Another boat ride

Another Travel Rule that I have written about here before is always take the boat trip. Well, I have to say that our recent boat ride really made us both reconsider this rule. Or maybe we've just done these things enough times. 

We thought it would be a nice respite from hot touring of temples to take a boat trip along a river that feeds into TonleSap lake near Siem Riep. Our hotel clerk recommended the trip which was to include a tour of a village showing how they process fish, and a little cruise on the lake. Nice, right? 

I suppose if someone had described it this way, we might not have been inclined to go:

"You will drive for 20 minutes in a small minivan that won't leave until all seats are filled, then you will drive for another20 minutes on a dusty, rutted ,red dirt road where the vegetation will be coated in red dust.  Then you will walk along that road to reach your rustic boat which will travel up a shallow muddy river."

But no one could have predicted that we would come upon a wedding party right in the middle of a rice paddy.

So, to the boats...

The shallow river water was the color of coffee with a lot of cream. The villagers that we would soon see do everything in this river, and I mean everything! Fish, bathe,drink, etc.

Our young captain piloted our boat through the maze of traffic quite skillfully. 

The kids were just going back in to school after recess.

During the rainy season, the river swells and the water rises to the height of these balconies, hence the stilts. This is the "fish processing": mats covered with drying miniature shrimp. Or the fish are pounded into a paste. Can you imagine the pungent smell? Pretty overpowering.

Then we came upon the wedding tent! 

The official portrait. And this little guy was happy to pose for us.

The women of the village were no doubt preparing the wedding feast. 

Then it was off to the floating restaurant for a snack before heading back. 

Our van was supposed to be waiting for us at the village, but he didn't get the memo, so we motored back the way we came, with a couple of mechanical problems and running aground as part of the adventure. 

After it was over, we thought " ordeal" and one of our travel mates said " it was short, but very worthwhile! " Each to their own...

Cambodia

For

I think after my depressing bus ride story, it's time to show a bit of Angkor Wat, which is the whole reason we came here. True, we felt much better after arriving in Siem Riep and getting our free tuk tuk ride to our pleasant hotel,

Where they provided us with a welcome drink, and settled us in. They also do amazing things with lotus blossoms.

So when our driver dropped us off he also made sure he got our business for the next morning, like any good driver will try to do! At 8:30 am we were on our way to Angkor Wat. Then we lined up with the rest of the tourists to buy our 3 day tickets.

This brings me to another of my Travel Rules: most of those ethnic fashions will not translate well back home. Leave the pointy hats in Cambodia! I have seen an awful lot of travelers bringing these hats on the plane, though. Here's another SE Asia style that every third woman is wearing:

We laughed about them in Laos, but I have to confess that by the third day in Cambodia I caved and bought a pair because they looked so, well, comfortable! And they are. Jim paid me a compliment saying that I wear my elephant pants well. You will never see a photo of me in them, though. And I already know how goofy they would look in Portland!

But enough about fashion...

Jim does have more than one t shirt, but he likes to promote his band, Los Dos whenever we go to tour some famous relic. Oh that was an unintentional joke. This is us outside of Angkor Wat. Check this off the life list! 

Several of these temples had a combination of Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, as both religions were represented. The carving was amazingly intricate.

It's really fortunate that so many of these friezes remain in good condition. 

And some didn't. This was in a "reunification temple" to unify the two religions, but at some period, all of the Buddha images were chiseled off. 

I got it in my head that I wanted a photo of Jim with a monk, and low and behold this fellow came along with a group. I think eventually he was on to me! 

And he finally played along...

For one dalar anyone can get a quick snap with these guys. They pulled me in, posed my hands( rather roughly if I do say so) and that was that. Jim missed this fun because he finally got tired of me and the monk show. 

Ancient body, new head. Many figures in the long row across the river were grimacing, but I liked this guy's smile. 

On the way to the next temple we saw these guys next to the road.

I have seen a lot of monkeys ( these are actually gibbons) but I have never seen one drinking from a bottle! 

Hmm, rereading this post made me think that maybe I was more interested in things besides the ruins...

Not true, but by this point in the day I was on the verge of heat exhaustion...maybe it was all those elephants that convinced me to buy the puffy pants...

One more temple to go before we could head home, to see these trees that looked like they are about to melt into the ruins. Our son was here 15 years ago, and I was determined to see this iconic view, since he had taken an amazing photo ( with a monk) here or somewhere like it.

Was it worth the bus ride? Probably not. Am I glad we came? Without a doubt! And this brings me to an important point about travel, especially the kind we have done that is occasionally a bit off the beaten track. If you want to go, DO IT NOW! Every time I climb some temple steps, or hop on a boat, I feel extremely grateful that I can still do this, but I know there will be a time in the not too distant future when I won't be able to. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of these young backpackers wonder what we're doing on the bus. So , don't wait until you can afford it( that's never stopped us!) or until the stars align. Make that plan. 

Going deeper into the heart of darkness

I saw this image on my new favorite blog, The Improvised Life and it was my mantra for another strenuous travel day, and for the trip in general. 

And it is even more powerful when accompanied by these words from Rumi:

"Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.

Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings.

Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move."

Sometimes it is easy to fear the unknowns that lie ahead, with travel and with life, and this is a good reminder to not look too far ahead.

There are no pretty pictures to accompany this post, unless you count this one of me holding my orchids, which I was determined to bring with us on the bus. 

That's me, with my new short Bangkok haircut, and it was the happiest I was all day. Things just went downhill from here, beginning with the fact that my travel partner ( not mentioning any names) suddenly got too timid to have our taxi driver stop on the way to the bus station so we could pick up some delicious breakfast pastries that we discovered the day before. I thought we might have a lemon curd muffin( yummy) , instead we had dunkin doughnuts from the bus station( believe me, one of the few choices) and yogurt. Ah well...

Then we lined up for our bus to Siem Reap, with all the other 20& 30 something European backpackers. We could have flown, but I think this might have been my idea to take another bus trip. I guess I was remembering the bus trips we had taken in Malaysia, that were actually a relaxing way to travel. This was not relaxing, and we were packed in like sardines with less space than tight airline seats.

I forgot to take a photo of breakfast, but it was handed to us in paper bags, and contained a hard peanutbutter cookie, a tasteless puff pastry pretzel and orange drink. I passed on that.

At noon there was a lunch stop in the middle of nowhere, with few food options, other than what we could find at the quick mart. 

It was this, and a small bag of potato chips , plus a bag of cut up watermelon. Onward! 

Then before we crossed the border into Cambodia we were given this lunch. Yum? 

We then filled out forms for a Cambodian visa and provided 40$ each and they whisked our passports away. We drove to the border, and most of us got our visas. Then we were told to get off the bus and walk across the border. This was the most unfortunate border town I have ever seen , and we crossed over a bridge that looked like it might be a garbage dump. More walking in the heat of the day, really unsure of where we were going. Finally we crossed from Thailand into Cambodia, more confused than ever about our next step. Eventually we realized that we were supposed to line up and proceed through customs, with the hundreds of other travelers. This whole process took nearly three hours before we were able to return to our bus. Very bad experience. Maybe if I was 40 years younger I could  roll with it, but I'm too old for this! 

Our bus was parked in front of a casino, in fact the whole town was filled with casinos! So I decided to use the loo, and it was tempting to try these slot machines. So colorful! Doesn't this look fun? 

Finally, we gathered all of our passengers and headed off. 

The trip was supposed to take 9 hours, but 9 hours stretched into 11, as we rode through the deepening darkness, hoping to see some glimmer of lights that would lead us to imagine that we were getting close to Siem Reap. There was nothing but a few roadside stands, and the occasional field burning in the darkness. 

Then all of a sudden, bam! We saw huge, fancy hotels and restaurants teeming with life, as was the busy main street of Siem Reap. It felt kind of like an oasis, and we weary travelers were all relieved to have finally arrived at our destination. 

Public transportation

ITI have actually drawn up a list of Cynthia's Travel Rules, complied last spring, but over the course of 40 years of travel. I think they're pretty good, too.And one of them is : take public transportation.

And by thus I don't mean go by metro, or by bus , but more than that, to take public transportation as a form of cheap entertainment. We have ridden many a city bus as a way to get off of our tired feet and to see something off of the tourist trail. Bus 69 in Paris is one if those fantastic rides, especially at night, when monuments are lit up!

When I was looking at the map of Bangkok the other day, I noticed a canal with little pictures of boats on it...aha, another potential boat ride! I asked at our hotel and they told me where the closest pier was. So, for the cost of a triple inflated taxi ride( hey, he needed the money- he just became a first time dad at 5 am!) we got to a small pier on the klong. Our driver thought it was hilarious that we didn't know, or particularly care ,where we were headed! And we didn't. When a boat came roaring up to the pier, we just jumped on- no time for photos! I was just glad I could be agile enough to hop on and off, and not trip on the blue plastic as one girl did. We all watched in horror as she was in a sort of suspended animation cartwheel onto the wooden bench.

Within seconds we roared off again, and the ticket taker clinging to the rails outside sold us a ticket for a few cents. We sped along the klongs, or narrow canals that had homes and businesses lining them all the way, with the occasional temple. When the waves got high and water threatened to splash in, a pulley system could be employed to raise the plastic " wall/ window". Very ingenious! We rode for about 20 minutes and decided that we would disembark and ride a boat in the opposite direction. As it turned out, everyone else got off the boat at that stop, too! So we just followed the crowds into a huge shopping mall. We had a good lunch at the food court, and jim got new lenses in his favorite reading glasses, in less than an hour. Cheap entertainment! 

It was an efficient food court system where you bought a card with any amt of money, then presented it to each individual food vendor. When you were done, you could bring the card back and the balance was refunded. This would be a great system for our Portland food carts! 

I had wanted to try the classic dessert of mango with sweet sticky rice, and it was delicious.

We discovered several malls close to our hotel, eventually. They are huge structures, often with 5 floors and two or three sub floors. One has a theme of around the world, so we toured the world from The Caribbean ( basement) through Rome, Istanbul ( accessories)&Paris , ending up eating in SanFrancisco, with movies on the top floor, which of course was Hollywood! 

As dopey as it may sound, food courts are a great place to eat, as the variety seemed endless and the food was fresh, often cooked to order.  It was tremendously crowed, too, so the locals know a good  thing. It had nothing of the dull sameness of our US food courts, more like a cleaned up version of street food. 

This is dessert. All kinds of toppings for shave ice , which we have seen all over Asia in various forms.

Also on the dessert aisle. Corn is very popular - on ice cream, too. Yum? 

I also visited a very upscale shopping center( these are all vertical, in high rises ) when I went in search of a new calendar for Jim, after he apparently lost his other one. Sad. 

The decor was beautiful.

But the music on that stage down there was anything but soothing...

I decided to treat myself to a lovely (and very expensive) tea and scones. The scones looked better than they tasted...but the atmosphere was a respite from bustling Bangkok. 

Finally I went back to the hotel to my " happy place".

I will leave you with one last photo of my favorite family in a Bangkok, where little sister joined her brothers.

Always take the boat ride

As I probably mentioned, we were in Bangkok over 18 years ago, and many things have changed during those years. For one thing, there is actually less pollution! When we rode in tuk tuks back then, you really felt, even more than now, that you were endangering your life just breathing in all that exhaust with every ride. 

One thing that endures is the river, the Chao Phraya. I remember how thrilling it was to look out our window( for one night ) at the beautiful Oriental Hotel and watch the busy river traffic from above. It seemed to be a real working river then, which it still is, but the cargo seems to be much more of the human type- tourists.

A great way to enjoy the river is to ride on one of the many forms of river craft, from water taxis to long tail boats. We decided to spend the morning on the river, so we rode the skytrain to the pier, where we were quickly herded onto a " tourist taxi" which I don't even think existed when we were here before.

Some of the more exclusive hotels have their own quaint water taxis which you can take up and down the river.Years ago, only guests were allowed to disembark at the hotel, and somehow they memorized the guests! 

These long tail taxis used to transport locals up the klongs, or small canals to and from school and work. Do they still? All I saw in them were groups of two tourists.

The temple in the background is the Temple of Dawn, and features heavily in our family mythology. Last time we were here, I decided that I really wanted to see it at dawn, on the morning that we were to fly home from Bangkok. As I prepared to leave early in the morning, on my own, Jim stirred and I told him my plan, saying that I was going, but he did not have to come with me, in spite of the fact that he had been here as a very young boy. He came, and really enjoyed it. That was a turning point, where he realized that if he goes along with me, he might see something cool, in spite of his initial resistance. 

Since we had good seats on our boat, we decided to ride upriver as far as the boat went. It is a good way to get to the main tourist sights, and the bait emptied out at the temple pier. 

We disembarked at the flower market, which I thought we had seen before, but I was wrong. 

For a flower lover like me, this place was incredible! Heaps of orchids, marigolds, every flower used in temple offerings. I couldn't resist buying a bouquet of these orchids, probably 15+ stems for about $1.50

These look like popcorn, but I know them as crown flowers from Hawaiian leis. They go from this, to these:

So incredible, especially considering that they are so temporal, lasting only a short time.

This was a delivery, just about to be wraped up.

Lotus flowers.

The same blossoms, transformed by having their petals carefully folded back.

Different orchid varieties.

And roses- 2 dozen for $5. It was really hard not to buy a little of everything...