After leaving Koh Toa, the Spaniards coaxed me into coming with them for an overnight stay in Phang Nga. I decided to follow because a) we got to see that huge monolith that James Bond jumped off of in one of his 20 movies and b) because it spliced my otherwise 23 hour boat/bus ride to Malaysia. The boat ride from Koh Tao to the mainland was also overnight and in six hours Pili managed to get attacked by a spider, a cockroach and upon deboarding almost slipped on a squashed rat on the pier. Excellent. Despite Pili's several bad omens leading up to our arrival, we had an amazing time and would definitely recommend a short stop in Phang Nga. We spent the day on a boat, hopping islands and visiting villages suspended on stilts. That night, we recharted our courses and realized that it would definitely be good-bye. And it was. This morning I got on a bus headed south, they on a plane headed north.
The bus ride through the south of Thailand I thought would be my last. I'm one step closer to becoming a Southeast Asian veteran after having survived Mr. Kean's express bus from Krabi, Thailand to Butterworth, Malaysia. I was suspicious getting in the '78 gelopy when I noticed that our 17 year old driving was wearing skull-wrapping Oakleys and Formula 1 racer gloves.
Well, that was that.
For my first stop in Malaysia, I decided to take a ferry to the island of Pulau Penang, described as the culinary crossroads of Southeast Asia. Indonesian-Thai-Malay-Chinese-Indian-English-fusion cuisine is probably the hippest way to describe it. The island is also home to some of earth's most exotic fruits. I've only had one meal of spicy chicken soup, a fruit plate and something like a cheese pancake with ginger sauce on top, but my plan is to gorge my way around town tomorrow on the motorbike I rented today.
Before boarding the ferry I struck a deal with Little Debby (my new nickname for the chronic irregularity whose become my most reliable travel companion since China), that she'd stay on the mainland and give me a few days to enjoy some sustainable digestion. She agreed but promised to meet me again promptly upon boarding the overnight train to Kuala Limpur. What a gal!
Oh me. I'm in Thailand, and it's everything everyone's ever told me it would be. There are vendors waiting around every corner to plan the next leg of your journey, Australians draped on every corner about to come of age, the Thai people are some of the friendliest and most hospitable people I've ever met, and the beaches are paradise... almost.
I spent a few days in Bangkok, recharging, decharging, and recharging again, for my dive into the south of Southeast Asia. I saw the national palace, the emerald Buddha, the floating market, I got massaged, loitered on Koh San Road, hired and fired Tuc Tuc drivers, and even suffered a night in a 2 dollar hostel with aforementioned coming of age Australians (COAA). Bangkok has been checked off my list.
Since I only have about a week in Thailand, I thought, as does every Westerner, that I could find paradise untouched, in all its divine serenity. One night bus with many COAAs, a 3-6am layover in a barracks for backpackers and a bumby boat ride to the middle of the Gulf of Thailand later, I landed on Koh Tao Island. Paradise? Not really, but the island offers plenty of distractions. When I arrived, I discovered that this island and the few surrounding comprise the scuba-diving-for-beginners capital of the world, or at least for COAAs.
So I decided to enjoy my paradise-lost with a healthy bout of productivity. As of tomorrow, day 4 of the Scuba School International's Beginning Open Water Dive Course for Certification, I will be a scuba diver. It's been four somewhat strenuous days of theory, classroom time, studying, examinations, pool drills, and finally (tomorrow) open water test dives.
When it's over, I'm taking my certificate and dashing for the border. My next stop is Malaysia. My search for paradise continues.
What I'm really sad about is saying goodbye to Pili and Santiago, my two new friends from Spain. I've been travelling with them ever since that fateful day at the Thai-Cambodian border. It's been great with them. Coincidentally, we have had until now similar itineraries and keep meeting up even after loosely agreeing on a time and location. I've learned a lot from them, and I think they've learned a thing or two from me.
Santiago is going home early for family reasons, their friendship is now on the rocks, and Pili was and still is in undergoing a severe work/money/location-related quarter-life crisis. Getting to know them and being with them as their poorly timed dramas have unfolded, has quite honestly, been arduous, but looking back on it, I'm glad I could have been a part of it.
It's strange the way people connect while backpacking, and detach. You're so much more likely to spill your guts, tell white lies, and desperately hold on to people you've never met before, while traveling through a strange land with only 10 kilos to your name. I thought this might have been just because I am traveling alone, but I'm starting to notice that even those in groups are ecstatic to meet an unfamiliar face. Sometimes I think it's all fleeting and shallow and why listen or help someone when you'll never see them again? But then again, I stop and think, I'm gone for several months, these are the only people with whom I'll share these memories. I don't know if I'll ever see them again. But this is just how it is. And I'm trying to enjoy it.
I know when someone says "omg, are you on Facebook? We've gotta stay friends!", it's probably not going to last, but when someone's cried on your shoulder, shared their oxygen tank with you, and shared a two person motorcycle three-ways... that's bonding! Santiago and Pili, this one's for you!
I took this rail line from town out to a lake. Get this, there was another train coming head on. So we both screeched to a halt, de-boarded, and decided who would have to take apart their train, carry it beyond the other, and reassemble it on the other side to continue. Perfect!
I looked down today and realized that Cambodia has turned my shoes a shade of yellow. So far, in each country I've been, it seems as though my white Asics are the first to adapt to local conditions. I like that.
Meanwhile my planned two days have turned into five. I'm not allowed to leave the country. Just kidding. I've decided to reroute my short stint in Cambodia to include the capital Phnom Penh and the remote, however sizable town of Batam Bang. People have warned me about Cambodia. Some have used the words difficult, some scary. I think it's downright cozy. After the trauma at the border, however difficult and scary it may have been, I've been made privy to nothing but hospitality and fascination.
In a country where genocide and a perverted form of Maoist, agrarian Communism was the order of the day only 30 years ago, this place has come a long way. What does that mean? Living in Germany as a non-German, I've experienced, with a certain measure of objectivity, a society dealing with a sense of collective guilt. But Germany is also a place flanked with top-ranked universities, incredible infrastructure and millions of Euros for lofty memorials and museums dedicated to a sort of societal altercation with the past.
But what about a place that's the total opposite? What about a country, in which the same regime that committed years of ethnic cleansing and systematic terror was, for almost 20 years after the fact, still officially recognized as the legitimate head of state by the United Nations? What about Cambodia? Visiting the Tuol Sleng Museum of the Cambodian genocide provides a glimpse into this countries painful and somewhat elusive "coming to terms". Pictures and interviews of those who committed these horrid crimes against humanity hang directly next to their victims. Pol Pot, the main perpetrator behind the Khmer Rouge was allowed to die of old age in peace in neighboring Thailand. The only museum in Cambodia that brings to light the concentrated extermination of Cambodia's educated, wealthy, urban and minority populations is crumbling from decay and a funds-depleted negligence. Compare this to Germany, a place with sleek, artistically designed monuments intended to last for the ages to remind humankind of man's sadistic capabilities. Cambodia is a place where its only local reminders are the occasional reports of rural children losing limbs from mines not yet disarmed. I began to ask myself, is all this altercation with our past a Western luxury? Should foreign investments come into a place like Cambodia and independently finance their awareness of the Khmer Rouge? Or is this also a viable method? Why do we try to make things that are so horrific, so accessible and at the same time so clean? Simply moving on, grieving within the family and shrugging the mishaps that are indicative of an unwavering human nature is the way we've dealt with history for thousands of years.
These victims should, without a doubt, be remembered and memorialized. I just found it all a bit bewildering. In such a poor country, whose capital's main tourist attraction has become an old high school in which tens of thousands of people were bludgeoned to death, is perhaps an approach to memorializing unfamiliar to the Cambodians that are actually feeling the sting of recent history.
I just realized what it was that I had missed so much while touring through China, that is, the thrill of arriving. It sounds cliche, but it's the only way I can describe it, thrilling. As much of a pain and hassle it sometimes can be, err, or total catastrophe, there's no other feeling when backpacking quite like arriving somewhere after hours on gruelling pot-holed roads, numerous haggling sessions over the price of a bottle of water or a tuc tuc ride over pedestrian unfriendly terrain. After all of this, you own the arrival. It doesn't matter how tired you are, how bad you smell, or how paranoid you are about whether or not your back-up debit card is in the front right pocket of your Jansport or gripping your sweaty thigh through your ultra-secret, theft-proof hidden pocket. You've made it, all by yourself and even if there's nobody there with whom to enjoy the moment, it becomes a part of you and makes it all worthwhile.
Angkor Wat was built in the 12th Century by Khmer King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple. Present day Cambodia was the spiritual capital of Southeast Asia for over a thousand years. It was later converted into a hub of Buddhist learning. More than that, at their height, Khmer Kings ruled over an empire that stretched from Vietnam to Burma. Somewhat overrun with tourism, Angkor Wat is one of the only testaments still remaining to the Cambodian's hour of grandeur.
So as not relive those familiar reactions received after my camp counselors called home to report my temporary disappearance, this entry is tactfully being published after my successful immigration out of Cambodia. The sixteenth of October, 2008 was to date one of the most surreal, exciting and down-right terrifying twenty-four hours of my life. Pardon the somewhat linear composition of the following narration:
At 5:00 I woke up in Bangkok, tired from the four consecutive nights of barely having slept during my final days in China and subsequent arrival in Bangkok. A cold shower and a handful of hammered rice later I arrived at a bus station in Lumpini Park to take me to the Cambodian border en Route to Siem Reap, the location of the sacred temples of Angkor Wat. Shortly before six, I discovered that the only seat left on any form of “public” transportation was on the Casino Bus to the border town Aranya Prathet. Exhausted as I was, I thought, shoot, if I can sleep on a roaring poo-powered train through the Chinese countryside, a bit of Cambodian craps couldn’t foil my desperation for a 3 hour bus-snooze. Besides, I’m a backpacker, and I was sure a warm bed was awaiting me somewhere.
Upon arriving at the border, I disembarked the bus and found myself in a town, which I can only describe as a cross between a Billy the Kid and a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas horror thriller. I was hurried into a Visa office by a "friendly" travel agent and was greeted by several smiling faces competing to sell me an overpriced entry-visa. Several in the office were glued to the television. When I asked the gentleman what everyone was so intently following, he said "We fight the Cambodia. No Problem. No Problem. That no problem. You no Thai, you go, you go." I felt my eyeballs receding into my head and throat into my stomach. I ran to the window to see if the casino on wheels had already departed. This was the moment I’d been waiting for; what my grandmother had warned me about and those John Kaplan films foreshadowed. I told the man I was leaving. Outside I saw motorcyclists with bibs covering their mouths, spewing dust behind their 1980 maroon Kawasakis and in the distance mud... and what looked like militia.
I pleaded for a call to the US embassy and the “friendly” man obliged if I first paid for the visa. Forty-eight of my USD reverses later, the US embassy in both Thailand and Cambodia assured me that the event was isolated and happens several times a year in the northern border regions between Thailand and Cambodia. Apparently, there's a patch of land whose border is still in dispute. Someone at the embassy also warned me that if people at the border tell me I'm in danger and that they'll protect me for money, it's most likely a scam. Ok, I thought. Ok, I'm in Cambodia, not the Sunshine State; things like this happen here. So I agreed with the man that if he, himself, personally escorted me across the border (scam), I'd give him a few dollars more. We left the office, turned left and headed down the heavily guarded immigration-chute. A little boy who called me "hey man" followed me with an umbrella. My guide led the way as I followed, clutching my passport wrapped in a shiny green Cambodian visa.
I was welcomed on the other side with yet more smiles and what sounded like the hissing of snakes. Take the visual I painted from the Thai border, place a ten year embargo on it and double the presence of what-could-he-possibly-be-doing-type men and that was my first impression of the farthest reaches of former French Indochina. But it was the billboards of young Cambodian men smiling with condoms in their hand with the words "from the American people" written above and a few Cambodian laws written in huge block letters, "DRUG TRAFFICING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH" that gave this border town its real post-colonial charm.
My guide motioned across a clay parking lot and told me to get on the back of a man's motorcycle. He was to take me to a taxi that would drive me for thirty USD for three hours over a red clay trail not suitable for an Ox to Siem Reap. Looking around me, I said "yeah, sure". Realizing that entire families of six were easily fitting onto the same sized motorcycles all around us, oh, and that every third person was armed to the teeth, I didn't so much mind fancying my two oversized backpacks, both of which still smelled of the cigarette smoke looming over the craps tables I had been eyeing a few hours previously.
In context, the motorcycle ride was relatively uneventful and upon arriving at a shack of make-shift offices, I was elated to meet two Spaniards and a couple from the Ukraine. Handshakes became hugs, and for the first time in hours, we all admitted that we finally felt "ok." The cheapest we could get the taxi was for seventy USD. They fed us some line that all the taxis were gone because of the conflict in the north. In turn, we convinced each other this made since and considered the costs sunk. The five of us finally decided to pile in, luggage included, and make our way as quickly as possible out of this Siamese hell. (Lonely Planet describes crossing the border at Aranya Prathet as "masochistic.") The ride was perilous, packed, and the road is apparently reverse-subsidized by the corrupt Cambodian government to deter tourists, leaving them overpriced flights in and out of Siem Reap as the only sane transportation option. The People's Party of Cambodia had nothing on us.
After three hours of more cigarette smoke, wild banshees, and water buffalo we arrived in Siem Reap, only five kilometers from Angkor Wat. We transferred to a rickshaw, and were brought safe and sound to a European-owned, French-style guesthouse. Despite the fact we and our meager belongings all remained intact, suspicion was still coursing through our veins. Wanting nothing but sleep and against our better judgment, we all decided it was fate to continue the fun. At three in the afternoon, we headed down to Tonle Sap, the river/lake that connects the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, with Siem Reap. We hired a boat and cruised down the lake to take in one of the nearby floating Vietnamese villages. We asked why they didn't just build on land, and our guide explained that for miles there is no regular land, because the lake expands exponentially in size during the rainy season. And rainy season it was.
Midway through the three-hour tour of floating pig farms, elementary schools and even a Catholic church, we were hit by an actual monsoon. I've never seen such an ominous looking sky and I hail from the lightening/hurricane capital of the world. We waited out the storm in a floating house while being pounded from side to side by white-capped waves before our guide deemed it safe to boat back to Siem Reap. In the dark, spattered with the tentacles of the receding electrical storm, we miraculously returned to shore safely. We thanked our guides, promised to send them tons of business from town and hired another rickshaw to take us back to town. A thirty-minute ride easily became ninety, and despite ambient conditions, my head started bobbing.
But the day wasn't over. When we got back to Siem Reap, we were unpleasantly surprised by the side of town we hadn't seen before; Four Seasons-owned bungalows, wealthy French tourists, bars and night markets. These were the people who had probably flown into Siem Reap. They hadn’t been escorted across the border, shoved onto a motorcycle, packed into a taxi, transferred to a rickshaw and skirted around a monsoon on a lake full of pig farms. We, the border crossers of Aranya Prathet, may have looked a bit more tattered and perhaps even shell-shocked than those who had just stepped off of an Air France, but we were the ones who had truly arrived. We walked down the main tourist drag of Siem Prathet soaking wet with mud on our fronts and bags under our eyes to match those on our backs. Like heroes returned from the trenches we decided we had earned the warm embrace of a steamy meal and a dry cot. Unfortunately, the pizza we were served minutes later was cooked with a locally grown herb that tends to put one inopportunely to sleep. Upon waking up the next morning piled on the floor of our shared room and realizing that many of our valuables must have been sacrificed to the angry gods at Angkor Wat, we realized that even without that warm bed we could survive. We were backpackers!
After leaving Koh Toa, the Spaniards coaxed me into coming with them for an overnight stay in Phang Nga. I decided to follow because a) we got to see that huge monolith that James Bond jumped off of in one of his 20 movies and b) because it spliced my otherwise 23 hour boat/bus ride to Malaysia. The boat ride from Koh Tao to the mainland was also overnight and in six hours Pili managed to get attacked by a spider, a cockroach and upon deboarding almost slipped on a squashed rat on the pier. Excellent.
Despite Pili's several bad omens leading up to our arrival, we had an amazing time and would definitely recommend a short stop in Phang Nga. We spent the day on a boat, hopping islands and visiting villages suspended on stilts. That night, we recharted our courses and realized that it would definitely be good-bye. And it was. This morning I got on a bus headed south, they on a plane headed north.
Angkor Wat was built in the 12th Century by Khmer King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple. Present day Cambodia was the spiritual capital of Southeast Asia for over a thousand years. It was later converted into a hub of Buddhist learning. More than that, at their height, Khmer Kings ruled over an empire that stretched from Vietnam to Burma. Somewhat overrun with tourism, Angkor Wat is one of the only testaments still remaining to the Cambodian's hour of grandeur.
