back home in the ‘Peg

We made it back to Canada after definitely taking the long way home from Bangkok.  By taking consecutive red-eyes we managed to squeeze in a brief tour of Tokyo on Sunday. And then repeated Sunday in Vancouver, but were too tired to do any touring.
It’s Monday now, and we’re back in our house. Our wonderful house-sitter (Julie’s friend Heather) picked us up as we dashed out from the airport with only rain jackets to shield ourselves from the cold wind. Fortunately for us the cold-snap ended just in time for us to arrive!
I probably have a thousand photos to sort through and pages of notes jotted down from the last 26 days.  Updates will likely follow as it’s all processed.
It was a fantastic trip, and I think just the right length: long enough to feel like we’ve been away for a long time, and also long enough to make us yearn to come home.
Now to get over the post-vacation blues and plan the next one!

See'em'n'reap

When we arrived here in Siem Reap Julie made it clear that she didn't want to stay long in a tourist town. And after experiencing the heat while at Angkor it was decided that we must escape to the southern coast - my dreams of Kep could come true!
Fortunately there flights direct from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville. Too bad the flight just left and it's not every day. So plans changed. Our driver Mooney had mentioned the floating village and a floating forest that he thought we should go see. So we did some investigating after dinner (at Angkor Palm, a worthwhile Lonely Planet trap) and found out that we could formulate our own tour to the village without spending $32pp and a whole day. Rather it worked out to about $15pp and took only 3 hours.
The village of Kampung Phluk is on the edge of the large Tonle Sap lake and it experiences water levels that fluctuate by about 6m. To cope with it, all buildings are built on stilts or truly do float up and down. Our man told us that there was about 4m of water here in the waterway and it could reach up to 10m. Spread out across this vast area that's a staggering amount of water. (For reference, Tonle Sap lake appears to be a bit smaller in size to Lake Manitoba, and when it flooded badly in 2011 it only went up about 2m.)
We were here at just about the peak of dry season so most everything was in the air. Our taxi driver turned into our guide as he could speak English while our boat driver could not. He seemed to have done this tour thing before as he was doing a fine job showing us around and answering our questions. The floating forest is basically the flooded forest, through which you could rent a small paddle boat and go through. For lack of time, and disinterest from all but Julie, we skipped it.
We disembarked onto land at the local Buddhist temple, and were quickly spotted by a number of girls and ladies selling snacks, drinks and school supplies.  The temple looked brand new but the rest of the village was a study in poverty. Smoke from grills and piles of burning trash wafted through the main drag. Moving from the temple towards the houses, school children were suddenly running around us and the sales ladies strengthened their sales pitches on the school supplies.  Julie and Blaine took the bait and were promptly led up the stairs into a classroom of the school. Honestly I was expecting more of a response from the kids when Julie and Blaine handed out the scribblers and pencils, but then I realized that if this happens with most tourists then this likely compares with getting socks and a sweater for Christmas. The kids were very polite though. We wondered why some children were in school whilst others were not. Turns out that the school operates in shifts.
It was a neat experience and I'm glad we went but I doubt you'd ever need to take advantage of the Guesthouse here.

Following a failed attempt at getting our taxi driver to show us street food, we flew away to PP on Cambodia-Angkor Air - a pleasant experience. 
Back on the ground our man Siy was at work for us finding a car to take us to the southern coast. On the plane we'd decided upon going to Kep. Too bad Siy's buddy wasn't warm to the idea. Agh! Dreams dashed!
It cost us $70 for the ride, plus the $10 "deposit" we'd given Bondal in Siem Reap. I assume that was simply Bondal's cut for drumming up business.  Ask Blaine to prove the math.

Thur, 05/January

Sorry no pictures

Having some technical difficulties. And we're simply moving too fast to keep everything up-to-date.
Only one week left in our little holiday! Looking forward to camping out on little Koh Phayam for a few days. Might be able to shake this cold.

Cheers,

Angkor Watever

Wake up at 4:30am and meet the tuktuk driver outside the hotel at 5am. Rattle along through the quiet streets all groggy and squinty-eyed. Get to the entrance gate, smile for the camera and hand over a wad of cash ($20pp and FYI, day passes are on the backside of the building). Buy a cup of coffee (surprisingly good for $1.25) at the roadside stand. Make your way across the road dodging tour vans to cross the moat into Angkor Wat as the rising sun lightens the sky.
And so begins your day of sightseeing at the vast temple complex that was built to worship the Hindu god Vishnu.

It seems that everyone knows to go to Angkor Wat super early to see the sunrise over the temple so I should not have been surprised to see a crowd of a couple thousand around the best vantage points to get the photo that you can easily download off Google (I checked last night). Yet go early to beat the crowds and more importantly beat the heat. By 10am it's freakin' hot. And the Asian tour buses have arrived.
The temple itself is downright amazing. The incredible detail and the volume of it is enough to render you speechless. Phenomenal. But then you walk into a corridor and it is suddenly apparent that something/somebody peed in it. We didn't see all of it and didn't try to get to the upper levels, but we'd seen enough after an hour and a half,  plus I was hungry.
Earlier on our way in, Angelina Jolie (not her real name I'm sure) spotted us and gave us some hints where we should go for the best views, provided we went to stall #3 for "brekfah". She was cute and Julie says she was hitting on me and thus we went to eat there. I should mention now that on the way to the strip of food stalls to the north of the main walkway, the girls snuck off to use the toilet. Leah said it was just slightly better than the one on the bus. The chicken & pineapple fried rice at Jolie's stall was good, but it's likely the same as one would have received if you sat 4ft away at the Batman cafe. After eating our noodles, Blaine, Leah & I thought we should hit the toilet before going to the next site. Seems that by this time the "orphan" kid had taken his post at the gate to the toilet and demanded 1000 Riel to use the sh*tty facilities. When Leah tried to walk past him the kid quickly brandished a stick and started trying to herd Leah away from the door. Not feeling like being caned by a 6yr old, we walked to the next toilet area. Same thing, except no stick. Blaine & I hung back (we balked at the price to pee) while Leah and another lady tried to get in to the outhouses with this scrawny kid trying to block the door all the while yelling "one thousand!". With the other lady taking the kid's attention Leah managed to get in. When she exited I gave a sign to go to the right, anticipating the the kid will be expecting her to return to us. Eye contact was made and she was off! Running past the palm tree, around the flower garden meeting us on the path back to the cafes, with screams of "one thousand! One thousand!!" fading into the distance. For some reason I was expecting the kid to put some sort of Khmer curse on us, or at least spread the word and have a coconut conveniently fall onto us.
Crossing the moat back to the road, it was surprisingly easy to find our tuktuk driver Mooney inthe sea of tuktuks and mini buses. Next stop, Angkor Thom. (Reminder to Julie: we've left Angkor Wat. It is but one temple of the many Temples of Angkor.)
Angkor Thom is perhaps more impressive since it is so large, once housing nearly one million people within its walls (at a time when London was merely a large town). Bayon is super cool with its many faces staring down at you. Baphuon is big and grand and you can climb up it for a great view back across the raised walkway. The Terrace of the Elephants is also impressive but the "possibility of visit" signs don't let you see it. You can walk on it, but not see the carvings of elephants that stretch 100 metres along its side.
By this time it's hot and we're getting a big tired. Many guides and online postings will say that you need a week to take it all in. We say different - 8hrs is plenty to get the gist of it. The lunch area at Thom is good and busy. Each tuktuk driver has a friend who operates a cantina so the decision of where to eat has been made for you. No matter since it's all the same. While Blaine & I were waiting for the girls we had a couple beers and a dragon fruit shake to cool off. Not to be outdone, the girls showed up with 6 beers and a T-shirt for $6. It all depends on how hard you barter.
...

I'll wrap this up with some final comments. The toilets at the lunch area are free to use when you show your park pass and they're quite nice. It's beyond us why such decrepid facilities exist at the famous Wat, and it's also beyond me how you'd get in this far without having a park pass.
Before leaving the lunch area, we bartered once again for beers for the road and a shirt for Blaine.
Our final stop was Ta Prom - the Tomb Raider temple if you've seen the movie. Apparently lots of people have since there's a built-up photo-op stage in front of it.
Oh, and if we're energetic when we get home we might try to calculate our carbon footprint of this trip. Today I'm sure was bad: tuktuk motorbike around all day and then each of the 40 food stalls has a generator a few yards away out back providing power for stoves and blenders.

4/JAN/2012

Angkory Birds

Ever ridden in the back of a pickup truck down a rough gravel road? Of course you have. But have you done it for six and a half hours? That was what our bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was like. Except that we had seats and air con. And the air con was blasting through the broken vents that I shoved Maclean's inserts into to save us from frost bite. And I'm not going to describe in detail the condition of the onboard toilet. But I do respect Leah for making use of it. Twice. Must've been the Angkor beers. I purposely dehydrated myself to avoid such fate.
Aside from the facilities, we took this $10 VIP bus ride to see the Cambodian countryside.  As you leave PP the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers dominate the land: flooding into rice paddies and stretching across the floodplain as far as you can see. About an hour out of the city it becomes more arid and large piles of hay (in yards and on trucks) dot the fields and cattle appear at the roadside.  But it's still flat, aside from two large hills (think Pilot Mound in Manitoba).
I've noticed that people of similar skill sets tend to congregate - if there's one bakery on a block then there'll likely be more bakeries on the next block. And so it was along #2 highway. We'd see one guy carving stone statues and 30s later there'd be 4 more doing the same. Same for tiles, woodwork, etc.

Siy, who gave us all hugs when he dropped us off at the bus, had arranged for an old high school friend of his to pick us up in Siem Reap. He even texted our names ahead so that we would know which tuktuk guy was ours. Sure enough when we pulled into the dusty, dimly lit compound after dark, we quickly spotted the sign "Julie Andrews McBannister III Winnipeg" being held up to the window. We were glad we had the ride waiting since it felt pretty sketchy there.
Bondal was an amicable young fellow with a big smile and obviously very appreciative of our business.  We polished off the case of beer on the tuktuk ride in to town and noted the stark contrast between the area where the bus stop was and the bright, glitzy tourist area. And we hadn't even yet seen Pub Street that reminded us of Chaweng or Patong. As we neared our hotel, both Blaine and i were taken by surprise at the largesse of it, glowing across the river. It once again firmly placed us in the flash-packer demographic.  I hope Agoda.com got us a good price at the Angkor Riviera.

Sigh, there's Siy again

Phnom Penh is chaotic compared to Hong Kong, but relative to Vietnam we think it's not quite as busy. For example, when crossing the street here you can wait for a break in traffic and make your move, whereas in Hanoi you'd be standing there all day waiting for a break,
We started our day by meeting a fellow named Siy. He'd a tuk tuk driver and he seemed to have claimed the spot outside our hotel. He's definitely a friendly dude but we passed him off in order to make our way to the Grand Palace since it was only a block away.
The Golden Palace of PP [ http://www.canbypublications.com/phnompenh/pproyalpalace.htm ] is very ornate by any standard and has lovely grounds filled with flowers and shrubs. But it'll cost you $6.50 and a $3 T-shirt if you're not appropriately covered up. Plus, the place shuts down at 11 (not 10am like Mr. Siy said as we walked past him) so we had to be quick. Fortunately none of us do a lot of research and the significance of most places are lost on us so we could easily breeze through the complex of temples in just over an hour before being asked to leave.  The main building, the Throne Hall, is an impressive structure but the good stuff is off limits and not really visible at all. Probably because the King still uses this as a residence.  One passes through a doorway in the surrounding wall to get to the Silver Pagoda that is nestled in another garden filled with bird baths of lilies, 2 large stupas and a statue of King Norodom on a horse. Strangely there is a large replica of Angkor Wat on the grounds as well - no need for that bus trip tomorrow!
Upon exiting the palace grounds we were immediately spotted by Siy. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the comment made by Blaine & Leah's taxi driver when they were dropped off at the hotel: "wow this place expensive, like 40 or 50 dollars a night". So obviously we're now targetted as the rich tourists. After some debate we decided to let Siy drive us around for the day for $25. First stop was lunch at a Khmer restaurant by the river. We were all taken by surprise how big and wide the Mekong river was here and it's hard to fathom the fact that during rainy season the river fills up and forces the Tonle Sap river backwards. Consider the Red River pushing the Assiniboine river backwards at the Forks in Winipeg.
Allow me to introduce you to my new friend Amok - he's a wonderfully tasty Khmer dish of curried fish smothered in thick coconut milk served in a banana leaf bowl. Variations abound but the one we had at this restaurant was the best we had. Too bad I can't recall the name of the place.

After lunch we took a siesta by the hotel pool to prepare ourselves for the brutality we would learn about at the "killing fields" of Choeung Ek. It was a heckuva tuktuk ride out there (40min?) but it did provide a glimpse of Camobian life - incredibly poor, corrugated metal shacks on stilts beside a garbage-filled ditch interspersed with new multi-story apartments covered in blue-tinted glass. Also the massages get cheaper the further out of town you go, $3 in PP dropping to 9000 Riel ($2.25).

I'm not going to say much about the Killing Fields. It's a tad sickening although I haven't been to Auschwitz and Rwanda might be worse. Just Google it yourself: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0110_030110_tvcambodia.html  But I will mention the jaw bones sticking up out of the ground and the tree where they smashed little ones' heads against to save bullets. Strangely enough I'm not thrown by the commander who said to do that, but wonder about the man whose job it was to do it and how his sleep was tortured by nightmares. We might try to buy the movie at the market once we return to PP.

The ride home was made much more pleasant by grabbing a case of Angkor beer ($11.50 for 24) and using it to wash the road dust out of our mouths.

02-JAN-2012

PP

Phnom Penh, not Koh Pi Pi. The airport is like Brandon compared to the massive structure of BKK. Our e-visas were supposed to breeze us through security but the stewardess on the plane skipped us when handing out the landing forms. So we had a bit of reversing in the customs queue and were the last ones out. And then a security dude at the exit asked for another form that we didn't have. But our blank looks caused him to wave us through of exasperation.
Toyota has what appears to be 90% market share here, judging by the number of Camrys swarming the roads. Many have extra chrome trim around the taillights, or blinking lights on the hood or mirrors or stainless steel gas cap doors. Also can't ignore the plethora of Lexus RX300 SUVs, many of which have "Lexus" plastered across the side just in case you missed the fact that the owner is richer than you.
The King Grande Boutique Hotel greeted us enthusiastically and informed us that our friends were up by the rooftop pool. We quickly dropped off our luggage in our lovely, well-appointed room and navigated the overly complex security system in the elevator.
"Cambodia. Wow." Said Leah.
It was exciting to meet with friends and stories from the past few days were fervently exchanged. Alighting Thai balloons were contrasted with HK fireworks, then compared to the parties that the hotel staff here told of NYE. (For the record, it sounded pretty good.)
The view up here was great. A water and light show was going on the park on one side. A carnival with a large ferris wheel was on the other. Street noise echoed up from in between. Fantastic!