Hows about we open this one with a quote:
"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things."
That is one of those quotes I have heard paraphrased innumerous times in various contexts. Turns out its a bible quote. Go figure? It strikes a chord with me though, largely because I do not agree with it. It harks to responsibility, to expectation, to a 'grown up' mind set. The burden of adulthood which we all eventually come to bear.
A friend of mine who had been travelling before and passed on to me all manner of advice, told me that everyone who goes backpacking for a long term period is running away from something and you can see that there is a sense of truth to that. You find abundant examples of individuals running a tortoise and hare race with their demons around the globe, too varied in their nature to adequately summise. If there was however one unified factor to identify which so many seem to be trying to unshackle themselves from, it is that of adulthood. The backpacking community is like a teeming mass of lost boys, looking for their neverland and not having to do away with childish things.
If you read that paragraph as a sentimental excuse for a hoard of arrested adolescents to forgo responsibility in order to get drunk in foreign locations, well you can certainly be excused for coming to that conclusion. You are not far off. It is more than the sheer festivity of it though. It goes beyond hedonism, beyond financial disregard and beyond an escape from the rat race. It is about regaining a sense of wonder. Reclaiming your right to shock and awe. Re-embraching a sense of spectacle, of discovery. Allowing yourself once more to believe there might just be magic in the world.
All these things that we take for granted in our early youth that too many of us strive to cast off before their time until it gets to the point that you can no longer remember when you stopped believing. Freeing yourself from the trappings of adult life in a place like South East Asia makes it easier to connect once more with these feelings. On any given day you can see so many things that take your breath away, its amazing you don't suffocate.
Having been out here for almost 4 months I have been fortunate enough to see a great number of people who should be old enough to know better, revel in infantile glee through any number of situations. There is however one toy in natures play pen that has an effect like none other I have witnessed.
Bioluminesence.
Or in the case out here, biolumisencent phytoplankton.
Or just glowing plankton. That's easier right?
That is ostensibly what it is. As ever I have neither the scientific knowledge, nor the inclination to research in order to explain how the phenomenon works. If you are reading this, you also have access to google. Go look it up yourself if you care that much.
Here is what I can tell you. The ocean is full of plankton and when you move through them after dark, they light up around you. It is staggering, it is humbling. It is enchanting, entrancing and enticing. It is like submerging yourself in a black canvas whilst some greater power draws around the outline of your being in glitter paint. Literally.
I have been lucky enough to find myself in a couple of locations that offer bioluminescent night swimming and I can honestly say, it has yet to get old. The only thing greater than swimming in to dark waters and watching them explode with light around you, is watching other people do the same. You see it time and time again, folks convinced that such a spectacle shouldn't be real, therefore can't be real. Surely you must have to trek to some obscure location? Maybe it only works at highly specific late hour? Perhaps you need to recite an acient greek incantation whilst offering up a blood sacrifice to Lord Poseidon? No, No and possibly (I have yet to look in to that last option.)
I am far from an expert, all I can say is that I do not have a count of the amount of times I have swam in such circumstances during my time here and it has never been harder than throwing yourself in and letting yourself go. And the release is palpable. Hearing the shrieks of delight, whether they be from hippie or hipster, it bewitches all. You get a fair few characters passing through this part of the world who like to think they have seen it all. Playing a game of location based one upmanship, they carry themselves as unshockable, unphaseable. When you meet such an individual that has yet to see the plankton, and watch as they experience it for the first time it is a true delight of life. The sparkling water flowing over them truly seems to cleanse all sense of pretension, cynicism and general smugness for at least a few sweet minutes.
It is certainly one of the most narcotic experiences you can have whilst entirely sober. It seems to instill in people a sense of euphoria free from intoxication. It soaks through to your inner 5 year old and casts it in to a giant ball pit. The effect it has on peoples spirits is almost as remarkable as the effect it has on their clothing. You could almost be forgiven for thinking the plankon has an acidic quality that simply dissolves fabric. People will dip their toes in, watch the first sparkles appear around their ankles and suddenly find themselves emerging from the water 20 minutes later wearing a birthday suit where once there was a bathing suit. Eventually they discover their garments discarded on the shore at a location in which they vaguely remember hastily disrobing some time before. The lucky ones that is.
I reflect on the plankton at this juncture because it was Koh Rong when it first came in to my life. It has been my fortune to witness it on more occasions than I can adequately recall by now but that was the first place I knew the wonder. Every time I have swam in it is a fresh story un to itself and I could recount the splendour endlessly but there I have neither the time or words to do it justice on each occasion. This will have to suffice but it will never truly capture the feeling of your eyes widening and your skin tingling as you attempt to take it in. Just know that it is a good time. And if you don't believe, venture out in to the world and discover it for yourself. Do away with adulthood, or at the very least allow yourself a moment to pretend.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Koh Rong: Right Time, Rong Place
Before I left for South East Asia, I clutched to my side a text that I was just about sure would serve as my life raft should I ever find myself lost in the figurative sea of backpacking. A tome held by a vast percentage of fellow travellers, a guide to navigating this strange and foreign land. The Lonely Planet: South East Asia On A Shoestring.
The book itself is almost as epic and dense as the land is vast sprawling. There is a certain irony to its application in the sense that whilst it serves to prevent you getting lost in the world, the process will inevitably end up with you lost within the pages. I have no doubt that for certain travellers, those who thrive on structure, lists and grid references, this text woud prove invaluable. For me though it just felt like an information overload clashing with my sensory overload causing a sensation akin to sea level vertigo. As it turns out, there is a far more acessible, reliable and relatable source of information readily availble on the backpacking circuit.
The power of word of mouth.
Simple, yet wonderfully effective.
A perfect example of this in action was my final morning in Bangkok. In order to exit my dorm and connect with my transport, I had to somehow remove the 19-year-old-dutch-teenager shaped door stop that had appeared on the floor. In seeking the assistance of his less bipedally challeneged associates, the inevitable conversation was struck as to where we had all been/were going. In reference to my intention to visit Cambodia in the near future their response was both effusive and pointed. Apparently I was, in no uncertain terms, to not miss out on visiting an island called Koh Rong.
Questions of curiosity ensued on my part, answers, information, stories and photos were imparted in response. Cut to roughly a week later, I am on a different island, Koh Chang in Thailand. I was enjoying the company of a pair of backpackers I had met on the beach. Following an amusing game that involved testing the tensile strength of a large stick of bamboo in relation to the human abdomen, we sat around nursing our bruises whilst sharing beers and stories. The inevitable destination equation was drawn and once more the name of Koh Rong was raised. Similar stories were shared, similar photos shown, similar enthusiasm delivered.
This process repeated throughout bars, throughout hostels, throughout countries. From Bangkok to Sihanoukville it was the brightest beacon in an ocean of transient discourse. Had you been? Were you going? What did you think? What about tropical diseases? Did they have electricity? Did they have rats? Was it ACTUALLY paradise?
What did the Lonely Planet have to say? Well my edition, current at the time although subsequently outdated, really did not have much to contribute. I have lost the copy in question so all I can do is paraphrase, suffice to say it laid out the bare bones of the island historically and geographically, providing more of a sense of the locations potential than its actual current state.
Why this factual dearth you may ask? Becase Koh Rong is on the rise. It is no more now the island it was 12 months ago, than it will be the island it is today in 12 months time. The last year has seen a remarkble influx of both guests and businesses that have kickstarted a transformation of the locations visage. Right now could well be considered the sweet spot, the perfect balance of the present beauty and the future utility.
So if the Lonely Planet can't tell you what Koh Rong is like, I will take it upon my self, just as I have with the multitude of fellow backpackers I have met since departing the location.
Koh Rong is transcendent.
It is disingenuous to describe anywhere as paradise given the relative nature of the term, however I can accurately state that it is a whole lot of what I was looking for. You take the boat from Sihanoukville, and arrive between 40 minutes to 2 hours later depending on which vessel transported you. When you emerge on to dry land you walk down the pier to the beachfront, along which lies the crux of the development that the island has seen thus far. A series of bars, bungalows and guesthouses, all unique in character yet uniform in their wood and bamboo construction. You choose where you want to stay, deposit your belongings and from that point on, simply recline and sink in to your surroundings.
Within ten minutes you can walk from the tip of the local community village located to the left of the pier as you emerge, to the furthest bungalows along the main beachfront. There are other institutions that can be sought across the island should you wish to see them, the treehouse bungalows or the high wire zip line for instance, but really the main draw of the Koh Rong experience, certainly in high season, consists of sand, sea and trees.
The story I kept hearing over and over before I arrived was that of Long Beach. The main beach on the island was more beautiful and relaxing than any of us has the right to expect, let alone demand. That said, there was another beach. Not near by, but it was there. You had to trek through the jungle. You had to use the rope to scramble over the rocks. The route was accesible but no easy feat.
And the reward?
A 7 km stretch of sand whiter than you could fictionalise. Water clearer than you could comprehend. A view of the sun submerging in to the horizon at the on set of dusk that was more resplendent than you could ever hallucinate. A feeling of otherworldly calm and tranquility as you lay on your back, bobbing on the tide, doing all you can to take in the combined elements with the faculties available to you.
You could tell Koh Rong was a place that a lot of people had geographically found themselves only to lose themselves in other ways but it was certainly a place I was happy to let my eyes adjust to. The trail of verbal breadcrumbs spread along my journey thus far had led me to this gingerbread house and I would be damned if I wasn't gong to stop in and put my feet up.
I mean it would be rude not to right?
The book itself is almost as epic and dense as the land is vast sprawling. There is a certain irony to its application in the sense that whilst it serves to prevent you getting lost in the world, the process will inevitably end up with you lost within the pages. I have no doubt that for certain travellers, those who thrive on structure, lists and grid references, this text woud prove invaluable. For me though it just felt like an information overload clashing with my sensory overload causing a sensation akin to sea level vertigo. As it turns out, there is a far more acessible, reliable and relatable source of information readily availble on the backpacking circuit.
The power of word of mouth.
Simple, yet wonderfully effective.
A perfect example of this in action was my final morning in Bangkok. In order to exit my dorm and connect with my transport, I had to somehow remove the 19-year-old-dutch-teenager shaped door stop that had appeared on the floor. In seeking the assistance of his less bipedally challeneged associates, the inevitable conversation was struck as to where we had all been/were going. In reference to my intention to visit Cambodia in the near future their response was both effusive and pointed. Apparently I was, in no uncertain terms, to not miss out on visiting an island called Koh Rong.
Questions of curiosity ensued on my part, answers, information, stories and photos were imparted in response. Cut to roughly a week later, I am on a different island, Koh Chang in Thailand. I was enjoying the company of a pair of backpackers I had met on the beach. Following an amusing game that involved testing the tensile strength of a large stick of bamboo in relation to the human abdomen, we sat around nursing our bruises whilst sharing beers and stories. The inevitable destination equation was drawn and once more the name of Koh Rong was raised. Similar stories were shared, similar photos shown, similar enthusiasm delivered.
This process repeated throughout bars, throughout hostels, throughout countries. From Bangkok to Sihanoukville it was the brightest beacon in an ocean of transient discourse. Had you been? Were you going? What did you think? What about tropical diseases? Did they have electricity? Did they have rats? Was it ACTUALLY paradise?
What did the Lonely Planet have to say? Well my edition, current at the time although subsequently outdated, really did not have much to contribute. I have lost the copy in question so all I can do is paraphrase, suffice to say it laid out the bare bones of the island historically and geographically, providing more of a sense of the locations potential than its actual current state.
Why this factual dearth you may ask? Becase Koh Rong is on the rise. It is no more now the island it was 12 months ago, than it will be the island it is today in 12 months time. The last year has seen a remarkble influx of both guests and businesses that have kickstarted a transformation of the locations visage. Right now could well be considered the sweet spot, the perfect balance of the present beauty and the future utility.
So if the Lonely Planet can't tell you what Koh Rong is like, I will take it upon my self, just as I have with the multitude of fellow backpackers I have met since departing the location.
Koh Rong is transcendent.
It is disingenuous to describe anywhere as paradise given the relative nature of the term, however I can accurately state that it is a whole lot of what I was looking for. You take the boat from Sihanoukville, and arrive between 40 minutes to 2 hours later depending on which vessel transported you. When you emerge on to dry land you walk down the pier to the beachfront, along which lies the crux of the development that the island has seen thus far. A series of bars, bungalows and guesthouses, all unique in character yet uniform in their wood and bamboo construction. You choose where you want to stay, deposit your belongings and from that point on, simply recline and sink in to your surroundings.
Within ten minutes you can walk from the tip of the local community village located to the left of the pier as you emerge, to the furthest bungalows along the main beachfront. There are other institutions that can be sought across the island should you wish to see them, the treehouse bungalows or the high wire zip line for instance, but really the main draw of the Koh Rong experience, certainly in high season, consists of sand, sea and trees.
The story I kept hearing over and over before I arrived was that of Long Beach. The main beach on the island was more beautiful and relaxing than any of us has the right to expect, let alone demand. That said, there was another beach. Not near by, but it was there. You had to trek through the jungle. You had to use the rope to scramble over the rocks. The route was accesible but no easy feat.
And the reward?
A 7 km stretch of sand whiter than you could fictionalise. Water clearer than you could comprehend. A view of the sun submerging in to the horizon at the on set of dusk that was more resplendent than you could ever hallucinate. A feeling of otherworldly calm and tranquility as you lay on your back, bobbing on the tide, doing all you can to take in the combined elements with the faculties available to you.
You could tell Koh Rong was a place that a lot of people had geographically found themselves only to lose themselves in other ways but it was certainly a place I was happy to let my eyes adjust to. The trail of verbal breadcrumbs spread along my journey thus far had led me to this gingerbread house and I would be damned if I wasn't gong to stop in and put my feet up.
I mean it would be rude not to right?
Monday, July 7, 2014
Sihanoukville: The Life and Death of the Party
So although I proposed a lack of chronology, this entry actually picks up from where I left off a month or so ago. It only seems appropriate as it is so close to my current location.
Have you ever heard of Sihanoukville?
Can you even pronounce it? Go on. Give it a shot.
Quite finished?
Sihanoukville is a beach town. A Cambodian beach town. Everyone knows a beach town. A kind of fringe existence built up to support the ocean economy. Where this was once based around the produce that came out of the sea, it is now formed around the people who want to go in to it. It is a passing form of trade which typically spends it time gliding across the surface of the locality without ever peering below the surface. As such you will find places like this, Sihanoukville being far from an exception, caters chiefly to one thing: surface pleasures.
Sihanoukville is like a gift wrapped turd in an adult version of pass the parcel.
O.k, that was slightly harsh. It might not be a gift wrapped turd. The thing is, there are a lot of shiny layers wrapped around the experience, that are at once exciting and enticing to sink your claws in to. The problem is, the more you peel away and the closer you get to the heart, the more it starts to stink. And with this place, there are definitely rips in the packaging.
The trick is distraction. This is something it does well. Take, for instance, Utopia bar. Yes, Utopia. Take all the connotations of an establishment that calls itself that and you probably wont be far off. During happy hour they sells beers for 25 cents. 25 cents. I mean yeah sure it is notorious for its $1 dorm rooms being infested with bed bugs, but 25 cent beers. Bed bugs. Beers. Bed bugs. Beers. The eternal debate.
The fact is, for those looking for a good time, Sihanoukville knows how to give it to you. It is one big party even if it does feel slightly like the tail end. Like turning up to a house at 5am where most of the revellers have passed out or gone home and the surroundings are littered with the detritus of festivities that once were.
Take the main beach, Serendipity Beach. At first glance you have a beautiful ocean front, golden sand, blue seas, the package. Problem is ase tide laps at your ankles, so too does untold amounts of refuse. Discarded cans, food containers, plastic bags and potentially even the odd rubber receptacle of the shared joy experienced the night before between two consenting adults who love each other very dearly. I enjoy a dip in the ocean but this was one location where I opted to stay dry.
Alright, that is not ostensibly true. There was that first night out drinking at the late night beach bars where my Texan companion and I were coaxed by new aquaintances in to taking a late night dip. The air of throwing caution and indeed modesty to the wind seems to blow in on the evening breeze and only dissipates in the glare of the following sunrise. The only hope is that whatever dignity you discard on the shoreline is able to be reclaimed before you surrender to sleep. We were lucky to leave with what we arrived with alongside some good memories, I have seen many who left with less.
In Asia though it is hard to entirely fault a location servicing abandon. Those that come to this part of the world can often be characterised by the desire, to a greater or lesser extent, lose themselves. Sihanoukville provides that environment in the easiest possible way. Seek Utopia, indulge hedonism, retreat from reality. The appeal is not hard to identify.
Unfortunately it is this reality that causes the stench of putrification wafting out from beneath all the glossy layers. When you can hardly hear the waves on the shore beyond the cries of children begging you to buy their bracelets and fireworks. When the crowd at the liveliest bar on the beachfront comprises more prostitutes than it does actual punters. I mean they call it a bar, we call it a bar but the flashing lights can only disguise so much from its true identity.
Ultimately though, Sihanoukville only lies across the edge of the sea. Where there is ocean, there are opportunities and other places to explore. It is a location I have passed through a number of times now but only as a point of transit whenever it can be helped. You can stop by, take it in for what it is, find the nearest boat and sail on out of there. It didn't take much of that place for me to start feeling choked on the fumes but i was hopeful to find a breath of fresh air on the horizon, and I certainly wasn't wrong.
Have you ever heard of Sihanoukville?
Can you even pronounce it? Go on. Give it a shot.
Quite finished?
Sihanoukville is a beach town. A Cambodian beach town. Everyone knows a beach town. A kind of fringe existence built up to support the ocean economy. Where this was once based around the produce that came out of the sea, it is now formed around the people who want to go in to it. It is a passing form of trade which typically spends it time gliding across the surface of the locality without ever peering below the surface. As such you will find places like this, Sihanoukville being far from an exception, caters chiefly to one thing: surface pleasures.
Sihanoukville is like a gift wrapped turd in an adult version of pass the parcel.
O.k, that was slightly harsh. It might not be a gift wrapped turd. The thing is, there are a lot of shiny layers wrapped around the experience, that are at once exciting and enticing to sink your claws in to. The problem is, the more you peel away and the closer you get to the heart, the more it starts to stink. And with this place, there are definitely rips in the packaging.
The trick is distraction. This is something it does well. Take, for instance, Utopia bar. Yes, Utopia. Take all the connotations of an establishment that calls itself that and you probably wont be far off. During happy hour they sells beers for 25 cents. 25 cents. I mean yeah sure it is notorious for its $1 dorm rooms being infested with bed bugs, but 25 cent beers. Bed bugs. Beers. Bed bugs. Beers. The eternal debate.
The fact is, for those looking for a good time, Sihanoukville knows how to give it to you. It is one big party even if it does feel slightly like the tail end. Like turning up to a house at 5am where most of the revellers have passed out or gone home and the surroundings are littered with the detritus of festivities that once were.
Take the main beach, Serendipity Beach. At first glance you have a beautiful ocean front, golden sand, blue seas, the package. Problem is ase tide laps at your ankles, so too does untold amounts of refuse. Discarded cans, food containers, plastic bags and potentially even the odd rubber receptacle of the shared joy experienced the night before between two consenting adults who love each other very dearly. I enjoy a dip in the ocean but this was one location where I opted to stay dry.
Alright, that is not ostensibly true. There was that first night out drinking at the late night beach bars where my Texan companion and I were coaxed by new aquaintances in to taking a late night dip. The air of throwing caution and indeed modesty to the wind seems to blow in on the evening breeze and only dissipates in the glare of the following sunrise. The only hope is that whatever dignity you discard on the shoreline is able to be reclaimed before you surrender to sleep. We were lucky to leave with what we arrived with alongside some good memories, I have seen many who left with less.
In Asia though it is hard to entirely fault a location servicing abandon. Those that come to this part of the world can often be characterised by the desire, to a greater or lesser extent, lose themselves. Sihanoukville provides that environment in the easiest possible way. Seek Utopia, indulge hedonism, retreat from reality. The appeal is not hard to identify.
Unfortunately it is this reality that causes the stench of putrification wafting out from beneath all the glossy layers. When you can hardly hear the waves on the shore beyond the cries of children begging you to buy their bracelets and fireworks. When the crowd at the liveliest bar on the beachfront comprises more prostitutes than it does actual punters. I mean they call it a bar, we call it a bar but the flashing lights can only disguise so much from its true identity.
Ultimately though, Sihanoukville only lies across the edge of the sea. Where there is ocean, there are opportunities and other places to explore. It is a location I have passed through a number of times now but only as a point of transit whenever it can be helped. You can stop by, take it in for what it is, find the nearest boat and sail on out of there. It didn't take much of that place for me to start feeling choked on the fumes but i was hopeful to find a breath of fresh air on the horizon, and I certainly wasn't wrong.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Eyes on the Horizon
So... Its been a while. I know. I made no promises and told no lies. I got slack and fell behind. I put the Hugh in to Hu(gh)man incompetency. Apparently in the past sentence I also managed to put the Hugh in to Human. I thought it would fit better. Actually looks kinda ugly. Food for thought.
Regardless here I am once more, attempting to communicate some fraction of the sensory overload that I have been weighing myself under for what has now been more than three months. Not long in the grand scheme of things but it certainly feels like something approaching a while on my end. I have seen, done, felt, experienced, embraced, swam in, jumped off, smelt, embibed and ran away from things that I could never have previously conceived to have even approached my path, let alone cross it.
And all of this without keeping you beautiful people informed of said shenanigans? For shame!
The benefit of my absence from the blogging medium is that my well of travelling tidbits has grown deeper and richer than ever before which means there should be an abundance encounters to share with y'all. Should being the operative word of course. I make no further promises as to my ability to maintain the informative flow but I do pledge to try. I mean, you don't even know what happened on the further adventures of my flip flops do you? Thats a good one, if I do say so my self.
I will say this much, it has only just occurred to me in writing this last paragraph that, were Hughs Views not such a damn catchy name for this blog, The Well of Travelling Tidbits would be a fantastic alternative. Its almost sounds like a knock off Harry Potter book, chronicling his gap year when he decided to go backpacking across the wizarding world. Hugh Surtees and the Well of Travelling Tidbits. It has winner written all over it.
Pointless digressions aside, here is my hope going forward. It has been so long that to attempt to maintain a coherent chronology is beyond my already limited powers of discourse so I will just attempt more to collate a collection of select memories from throughout. Once I have figured what I can share and what is best left for personal recollection, I will do my utmost to type them down and post them up. To be fair a lack of sense and structure would certainly be the more accurate form of reflecting the last few months.
Now if you will forgive me, I am going to shake out my head, stretch out my fingers and see what flows forth. I am quietly optimistic but as one of the golden rules of scuba diving would say, don't hold your breath. And don't aggravate sharks. That should be obvious.
Regardless here I am once more, attempting to communicate some fraction of the sensory overload that I have been weighing myself under for what has now been more than three months. Not long in the grand scheme of things but it certainly feels like something approaching a while on my end. I have seen, done, felt, experienced, embraced, swam in, jumped off, smelt, embibed and ran away from things that I could never have previously conceived to have even approached my path, let alone cross it.
And all of this without keeping you beautiful people informed of said shenanigans? For shame!
The benefit of my absence from the blogging medium is that my well of travelling tidbits has grown deeper and richer than ever before which means there should be an abundance encounters to share with y'all. Should being the operative word of course. I make no further promises as to my ability to maintain the informative flow but I do pledge to try. I mean, you don't even know what happened on the further adventures of my flip flops do you? Thats a good one, if I do say so my self.
I will say this much, it has only just occurred to me in writing this last paragraph that, were Hughs Views not such a damn catchy name for this blog, The Well of Travelling Tidbits would be a fantastic alternative. Its almost sounds like a knock off Harry Potter book, chronicling his gap year when he decided to go backpacking across the wizarding world. Hugh Surtees and the Well of Travelling Tidbits. It has winner written all over it.
Pointless digressions aside, here is my hope going forward. It has been so long that to attempt to maintain a coherent chronology is beyond my already limited powers of discourse so I will just attempt more to collate a collection of select memories from throughout. Once I have figured what I can share and what is best left for personal recollection, I will do my utmost to type them down and post them up. To be fair a lack of sense and structure would certainly be the more accurate form of reflecting the last few months.
Now if you will forgive me, I am going to shake out my head, stretch out my fingers and see what flows forth. I am quietly optimistic but as one of the golden rules of scuba diving would say, don't hold your breath. And don't aggravate sharks. That should be obvious.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Phmom Pen: Death, Darkness and Disarray
Ooh, what an ominous title.
Don't worry though, its not all doom and gloom. Backpacking can often be described as a pretty light hearted and joyful exercise in experiencing the world. You can come and go as you please, live your days at your leisure, flit from excercise to excursion as the mood strikes. Certain places however have sites you have to see. Some out of wonder, some out of curiosity but also some out of education and to an extent duty. Phnom Penh holds such a place.
When first strting my travels in Bangkok, i naturally enquired amongst the more seasoned travellers as to what my upcoming destinations would be like. Phnom Penh was the first stop described to me in anything less than effusive terms. I was told it was dirty and seedy. Further enquiry however uncovered a more apt term for it. A description from the tourist information advisor.
Phnom Penh is a sad city.
As the capital of Cambodia is the most developed location I have witnessed throughout the country and by some margin. It has high rise buildings. Bustling main highways and intersections. Branded shopping malls. Uptowns and downtowns. You can see the freshness to some of it and feel the strengthening beat of the urban pulse which is slowly building towards the fully fledged modern heartbeat developed by cities such as the Bangkoks and the Hanois it is ultimately destined to emulate.
Cambodia is a poor country though which has not had it easy. Phnom Penh has been front and centre for the struggle. It is growing to diversity through adversity. To even get close to understanding this, you need to visit the killing fields.
Getting there it self is like a trip between worlds. You catch a tuk-tuk (of course) and it drives you through smoggy sprawl of transport and commerce that are spread across the streets and the roads, neither exclusively set on one or the other. You are as likely to find a fruit seller strolling down the middle of the main road as you are to find a motorbike weaving through pedestrians in search of short cut.
Ultimately you get to the infamous killing fields. They are symbolic of attrocity. Moreover they are the site of attrocity. To think that one such place exists is heartbraking. To think that it is one of many throughout the country is unbearable.
I am not qualified or informed enough to give an adequate description of its history or context. Suffice to say that a bad man by the name of Pol Pot got some crazy ideas and some influence, he used this to convince a large proportion of undeducated peasants to join a cause they didn't truly understand and form an army called the Khmer Rouge. At this point in time Cambodia was still suffering from the battering it had had taken on behalf of the Vietnam war, meaning that when the action came, it was not ready or able to defend itself. The Khmer Rouge took the city, took control and just like any crazy tyrant, Pol Pot started wiping out his enemies.
The killing fields are an execution ground. An execuition ground of mass graves that span vast fields. Just as power breeds paranoia, especially the ill-gotten variety, more and more people became classed as enemies and now across the country fields like these exist. Appartly out of a population of 9 million people, 3 million were massacred. Please don't judge me on any faults in those details, I am just trying to recall it from memory. It seems strange to be part of a generation that grew up just after these events happened. Too late to have born witness to the news and yet too fresh to have the perspective to have studied it as history. I don't know if I speak for all my age but I know a lot of people who are aware that something bad happened there but dont know the story.
Now I think I will never forget it. I mean these are real, authentic mass graves you are walking amongst. They are still uncovering fragments of bone and clothing even to this day. I visited the morning after a heavy storm and had a hard time being able to atually compute that the cordoned off mud pits with bone shards sticking out of the dirt were not props. Pirates of the Caribbean, this aint.
You can only imagine that a day spent in such surrounds requires an evening to reflect but a night to forget. Some sights may never leave you but you cant fault a distraction from them. Duly socialising abounded, hair was let down and the night began. Then came time for the night to move on. The last bar was closing, it was time for a club.
Enthusiasm was rife, a location was set and a ebullient group of us set off in tuk-tuks, the rest following behind, the destination: Code Red. Great club, great drink offers. We had been dealt a winning hand.
One catch though, the ace in our pack turned out to be a joker.
Here is a piece of trivia for you. A lot of the tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh, don't actually come from Phnom Penh. They come from far and wide, they are drawn to the bright lights and the commerial buzz. The catch being, they don't know the city and they don't know where the hell they are going.
It took us some time to realise this. I would say roughly an hour. Give or take. The giving and taking referring to giving directions and taking lies. Giving advice and taking false nods of understanding. Giving grief and taking confused looks. Giving up and taking another option for a club that was nearby and seemed acceptable.
And it was. It was called Heart of Darkness but that was somewhat misleading. A literary title for a gaudy electro pop nighclub. It may seem like a strange name that teeters along the titghtrope of inappropriatess given the books connection to the Vietnam War. Then again there was a club in Saigon called Apocalypse Now so really, who is to say.
Either way it seemed like a good enough time, and wouldn't you know love was in the air. Amongst all the dancing, frolicing folks a local Cambodian lad, couldn't have been older than twenty, he found affection. Clearly someone who understood him, someone he could share his spirit, certainly someone who got him. So what if this partner in question was a western man, who was clearly past the age of retirement. You could seem the connection in their dancing. And grinding. Why, the old, roughly unshaven, creepy old white guy had such a close relationship with this young Cambodian chap, he even trusted him enough to count his money.
And the say romance is dead.
I sat down in the other end of the club, trying to reflect on everything that I had seen that day. The sorrow, the confusion, the vibrancy, the frivolity, the vice and the festivity. It was a rich synaptic cocktail to digest and I wasn't sure how it was going to go down.
The answer, naturally, was to dance.
In this less populated end of the establishment, a group of waitresses finished their shift, put on a traditional local song and started dancing in a circle around a bar stool. They tapped my friend and I on the shoulder and invited us to join in. It was something I had never done before, I didn't know the moves but they just seemed happy. It could have meant all kinds of things, it could have meant nothing but amonst all I had seen, sharing in these people having a good time meant everything. I knew nothing of what was going on but at that moment, it made all the sense in the world snd that counted for a lot.
Don't worry though, its not all doom and gloom. Backpacking can often be described as a pretty light hearted and joyful exercise in experiencing the world. You can come and go as you please, live your days at your leisure, flit from excercise to excursion as the mood strikes. Certain places however have sites you have to see. Some out of wonder, some out of curiosity but also some out of education and to an extent duty. Phnom Penh holds such a place.
When first strting my travels in Bangkok, i naturally enquired amongst the more seasoned travellers as to what my upcoming destinations would be like. Phnom Penh was the first stop described to me in anything less than effusive terms. I was told it was dirty and seedy. Further enquiry however uncovered a more apt term for it. A description from the tourist information advisor.
Phnom Penh is a sad city.
As the capital of Cambodia is the most developed location I have witnessed throughout the country and by some margin. It has high rise buildings. Bustling main highways and intersections. Branded shopping malls. Uptowns and downtowns. You can see the freshness to some of it and feel the strengthening beat of the urban pulse which is slowly building towards the fully fledged modern heartbeat developed by cities such as the Bangkoks and the Hanois it is ultimately destined to emulate.
Cambodia is a poor country though which has not had it easy. Phnom Penh has been front and centre for the struggle. It is growing to diversity through adversity. To even get close to understanding this, you need to visit the killing fields.
Getting there it self is like a trip between worlds. You catch a tuk-tuk (of course) and it drives you through smoggy sprawl of transport and commerce that are spread across the streets and the roads, neither exclusively set on one or the other. You are as likely to find a fruit seller strolling down the middle of the main road as you are to find a motorbike weaving through pedestrians in search of short cut.
Ultimately you get to the infamous killing fields. They are symbolic of attrocity. Moreover they are the site of attrocity. To think that one such place exists is heartbraking. To think that it is one of many throughout the country is unbearable.
I am not qualified or informed enough to give an adequate description of its history or context. Suffice to say that a bad man by the name of Pol Pot got some crazy ideas and some influence, he used this to convince a large proportion of undeducated peasants to join a cause they didn't truly understand and form an army called the Khmer Rouge. At this point in time Cambodia was still suffering from the battering it had had taken on behalf of the Vietnam war, meaning that when the action came, it was not ready or able to defend itself. The Khmer Rouge took the city, took control and just like any crazy tyrant, Pol Pot started wiping out his enemies.
The killing fields are an execution ground. An execuition ground of mass graves that span vast fields. Just as power breeds paranoia, especially the ill-gotten variety, more and more people became classed as enemies and now across the country fields like these exist. Appartly out of a population of 9 million people, 3 million were massacred. Please don't judge me on any faults in those details, I am just trying to recall it from memory. It seems strange to be part of a generation that grew up just after these events happened. Too late to have born witness to the news and yet too fresh to have the perspective to have studied it as history. I don't know if I speak for all my age but I know a lot of people who are aware that something bad happened there but dont know the story.
Now I think I will never forget it. I mean these are real, authentic mass graves you are walking amongst. They are still uncovering fragments of bone and clothing even to this day. I visited the morning after a heavy storm and had a hard time being able to atually compute that the cordoned off mud pits with bone shards sticking out of the dirt were not props. Pirates of the Caribbean, this aint.
You can only imagine that a day spent in such surrounds requires an evening to reflect but a night to forget. Some sights may never leave you but you cant fault a distraction from them. Duly socialising abounded, hair was let down and the night began. Then came time for the night to move on. The last bar was closing, it was time for a club.
Enthusiasm was rife, a location was set and a ebullient group of us set off in tuk-tuks, the rest following behind, the destination: Code Red. Great club, great drink offers. We had been dealt a winning hand.
One catch though, the ace in our pack turned out to be a joker.
Here is a piece of trivia for you. A lot of the tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh, don't actually come from Phnom Penh. They come from far and wide, they are drawn to the bright lights and the commerial buzz. The catch being, they don't know the city and they don't know where the hell they are going.
It took us some time to realise this. I would say roughly an hour. Give or take. The giving and taking referring to giving directions and taking lies. Giving advice and taking false nods of understanding. Giving grief and taking confused looks. Giving up and taking another option for a club that was nearby and seemed acceptable.
And it was. It was called Heart of Darkness but that was somewhat misleading. A literary title for a gaudy electro pop nighclub. It may seem like a strange name that teeters along the titghtrope of inappropriatess given the books connection to the Vietnam War. Then again there was a club in Saigon called Apocalypse Now so really, who is to say.
Either way it seemed like a good enough time, and wouldn't you know love was in the air. Amongst all the dancing, frolicing folks a local Cambodian lad, couldn't have been older than twenty, he found affection. Clearly someone who understood him, someone he could share his spirit, certainly someone who got him. So what if this partner in question was a western man, who was clearly past the age of retirement. You could seem the connection in their dancing. And grinding. Why, the old, roughly unshaven, creepy old white guy had such a close relationship with this young Cambodian chap, he even trusted him enough to count his money.
And the say romance is dead.
I sat down in the other end of the club, trying to reflect on everything that I had seen that day. The sorrow, the confusion, the vibrancy, the frivolity, the vice and the festivity. It was a rich synaptic cocktail to digest and I wasn't sure how it was going to go down.
The answer, naturally, was to dance.
In this less populated end of the establishment, a group of waitresses finished their shift, put on a traditional local song and started dancing in a circle around a bar stool. They tapped my friend and I on the shoulder and invited us to join in. It was something I had never done before, I didn't know the moves but they just seemed happy. It could have meant all kinds of things, it could have meant nothing but amonst all I had seen, sharing in these people having a good time meant everything. I knew nothing of what was going on but at that moment, it made all the sense in the world snd that counted for a lot.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Siem Reap/Phnom Penh: Backpacking Karma - A Tale of Two Monkeys
One fact that is inescapable in South East Asia is that despite all the rife madness and debauchery they are incredibly spiritual people. You see temples in abundance and shrines in every establishment laden with offerings of food, drink and incense.
The prevailing religion in this region is Budhism, definitely one of the more interesting and peaceful religions as far as I am concerned. Despite having actually studied this particular faith in school some many years back, I could not provide much in the way of detail when it comes to their particular practices. One key element that I am aware of however is that of Karma. This is (basically) the notion that in the cycle of life good actions will reap good consequences and the same conversely with bad actions.
As I have mentioned before I am not a spiritual person and I could not begin to say how this Karma thing actually works but the following story makes me think there may actually be something to it.
You see as I tore through the streets of Siem Reap in the back of a tuk-tuk, my Karma meter was definitely rising. So was my heart rate and the contents of my stomach.
It had seemed simple enough at the time. A fellow backpacker had just departed on a night bus for their next destination and unfortunately left their camera behind in the bar. It had since found its way in to my possesion due to being one of the last faces to be photographed on said camera. The solution to this quandry seemed simple. I would go to reception, inform them of the unfortunate circumstance, they would hold on to the camera until its owner got in touch, at which point they could forward it on to the next set address.
The thing is, Cambodia does not do simple solutions.
Upon explaining the situation and all the relevant details, the receptionist told me to stay there and a series of frantic phonecalls ensued. I kept trying to explain what needed to happen but they were having none of it. A few confusing minutes later, said receptionist pointed at me and I was ushered outside. I dutifully followed and noticed that the receptionist was hailing down a tuk-tuk. It was at this point I clocked on to the new plan. We were going after the bus.
I timidly climbed in to the vehicle and the receptionist jumped in after me. I am not sure precisely what she said to the driver but sometimes physical comunication is universal enough. One such gesture is the tapping of the watch and the firm point in a specific direction. That means floor it, preferably with even scanter regard for sense and safety than you would normally practice. It also means the following: Hold. On. Tight.
The bus had a significant headstart on us but thankfully it had stopped further on up the road to collect more passengers. Ultimately we caught up with it and I was able to stride on the bus, return the lost goods and play the role of the hero. The shaky legged hero with a pale face and even paler knuckles, but the hero none the less.
And the karmic reward for my actions? Some bastard stole my bloody flip flops.
I loved those flip flops.
After a lifelong aversion to wearing such footwear, I relented in 2009 during my time in Florida and finally purchased a pair. Unrivalled in comfort and durability, these flip flops had been with me ever since, on various holidays and adventures. They had never let me down but for some reason, this was to be the day the universe saw fit to part me from them.
I was staying at the Mad Monkey hostel in Siem Reap and one great feature of this hostel is a rooftop beach bar, covered in sand with hammocks and good times in abundance. One poor feature of the hostel was having to take your footwear off before entering the bar. It means putting your trust in your fellow patrons. Some patrons are bad people. Sure enough when it came time to leave the bar, my beloved flip flops were nowhere to be found. I drunkenly searched high and low. By that I mean I swore a lot, stumbled round in circles and gave up looking after almost falling over my own feet for a third time.
At this point I made what peace I could with my loss. I had other shoes and I was leaving for another city the next day. I guess it was goodbye. It wasn't all doom and gloom after all. There was still a night out to be had and I was determined it would be a good one. It certainly was. I said goodbye to Siem Reap and one of my longer term travelling buddies in a suitably fitting way and ended up having what was at that point one of the best nights of my trip. Flip flops be damned, the universe didn't hate me that much.
Right?
When I awoke the following night in Phnom Penh to the news that my room was flooding, I questioned it once more.
The journey had been fine and we were staying in another Mad Monkey hostel, the sister venture of the establishment from Siem Reap. It was another good fun hostel, I settled in, had a few beers, met some nice people and called it an early night just as the rain began.
Turns out this wasn't just rain, this was a tropical storm. A real one. No one had seen fit to inform our dorms bathroom plumbing that such a storm would be occuring so it decided to burst a pipe in protest. When I awoke, the water was ankle deep and rising. The only people who seemed more bemused than the occupants of the dorm were the staff members who had been called up to fix it. They stood around literally scratching their heads. After a few minutes of optimistic discussion, they decided that what was called for was some good old fashioned Cambodian improvisation. I couldn't tell you exactly what they did but it involved various lengths of wire and a hammer.
A flooding en-suite in a Cambodian hostel. Talk about first world problems in a third world country.
Amazingly whatever they did happened to work and my belongings along with my self were unscathed and unsoaked. I did my part to rouse the fellow inhabitants of my room and in the end all was well.
I was pissed off with Karma though. As far as I was concerned I had done good deeds and this was simply not karmic cricket.
Maybe the universe agreed. After an intense following day seeing sights that took my mind far from any of these concerns I returned to my hostel and lay down for a power nap. I woke later and was just heading out of the dorm to join my friends for dinner downstairs when I stopped. I looked down. On the floor, two bunks over were my flip flops.
Like, actually MY flip flops. Not similar flip flops. Mine. For starters they were the only ones like that I had ever seen. They also had the same scratches, the same wear marks, the same missing decorations that had fallen off after years of use. No mistaking, no questioning. It was them.
I was incredulous. I had traveled close to ten hours across the country and my flip flops had seen fit to follow me. The person who had taken them could have gone to any city next, in that city he could have stayed in any hostel, in that hostel he could have stayed in any dorm, in any bunk. There are so many ways I could have never seen them again, yet here they were. Clear as day.
When the perpetrator returned I politely inquired as to whether he had just come from Siem Reap, without meaning to sound weird of course, if those were in fact his flip flops. His resulting expression was sheepish to say the least. Thankfully he was gracious in response, explained that his flip flops had too been taken and he picked up the nearest pair out of necessity. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not but at this point, I didn't care. Against all odds, I had my flip flops back.
I could have reprimanded the guy, could have chastised him, could have called him out as a thief and general vagabond. But I chose not to. Instead, when I saw the guy in the bar later, I bought him a beer and said that even though i'm not sure how it happened, I was pleased that it had.
It seemed the right thing to do. Just maybe, if I was the bigger man and did the nice thing, Karma might find a way to reward me.
Or maybe it will give me dengue fever. I don't know. I guess time will tell...
The prevailing religion in this region is Budhism, definitely one of the more interesting and peaceful religions as far as I am concerned. Despite having actually studied this particular faith in school some many years back, I could not provide much in the way of detail when it comes to their particular practices. One key element that I am aware of however is that of Karma. This is (basically) the notion that in the cycle of life good actions will reap good consequences and the same conversely with bad actions.
As I have mentioned before I am not a spiritual person and I could not begin to say how this Karma thing actually works but the following story makes me think there may actually be something to it.
You see as I tore through the streets of Siem Reap in the back of a tuk-tuk, my Karma meter was definitely rising. So was my heart rate and the contents of my stomach.
It had seemed simple enough at the time. A fellow backpacker had just departed on a night bus for their next destination and unfortunately left their camera behind in the bar. It had since found its way in to my possesion due to being one of the last faces to be photographed on said camera. The solution to this quandry seemed simple. I would go to reception, inform them of the unfortunate circumstance, they would hold on to the camera until its owner got in touch, at which point they could forward it on to the next set address.
The thing is, Cambodia does not do simple solutions.
Upon explaining the situation and all the relevant details, the receptionist told me to stay there and a series of frantic phonecalls ensued. I kept trying to explain what needed to happen but they were having none of it. A few confusing minutes later, said receptionist pointed at me and I was ushered outside. I dutifully followed and noticed that the receptionist was hailing down a tuk-tuk. It was at this point I clocked on to the new plan. We were going after the bus.
I timidly climbed in to the vehicle and the receptionist jumped in after me. I am not sure precisely what she said to the driver but sometimes physical comunication is universal enough. One such gesture is the tapping of the watch and the firm point in a specific direction. That means floor it, preferably with even scanter regard for sense and safety than you would normally practice. It also means the following: Hold. On. Tight.
The bus had a significant headstart on us but thankfully it had stopped further on up the road to collect more passengers. Ultimately we caught up with it and I was able to stride on the bus, return the lost goods and play the role of the hero. The shaky legged hero with a pale face and even paler knuckles, but the hero none the less.
And the karmic reward for my actions? Some bastard stole my bloody flip flops.
I loved those flip flops.
After a lifelong aversion to wearing such footwear, I relented in 2009 during my time in Florida and finally purchased a pair. Unrivalled in comfort and durability, these flip flops had been with me ever since, on various holidays and adventures. They had never let me down but for some reason, this was to be the day the universe saw fit to part me from them.
I was staying at the Mad Monkey hostel in Siem Reap and one great feature of this hostel is a rooftop beach bar, covered in sand with hammocks and good times in abundance. One poor feature of the hostel was having to take your footwear off before entering the bar. It means putting your trust in your fellow patrons. Some patrons are bad people. Sure enough when it came time to leave the bar, my beloved flip flops were nowhere to be found. I drunkenly searched high and low. By that I mean I swore a lot, stumbled round in circles and gave up looking after almost falling over my own feet for a third time.
At this point I made what peace I could with my loss. I had other shoes and I was leaving for another city the next day. I guess it was goodbye. It wasn't all doom and gloom after all. There was still a night out to be had and I was determined it would be a good one. It certainly was. I said goodbye to Siem Reap and one of my longer term travelling buddies in a suitably fitting way and ended up having what was at that point one of the best nights of my trip. Flip flops be damned, the universe didn't hate me that much.
Right?
When I awoke the following night in Phnom Penh to the news that my room was flooding, I questioned it once more.
The journey had been fine and we were staying in another Mad Monkey hostel, the sister venture of the establishment from Siem Reap. It was another good fun hostel, I settled in, had a few beers, met some nice people and called it an early night just as the rain began.
Turns out this wasn't just rain, this was a tropical storm. A real one. No one had seen fit to inform our dorms bathroom plumbing that such a storm would be occuring so it decided to burst a pipe in protest. When I awoke, the water was ankle deep and rising. The only people who seemed more bemused than the occupants of the dorm were the staff members who had been called up to fix it. They stood around literally scratching their heads. After a few minutes of optimistic discussion, they decided that what was called for was some good old fashioned Cambodian improvisation. I couldn't tell you exactly what they did but it involved various lengths of wire and a hammer.
A flooding en-suite in a Cambodian hostel. Talk about first world problems in a third world country.
Amazingly whatever they did happened to work and my belongings along with my self were unscathed and unsoaked. I did my part to rouse the fellow inhabitants of my room and in the end all was well.
I was pissed off with Karma though. As far as I was concerned I had done good deeds and this was simply not karmic cricket.
Maybe the universe agreed. After an intense following day seeing sights that took my mind far from any of these concerns I returned to my hostel and lay down for a power nap. I woke later and was just heading out of the dorm to join my friends for dinner downstairs when I stopped. I looked down. On the floor, two bunks over were my flip flops.
Like, actually MY flip flops. Not similar flip flops. Mine. For starters they were the only ones like that I had ever seen. They also had the same scratches, the same wear marks, the same missing decorations that had fallen off after years of use. No mistaking, no questioning. It was them.
I was incredulous. I had traveled close to ten hours across the country and my flip flops had seen fit to follow me. The person who had taken them could have gone to any city next, in that city he could have stayed in any hostel, in that hostel he could have stayed in any dorm, in any bunk. There are so many ways I could have never seen them again, yet here they were. Clear as day.
When the perpetrator returned I politely inquired as to whether he had just come from Siem Reap, without meaning to sound weird of course, if those were in fact his flip flops. His resulting expression was sheepish to say the least. Thankfully he was gracious in response, explained that his flip flops had too been taken and he picked up the nearest pair out of necessity. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not but at this point, I didn't care. Against all odds, I had my flip flops back.
I could have reprimanded the guy, could have chastised him, could have called him out as a thief and general vagabond. But I chose not to. Instead, when I saw the guy in the bar later, I bought him a beer and said that even though i'm not sure how it happened, I was pleased that it had.
It seemed the right thing to do. Just maybe, if I was the bigger man and did the nice thing, Karma might find a way to reward me.
Or maybe it will give me dengue fever. I don't know. I guess time will tell...
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Siem Reap: Angkor What Happened Last Night?
The seemingly makeshift city of Siem Reap has developed to the state it exists in today thanks, in part, to the presence of one major tourist attraction, namely the Angkor Wat temples. I am no authority on the history of the place so I won't attempt to provide any context on where the temples came from or indeed the depth of their significance. If you are interested, look it up on Wikipedia. I'm sure that can provide all the answers.
What I can tell you is the following: they are old, they are massive and they are magnificent. They combine those three things to such an extent that they almost transcend any fantasy or mythology that could be created around them. These are the kind of grand structures that the creators of Tomb Raider aspire to imagine. This much can be assured, if by no other fact than one of temples was featured in the Tomb Raider movie. The crumbling authenticity of these archaic entities is genuinely breathtaking, the sheer degree of construction that must have taken place to create them all those years ago is staggering.
You might even say the sight is unforgettable.
The thing is, in Siem Reap, that statement could almost be taken as a challenge.
I was tired, I was weary but I was in good shape. It was 5 am, I had every right to be exhausted. You see part of the joy that comes with housing such a beautiful sight in a hot country is that you get to appreciate the natural splendour of a sunrise alongside the man made wonder of the ancient temples. This of course requires an early rise but I had been sensible the night before and was ready to face it.
The same could not be said of my companion. The man who had come to be affectionately known as Texas was basking with deep peace in somewhat of a festive coma following what was intended to be his one last drink on pub street around midnight. I couldn't tell you what time he eventually got in. Neither could he.
Upon realising that our tuk-tuk driver was ready to take us to temples and that our party was incomplete by one number, I feared the worst and set off to rouse our missing patron. Sure enough, upon finding his dorm I too found the man in question unfortunately lacking the requisite consciousness for such an undertaking. He shortly awoke with an expression that spoke of anger, incomprehension and sadness. Sadness that such a fate could have befallen him on this occasion. Sadness that his carefully laid plan, and indeed carefully set alarm had somehow failed him. Sadness that cool comfort of his bed and its surrounding dormitory were about to be parted from him and replaced sweat and exertion.
We had a matter of minutes to make it downstairs though so the time for lamenting had to wait. There would be another point to wonder why there were holes in his knees equivalent to the holes in his memory. He got up, walked in to the wall with all the confidence of a man expecting to walk through it, fixed himself together to the best of his capabilities and we set off.
The temples themselves did not disappoint in the slightest. Whereas the grand temples in Bangkok stand as testimony to the capabilities of human creativity in seeking worship, the Angkor Wat temples are something else. They defy not just construction but conception.
The overwhelming scale of the establishment is all encompassing. Any one of the temples by themselves could blow the average mind as it wanders through the intricate stone corridors and trapses up and down decrepit staircases which feel as if they could either crumble beneath you or slide inwards to reveal secret chambers full of golden idols. The fact that there are so many of them in one area, each one unique yet equally mesemerising, is beyond measure.
Did I take slight advantage of some of these ancient, sacred structures and pose for amusing photos that could be seen as disrespectful to the spiritual endeavour that they stand in monument to? Perhaps. Did i disregard pretty clear instructions not to straddle the balustrade in search of an inappropriate photo opportunity? Its possible. Really though it would be rude not to bring some of my juvenile western sensibilities to bare on this mystical eastern location. And besides, I didn't even know what a balustrade was before I straddled it. Doesn't mean I wouldn't do it again but at least ignorance can be a minor excuse.
I was still doing better than Texas regardless. After what he had consumed the night before, the term 'sweating buckets' was taking on a whole new meaning. Narrowly surviving the ride over as he swayed in and out of the speeding vehicle, he somehow managed to stagger and stumble through temple after temple, turning to small animals for support in his weaker moments. Cambodian dogs are just as undiscerning as the rest of the worlds canine population when it comes to getting a scratch behind the ears.
Overtime though, the majesty won through. The blur of experience gradually came in to focus as the swelter of the ever intensifying sun cooked away the previous nights marination. There is something undeniable about an accomplisment that is so literally monumental. He turned to me at one point and genuinely asked how we had even got there in the morning. It was a journey through darkness that had ultimately been illuminated by a glorious sunrise and revealed something that defied both imagination and inebriation.
We never did find out where the wounds in his knees came from. Pub street had claimed both his physical and mental fortitude. Angkor Wat had seen fit to redeem him however and the day won through.
Well I say that, really after arriving at the temples at 5am we were finished by 12 and went back to the hostel where he subsequently slept pretty much in to the following day. At least half the day won through, and as half days go, it ceratinly was one to (almost) remember.
What I can tell you is the following: they are old, they are massive and they are magnificent. They combine those three things to such an extent that they almost transcend any fantasy or mythology that could be created around them. These are the kind of grand structures that the creators of Tomb Raider aspire to imagine. This much can be assured, if by no other fact than one of temples was featured in the Tomb Raider movie. The crumbling authenticity of these archaic entities is genuinely breathtaking, the sheer degree of construction that must have taken place to create them all those years ago is staggering.
You might even say the sight is unforgettable.
The thing is, in Siem Reap, that statement could almost be taken as a challenge.
I was tired, I was weary but I was in good shape. It was 5 am, I had every right to be exhausted. You see part of the joy that comes with housing such a beautiful sight in a hot country is that you get to appreciate the natural splendour of a sunrise alongside the man made wonder of the ancient temples. This of course requires an early rise but I had been sensible the night before and was ready to face it.
The same could not be said of my companion. The man who had come to be affectionately known as Texas was basking with deep peace in somewhat of a festive coma following what was intended to be his one last drink on pub street around midnight. I couldn't tell you what time he eventually got in. Neither could he.
Upon realising that our tuk-tuk driver was ready to take us to temples and that our party was incomplete by one number, I feared the worst and set off to rouse our missing patron. Sure enough, upon finding his dorm I too found the man in question unfortunately lacking the requisite consciousness for such an undertaking. He shortly awoke with an expression that spoke of anger, incomprehension and sadness. Sadness that such a fate could have befallen him on this occasion. Sadness that his carefully laid plan, and indeed carefully set alarm had somehow failed him. Sadness that cool comfort of his bed and its surrounding dormitory were about to be parted from him and replaced sweat and exertion.
We had a matter of minutes to make it downstairs though so the time for lamenting had to wait. There would be another point to wonder why there were holes in his knees equivalent to the holes in his memory. He got up, walked in to the wall with all the confidence of a man expecting to walk through it, fixed himself together to the best of his capabilities and we set off.
The temples themselves did not disappoint in the slightest. Whereas the grand temples in Bangkok stand as testimony to the capabilities of human creativity in seeking worship, the Angkor Wat temples are something else. They defy not just construction but conception.
The overwhelming scale of the establishment is all encompassing. Any one of the temples by themselves could blow the average mind as it wanders through the intricate stone corridors and trapses up and down decrepit staircases which feel as if they could either crumble beneath you or slide inwards to reveal secret chambers full of golden idols. The fact that there are so many of them in one area, each one unique yet equally mesemerising, is beyond measure.
Did I take slight advantage of some of these ancient, sacred structures and pose for amusing photos that could be seen as disrespectful to the spiritual endeavour that they stand in monument to? Perhaps. Did i disregard pretty clear instructions not to straddle the balustrade in search of an inappropriate photo opportunity? Its possible. Really though it would be rude not to bring some of my juvenile western sensibilities to bare on this mystical eastern location. And besides, I didn't even know what a balustrade was before I straddled it. Doesn't mean I wouldn't do it again but at least ignorance can be a minor excuse.
I was still doing better than Texas regardless. After what he had consumed the night before, the term 'sweating buckets' was taking on a whole new meaning. Narrowly surviving the ride over as he swayed in and out of the speeding vehicle, he somehow managed to stagger and stumble through temple after temple, turning to small animals for support in his weaker moments. Cambodian dogs are just as undiscerning as the rest of the worlds canine population when it comes to getting a scratch behind the ears.
Overtime though, the majesty won through. The blur of experience gradually came in to focus as the swelter of the ever intensifying sun cooked away the previous nights marination. There is something undeniable about an accomplisment that is so literally monumental. He turned to me at one point and genuinely asked how we had even got there in the morning. It was a journey through darkness that had ultimately been illuminated by a glorious sunrise and revealed something that defied both imagination and inebriation.
We never did find out where the wounds in his knees came from. Pub street had claimed both his physical and mental fortitude. Angkor Wat had seen fit to redeem him however and the day won through.
Well I say that, really after arriving at the temples at 5am we were finished by 12 and went back to the hostel where he subsequently slept pretty much in to the following day. At least half the day won through, and as half days go, it ceratinly was one to (almost) remember.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Siem Reap: Reaping and Pillaging
Take a moment and picture Cambodia.
Hard right? For the many of you who, like myself prior to this trip, have never been to Cambodia, it is difficult to know what to expect.
In the recent past it has been most famous for genocidal attrocities that happened just outside of my generations frame of reference. We grew up associating the name of Cambodia with that of slight unknown danger without being able to put a fine point on what the issue was. As such it seems strange that this country has become such a prominent stop of the backpacking trail. Somewhere along the line tourism started to build up and it just became accepted that this was a place to visit. Those who know me can likely attest to the amount of planning and preperation I put in to the running of my life (note: minimal at best) so it will surprise few of you to know that my first impression of Siem Reap was one of bewilerment.
Driving in to Cambodia is a trip in it self. If anyone has seen the episode of South Park in which they visit Canada only to discover that there is only one road in Canada (ala the yellow brick road) and if you follow it, eventually you will get everywhere. That is how Cambodia felt upon arrival. One looooong road. Surrounded by a vast degree of nothing. Sometimes nothing with a large dirty trench. Somtimes nothing with a few shacks. Sometimes nothing with a cow. But mostly nothing. At points there isn't even road at all.
If you follow the road far enough though, it starts to change. It is as if the country is a sparse field of cultural farmland and in certain locations they have sprinkled seeds of urban development which look like they are just starting to sprout. Siem Reap is one such area, a budding city. With very few establisments taller than two stories to be found, the buildings are the fledgling crops, the tuk-tuks are the flies.
In lieu of any kind of public transport network, a swarm of tuk-tuks choke the streets. Each man with his own bike drawn carriage, just falling over himself to transport you to your destination for a debateable price. No matter how hard you swat at them, they keep buzzing around. They provide a service of course, it just so happens that most places you wish to be are easily walkable, even in the heat. The main reason people visit Siem Reap is to witness the majesty of the ancient Angkor Wat temples, beyond that there are a number of smaller attrractions, quite a few markets and of course bars.
Lots and lots of bars.
Cambodia is striking and surprising at every turn but there was one thing that took me aback. When I first set foot in the rooftop beach bar at The Mad Monkey hostel (where I happened to be staying, great place!), it rang with the chorus of British bar banter. It was honestly like stepping back in to university. Of course you expect a lot of young Brits to be a travellin', just like myself but this was the greatest concentration I had so far witnessed and by some margin. Aside from the vocal clatter, there was also a firmly established beer pong set up and a 'Grenade' leaderboard.
What is a Grenade I hear you ask? Why a Grenade is a shot of tequilla wedged next to a shot of jaegermeister in the rim of a glass containing a small measure of red bull. The idea is that one consumes the shot of tequilla, thus causing the jaeger to fall in to the red bull, which is promptly consumed subsequently.
Hard right? For the many of you who, like myself prior to this trip, have never been to Cambodia, it is difficult to know what to expect.
In the recent past it has been most famous for genocidal attrocities that happened just outside of my generations frame of reference. We grew up associating the name of Cambodia with that of slight unknown danger without being able to put a fine point on what the issue was. As such it seems strange that this country has become such a prominent stop of the backpacking trail. Somewhere along the line tourism started to build up and it just became accepted that this was a place to visit. Those who know me can likely attest to the amount of planning and preperation I put in to the running of my life (note: minimal at best) so it will surprise few of you to know that my first impression of Siem Reap was one of bewilerment.
Driving in to Cambodia is a trip in it self. If anyone has seen the episode of South Park in which they visit Canada only to discover that there is only one road in Canada (ala the yellow brick road) and if you follow it, eventually you will get everywhere. That is how Cambodia felt upon arrival. One looooong road. Surrounded by a vast degree of nothing. Sometimes nothing with a large dirty trench. Somtimes nothing with a few shacks. Sometimes nothing with a cow. But mostly nothing. At points there isn't even road at all.
If you follow the road far enough though, it starts to change. It is as if the country is a sparse field of cultural farmland and in certain locations they have sprinkled seeds of urban development which look like they are just starting to sprout. Siem Reap is one such area, a budding city. With very few establisments taller than two stories to be found, the buildings are the fledgling crops, the tuk-tuks are the flies.
In lieu of any kind of public transport network, a swarm of tuk-tuks choke the streets. Each man with his own bike drawn carriage, just falling over himself to transport you to your destination for a debateable price. No matter how hard you swat at them, they keep buzzing around. They provide a service of course, it just so happens that most places you wish to be are easily walkable, even in the heat. The main reason people visit Siem Reap is to witness the majesty of the ancient Angkor Wat temples, beyond that there are a number of smaller attrractions, quite a few markets and of course bars.
Lots and lots of bars.
Cambodia is striking and surprising at every turn but there was one thing that took me aback. When I first set foot in the rooftop beach bar at The Mad Monkey hostel (where I happened to be staying, great place!), it rang with the chorus of British bar banter. It was honestly like stepping back in to university. Of course you expect a lot of young Brits to be a travellin', just like myself but this was the greatest concentration I had so far witnessed and by some margin. Aside from the vocal clatter, there was also a firmly established beer pong set up and a 'Grenade' leaderboard.
What is a Grenade I hear you ask? Why a Grenade is a shot of tequilla wedged next to a shot of jaegermeister in the rim of a glass containing a small measure of red bull. The idea is that one consumes the shot of tequilla, thus causing the jaeger to fall in to the red bull, which is promptly consumed subsequently.
Why would one drink such a concoction I hear you ask? Well as far as I can tell there are two types of people. Those who would ask that question, and those the inherently know the answer. As the Red Hot Chilli Peppers would say, if you have to ask, you'll never know. It is clearly a serious business to hostel owners around Cambodia though. In every town or city there will be one bar with its own drinking challenge and a leaderboard against which you represent your country. Bazookas in Phnom Penh (absinthe and sambuca), Jaegerbombs in Sihnoukville, even the remote paradise island of Koh Rong has a bar with a beer shotgun leader board. Someone realised the most potent ingredient they can put in a cocktail is patriotism and boy is it paying dividends.
In Siem Reap once the hostel bar kicks out, you are off to Pub Street. Yes you heard that right, Pub Street.
What is Pub Street I hear you ask.... you know exactly what Pub Street is.
It is like someone tried to force feed all the neon illumination of Soho in to the digestive tract of a developing city that couldn't stomach it. As such it was thrown back up and the resulting upheaval fell in a strip across the heart of the city. Someone then approached the mess of partially chewed razzle and half digested dazzle and decided to build bars either side of it. Thus Pub Street was born.
To be honest, it is a lot of fun. There are two main bars that are directly opposite each other along the road. One is called Angkor What?, the other is simply called Temple. They do love their temple theming over here. Given that Cambodias only temperature setting is set firmly to ' unrelenting swelter ' everyone ends up dancing in the street, flitting from one bar to another depending on which song you prefer at the time. Its energetic, its unhinged but it sure as hell doesn't feel like Cambodia. It feels like Europe.
There is an almost unsettlingly surreal feel trying to reconcile the notion that you are travelling through an undeveloped, spiritual country when you are dancing all your cares away on a road that feels like a donated limb from Magaluf. The locals are clearly cottoning on and adapting accordingly but you must kind of question whether they should have to. With the amount of Europeans passing through, it is inevitable that cultural baggage will be left behind, this lifestyle seems to be our gift to the city.
As the urban cornfield that is Siem Reap continues to grow, you can already see that a crop of a whole different kind of sprouting up beneath. It may not be healthy for anyone but i'll be damned if it doesn't know how to show you a good time.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Break For the Border Vol. 1
So here is an aspect of travelling on a budget that takes some getting used to. Sure on a general holiday you hop a flight, board at A, disembark at B and voila, Bob is your proverbial uncle. I won't go in to the translation of that phrase or those from a non-British disposition, just trust me, it's a good thing.
It is a pricey passtime though. When you move around at the rate required to undertake a journey such as this, flying is a habit that defies boundaries of budget and practicality. Thankfully when the locations you are travelling between do not find themselves divided by vast oceans, overland travel becomes an entirely viable means of transportation. I mean, you can just drive between countries! All you have to do is make a little stop at the border to get your visa and you are on your way once more. So as you all know, I, at this point in the journey, am now an intrepid and established traveller. I am ready to embrace inter-country journies and all the border burdens that go along with the process. How hard can it be? And at only 300 baht, why that is hardly more than a 5 pounds! What a bargain.....
Soooooo this is the story of my exodus from Thailand to Cambodia.
Wake up. Its 6 am. Bus leaves at 6.30. Perfect. Finish packing, shower, dress, refresh. Off to a good start.
Its 7 am. The bus arrives. My fellow travel buddy for this journey is already on board. We get on our way. A brief snack stop ensues before the ferry crossing. The morning breeze aboard the ship wafts us gently onwards. The island disappears as the mainland draws ever closer.
I sleep for a large chunk of the ensuing journey. A couple of hours through the Thai countryside, passing fields, mountains and oddly frequent groups of small Thai children surrounding one chubby child. There seems to be one in every community. No idea why.
So we keep going and before we know, the bus pulls over and the driver announces that we are here. And in such good time. We're here! We're at the border! We're at...wait....isn't that a cafe? The border is a cafe? Between two big countries? Seems kinda informal...
So we are in fact not at the border. We are near the border. The bus has gone. But we need not fear. We are in safe hands. He explains that these are his friends. He seems like a nice guy, im sure they will look after us. I mean look at all those other confused looking western faces eating small plates of over priced Pad Thai. This is clearly a caring bunch.
Turns out they will even sort our visa out for us. We simply fill in the immigration forms and they take care of the rest for us and all for the low, low price of...Forty dollars? Isn't that double the normal price of a visa? But It makes the process quicker though apparently. But I am not in a rush. But the new tour operator is. But I can just be dropped at the border, sort my own visa out and meet the bus on the other side. But the bus may not wait for me on the other side. And I don't want to be left at the border. I may have been under the impression that my transportation from this point to my ultimate destination is his problem but he assures me, it is not.
I eventually get it down to thirty dollars which is hardly breaking the bank and genuinely does expedite the process. There is no longer a long wait on the Thai side of the border. So we get on another bus and drive 10 minutes down the road to the actual border. The official, not-at-all-resembling-a-cafe border. Here we meet our guide. He will take us on our way. He takes us past the long line of people waiting. And through the car park. And past the barbed wire. And around the murkey sewage strewn trench. And...where the hell are we actually going?
Well me make it to the passport office. Safe and sound. We get another fantastic bargain of an offer. Apparently in Cambodia, they are a mean country. They like to rip off tourists for currency exchange. Not like this kind fellow. He wants us all to have the opportunity of making a great deal. We can change all our horrible old Thai baht in to delightful Cambodian riehl. And wouldn't you know it, he has a friend just over the road operating a currency exchange service with the best rates in town. What are the odds? These Thai people sure do have a lot of friends.
Already safe in the knowledge that Cambodia operates almost entirely on the currency of the US dollar and that, as it happens, Cambodian riehl is one of the few world currencies less valuable than monopoly money, I politely declined his offer. So once more we move on, get through the Thai immigration control and cross the bridge in to no mans land.
No mans land I believe is Latin for Do Whatever The Hell You Want, so you find yourself passing liquor, casinos and hookers in abundance. Kinda like Vegas when you think about it. Taking another bus across this landscape, we find ourselves at the Cambodian side of the border. Here the lines are longer and the officials even less enthusiastic to welcome us to their country. We continue diligently through the line, I have lost all sense of what time it is. It is very hot. I have made it though. I am actually in Cambodia! I have...no I don't want to buy cigarettes off you. No, honestly i'm fine. Yes im sure its a great deal. No I don't want to buy your liquor either. No, look please I am just waiting for my bus. I don't want to buy anything. Honestly.
5 minutes of hassle later. We board our next bus. For anyone who wonders where their ancient school busses go to die after they are ruled unfit for human transportation, the answer is Cambodia. We are once more on our way, finally heading for our destination and...oh wait, we have stopped again.
Another bus station, another bus, another start, another stop. The final stop before our destination. This time at another cafe. For an hour. If anyone is wondering where to find it, just look between the 56th billboard for Angkor beer and the 27th mini mart with no customers in it, the one surrounded by empty wildernes, just next to the half naked cambodian child trying to get his partially sunk bike out of the water logged crater. You can't miss it.
We eventually set off for the last time along the same long road/sand and gravel track where a road might one day be, and set a course for Siem Reap. Half delerious from heat and culture shock we entered the city limits, got off the bus, changed transportation once more and boarded a tuk-tuk (think the bastard offspring forged in an illicit menage-au-tois between a motorbike, a horse cart and an enthusiastic street vendor) and finally reached the heart of the city and our hostel.
We disembarked, I surveyed my surroundings, breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought
'We have made it!'
'What the hell do we now...??'
It is a pricey passtime though. When you move around at the rate required to undertake a journey such as this, flying is a habit that defies boundaries of budget and practicality. Thankfully when the locations you are travelling between do not find themselves divided by vast oceans, overland travel becomes an entirely viable means of transportation. I mean, you can just drive between countries! All you have to do is make a little stop at the border to get your visa and you are on your way once more. So as you all know, I, at this point in the journey, am now an intrepid and established traveller. I am ready to embrace inter-country journies and all the border burdens that go along with the process. How hard can it be? And at only 300 baht, why that is hardly more than a 5 pounds! What a bargain.....
Soooooo this is the story of my exodus from Thailand to Cambodia.
Wake up. Its 6 am. Bus leaves at 6.30. Perfect. Finish packing, shower, dress, refresh. Off to a good start.
Its 7 am. The bus arrives. My fellow travel buddy for this journey is already on board. We get on our way. A brief snack stop ensues before the ferry crossing. The morning breeze aboard the ship wafts us gently onwards. The island disappears as the mainland draws ever closer.
I sleep for a large chunk of the ensuing journey. A couple of hours through the Thai countryside, passing fields, mountains and oddly frequent groups of small Thai children surrounding one chubby child. There seems to be one in every community. No idea why.
So we keep going and before we know, the bus pulls over and the driver announces that we are here. And in such good time. We're here! We're at the border! We're at...wait....isn't that a cafe? The border is a cafe? Between two big countries? Seems kinda informal...
So we are in fact not at the border. We are near the border. The bus has gone. But we need not fear. We are in safe hands. He explains that these are his friends. He seems like a nice guy, im sure they will look after us. I mean look at all those other confused looking western faces eating small plates of over priced Pad Thai. This is clearly a caring bunch.
Turns out they will even sort our visa out for us. We simply fill in the immigration forms and they take care of the rest for us and all for the low, low price of...Forty dollars? Isn't that double the normal price of a visa? But It makes the process quicker though apparently. But I am not in a rush. But the new tour operator is. But I can just be dropped at the border, sort my own visa out and meet the bus on the other side. But the bus may not wait for me on the other side. And I don't want to be left at the border. I may have been under the impression that my transportation from this point to my ultimate destination is his problem but he assures me, it is not.
I eventually get it down to thirty dollars which is hardly breaking the bank and genuinely does expedite the process. There is no longer a long wait on the Thai side of the border. So we get on another bus and drive 10 minutes down the road to the actual border. The official, not-at-all-resembling-a-cafe border. Here we meet our guide. He will take us on our way. He takes us past the long line of people waiting. And through the car park. And past the barbed wire. And around the murkey sewage strewn trench. And...where the hell are we actually going?
Well me make it to the passport office. Safe and sound. We get another fantastic bargain of an offer. Apparently in Cambodia, they are a mean country. They like to rip off tourists for currency exchange. Not like this kind fellow. He wants us all to have the opportunity of making a great deal. We can change all our horrible old Thai baht in to delightful Cambodian riehl. And wouldn't you know it, he has a friend just over the road operating a currency exchange service with the best rates in town. What are the odds? These Thai people sure do have a lot of friends.
Already safe in the knowledge that Cambodia operates almost entirely on the currency of the US dollar and that, as it happens, Cambodian riehl is one of the few world currencies less valuable than monopoly money, I politely declined his offer. So once more we move on, get through the Thai immigration control and cross the bridge in to no mans land.
No mans land I believe is Latin for Do Whatever The Hell You Want, so you find yourself passing liquor, casinos and hookers in abundance. Kinda like Vegas when you think about it. Taking another bus across this landscape, we find ourselves at the Cambodian side of the border. Here the lines are longer and the officials even less enthusiastic to welcome us to their country. We continue diligently through the line, I have lost all sense of what time it is. It is very hot. I have made it though. I am actually in Cambodia! I have...no I don't want to buy cigarettes off you. No, honestly i'm fine. Yes im sure its a great deal. No I don't want to buy your liquor either. No, look please I am just waiting for my bus. I don't want to buy anything. Honestly.
5 minutes of hassle later. We board our next bus. For anyone who wonders where their ancient school busses go to die after they are ruled unfit for human transportation, the answer is Cambodia. We are once more on our way, finally heading for our destination and...oh wait, we have stopped again.
Another bus station, another bus, another start, another stop. The final stop before our destination. This time at another cafe. For an hour. If anyone is wondering where to find it, just look between the 56th billboard for Angkor beer and the 27th mini mart with no customers in it, the one surrounded by empty wildernes, just next to the half naked cambodian child trying to get his partially sunk bike out of the water logged crater. You can't miss it.
We eventually set off for the last time along the same long road/sand and gravel track where a road might one day be, and set a course for Siem Reap. Half delerious from heat and culture shock we entered the city limits, got off the bus, changed transportation once more and boarded a tuk-tuk (think the bastard offspring forged in an illicit menage-au-tois between a motorbike, a horse cart and an enthusiastic street vendor) and finally reached the heart of the city and our hostel.
We disembarked, I surveyed my surroundings, breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought
'We have made it!'
'What the hell do we now...??'
Koh Chang: Lost In the Sunset
So island life can be intoxicating. The tide seems to wash time off your shoulders and sweep it out to sea, relieving you of a burden that you weren't even aware was there in the first place.
A typical day on Koh Chang could start with waking up alongside the sun as it shines through the cracks in your wall. You might slip back in to a peaceful slumber once your skin readjusts to the rhythm of sweat and relief that follows the undulations of the asthmatic wall fan. When the feeling strikes you, stroll down to the bar. The morning sea breeze invites you to relax. You come for the ambience, you stay for the banana pancakes.
Seriously, the banana pancakes. You only need one. The diameter of a cereal bowl, the thickness of a large matchbox, the consistency of a perfect hug from someone that knows how to hold you. Hot and fluffy, pockets of gooey melted banana and smothered with honey and chocolate sauce on top. You don't 'need' to have a shower after but no one would blame you if you did.
Its a good place to sit and think but eventually someone you know will come along and you can chat the day away. When the mood takes you can shell out a whole 100 baht (less than 1 pound) for your lunch, maybe some fried rice with pork or chicken? You can take intermittent dips in the pool as the midday sun cooks the world around you but eventually you are heading down to the beach.
Stroll along, keep an eye out for anyone you may have met the night before, if you do, stop and chat for a while. Find a spot, chill out and swim in the sea. At some point during this journey I will write a whole entry about why I love to swim in the sea. I always have done and it certainly doesn't need to be tropical although that does help. This is not that entry though. I don't think I can fully articulate it right now. I will think about it and get back to you.
You can opt as to whether you want to witness the days transition in to night on the beach or to sit by the bar and have a beer cool your body just as the ocean cools the sinking sun. Thats a wanky way or saying, start the night off as you mean to continue. You could always go for a massage first though. I had my first thai massage at a small place just down the road from the beach with some friends upon their recommendation and believe me, it will be the first of many!
Finally the night is set, you shower, refresh and head out for some barbecue. For roughly one pound fifty you can have your choice of barbecued meats or seafood along with salad, baked potato, corn and garlic bread. You wash it down and you go out. There are plenty of beach bars starting the evening with established chart hits and transitioning in to electronic music as the night progresses and these places are always a reliable location to dance your cares away with a bucket in hand. There was one spot that held a special place in my heart though.
Stone Free is a bar and guesthouse in the Lonely Beach area of Koh Chang. It is run by a group of old Thai hippies with long grey hair and grey beards. They greet you every night with a dopey enthusiasm which is at once entertaining and comforting. You can get food and drink out the front but the back is where you want to be. Amongst tables, chairs, mats and hammocks you will find The Sticky Rice Blues. The band plays every night and have done for longer than any of them can likely remember. They are all Thai and it seems the nominal english they speak is learnt mostly from their endless catalogue of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Beatles and other old blues and rock standards. This is not kareoke though. They just refer to it as jamming but they play at the tempo and cadence that best suits their mood, never pandering to accent. You can make out half of what is being sung and follow even less of how it is being played. It is glorious, trust me on that.
Don't be fooled for a moment though. This is not reality. It can so easily seem like it, but it is not. It can be a great trip, a sweet breezy respite as you run along the rollercoaster tracks, sandwiched between the urban loops and dips that stand either side. It can also suck you in.
You see it everywhere, young people who arrive on the island and decice to stay. Their blonde and brunette dreadlocks serving as a self styled division from the culture they left behind, forgetting that a seperation from one does not automatically equal an invitation to another. The girls who stroll along the beach during the day with the local firedancers, handing out fliers for the bars they now work at in a 'promotional capacity'. They know they are a long way from Norway, they just don't realise quite how far.
It is a nice life out here but you have to move on. Following my last night I would remove myself from this experience in pretty much every conceivable way, not because I wanted to leave it behind but because it is what the next stage of my journey called for. I can never see myself getting hooked on sunset in the way that many of the islands collection of gathered souls have done but being there, you can hardly blame them for it. The problem is they seem to think they are home, but from where I sat, it looked like they had never been more lost in their lives.
A typical day on Koh Chang could start with waking up alongside the sun as it shines through the cracks in your wall. You might slip back in to a peaceful slumber once your skin readjusts to the rhythm of sweat and relief that follows the undulations of the asthmatic wall fan. When the feeling strikes you, stroll down to the bar. The morning sea breeze invites you to relax. You come for the ambience, you stay for the banana pancakes.
Seriously, the banana pancakes. You only need one. The diameter of a cereal bowl, the thickness of a large matchbox, the consistency of a perfect hug from someone that knows how to hold you. Hot and fluffy, pockets of gooey melted banana and smothered with honey and chocolate sauce on top. You don't 'need' to have a shower after but no one would blame you if you did.
Its a good place to sit and think but eventually someone you know will come along and you can chat the day away. When the mood takes you can shell out a whole 100 baht (less than 1 pound) for your lunch, maybe some fried rice with pork or chicken? You can take intermittent dips in the pool as the midday sun cooks the world around you but eventually you are heading down to the beach.
Stroll along, keep an eye out for anyone you may have met the night before, if you do, stop and chat for a while. Find a spot, chill out and swim in the sea. At some point during this journey I will write a whole entry about why I love to swim in the sea. I always have done and it certainly doesn't need to be tropical although that does help. This is not that entry though. I don't think I can fully articulate it right now. I will think about it and get back to you.
You can opt as to whether you want to witness the days transition in to night on the beach or to sit by the bar and have a beer cool your body just as the ocean cools the sinking sun. Thats a wanky way or saying, start the night off as you mean to continue. You could always go for a massage first though. I had my first thai massage at a small place just down the road from the beach with some friends upon their recommendation and believe me, it will be the first of many!
Finally the night is set, you shower, refresh and head out for some barbecue. For roughly one pound fifty you can have your choice of barbecued meats or seafood along with salad, baked potato, corn and garlic bread. You wash it down and you go out. There are plenty of beach bars starting the evening with established chart hits and transitioning in to electronic music as the night progresses and these places are always a reliable location to dance your cares away with a bucket in hand. There was one spot that held a special place in my heart though.
Stone Free is a bar and guesthouse in the Lonely Beach area of Koh Chang. It is run by a group of old Thai hippies with long grey hair and grey beards. They greet you every night with a dopey enthusiasm which is at once entertaining and comforting. You can get food and drink out the front but the back is where you want to be. Amongst tables, chairs, mats and hammocks you will find The Sticky Rice Blues. The band plays every night and have done for longer than any of them can likely remember. They are all Thai and it seems the nominal english they speak is learnt mostly from their endless catalogue of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Beatles and other old blues and rock standards. This is not kareoke though. They just refer to it as jamming but they play at the tempo and cadence that best suits their mood, never pandering to accent. You can make out half of what is being sung and follow even less of how it is being played. It is glorious, trust me on that.
Don't be fooled for a moment though. This is not reality. It can so easily seem like it, but it is not. It can be a great trip, a sweet breezy respite as you run along the rollercoaster tracks, sandwiched between the urban loops and dips that stand either side. It can also suck you in.
You see it everywhere, young people who arrive on the island and decice to stay. Their blonde and brunette dreadlocks serving as a self styled division from the culture they left behind, forgetting that a seperation from one does not automatically equal an invitation to another. The girls who stroll along the beach during the day with the local firedancers, handing out fliers for the bars they now work at in a 'promotional capacity'. They know they are a long way from Norway, they just don't realise quite how far.
It is a nice life out here but you have to move on. Following my last night I would remove myself from this experience in pretty much every conceivable way, not because I wanted to leave it behind but because it is what the next stage of my journey called for. I can never see myself getting hooked on sunset in the way that many of the islands collection of gathered souls have done but being there, you can hardly blame them for it. The problem is they seem to think they are home, but from where I sat, it looked like they had never been more lost in their lives.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Koh Chang: Aka Little Sweden
Travelling brings people together from all over the world. As I have previously stated, the selection of nationalites that I have encountered and embraced along my relatively short journey thus far has been as varied as it has been delightful. Prior to Koh Chang the main ratio had been pretty evenly split between Canadians, Germans, Dutch, Americans, Brits and Swedes. This place was bout to swing it though, and It wasn't even going to be close.
I will go out on a limb and say I have never seen so many Swedish people in one place.
And I have been to Sweden.
There came a point when it became easier to assume someone was Swedish before even asking what other geographic locality may have spawned them. Luckilly I have a lot of affection for the Swedish. This experience forces you to find ways to establish common ground with any individual that crosses your path. Whether its discussing the minutae of the small local geographic knowledge you have for remote countries, or whether it is being greeted by a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver with the phrase 'lovely jubbly' upon discovering your British identity, everyone manages some form of connection. With the Swedish though, it comes pretty easily.
From my respect for burgeoning UFC star Alexander Gustaffson to the fact that I spent a significant portion of my life being raised by a fleet of Swedish au-pairs, there is always something to say. Being taken to task on my table manners and eating habits by a 19 year old swedish girl took me back in an entirely unexpected manner of nostalgia.
One individual stood out though. I think he is my new personal hero.
When we first got off the ferry to Koh Chang, we were tired, hot, confused and stuck. Being the last people on to dry land, all the previous taxis had departed and the one awaiting us was only half full. It clearly served the drivers financial ends to make us wait for the next ferry to arrive, providing him with a greater passenger load and a fatter pay off. The problem was the next ferry wasn't due for over an hour and we were getting increasingly worn out.
When the heavy set, middle aged guy with the closely cropped slightly greying hair stood up to talk to the driver and get us going I was relieved. When he returned a few minutes later with a smile on his face and a bag full of beer I was impressed. When he informed me that my journey was now going to cost less then it was before, I was amazed. When he introduced himself as Bjorn, I was in love.
Bjorn and his wife Tris were holiday makers. He was a removals truck driver from an area of rural Sweden with a name I could hardly pronounce, let alone remember. They took one big holiday a year to a Thai island to relax, drink, party and re-embrace their inner youth.
Having found themselves in an equally remote and antisocial part of the island as the one I had ended up, they coincidentally moved to the same location as I did the following day. Finding my way solo to a local bar on my second night, I established a fun conversation with a pair of fellow British travellers who had to excuse themselves due to early on-set dissentary or something of the like. Looking across the bar I suddenly saw Bjorn and Tris sitting happily with a beer and a bucket in their respective hands.
I made my way over, intending to make light chit chat whilst I finished off the last of my current drink. Many hours later when we all stumbled home together, the world had been put to rights and as much as I could be sure of anything at that point in time, I knew that boundaries of generation of geography meant less to me than they ever had previously.
In the following days we watched a Thai blues band make unique art of Clapton and Hendrix, we occasionally met each other lounging by the pool and eventually we both moved on without getting to exchange parting pleasantries. Company round here can be many things but it is certainly fleeting. The beauty of it all is that there is still a whole world of other people to meet along the way. Any bets of who they will be next are firmly off.
I will go out on a limb and say I have never seen so many Swedish people in one place.
And I have been to Sweden.
There came a point when it became easier to assume someone was Swedish before even asking what other geographic locality may have spawned them. Luckilly I have a lot of affection for the Swedish. This experience forces you to find ways to establish common ground with any individual that crosses your path. Whether its discussing the minutae of the small local geographic knowledge you have for remote countries, or whether it is being greeted by a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver with the phrase 'lovely jubbly' upon discovering your British identity, everyone manages some form of connection. With the Swedish though, it comes pretty easily.
From my respect for burgeoning UFC star Alexander Gustaffson to the fact that I spent a significant portion of my life being raised by a fleet of Swedish au-pairs, there is always something to say. Being taken to task on my table manners and eating habits by a 19 year old swedish girl took me back in an entirely unexpected manner of nostalgia.
One individual stood out though. I think he is my new personal hero.
When we first got off the ferry to Koh Chang, we were tired, hot, confused and stuck. Being the last people on to dry land, all the previous taxis had departed and the one awaiting us was only half full. It clearly served the drivers financial ends to make us wait for the next ferry to arrive, providing him with a greater passenger load and a fatter pay off. The problem was the next ferry wasn't due for over an hour and we were getting increasingly worn out.
When the heavy set, middle aged guy with the closely cropped slightly greying hair stood up to talk to the driver and get us going I was relieved. When he returned a few minutes later with a smile on his face and a bag full of beer I was impressed. When he informed me that my journey was now going to cost less then it was before, I was amazed. When he introduced himself as Bjorn, I was in love.
Bjorn and his wife Tris were holiday makers. He was a removals truck driver from an area of rural Sweden with a name I could hardly pronounce, let alone remember. They took one big holiday a year to a Thai island to relax, drink, party and re-embrace their inner youth.
Having found themselves in an equally remote and antisocial part of the island as the one I had ended up, they coincidentally moved to the same location as I did the following day. Finding my way solo to a local bar on my second night, I established a fun conversation with a pair of fellow British travellers who had to excuse themselves due to early on-set dissentary or something of the like. Looking across the bar I suddenly saw Bjorn and Tris sitting happily with a beer and a bucket in their respective hands.
I made my way over, intending to make light chit chat whilst I finished off the last of my current drink. Many hours later when we all stumbled home together, the world had been put to rights and as much as I could be sure of anything at that point in time, I knew that boundaries of generation of geography meant less to me than they ever had previously.
In the following days we watched a Thai blues band make unique art of Clapton and Hendrix, we occasionally met each other lounging by the pool and eventually we both moved on without getting to exchange parting pleasantries. Company round here can be many things but it is certainly fleeting. The beauty of it all is that there is still a whole world of other people to meet along the way. Any bets of who they will be next are firmly off.
Koh Chang: Island Living
So as I sit in a Cambodian restaurant trying to absorb the mixture of madness and horror that was a trip through Phnom Penh to visit the killing fields, now seems as good a time as any to take a mental trip back to the island paradise that was Koh Chang.
It didnt start off as paradise though. If there is one common factor I can link between all the disparate locations I have been so far, it is that everywhere seems scary, overwhelming and significantly disconnected from any kind of relatable reality on the first night of arrival. It should of course be noted that the only thing easier than feeling out of your depth here is finding a way to suddenly discover comfort and feel once more at home in an entirely foreign climate when you meet people in a good place.
That doesn't stop the initial shakes though.
Although I would feel this even more through ensuing experiences, when riding in the back of pick up truck come taxi along the steep, winding, jungle surrounded roads of Koh Chang island, I had never felt further from home in my life.
I could tell I was not entirely alone given the abundance of intrepid westerners riding their scooters around our driving position but it seemed without question that in this location, my previous notion of civilastion existed in the islands pockets, not in its body.
As the rest of my fellow passengers were dropped off at various comfortable looking deposits of touristic frivolity, I found myself being driven further and further towards the end of the island. Eventually I was dropped off at the hostel I had booked my nights in. Built from the side of the road in to recently chopped down portion of jungle, it was still under construction but the owner was an effusive Brit whose laid back attitude couldn't help but make me think that their must be ease to be found somewhere.
See the thing is, it wasn't a bad place. It was a remote place. There was a small fishing village nearby which was in the process of gentrification through the medium of souveneir shops and seafood restaurants serving to placate the russian tourist masses staying in stand alone resorts the dotted the local landscape. The nearest town with any sense of life was a long, dark walk away.
I resolved to bunker down for the night. My bed was clean, I had secure storage for my belongings and I had a wifi connection (hashtag first world concerns y'all). I hoped that if I set off in the morning to the next town, I would find salvation down the road for my almost week in this place.
I was right.
The following morning I awoke to a message from my Canadian cohort from the previous days bus journey. He was staying in the Siam Huts. Located in the ironically titled Lonely Beach area of the island, they were a selection of beach huts with a pool and a bar. They were basic, they were shabby, the bed linen looked older than me, there was no hot water, there was no air conditioning beyond a stuttering fan loosely connected to the wall and there were holes in the ceiling. It was heaven.
Location, location, location. I was connected once more. Suddenly the beach that drew people in was meters from my doorstep. Through establishing a location, knowing that people would gather because of an unbeatable view of the sunset, they had developed their own form of utility, catering less for what people had left behind and more what they had come for. The food was delicious, the beer was abundant and both were cheap enough to make Ebenezer Scrooge feel like he was getting a bargain.
It was a far cry from anywhere I could have imagined myself staying when I first set out. Mere weeks before I had been sitting on my bed in West Hampsted, decrying the lifestyle I may be setting off for with its lack of western comforts and yet from the moment I stepped in to my shack, I felt entirely like I was where I was meant to be.
The night before I had felt as helpless and lost and the gigantic, unidentifiable insect I had found rolling around on its back in the hostels bathroom sink but now I was on track. The towns ameninties were a short stroll away and I was back in control.
The ingredients were all set in the bowl for a good time. Now it was up to me to mix them together!
It didnt start off as paradise though. If there is one common factor I can link between all the disparate locations I have been so far, it is that everywhere seems scary, overwhelming and significantly disconnected from any kind of relatable reality on the first night of arrival. It should of course be noted that the only thing easier than feeling out of your depth here is finding a way to suddenly discover comfort and feel once more at home in an entirely foreign climate when you meet people in a good place.
That doesn't stop the initial shakes though.
Although I would feel this even more through ensuing experiences, when riding in the back of pick up truck come taxi along the steep, winding, jungle surrounded roads of Koh Chang island, I had never felt further from home in my life.
I could tell I was not entirely alone given the abundance of intrepid westerners riding their scooters around our driving position but it seemed without question that in this location, my previous notion of civilastion existed in the islands pockets, not in its body.
As the rest of my fellow passengers were dropped off at various comfortable looking deposits of touristic frivolity, I found myself being driven further and further towards the end of the island. Eventually I was dropped off at the hostel I had booked my nights in. Built from the side of the road in to recently chopped down portion of jungle, it was still under construction but the owner was an effusive Brit whose laid back attitude couldn't help but make me think that their must be ease to be found somewhere.
See the thing is, it wasn't a bad place. It was a remote place. There was a small fishing village nearby which was in the process of gentrification through the medium of souveneir shops and seafood restaurants serving to placate the russian tourist masses staying in stand alone resorts the dotted the local landscape. The nearest town with any sense of life was a long, dark walk away.
I resolved to bunker down for the night. My bed was clean, I had secure storage for my belongings and I had a wifi connection (hashtag first world concerns y'all). I hoped that if I set off in the morning to the next town, I would find salvation down the road for my almost week in this place.
I was right.
The following morning I awoke to a message from my Canadian cohort from the previous days bus journey. He was staying in the Siam Huts. Located in the ironically titled Lonely Beach area of the island, they were a selection of beach huts with a pool and a bar. They were basic, they were shabby, the bed linen looked older than me, there was no hot water, there was no air conditioning beyond a stuttering fan loosely connected to the wall and there were holes in the ceiling. It was heaven.
Location, location, location. I was connected once more. Suddenly the beach that drew people in was meters from my doorstep. Through establishing a location, knowing that people would gather because of an unbeatable view of the sunset, they had developed their own form of utility, catering less for what people had left behind and more what they had come for. The food was delicious, the beer was abundant and both were cheap enough to make Ebenezer Scrooge feel like he was getting a bargain.
It was a far cry from anywhere I could have imagined myself staying when I first set out. Mere weeks before I had been sitting on my bed in West Hampsted, decrying the lifestyle I may be setting off for with its lack of western comforts and yet from the moment I stepped in to my shack, I felt entirely like I was where I was meant to be.
The night before I had felt as helpless and lost and the gigantic, unidentifiable insect I had found rolling around on its back in the hostels bathroom sink but now I was on track. The towns ameninties were a short stroll away and I was back in control.
The ingredients were all set in the bowl for a good time. Now it was up to me to mix them together!
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Baby Steps to the Beach
I'm not one to look too much for a 'point' in things. You get up, live your life and go about your business. There doesn't have to be a deeper point than that. However if I was look to look for a point in travelling it would be this:
To travel!
Whilst this may seem to some like a stating of the obvious, it was something that was weighing on my mind as my time in Bangkok drew to a close. The plan had always been to start my journey there but I had only booked a few nights and had assumed I would figure out the rest. The problem was, it had been 4 days and I was no closer to a second destination, figuratively and literally.
I had made plans for a later date though. I was meeting a friend from my dorm in Cambodia on April 1st. As I write this it has only just occured to me that this plan may be part of spectacularly elaborate april fools joke on his part. I may arrive to meet him at the hostel in Siem Reap to find a message awaiting me saying 'Jokes on you, I'm actually in Singapore. Lol.' I certainly hope not, I guess I will find out later.
Anyways, this gave me a week to fill between Bangkok and Siem Reap. The route to the border was to the east, meaning practicality ruled out Chang Mai in the north and Phuket in the south which are two of the most common destinations to progress to. I was starting to feel lost but I knew I needed to get out of the city.
Thankfully some sage like advice came from back home. A friend of mine who had done the same route before said that I should check out an island on the gulf coast called Koh Chang (my thanks go out Anka for this call!). It seemed like the perfect place to unwind between the bustle of Bangkok and the sites of Cambodia. The only problem was, I had no idea how to get there.
After checking with the travel advisor working in the hostel, I discovered that if I went to victory monument I could catch a mini bus. Seemed simple enough. So with my backpack finally on my back where it belonged I set off for the sky train. This is one of the main public transport services in Bangkok and is quite a convenient way of getting around. Kinda crowded though. Feeling like I was carrying a baby elephant on my back, I somehow squeezed my way on to the train, no doubt concussing a few locals on the way, but needs must and I had a bus to catch.
Any sense of bravado I had from using real public transport on my own for the first time, soon evaporated when I reached victory monument. Anyone who has been to a big, official bus station in their home city can get that idea out of their head. After wandering the streets trying to figure out where anything was that could transport me forward, I saw a guy with a sign saying 'Koh Chang'. As I approached him, he pointed to a woman sitting behind a table and told me to pay her 300 Baht. She in turn told me to go and wait and I would be told when my bus was ready to depart.
I waited in what can best be described as a yard. It was covered in an array of different mini busses, some broken television sets, an old motorbike, what I think was a fridge and some complacent looking Thai tourists. I felt completely out of place and I was just waiting. And waiting. And Hoping. Eventually I was joined by a pair of Canadians who said they too were going to Koh Chang which inspired me a little more and sure enough, we were eventually approached by a guy in some kind of makeshift uniform who told us to get on his bus. We duly obliged and shortly after, we were on our way!
Performing the sardine shuffle amongst the assorted locals also using this bus, we were certainly cosy but we were moving. I got chatting to one of the Canadians who turned out to be a proffesional rapper and muay thai kickboxer. We discussed all manner of things and bonded over a mutual affection for hip hop. We both recounted the moment we first heard The Real Slim Shady, mine was on a similar mini bus on a school trip to wales, his was in jail.
As the miles and hours melted away, the destination drew ever closer. I saw a variety of sites along the way, including a legitimate ' elephant crossing ' sign and a monk of a motorbike. It was weird, it was new and it was exhilarating. I would later come to realise that this trip was a walk in the park compared to the next journey I would be making to Siem Reap but at this point I didnt care. I had done it. I had made a call and seen it through. I was finally travelling.
To travel!
Whilst this may seem to some like a stating of the obvious, it was something that was weighing on my mind as my time in Bangkok drew to a close. The plan had always been to start my journey there but I had only booked a few nights and had assumed I would figure out the rest. The problem was, it had been 4 days and I was no closer to a second destination, figuratively and literally.
I had made plans for a later date though. I was meeting a friend from my dorm in Cambodia on April 1st. As I write this it has only just occured to me that this plan may be part of spectacularly elaborate april fools joke on his part. I may arrive to meet him at the hostel in Siem Reap to find a message awaiting me saying 'Jokes on you, I'm actually in Singapore. Lol.' I certainly hope not, I guess I will find out later.
Anyways, this gave me a week to fill between Bangkok and Siem Reap. The route to the border was to the east, meaning practicality ruled out Chang Mai in the north and Phuket in the south which are two of the most common destinations to progress to. I was starting to feel lost but I knew I needed to get out of the city.
Thankfully some sage like advice came from back home. A friend of mine who had done the same route before said that I should check out an island on the gulf coast called Koh Chang (my thanks go out Anka for this call!). It seemed like the perfect place to unwind between the bustle of Bangkok and the sites of Cambodia. The only problem was, I had no idea how to get there.
After checking with the travel advisor working in the hostel, I discovered that if I went to victory monument I could catch a mini bus. Seemed simple enough. So with my backpack finally on my back where it belonged I set off for the sky train. This is one of the main public transport services in Bangkok and is quite a convenient way of getting around. Kinda crowded though. Feeling like I was carrying a baby elephant on my back, I somehow squeezed my way on to the train, no doubt concussing a few locals on the way, but needs must and I had a bus to catch.
Any sense of bravado I had from using real public transport on my own for the first time, soon evaporated when I reached victory monument. Anyone who has been to a big, official bus station in their home city can get that idea out of their head. After wandering the streets trying to figure out where anything was that could transport me forward, I saw a guy with a sign saying 'Koh Chang'. As I approached him, he pointed to a woman sitting behind a table and told me to pay her 300 Baht. She in turn told me to go and wait and I would be told when my bus was ready to depart.
I waited in what can best be described as a yard. It was covered in an array of different mini busses, some broken television sets, an old motorbike, what I think was a fridge and some complacent looking Thai tourists. I felt completely out of place and I was just waiting. And waiting. And Hoping. Eventually I was joined by a pair of Canadians who said they too were going to Koh Chang which inspired me a little more and sure enough, we were eventually approached by a guy in some kind of makeshift uniform who told us to get on his bus. We duly obliged and shortly after, we were on our way!
Performing the sardine shuffle amongst the assorted locals also using this bus, we were certainly cosy but we were moving. I got chatting to one of the Canadians who turned out to be a proffesional rapper and muay thai kickboxer. We discussed all manner of things and bonded over a mutual affection for hip hop. We both recounted the moment we first heard The Real Slim Shady, mine was on a similar mini bus on a school trip to wales, his was in jail.
As the miles and hours melted away, the destination drew ever closer. I saw a variety of sites along the way, including a legitimate ' elephant crossing ' sign and a monk of a motorbike. It was weird, it was new and it was exhilarating. I would later come to realise that this trip was a walk in the park compared to the next journey I would be making to Siem Reap but at this point I didnt care. I had done it. I had made a call and seen it through. I was finally travelling.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Universal Greeting
Before continuing to the next stage of the adventure, here is a brief interlude.
For anyone that wants to know what its like to meet and befriend people along the travelling path, I give you the formula for introduction.
I have realised along the way there is a set greeting discourse that happens with everyone you meet in the same situation. Almost more of a ritual than a conversation. It goes as follows:
(Some elements are interchangeable, these are the bits in brackets)
Me: Hi, hows it going? I'm Hugh
Them: Oh hey, nice to meet you, I'm (Olga)
Me: Pleasure to meet you (Olga), where are you from?
Them: I'm from (Holland), how about you?
Me: Im from London
Them: Ah thats cool, I have friends in England, do you know (Enfield)
Me: Um yeah I know of it, never really been there though
Them: Ah well thats where they are from. Do you know (Holland)?
Me: Yeah I know (Amsterdam), lovely place.
Them: Cool, so how long have you been travelling?
Me: Just a week so far, im gonna be in Asia for a few month though
Them: Ah right, I have been here for (2 months), you have a lot to look forward to
Me: Thats great to hear, where was the best place?
Them: Ah Laos was amazing - *Note Laos wasn't in brackets. Its always Laos. Everybody loves Laos*
Me: Cool I can't wait to visit it. By the way i'm sorry, what was your name again?
Them: (Olga)
Me: Thanks, sorry, I'm Hugh
Them: Haha, no problem. Want to get a beer?
Me: Absolutely
- Exit to nearest Bar -
- Already forget their name, again... -
For anyone that wants to know what its like to meet and befriend people along the travelling path, I give you the formula for introduction.
I have realised along the way there is a set greeting discourse that happens with everyone you meet in the same situation. Almost more of a ritual than a conversation. It goes as follows:
(Some elements are interchangeable, these are the bits in brackets)
Me: Hi, hows it going? I'm Hugh
Them: Oh hey, nice to meet you, I'm (Olga)
Me: Pleasure to meet you (Olga), where are you from?
Them: I'm from (Holland), how about you?
Me: Im from London
Them: Ah thats cool, I have friends in England, do you know (Enfield)
Me: Um yeah I know of it, never really been there though
Them: Ah well thats where they are from. Do you know (Holland)?
Me: Yeah I know (Amsterdam), lovely place.
Them: Cool, so how long have you been travelling?
Me: Just a week so far, im gonna be in Asia for a few month though
Them: Ah right, I have been here for (2 months), you have a lot to look forward to
Me: Thats great to hear, where was the best place?
Them: Ah Laos was amazing - *Note Laos wasn't in brackets. Its always Laos. Everybody loves Laos*
Me: Cool I can't wait to visit it. By the way i'm sorry, what was your name again?
Them: (Olga)
Me: Thanks, sorry, I'm Hugh
Them: Haha, no problem. Want to get a beer?
Me: Absolutely
- Exit to nearest Bar -
- Already forget their name, again... -
Bangkok: Hold On, Let Go
So I am sure you are all sick of hearing about Bangkok by now, hell I have been on an Island for the best part of a week now and believe me there are a wealth of stories to be told from that experience.
Before I leave my first encounter with bangkok behind though, here are the last thoughts that the city left me with.
For me there is a fascinting dichotomy in Bangkok. It is not so much the division between the opulence and the poverty. Dont get me wrong, that is clearly an element of Bangkok life, the gulf between the street markets and the shopping malls is more pronounced than any I have seen before. Bangkok is a developing city though, this disparity is far from unique. The key to my first impression lies elsewhere.
Tension and release.
You can ask a hundred different visitors Bangkok what they felt when they were there and you will likely get a hundred different answers. Whether they were backpackers, holiday makers, business travellers, ex-pats or any one else, they will all have their own experiences and their own feelings, but the one common sensation that stays with you throughout is that of unease.
This may have been especially pronounced when I was in the city as it is currently election time. The sunday I was in town, they placed an alcohol ban across the whole place in prepartion for the days balloting. Khao San road was quiet. You could still get a drink but only in discreet locations removed from the central hubub.
There is no question that despite the international miasma floating around the face of the city, it belongs to Thailand and their people. Tourism is a huge industry but the motorcycles that ride on to the pavements to sell you a lift are just as clearly stating unequivocal ownership of where you walk. This isnt to say you are under threat, there is a balance in place and it seems to serve all parties pretty well but it isn't one that seems likely to tip towards the visitors any time soon.
Despite this it still a city of extreme release. As evidenced before, people come here to let their hair down. The nightlife is riotous, the distractions abundant, the vices innumerable. You are just as capable of witnessing a protest during the day as you are a ping pong show at night. There are many who come to bangkok for a good time and they don't do it by halves.
Uninhibited debauchery is not the only release offered by the city though. You could walk down any bustling road and stand a chance of finding a temple on the corner. Majesty amongst the mayhem.
They come in various sizes and from various perspectives reflecting the myriad of spiritual values held by those who formed them. My first experience of one was on quite a small scale. I was told (and I have no doubt forgotten the finer details of the story so take this with a pimch of salt) that it was built following the start of construction on the grand shopping mall it sits beside. Supposedly construction was started on an unlucky day and sure enough everything started to go wrong. As such construction was halted and the temple was built to appease whomever was responsible for reaping so much misfortune upon them It now stands as a shrine to good luck for all who visit.
Now anyone who knows me will also know I am not a spiritual person. Its just not my bag, I wont go in to it here. Despite this I found the temple to be a remarkable point of tranquility. Nestled between the highway, the skytrain and and a high end shopping mall, once you enter there is calm and there is reflection.
Feeling like a minor fraud I partook in established practice, planting incense and laying flowers around all 4 sides of the shrine, paying my respects to, if nothing else, the first semblence of peace I had found in this place. And hey, if I had ever felt I was getting too lost in the mysticism of it all, i just had to look up and see the logos for Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen emblazoned on the surrounding walls outside to provide me with a frank wake up.
I visited another temple that day which offered similar quiet and similar wonder. I may have accidentally got married here. I received a monks blessing with friend and I need to look up what it means if he joins your hands together then starts chanting and spraying you with water. I may need a lawyer on this one.
Either way it was a stark contrast to the journey home, wandering through a strange part of town because the taxis wouldn't take us past the site of a protest that had shut down all the traffic in its area. For all the righteous anger held in an event like that, it is no less a part of what characterises Bangkok than the reverential worship that takes place in the ornate temples. It is a system that has risen to serve the needs of city that is still creating itself, despite the ancient history that preceeds it.
The whole thing may seem crazy to us, but then we are only visitors. Bangkok is happy to let you skate on through, observe the delights and take it all in, you just have to remember that the ice is thinner than some people realise. You don't want to fall through.
Before I leave my first encounter with bangkok behind though, here are the last thoughts that the city left me with.
For me there is a fascinting dichotomy in Bangkok. It is not so much the division between the opulence and the poverty. Dont get me wrong, that is clearly an element of Bangkok life, the gulf between the street markets and the shopping malls is more pronounced than any I have seen before. Bangkok is a developing city though, this disparity is far from unique. The key to my first impression lies elsewhere.
Tension and release.
You can ask a hundred different visitors Bangkok what they felt when they were there and you will likely get a hundred different answers. Whether they were backpackers, holiday makers, business travellers, ex-pats or any one else, they will all have their own experiences and their own feelings, but the one common sensation that stays with you throughout is that of unease.
This may have been especially pronounced when I was in the city as it is currently election time. The sunday I was in town, they placed an alcohol ban across the whole place in prepartion for the days balloting. Khao San road was quiet. You could still get a drink but only in discreet locations removed from the central hubub.
There is no question that despite the international miasma floating around the face of the city, it belongs to Thailand and their people. Tourism is a huge industry but the motorcycles that ride on to the pavements to sell you a lift are just as clearly stating unequivocal ownership of where you walk. This isnt to say you are under threat, there is a balance in place and it seems to serve all parties pretty well but it isn't one that seems likely to tip towards the visitors any time soon.
Despite this it still a city of extreme release. As evidenced before, people come here to let their hair down. The nightlife is riotous, the distractions abundant, the vices innumerable. You are just as capable of witnessing a protest during the day as you are a ping pong show at night. There are many who come to bangkok for a good time and they don't do it by halves.
Uninhibited debauchery is not the only release offered by the city though. You could walk down any bustling road and stand a chance of finding a temple on the corner. Majesty amongst the mayhem.
They come in various sizes and from various perspectives reflecting the myriad of spiritual values held by those who formed them. My first experience of one was on quite a small scale. I was told (and I have no doubt forgotten the finer details of the story so take this with a pimch of salt) that it was built following the start of construction on the grand shopping mall it sits beside. Supposedly construction was started on an unlucky day and sure enough everything started to go wrong. As such construction was halted and the temple was built to appease whomever was responsible for reaping so much misfortune upon them It now stands as a shrine to good luck for all who visit.
Now anyone who knows me will also know I am not a spiritual person. Its just not my bag, I wont go in to it here. Despite this I found the temple to be a remarkable point of tranquility. Nestled between the highway, the skytrain and and a high end shopping mall, once you enter there is calm and there is reflection.
Feeling like a minor fraud I partook in established practice, planting incense and laying flowers around all 4 sides of the shrine, paying my respects to, if nothing else, the first semblence of peace I had found in this place. And hey, if I had ever felt I was getting too lost in the mysticism of it all, i just had to look up and see the logos for Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen emblazoned on the surrounding walls outside to provide me with a frank wake up.
I visited another temple that day which offered similar quiet and similar wonder. I may have accidentally got married here. I received a monks blessing with friend and I need to look up what it means if he joins your hands together then starts chanting and spraying you with water. I may need a lawyer on this one.
Either way it was a stark contrast to the journey home, wandering through a strange part of town because the taxis wouldn't take us past the site of a protest that had shut down all the traffic in its area. For all the righteous anger held in an event like that, it is no less a part of what characterises Bangkok than the reverential worship that takes place in the ornate temples. It is a system that has risen to serve the needs of city that is still creating itself, despite the ancient history that preceeds it.
The whole thing may seem crazy to us, but then we are only visitors. Bangkok is happy to let you skate on through, observe the delights and take it all in, you just have to remember that the ice is thinner than some people realise. You don't want to fall through.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Bangkok: The Night Charlie Got Burgle-Snatched
As I mentioned before, I will not only be using this blog to tell my own story, I will also use it to impart the tales of people I meet along the way. The people you meet make up such a huge part of the experience. You realise quickly that what you see and do is a minute part of what is going on. Everyone has something mad happening to them.
This is one such example.
Charlie was having a bad morning.
We all were, it had been one of those 'night befores' where despite everyone going off in their own directions, the conclusion by dawn was pretty universal. Headaches and hazy tales in abundance. As the dorm reverberated in patchy hangover explanations, one figure on the far right top bunk looked more folorn than most. He just wanted to sleep but that was no longer an option. Eventually forced to accept his lost slumber, he awoke and introduced himself as Charlie.
Charlie was having a bad morning, because Charlie had a bad night.
You see he wasn't meant to still be here. He was meant to be in the air. Flying home. Class started on monday, college was calling. Bangkok had other plans. When he had arrived at the aiport the night before, the flight he had booked himself on to didn't exist. Payment had been taken but the flight appeared to nothing more than a fabrication. As journeys go it wasn't off to a good start.
An hour or so later, still at the airport he came to two realisations that made things even worse. Firstly, in waiting at the airport, he had fallen asleep. Secondly his passport had been stolen.
Clearly distressed by this turn of events he turned to the support force there to put travellers at ease. The Bangkok ariport Tourist Police. He explained his tale of woe to the kindly woman who was serving as the face of the enterprise. She nodded politely, smiled and explained:
" Oh yes, you've been burgle-snatched! "
Charlie had indeed been burgle-snatched. There was no getting around it.
The rest of the force was then brought out to replay the footage of the incident. They watched it over and over and responded as no doubt any law enforcement unit should be expected to. They burst out laughing.
With paperwork in hand to confirm what had happened, Charlie returned to the hostel he had departed from with misty eyes earlier in the evening, ready to settle back in. This was friday night and the embassy didn't open until monday.
What followed was a weekend of clandestine meetings with embassy officials, a modicum of strife but a new found enthusiasm to the make the most of the extended enforcement of his tenure in the city. If Bangkok was keeping him, then the most might as well be made of the experience.
Whilst it was not a circumstance he would have chosen, looking back he gained a wealth of stories for his troubles. Had this not happened he would never have made strange new local Thai aquaintances on the sky train, he would never have found him self lost amongst the frozen stingrays in the weekend fish market and he would have never found himself being sprayed in the face with soda water from the vaginal cavity of a ping pong performer.
It was a strange kind of fortune Charlie had. A mutual friend later remarked that were he to fall down a manhole on the street he would be likely to find a hungry crocodile on one side and the lost city of Atlantis on the other. A curious mixture of stress and discovery.
Later as I drank with him at Sky Bar, taking in the breadth of the city that had provided this unexpected ride he recounted a story of how he had once been rock climbing and found a handhold halfway up the face that unfortunately held a poisionous spider that proceeded to run down his arm. He was clearly still around to tell the tale but I posited that maybe he had actually perished at that moment and what he was going through now was his experience of the afterlife.
He thought about it and decided that he certainly hoped not because for all he been through, for better or worse, it wasn't what he hoped heaven to be.
I think for me, this summed it up as well as could be managed.
Bangkok was many things, but it was not Charlie's heaven.
This is one such example.
Charlie was having a bad morning.
We all were, it had been one of those 'night befores' where despite everyone going off in their own directions, the conclusion by dawn was pretty universal. Headaches and hazy tales in abundance. As the dorm reverberated in patchy hangover explanations, one figure on the far right top bunk looked more folorn than most. He just wanted to sleep but that was no longer an option. Eventually forced to accept his lost slumber, he awoke and introduced himself as Charlie.
Charlie was having a bad morning, because Charlie had a bad night.
You see he wasn't meant to still be here. He was meant to be in the air. Flying home. Class started on monday, college was calling. Bangkok had other plans. When he had arrived at the aiport the night before, the flight he had booked himself on to didn't exist. Payment had been taken but the flight appeared to nothing more than a fabrication. As journeys go it wasn't off to a good start.
An hour or so later, still at the airport he came to two realisations that made things even worse. Firstly, in waiting at the airport, he had fallen asleep. Secondly his passport had been stolen.
Clearly distressed by this turn of events he turned to the support force there to put travellers at ease. The Bangkok ariport Tourist Police. He explained his tale of woe to the kindly woman who was serving as the face of the enterprise. She nodded politely, smiled and explained:
" Oh yes, you've been burgle-snatched! "
Charlie had indeed been burgle-snatched. There was no getting around it.
The rest of the force was then brought out to replay the footage of the incident. They watched it over and over and responded as no doubt any law enforcement unit should be expected to. They burst out laughing.
With paperwork in hand to confirm what had happened, Charlie returned to the hostel he had departed from with misty eyes earlier in the evening, ready to settle back in. This was friday night and the embassy didn't open until monday.
What followed was a weekend of clandestine meetings with embassy officials, a modicum of strife but a new found enthusiasm to the make the most of the extended enforcement of his tenure in the city. If Bangkok was keeping him, then the most might as well be made of the experience.
Whilst it was not a circumstance he would have chosen, looking back he gained a wealth of stories for his troubles. Had this not happened he would never have made strange new local Thai aquaintances on the sky train, he would never have found him self lost amongst the frozen stingrays in the weekend fish market and he would have never found himself being sprayed in the face with soda water from the vaginal cavity of a ping pong performer.
It was a strange kind of fortune Charlie had. A mutual friend later remarked that were he to fall down a manhole on the street he would be likely to find a hungry crocodile on one side and the lost city of Atlantis on the other. A curious mixture of stress and discovery.
Later as I drank with him at Sky Bar, taking in the breadth of the city that had provided this unexpected ride he recounted a story of how he had once been rock climbing and found a handhold halfway up the face that unfortunately held a poisionous spider that proceeded to run down his arm. He was clearly still around to tell the tale but I posited that maybe he had actually perished at that moment and what he was going through now was his experience of the afterlife.
He thought about it and decided that he certainly hoped not because for all he been through, for better or worse, it wasn't what he hoped heaven to be.
I think for me, this summed it up as well as could be managed.
Bangkok was many things, but it was not Charlie's heaven.
Bangkok: The Wonders of the Weekend Market
In Bangkok, they love a market.
Any location, it would seem, is a canvas on to which a fleet of market stands can be painted at any given oppotunity, selling anything from fried bugs to knock off designer brands to a carved wooden fertility phallus.
Given this penchant for commercial enterprise you can only imagine what they come up with when they gather together to put on a real market at the weekend.
Except, you can't really imagine it. You can try but unless you have been there and found yourself enveloped within, it's hard to garner an accurate notion of the experience.
The weekend market in Bangkok is not so much a marketplace as a small town. It is so sprawling as to make the idea of seeing everything, feel beyond the capacity of normal human endeavour, yet at the same time so densely packed with produce and populace that you could stand on any given single spot, turn your body 360 degress and see more variety in sights, sounds and smells than your cognitive functions an easily process.
Its like a pressure formed gem of consumption. You take a collection of food stalls, souvenier stands, flower shops, clothes vendors and other such trading posts then you squash them together as tightly as they will go, giving little regard for spacial awareness, then repeat the process over and over until you have a whole independently function organism. You could cut it open at any given point and the sheer amount of compacted diversity that made up the cross section would be enough to overwhelm the average shopper.
Simply getting from the street in to the complex it self is a struggle. There are market stands outside of the market, lining the road between the station and the destination. Once you have avoided all the various toy robot trinkets and overtly enthusiastic cocounut merhcants, you squeeze yourself through an entry side streets, one of many human blood cells being pumped in to the artery that keeps this beast alive.
Once inside you find yourself on the outer rim, a winding road that runs around the edge of the main market place, something that wouldn't seem out of place in a science fiction film. You see everything from performing school choirs, mumbling blind alms collectors, squid ball stands, kebab stands, ice cream vendors, traditional thai dancers, even the occasional ladyboy.
Once you gather your senses enough to venture inside, you take one of the narrow inlets to the main complex and prepare to have them all blown again. It is overload in every capacity. People moving in confined spaces that seem to defy the laws of physics, the sounds of vendors calling you from all sides, trying to draw attention to their wares, the smells of every conceivable food, flower, perfume, product and indeed waste recepticle bombarding you with little thought for invitation.
At this stage in my journey my bag is too full to take on any greater load and its too early for souveniers. I also think I have a lot of haggling banter to perfect. As such I only purchased one lone wristband to start what I hope will be a booming collection over the course of my journey. I was here to observe as opposed to partake, even though that was a whole experience to itself.
I will return to Bangkok in the coming months, and likely return to the market. Maybe then I can play the part of the all conquering consumer. I would say that is as likely as pigs flying but then if there was anywhere you might expect to see such a sight, it would be here.
Any location, it would seem, is a canvas on to which a fleet of market stands can be painted at any given oppotunity, selling anything from fried bugs to knock off designer brands to a carved wooden fertility phallus.
Given this penchant for commercial enterprise you can only imagine what they come up with when they gather together to put on a real market at the weekend.
Except, you can't really imagine it. You can try but unless you have been there and found yourself enveloped within, it's hard to garner an accurate notion of the experience.
The weekend market in Bangkok is not so much a marketplace as a small town. It is so sprawling as to make the idea of seeing everything, feel beyond the capacity of normal human endeavour, yet at the same time so densely packed with produce and populace that you could stand on any given single spot, turn your body 360 degress and see more variety in sights, sounds and smells than your cognitive functions an easily process.
Its like a pressure formed gem of consumption. You take a collection of food stalls, souvenier stands, flower shops, clothes vendors and other such trading posts then you squash them together as tightly as they will go, giving little regard for spacial awareness, then repeat the process over and over until you have a whole independently function organism. You could cut it open at any given point and the sheer amount of compacted diversity that made up the cross section would be enough to overwhelm the average shopper.
Simply getting from the street in to the complex it self is a struggle. There are market stands outside of the market, lining the road between the station and the destination. Once you have avoided all the various toy robot trinkets and overtly enthusiastic cocounut merhcants, you squeeze yourself through an entry side streets, one of many human blood cells being pumped in to the artery that keeps this beast alive.
Once inside you find yourself on the outer rim, a winding road that runs around the edge of the main market place, something that wouldn't seem out of place in a science fiction film. You see everything from performing school choirs, mumbling blind alms collectors, squid ball stands, kebab stands, ice cream vendors, traditional thai dancers, even the occasional ladyboy.
Once you gather your senses enough to venture inside, you take one of the narrow inlets to the main complex and prepare to have them all blown again. It is overload in every capacity. People moving in confined spaces that seem to defy the laws of physics, the sounds of vendors calling you from all sides, trying to draw attention to their wares, the smells of every conceivable food, flower, perfume, product and indeed waste recepticle bombarding you with little thought for invitation.
At this stage in my journey my bag is too full to take on any greater load and its too early for souveniers. I also think I have a lot of haggling banter to perfect. As such I only purchased one lone wristband to start what I hope will be a booming collection over the course of my journey. I was here to observe as opposed to partake, even though that was a whole experience to itself.
I will return to Bangkok in the coming months, and likely return to the market. Maybe then I can play the part of the all conquering consumer. I would say that is as likely as pigs flying but then if there was anywhere you might expect to see such a sight, it would be here.
Bangkok: Above and Below
As a tropical thunder storm sets in across the island of Koh Chang, I sit in an almost deserted beach shack/bar, awaiting my pancakes with little but time on my hands.
This is a story for another day though, inevitably Thailand seems to give you tales to tell faster than you are able to tell them. Why, it was only a few days ago I was still in Bangkok.
Speaking of which...
My second day in Bangkok was less eventful than the first night. Thankfully. You could fairly argue that I started at a somewhat unsustainable pace and given the length of time I have out here, I felt no sorrow in joining my room mates by spending a day in recovery as opposed to excursion.
The evening came though and it was time to venture beyond the hostels comfotable confines and back out in to the sticky night air. This however would be a night of a different class to the one previous as this was our chance to visit Sky Bar.
This truly was another view of Bangkok, figuratively and literally. Boasting (apparently) the highest open air bar in the world, this is place for tourists to indulge themselves in the opulence of a 5 star hotel bar and look down on the city below. Inevitably the drink prices rise proportionately against the floors you ride up to get to it but you could well argue, Mastercard style, that the combination of cool night breeze, unqieuly delicious cocktail and majestic vistas was kinda priceless.
I ended up, purely out of chance, visiting this location two days in a row. Sure a view is a view, especially a city view. Whether you are looking out over Bangkok, London, New York or any other illuminated metropolis, you seen one dark city lit up by building lights, you seen them all right? Well obviously no, but especially here. Given the palpable character teeming out of seemingly every doorway on every street block, to an almost smothering degree, to seperate yourself from it on such a scale yet still observe it from a gilded distance gives the feeling of being in such an artificial reality that it makes it easy to forget where you really are. Given the looks of a lot of the touists who frequent it, you almost get the impression that this is half the appeal.
Escape doesn't always come so easy though, take two days later for instance.
Having been in Bangkok a couple of days, it was only right that I got my backside round to visiting some temples. Given that the city is awash in them it was not hard to accomplish, so with the delightful and very practically informed company my half Thai travelling companion from the hostel, I set out to achieve this.
I will discuss the experience of the temples in more depth on another post, the story of this occasion came after the fact.
You see we had found ourselves at the Golden Buddha temple by the city's famous Chinatown gates. A glorious temple, not so well connected for public transport links though. Not a problem right? You are in Bangkok, the city runs on the back of its Taxi service, you can barely walk past a shop let alone a block without one stopping past. This is all well and good, assuming the traffic in your part of town hasn't been shut down by a protest. If that happens, you are on your own.
Thus we find ourselves.
Armed with a hostel provided street map that appeared to have been drawn by a jobbing cartoonist looking for a quick paycheque, a map that has also been conveniently torn in to three pieces, we set off on foot.
Given the amount of sweat exuded on this mini urban hike, it felt almost like we swam home. We of course made it entirely unscathed, we even managed to return on the opposite end of the main road the protest was on which was a bonus. That didn't change the fact that I was clearly a long way outside of my comfort zone. This was not the tourists Bangkok we were walking through. Mostly evidenced by the fact that the only western face we passed for a long time was my own reflected in shop windows.
It wasn't a bad area of town, just a different one. It seems there is an entire district dedicated to shops selling only motorcycle parts and ceramic tiles. Not in the same stores but all within the same radius. Block after block of shopfronts stacked floor to ceiling with one or the other. In Bangkok you can buy anything, this was where you bought those.
With a wing, a prayer and a reasonable grasp of the Thai language provided by my friend we walked for what felt like the longest 30 minutes of my life through the streets that supported all the institutions that made palatable Bangkok escpaes such as Sky Bar possible. The sites that make the sights.
It certainly wasn't the days plan, it started off so comfortably in a shiny dim sum restaurant by a high end shopping mall, but it was a fascinating impromptu excursion. You realise very quickly in Bangkok, trying to plan what happens next is so often an excercise in abject futility.
This is a story for another day though, inevitably Thailand seems to give you tales to tell faster than you are able to tell them. Why, it was only a few days ago I was still in Bangkok.
Speaking of which...
My second day in Bangkok was less eventful than the first night. Thankfully. You could fairly argue that I started at a somewhat unsustainable pace and given the length of time I have out here, I felt no sorrow in joining my room mates by spending a day in recovery as opposed to excursion.
The evening came though and it was time to venture beyond the hostels comfotable confines and back out in to the sticky night air. This however would be a night of a different class to the one previous as this was our chance to visit Sky Bar.
This truly was another view of Bangkok, figuratively and literally. Boasting (apparently) the highest open air bar in the world, this is place for tourists to indulge themselves in the opulence of a 5 star hotel bar and look down on the city below. Inevitably the drink prices rise proportionately against the floors you ride up to get to it but you could well argue, Mastercard style, that the combination of cool night breeze, unqieuly delicious cocktail and majestic vistas was kinda priceless.
I ended up, purely out of chance, visiting this location two days in a row. Sure a view is a view, especially a city view. Whether you are looking out over Bangkok, London, New York or any other illuminated metropolis, you seen one dark city lit up by building lights, you seen them all right? Well obviously no, but especially here. Given the palpable character teeming out of seemingly every doorway on every street block, to an almost smothering degree, to seperate yourself from it on such a scale yet still observe it from a gilded distance gives the feeling of being in such an artificial reality that it makes it easy to forget where you really are. Given the looks of a lot of the touists who frequent it, you almost get the impression that this is half the appeal.
Escape doesn't always come so easy though, take two days later for instance.
Having been in Bangkok a couple of days, it was only right that I got my backside round to visiting some temples. Given that the city is awash in them it was not hard to accomplish, so with the delightful and very practically informed company my half Thai travelling companion from the hostel, I set out to achieve this.
I will discuss the experience of the temples in more depth on another post, the story of this occasion came after the fact.
You see we had found ourselves at the Golden Buddha temple by the city's famous Chinatown gates. A glorious temple, not so well connected for public transport links though. Not a problem right? You are in Bangkok, the city runs on the back of its Taxi service, you can barely walk past a shop let alone a block without one stopping past. This is all well and good, assuming the traffic in your part of town hasn't been shut down by a protest. If that happens, you are on your own.
Thus we find ourselves.
Armed with a hostel provided street map that appeared to have been drawn by a jobbing cartoonist looking for a quick paycheque, a map that has also been conveniently torn in to three pieces, we set off on foot.
Given the amount of sweat exuded on this mini urban hike, it felt almost like we swam home. We of course made it entirely unscathed, we even managed to return on the opposite end of the main road the protest was on which was a bonus. That didn't change the fact that I was clearly a long way outside of my comfort zone. This was not the tourists Bangkok we were walking through. Mostly evidenced by the fact that the only western face we passed for a long time was my own reflected in shop windows.
It wasn't a bad area of town, just a different one. It seems there is an entire district dedicated to shops selling only motorcycle parts and ceramic tiles. Not in the same stores but all within the same radius. Block after block of shopfronts stacked floor to ceiling with one or the other. In Bangkok you can buy anything, this was where you bought those.
With a wing, a prayer and a reasonable grasp of the Thai language provided by my friend we walked for what felt like the longest 30 minutes of my life through the streets that supported all the institutions that made palatable Bangkok escpaes such as Sky Bar possible. The sites that make the sights.
It certainly wasn't the days plan, it started off so comfortably in a shiny dim sum restaurant by a high end shopping mall, but it was a fascinating impromptu excursion. You realise very quickly in Bangkok, trying to plan what happens next is so often an excercise in abject futility.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Bangkok Daze
The good thing about time is that it gives you options. When you know you have a while, you can go at your own leisure without needing to cram everything in. Get off the plane, find the roof your head will be residing under for the initial days. Find the bed that will smite the weariness of your travels, relax, unwind and ease yourself in.
As a concept it sounds nice doesn't it? Taking in a long plane ride, a whole other time zone and a foreign city, that is the kind of antidote you are looking for. For better or worse though, life deals in reality and Bangkok, well it has its own ideas on what constitutes reality and they certainly don't pander to sense and reason.
It started soundly enough. Your on your own so you socialise. The first guy I met in my dorm room gave me all his remaining Vietnamese currency because he didnt need it anymore. The travelling spirit in full effect. I dont know what it actually adds up to but the gesture counts for a lot. Canadian hospitality in Thailand eh?
So with my bag secured in my locker and a spark of explorative enthusiasm in my heart, I ventured down to the communal front porch, bought myself a Chang (the local beer) and set out to meet a few people before settling in for an early night.
It was about 1am when someone suggested the Kareoke. As each beer ended up being the one before the last beer of the night, the conversations with all the varying nationalities proved a stronger temptation than was held by designated bunk. As such when the Irishman decreed the need to mark his final night in Thailand before returning to South Korea with a bout of Kareoke, it seemed rude not to join in.
As such I joined Ireland, California, Germany, Denmark and Sheffield in squeezing tetris style in to the back of cab and set off in search of some manner of tuneless musical union. Alas the location suggested by the hostel ammounted to little more than a highway, open sewage and a strangely glitzy club in the middle of what appeared to be an otherwise desolate car park. It was not what as aimed for but we would not be dissauded.
Another taxi was hailed, the destination this time: Khao San Road, the designated hub of festivity for Bangkok where all comers are welcome to try and create their own version of The Hangover 2s blackout. As the taxi bought us there, we in turn bought Kareoke to the taxi. With the aid of a smartphone and Yotube lyric videos, all requests were taken and the driver found himself regailed with tone deaf renditions of 90s pop classics in a variety of accents. It was no doubt his pleasure as much as ours.
After settling in to a pleasant Shisha bar at our given destination, it made all the sense in the world to indulge our makeshift UN union with a round of tequillas. Armed with changloads of confidence and a swelling sense of my ability to conquer all international challenges, this would be the mark to say adventure had begun and from here on in, the only way was up.
That is the only reason I can come up with now as to why I ate the cockroaches.
Sure, you go to bars, you order drinks. Sometimes you get complimentary peanuts. On this occasion I was offered a fried locust. I thought it was being held out to me on a cocktail stick, it was just its leg. When in Rome right? With less than a moments hesitation, I consumed the bug and was suprisingly endeared to the experience. Kinda crunchy with a soy sauce tang. Clearly buoyed by my enthusiasm for this complimentary treat, the bar staff went on to provide me with another plate. This time though, another delicacy entirely.
The cockroaches came in all sizes, babies and grown ups. All fried and surpisingly appetising. The staff themsleves tucked in graciously so I felt happy to join in. To entirely misquote the author Chuck Palahnuik, I wont tell you what a plate of fried baby cockraoches looked like because if I did, you would never eat black olives again.
Despite all this, I do not regret the experience. It was a new, it was different, it was admittedly weird and not demonstrative of the most sober judgement but I came away unscathed and with a new perspective on the endeavours I can undertake.
Ok sure I was sick on my way back to that delayed assignation with my bed but I blame that more on the combination of liquor and the after effects of a long plane ride. Besides it felt right to leave a small mark of my own on Bangkok, because Bangkok had certainly left its mark on me.
That was the first night. More tales to come when I can stop long enough to write them down.
As a concept it sounds nice doesn't it? Taking in a long plane ride, a whole other time zone and a foreign city, that is the kind of antidote you are looking for. For better or worse though, life deals in reality and Bangkok, well it has its own ideas on what constitutes reality and they certainly don't pander to sense and reason.
It started soundly enough. Your on your own so you socialise. The first guy I met in my dorm room gave me all his remaining Vietnamese currency because he didnt need it anymore. The travelling spirit in full effect. I dont know what it actually adds up to but the gesture counts for a lot. Canadian hospitality in Thailand eh?
So with my bag secured in my locker and a spark of explorative enthusiasm in my heart, I ventured down to the communal front porch, bought myself a Chang (the local beer) and set out to meet a few people before settling in for an early night.
It was about 1am when someone suggested the Kareoke. As each beer ended up being the one before the last beer of the night, the conversations with all the varying nationalities proved a stronger temptation than was held by designated bunk. As such when the Irishman decreed the need to mark his final night in Thailand before returning to South Korea with a bout of Kareoke, it seemed rude not to join in.
As such I joined Ireland, California, Germany, Denmark and Sheffield in squeezing tetris style in to the back of cab and set off in search of some manner of tuneless musical union. Alas the location suggested by the hostel ammounted to little more than a highway, open sewage and a strangely glitzy club in the middle of what appeared to be an otherwise desolate car park. It was not what as aimed for but we would not be dissauded.
Another taxi was hailed, the destination this time: Khao San Road, the designated hub of festivity for Bangkok where all comers are welcome to try and create their own version of The Hangover 2s blackout. As the taxi bought us there, we in turn bought Kareoke to the taxi. With the aid of a smartphone and Yotube lyric videos, all requests were taken and the driver found himself regailed with tone deaf renditions of 90s pop classics in a variety of accents. It was no doubt his pleasure as much as ours.
After settling in to a pleasant Shisha bar at our given destination, it made all the sense in the world to indulge our makeshift UN union with a round of tequillas. Armed with changloads of confidence and a swelling sense of my ability to conquer all international challenges, this would be the mark to say adventure had begun and from here on in, the only way was up.
That is the only reason I can come up with now as to why I ate the cockroaches.
Sure, you go to bars, you order drinks. Sometimes you get complimentary peanuts. On this occasion I was offered a fried locust. I thought it was being held out to me on a cocktail stick, it was just its leg. When in Rome right? With less than a moments hesitation, I consumed the bug and was suprisingly endeared to the experience. Kinda crunchy with a soy sauce tang. Clearly buoyed by my enthusiasm for this complimentary treat, the bar staff went on to provide me with another plate. This time though, another delicacy entirely.
The cockroaches came in all sizes, babies and grown ups. All fried and surpisingly appetising. The staff themsleves tucked in graciously so I felt happy to join in. To entirely misquote the author Chuck Palahnuik, I wont tell you what a plate of fried baby cockraoches looked like because if I did, you would never eat black olives again.
Despite all this, I do not regret the experience. It was a new, it was different, it was admittedly weird and not demonstrative of the most sober judgement but I came away unscathed and with a new perspective on the endeavours I can undertake.
Ok sure I was sick on my way back to that delayed assignation with my bed but I blame that more on the combination of liquor and the after effects of a long plane ride. Besides it felt right to leave a small mark of my own on Bangkok, because Bangkok had certainly left its mark on me.
That was the first night. More tales to come when I can stop long enough to write them down.
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