Cambodia

I left Thailand on March 28. I really wanted to like Bangkok and give it a chance, especially since most everyone I talked to hated it and said to get out as soon as possible. I have to agree with them. It has a nice airport and a few good temples, but if I was pressed for time, I would forgo Thailand for Cambodia and Vietnam.

I took a minibus to the Cambodian border. There were 12 people on the bus - 11 guys and one girl. I was hoping there would be more girls. The bus took us to the Cambodian Consulate in Aranyaprathet at the border to get our visas. Then we walked across the border into Poipet Cambodia. We were then taken to a bus station to get shared taxis to go into Siem Reap, home of the Angkor Wat temples. I met three Brits from Liverpool on the trip, Craig, Tony, & Tom. I spent the next few days hanging out with them and traveling to Phnom Penh. After about eight total hours of traveling, we made it into Siem Reap.

Cambodian border.

Cambodian landscape. Cambodia is very, very flat, like north Mississippi between Memphis and Tunica. Mississippi has a few more paved roads though. It was also the dry season.

There are a lot of new-looking luxury hotels and resorts along the main road into Siem Reap. I was told that the most expensive room in town cost $4,000 US dollars. This strikes me as totally ridiculous in a country where the average daily wage is $2 and a perfectly good, immaculately clean room with a private bath and breakfast can be had for $6 ($12 if you want air conditioning).

Cambodia was once a colony of France. The first evidence of this was at breakfast. You get a nice baguette with breakfast instead of the weak-ass white toast you get in Thailand. Also, Cambodia has its own currency, the real, but prices are always quoted in US dollars. It's actually easier to pay in dollars. It still amazes me how a country on the other side of the world uses the US dollar as its preferred currency.

The Cambodians are quite attractive people. They have this beautiful bronze skin tone, the kind that white people spend hours and hours in the sun or in tanning beds trying to attain, risking skin cancer, premature aging, and sunspots. They also appear to be very happy. I've seen some of the biggest smiles ever here. KFC is the only American fast food chain in Cambodia and the one in Siem Reap had just opened a few weeks prior. I couldn't believe how happy the workers were. In the states, people who work in fast food restaurants have this look like it's all they can do to keep from killing themselves. Here it's different.

On March 29, we toured the Angkor Wat temples. There is actually a series of temples, of which Angkor Wat is the largest. I saw five temples in one day. It was incredibly hot and really wore me out. But the temples were amazing. When I bought the ticket, they took my picture and I got a personalized ticket.

When the tuk tuk pulled in and dropped us off at Angkor Wat, we were immediately surrounded by at least a dozen really young kids selling drinks, postcards, guidebooks, bracelets, etc. Since I already had a bottle of water and was not interested in another, they tried to get me to promise to buy another when I came back. I made no promise, but that didn't stop them from asking me 100 times as we were walking to the temple. When we came back, sure enough the kids were there. As it became apparent we were not going to buy any of their drinks, they started turning the screws. "You promise me", "I wait for you for two hours". Then they started getting nasty. "You good lying man!" (I think they meant "no good lying man") "You number one liar!" It was funny but sad that these kids were not in school. I kind of wish I'd given them a dollar for entertainment value, even though the money doesn't really go to help these kids.

I don't mean to make fun of these kids' grasps of the English language, they couldn't have been older than eight. A lot of people in southeast Asia speak a little bit of English. Most of them don't have the greatest grasp of the language, but that doesn't stop them from trying. It is kind of humorous to see translations on menus, signs, and instructions that aren't exactly right. But the fact that so many people speak some English is good for me as a tourist. It's much more widely spoken in Asia than it is in South America, making travel quite a bit easier. In Asia, most hotels and guest houses have a travel agent on site who speaks English and can book tours and tickets. In South America, usually I had to make a special trip to the bus station and purchase a ticket there from somebody who spoke no English.

Angkor Wat is the largest of the temples.

I thought Wat Bho was the most interesting.


I forget the name of this one, but I call it the one with the trees growing up through it.


I spent the next few days chilling in Siem Reap. I liked the town. It wasn't very big, but due to the number of tourists coming in, it had enough restaurants, diversions, and a chilled vibe that made it worthy of a few days. I particularly enjoyed Amok with fish - a very typical Cambodian dish. One night we went to a really local place with some people we'd met who were there more long term doing volunteer work. It was quite a bit away from the tourist part of town. The door to the kitchen was open and the cook was not wearing a shirt. We had a chicken bone stir-fry. This is basically what is left over after cutting up a chicken, mostly the back. It was cut in to bite-sized pieces and stir fried with vegetables in a spicy-sweet sauce. So you obviously had to get your hands dirty to get at the meat. Most westerners don't like to get their hands dirty when eating. We only pick up food with our hands if it's dry or crispy (ribs being one exception). Most people in the east are quite comfortable with this.

A fish massage is a must-do when traveling to Siem Reap. I don't think it is technically a massage, but you pay $3 for 20 minutes to let fish eat the dead from your feet. It was a really strange sensation - somewhere between ticklish and painful.

After seeing some pictures of Angkor Wat at sunrise, I really wanted to go back and get some better pictures. On April 1, I went to Angkor Wat by myself to see the sunrise. It was my last day in Siem Reap. It was a cloudy day and my pictures didn't come out quite as magnificent as I'd hoped. There were about 50 or so people out there at 5:30am waiting to see a disappointing sunrise.

Here is what I saw.

Below is a photo from the internet. This is what it would have looked like if it had been a clear morning and I had been a professional photographer.

I waited there until about 7:00 am, kind of knowing it was not going to get any better. At one point I looked down at my feet. I was wearing someone else's flip flops. In most Asian hotels and guesthouses, they make you take off your shoes at the ground level before walking upstairs to your room. It was dark when I left at 5:15 and I couldn't really see what I was doing.

At 9:00 on April 1 we took a bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The entertainment on the bus was a bunch of Karaoke videos. At first they were in Cambodian. The background for all the videos seemed to be the same guy looking off in the distance with a brooding look while the lyrics in Cambodian flowed across the bottom of the screen. After a while they popped in a disk of some American songs. They were mostly crappy ballads like Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx, Hello by Lionel Richie, and Feelings by Albert Morris. So of course we had to sing along. No one else on the bus seemed to mind, as our singing wasn't nearly annoying as playing karaoke videos in the first place. The most hard rocking song played was Hotel California.

Lots of motorcycles in Asia. It is very common to see 2-3 people on a bike plus kids and babies. No seat belt laws here.

We got into Phnom Penh in the afternoon and checked into an even cheaper guesthouse ($5/night) on a lake in the middle of town. It was very tranquil, but lots of bugs.

On April 2, we hired a tuk tuk driver and went on tour of Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh, you re constantly hounded by offers for tuk tuk rides. We finally decided on a guy who was at least nice about it. He basically said he would take us around for six hours for whatever we wanted to pay him. We paid him $4, which was probably too much.

The first stop was at a shooting range. I haven't shot a gun in a really, really long time. I'd heard you can shoot some pretty big guns here. The driver took us to a Cambodian military base. After looking over the assortment of guns, I decided on an M-16. The cost was $50, a large chunk of cash here, to fire 30 rounds. I tried to haggle the guy down, but he said the price was set by the Cambodian Army. Deciding that not many opportunities to shoot an M-16 were in my future, I bit the bullet (so to speak) and went for it. I shot a few rounds semi-automatic, then the dude flipped a switch and I shot the rest automatic. I was firing at a target.

Then they asked if I wanted to shot another machine gun with 40 rounds. The 30 rounds went pretty quickly, and I wasn't really to shell out some more money. Then he asked me if I wanted to shoot a chicken for $15 more. I thought $15 was a lot of money for a chicken, since one can be had fully cooked in a restaurant for much less than that. So I offered $5 and we settled on $10. The bullets weren't negotiable but the chicken was.

I know there's no way I'm going to come out of this looking good. My friends who've never hunted or never been around farms will think it's brutal and inhumane. My other friends will think it's not very sporting to shoot a bird that's tied to the ground. But at that moment, there was nothing I wanted to do more that shoot a chicken with a machine gun. The guy went and got the chicken and tied it to a rope at the end of the target range. Then he set up this really ancient looking machine gun. I asked him how old it was and he said ten years, but it could have easily been older than me. He attached a flat cylinder containing the rounds (looked like something old filmstrips came in) to the top and liberally oiled it in several places. It would have been embarrassing to spend as much money as I did and fired 40 rounds and missed, but I hit it, probably more than a few times.

I have videos of the shooting range uploaded to Youtube. See the links below if interested. Warning: Explicit language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksEakkU2jn8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30b2_zD44ks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg8Fn4C70w

The rest of the day was much more sobering. The next stop was Choeung prison, about 15 kilometers outside central Phnom Penh. Choeung is more commonly known as the Killing Fields. The Khmer Rouge regime, led by Pol Pot took over Cambodia, taking Phnom Pehn in 1975. They then proceeded to evacuate the city and moved everyone out to work in the rice fields. Pol Pot had a vision of turning Cambodia back to "Year Zero" and envisioned a prosperous country based on the production of rice using ancient methods. While doing this, intellectuals, minorities, the middle class, the educated, police, and military offices were identified and executed. From April 1975 to January 1979, over 2 million Cambodians died of starvation, torture, or execution. A Buddhist Stupa was constructed at the prison site and is filled with over 5,000 human skulls.

Mass graves containing almost 9,000 bodies were discovered here after the Khmer Rouge regime fell. Some have been excavated, leaving craters in the ground.

The prison grounds are littered with human remains. What at first site appear to be sticks embedded in the ground are actually human bones.

The next stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Toul Sleng was a former high school that was converted into a prison. People were taken here to be tortured and coerced into naming family members and associates, who were then rounded up, and the cycle continued. Over a period of about four years, about 17,000 are estimated to have been imprisoned. Only 12 people are known to have survived. The prisoners were photographed upon arrival. There are several prison rooms dedicated to photo displays.

It's hard to imagine this all happened a little over 30 years ago. Some of the kids in the pictures would be my age if they were still alive. I'd like to think that something like this could never happen again, but it's happening in some countries now as we speak.

On April 3, I took a bus from Phnom Pehn to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam.

Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand

On March 12, I flew from Brisbane, Australia to Singapore. It was a seven hour flight. I didn't think about Australia being that far away form Asia. One can almost get from the US east coast to Europe in that amount of time. As per the earlier post, the flight food and service was really good and I had all three seats to stretch out. But I didn't like the way it started. The lady at the ticket counter asked me if I had a visa to enter Singapore. I told her I was not required to have a visa to enter Singapore. She then looked it up and sure enough, I didn't need a visa to enter Singapore. But the notes in her system said you need a passport, proof of sufficient funds, and proof of onward travel. I told here that I was going to go by train to Malaysia after leaving Singapore. She wasn't having it. She was not going to let me on the plane without it. But there just so happened to be a tour desk right by the Etihad check-in counter. So I ended up having to buy a plane ticket to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia for about $50. I was seething. Most countries stipulate that travelers need proof of onward travel. But I have never once been asked to show it and was not asked for it by customs in Singapore. Oh well. No train ride for me.

Singapore is a city state that became independent in the 50's. It is very clean and westernized (to an extent). English is one of the official languages. It is a good transition from West to East.

Eating is Singapore is one of the great experiences, especially in the food centers. It's basically around 5-10 restaurants serving a food court area. These are all over Singapore and have a wide variety of foods that reflect it's make-up - Chinese, Malaysia, & Indian. You see Singaporeans at these food centers at all hours drinking beer and eating this incredible food. In one day in one food center, I had barbecued stingray and pig's organ soup.

Sentosa is a theme park and is the southern-most point of continental Asia.

Durian is an Asian fruit with a unique smell that I got to try. From a distance, it smells like a combination of pooh and sweetness. The smell isn't as noticeable close in, or maybe I just got used to it. It actually wasn't that bad. The inside pods tasted like custard. I would recommend it.


I enjoyed my four days in Singapore. It is a good place to visit and not nearly as boring as it's reputation. Although chewing gum is illegal and the government controls the media. The 7-11s have mashed potato machines. For on Singapore dollar (about 70 cents) you can get a cup of mashed potatoes with gravy. The machine dispenses this semi clear liquid that turns into mashed potatoes in about 5 seconds. It's best not to watch it being dispensed. Perfect at 1:00am after a few drinks.

I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on March 16. I only spent two days in KL. The big thing to see in Kuala Lumpur is the Petronas Towers. The Petronas Towers were built in 1998 and were the tallest buildings in the world until 2004, although there is some controversy about how they are measured. If you take away the spires, they are quiet a bit shorter than the Sears Tower in Chicago. The antennas on the Sears tower are not counted in the height. Still, they are quite impressive, especially for a small country.


Free tickets to the bridge at the 41st floor were provided beginning at 9:00am until they ran out. It was impressive, but it seems like they would have some sort of observation deck closer to the top floor. I only spent two days in Malaysia. I saw an Outback Steakhouse near my hostel. I was feeling a bit homesick and had a sudden craving for Alice Springs chicken, so I went in. The decor, menu, and uniforms were just like back home. But the meal was not all I had hoped. The food in Asia is more spicy and the flavors are more intense than food typically is back home. I don't know my tastes are changing or if I got a bad order of Alice Springs Chicken, but it was quite bland. Even the Diet Coke with ice and free refills left me wanting.

Getting out of Kuala Lumpur proved to be more difficult than I imagined. The airport in KL is quite impressive, but pretty far from the city (about 60 kilometers). There is a train service that gets you into the city in about 25 minutes for about $12 US. I took that train from the city back to the airport. When I got there, I didn't see the Air Asia flight listed on the big Departures board. So I thought, hmmmm that's odd. I went to the information desk and the lady said Air Asia departs from the LCC terminal about 20 kilometers away and the best way to get there in time was by taxi. So that was another $12. The LCC terminal was awful. It was basically a tin building and you have to walk around this crazy route because of the construction. And it was packed. Nothing like the nice terminal I flew into. I found my way to the check in desk. The lady informed me that my bag was over the weight limit. I had only purchased 15 kilograms of baggage and my bag weighed 18. Cost of the extra weight - an extra $17 US. I had now paid $41 to get to the airport to board a flight that cost $52. This probably doesn't sound like a lot of money, but this is in a country where lunch typically costs about $2.



On March 18, I flew to Bangkok Thailand. I took the airport bus to Kho Sahn Road.

Kho Sahn Road is the ground zero for tourists in Bangkok and usually the first place most people traveling in southeast Asia stay. There are many, many street vendors selling food, bootleg DVDs, fake Rolex watches, fake IDs, etc.

There is an interesting variety of street food in Thailand. Noodles make up a big part of it, but you can also get insects and a variety of animal parts not normally consumed in the states. I had a few smaller insects. I'm pretty daring when it comes to trying new food, but some of the bugs were really, really big. They are usually salted and deep fried, which gives them potato chip and pork rind like flavors.

Fried chicken feet. They tasted like....(wait for it).....chicken.


A variety of pics from temples. Anyone traveling to southeast Asia will spend a lot of time taking off their shoes and visiting temples.



Things are really cheap here, but there is this constant feeling that you're getting screwed. You have to haggle for everything. The cabs use the meter sometimes. The price has to be agreed on ahead of time for the tuk tuks. The hotel I stayed at off Kho Sahn road cost about $7.50 US for shared bath.

My guesthouse in Bangkok didn't really lend itself to meeting people the way hostels do. One day, I decided to treat myself to a spa. I had a one hour Thai massage ($5). A Thai massage is not nearly as good as it sounds. It is mostly pressure based and was quite uncomfortable. It also involved a lot of cracking of joints. Joints I didn't previously know could be cracked. I then had a manicure and a pedicure ($5.70). I'd never had either. I was unaware that a pedicure involved taking a razor-like instrument and actually shaving the dead skin off the feet. I then had a one-hour oil massage ($5.70). The oil massage is more like what I was used to.

Anyone traveling to southeast Asia will spend a lot of time visiting Buddhist temples, trying to avoid getting ripped off, and eating great food. The tuk tuk drivers are the worst. You have to haggle with them, not just to get a fair price, but to actually get them to take you where you want to go. They always suggest other places. Right outside the Wat Pho, home of the famous reclining Buddah, the touts and tuk tuk drivers boldly lie to your face and tell you that the temple is closed. I walked from Kho Sahn road to the temple and was told by four touts that the temple was closed until 2:00pm. Two of them were right outside the temple walls. They all seemed to have their stories straight. What they were trying to do is get you to ride in their tuk tuk. They would then take you to a few temples and then some jewelry and souvenir stores that pay them.

On March 20, I took an overnight train to Chang Mai. Pretty much everyone that travels to Thailand goes to Chang Mai and does a jungle trek and stays with a hilltribe village. My first day in Chang Mai I visited the Tiger Kingdom and the monkey show. At the Tiger Kingdom, you get up close and personal with tigers inside their cage. I was literally a few feet from a couple of tigers going at each other. I also got to pet the tigers.



On March 22, I left for a three day trek in the jungle. It was a group of 12 Irish, Germans, Dutch, Hawaiians and a Dane. It was a good group and good craic. The scenery was nice. It was the dry season in Thailand and it wasn't lush and green like I had expected. The hilltribe experience was a little lacking. A lot of people complain about not getting an authentic experience with the hilltribes. I agree. It's hard to get an authentic experience with a hilltribe that hasn't already seen four groups that day and doesn't make their living selling drinks and snacks to tourists. Two days were mostly spent walking through the jungle and visiting waterfalls. The conditions were basic. Showering was done in the river near the waterfalls.

Market on the way to the trekking site.



Accommodations in the village were pretty basic.


By the third morning of the trek, I was to face my greatest fear of the trip. I had been putting it off long enough. It was time to face the Asian squat toilet. Hotels, airports, and restaurants, places of businesses that cater to tourists, have western style seated toilets. But out in non-tourist areas and smaller towns, the squat toilet with a barrel of water for flushing reigns supreme, and that was the only option with the hill tribe people. When you finish your business, you take a dipper and pour water in the toilet until everything goes down. You have to bring your own toilet paper. These toilets feature a hose instead of toilet paper. I'm not entirely sure how the hose option works without getting water all over everything. I survived.

The third day of the trek included a ride on a bamboo raft (with a 10 year old doing the rowing) and an elephant ride.



There are much better pictures on other peoples' cameras, but none of the others on the trip have uploaded their pictures. I will post some additional pictures (some are quite good) when I get them.

On March 25, I took an overnight train back to Bangkok. I would have preferred to go straight from Chang Mai to the Laotian border, but I had left my passport in Bangkok to get visas for India and Vietnam, which have to be obtained beforehand. As I was negotiating a ride from the train station to my hotel, it seemed like I was getting a good price. I was proud of myself. Then when I followed the dude, he handed me a helmet. I was negotiating a ride on a motorcycle. So I climbed up on the back with my big backpack and rode to my hotel. It got me there more quickly because the motorcycles weave in and out of traffic and between cars, but it was pretty damn scary.

On March 28, I took a bus to Cambodia.

Australia Part Two

Sydney to Cairns

On Monday, March 2, I departed for a four day guided tour through the Australian countryside that would take me up the east coast and drop me off at Byron Bay. Rob was the tour guide and along on the tour was James and Sam (Brits), Donna and Cathy (Irish), Janell (Italian), and Billie (Israeli). The first stop was at the Australian Reptile Park in Somersby. The name doesn't cover everything as there are plenty of non-reptile animals to see. Along with the extensive collection of snakes, crocs, and lizards, they also had Tasmanian devils, dingoes, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and koalas.


Up close and personal with a koala.


Tasmanian devil



I finally got to see a platypus, but the room was dark and no flashes were allowed. It was smaller than I expected. He moved around too fast to get any quality pictures. However, if your curious, check out the Picasa site (photo link to the right).

They also had a kangaroo petting zoo where people could feed and pet the kangaroos. I picked a medium sized kangaroo to feed and play with. I thought it was pretty safe since there were several kids there. But this dude started coming at me, scratching me with his claws. In about ten seconds he reached up and bit me on the side of my stomach. Little f%&cker was mean. A zoo worker took him away this happened. They said he was a young male and was trying to show dominance. I told my mother this story and she said, “I'm glad that happened to you rather than some kid.”

Me and the juvenile delinquent.


It was just a flesh wound.


The next stop was a wine tasting at the McGuigan winery in Hunter Valley before heading up to a ranch near Glocester.

On Tuesday, for the first time in my adult life, I got on a horse. We did a one-day "City Slickers" type ride. It was an actual 3,000 acre working ranch with 600 head of cattle and we rounded them up and moved them old school style on horseback. My horse was named Monty. We separated a group of steers and drove them to a grain lot for finishing. We also tried to separate a bull and bring him back (I was never clear on where "back" was). We failed. There was some really gorgeous scenery. It was fun, but not something I'm dying to do again right away. All the cliches about horseback riding are true. My bum and legs were quite sore. The horses seemed very well trained and good tempered.


Australian road kill.


We came across this. Someone had hit a kangaroo. Rob, the tour guide said whenever you come across roadkill, it should be checked for a joey and then moved off the road. This one had a joey in its pouch, but it was also dead.

The third day was spent canoeing and the fourth ended in Byron Bay, a charming little beach town not overgrown with high rise condos. Most of the beaches in Australia allow topless sunbathing, although less than about 5% of women actually do it.

Byron Bay lighthouse.


Eastern most point on Australia's mainland.



On Friday March 6 we spent most of the day on the beach and in the evening, I took a greyhound bus from Byron Bay to Brisbane.

On Saturday morning, I took a train from Brisbane to Beerwah, home of the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin zoo). Beerwah is about an hour train ride from Brisbane. About halfway there something just didn't feel right and I discovered it was because I didn't bring my camera. I bought a disposable camera at the zoo. That's why these pictures are kind of lousy. What did we do before digital cameras? Most of the animals there I had already seen. They had an extensive collection of crocodiles. Crocodiles are kind of boring unless they are feeding. They just lay there. Luckily, they had two shows in the "Crocoseum" where they fed the crocs. That was pretty cool. The zoo workers also got in the tiger den and played around with he tigers, getting them to jump into the water to chase them. No pics of the tigers as these didn't really come out good.




On Sunday, I flew from Brisbane to Cairns. Cairns is the most popular base for exploring the Great Barrier Reef. On Monday I went for a dive. It was a day package of two guided dives, snorkeling, and glass bottom boat ride. The reefs were amazing, but I thought they would have been more colorful.


On Wednesday I flew back to Brisbane and on Thursday, March 12, I flew from Brisbane to Singapore. I flew on Etihad Airlines. Etihad is a fairly new airline based out of the United Arab Emirates. It was by far the cheapest trip from Australia to Asia. It was actually a connecting flight from Brisbane to Abu Dabhi. Most of the people on the flight didn't look like they were from either Singapore or Abu Dabhi. I believe a lot of people were connecting to Europe. Great service and good food. I would recommend them. It's a seven hour flight from Brisbane to Singapore. On a map it doesn't really look very far.

A few more observations about Oz.

Australia has really good coffee. Almost all coffee sold is espresso based and really good. There are very few Starbucks, so it happened independently of Starbucks. That's something that wasn't on my radar.

They love their pies. Meat pies are the traditional foods of Australia. It's basically a pot pie, but better than the one's that cost 30 cents at the grocery.

Sales tax is included in prices of items in stores and restaurants. So the price shown is the price you pay. It's good as it helps keep ones pockets from filling up. Also, they round to the nearest 5 cents. So they don't have to deal with pennies. Brilliant! If you order something in a restaurant that is listed at $15, you pay exactly $15. Tax and service are included in the prices.

Most of Australia is wide open spaces. It is about the size of the continental United States, with a population of only 21 million. And most Aussies live in cities. The look out a plane window is pretty barren.

Aussies are crazy about traveling. Both Lonely Planet and Frommer's are headquartered in Australia. Travel books are featured prominently in bookstores at the entrance. One guy I talked to summed it up pretty well. He said that Australia is really far from anywhere else. So if they travel, it is usually a long trip and they make it count.

I would like to spend a lot more time here. I think one could easily spend 4-5 months here. There's a lot to see. But it is time for me to move on to southeast Asia.