In the early 12th century King Suryavarman II ruled the Khmer Empire, a very rich reign of a kingdom which took in a large amount of South East Asia, but not a peaceful one as there was always threat from the neighbours, particularly Vietnam and Siam (now Thailand). The Kingdom was ruled from the area of Kambuja called Angkor, and being a proud ruler the King built a magnificent capital city, with a huge temple dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, this temple was called Angkor Wat. Some fighting ensued and Kings came and went, eventually moving the capital to nearby Angkor Thom. The King Jayavarman VII converted the Angkor Wat and several other temples from Hindu to the more in vogue Buddhism. All this time building work on magnificent temples and shrines had been continuing like crazy, and continued to do so until suddenly, possibly because of a Thai invasion, they were all abandoned and the capital moved south to Phnom Penh.

For hundreds of years the temples were left to be engulfed by forest.

During this time the French had turned up in Camboge to bring culture to the heathens. It was not a comfortable rule, with them being kicked out a couple of times, but in the late 1800’s they did rediscover the forgotten Angkor area and attempt to excavate it, bringing life back to the area and the rapid expansion of a small village called Siem Reap. They brought tourism to the area, hotels and restaurants, in a Colonial French style for the visitors flocking to see this forgotten wonder.

We arrived in Siem Reap only to discover that a motorcycle had been sent to collect us and our 40kg of luggage. No problem though as the trailer that the bike was towing could easily propel us and our luggage down the road at a jaunty 5 miles an hour. Eventually we arrived at our hotel, the Golden Banana, it was a real surprise. We had been thinking the worst for Cambodia, it has had a turbulent time and is definitely in a state of development which makes India shine, but our hotel was a real gem. In fact the whole town is a bit of a gem, just as the French had intended it caters for millions of tourists a year (though it appears to be millions a day), and with most businesses being foreign owned they tend to hit the right notes. This is still a country where a family home can be built for $900, and car batteries are the most common source of home power.

We explored the town which really does have some nice places to eat, drink and make merry all for a ridiculously low price (our average meal cost has been about $12 for the both of us – pizza, pasta, mexican, khmer, you name it). The market did leave us gasping for air, definitely not the freshest food – people would pick up an uncovered lump of meat to look at before deciding on it – not to mention the flies on the pigs heads (and thats not mentioning the mere presence of pigs heads).

The currency here, for the purpose of tourism, is the unsullied US dollar (a torn or crumpled one is worthless). This makes it easy to rationalize the cost of things, and because of the general low prices I have found myself scandalized at the prospect of parting with more than $5 – should be fun when I get back to Horseheads.

We have probably had our most packed time to date, here is a brief summary of what we got up to on the following days

Day 2: Up at 4am to go see the sun rise at the most famous temple, Angkor Wat. We hired a driver and a guide to take us around, so we packed in another four main temples including Ta Prohm, which was made famous by the Tomb Raider movie. The biggest problem was we were constantly surrounded by THOUSANDS of Asian tour groups, although I manages to get a load of pictures which make it look atmospheric and tranquil, the truth is far from it. It is especially popular with Koreans – North Korea note, you should invade the south tonight, the country is empty!!! It was a sunday so that night we went for a traditional roast dinner at the Funky Munky British pub – it was fantastic!

Day 3: We hired the same driver, and headed well out of town (about 2 hours) first to Banteay Srei which is a temple famous for its carving. Being so far out it is not quite so busy, but it is small so it appears that way. Which brings me to something Sarah and I have spent a fair amount of time discussing – the temples are ruins, which were taken over by forest. Why do so many really old people think it’s a good idea to come here? It’s not an ageist thing, but you really need to be quite sure footed! Even more unfortunately, to cater for this demand, the private company which profits from conserves the temples, is boarding over everything to make it easier to get around. Is this really necessary???

On the way to the temple I had seen a de-mining crew clearing a field close by. The driver took us for a closer look, it is really quite tragic to see something so devastating play a part of everyday village life. Every mine cost about a dollar to buy and lay, and about $1000 to find and deactivate (unless you are a child or an unfortunate farmer), and there are an unknown number, in the many thousands, strewn over the country. Later in the day we visited the Cambodia Landmine Museum, an organization started by an ex-soldier responsible for laying mines, who now spends his time educating people on the dangers, taking care of children injured by mines and unofficially de-mines (he was frustrated by the official de-mining charities longwinded administration and approach, so he walks up, plucks them from the ground and removes the detonator under the cover of darkness).

We also went on a trek to the top of a hill to see some carvings in a river bed. It was quite the serious hike, but the path was clear. Of course it started to rain HARD and our clear path returned to its other purpose of being a river bed. It was hard work, but well worth the effort, especially as it is very lightly visited, we were almost alone.

Day 4: A visit to a really far out temple, Beng Mealea. This is like Ta Prohm but hardly visited, and hardly touched since the day the forest was peeled back to reveal it. It is still over grown and unrestored, and with the help of a villager it is great fun to clamber over and under the now fallen structure – this is as close to the real Tomb Raider as you can hope to get, and this is not visited by the geriatric buses.

We then headed out to a couple of boat trips, one to the flooded forest and the other to a floating village.

They are pretty much what they sound like. In each case we took a little floating thing with an engine out into the lake. The flooded forest is a haunting place which spends half the year submerged to varying degrees, and you can float through the trees without a care in the world. The floating village is not so haunting, an entire community mainly of Vietnamese immigrants, consisting of schools (courtesy of Japan, every child can go to school for at least a few years), hospital, catholic church etc. Depending on the season the whole town moves to where the fishing is!

We returned to find Jack Johnson’s Upside Down playing merrily, but repeatedly in the hotel bar – we were too exhausted to care, we supped our local beer and considered the gecko. We did manage to make it out later to a bar which had a show of traditional Khmer dance (and a juicy burger)!

Today was relaxing. We wandered around town, visited the brand new (few days old) National Museum of Angkor, and undertook the never ending task of packing our bags. We leave Siem Reap in the morning in search of turkey in Phnom Penh (which we have now learned to pronounce), and I for one will be sad to leave. Touristy though it is, the people, despite the obvious hardships and corruption they face, are truly wonderful, and make this a very enjoyable place to be.

Coming in the “A Short History of Cambodia: part 2”, Phnom Penh and how to reset your country to year 0 without wasting a single bullet! And if he can slip away from Sarah long enough, Andy hopes to review an AK-47.

Happy Thanksgiving!

… or a couple! Andy and I both really enjoyed Bangkok. This could be partially due to the fact that we stayed at one of the nicest hotels in the world (according to Conde Nast), the Oriental. The Oriental has a long and illustrious history from the time it opened as a boarding house for sailors in the mid 1800’s until now. It has been the refuge of many literary types, including Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad and James Michner. After they had all of the jungle they could handle they came to Bangkok and they came to the Oriental. The author’s suites are in the oldest part of the hotel. We had a room in the small tower built in the 1950’s (There is also a newer tower built in the 70’s). Although our rooms had no historical significance they did have awesome views of the river and use of the floor butler! As soon as we had checked into the hotel we went to Siam Square. This is an area full of shopping malls. There are four malls, one right next to the other. Each one has between four and six floors of shops. Would you like a fake Tiffany necklace? How about a real Tiffany necklace? A Thai silk blouse? A diamond tiara? Botox? Collagen treatment? Scottish shortbread? Dried squid? Teenage girl? You can get it all in Bangkok. On Khao San Rd, the famous backpacker haunt, we even saw press passes, driving licenses and college ID’s for sale! We finished our day at the Hard Rock Cafe. After three days of Thai cooking school we really ready for some familiar food. Our second day in Bangkok was devoted to more cultural pursuits. We went to the Grand Palace complex and saw many historical buildings, as well as, the famous emerald Buddha. I even got to walk down the same steps as Anna Leonowens after she left the presence of the King of Siam. We then went to a former house of the king at the turn of the century. It is made entirely of beautiful teak wood (no photos allowed). We finished our day with a walk through Pat-pong, Bangkok’s famous red light district. I didn’t feel inspired to go into any of the go-go bars so we went to a bar called Vertigo instead. This bar is on the 61st floor of the Banyon Tree hotel. It is literally on the roof. There is no cover of any kind, just a waist high glass wall and very tall lightning rods! The view was amazing in all directions, however, I was only able to stay for one drink before my panic attack started to set in. Our last day in Bangkok we availed ourselves of all that the hotel had to offer. I went for a traditional Thai Massage. In many ways it was very enjoyable. In other ways it was downright painful. Thai massage is more like forced yoga than traditional massage. I was stretched and pulled in ways that I would have said my body couldn’t move. It was a good experience but next time I think I will go for something less intense! The spa and the traditional Thai restaurant were across the river from the hotel proper and it was necessary to take a boat to get across. This never failed to be an experience, as that stretch of river also contained two public “bus” boat docks, as well as, private docks including our dock and one for the Peninsula Hotel. Chaos on the river, similar to chaos on the streets! We went to the Thai Restaurant for dinner and traditional dancing. We sat at tables on the floor in traditional Thai style. To make it more convenient they had dug out the floor underneath, so in actual fact you were still sitting with your legs dangling into a pit. Authentic, not authentic? I am not sure. The dancing was very good although, like most ethnic dancing I found it to be slightly repetitive. Our last day in Bangkok involved going to the airport. We had arranged transportation with the hotel. This turned out to be a brand new BMW. When we arrived at the airport a Mandarin Oriental representative met us and took our baggage and our passports. He walked us to the airline and checked us in for our flight. Then he gave us the paperwork we would need for Cambodia and wished us a pleasant journey. Now that is service.

We left the Chiang Mai Thai House and headed out of town to the Jasmine Rice village (apparently the type of rice used in regular Thai cooking is called “jasmine rice”, and this resort was in the middle of fields of the stuff). The resort is owned by internationally famous Thai TV chef Sompon Nabnian and his wife, and it was his cooking school in which we were enrolled for two days. Here summarized just for you is what we learned – use lots of chilies!

As a special treat, here is the recipe for the traditional northern Thai dish called Ae Khing B’um

serves 1

Ingredients:

100-102 small hot green chilies (finely chopped)

Preparation

Place finely chopped small hot green chilies in a bowl and serve. Eat with a spoon.

OK, I jest, but trust me not far from the truth.

The school was near our resort and we each had a preparation area and gas burner and all the equipment we would need for each recipe (basically a knife, a coconut shell spatula, and a wok, there is not much sophisticated equipment involved in thai cookery). This was setup in a covered courtyard which also contained an air conditioned demonstration classroom. Thai food is a cross between indian and chinese, but with local ingredients and a lot more chili. Most of the dishes are prepared using a hot wok and stir-frying, but boiling is also involved, and most recipes have a fairly common base – in short it’s quick and easy and if you can get past the chili, tasty!

Day 1: We first of all spent a couple of hours learning about thai ingredients, mainly vegetables and spices of the sort which cause great alarm when confronted by them at the supermarket. There are three types of rice, a variety of wood derivatives such as lemon grass and ginza and around 300 sorts of chili. All meat and seafood can be used, there are no religious issues, but having seen several markets (more about that in a future Cambodia update) they are possibly best avoided. Of liquid ingredients, there are two, coconut milk and fish sauce (a foul smelling fermented fish juice which is a little like soy sauce). Then we were shown a demonstration of a recipe and we would go outside and try our hand at it, then eat our concoction.

Overall the first day went really well for us, it took a fair while to learn to adjust the appropriate level of chili to produce something edible.

Day 2: Curry paste filled the morning. Much pounding and sweating resulted in a sticky aromatic mess, which was to be used in our first dish. The only excitement in the day came when someone’s wok caught fire (no, not mine or Sarah’s)

What we made:

Hot and sour prawn soup

Green curry with chicken

Thai fish cakes

Fried Noodles (Sarah’s favourite Thai dish)

Minced Chicken Salad

Water Chestnuts with sugar syrup and coconut milk

Panaeng curry with pork

Chiang Mai curry with chicken

Fried fish with chili and basil

Sweet and sour vegetables

Spicy glass noodle salad

Black sticky rice pudding

We spent the final day in Chiang Mai relaxing by the pool, taking a stroll and eating durian fruit. I had been wanting to try durian for some time, it has a cult following in Asia, but due to the sulfurous stench it is prone to emitting it’s banned from many markets, hotels and public transportation. Fortunately, the helpful chef at the resort was willing to procure and prepare one for me. It is about the size of a basketball, but with big spikes, saying “stay the hell away”. Once open, the inside looks like a brain, but breaking the skin of the ‘brain’, it’s like a thick cream which tasted to me like a cross between a mango and an onion.

We left Chiang Mai on a Boeing 747 for a 45 minute flight to Bangkok. We got a meal on that!

I am in the process of uploading some more photos. These are the last of Thailand, a few more of Chiang Mai, when we moved out of town and took cooking lessons, and Bangkok where we shopped till we dropped and greatly enjoyed the Mandarin Oriental hotel.

They should be uploaded after a few minutes of posting this, but I need to go to bed now as we have an early flight to Cambodia tomorrow.

It is becoming more and more popular to go to countries where labour is cheap to receive high quality health care. There is concern that the treatment will not be a good as home, but according to the World Health Organization, there are 36 countries which offer better treatment than the US (and this includes Columbia, among other surprising entries), so home is nothing much to shout about! Thailand is a country which has seriously latched on to the growing trend and you can hardly move in Chiang Mai without seeing a swanky medical or dental clinic offering cheap treatment. In fact there’s a dentist right by our hotel…that’s where I’ve just been!

I’ve had my teeth serviced and while I was at it, I had them whitened, in less than an hour and at a cost far lower than in the States for a similar whitening treatment. In fact much lower, so much so that you could almost buy a return flight to thailand, buy some factor 30 sun block, check in at the Chiang Mai thai house, have the treatment and spend 2-3 days relaxing by the pool and still come home with change!

I’m very happy with the result and will spend the rest of the day smiling

After our transition time at the beach in Hua Hin we flew to the town of Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand. We have both really enjoyed our time here. There are many things to see and do. Although there are lots of other tourists it is a big enough city to absorb them and still be Thai. On our second day in town we went on day trip. It was actually billed as “a 4×4 Muddy Day Adventure”. I’ll give you three guesses as to who wanted to book this trip. His name starts with an A. We drove for about 40 minutes outside of Chiang Mai where we turned onto the dirt “road”. For about another 30 minutes we slammed and banged along this little dirt path through the jungle. Our itinerary was to go up and over a mountain and come out at an elephant camp on the other side. As we started to climb we passed through a tiny village that was picturesque but clearly very poor. The driver had put the car into 4 wheel drive and we started doing some serious driving. I was holding onto the “oh shit” grip for dear life and i was still getting thrown all over. We drove through another little village and started up a steep stretch of road. It had rained the night before so everything was muddy and slippery. The road had a sharp drop off on the right side and a steep hill side on the left. The road itself had several deep gullies in it. As we tried to make our way up the hill the jeep slid into a deep gully and lodged tipped on it’s right side. The driver managed to back us up a little bit and gunned the engine. We moved forward a little bit but then slid even further into the channel. Both tires on the right side were completely stuck and we were only a couple of feet from the drop off on the right side of the road. At this point I said “I want out of this car right now”. Andy and I both got out and surrounded by three village women we watched the driver almost flip the jeep over at least twice. With the help of an old man from the village they were finally able to get the jeep out of the gully and backed down the hill to a fairly flat spot in the village. It was good fun for all involved. We then had to drive for three hours back the way we came and around the mountain to get to the elephant camp to ride the elephant! Thankfully riding the elephant turned out to be much more enjoyable than riding a camel. The ride went through the jungle. We were able to feed the elephant bananas and the mahout had the elephant pull a tree out of the ground with his trunk! To get back to the camp we had to cross a river. On the opposite bank one of the other elephants was tethered. As we started to cross the other elephant decided it was not happy. It started growling, trumpeting, and screaming. It was immediately clear to me why they used to use elephants as weapons of war. I was terrified and the mahout didn’t seem completely at ease either. Thankfully we passed by and finished the ride without incident. Our next adventure was a bamboo raft ride. The rafts are made out of ten, thirty foot long bamboo poles lashed together at both ends and in the middle by pieces of cut up bicycle tires. This was surprisingly more sturdy than it sounds but not in anyway watertight. Our feet and our bottoms were soon wet. It was a pleasant ride, somewhat like the jungle cruise only real. There were a couple of spots where it was a little choppy but our boatman was good (like a gondola these boats are propelled by a person standing on one end using a pole to push off the bottom). At one point there is an actual cataract in the river where passengers are requested to get get off the boat momentarily while the boatman runs the rapid alone and then you get back on afterwards. Our boatman was young and it was clearly a slow day so he suggested that we could stay on and run the rapid with him. Of course as I said “no way” Andy said “yes”. I am not ashamed to say that I screamed like a girl as we went shooting through and the water covered the boat but it was fun!

More up my alley we have been to see several Buddhist temples. There many, many Wats (temples) in Chiang Mai. The most impressive one is called Wat Doi Suthep. It is on a hill outside of town, on a location where an elephant carrying some of Buddha’s relics stopped. We were shown by our guide how to perform Buddhist prayers and make an offering. Then we went into another area of the temple where a monk blessed us with holy water. We also went to Wat Suan Dok to participate in “Monk Chat“. We were paired with a young monk who is studying English at the university located at the Wat. It was an enlightening experience to talk with someone so different from ourselves.

We have also gone to the night bazaar several times. This consists of multiple streets and freestanding markets full of anything you could ever want to buy, from hill tribe crafts to “real Tiffany” jewelry. It is fun and completely overwhelming.

Tomorrow we go to a new hotel outside of town where we will be taking cooking classes for the next several days. Wish me luck.

We went into Starbucks the other day and they were advertising the start of the Holiday season with snowflake decorations and Christmas mugs. It was also the first day for Toffee Nut Lattes and Peppermint Mochas. We sat by the window drinking our piping hot toffee nut lattes, the air-conditioning providing the requisite Christmas chill to the air. Outside the tuk-tuks continued to roar past in the 95 degree sun and a couple of Buddhist monks negotiated crossing the street. It was all very surreal. If I closed my eyes the flavor of the coffee said Christmas season, busy Saturday, Barnes & Noble. If I opened my eyes it was different entirely!

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, something we were always concerned about, especially at Christmas, was SPH (sales, per person working, per hour). In other words, have I had enough sales in the past hour to pay the wages of the amount of employees on the sales floor at that time. We were always looking at ways to streamline SPH. This often involved doing complicated math (which of course I love!!) to try to figure out how much sales we could expect to do in a day and how many employees that would support! I have exciting news! In Asia they have solved this problem. In restaurants and shops in both India and Thailand there are generally about three employees for every customer. If you want to try on a shirt there is someone there immediately to help you. If you set down your empty soda bottle at lunch at least two employees will rush over and fight about who gets to pick it up! The solution is simple. They can afford to have lots of employees on at all times because they only pay them a pittance! Lower wages more people, problem solved.

I am being facetious of course, as that is not a solution to the problem. People everywhere who are willing to work should be able to make a decent “living” wage. Until that happens it does take some getting used to. I am used to hunting for a clerk in a department store to check me out and flagging a waiter down to order my dinner. It can be a lot of pressure to have three people staring at you waiting for you to put down your coffee cup so that they can be the one to spirit it away!

I know I promised to reveal more on our adventures in Thailand, but I managed to take 253 photos today alone, so it’s taking a bit of time to select the best and get them ready for upload, and we just got back from a pub quiz. We are having a great time in Thailand (caveat: I have been to Thailand many times before, I love the place, so don’t expect an unbiased opinion from me, wait for Sarah), there is so much to do and see.

As for Merry Christmas…. Starbucks (here at least) launched their Christmas drinks yesterday, so we have been enjoying toffee nut lattes and peppermint mochas along with all the amazing scenery!

Please bear with us, we really enjoy reading all your comments and emails, sorry we are not doing better with the updates!

Forget Indian food, it’s for small girls! Forget Mexican, it would hardly cause Mr Kitty to meow in alarm. Thai food is where the burn is at. Sarah and I have just returned from a delicious meal in a street market in Chiang Mai. I chose the beef with sweet chili sauce, it was delicious, but sweet was not the word I would use to describe the inferno. Some three hours later it still feels like I have a fresh chili in my mouth. No doubt it will feel like it is somewhere else in the morning.

We have been up to all sorts of fun things, and we plan more for tomorrow. We will write a post with more info, and hopefully photos within the next couple of days.

We arrived in Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport and after a small difficulty navigating the labyrinthine terminal we, and our luggage were soon in the prearranged car on the 3 hour drive to the small resort town of Hua Hin. The Hilton resort is paradise; clean, friendly with every amenity you could desire and a pool to die for. The problem is the weather outlook was none to good, with foreboding clouds blanketing the sky. Dull though it was, we went to the pool area to enjoy the 80+ degree climate, and I promptly turned a bright pink – not too bad….yet!

That evening we went to the near by brew pub to enjoy something completely missing from out time in India – STEAK! It was most tasty and we felt sated, and as we hardly slept over the previous days, we called it an early night. It was 2am when I saw my steak again, in a not very digested form. It was later in the day Sarah lost hers but at least in the right direction if a little too fast!

GREAT, we are in a nice place with lots of nice looking eateries and now we fall ill (nice looking does not mean hygienic, easily observed in the “fresh” fish enjoying the unrefrigerated afternoon sun).

After some time we feel well enough to venture out and head to the pool. I have an aerosol spray sunblock, which was liberally applied as per instructions. My lesson for this day is that like you should never use spray cans of paint to recolour your car, you should not use spray cans of sunblock to cover your body, as it only appears to really take directly under the stream of the nozzle. I now have a more severe sun burn on my back, but one which reveals a pasty white mark of Zorro. I spent the day out of the sun!

This evening we had a beautiful candlelit meal on the beach, hopefully it will not poison us!