Cambodia and Thailand

I've now been back over a day from Thailand and Cambodia. Sort of strange to settle back into one place after being mobile for 8 days constantly. The photos above all have captions, so I'll just talk about a few things that stick out in my mind about the trip.

Cambodia:
The food was amazing, honestly some of the best that I have ever had. Amok seems to be a popular dish available at all restaurants. It's a sort of thick curry with vegetables and egg in it. The hospitality was also some of the best I have seen. Either people are genuinely friendly or they're really good at scamming. I like to think it's the former.

Phnom Penh was not at all what I was expecting in a capitol city. No tall buildings, and poverty everywhere. The ground was littered with trash wherever you went, people just threw things away on the ground when they were finished with them. It was really a stark contrast to any other cities I had seen. Siem Reap was somewhat dirty, but nothing compared to Phnom Penh. It's really hard to imagine living in such a place. Are people there happy living like that I found myself wondering? I can't imagine myself being happy living in such filth all the time.

Driving in Cambodia is also an experience. They drive on the right side of the road like in America, but there are literally no traffic laws. People commonly drive in the wrong lane. Honking is constant, and isn't used angrily as it is in the US, but rather as an alert to other drivers that you are there. The taxi ride from the border town of Poipet was my first taste of this, and my taxi was a British style one (driver on the right side) so he couldn't even see when he was passing the other drivers. Not that he cared too much, as autos frequently pass with just feet to spare before a collision would happen.

Overall though, Cambodia was worth if if only for Siem Reap, the food, and learning about the Khmer Rouge and a side of history seldom seen in the US.

Thailand:
We tended to stick to touristy areas of Thailand, though we did venture off a few times to see a bit more, and we walked around most places our last day rather than taking taxi or tuktuk. Speaking of which, the system of taxis/tuktuks is quite frankly the most corrupt thing I have ever seen. You're never sure if you're going to be scammed. Our first day we wanted to see a couple sights. We ended up getting dragged all over Bangkok going to the Tuktuk driver's sponsors so he could get free gasoline. If you are unfamiliar with what a sponsor is, it's a business that pays tuktuks to bring tourists there to try to sell them things. We went to three tailors where we were barraged by them trying to sell us custom tailored suits for 100USD. As a group we tolerated it because we had extra time anyways, the aircon felt good, and it made everything significantly cheaper (especially when combined with the fact that it was Buddhist holiday). The overall cost of the tuktuk was 20Baht, which split three ways meant that we spent 0.22USD for a whole day of driving. Not a bad deal.

Red Shirts. The media portrays them as a violent mob, but that is not at all what I saw of them in my time in Bangkok. On the contrary, they seemed to be friendly people who just wanted a more democratic system of government for Thailand. When you spoke to them they seemed happy that a foreigner wasn't afraid to speak to them considering how they have been portrayed. That being said, I cannot speak for all of them. As with any group, there are some radicals, such as those that broke into the government building. This did put things in perspective a bit, making me realize that these people are indeed pushing for a revolution, and as such can sometimes get out of hand. Nonetheless, I think that they have gotten a bad rap from the media. I am glad that I met redshirts during my time in Thailand. Not many people get to be somewhere in a time of potential revolution.

Architecturally, Bangkok was phenomenal. With Thailand being 95% Theravada Buddhist, you can see a lot of this style in the temples throughout the city. Incredibly elaborate details contrast sharply with simple floor plans. Seeing Wat Phra Kaew was a sensory overload with dozens of such buildings all gathered together.

Animal Cruelty. I'm a stickler on this, obviously. The first I saw of this was near the River Kwai with the jaguars. Later on, my group wanted to go see the Tiger Temple, which is operated by Buddhist monks. I did a bit of research and was appalled to see some of the violence displayed by monks and other caretakers towards the tigers. I had settled beforehand on not going in when it came to that part of our day tour, and my friend Bryan also decided that he would stay outside and wait. I am glad I did stay out, as some of the others who went saw the abuse firsthand.

We met a lot of interesting characters everywhere we went. One of the more interesting was a girl from Hamburg who had taken off 6 months after graduating with an English teaching degree to backpack the world. She had seen central and south America and a plethora of other places. She said she seldom stayed more than a few days in one location before feeling restless and bored. Bangkok was her last stop before returning home and she seemed curious as to how living in one place was going to be after that long on the road. Talking to her made me even more excited about this summer.

Overall I'm glad to be back in Hong Kong, where it's not obnoxiously hot, I don't get harassed all the time to buy things (except massages), and where I can trust a taxi driver not to scam me.

Smugglers' Ridge Hike

(click to access the Picasa album)

Basically you start up north at Pineapple Dam and hike 4.5km south along the ridge. During the first part you encounter some World War 2 defense trench and bunker ruins, which are really neat. They were put there by the British in the 30s to defend Hong Kong. Some of the defense trenches are named after British streets.


Further along you climb up to an amazing view of Tsuen Wan (an area of HK). You are probably about sixty stories up at this point.

And even further along the trail joins what is known as the "Monkey Trail," which is by Golden Hill. Along here there are tons of macaques. We even saw some jump into a pool of water and swim around!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE2ZPm6wK30

Afterwards all went out to a vegetarian restaurant called "Sino." They use soy to make fake meats such as duck, beef, chicken, shrimp, pork, etc. It's very realistic, but I opted for a mushroom-potato-tomato mixture instead.

A Less Exciting Update

Midterms have rolled around. Three next week, and then on the following Tuesday 31/3 I will be heading to Bangkok and Cambodia for break.

And since it's Thursday, it's go-out-and-try-a-new-restaurant day! I have a big list of vegetarian restaurants that I've been going to each Thursday. So far I have yet to be disappointed.

Been spending a lot of my free time planning the summer's backpacking. Thirty days seems like a long time, but it's nowhere near enough to do this country justice. I won't even be able to explore the western half. But, my Tour de China does take me by such scenic places as  Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie (look familiar... it should if you've seen Avatar), as well as several major cities, and some more historic places. And I have a good excuse to come back, not having seen any of the western half.

Boracay, Philippines

I won't post any on here just because it's a lot more difficult than just syncing stuff to a web album, but I shall talk about the journey.

Woke up for a really early morning flight, headed to the Hong Kong airport to hop on our plane to Manila. All was uneventful. We knew we had a 1.5 hour layover (not very long) in Manila, so we'd have to be on top of things to make our flight. What we didn't know was that Manila airport is not all one facility. In fact, it is actually 3 separate facilities about a 20 minute cab ride apart from each other. We arrived in terminal 3 only to find out that we had to go to terminal 2 to catch our next plane to Caticlan. All 7 of us boarded a van and we started heading that way. Traffic in Manila is absolutely crazy. It didn't look like there was any order at all to the highway, just a bunch of cars competing for spots at intersections, maneuvering as best they could to pinch in between others. After about 10 minutes I got to wondering whether mine and Markus' flight was the same as the others', as we had booked separately. Checked my itinerary and found that, no, it was not; we had landed in the correct terminal and needed to head back to it in order to catch our flight (this was 40min til, check in typically ends at 15 til).

So we hopped out of the van, flagged down a taxi and ran across traffic to get to it. Luckily everyone in Philippines speaks very good english and is helpful. Also lucky the traffic going the other way wasn't bad. We managed to get to the airport, talked to security and they let us cut line and showed us the way to check in to get our tickets. After 2 more security checkpoints and loads of running, we finally got to our terminal just a couple minutes before boarding ended. The plane was a prop-plane, fairly good size. Flight was beautiful. Looking out into the blue sea and seeing all the islands was a very good introduction to the place.

As for the others, they found out upon arrival at the other terminal that they actually needed to stay at terminal 3. They missed their flight, had to rebook, catch a flight into Kalibo and take a cab to Caticlan. They showed up about 7 hours after us.

Anyway, we arrived at Caticlan airport, which was absolutely tiny. Security and everything was very relaxed there. Hopped on a tricycle (the cabs of the Philippines) to get on the ferry to Boracay. Riding a tricycle through town really gave you an idea of the living conditions of people in the area. It was worlds different than anything I'd seen before. To give you an idea, a "cab" ride ran 50 Philippine Pesos, which is about 1 US Dollar. The buildings were all open to the outside and looked very dinghy.

The ferry was really pretty and you could see across the water the island we were going to spend the weekend on. White sand beaches, palm trees, perfect blue water that you could see over 40' into, it was really phenomenal. Once we got to the beach we bumped into our other 3 friends who had arrived the day before. They showed us to the hotel, the Ocean Breeze Inn, which was nestled a good distance into a residential area past station 3 (the southernmost station on the island). We were greeted with juice and genuine friendliness by the staff. Settled in and headed out to explore the beach and check out a few bars by station 2, which is the main station and has the most stuff.

We spent most of the weekend walking the beach, exploring some local shops, fending off vendors, and trying new food. I developed a bit of an addiction to fresh squeezed pineapple juice. Everything was very inexpensive, you could get a meal for 70-100PHP, beer was 35PHP for a San Miguel (locally brewed) during happy hour.

The next day we all booked a sailboat to go island hopping and snorkeling. Total cost of the boat and snorkeling combined: 450PHP per person, plus an additional 200PHP for entrance to Crystal Cove, which had some really neat caves on it. At one point in time one of those persistent vendors was chasing us in a rowboat trying to sell us ice cream. A bit later we got to the snorkeling area. Unfortunately the water was really rough. Most of the people weren't able to make it back to the boat; I actually took off my snorkeling stuff because it was so difficult to use with the waves. It was really pretty, though, swimming among tiny jellyfish and other varieties of fish and coral. Got to Crystal Cove and checked out some caves before hopping back on the sailboat to enjoy the sunset at sea. Bit of barhopping that night once we got back, all in all a great day.

The next day we spent most of the day just lounging around the beach or swimming in the ocean. We were all pretty exhausted from the day/night before. Enjoyed our final sunset in paradise.

Headed out a few hours earlier than we should have the next morning just to avoid flight problems. Markus and I were able to catch an earlier plane so we didn't have to spend much time in Caticlan. The plane was absolutely tiny, a 19 seater open to the captain's cabin. It flew really low, good scenery the whole way. Everything was fairly uneventful all the way back to Hong Kong.

All in all I would gladly go back to Boracay. It was beautiful, the people were some of the friendliest I have ever met and the prices were really low across the board.

Touring and Modern Toilet

Haven't updated for awhile, so here goes:

The day after the Lantau tour we went to check out Kowloon Walled City and Chi Lin Nunnery.Click to follow links to their respective wikipedia articles. Neither are terribly long but both are interesting. Later that night a group of friends and I went out in search of the Modern Toilet, a poo-themed restaurant.