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Published: August 29th 2006
Our last five days in Africa were spent in Johannesburg. We were planning on travelling up the eastern coast of South Africa, to see the tropical beaches and do some diving, but Meghan got Bronchitis and we decided to lay low. We were blessed with being set up with some family friends of Mike's. The Beck's live in Sandton, a suburb north of Johannesburg. It is definitely an upscale change from camping and staying in backpackers' lodges. The Beck's were an amazing family that treated us like their own and catered to us more than necessary. We had a great few days with them and it was a great way to say goodbye to Africa.
We departed Africa, stopped in Dubai for a layover and then were off to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok on August 16th and have loved every minute of Southeast Asia thusfar. Our first impression of Asia was that of overwhelming humidity and heat. Although, we are slowly adjusting to it. We spent the first few days in Bangkok on a touristy street named Khao Sarn. This street is constantly packed with tourists and street vendors. We devoured the best spring rolls and pad thai during
lunch everyday, spending less than a dollar. Our hotel was right on Khao Sarn Road and had a pool, salon and massage parlor on the roof. We quickly treated ourselves to two-hour massages (only $12) to rid ourselves of jetlag. Meghan also got her hair chemically straightened (for only $20). As you can tell, it's rather inexpensive here. We spent a lot of time walking around Bangkok and orientating ourselves with the city. We went to two enormous and hectic malls and took every form of transportation. We mastered the Sky Tran, the metro, taxis, busses, and tuk tuks. For all of you who don't know, tuk tuks are mo-peds with a carriage on the back. We basically take them everywhere and Meghan is trying to master the art of bargaining prices with them (she's not very good at it). Bangkok is a fascinating, lively city, full of friendly people who love their king. Literally. It is the 60th anniversary of the king and it's impossible to not see that the people adore their leader. There are enormous pictures of him and his wife all over the city: at the bus station, in the markets, at gas stations, on billboards,
everywhere. Everyday we saw people (everyone) wearing bright yellow polos with a logo on the breast pocket. We weren't quite sure what it represented at first, but we later found out it was in support of the king.
On our fourth night in Bangkok, we went to a Muay Thai boxing match. There were nine fights in total. Each one began with a ceremonial dance around the ring. The boxers then began fighting. Muay Thai boxing involves punching, kicking and kneeing. Traditionally no gloves were used, however, gloves have been integrated. Fighters must be 15 years old and must weigh at least 100 pounds. They can fight every seven days, unless they get knocked out. In that case, they must wait up to a month before they can fight again. We sat one row back from the ring, spitting distance from the fighters. During all of the fights, traditional Thai music plays and local gamblers in the rafters were constantly chanting. We were surprised when we saw several knockouts, because generally in these five round fights, the winner comes down to a decision. Two fighters were actually carried off on stretchers, but we don't think either of them were
hurt too bad. When Mike went to the bathroom he was astonished to see many of the boxers getting taped up for their fights and some of them cooling off in the showers after a tough loss. After the thrill of the boxing spectacle, we headed towards the "Red Light District." On the way, however, Meghan had to use the restroom so we stopped in the "best Mexican restaurant" in Asia. As Meghan b-lined for the bathroom, Mike was greeted by a slew of rhinestone cowboys. When Meghan got back from the bathroom Mike filled her in on the fact that they had apparently entered "the best gay Mexican restaurant." We had a margarita and nachos and made our way towards the heterosexual part of town. The Red Light District was nothing more than a tourist trap full of street vendors and families. There was an occasional local trying to persuade you to enter one of their "Ping Pong Shows," but as we found out, it was tamer than Broadway Street in San Francisco. Shortly after our arrival, we headed back to our hotel for a short rest before we would leave for Cambodia.
We had heard several times
about these "scam busses" that you book at travel agencies in Bangkok. Basically, for a cheap price, they screw you over with the worst transportation and later try to force you to stay at their accomodations in Siem Reap, our destination. We decided to avoid this scam and travel like the locals. We took the local transit bus from Bangkok to Aranya Prathet (the border). It was a decent five hour bus ride. The only setback was that we had to change busses once because ours broke down. But no worries. When we arrived at the Cambodian border, we were planning on jumping in the back of a truck (a recommendation we were told about). First, it took almost an hour to cross the border. Then, once we were across, we were told that it was no longer legal to hitch a ride on the back of trucks. So in the end, we were scammed by the scammers and had no way of avoiding the scam bus. The scam bus was every bit as horrible as we had heard, if not worse. It was 6 hours of pure hell. The bus was the most run down, dilapidated van we had
ever seen in our lives. And with our luck, after about a minute on the dirt, pothole infested road, our seat fell through. The cushion wasn't attached to the seat and we had to readjust it about every 10 minutes. It was funny because when we heard all of these horror stories about the road, we thought that people just hadn't ever experienced bad roads. We thought we would be fine since we had our fair share of bumpy roads in Africa. Well, we were wrong. It was nuts. There were bridges that were wiped out from rain and thus had an alternative detour route. Sometimes our driver took the detour and a few times he took the busted bridge. Everyone on the bus was looking at each other in bewilderment and fear. We figured you have to trust the local drivers, but when some take the detour and we didn't, we had to think twice. The scam continued to amaze us when we conviently stopped at the most expensive restaurant in Cambodia for dinner. We then also stopped to get our van washed, which we found quite peculiar since we were driving down the most muddy, dirt road you
could imagine. However, there was an upside to this ungodly venture. We saw some beautiful Cambodian scenery. Cambodia is a lush, tropical environment, full of palm trees, banana trees and everything green. There is water everywhere, especially since it is rainy season. We also saw some interesting billboards that pictured an AK-47 and other weapons, pleading to stop the use of weapons. We definitely found this country to be more third world than that of what we saw in Africa. However, it was amazing to see how these people have used what little infrastructure they have to survive and build homes. All of their homes are built on stilts, protecting them from the constant flooding that occurs in the region. We were however, disappointed to see so much trash infecting the gorgeous surroundings. Finally, after a long and grueling day of travelling, we made it to Siem Reap at about 10pm. We were able to escape the scam accomodation and went to the Smiley Guest Lodge, which was actually a great place.
After some much needed sleep, we woke up and rented a tuk tuk driver for the day to take us through the majestic Angkor. The wats (temples)
of Angkor are one of the Manmade Wonders of the World. Construction of the Wats began in the 9th century by the Khmer empire, who by the 15th century, ruled over the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. At the time, Angkor was the capital, but it has since relocated to Phnom Penh. There are over 100 wats in total, but only about 20 are regularaly visited. We began our exploration at the Angkor Thom Wat. Angkor Thom, meaning "Great City," was constructed by Jayavarman VII in a cosmological layout: a moat symbolizes the oceans, the walls represent land and the towers signify th peaks of mountains. The Bayon, which lies in the exact center of Angkor Thom, is dedicated to Buddhism. It's releiefs depict scenes from everyday life, battles and stories from Hindu epics. There are also several fascinating, three-headed faced towers. We ventured around the magnificent wat for nearly an hour, seeing lifesize reliefs of elephants in the Terrace of Elephants and reliefs of mythological creatures in the Terrace of the Leper King. After discovering Angkor Thom, we visited Ta Prohm, which we would later rate as one of our favorites. Ta Prohm is known as the most
authentic jungle temple, and is where Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, witḥ̣ ̣Angelina Jolie, was filmed. Ancient trees have grown into the walls of this amazing Buddhist temple and now stand as one with the stone. The enormous trees are a spectacular and phenomenal sight in conjunction with the ancient ruins upon which they lie. At this time, about 10am, the heat and the humidity were quickly escalating. We visited two other temples before we decided to escape the sun and get some lunch. During a typical Cambodian lunch of fried rice and noodles, the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. Much to our relief, the rain cooled everything down and we were able to go explore the world famous temple in comfort. Angkor Wat was constructed in the early 12th century, in honor of the Hindu god Vishnu and is a symbolic representation of Hindu cosmology. The first sight of Angkor Wat is it's bridge leading into it's fort-like walls. Once we walked through the main gate, the magnificent temple lie directly ahead. We walked inside the massive temple and had to choose which direction we wanted to go, for there were many different ways. We chose
to go first go up the steep, third level tower. The stairs leading up to the tower were almost straight up and extremely narrow; we basically crawled up them. When we got to the top, we were relieved to see an amazing bird's eye view of Angkor Wat in its entirety. We roamed around the surprisingly large tower for a while and saw many beautiful reliefs and even better views. We then decided to work our way down to the second level, which consisted of many long corridors and reliefs. Then we went to the first level, where intricately detailed stone carvings lined the walls of the gallery, forming the largest series of reliefs in the world. These reliefs depicted battles, military processions and gods and demons. On the way out of the temple, we saw a family of monkies congregating near the walls and decided to go watch them. We got really close to them and watched them play with each other and eat some fallen fruits. They are such funny animals. After almost two hours of exploring Angkor Wat, we went to Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. Unfortunately, the long hike up the hill was unrewarded with
an average sunset, due to all the rain clouds in the sky. Exhausted and in dire need of showers, we arrived back at our hotel. We relaxed for a bit and got cleaned up before we went to dinner. We walked around for a while trying to find a nice place to eat, before we stumbled upon a lively street. We picked a restaurant with twenty five cent draught beers and nothing on the menu exceeding two dollars. We were pleasantly surprised with great food and an even better ambiance, thanks to the bustling street. After a wonderful dinner, we headed home in preparation for an early morning.
5am the next morning our tuk tuk driver, Mr. Sa, picked us up at our hotel and took us to Angkor Wat for sunrise. With hundreds of other tourists in sight, we arrived and staked our ground to get the best pictures. We waited in anticipation and watched a beautiful sunrise over such a magnificent and ancient human development. After the sun rose, we visited four other wats. These were a lot smaller than the ones we had seen the previous day. After the last few, we decided we were all
"wat'd" out and done viewing them. We arrived back at our hotel at 11am and hastily decided that we were going to jump on the noon bus to Phnom Penh. And then we were off....
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Emily
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Hey guys...I absolutely love your blog! I am at work and always get so excited to read about your adventures! Be safe, I miss you!