We're back! (Finally.) I'm going to do this in installments, like a Dickens novel... with pictures.Hold on tight!
Day one: Arrival in Bangkok/Checking out the wats
Our plane ride from HK to Bangkok was pretty uneventful, except that we flew Ethiopian Airlines, which meant 1. everything was written and spoken in English, French, and Ethiopian (Linguistics nerd bonus factor: +10) and 2. every person on the plane, except for maybe 8 people including ourselves, was checking 15 boxes worth of God-knows-what on their way to Addis Ababa (Bangkok being a mere stopover). We arrived in Thailand around 12am and headed for our hotel.
In the morning we wandered around a temple complex that was nearby. An adorable little old lady kept smiling and waving at us to go inside the main temple, so we did. Inside was a huge floor-to-ceiling white buddha and several other buddhas covered in gold leaf. A woman gave us some joss sticks and gold leaf squares, so we did as the Thais do, trying our best not to offend anyone.
Afterwards, we caught a bus to downtown BKK, and then another to the train station. We found a hostel and then walked around a bit in Chinatown. I'm guessing that was what Hong Kong looked like back in the day -- tons of open-air stalls selling generally unidentifiable goods, even shark fins and 'antiques'. Where HK seems to have cleaned up a bit, Bangkok's Chinatown was still pretty rough.
There are wats scattered all over Bangkok, and we went to one near Chinatown.
Day Two: Aranyaprathet and Poipet
The next morning (bright and early) we took the 5:55am train to the border town of Aranyaprathet. We paid 48 baht each (roughly US$1.50) for a six-hour train ride, and we got what we paid for. It was pretty awful -- people outside of our train car were walking faster than we were going. We passed groups of shacks here and there, with a lot of nothing in between (it's the dry season). When we eventually arrived in Aranyaprathet, we had to take a tuk-tuk to the actual border at Poipet. We passed through Thai immigration with little difficulty, and walked into the no-man's-land of Poipet. We weren't sure where we were exactly. We hadn't yet crossed the Cambodian border. We couldn't even see where the gates actually were through the dust and traffic, people hauling carts and wagons, children begging for change, and casinos, of all things. Here, in the wasteland between Thailand and Cambodia, gambling is legal, so tons of Thais come on the weekends to throw their money around in luxury, while squalor reigns just outside the doors.
We were so exhausted (mentally and physically) from that morning that we just gave up and decided to eat at a restaurant we stumbled upon. A giant group of Canadian Christians was also there, and just as we were getting tired of wondering what the hell 30 white people were doing at this restaurant, one of the girls came over and sat down to tell us. She said they were traveling around making bricks and helping the children. Of course. We got the scoop from her about the border crossing and, after our pitiful excuses for lunch, left for Cambodia.
The customs "office" (read: window, roof, tree, shrine, line of foreigners) was a joke. Once outside we had to find a ride to Siem Reap. Two Swedes we'd been riding the train with asked us if we wanted to share a cab. The drive was interesting, to say the least -- the big Swede guy in the front passenger seat, the wife, me in the middle, and Matt in the backseat of a Toyota Camry for 4 hours on an unpaved road. I was just glad we had AC. Many people we passed were riding on the tops and beds of trucks, wearing scarves to protect their skin from the scorching sun and their lungs from the fumes and clouds of red dust. Our driver was on the horn basically the entire time, notifying everyone (including the cows) that he was passing them, even with oncoming traffic just inches away. No rules, no lanes, no speed limit. Nothing you can do but sit back and hope you don't get violently ill from the bumping and swerving. This was our welcome to the third world.
Pit stops: Now with more cows!
And puppies!
Did I mention that the Swedish woman smelled like fake tanner?
Anyway, we got to the outskirts of Siem Reap a while later, where our driver stopped. This was an interesting surprise, because we'd been told we would be taken to our guest house of choice. He herded us onto tuk-tuks "paid for by the company" and naturally we were pretty damn skeptical. We got on one anyway and the guy took us to check out some hostels I'd heard about. Meanwhile, another guy jumped on the back and started talking to Matt. He was pretty charming, and persistent -- "I just want to be your driver" over and over -- so finally we agreed to let him take us to the temples in Angkor Wat the next couple of days. He also helped us find a good hostel ("my friend's place! good and cheap!") when the recommended ones were full. His name was Clem. Turns out, he was awesome.
More on Clem and the Angkor temples in the next post.
Stay tuned!
