Category: SoutheastAsia
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Dim Lights, Big City
We’re in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, recovering from being in the dirty but welcoming countryside. With any luck our visas and passports will come through this evening for Vietnam and we’ll be on a boat down the Mekong river tomorrow morning. Time for a regional food update. Cambodia definitely has a simpler…
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4 Showers a Day
We are here in the middle of the dry season, and the ever-present rice paddies are a dull brown broken up only by colorful pagodas and sporadic spikes of palm trees. Pickup trucks overflowing with bushels of vegetables, bags of rice, suitcases, motorbikes, and as many people as can find a handhold are the standard…
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What is in these bottles? Answer: Gasoline
Took us a bit to figure this one out, but they are frequent sites in Cambodia.
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Angkor Away
6 Days wandering Angkor Wat and its neighboring temples has turned us into archaeological devotees, admiring every lintel, pediment, and bas-relief. Package tours bustle most tourists through the Angkor temples in 3 days, starting before sunrise and ending after sunset, ostensibly seeing the same number of temples that we have in 6 days. We lack…
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Cash is King
Bargaining with police men over the clearly posted cost of your visa is a new low. After 1 broken down bus, 10 hours overnight in a cockroach infested border town (the safe side), walking across the border, some bribery, and 3 hours off-roading on the highway in a Toyota Camry, we arrived in Siem Reap,…
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Border Crossings
Tomorrow we’ll head to a border town that is near Cambodia, and the next day attempt crossing as early in the morning as possible. As our “guide”, we’re using the often amusing Tales of Asia website. Wish us luck!
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Capital(ism) City
It is entirely possible for you to travel by foot to a bus stop to a boat taxi to a skytrain station to a mall to a subway to a train station. We have frequently used any 3 of the above in a day, and while it may seem chaotic, Bangkok has a way of…
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Snakes in a Jungle
Most people lay on the beach to relax with the sea breeze and gentle lapping of the waves. After a few days in Khao Sok, a national park / rainforest, we weren’t in any hurry to get back to the sand. We traded our ocean-side bungalow for one along a bamboo-lined river. We happily gave…
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Thaisland
Like most tourists in Thailand, we flocked to Ko Phi Phi, an island of preternatural beauty and overwhelming tourists. Before arriving we were warned of sold-out rooms and sky-high prices, but we decided to take our chances in finding a bungalow on a remote beach briefly mentioned in Lonely Planet. On disembarking the ferry, we…
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Welcome to Thailand
Another painless border crossing by public transportation and we are in Thailand. So far, the only items worth mentioning are yummy mango shakes, and our mattress is on the floor. Back to a language that makes the Greek alphabet look easy. Malaysia was great, and had some of the highlights of our trip with its…