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Published: February 19th 2008
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As we were leaving Koh Tao, we were offered “happy” but had to turn it down. It isn’t too often someone offers to sell you an emotion, and even more rare that the potential purchaser would turn down such an offer. However, when in Thailand and a young girl rides by on the back of a moped and yells, “You want happy?”, “No” is the appropriate answer.
Darren and I made it to Bangkok without incident. We got dropped off on Koh San Road. What a show that is! It is a street known for being backpacker central in South East Asia. There are vendors selling all sorts of shirts, shoes, CDs and DVDs, and any other junky souvenir you can think of. There are food vendors everywhere and carts that also serve as impromptu bars. The only thing you can’t find on Koh San Road is a Thai not trying to sell you something. Darren and I gawked at the fact that this is a draw to most backpackers, and we dipped out to our hostel, which was about a fifteen-minute cab ride into the business district of Bangkok.
The first day we hit the major tourist sites
Comparing Staches
I got a lot or requests for a mug shot. Didn't realize I was such a hot commodity. pretty hard because we only had two days. We went to the Royal Palace and the adjoining Wat Phra Kaew. The attention to detail and the number and size of these buildings is astounding. They were absolutely remarkable in the amount of labor and workmanship that must have gone into their construction. We also went to see Wat Pho. This was another nice temple area that housed an enormous Buddha statue (46 meters long and 15 high). We saw the huge Buddha, then left. We had had enough of the tourist sites for the day. We headed over to Lumpini Park, which was right by our hotel. In the middle of the park we ran into about a hundred Thais doing aerobics to hardcore techno music. Our first impression was, “Really?” We sat down and enjoyed the show for bit then we headed off to get some food. We had made the decision to break our Thai food streak with a meal at the Outback. It was disgusting. I’ll spare the details, but Darren figures that he had more calories in that one meal than he has had on the average day of trip (Darren’s edit: Nothing but fried, greasy
deliciousness).
The second day we took it easy. We meandered around the city, arranged a few plans for when we got back from Cambodia, and just chilled out. To be honest, the only thing exciting that happened was that I got bit by an ant in Lumpini Park. I had a huge welt on my right hip and had some crazy allergic reaction to it that affected my sight for an hour. It passed, but from now on I am sitting on the designated benches and not on the grass.
We hopped a plane to Phnom Penh early the next morning. It was an incredibly easy flight, which from what I hear is in stark contrast to the horror stories of taking a bus over. Because we got our visas ahead of time online, we were out of the Phnom Penh airport in less than thirty minutes and were on our way into the city. I was like a kid in a candy store on the ride. It was absolutely amazing. People on mopeds everywhere sitting with sometimes over 4 people on one bike, people carrying huge loads of furniture on their mopeds, cars driving down the wrong
side of the street, old women crossing the road in the middle of ridiculous traffic, SUVs doing whatever they pleased because they were bigger; and the most remarkable thing of all was that it worked! I didn’t see anyone get hit! I absolutely love the chaos. When you cross the street you feel like you are in Frogger. You go when then traffic is lightest (so only ten mopeds coming at you instead of twenty) and make eye contact with the drivers as they come your way. You get as far as you can, then slow up to let others pass, then look the other way to make sure the car that is going down the wrong side of the street doesn’t hit you, then go a little further and you’ve made it to the median; now you have to cross the other half of the street.
The first day we were exhausted because we had gotten up at 4 a.m. for our flight, so we spent the day just meandering around the northern part of the city. We checked out a few markets, saw Wat Phnom, but more than anything tried to soak up the city.
The
Wat Phra Kaew
The beauty of the place was in the details... second day we hired two guys to drive us around on their motos and we hit the tourist sites. We first went to Tuol Sleng (also known as S 21). This is a high school that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture and death camp during their regime. Out of the ten thousand plus that went in as prisoners, only seven made it out alive. While the numbers are not as large as the Holocaust, the ratios are staggering: Pol Pot exterminated nearly twenty percent of the Cambodia population. It is hard to put into words the emotions you go through when you see a place that demonstrates the atrocities humans can commit to one another. I found it interesting to reflect on what is going on today that could one day be turned into one of these museums. With so much media attention on China’s human rights abuses leading up to the Olympics, I couldn’t help but think of prisoners in Tibet and the Falun Gong. Also, at the end of the museum they showed some methods of torture used by the Khmer Rouge, one of which was water boarding. Unless you’ve been under a
rock, you probably know that this interrogation method is used by the United States in Guantanamo Bay. It is being debated as to possibly being considered torture and hence illegal for the US to continue this practice. Not making a statement one way or the other, just thought it was interesting to see the connection between the Khmer Rouge’s techniques and the current methods used by my government.
Anyway, after that we headed on to the National Museum and then the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. The buildings were not nearly in as good of shape as the ones in Bangkok. However, the grounds were gorgeous and Darren and I spent a good hour or so just relaxing in the gardens and walking about. After that we called it a day and headed back towards our hostel. We hung out in that area the rest of the night just getting used to the scene.
It is hard to explain the difference between Thailand and Cambodia, or to be less general Bangkok and Phnom Penh, and why Cambodia excites me. Cambodia is simply grittier and easier to sink your teeth into. I get the feeling that the experiences
are more genuine; people laugh and smile as you interact not because I’m the westerner with the money, but because they thought something was funny. In Thailand, or at least Southern Thailand, you get the feeling that everything is a prop for the tourists. One night in Koh Tao Darren and I went to a bar and started talking to the bartenders in a conversation composed of English, charades, and a Thai-English dictionary. The head bartender had really long dreadlocks, was playing reggae music, and had posters of Bob Marley on the walls. I asked if he liked Bob Marley and reggae music. He responded, “No. Tourists do! Good for business.” He is right, so you can’t blame him. Southern Thailand is beautiful and I loved spending a few weeks there, but it just isn’t the experience Darren and I are looking for.
Today Darren has been tooling around by himself as I am laid up on the injured reserve list with my first case of stomach issues. It is something you have to expect as you travel in developing nations, I just wasn’t expecting it two days into the first really developing country! Tomorrow we plan on heading
up to Siem Reap to see the Temples of Angkor Wat. We are really excited to see them, and if you don’t know what they are, I would suggest checking them out on Google or Wikipedia as there is no way I could do their history justice. Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and wishing you all the best!
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Carissa
non-member comment
wow
Wat Phra Kaew looks amazing!!! Your stache is filling in nicely - like an extra on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean :) Hope you're feeling better soon! ~Carissa