Time For a Champagne Toast in Bangkok!

Our virtually empty, comfortable, double decker bus was one hour late, leaving us time to write and send out last minute postcards from Cambodia. Four hours later we arrived at a sketchy border town to process our free 15 day visas and continued onto Bangkok for another 4 hours in a minivan. Our lunch stop confirmed that we had reached modern Thailand, with a giant 7-11, a Shell station,  larger than life golden framed portraits of the King and Queen, spicy street food (thank Buddha) and a new confusing currency ($1USD=30Baht).

Bangkok boasts 7.5 million people, maybe triple that amount in cars and tuktuks and in our opinion quadruple that amount in beauty in every sense. Our five sense are inundated by beautiful-shimmering-golden-wats, mouthwatering cuisine, incense mixed with exhaust, techno-over street stall vendor advertising-over Buddhist chimes and our relentless perspiration. Bangkok even has four major red light districts. The minivan dropped us off on Khao San street, the backpackers' district, where we ended up staying for our final four glorious nights together. In this time our pillows have suffered our tears of loss while our bodies have suffered the hottest, must humid and sweatiest capital in the world.

Banglamphu where Khao San is located,  is littered with street food stalls, cheap fashion, tuktuks, bars and tourists in every form imaginable. The tuktuk drivers will counter your offer to pay 80 Baht for a ride with "20 Baht and one stop!" One stop means a visit to a factory jewelry or other scheming shop where they will force you to buy things you don't want. Fortunately we never fell for this, but it did provoke some incredulous laughs.  Our first evening in Bangkok was ample time to get our bearings in our new neighborhood, window shop, eat delicious Thai food and make plans with two fun Germans to have drinks later on. To our shock we got stood up. How dare they! But we still had a fabulous time sharing a bucket of mystery drink, taking silly photos and appreciating our very own homegrown Starbuck's coffee.

Waking early on Sunday in our stiflingly hot "fan (if it deserves to even be called that) room", we ventured to the weekend market. Immediately we were intercepted by two American School students who endearingly interviewed us, photos and all, for their English class assignment. We continued through the massive market of clothing, antiques, food, books and more realizing that there were many more Thai than fa-rang (western tourists). Lisa shopped her way through the market while Gabi ate her way through the market (mostly in ice creams) leaving us both exhausted. We headed in a luxurious air conditioned taxi to a place we were told Gabi could purchase a new digital camera (an unexpected expense) after hers' broke in Cambodia.

The shopping center was intimidating. We entered on floor one of seven and immediately encountered a "celebrity superstar" singing pop amidst faux smoke to a massive crowd of Thai fanatics. We made out way up the seven floors of congested electronic shops and shopaholics, entering several shops on each floor to inquire about the perfect purchase for Gabi. By floor seven we had found our match and they even gave us each a bag of free popcorn. We a gracious smile and a high-five, we accepted our highly deserved edible reward, while Gabi dropped a lot of bones on her first digital camera in five years.

With impressive stamina for sightseeing and ample appetites, we continued into China Town. We were confronted, as expected, by many new foods. we saw 'Birds' Nest', 'Shark Fins', and we tried large black scorpions, long legged grasshopper, larvae and tiny fried frogs. To our surprise, we almost ordered seconds of the scorpion. The claws were the crispiest part. Instead we went onto try many other snacks including delectable chicken and pork skewers in peanut sauce and Gabi's fave mezcla of a cooling sweet drink with beans, corn, rice, jello seaweed and mango. Before heading home we explored a Chinese temple and public hospital late night. We celebrated over a bottle of wine and five-rounds of intense Yahtzee.

Again drenched in our own sweat, we awoke to a cold shower and an ambitious day of sightseeing. Our first stop was the Wat Phra Kaew (aka the temple of the Emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace. After meeting two German guys in line, we decided to give Germany a second chance and hired a guide together at a discounted price. The services included fashionable skin covering attire. The grounds were constructed in 1782 and to this day represent more than two hundred years of one royal dynasty and continue to be a sacred pilgrimage for Buddhists.

We were blown away by the bling and the beauty and our photos cannot give it justice (especially since we could not take photos inside of any temples, understandably). Everything that looks gold is in fact at least gold plated with 24kts. The highly revered Thai King Rama IX and Queen Sirikit do not live on these grounds unless there is a special occasion, allowing for daily visitors, to our benefit. Royal Heads of State who visit Bangkok get to stay on these gorgeous religious grounds in the Guest House, but of course the elected U.S. President is not one of these fortunate visitors (instead he gets the entirety of a 5-star hotel).

The temple housing the Emerald Buddha is covered in shimmering gold and multicolored glass tiles along with antique porcelain and lacquer art. The Emerald Buddha has three wardrobes throughout the year, commemorating the different seasons of hot, cold and rainy. Before entering the temple, you must remove your shes (as in all Hindu and Buddhist temples) and you can opt to be blessed three times on the forehead by a lotus flower dipped in holy water. We were also given gold flecks to wear on our foreheads like bindis. Inside the temple, tourists and Buddhist Thai visitors alike respectfully practice silence in reverence to the Emerald magnificence. We both made our prayers and bowed three times to Buddha with such ease and compassion that our new German friends thought we were both practicing Buddhists. Outside of the temple an intimidating row of Garutas (demon birds) protect the temple from evil spirits.

Our animated guide took us to an impressively detailed walls surrounding the temple and Grand Palace portraying the Ramayana in lacquer art. He acted out some of the scenes to our (and his own) amusement. The wall even included some bandaged up Thai boxing monkeys. We continued to the coronation hall and then onto the Royal Palace, where we took ridiculous photos on the lawn. The tour ended with huge shared smiles between our toothless endearing guide and us, as a guide friend of his looked on saying "he is a good man, he is a wonderful guide".

Having befriended the Germans, we continued on together to eat and sight see, where we introduced them to a backpackers' budget lunch, aka street-food. Lisa had the best Pad Thai of her life among our other delicious snacks. We visited the ginormous reclining golden Buddha, 46m long and 15m high, which illustrates the passing of Buddha into Nirvana (the Buddha's death). This Buddha, with his ornately engraved foot soles, hardly fit in his home of Wat Pho. We jointly purchased a bucket of 108 coins, symbolizing 108 japa beads of prayer, an auspicious number in Hinduism. We took turns dropping the coins each alternating into the 108 vases but lost our count and were one coin short at the end of our religious endeavor. We venerated ourselves by visiting and praying to no less than 394 magnificent Buddha images inside of the rest of this Wat. On our way out we saw statues of Yogis mastering challenging meditation poses. We each commemorated this experience with three hittings of the gong accompanying our prayers.

We continued onto Wat Arun, a temple renamed for the Indian God of Dawn, Aruna. We arrived by a short ferry over the Mae Man Chao Phraya River to this religious sight to find a loudspeaker of tasteful Thai pop playing. We climbed up a few stupas and entered temples, visiting a Buddha footprint, lighting incense and hitting gongs along the way in prayer. The final climb was up a steep staircase ascending the largest stupa which resulted in 360 degree views of Bangkok.

Having visited the three major religious sights in Bangkok, the four of us celebrated with several rounds of beers along the river. The waitress, proud of having grown her hair out for about 30 years at the age of 44, was excited to instigate many photos with the German men.

We continued onto our Backpackers' turf for more beer, slushies, dancing and a grand introduction to insect cuisine for the Germans.

After a late start we headed to the Siam Square, a five-star shopping mall filled with Versace and Bulgari and the out-of-our-budget Ocean World Aquarium, the largest aquarium in SE Asia. We walked along the SkyTrain line to the National Stadium to the Bangkok Center for the Arts. There we enjoyed free art exhibits and "food art" of ice cream inspired by local street foods.

A few blocks away we visited the Jim Thompson House Museum made completely of gorgeous teak wood. We explored the gardens and art exhibitions of this entrepreneurial, former CIA director, and personal art collector, with the guidance of an elegant, adorable, tiny Thai guide with her very own invented singsong English accent. Thompson created the international appetite for Thai silk, having started by sending samples to the international fashion houses in Milan, London and Paris. Thompson's tastefully decorated house is along a river canal in Bangkok, adding to its' charm, along with the lush garden and koi fish.

With only hours left together at this point, we are enjoying a 2 liter bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne will celebrate the completion of this blog and photo posting. As our tears continue to flow we have future plans to look forward to. Lisa will begin two days of travel tomorrow night (Thursday, Sept. 8) via Seoul and San Francisco to Mexico City. She is excited to see her friends on Friday night in Mexico City for a welcome home/going away/b-day party for a group of people. In true Gabi fashion, against her budget, Gab has extended her travel through Sept. 30 to tour Thailand. Lisa is jealous yet feels entitled with responsibility. Maybe she and Gabi could have shared a bit of their burdens (responsibility vs. irresponsibility).   

In three months we have accomplished more than we are capable of sharing in a blog. We'll just mention a few landmarks. Today we reached 77 bottles of wine consumed, 1 bottle of champagne, and a lot of bottles of SE Asian beers. We have slept all over the place including 10 guesthouses, 1 home stay and 1 boat in Vietnam, 10 guesthouses, 1 border crossing and 1 home stay in Laos, 9 guesthouses in Cambodia, 1 guesthouse in Thailand and a few overnight buses in between. That's a total of laying our heads at 30 guesthouses, 1 border, 1 boat, 2 home stays and many buses.

We deserve a massage and a comfy air conditioned bed. We've documented our excursions with 24 blog posts, receiving over 700 unique hits from our fabulous fans and a whopping 1,496 photos. We've also dominated an extensive number of wats and new friends encountered which we cannot begin to count. Our laughs, frustrations, surprises, and bowl discomforts are also innumerable. Yet after all of our adventures, it still feels like we were only planning our trip haphazardly yesterday amongst our busy lives which we will soon return.

Thank you for checking out our adventures for the past three months. Your dedication and enthusiastic feedback has inspired us to keep writing. Travelling for three months together has been an invaluable and inspirational experience which will remain a significant part of us. After we depart tomorrow we anticipate outbursts in our sleep of deprivation and daytime outbursts of laughter in nostalgia. Although this is last blog posting to Girl Talk, Gabi will keep in contact via email about her solo adventures with photos posted to the album linked here. Lisa will not bore you with her everyday life in Mexico City. We love SE Asia, we love our current state of unemployment and most of all we love each other.

The Siem Reaper... Angkor What?

We realized our previous post ended rather abruptly, for which we'd like to apologize. We weren't feeling very well but we are now. For eight hours we sped at 20kph down the Sangker River from Battambang to Siem Reap on a wooden boat filled with a few tourists, a few locals, a lot of kramas (a versatile scarf used by locals), even more produce and a sewing machine, but no animals.

We did see a little girl pass us in a boat with a boa constrictor around her neck, larger than her body. We passed intricate villages of houseboats, meeting primitive living conditions, enjoying an entire day's worth of activity and waving to enthusiastic children the entire way. We did have the option to take a bus for a quarter of the price and half the time, but the romance of the scenic route and a boat called our names and emptied our wallets.

After this lovely excursion, complete with red wine concealed in water bottles, we were rested and ready for three days of Angkor temple expeditions covering 400 square kilometers (which happens to include forested areas, rice paddies, cows, pigs and water buffalo).

Originally Angkor was discovered by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century, who deemed it a "Walled City". Like most Portuguese 'discoveries' a different European country swooped in centuries later to take credit for this exploration. When French explorers (re)'discovered' Angkor in the mid 19th century, Siem Reap was a small village. During this time the Thai somehow came to control the beautiful treasure that is Angkor and only in 1907 was it returned to Cambodia, which also marked it's first year for foreign tourism with 200 visitors in the course of three months.

Thanks to the Franco efforts in restoring the ruins of the hundreds of temples that make up Angkor during the early 1900's, by the 1930s-1960's Siem Reap was the hip spot to visit for foreigners traveling to Asia, with such notable fashion superstars as Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Kennedy. During the war, obviously, tourism stopped completely and Angkor was forgotten to greater current tragedies and re-consumed by the lush jungle. Foreigners began to return in the 1990's, only to find many temples in further ruin due to the thoughtless destruction of the Khmer Rouge. This said, the temples of Angkor are still pretty fabulous, even those that have yet to be rehabilitated by the many international organizations investing in this enormous endeavor. In 1992, this 8th Wonder of the World became a UNESCO World Heritage Site (making it, according to our calculations, possibly SE Asia's 512th UNESCO sponsored location)!

The Angkorian period spans more than 600 years from AD 802 - 1432, which is when the temples were constructed, invaded and reconstructed to match the religion of the day. More than 10 King's and their descendants reigned during these years, each with no ideas of how to run Angkor. While most of the sandstone temples were originally Buddhist, the faces and sitting positions of many deities were carved, altered and replaced to resemble Hindu gods, as different groups came to control this region. The evidence of this is still plainly visible in some temples. King Jayavarman VII was a special case of narcissism. Seeing himself in Shiva, the Supreme god in Hinduism, he pronounced himself a God King, the earth way representative of Shiva. While Shiva is the destroyer, Jayavarman VII did just the opposite, building a 'temple mountain' symbolizing Shiva's dwelling place at the center of the Universe, which would serve as a prototype for Khmer architecture to follow, including many building which he would help to design.

Early on our first day together, our tuktuk driver informed us that he thought of his vehicle as a spaceship and so, not remembering his real name, we renamed him Marvin (for those of you who watched Looney Toones growing up). Not understanding the nickname, he laughed in acceptance anyway. Marvin was a talker, chatting wildly to us in often incomprehensible English as he sped in front of the tuktuk on his motorbike, only taking breaks to flirt with women driving past us on scooters or to smoke cigarettes. After a while we also learned that he was incredibly sensitive, taking anything we said out of context and making it a highly personal situation. We were even invited and then uninvited to have beers and a snake roast at his village to celebrate the end of three days of intensive ruin exploration.

Each day we spent roughly six hours visiting Angkor (quite possibly the largest temple in the world), the Bayon and surrounding temples. We saw about 15 temples in total including one mystical and ethereal sunrise. We saved Angkor Wat and the Bayon for the last day, with Marvin instructing us to close our eyes as we drove past them each day on our way to smaller, yet impressive, outer sights. Many of the temples featured Buddhist and Hindu gods and many were strewn with symbolic figures of lingas and female fertility.

Key figures of Hindu and Buddhist teachings decorated the grounds and temple walls, such as gods/goddesses, Apsara dancers, human warriors, demons and animals, including horses, cows, elephants, snakes, half-human/half-birds and dogs.

Upon arrival at each temple entrance we were inundated with a dozen children scrambling in several languages to sell us scarves, snacks, puppets, flutes, paintings and other knickknacks. We politely resisted with "ate aw kohn" (no thank you) and were impressed with the childrens' fluency in Spanish and English and likely many other languages. You're probably wondering how we visited 18 hours worth of temples without getting exhausted. The truth is, we were surprised at how unique each temple was; some focusing more on fountains and pools and others on worshiping halls and relieved engravings, not to mention the natural energy and enthusiastic aw the sites left us. Furthermore, while transporting between temples, the endearingly genuine smiles an and simply enthusiastic hellos from Khmer of all ages along the side of every road filled us with even more positive energy. 

The littering of fellow tourists at Angkor Wat didn't take away from the charm. Focusing on the orange robbed monks, we walked over extravagant lawns from the main entrance to the temple, , giving the place an ancient air reminiscent of the Versailles Palace. Inside we were lucky enough to borrow pants and a skirt from some nice Belgian girls and scarves from the Khmer workers to cover our inappropriately exposed skin in the muggy 100 degree heat, allowing us entrance to the quintessential Angkorian temple of the Ascendance to Heaven. From there we enjoyed gorgeous views of Angkor and the surrounding forest. The more than 3,000 apsara dancers carved all over the temple walls uniquely sport 30 different hairstyles.

We continued on to Angkor Thom and the Bayon where we hovered under the ominous glare of hundreds of faces, closely depicting that of Jayavarman VII of course, who oversaw this creation of the 54 towers that make up this structure. Linking this to modern history, the Khmer Rouge organized itself into 54 provinces to closely oversee every behavior of the Khmer people during the war, just as the faces on each Bayon temple look down on its visitors unceasingly. While a bit eerie of a history, the Bayon was one of our favorite temples, which Gabi deemed as a great place to play "hide-and-seek" due to its compact nature and intricate tunnels. The first of three levels depicted the history of the Khmer victory over the Chams in a delicately detailed 1.2km of bas-reliefs or wall engravings, including one image of a gigantic fish eating an antelope and some soldiers getting drunk.

Our grand finale of finales, was the temple that looked the most organic, or most impressive due to it's lack of restoration. Ta Prohm, also nicknamed the Tomb Raider Temple, for it's cameo in Angelina Jolie's hit film, is overgrown to a point of no return. The size of the trees and roots that have overtaken this beautiful sprawling one story structure are testament to the age of the temples, and only add to it's crumbling beauty. Not only were they built a long time ago, but they were also abandoned for long enough to allow for trees, hundreds of years old, to literally take root. When the temple was still inhabited it required 80,000 people to maintain it including 615 apsara dancers. Angelina was so inspired by her visit to Angkor that she took home a Cambodian baby souvenir to remind her daily of the beauty of Cambodia. All jokes aside, little Maddox, an orphan from Battambang, is a pretty lucky kid for the standards of any country. We were inspired too, but we won't be bringing home any babies.   

In between temple explorations we relaxed in the comfy backdrop of Siem Reap with restaurants, walking streets, day and night markets and fancy bars all equipped for tourists beyond our budgets. We did manage to eat fried tarantula, a Cambodian delicacy, which sent prickles up our spines (especially the legs) but was actually quite tasty. We also read at a cafe three days in a row, indulging in homemade ginger poppy seed ice cream with rice flour and poppy seed cones, while reading and sipping on cheap 'French Red Table Wine' we snuck into the establishment on our excusable back packers' budget.

Our time in Cambodia would not have been complete without apsara dancing, which we enjoyed in a five star restaurant (we splurged big time) over a mouth watering Khmer buffet dinner and our personally imported 'French Red Table Wine'. We arrived to our reserved table assigned to "Mr. Gabriell, T 2 pax". Apsara dancing is a huge part of Cambodian culture representing ideal feminine beauty. Elegant dancers are often portrayed bare breasted in carvings on Angkor temple walls and in some stories are said to have distracted demons into the submission of Buddhist deities. You may recall from our blog post in Kampot (Seafood! See Food?), that the girls at the orphanage were already practicing apsara dancing from a young age in following with Khmer artistic tradition.
 

Sadly, this will be our second to last post together. It is so sad that we are skipping an expat party in a hidden garden that we were invited to, to update this very important blog post together and to add photos to the Picasa album, which we hope you will visit. We will be heading to Bangkok at 5:30am tomorrow, crossing our fingers for luck at the border, and already nostalgic to have just under a week of further adventures together on this long trek.

Battambang bang baby

After 11 hours on the bus, two five minute bathroom breaks and no lunch, we arrived relieved and cramped to Battambang, Cambodia's second largest city with 140,000 inhabitants. Again the Lonely Planet mentions the best preserved French colonial architecture along the riverside as the draw to this city, however once again, we do not agree. We were far more impressed by some of the sights surrounding the city, the NGO we visited, and the incredibly friendly people we met. As with every city we've visited, we encountered many monks, one of which was extremely talkative and excited to asnwer all of our questions regarding Buddhism and it's culture.

While our musty room had no windows, one week fan, and left us dripping in beads of sweat, we awoke rested with new found mobility after 10 hours of being horizontal. Energized, we took a jog along the river, followed by stairs and sit-ups and biceps/triceps workout. Our exercising drew the close attention of five seven year old street boys. As we are always interested in mingling with locals, we invited them to participate. The seven of us lined the tile wall along the riverside, palms at our waist on the wall to do dips, counting each set of 20 in Khmer in unison. When the boys tired, we encouraged them that the exercises would make them stronger by punching the air, flexing and yelling "Rambo", all of which they repeated! Unfortunately we did not have a camera to capture this precious moment.

We ventured out of the city with our tuktuk driver Sambath (he prefers 'Bath'), to the famous Bamboo Train, known in Khmer as a norry. The trains run on ancient national railroad tracks and supposedly 'know' the actual schedules of trains running to and from Phnom Penh. The train consists of a thin slatted bamboo flat on top of two dumbbells, with a lawnmower motor and a fan belt. Upon arrival we were greeted by the owner of the Bamboo Train operation wearimg a shirt that said 'No Money No Hunny', so we forked over $10USD. Once again, not knowing what we were getting into, we rented a private Bamboo Train equipped with a 16 year old conductor in a hip trucker hat and an unbuttoned pink cowboy shirt. We sat on two pillows and within seconds, were speeding down the rails at upwards of  20km/hour, through a narrow avenue of bushes, passing rice paddies and dodging dragonflies. People, cows and lizards, walking on the tracks, dodged us as we rambled by at high speeds to our spines' discontent. As we tried to yell above the noise, we realized there was no way we would be able to hear real trains approaching in either direction. This is when we prayed to Ganesha for good luck.    

So you might be wondering what happens when two Bamboo Trains going in opposite directions do when they collide?  They both stop and whoever has less passengers have disembark and disassemble the train for the other one to pass. This happened many times, but fortunately bamboo is very light. At the end of the track, our reward was a gaggle of children to play with. We spun them around, gave them high-fives and taught them the joys of a digital camera, all of which invited giggles, smiles and more children.

Bath took us to a mud bath, known in SE Asia as rice planting. We approached an innocent couple planting their rice in a field who had never encountered foreigners in their lives, and asked to help plant. Credulous but appreciative, full of smiles, they welcomed our novice rice planting skills while correcting our technique sothat we wouldn't cause them more work than assistance. Bath joined us in the labor with enthusiasm as chilfren watched with bewilderment, thankful we were completing their chores. Ankle deep in leech and freshwater crab filled mud, after 45 minutes and a newfound appreciation for rice, we thanked the family and bid them good luck with harvesting their crops in December. Before departing ways we Bath we spent 45 minutes at an internet cafe explaining the benefits of gmail and fixing his e-communication problems.

The following day we found another smiling English speaking tuktuk driver to hang out with, named Chea. Chea let us take a shot at driving his manual tuktuk and recieved our assistance with his English homework for impressive level 7 (of 12) coursework. We visited the Prasat Banan temple within the town of Phnom Banan. Locals claim that this temple, built in the 11th century,  was the model for Angkor Wat. A steep staircase led to five ancient towers on a high hilltop, one filled with a puja, for which we lit yellow candles and incense in prayer.

Randomly Chea took us to see 'jumping foxes' which turned out to be giant fruit bats to our enthusiasm. We never understood his humour, but we did have a fabulous time. Chea threw sticks at the two trees, filled with hundreds of sleeping bats, in an attempt to rouse excitement for our enjoyment. He was successful, as we ooed and awed at the brown headed and blacked winged creatures, which he termed 'dracula'. Then Chea repeatedly taunted "Eat your blood, eat your blood".

We made out way to the only winery in Cambodia, Chan Thai Chhoeng, run by an entrepreneurial woman who is known throughout the country by many including the King and Prime Minister for her Reds, Roses and grape brandy. We tasted the three distills while chatting with the owner and listening to her history in wine making. While it wasn't the best wine we've had, we splurged on a bottle of Cab/Shiraz  which we enjoyed later at dinner.

We awoke multiple times between the hours of 2:00 and 7:00am tossing and turning in the 90 degree heat of our stifling room. Exhausted, we met Chea who took us just outside of Battambang to Friends Economic Development Association (FEDA). This local NGO founded and run entirely by Cambodians provides free English courses and the opportunity for students to become involved in income generating projects including: a small store, traditional music and dance, kayak guiding, a rock band and garment creation. The NGO is funded by donations from many organizations including PANGEA which Gabi's father works with. During our visit, students were practicing for a traditional music and dance show and preparing food for a celebration with visiting donors. We visited classrooms and took a motorbike tour through local villages where the students live. The location of the NGO is pertinent because it enables participation from students who cannot access similar opportunities only available in the city.