodia early next week.

Happy thanksgiving to everyone, same request as I had last year.  Have a couple extra pieces of turkey for me, and an extra slice of pie.

Current Location: Bangkok, Thailand

I sit and stare at the crystal blue water and think I’ve failed to find any of the true Thailand.  I’ve seen temples and historical places and met a few people here and there, but I have the nagging suspicion I took the easy way out most of the time and haven’t experienced the true Thailand.  After being here a little over a month now I feel I know little more than I did before I got here with regard to Thai culture.  I’m not sure exactly how to remedy this for the remainder of South East Asia but it’s something to ponder on for the next few weeks.

At the same time It’s hard not to become more cynical towards a lot of the interactions here because of the tout culture.  I’ve come to realize that any information that comes to me unasked for is a lie and to believe the complete opposite of whats told to me.  A good example of this is at the Cambodian border where I was told countless times that if I left the border that day I wouldn’t be able to return the same day, of course this was completely unfounded and was able to return with no problems.  I realize they are just doing their job but from my perspective it gets very tiring to be on guard 24/7.  I keep reminding myself to have faith in humanity and that they are just doing a job, but it’s hard to remember that after being lied to for the millionth time.

I spent a few days on Koh Phi Phi island, famous for several reasons.  One was that it was devastated by a tsunami shortly after Christmas in 2004.  Any signs of the tsunami are far removed from what I can gather. The guidebooks say that rebuilding has been done to survive another tsunami but I find that hard to see as most of the structures look to be built with the same half-hazard construction I’m used to seeing.  The other reason is it’s where the film “The Ocean” was set, something I neglected to watch or read before getting here.  We went around on a longtail one day to see all the “pristine, deserted” beaches.  I wouldn’t go so far as to call them deserted as each one was flooded with longtails disgorging their passengers but they do manage to keep the beaches clean which made for some stunning beaches.  Pictures can’t do the blues justice, it’s a shifting kaleidoscope of blues.  It was fun to sit on the veranda and just look out into infinite blue.

Another long bus ride and I’m back in Bangkok figuring out what happens next.

Added a few pictures yesterday.

Stormy Boat

Current Location: Koh Tao, Thailand

It’s was quite an adventure making it to Koh Tao after being in Chiang Mai.  It took me two bus rides, each about 12 hours a piece, and 2 more boat rides to make it here.  The first bus ride straight after the Loy Krathon festival got me to Bangkok where I was supposed to catch a connecting bus to Surathani where I would connect to a boat.  But the taxi driver in Bangkok took me to the wrong bus and I ended up missing the bus and had to waste a day in Bangkok getting things sorted out.  So I ended up on a bus later that night and it was another over night spent on a bus making it to Champon to catch yet another bus to Suratani where I could catch a boat to Koh Samui and then Koh Phangan.  They kicked us off the boat at Phangan just saying we had to switch boats.  Little did we know they were asking us for 140 baht more to catch the next boat.  We were all pretty unhappy with this as it’s a common scheme to get more money but what choice did we have as we couldn’t get on the next boat without paying.

The next boat ride from Koh Phangan to Koh Tao ended up being quite an experience.  The waves were estimated at 3meters and the boat rocked, a lot.  By my guess there were over two dozen people sick all over the boat.  I was running around with other passengers who weren’t sick getting bags for people and trying to keep things in order.  Little did I know but even the boat engineer was sick in the back as well.  I had wanted to ride through extreme conditions and this satisfied that, I went through it with no reaction at all.  Wish I could say the same about the rest of the passengers.  After what felt like a precarious 2.5 hr boat ride we finally make it to Koh Tao just in time for a great sunset.

I signed up at Big Blue dive resort for my open water certification where they give accommodation and training for 9000 baht, a little over 300$ us.  My luck has it that the next day as we spend all day in the classroom the weather is amazing.  The next day as we start our practical  exercise the monsoon starts.  The rain falls in walls, not sheets.  Rivers everywhere and thunder and lightning to boot.  Our first open water dives the visibility is just about nil where the normal visibility here on the island is typically about 10-20 meters.  Our second day of diving the weather opened up for us and it is actually a postcard perfect weather day.  The second day of diving we made it down to 19meters (62 feet) and visibility was noticeably better.  Saw loads of fish and had a great day diving.  I took to it quite easily probably thanks to being in and around water a good portion of my life.  Some people had difficulty getting accustomed to taking off their mask and dealing with being underwater.  In the end 2 people in my class quit before finishing, it’s not for everyone.

We finish up with the tests tonight and I’ll be certified as an open diver by SSI (Scuba Schools International.)  I’ll probably hang out on the island for a few more days as the weather is supposed to stay this nice and then take off for somewhere else, just not sure where yet.