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city of life!
again what color! I wish this camera could capture the beauty! (my picture taking skills are never to be doubted!)Our last days in Thailand were spent watching Thor in 3D, enjoying the blasting AC while eating at food courts in the mall, and riding the subway... Ok maybe I'm being a little facetious but it's very hard to like Bangkok once compared to the island beauty of the South and the serenity of the North... Painted all over the skyrail (and not subway) was : 'Bangkok, City of Life!' And justly so! The streets are crowded and bustling with sweaty people as the thermometer won't give, even at night.
No taxi would put the meter on, no tuk tuk driver took us where we wanted to go without a fight as they constantly wanted to take us to buy crap, and no food was remotely more than eukh! We heard of a respectable Japanese quarter with good Japanese food, so Dina and I went looking for tempura soba, which ended up being a huge failure. I persistently pushed to walk around more to find the restaurant that served exactly what we were craving. After five restaurants and a good hour and a half of walking in 30 degrees celcius, the only thing I achieved was angering a hungry Dina.
Believe me folks when I say this, but you DO NOT want to mess with a hungry, grumpy, sweaty, and tired Dina! So we reverted back to the first Japanese restaurant we found that looked amazing but only served tasty sushi but no soba.... only to find it closed! Yikes I was done for! Thankfully the Italian owner to Pizza Napolitana was open for business just steps away.
The next day we took a ferry up the Chao Praya river to the other end of town from our hotel. We discovered one 5 star hotel after the other, with pools and decks overlooking the murky green water that flows beneath, and a couple of wats scattered amongst a sea of shabby looking wood huts with galvanized steel roofs. But Bangkok's charm lies elsewhere. The streets are inundated by street vendors who web into endless snaky markets. We were told that most Thai houses were not equipped with full kitchens which is why eating out (esp at stalls) is so common here. Sure some of the smells are absolutely nose fracturing but what I admire most about this country is the incredible entrepreneurial spirit of the people. The mix of
muay thai
in the middle of the street! set up shop and lets get the show started in downtown bangkok! modern and traditional seemed just right in the remaining authentic parts of town, but according to the artists' displays in ART MUSEUM, many feel that their people are losing themselves to modernity. This clearly is a city in transition, we leave it hoping it won't lose its bustle and charm.
Next destination is Phnom Penh, Cambodia and let me tell you things kick off just nicely! We arrive at the airport to be greeted by a team of immigration officers. The entire plane full of tourists stood in line to 'apply' for the cambodian visa. Let's entertain the word apply for a line or two. This word, apply, would let you think that just maybe you can fail at whatever you are applying for.... Yet here, after 5 minutes only and no supporting documents for your so called application, you are granted a month long visa for 20 dollars. Pictures are the only requisite, but fear not, 2 dollars takes you a long way here! For a Moroccan to feel like a first class citizen of the world in an airport felt too good to be true. We then arranged a 7$ tuk tuk ride to our hotel, only
reclining buddha
46 meters long and 15 meters high Buddha when I pay the driver with a ten dollar bill, he decides that 2 dollars in change is fair, and that he is due an extra one dollar in tip... I would have honestly given it to him... Just not like that.
Phnom Penh it seems is home of the Lexus! I mean seriously... If you live in a hut, are surrounded by poverty, hunger, and an underdeveloped economy, what else could you do with your money than drive a Lexus?! After inquiring about this phenomenon, we discovered that the Cambodian land owners here, got rich from selling their land rights to the rainforest to the Chinese. Riding on the horn, these cars zoom by you and weave through 50+ motorcycles within a square meter! The traffic here is sheer craziness with people neither caring to stick to their side of the road nor stopping at red lights! Still, we decided to rent a motorcycle and join the madness (and quickly realized after a few red lights that we were the only foreigners who chose this mode of transportation). I couldn't help but think of Marrakech in the olden days, when traffic was allowed inside Jamaa El Fna.
Beware of the foreign gangs!
yeahhh! only beware of the foreigners pickpocketing! (hmmmm) Riding around the city, we discover even more entrepreneurs who convert the front part of their one story homes into commerces. We stopped to buy bottles of water from a mini mart but had to wait for the mother to go on back (to their living room) and call on her 8 year old daughter to translate for us. And what a treat that was! Not only was the water refreshing, but it was great to see youth speak such eloquent English in the least expected of places!
After visiting S21 and the killing fields of Cheung Ek, we came to better understand the Khmer culture of today. You can read about the genocide of the Khmer people under Pol Pot's regime, but you can't even begin to grasp its scale until you visit these depressing sites. S21 was once a school compound that in the late 70s made for a terrifying prison camp and torture facility. All members of the previous regime, lawyers, teachers, doctors, educated people and anybody suspected of not supporting the Khmer Rouge or of hqving other skills thqn to plow the fields were brought to jail along with their families. When the Vietnamese liberated
Phnom Penh from the Khmer Rouge, they only discoverd S21 due to its stench! As they walked inside, they snapped pictures of the converted class rooms untouched, some with a rotting corpse laying on the floor and shackled to a mattress-less metallic bed frames with signs of days of bestial torture. There was still blood spattered in some of the rooms' floors and ceilings. In only 3 years, 20,000 people have been through this jail, only 7 survived and 3 are still alive today. In the killing fields, we were free to walk around the ditches which served as mass graves and we could still see remains of jawbones, teeth, and clothes poking out from the ground. This horrific past was so recent that most middle aged Cambodians (including our guide that day) are still haunted by the memories. We started to see Cambodia for what it really is: a culture under construction, where elderly people are scarce and the youth are filled with a thirst for knowledge and a joy to live! We spent the rest of the afternoon at the royal palace, met some cool people and had some amazing food at a restaurant that took on street
what colorss!
seriously though, this trip has been a fairytale... that or we are eating shrooms and seeing these magical colors allllll over the place! children and trained them in order to join the hospitality industry, but only after a full night's sleep did we regain morale. I should precise that our hotel was on a busy street where music is blasted until 3 am, so a full night's sleep started at 3; before then, you were left to kick and turn in your bed to the rythm of techno.
Early next morning, we decided to catch the first bus to Battambang. Dina commented that I was spoiled for wanting to fly everywhere. Complaining that buses were an essential part of our experience on this trip, that I should embrace it and go with the flow. "Let's take a bus," she insisted. Half an hour into our ride on a public bus, surrounded by dudes in admiration of out of place tourists, she passes out on my shoulder (as usual), leaving me all alone to contemplate the vast nothingness that fills the gap between the two cities! As one Cambodian almost sat in my lap for the duration of the trip and another breathing down my neck, this last one decided to show me a newspaper article about his son. Oh he was sooo
proud of his lawyer son! After further inspection of the English newspaper, I later discovered after congratulating this man on his son's achievements, that this lawyer was on the front page for defending foreign pedophiles...
This week we are settling down in Battambang, volunteering at a community center, being ridden by Many who has monkey like abilities (seriously this kid stood by my side, gripped onto my shorts, placed one leg on my knee, then my hip, then my shoulder and up he went straddling my neck without a hint of a notice!). More exciting stories to come shortly...
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