Cambodia and Vietnam

After Chang Mai and the Songkran Festival in Northern Thailand we headed back to Bangkok for some last minute site-seeing and shopping, and to pick up our Cambodia and Vietnam visas. A bus picked us up at our guesthouse a little after six on Monday morning, heading for the Thailand-Cambodia border. We had purchased a package trip to Siem Reap, home of the Angkor temples, which involved a bus to the border, an escort across (you have to cover a few hundred yards on foot), and a bus from the border to the center of town. The price was reasonable - 600 baht per person, about fifteen dollars. The bus seemed decent enough, though every inch was packed with either person or luggage, and the aisle was so full that we literally had to climb out the windows when we stopped for lunch.
What we didn't know, and what we later noticed in an embarassingly prominent position in the Siem Reap section of Lonely Planet Cambodia, was that this particular ride was known as the 'scam bus'. The scam, essentially, is to drive as slowly as possible between the border and Siem Reap, and then drop the passengers off at a guest house in town at a late hour and tell them that all of the other guesthouses had already closed for the night. Normally, nobody would question the snails' pace of the trip, as the road is in truly terrible condition (we had been warned about that by several fellow travellers) - and most of the passengers are too busy bouncing like tennis balls to notice that maybe the driver could move a little bit faster. Fortunately, though we hadn't read about the scam in our guidebook, Rachel had been warned by our guesthouse when she called to make reservations, and she was thus able to warn our fellow passengers. When the bus landed in the driveway of the participating guesthouse, all the passengers scrambled to find taxis. Scam averted.

We found our way to a great guesthouse, called Smiley's, largely by luck. There are dozens, if not hundreds, to choose from. The town quite literally runs on tourism.
(Angkor Thom - featured in the Tomb Raider movies, but better in person)
Accompanied by a great fellow traveller named Noah, we spent two of our three days there exploring the temples at Angkor - the most famous of which is Angkor Wat - possibly the largest religious structure on earth. The more interesting temples were those less touched by renovation. Several had trees growing on or through them - walls half supported by massive trunks that had grown in the thousand years since the structures were built.








(Climbing one of several shaky staircases) (Bayonne Temple, a structure decorated with hundreds of stone faces, each about a meter high, which supposedly bear a strong resemblance to the king who commissioned them)
(A stickbug we encountered in one of the temples.)
(Rachel in one of the Angkor temples.)











Next we headed to Phnom Penh - capital of Cambodia. We spent our first full day visiting the killing fields and the genocide museum. That left us exhausted and depressed, though fortunately at dinner we had as a waiter a great guy named Charles whom we'd spent some time with in India. We explored the markets for a day, and then we flew to Danang in central Vietnam, via Saigon. Danang was just a stopover on our way to Hoi An, where we still are. It's a charming riverside town just a few kilometers from the South China Sea, and it's one of Vietnam's four world heritage sites. Nearly every other store is a tailor's, and so we've spent much of the last four days at fittings. Trousers for $20, winter coats for $25, and business shirts for $10. Yesterday we ran into someone I knew from school, currently travelling with two of his friends on a similar trip through Southeast Asia. Together we rented a small boat, which headed out towards the sea. Unfortunately the clouds settled in just in time for sunset, but we had an excellent time with great company, and we did get a close-up view of the fishing nets scattered along the coast - four long posts reaching several meters our of the water, together supporting a large net that is used like a basket - lowered into the water and then raised an hour or so later.
Today, our last day in Hoi An, we finally made it to the beach. The waves and the crowds were small, and the weather was perfect. Tomorrow we're heading back to Danang, from where we'll fly to Hanoi for the last leg of our trip - Northern Vietnam. Thanks to everyone who's still reading - though we're both saddened by the idea of the trip ending, we're also excited to get home and see everyone.

Songkran Festival!

Hey All! So today, Daniel and I got to experience the joy that is the first day of the Thai festival Songkran. I should mention a few things:
1) The temperature in Chiang Mai has been disgustingly hot and sunny, in the upper 90s since we arrived.
2) Songkran is a national holiday, the banks close, the post offices close, a lot of businesses close, etc. People take this holiday very, very seriously.
3) The city of Chiang Mai has several large and deep canals running through it.
4) Songkran is the week-long Festival of Water.

Imagine a city where every person standing outside is wet. Not just splashed, but dripping. It is virtually impossible to get from one place to another and remain dry. The streets are lined with children, teens, adults, and elderly, each bearing water guns of all sizes, buckets, bottles, hoses, etc. Every shop owner is armed, every corner is trapped. The streets are filled with water. There are pick-up trucks full of people carrying water in giant pails and throwing it at every bystander. There are bystanders throwing buckets from the canal at the motorists.
There are teams of people standing on different sides of the street who are at war with each other. This is going on for miles. It is the biggest nationwide water fight ever. No one is spared. I wish I could take photos to show you how amazing and wet it is, but its unsafe to take anything of value outside. I sit now and am making a puddle under the chair in the internet café. This week is a huge, fantastic, non-stop water party. Dan and I are armed and ready with a pail and two pump-action water guns. These are absolutely necessary in order to return retaliatory fire while attempting to run to dinner unscathed. (this was unfortunately unsuccessful, thanks to a man with a big pot of cold water who jumped out of us from behind some bushes).
Every man for himself!

Chiang Mai

So we're in Chiang Mai, and even in the back of this internet cafe most of my thoughts are drowned out by the music, screaming and laughing of the New Years' celebration going on outside (Rachel's working right now on a better description of just what that entails), but I'll try to get down a general description of what we've been up to so far. To get here we took an overnight bus from Bangkok, arriving at some ungodly hour (6am or so). We spent our first two days exploring the local markets (there are several famous ones in this city - the day market, the night market, the sunday market...). Rachel shopped for bootlegged Sex and the City DVD's and I got fitted for a suit at a tailors that came recommended by some fellow travellers (Bo and Katey - a wonderful Aussie couple who shared their experiences and culture shock with us - perhaps slightly comforted by our assurances that India, though wonderful, was much, much harder to get accustomed to). On our third day we signed up for a one-day 'trek' which included visits to an elephant camp and an orchid farm, and bamboo rafting. The elephant camp inspired some mixed feelings, but it was definitely more interesting than the same thing would have been in the States. The older elephants were for the most part always under some sort of control, being guided or ridden by a handler, but the babies were allowed to roam relatively free.

They wandered through the crowds graciously accepting bananas and sugarcane that tourists had bought for 10 baht. We watched the elephants walk down to the river and flip over for a bath, their handlers scrambling one way or the other to stay above the surface - and in an entertaining but extremely campy show we saw elephants work (moving logs), pray (like buddha), play (soccer and basketball), paint (floral still-lifes) and play music (good rythm, no harmony). After the show Rachel and I climbed up some wooden stairs, stepped out onto an open-air platform, and sat in a seat strapped to an elephants back. Guided by a handler sitting on his neck, the elephant took us across a shallow river and up the mountain side. We had one scary moment in which our elephant became frustrated - for reasons of hunger or exhaustion or boredom, we don't know. It backed up a bit, refused to move forward, bucked a little left and right, and made some huffing noises. Our handler didn't seem too concerned, but he definitely did have his concentration on placating/disciplining the elephant. It's hard to describe what it feels like when the animal underneath you, the weight of a truck, starts to get irritated. But the handler, who has probably spent most of his life with these animals and for whom this was probably a non-event, did whatever he had to do, and we arrived safely. After taking an ox-cart back down the mountain we hopped on a bamboo raft and coasted down the river for a while (I got to stear for a bit, when our guide was tired).

Our guide picked us up at the end of the ride and took us to an orchid/butterfly farm, which made for some nice pictures, before dropping us back off, groggy and worn-out, at our hotel. We had a great time, even in the heat.

We're in Thailand!

Last week was a frantic week in Delhi, buying souveniers, trying to eat at all our favorite restaurants, confirming our ongoing flights and hotel reservations and sending things to the post office. After a lovely farewell dinner with our friends from JNU, Dan and I boarded a 1am flight from New Delhi to Bangkok, arriving at 6:45am Bangkok time. The city is huge! It is also very tall and suprisingly clean. We were happy to arrive at our gorgeous guesthouse, Sri Ayuttaya, and settle into a comfortable and clean room (with a private bathroom and shower!!!). We've been eating a lot of great thai food, and also some homey scrambled egg breakfasts, and cornflakes with soymilk. Compared to New Delhi, Bangkok is a fantasticly easy city to get around in. There are proper taxis with meters, and there are also tuk-tuks (which rival the auto-rickshaws of india). There is a strange mix of street food and diesel fuel and fish in the air, constantly changing as we whiz by the markets going 60mph in the tuk-tuks. I decided to sign up for a 5 day, 30hr course at Wat Po traditional massage school, and I enjoyed it so much that Dan decided to join a different class the next day. In those five days, we learned 5 complicated steps to the fascinating dance that is thai massage. Some of the steps, as Dan puts it, involve kneeling, bending, twisting, and stepping on people, for an hour and a half. At the end of the course, there is a final exam where we had to do the entire massage on a person as the teachers looked on. We both passed and now have nice certificates to show for it! Tomorrow we're taking the overnight bus up to chiang mai, and we'll be staying there for about a week, before going back to Bangkok then down to Cambodia! In Cambodia we'll see Siem Reap (Angor Wat) and Pnom Penh. From there the plan is to head up to Vietnam, to the city of Hoi Ann, by way of Saigon. After Hoi Ann we'll go up to Halong Bay, and then across past Hanoi to Sapa, before going back to Hanoi. Our departure is May 16 :( This trip has been incredible, and I'll be sad to see this last 5 weeks slip by so quickly!