I was doomed from the moment I used the phrase, "rapid succession." Unfortunately, blogging has taken a backseat as of late, especially since I've been fighting off a bad cold for at least the past week. Seems like they take longer to dissipate in China. Anyway, I'll have all sorts of stuff to write about very soon, but for now, I have to go to Beijing to meet my father and make sure he doesn't get lost in a foreign country. I will also try not to get lost. Back in a few days.

Kevin

Cambodia: Angkor Wat

So, this is getting a little silly. I've been back for over a month, and I haven't finished these posts. It's been busy around here, but probably not too busy to wrap this up. The last few should come in rapid succession.

1/16-1/20

Our trip back into Cambodia began one of the more fascinating legs of the tour 'round SE Asia. It was another early morning bus ride, this one taking about 13 hours in total, and there were several stops along the way. One of which was for border control, where we had to pay another $20 to get into the country, since our previous visas were only single-entry and at that point invalid. Another harsh lesson in Cambodia's bureaucratic avarice. Along the way, we got to see a lot of the countryside, mostly made up of small wooden houses on stilts and children selling fruit by the roadside. We got into Siem Reap pretty late at night, exhausted, and ready to throw our stuff down. The bus company hooked us up with a tuk tuk driver free of charge, but they gave us the winking and nudging "maybe you could use our driver for a tour of the temples." The first place we tried was all booked up, and the second was pretty full, but they did manage to find us a room on the fifth floor with no air-conditioning or curtains. It was only $6 a night, so we happily took it.


With its requisite and blatant allusion to the historical site, the "King Angkor" Hotel proved to be more than suitable, having an attached outdoor restaurant and a massage parlor. I did not partake of the latter, but it was nice to know the option was there. After dropping us off, the driver immediately dropped the question, "So you want to go to the temples tomorrow?" The last thing we wanted to do at that moment was commit to a driver and itinerary for the weekend, and we were definitely in no mood to bargain. But he was rather insistent. So we told him we'd do a one-day tour for $20. He showed up early the next morning, and we were on our way.



Angkor Wat is just one of many ancient temples outside the city, but it's definitely the most impressive. They're spread out over a large area about 4 miles away, so most people rent bikes or take a tuk tuk. You can't possibly see all of it in one day. We bought a three-day pass for $40, I think. When you first get there, you have to take a land bridge across a large lake, and then a long stone path to the temple itself. The ancient Khmer kings really had a flare for the dramatic. On the way in, there were monkeys, a couple of elephants, and a whole lot of swarming children selling stuff I didn't need: postcards, bracelets, flutes, bottles of water--those were actually pretty useful, since it gets remarkably hot in the winter months. I imagine the height of summer to be one of the lower circles of hell. Approaching Angkor Wat, we could see some of the scaffolding where the restoration/preservation work is being done, as well as some of the monks who still inhabit the place. I believe they were Buddhist. Several times I was offered some incense as a form of worship, only to be hit up for a donation shortly after.



We made our way from one temple to the next, and each time our driver gave us an hour or two to wander and take pictures. A lot of the original carvings are still visible, which was nice. The endless corridors and staircases proved to be photogenic, as well. I'll let the online gallery paint the picture for you. We had a map that was sort of helping us through, and at one point we even had a surprise tour guide. He jumped out at us and starting spouting information about one of the facades, and we tried dodging him, but it was no use. When he was finished, I gave him some riel, and when that didn't satisfy him, he was content to relieve me of my can of Coke.



We concluded our tour with a climb up one of the taller temples. We reached the top as the sun was getting close to the horizon, and it was one hell of a view. Pretty peaceful, too, until everyone else started showing up. We even recognized a few people from our bus ride the day before. The summit was soon awash with cameras and cell phones, one of them playing a vaguely familiar Chinese pop ballad, but the sunset was still really cool. When we got back to the hotel, we were sweaty and dirty and determined to let our driver dowm easy. We had said all along that we wanted one day of service, since we had planned to walk or bike after that, but he wasn't convinced. Asking us if we thought he overcharged, he looked as if we had just thrown his dog out of a speeding tuk tuk. We did our best to be reassuring and eventually just said goodnight.



We spent the next day resting, taking in the city, walking down by the river, that sort of thing. We found another market and made a couple of snack runs to the gas station. I'm still amazed at how plentiful things like Pepperidge Farm and Dr. Pepper were, given their extreme scarcity in China. I'm told it's all about supply chains and whatnot, but it seemed really random at the time. I didn't take pictures of the city, since there really wasn't much to see. The dusty, two-story town seems to have been built ad hoc, serving the millions of tourists that pass through year-round. We had a nice chat with one of those millions, an Englishman who had made a long career out of teaching overseas. A bit of an odd guy, but most foreign teachers are.



Definitely one of the coolest parts of the whole trip came the next morning. I managed to convince Cori that it was a good idea to walk to Angkor Wat in time for sunrise, so we set out on foot at about 3:30 in the morning. The road is well-lit most of the way, with the final stretch being well-traveled, so I felt plenty safe. Once we got close enough, the road became nearly pitch-black, and we were very careful not to get hit by a passing motorist. You could say the only danger came from within, as Cori lost track of the rood and went down in a heap on the dirt. She wasn't badly injured. There was a little moonlight, and the sky was so clear that it actually had recognizable constellations. That was certainly a highlight. Sunrise was tired, but it was really cool to see the temple in all its silhouetted glory. Once again, we were joined by a couple hundred of our closest photographer friends, but there was plenty of room for all.

We got back to the hotel and took a nice, long nap as other guests looked on. I mentioned earlier that there were no curtains, and the only window happened to face the stairs, so everyone on the fifth floor must've gotten a free show at some point. We didn't really mind; some of the other guests thought it was pretty funny. Later, we had some Mexican food, which was exciting, and we took off the next morning. We had arranged a tuk tuk to the airport, but they upgraded us to a car for a little more money. And if that wasn't enough, we were not allowed into the gate area until we had paid the $25 service fee. Apparently, no one is allowed to fly out of Cambodia until they've paid the fee. Which is bull$#@%.

Next stop: Kuala Lumpur. Now, click for pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.wender/AngkorWat

Tibetan Uprising

Thought I'd take a quick break from my travelogue to highlight the significance of the day, March 14, the one-year anniversary of the uprising in Tibet, itself a marking of the now fifty-year anniversary of a rebellion against communist rule. I don't exactly know what to make of it, since I don't have much experience with the region (I do hope to visit someday), and I believe people on both sides of the Tibet issue tend to paint an inaccurate picture of life there. Ask the Chinese government, and they'll say something to the effect of "Tibetans now enjoy a beautiful and harmonious existence." Ask a human rights watchdog group, and they'll say that life there is hell on earth. Of course, it's really somewhere in between. But in any case, I thought I'd provide a couple of links, just in case you weren't up on recent developments.

UPDATE: This pretty well sums it up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/weekinreview/15WONG.html?hp

A timeline of the past year:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSPEK80094

Living on a campus in Wuhan, far from the Tibet Autonomous Region, I don't really feel any of the effects, nor do I see any of the demonstrations. Maybe the only manifestation of the central government's alleged oppression that I've experienced firsthand was the blocking of YouTube for a brief period. It's not uncommon for certain "incendiary" websites to be blocked, and a lot of times they're ones you wouldn't expect (like images of tornadoes, for example), but this time they were really out to prevent any kind of incitement to violence, or incriminating evidence, or free self-expression, or whatever you want to insert here. Believe what you want, but I'm trying to reserve judgment until after I actually go there. That is, when it's not closed to foreigners.

Vietnam

Capital: Hanoi
Currency: Dong ($1 = 16,000 VND)

Language: Vietnamese

Drink Specials: Iced Coffee

1/13-1/16

The simplest way to get to Vietnam is by bus, so that's what we did. We booked bus tickets through the guest house in Phnom Penh, and we were able to get our travel visas in advance, at a cost of at least $30. I forget whether or not you can get them at the border. It's probably all a question of how much you want to pay. Anyway, we caught the early bus--7 am, if I remember correctly--which meant that we had to get up much earlier in order to check out and catch the shuttle. The trip to Ho Chi Minh City was, without a doubt, the bumpiest ride I've ever been on. Once you get outside the city, paved roads are nowhere to be found. The constant up-and-down, combined with the heaping plate of greasy German food I had eaten the night before, made sure that the journey was not a pleasant one. I guess I should learn to stick with Asian food. Fortunately, I made it to the border okay, and we were let off for food and processing.

The restaurant we stopped at seemed to have a pretty sweet deal going, since there were several other buses there, and I had the pleasure of stopping again on my way out of Vietnam. It was there that I tried to exchange US dollars for Vietnamese dong, but the guy gave me riel by mistake, which was useless to me. Later, I tried to exchange the riel, and the old woman I was dealing with gave me far less dong than she should've. I began to argue the point with her, but as this was happening, I was being herded back onto the bus by the driver, and there was nothing I could do to stop from getting screwed. I probably gave her about $15 worth, and I think she ended up stealing at least $10 of it, which was a lot of money to me. Doesn't matter how much you try not to get hosed; it's bound to happen sometime.

I'm sure you're wondering what Ho Chi Minh City (also still called Saigon) is like. Well, I'll tell you. It was very nice. The weather was pleasantly warm, and the city felt like a real city. There were buildings taller than a few stories, there were parks and promenades to walk through, and we weren't hassled every second by motorcycle chauffeurs. We did get our fair share of offers, this time from bikers and rickshaw drivers. Still, we chose to walk. I did marvel at the constant flow of motorbikes pulsing through the intersections, and I think I can say they even had China beat in terms of sheer volume. A lot of foreigners around, which made me think the city was worth visiting. We really had no plan, after all, our only thought was "Let's hop over to Vietnam and see what's goin' on."

We found a lot of cool places--a couple palaces, cathedrals, bookstores, and a pub, to name a few. We spent a lot of our time in the back streets, where all the best restaurants and shops can be found. A lot of these stores sell similar items, such as Vietnam t-shirts, but the fun is all in negotiating the price. Usually, you can knock a few thousand dong off the top. From the shops you can walk right into a pizza place or grab a kebob along the way. One thing I didn't know about the country is that it has great coffee, which is something China is definitely not known for. It's best with milk and ice, and every now and then, you have to stray from the usual bold and black. Around dinnertime, you can avail yourself of one of the many roving masseurs. They're the ones riding around on bikes with metal clackers, massaging people right in their chairs when they're done eating. This costs about 20,000 to 30,000 VND, and dinner was usually about 80,000 to 100,000, which sounds like a lot but isn't. Thankfully, the menus were in English, and people know enough of the language to be able to take your order. It's a shame more people weren't fluent, since Vietnamese isn't exactly easy on the ears, but that's asking a lot.

Trying to find a place to stay was fun. We got off the bus and started checking prices. Many of these hotels have narrow fronts, with the lobby on the second floor and a travel agency on the first. A pretty convenient design, if you're just passing through. At one hotel, they said rooms were $35; we said we could pay $10. They said, "I think we have a room for you." As you'll see from the pictures, we had to crouch when entering the room and bathroom, and we could touch the floor, ceiling, and opposite walls all at once. But despite this, or maybe because of this, it was my favorite of the trip. It also had a TV, fridge, fans, and hot shower. I can't remember if we paid for it in dollars, but most places only took dong. I even had trouble exchanging my Chinese yuan, which is absurd, given the size of China's economy, but with all the lingering animosity between countries, it's not surprising.

We spent most of our days just walking around the city, taking in the local flavor and such. We saw the Saigon River, watched a traditional Chinese Dragon Dance, took pictures of the Reunification Palace from beyond the gate, and wandered into a pretty cool open-air market. As I remember, every city we went to had one of these markets. They're full of many of the same kinds of crafts and trinkets, and most of them will probably never be touched by tourist hands, let alone bought. As we walked through parks, we saw people out getting exercise, and we even got to watch a pretty intense game of hackey-sack volleyball. We finished up the first night with a sampling of the local brews, and it was agreed that Saigon Red was the best. The others aren't really worth your time. Especially Zorok.

Overall, a fairly uneventful few days, and that was just fine by us. Questions? Comments? Click for pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.wender/Vietnam

Cambodia, Part I

Capital: Phnom Penh

Currency: Riel ($1 = 4,000 Riel), US Dollar

Language: Khmer

Transportation: Tuk Tuk

1/9-1/13

When we arrived in Phnom Penh, we had been traveling for two days straight, and we finally had a chance to lie down and relax. And we did. We took it easy that night, and most of that weekend, since the most pressing thing on the agenda was a local beer taste-test. Incidentally, in the contest of Anchor vs. Angkor, the latter is without a doubt the superior beer, and it's my understanding that neither is actually pronounced "anchor." Anyway, we found a lot of good restaurants down by the river, which was where all the other white people were going for food. We often ran with the tourist crowd in Cambodia, but since I had only a few hundred Chinese yuan to my name, I had to remind myself that my place was with the backpackers. Luckily, things were pretty cheap by American standards. Five dollars could get you a hostel room or a hot meal.

The first night we went with traditional Khmer food, different from Chinese, but still very Asian in flavor. That was also the night I tried grog. I had no idea what it was, but I really wanted to find out. As I recall, they put in front me a pot of tea, some honey, a few slices of lime, and a shot of rum. I had no idea what to do, so I just poured some tea and dumped in the honey and rum. I don't think they gave me a spoon, so the first sip had a hell of a kick, and the last was a little gooey. After that, we had mostly Western food, a lot of it, since you can't get a real burger in Wuhan.

Most of these restaurants have outdoor seating, which makes a lot of sense with the year-round shorts weather, and as you sit there, you get to take in what little there is of a riverfront. Unfortunately, you don't get much culture, since the only Cambodians around are serving the food or selling books and bootleg DVDs. Several children came up to us as we ate, and we'd say no thanks again and again, trying not to let the white guilt get the better of us. We'd get the bill, which was always in US dollars, and our change would come in both currencies. They don't use coins; instead of a quarter, they'll give you 1,000 riel. It's bizarre, not to mention confusing. And when you get up to leave, there is a chorus of no less than five guys there waiting for you, and they only know one song: "Hello, tuk tuk?" This is an industry of guys sitting around in motorcycle-drawn carriages, calling out to any tourist who might need a ride, apparently not caring that there aren't nearly enough tourists to fill every tuk tuk. We always walked, and thanks to the transportation surplus, we were the only ones.

Our only tuk tuk ride in Phnom Penh was part of a tour offered by the guest house. We got up early to take a trip to the Killing Fields, then a former house of torture (now a genocide museum), and finally a lovely indoor market. Overall, it was a depressing day. If you haven't read up on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, you probably should. But don't have anything fun planned for afterward. Once all the joy had been sucked from our lives, we said goodbye to the English couple we'd been paired with and went down for a nap. Later, we watched the film version from the early '80s, the one with Malkovich and Sam Waterston, and it really captured the chaos and brutality in Cambodia at the time. After that, we probably had a drink.

I think I'll save the rest of my comments for Part II, but in the meantime, here are some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.wender/CambodiaPartI

Thailand

Capital: Bangkok

Currency: Baht ($1 = around 35 Baht)

Language: Thai

Side of the Road: Left

1/9

We landed in Thailand at about 1 or 2 in the morning with our hostel already booked. We grabbed a cab from the airport and rode the expressway into Bangkok. We saw maybe one other car the entire time. When we got to the guest house, we had to sort out a small booking mix-up, which was made much easier by the fact that they spoke English. Thai is actually pretty easy on the ears, but not any easier to learn than Chinese. They, too, use a different alphabet. The currency definitely required some mental math on my part, but I was only in the country for about 12 hours, so I wasn't really looking to stretch my Baht.

The room had the bare essentials--two beds and a bathroom down the hall. It turned out to be a good value...I think. We got a few hours of sleep before waking up to check out. It was hot outside that day, and traffic was bad, and nothing looked remotely like winter. I went to the 7-11, which was weird, and then we went back to the airport, which was also weird. This was the same airport that had been besieged by protesters just a few weeks before. It was kind of disappointing to see that operations had returned to normal, that there weren't hordes of people with unintelligible signs hurling unintelligible insults at whatever government happened to be in power that day, but in retrospect, it was probably better that the airport wasn't shut down.

You know what happens from here, more checkpoints, passport stamps, and shoving to get on the plane. (Another flight on Air Asia.) I support my previous statement by saying that this flight had mostly Chinese passengers. I grabbed a sandwich and a fistful of US dollars on the way, which I will explain later, and headed off to Cambodia. I would've liked to stay longer--I hear the country has great beaches--but we had other plans. I promise that I did far more interesting things in Cambodia than I did in Thailand. You'll just have to keep reading.

Southern China

So, I'm back now and busy picking up the various threads of my life--classes, friends, the search for employment--but I'm going to devote the next several blog posts to my recent vacation. Unless something exciting happens here in Wuhan, which I'm guessing it won't.

1/7-1/8

I'll start from the beginning. The Wednesday I left, I still had two final exams to give and all of my grades to record. This is how I motivate myself. I buy a train ticket to Shenzhen and use the departure date and time as my deadline for finishing all of my work. (As with anything schedule-related, the school was pretty fuzzy on when I had to turn grades in.) I gave finals, ran home, and had my travel buddy Cori record my grades while I finished packing. I'd like to think it wasn't all my fault, that my laundry had taken longer to dry than expected, on account of the cold. But who remembers. I might've also been cleaning, not wanting to leave a lot for the rats.

The train ride was fine, aside from the usual Chinese guys sidling up to me, snoring, and hawking up unmentionable fluids. I slept on the narrow bed next to my backpack filled with five weeks' worth of stuff. Cori and I arrived in Shenzhen early the next morning. Already, we noticed a change from the blustery weather in Wuhan. The sun was shining, the air was calm, and it actually felt easier to breathe. We began killing time before our evening flight to Thailand by stopping off at the nearest McDonalds for breakfast. The scene of us trudging into a restaurant with giant backpacks, as if we were grabbing a quick McMuffin before mounting an expedition into the Swiss Alps, was to become a familiar one.

We did a lot of walking, and when that got old, we hopped on the metro line. And when that got old...well...we saw a movie. We had a lot of time to kill. It was a Chinese film, and if that wasn't enough to hamper our interest, it was a sequel. Luckily, action films don't need much translating. After that, we hit the Starbucks. Shenzhen was surprisingly clean and Westernized that way. Later, after dinner, we found a shuttle to the airport and made friends with a Canadian man on the way. He spoke a fair amount of Chinese, said he was also on his way to Thailand, and since our gate was nearly impossible to find, he was a big help. Now let me wrap up the entry with my experience on Air Asia.

Being a low-cost carrier, they don't do jetways. They take all the passengers waiting at the gate and herd them onto a bus, which then drives across the tarmac to the plane. There are no seat assignments. As the doors of the bus opened, I felt the crowd behind me contract, pushing ever harder toward the waiting plane, bursting into a mad dash for the stairs. This is the kind of thing that, as far as I know, happens only in China. I may be wrong, but weren't we all sitting in the same section of the same plane going to the same place? Is the difference between a window seat and an aisle seat really worth throwing elbows over?

I put on my headphones and reminded myself that I'd be in Bangkok by morning.