Year: 2003

i woke up at 4:30 am feeling utterly miserable. how could i be awake at this hour when it’s still pitch black outside? after a *freezing* cold shower, i stumble outside. if you’re on your own, the cheapest and easiest way to see all the temples of angkor is to hire a scooter driver for the day. he picks you up in the morning and drives you to all the temples you want to see. all day long for 6$. we arrive to the main temple at 5:45 when it is just barely starting to get a little bit light out. everyone was milling about anxiously awaiting for the sun to rise from behind the watt. it finally did, and it was quite a sight. angkor watt is a huge stone watt with a collection of towers, tunnels, columns, and staircases. without showing a picture, there’s no way of describing how cool it looks. let’s just say that it isn’t considered one of the wonders of the world for nothing.

other than a few minor areas that have crumbled and are dangerous, people are allowed to walk around anywhere in the watt. it’s so cool to be able to explore all the different long passageways, see all the sculpted stones, and climb all over. the staircases here are insane. each step is about 1.5 to 2 feet high, but only about 6 inches wide! climbing up them is really sketchy, there is no handrail, and i am honestly surprised that people don’t fall to their deaths. oh, did i mention that a lot of the steps are crumbling and unstable? well, they are, so you have some added dangers there. i spent the next several hours exploring. it turns out that angkor watt is just one of the many ancient stone watts in the angkor ruins, so i got to see a ton of temples today.

as you walk into each temple there are usually a bunch of kids hanging around who try to be your guide for $$. the trick is that they just start following you around and telling you interesting facts about the temple. then, *after* they are done, it’s all “oh btw, gimme money!” and no matter how much you offer them, they always say that this is too cheap and that they want more. it’s a tough game to play. on one hand, i was interested in learning the history of the watts, but on the other hand, if i was told to pay a certain amount, i wanted to just pay that amount, and not spend the next 15 minutes haggling w/ the guy, and feeling bad. a lot of the guides are young, and one of mine was actually just a 10 year old kid!

by noon, i was thoroughly exhausted and very very hot. i had to sit down by one of the watts to rest. i noticed this old (and i mean *old*) man selling trinkets by the watt. he was so old that when he walked, he was so hunched over that his hands practically touched the ground. moments later, a ton of tourists show up and all of a sudden… they all go totally nuts! people are whipping out their cameras, shouting excitedly to their friends, pointing at the man, etc etc. huh? it turns out, this old man is on the cover of the lonely planet cambodia guide book. *the* guidebook. pretty much anyone who travels around uses lonely planet and every damn person had probably stared at this old man’s face a million times… and now they finally got to see him. seriously, the sunrise over angkor watt didnt create a stir as big as this.

as i said earlier, i was dead tired. so i probably spent a good 20 minutes sitting there watching. too funny. as each new person would round the corner, their face would light up and inevitably i would hear them turn to their friends “oh my god! look, that’s him!” followed by them whipping out their copy of the book, “oh my god. do you think he *knows* he’s on the cover? we should show him the book! should we? YES! lets show him!!!” so all these people would keep trying to show him the book, and he would look at it, grunt, and nod. i’m sure they all hoped that *they* had been the first to show him, and that he would thank them ecstatically… but alas, that never happened.

it was kinda sad in a way. all these people had no problem taking tons of snapshots of this guy, were soooo excited by him. yet hardly anyone would help him out by spending the *one measly dollar* that he was selling trinkets for!! i had to wonder what this guy got paid for being on the cover of the most popular guidebook for his country. a guidebook that’s sold probably millions of copies. obviously he didnt get too much if he’s still sitting here selling 1$ trinkets. *sigh* i bought a trinket, took a snapshot, and moved on.

later on i watched the sunset over another temple in angkor. AMAZING. when my guide showed up, he offers to take me to the “secret store”. secret store? now, i’ve already been offered hookers, drugs, and illegal gambling… but a secret store? what could that be? so, it turned out to be a lot less exciting than it sounded, he was actually just saying “cigarette store” with a very bad accent. ah.

-a few other thoughts on cambodia-

it’s weird. dollar is king here. all prices are in dollars instead of the riel (cambodian money). the riel is worth jack squat (3865 riel=1$). after being so used to paying in baht etc, it’s so bizarre to all of a sudden see dollars everywhere. to make matters more complicated, they also accept thai baht. so when you buy something, you never know what change you will get: baht, dollars, or riel. pretty soon my pocket was a huge jumble of tons of random bills and trying to figure anything out was quite confusing.

i know i’ve already written quite a bit about crazy driving, but here they take it to the next level. people drive on the right side of the road… except when they dont feel like it. so what you have at any given time is: no lanes, trucks and busses and cars being passed by scooters in either direction while cross traffic is coming at you from both sides. seriously nuts. and i’ve only seen one intersection w/ a traffic light, so most of the time, everyone just goes for it. the intersections end up being a jumbled mess of people going in like 16 different directions. and this is all a mix of bikes, scooters, walking people, and trucks. whoa!

-v

sometimes i wonder if thai-style is very similar to vlad-style. i ended up almost missing my flight and only got to the plane within minutes of take off. sheez, no matter how much time i have, i always cut things close.

i arrive in cambodia and we have to wait in these super long lines to get our visas. what, they dont take baht for the visa fee? only US dollars? damn! luckily i was able to trade some baht for dollars to this random lady in line. phew. i get to the front of the line and once again there are problems. they need a passport sized photo to give me a visa. damn! i tell them i dont have one. then the guy looks at me and says “gimme money!”. eh? i guess you can get around the “rules” if you pay 2$. nice. finally way later i am free from the airport.

i get a room at a random guest house and go to grab some dinner. turns out cambodian food is pretty good. i get this dish that comes in this HUGE coconut that tastes like it’s a curry that’s halfway between indian and thai. also, my meal comes w/ these chips that you dip into this special paste. fucking delicious!!

so my first impression of cambodia is definitely a good one. people here seem super friendly… maybe even friendlier than people in thailand? also everyone drives on the right side of the road which is cool (i hope to rent a scooter here). of course as usual, when walking down the street alone, people drive up to you with all sorts of propositions: “me take you to young lady?”, “you want young lady massage?”, and even “i sell you grass. you want?”. even after you say no, they usually follow you for a bit begging.

i’ve been getting up early quite frequently here, but tomorrow i gotta set a new record. i gotta be up and showered and dressed by 5am! i’m gonna see the sun rise over angkor watt which i here is quite a sight.

as i write this, all of a sudden my pocket is feeling very wet. crap. a bottle of mosquito repelant busted open and now i REALLY SMELL like repellent. this is the second time that i’ve had one of these bottles explode on me. ugh.

-vlad

i bought my first pack of marlbro lights today. sheez. what’s this world coming to?

-v

last night i was wandering thru the streets of kho phi phi when i passed a huge bar called the reggae bar. someone out front was passing out flyers and the flyer said that they had thai kickboxing there for free every night at 10pm. i had read a bit about thai kickboxing in my guidebook so decided that i should check it out (heck, at 0$ the price was right) . around 10pm the bell rings and these 2 boxers get into the match. let me tell ya, thai boxing is some hardcore stuff. they can do pretty much whatever they please: kick to the head, elbow or knee each other in the face, grab each others legs and trip their opponent so he falls to the floor. it’s brutal. so for about 20 minutes, these guys beat the living crap out of each other. they keep doing this till one guy gets knocked to the floor so bad that he can barely get up after a long long time.

i dunno… watching this all was pretty depressing. i just felt so bad for these people. i couldnt believe that they had to make a living this way. so, i’ve never particularly been a fan of boxing in general (people getting beat up is not my thing)… but somehow i see regular boxing as a whole different thing altogether. see, in the US… at least boxing is a sport. the people who do the boxing train all the time of their own free will and box for the competitive aspect of it… hoping for some kind of glory, or a title, or maybe even millions of dollars. like the olympics, boxers want to be the top of their sport. here in thailand though, at the reggae bar… these guys were fighting for no reason other than to be a spectacle gawked at by tourists from around the world. like some kind of freakshow. i bet it’s the same two guys going up there everyday and just getting the crap beat out of them nightly. and why? to promote some more drink orders at the bar. i bet they get paid jack squat as well. i kept wondering (seeing as kho phi phi is a small island) if these 2 guys might be friends, and eat lunch with each other during the day, while hoping not to give the other a concussion at night. ugh.

so today i had to catch a ferry to phuket so i could fly to bangkok and then siem reap cambodia. on the ferry i got hit on by some thai girls. it’s pretty funny to get hit on by someone who speaks hardly any english… “we think you so handsome” heh.. and at some other point, someone called me “lovely”. lovely? not too often you hear of a guy being called lovely. too funny.

had a few hours to kill at the airport today. so i went to the mall. the mall was pretty crazy. it wa so weird to see a place so familiar and so much like home in so many ways… and yet so different. now, i thought it was hard to explain aloe to the thai people before… but try explaining “compact flash memory card”. somehow i managed to buy one though.

oh yeah, one thing i keep forgetting to post about. i got a haircut on kho phi phi. i went to the barber shop. this place was so ghetto: the floor was completely covered w/ hair (they dont bother sweeping) and they had barber chairs that looked like they were from the 1940’s. so i sit down, the girl asks me if i want it short, and when i say “yes”, before i can explain how i want it, she just starts cutting!! what?? are all haircuts here the same? short or long is the only choice? so i try to explain to her what i want, but i really dont think she paid attention. anyways, the cut turned out ok.

ok, that’s it for now..next post will be from cambodia.

-v

today i went diving again. we did 2 dives, the first of which was a wreck dive. one of the ferrys that shuttles people back and forth between phuket and kho phi phi crashed into a rock in 1997 and sank to the bottom. now people are able to scuba dive thru the remains of the ship. wow. this dive was definitely one of the coolest things i’ve ever done. diving and seeing fish and coral is one thing, but swimming thru the wreckage of a ship really takes it to the next level. i’m sure everyone has watched the discovery channel and seen footage of boats decaying on the bottom of the ocean… can you imagine actually being inside there? this was so eerie and surreal. everything down there is sorta dark and murky and there are millions of schools of fish swimming thru the inside of the boat. coral has started growing on all of the boats surfaces and that gives the boat an even more mysterious look. we swam through the ship’s insides and also around the sides and on top of the boat. at one point we swam by where the ships bathroom was and there were sea urchins chillin’ inside the toilets. too funny. there were also tons of lionfish swimming around in there. they are the highly poisonous fish that have all the crazy feather-like quills sticking out: http://www.kidseyeview.com/kidseyeview/fish/lionfish.jpg

for the second dive we went to shark point. it’s a small island surrounded by corral reefs far out in the ocean. this dive was really fun too. we got to see this huge leopard shark that was about as long as i am. we also saw about 5 or 6 eels peeking out from tiny caves in the rocks. diving here is much better than on kho tao i’d say. the fish are more diverse and there is a lot of really crazy looking fluorescent plant life. i’m so glad that i ended up getting my diving license. and to think, i almost didnt bother to get it. that would have been the hugest mistake.

the nice thing about traveling and being on vacation is that you have unlimited freedom to do as you please. when i woke up this morning i randomly decided to throw an extra country into the mix of my itinerary. so i bought a plane ticket to cambodia and i’m flying there tomorrow. i’ll get to explore the ruins of angkor watt and see a whole new culture…

-v

today i woke up and despite the horrible pain of my sunburn, i caught the ferry to kho phi phi. upon arrival, i was bombarded by people trying to sell me a room for 1000B. what??!! 1000 baht for a room? unfortunately, after searching around i found out that all rooms on this island are ridiculously expensive. after searching long and hard, i was able to find a room for 400B (10$) which is more than i’ve paid for other rooms i’ve had… and this room doesn’t even have it’s own toilet/shower! you have to use a communal one down the hall!

after securing the room, i explored the island. honestly, i’m not too psyched on it. out of all the places i’ve been in thailand so far, this one is by far the most touristy. the beach is completely lined w/ shops trying to sell cd’s, plane tickets, or internet time. also, the people staying here seem more like either the “i’m here w/ my family to stay at a fancy resort” or the “i’m hot and am here to work on my tan” type. luckily though, this island has great scuba diving so i signed up to do some dives. tomorrow i get to dive though a wrecked ship on the ocean floor. that sounds like it’ll be really trippy.

i spent most of the day chilling on the beach hanging out, and when it came time for dinner, it was a tough call as to what to get. one one hand i feel like i’ve spent too much $$ today and should just get a super cheap meal, but on the other hand, seafood is really really popular here, restaurants all have huge fish and lobster displays out front, and having a seafood dinner just sounded really good. so i caved in and got grilled shark. it sucked!! it ended up being super bland and was not good at all. what a disappointment!

-v

today i decided to go to kho phiphi, a small island off the coast of phuket. according to my guidebook i needed to go to the pier in krabi to take the ferry there. so i catch the first taxi i see and ask them to take me to the boat to kho phi phi. there’s like 4 people driving the taxi, and only one of them barely speaks english. there seems to be some serious confusion when i tell them where i want to go, but finally we’re off. we end up in some totally random place where some other people tell us we can not rent a boat there. then the taxi driver tells me they can take me to krabi… but only for 1000B (25$) huh?

finally i figure out what the deal is. krabi is not the region that i’m in as i thought… it’s actually a completely different city about 75 miles away from phang-nga. now i’m at a loss as to what to do and have no idea how much it would cost to go there other than this taxi. so i ask them to take me for 800B and they agree. now, 20$ may not seem like a lot of money for a 75 mile cab ride, but here that is an insane amount of money. so as we’re driving i look in my guidebook… and realize that there are buses that go from phang-nga to krabi for only 36B (95 cents).CRAP. so i try to explain to the taxi person that now i dont want to go to krabi, and that i want them to take me back to town. of course, due to the english barrier, my message does not get across.

so now we’re off to krabi. this whole family is in the cab (the driver is the dad, and there’s 3 other kids), and then we stop to go pick up the mom from an illegal gambling casino. so, i definitely felt like i had wasted a lot of money, but the cab ride was kind of fun, with the one english speaking girl trying to show me the sights along the way. she even gave me a good luck charm and we toured the tiger temple on the way.

now i’m in krabi. i went to a night market here and decided i’d buy some lychee fruit. i didn’t really know how much half a kilo of fruit would be, so now i have TONS of fruit. what am i gonna do w/ it all?

so basically, my day has been filled w/ mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps. yet, it’s definitely all been an adventure. luckily, thailand is so cheap that even though i wasted money on the taxi ride, and on the fruit, really i only lost $20.25 altogether.

oh yeah. did i mention that thailand bootlegs tons of movies illegally? right now i’m watching “two towers” in the internet cafe as i type this.

-v

today we took a day trip to the similan islands. unfortunately to do this we had to wake up at 5:30 am. ouch! i’m not a big morning person so waking that early was horrible. we took a taxi to the pier and from there it was a 2.5 hour boat ride to the similan islands. the similan islands are famous for having some of the best snorkeling/scuba diving ever. super clear waters, great visibility and tons of marine life. the boat took us to 2 different dive spots and we got to snorkel for an hour in one spot and 2 hours in the other.

i wouldn’t really say that the diving and snorkeling there are the best. i think that it was better in kho tao, and way better in hawaii. it’s weird, although thailand is very famous for it’s marine life, i’d say that hawaii has way more colorful fish. nevertheless, it was still really cool. other than all of the fish, i spotted a water snake at one point swimming along the bottom. it was silver-blue with black stripes and did not look like an eel really. then, just a few minutes before we left, someone pointed out 2 sharks in the water! these were the small kind of sharks (only like 2-2.5 feet long), but it was still so exciting to see them! i swam around for a while following the sharks, until at one point they both turned around and started swimming right at me. all of a sudden i wondered how prudent it was to swim right by the sharks and i swam away pretty quickly.

on the boat ride home, all of us were pretty tired from being up in the sun all day and from lack of sleep. then a bunch of us noticed that we were really sunburned. doh! i got burned really bad all over my back, my arms, and my legs. crap. how am i gonna carry my heavy backpack on my back now? we went to the mimimart by our hotel to try to get aloe… but trying to describe aloe to the thai was pretty hopeless.

speaking of which, let me tell a little about the town we are staying in. it’s called pa-nga and it’s a small town on the southwest coast of thailand (krabi region). although there are several national parks near here, the town itself has no tourist attractions so everything here is very thai. other than 3 germans, we have not seen any other white people here except for us. it’s really neat to be in a town that is not really geared toward tourism. everything just seems so much more authentic. it’s funny, we stick out so much here, and it looks like everyone is excited/surprised to see us: people wave to us from scooters, others gather around to gawk at us, and shop owners get excited to try to speak w/ us. being here has definitely been an adventure. of course, people here dont speak english as much as other places, so it’s often really hard to get your point across to them, or to ask them something. try explaining a sunburn or aloe without using words. also, this place doesn’t have much in the way of internet cafes, which is why i’ve only posted once in the last 4 days. but… somethings never change, and the local youth here gather in the net cafes and play quake-style computer games against each other. i guess that addiction is universal.

our hotel itself is across the alley from a small thai karaoke bar. and has a little tv outside that we often hang out and watch tennis with the locals on. it’s very chill and relaxing. several nights in a row now, we haag out on the benches, drinking our 22 ounce singha beers by pouring them into glasses and adding ice. back home, i would never dream of adding ice to my beer, but here it’s so hot that unless you add ice, the beer gets all warm before you even get thru half of it. last night we actually ventured into the karaoke bar. everyone from the place totally was staring at us. and when tom started singing along (just at our table, not into the microphone) the people near us were amused.

yesterday was my last day w/ our little group. it’s so sad! although i do want to try the whole traveling alone thing, it’s been so much fun hanging out w/ everyone. it’s awesome traveling and exploring new places w/ jamie and tom. it’s always fun to see people when they are extracted from their natural environment. also, it’s been really fun getting to know the other people in the group. so last night we had our last drink together on the benches.. and this morning they were gone… :(.

so now i’m on my own again. i’m not even exactly sure where i want to explore next! or how to get out of this little town? wow, i’ve spent a whole 12 days here now. most vacation, would be winding down around now and i’d be preparing to leave, but i’ve got a whole 25 days more to go! i’ve only used 1/3 of my vacation so far! i still got so much time to see stuff! so i’m, off!

oh wait, the most random thing just happened. i didn’t mention this earlier, but the farther south you go in thailand, the dominant religion shifts from buddhism to islam. i didn’t notice, but the internet cafe i’m in is right across the way from a mosque. just as i was wrapping up this post… all of a sudden i hear this singing coming from across the street. i guess it must be time for one of the daily prayers. wow. so eerie and beautiful sounding. sitting here and hearing the prayers echoing thru the streets is quite something.

-vlad

today we explored to krabi area. krabi is famous for having huge limestone cliffs and beautiful scenic views. we tried to rent scooters this morning, but unfortunately we were only able to get 2, instead of the 3 that we would need for the 7 of us. now that we are getting more and more adventurous on the scooters, we started riding them w/ 3 people on a scooter. totally crazy! but we’ve seen the thai people fit like 4 or 5 people on one, so we figure we should be ok. heh.

we went to 2 national parks today. both were pretty cool. the first one had several caves to explore. the caves were pretty cool, and it was dope cause there were hella monkeys running around everywhere. the monkeys were so funny! they would play w/ each other, hop around, and try to steal food from people.

there were a lot of thai people selling food in the park, so we had a little picnic in the park by one of the caves. the food was good, although we found a bunch of chicken claws in our fried chicken. i guess the people here dont discriminate on what parts of the chicken they eat. at one point, one of the more daring monkeys started approaching us to get some food. we tried to shoo it away by stomping our feet and yelling, but it would just bare it’s fangs at us. i’ve never seen a monkey be this ferocious! then the monkey makes a run for our little area… we all jump up, the girls in our group start screaming and the monkey, with a truly evil look on it’s face, jumps on our food and starts grabbing stuff. at this point one of the food vendors runs up w/ a slingshot and starts shooting at the monkey! the monkey runs off and then the vendor gave the slingshot to us. from then on, whenever we even pointed the slingshot at the monkeys, they would scurry off. i guess they have learned to be afraid of them. heh.

the second national park was cool too. we took a boat thru these mangroves of banyan trees. it was a nice mellow boat ride and we got to see a lot of cool cliffs and finally, the boat swam under this awesome cave/cliff archway. lots of great scenery.

later that night, after hanging out at the hotel and discussing the merits of the welfare system (go figure), we went out to eat and had one of the better meals we’ve had in a bit…

-v

today we spent pretty much the whole day traveling. in the morning we took this really long boat ride back to the mainland. it was about 3.5 hours and after that we had a 2 or 3 hour long bus ride that took us to the town of sarathani. we arrived tired and exhausted and knew that we still had several hours to go to get to krabi where we wanted to be by night time. we soon found a place to eat, and the food that we got was not very good. actually this whole restaurant was pretty gritty and i wasnt even sure what some weird little seed type things were in my food. we then hired a minivan to drive us the rest of the way to krabi. the drive was fairly long and most of us wavered between sleeping and listening to walkmen on the way. the minivan driver was a maniac like all the other drivers around here and we definitely feared for our life several times thru the trip. one time, when we were going about 60 miles an hour, another van, that was trying to pass us on the wrong side of the road, got within several feet of crashing into us cause it had to swerve away from another truck barreling toward it. yikes!

finally, by night, we arrived in the town that we were going to. it was a long day, and we really didnt get to do hardly anything… but yet is was still kind of cool. it’s weird how i really end up having a great time here no matter what i do. even down time… i just look at it as time spent relaxing in thailand and hanging out w/ friends. i’m becoming so relaxed on this trip that i’m really starting to not care about much. anything that happens is cool, an i just sit back and enjoy it all. it’s all just an adventure right? any adversity just adds to the quirkiness of the trip.

the hotel that we checked into was on the expensive side (at least for here it was expensive 450B, 11$) but the rooms were nice (i.e. hot water, air conditioning etc). after living in little shacks for a few days, it was good to be treated to some of the luxuries of back home. heh.

-v