No Regrets!

We’ve put quite a bit of planning into this trip, coming up with the most detailed, structured itinerary I’ve ever made for a vacation, mostly because it’s one of the shortest. Weird how the less time you spend somewhere, the more carefully you need to plan it. With only five days in Ireland, we really want to be efficient. There is so much to see and do, and we want to make sure we hit all of the highlights.

Our provisional itinerary is as follows:

4/29: Dublin
4/30: County Wicklow, Glendalough, Kilkenny
5/1: Kilkenny, Rock of Cashel, Blarney Castle, Cork, Killarney
5/2: Killarney, Ring of Kerry, Doolin
5/3: Aran Islands, Cliffs of Moher, Galway
5/4: Galway
5/5: Shannon

Once again, trying to use international web sites to book accommodation and transport was extremely difficult. Many of the crappy sites feature drop-downs that only go up to 2007, forms that won’t submit, pages that don’t display in certain browsers, and web page font selections from 1996. I don’t think these businesses realize how much money they are missing out on by not having good web sites. They are certainly losing out on my business.

TripAdvisor’s objective traveler reviews and rankings might be the best resource for international accommodation, and we used it to find and book our first night’s accommodation in Dublin. We are still trying to make sense of all of the train timetables and bus routes around Ireland. In the end, might have to rent a car to give us the flexibility we need. The trains just don’t run the routes we need, and the buses don’t run as frequently or as late as we need. By all accounts, driving in Ireland is an adventure, so it should be an interesting few days.

The weather forecast for the next week looks cool and rainy, which I suppose is no surprise for Ireland.

I have booked my next adventure, a trip to Ireland with Stefanie! A while back, she said she’d have some time off from work and that she wanted to go on a trip. I was up for it. It was just a matter of picking where we wanted to go.

Ireland’s a place she’s always wanted to go, and I’ve heard some pretty good things about it. And after finding that round-trip airfare to Ireland was ridiculously cheap ($400), we jumped on the tickets. Fittingly, we bought our tickets on St. Patrick’s Day.

We’ll be there only five days, but we think we can see a decent chunk of the country in that time. Once again, finding up-to-date and reliable information about transportation and other services overseas is proving difficult, but we have successfully planned out our first couple of days. We’ll start off in Dublin and, after a couple of days soaking in the city, we’ll make our way across the Irish countryside to catch our return flight home from Shannon.

I must take a moment to share my appreciation for the company I work for. Most people know how difficult it can be to get a decent chunk of vacation time working in the US, but my company has been very flexible, allowing me to take just about any trip I like provided I wrap up any loose ends and give them enough notice. So if anyone from work happens to be reading this, a big thanks!

I’ve been home from Southeast Asia four months now, and it seems like I never went. Seems like a dream. It’s weird how travel memories are like that. When you’re back home, sitting at the same desk, sitting in front of the same computer, it all just seems so intangible. You know you went because you have the stories and the pictures, but it’s just so hard to believe that you were really there.

I remember the moments when I was away, sitting on a plan or in a taxi or on a boat, looking off into the distance and wondering what it would be like to be back at home, sitting at my desk in front of my computer. And here I am. Such a strange feeling making a connection with yourself through time like that.

I’ve spent the last couple of months living my regular life and working on my photos from the trip, a daunting task considering I took about 8,000 of them. If you take out the time I spent sleeping or sitting on a plane, that’s an average of one photo every 2-3 minutes for three weeks. Granted, taking multiple exposures for HDR exaggerates things a little bit, but still…

I’ve been posting my photos to Flickr, and I’ve begun adding them to my blog posts from the trip. If you click back a bit, you can see them. The photos really make the posts come alive, I think. But it’s all very time-consuming, and it will take another few months to get through them all.

Home. Got in yesterday afternoon at about 1pm. Took a marvelous shower, unpacked, and started doing laundry.

As far as the jet lag goes, I am completely wrecked. I was OK going out there, but now I feel horrible. Last night at 7pm, I had a burger and almost threw up, maybe because my body thought it was 7am and it can’t handle a Front Page burger for breakfast. And I am exhausted.

Do I have any regrets about the trip? Well, we were always on the move, and there were times when our stops felt a bit rushed. It would have been nice to have an additional one or two days at each stop to have some relaxation time. It would have been nice to see Vietnam. It would have been nice to spend more time on the beaches of Thailand, maybe going to Phuket. And it would have been nice if one of the legs of our journey were an overland route, just to mix it up a bit. But I keep coming back to the fact that we only had three weeks. You have to make trade-offs, and I think we did OK.

On one hand, I wonder if we should have relaxed a bit more and seen less, but on the other, I feel like we’ve only grazed the surface of Southeast Asia. Even though we’ve seen and done more than most backpackers we met, I feel like we just grazed the surface. There is so much to see and do in Southeast Asia that I wonder if a thorough tour is even doable in six months.

I wish there was away around the flight cancellation fees and the numerous trips to the airport we had to make to sort out our itinerary. It’s too bad Kayak and other international travel web sites doesn’t keep an accurate database of Asian airline flight schedules. It would have made all of my booking a lot easier and probably cheaper than going through travel agents. The only other thing we could have done is not book anything and wing the entire trip once we got out there, but I was scared about doing that around New Year’s, thinking some of the flights would book up quickly.

I guess the only thing I really regret is not having one of the magic mushroom shakes served on the beach during the New Year’s Party on Koh Phangan. I only heard about them the next day, so I can’t say it’s really a regret, but I think that would have pushed the already surreal experience off the charts.

Doug was a really great travel companion. Low-maintenance, flexible, and active, he was always very organized with paperwork and receipts, his clothes were always neatly rolled, and he could find anything in his bag in about three seconds. When first planning the trip, Doug was a bit hands off, but in the end, he came through by arranging our travel visas and took responsibility for navigating each city we visited.

Doug and I made things fun by playing little games along the way, like coming up with odds that the fat girl climbing up to the waterfall was American or that he would be served his noodles before I was served my rice or that my bag would come down the conveyor belt first. There were over/unders for people’s ages and for meal checks and for the cost for boom-boom in Cambodia (US$40).

In the next few days/weeks/months, I’ll be sorting through all of my photos. I’ll go back and add them to my old posts.

So weird to think that 24 hours ago, I was on the other side of the planet.

No Regrets!

From Khao San, we grabbed a taxi to the airport. Forcing the driver to use the meter, it cost us half as much as what we’ve been paying. Finally, we’re getting this down.

We took off from Bangkok in an enormous 747-400, biggest plane in the Air France fleet. It really took some effort to gain some altitude, though, almost like the plane weighed too much. I went right to sleep. Woke up for dinner served with METAL forks and knives. WTF?

The coach seating on these international flights is uncomfortable. No leg room, and you sit so upright that you’re almost leaning forward, making it impossible to sleep since your head is bobbing around like a carnival toy. And those inflatable, U-shaped neck supports that Doug and I have don’t help, since the gap of the U is in front of you and, because you are sitting so upright, your head keeps falling forward. Wearing the neck support backwards prevents your head from falling, but if you have an Adam’s apple like me, you are choked while you sleep. Still not sure if it’s worth the several hundred dollar upgrade to first class, though.

Sitting next to Doug was a young girl from Virginia. They struck up a conversation about the usual stuff like her reason for travel, what she saw, and school. Inevitably, she asked Doug when he graduated. Doug looked at me. We knew that this would be where the conversation ends. When Doug answered “1998,” the girl put her head down and went to sleep. 32 is the new 52.

The flight took us back on roughly the same route, only this time I was awake for a different part of it. Looking out the window, we flew by Odessa, Vienna, and Prague, each a spider of sulfur lights in the blackness.

By the time we got to France, I couldn’t see anything. We descended all the way into Paris without seeing any lights. Heavy fog blanketed the city. Saw the runway lights whizzing by just a moment before touching down.

We’re in Paris for about five hours, not really enough time to really do anything in Paris since a) there’s not really enough time to commute back and forth, b) it’s the middle of the night, and c) I feel like crap.

What I think was probably just a cold intensified by the air pollution of Siem Reap now plagues me with a pounding headache, coldness, and a general malaise (points for using French in France?).

I walked in slow motion to our gate, and we plopped our stuff down. I walked around trying to figure out what I could do to keep warm. My jacket and hat were packed, and it felt drafty wherever I walked. I discovered that the grill on the floor and lining the windows throughout the terminal was producing heat, so I laid down on it, rotating a few times to make sure I was cooked evenly. It was glorious. I just woke up and feel much better.

We’re about to board our last leg home to Washington. Sitting on the grill are two “arroy ma” flight attendants waiting to board the same flight. Air France knows how to recruit.

Checked out of our guest house in Siem Reap this morning, and Voy was waiting for us. Pretty interesting set-up at Bouvasy. Voy pretty much acted as our maitre d’ for our entire stay. I hardly had any interaction with the staff and never even met the owners.

Driving out to the airport, the air got noticeably better, which was one of the things that struck me about Cambodia when we first landed here. On the west side of the city and around the airport, the air seems a lot cleaner.

On our Bangkok Airways flight back to Bangkok, Doug and I sat in an emergency exit row, which is nice because it gives you get a bit of extra legroom. After we took our seats, a tall and borderline goofy Thai fellow came over and gave us some safety instructions.

“Just want to tell you that you are sitting in an emergency exit row. Want to tell you how to use door. Pull the cover off the top, and there is handle. Hold handle on top and handle at bottom and pull door. It come off. When you have door, throw it away. Then go out and run as fast as you can.”

A refreshing towel and sketchy sandwich later, and we were back in Bangkok.

We were there for a full day before our flight home, and we had our whole day planned out. First, Doug and I took a taxi to Central World, a ridiculously huge shopping complex in the center of town. While the size of the structure was impressive, the prices were not, with most retail stores charging about the same as the stores at home. The only deals in Thailand, it seems, are the knock-offs sold on the street.

We were hungry, so we decided to grab a meal at Central World before leaving. We browsed the restaurants until Doug found one he liked, called Kum Poon. Pretty yummy, but the service was unsurprisingly not wonderful.

From there, we headed to Khao San Road, the tourist mecca that we somehow missed our first time through Bangkok. Of course, part of the reason we may have missed it was because our tuk-tuk drivers “didn’t know” about it despite our constant pleas to take us to a place where all the tourists hung out. Guess they don’t make a lot of commissions there.

Khao San is filled with mostly hippies, and the stands lining both sides of the street sell mostly hippie clothes. Lots of souvenir stands sell mostly the same crap we’ve seen everywhere else, but something I don’t get tired of seeing are the stands with fresh-squeezed orange juice on ice. I love that stuff.

We were standing at a table selling international fake IDs when, in a quick burst of craziness, the table was whisked away and the people who were manning it put their innocent faces on. Just then, a couple of cops on motorcycles drove by and started shutting down other people’s stands. Are the fake IDs really illegal here? Or is setting up a table in the street illegal? I was just about to get a fake AP photographer pass, too. Oh well.

Doug and I wanted one more massage before going home, so we scoped out the scene and found one on the main strip that didn’t look too sketchy. Rather than an oil massage, we opted for a Thai massage. As it turns out, a Thai massage is more squeezing than rubbing. Not as good. When we emerged, the sky was dark, and the neon signs of Khao San were lighting the street.

We are now at a restaurant called Silk Bar, sitting outside and soaking it all in. Hippies come and go in the street in front of us, hauling backpacks and suitcases and body hair to guest houses and taxis. The bar across the street is blaring music, overpowering the poor lady in the middle of the street with a cane and a microphone and a karaoke box strapped to her back.

We’ve watched our last sunset, enjoyed our last massage, turned down our last souvenir bracelet. Doug’s tasted his last pork soup, I’ve chewed on my last spring roll, and we’ve sipped our last manly pina colada. It’s time to go home.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty lousy, with my sore throat joined by a headache and weakness. I really hope it’s not malaria or Dengue fever or something like that. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s aggravated by the disgusting air of Siem Reap.

I’m not at all a morning person, but I psyched myself up for sunrise at Angkor Wat, and it was worth it. Voy took us out there in the darkness. Walking to the wat, the moon was so bright that it cast a shadow in front of us. Not sure I’ve ever seen a moon shadow before.

A small crowd was already gathering in front of the wat, with a few photographers picking their spots for the best angle and holding their ground. Most of them didn’t have a tripod, so I was able to start knocking out pictures way before the sun came up. The sunrise was truly amazing.

From Angkor Wat, Voy took us for a ride way outside of town. Paved roads became dirt roads, souvenir stands disappeared. Working or chatting in front of their houses were the expressive, weathered faces of Cambodian mothers and fathers. Playing in the mud and riding bicycles were their cute and vibrant children. Walking alongside the road were toddlers with shirts but no pants. Makeshift houses of corrugated metal and straw. Fields of cows and water buffaloes. Lots of poverty, but with it, lots of natural beauty.

And then there were the piles of burning trash. Seems like that’s what everyone does here. And I don’t think there’s a vehicle in the country that’s ever had an emissions check. The air isn’t quite as bad away from the city, but the lingering smell of burnt plastic and vehicle exhaust still lingers. And all the dust from trucks and cars and motorcycles zooming by on the dirt roads made things even worse.

It’s no surprise to me that the life expectancy in Cambodia is 59 years. These people are literally poisoning themselves. Emissions checks, mass transit, and organized garbage collection would go a long way in this country. But I guess being a third-world country means not having any of that stuff.

After driving away from the city for what seemed like hours, we turned off the main dirt road and onto a tiny dirt road. Thinking that this might be the place where Voy takes our money and hacks us to pieces, Doug was relieved to find a big “National Park” sign next to the road.

After a moderate hike through the jungle and over some rocks, we got to a nice, little waterfall called Kbal Spean. Nearby, workers burned piles of leaves that they had raked, filling the area with smoke.

On the way back into town, we stopped at a couple more wats and then the Land Mine Museum. Founded by mine-clearer named Aki Ra, donations to the museum go directly to children who have been injured by land mines. After watching a poorly made but nonetheless touching video about Aki Ra’s life and the kids he helps, I made a small donation.

I bought myself a surgical mask as a gag gift, but I probably should have worn it today. Breathing all of that grossness and bouncing around in the back of the tuk-tuk all day long has not made me feel any better.

For dinner, we went out for some Cambodian BBQ, which consisted of raw beef, chicken, crocodile, snake, and squid. A metal dome sits on top of hot coals, and you cook your own meal at the table. Was pretty good.

Before going to bed, I flipped on the TV in our room to see what was on in Cambodia. After flipping through a bunch of English language cable channels, I stopped at what appeared to be a Cambodian movie. A young guy wearing a red leather jacket was fighting some other less attractive dudes in an awfully well-lit pool hall. His stick-fighting was not quite kung fu-calibre, but it was good enough. In the next scene, the same guy is on a motorcycle with his girlfriend sitting behind him, and he’s challenging three other dudes with their girlfriends. When one of the girls jumps up and yells something, the race begins. The nauseating editing and sped-up footage imply that the race is very unpredictable and dangerous. The motorcycles ram each other and cut each other off, and one by one, the bad guys wipe out. For each wipe-out, the girlfriends are replaced by dummies, and camera holds on each crash long enough for you to see the dummies flopping around unnaturally as they fly off the motorcycles.

Satisfied, it’s now time for bed. We fly back to Bangkok tomorrow for an afternoon before catching our flight home later in the evening.

After dinner, a drink, and light conversation with some Cambodian hookers, we waited for all the tuk-tuk drivers to gather around before announcing that we were going to pay exactly US$1 to get back to our guest house, since that is what we paid every night for the ride there. All of the drivers looked displeased and turned away, but due to the sheer number of them, we knew it was just a matter of time before someone would bite. About four seconds. We made sure that it was one of the certified drivers with a numbered vest and not some random guy looking to make a buck, and we had a deal.

Woke up this morning feeling lousy. My throat felt like I swallowed an angry puffer fish. But I wasn’t going to let it slow me down.

Voy took us back into Angkor. On the drive in, I was almost overcome by dust and the smell of burning plastic. There is definitely an air pollution problem here. At Angkor, many of the Asian tourists wear surgical masks to keep out the bad stuff. Looks silly, but perhaps it’s effective.

Continuing through Angkor, we explored a few of the other wats. Some have been partially restored, and others have been left to be overcome by the jungle. Rooms, corridors, and crumbled archways make each wat fun to hop around. I agree with Doug in that they would be absolutely perfect for a game of Paintball. We also revisited a few of the wats we saw yesterday. They certainly looked a bit different, with the sun hitting them at a different angle.

Taking you back hundreds of years when they were first built, a mystical haze covers the grounds of each wat. Is it really the ghosts of a forgotten past? Or the carcinogenic fumes of burnt plastic?

Of course, the souvenir kids were out in force again. When I told one of the girls that my name was Frank and I was from France, she gave me a bracelet for free in appreciation for what France has done for the people of Cambodia. I felt guilty for lying to her and told her she should take the bracelet back and try to sell it to someone else, but she refused. Quite mature for a young kid who was desperately trying to make a buck, I thought. Or was it just part of the game? In the end, I bought a Pepsi from her. Maybe that was her goal all along.

We’re taking it easy for the rest of the afternoon. Tomorrow will be an early start, leaving at 5am to catch a sunrise at Angkor Wat.

Voy was ready for us at 7am. We wolfed down breakfast and then headed into Angkor. It was cool and hazy, perfect for exploring wats and better than the sweltering heat tourists have to put up with at other times during the year.

The three-day pass was US$40, very expensive by Cambodian standards. They must be making a crapload of money on this place. I hope it is going to the right people and being put to good use.

The dirt road to the wat was just being paved for the first time. The first sign of mass commercialism? The drive took us past monkeys, chickens, dogs with large nipples, male workers leaning over and cutting the grass with machetes, and female workers doing their best to sweep up the scraps with brooms and sticks.

As soon as the tuk-tuk stopped in the parking lot across from Angkor Wat, we were swarmed by kids selling guidebooks, postcards, bracelets, scarves, all the usual crap.

Since we got there pretty early, there weren’t a lot of people there yet, which was great for photos. They let you bring tripods in, which is nice. Business idea: At every major attraction around the world, rent tripods to tourists at the front entrance. Tripods a pain to lug around in your baggage and around town, and if people knew they could just rent them at the attractions where they needed them most, you’d save them a lot of aggravation.

After walking through a gate, Angkor Wat revealed itself to us. Familiar with iconic photos of the structure, I was able to figure out exactly where people were standing when they got those shots. I begin snapping some of my own. I was disappointed to see scaffolding on top of Angkor Wat, but after taking another look and some older photos, it looks like that scaffolding has been there for years.

Angkor Wat has a certain beauty to it, for sure. The architecture is impressive, but it’s the intricate details like decorated columns and carved Buddha images that make you stop and look. The ruins reminded me a lot of Peru’s Machu Picchu, although these are a little bit older. The stonework is old, worn (especially on the spots where people frequently step), and covered with lichen.

And it’s massive. It took us several hours to walk around the whole thing. Of course, much of that time was spent waiting for tourists to get out of the way so I could snap my photos.

The exit to the left of the wat took you past perhaps the most aggressive souvenir hawkers we’d seen the whole trip. More of the same crap.

“Hello, sir! Look, sir! Cold drink for you!” the mothers would call from their stands, while their cute but annoying kids ran over and danced around us, shoving t-shirts and bracelets and carved elephants and guide books in our faces.

“Sir, you buy now!”

“No, thanks.”

“OK, you buy from me.”

“No, thanks.”

“Good price for you, sir.”

“No, thanks.”

“Discount for you!”

“No, thanks.”

“Look, sir. Good book for you.”

“No, thanks.”

“Look, sir. Scarf for you. Get scarf for girlfriend.”

“No, thanks.”

If you keep walking, the kids fall off one by one, but they are replaced by new kids offering the exact same stuff and saying the exact same things as the kids before. It’s absurd.

Some of these kids are pretty smart. Some of pull your heartstrings by being cute and saying they have not had a sale all day. Others will ask for your name and then remember you minutes or hours later in an attempt to make the sale a bit more personal. Still others will ask you where you’re from and say that you must buy something from them if they can name your country’s capital. I thought I had one girl when I told her I was from Czechoslovakia, but she was quick with a response.

“If I tell you capital of Czech Republic or Slovakia, will you buy something from me?”

If you catch their interest and distract them from selling for just a moment, they are actually quite capable of conversation and humor. But they are not deterred for long.

The good thing is that I don’t think they’re allowed to come inside the wats. Some of them push it, but they stay out for the most part. It’s the walk to the wat and back to the tuk-tuk when you’re caught in the crossfire. Ignoring them is really the only way to deal with them, but pointing my camera at them is sometimes an effective repellent.

I was surprised to learn that Angkor is filled with many wats, each with similar stonework, repeated floor plans, and narrow steps that force you to go up or down slowly and with your feet sideways. In Voy’s tuk-tuk, we started knocking them off our list. He’d drop us off, and we’d get out, zip past the swarming souvenir kids, walk past the band of land mine victims playing music with their traditional Khmer instruments, hop around the wat, take some photos, walk past the band of land mine victims playing music with their traditional Khmer instruments, zip past the swarming souvenir kids, get back into the tuk-tuk, and go to the next one.

Along with the classic beauty of Angkor Wat, the architecture of Bayon and the twisted roots covering Ta Prohm were my favorites.

I am taking a veritable crapload of photos. When we stopped for lunch, I realized that my camera’s memory cards were almost full and both of my rechargeable camera batteries were dead. This required a trip out of Angkor and back to the guest house to empty my cards and charge up my batteries. Bit of an inconvenience, but a necessary one. I’m not going to look at all these beautiful wats if I can’t photograph them. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way. Lots of guys are walking around with cameras and lenses that put mine to shame. My D300 is having feelings of inadequacy.

After a few more wats, we joined hordes of other tourists atop Phnom Bakheng for the sunset. Like the night before, the sun glowed red and then disappeared into the haze before touching the horizon. I am beginning to realize the haze is more like smog and that there’s actually a pretty bad air pollution problem here.

We called it a day and headed back to the guest house to clean up. Then, off to Pub Street for dinner and drinks. And that’s where we are now.

Doug and I are sitting at a restaurant called Le Tigre de Papier. It’s one of many on Pub Street here in Siem Reap that offer free wifi with a meal. Just ordered penne al salmone, and we are sipping (in a manly way) the best pina coladas we’ve had all trip. So surreal that I am sitting outside at a restaurant in Cambodia with my laptop and I am online.

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today. Some kind of throat/nose thing. Malaria? Dengue fever? Too much rice? Air pollution? Maybe a good night’s sleep will help.

Just came back from Pub Street. Seems like a pretty nice little strip of bars. First a pretty good Khmer dinner and then a drink at “Angkor What?”, a popular bar on the strip.

Cambodia is definitely the cheapest place we’ve been. The local currency, the riel, is so unstable and worthless that it’s hardly used. Instead, prices everywhere are quoted in US dollars. Meals cost about US$3 and a rum & coke costs US$1.50. Walking up and down the strip, Doug was offered boom-boom and yum-yum by a woman giving off the pimp vibe. He did not get a price for boom-boom, but yum-yum was US$30, and that included a massage.

The tuk-tuk drivers will swarm to you like flies to shit as soon as you get out of another tuk-tuk. They hover outside restaurants, asking you as soon as you step outside. They will ask you if you want one even if they just saw you turn another driver down. Relentless.

We picked a place to eat and people-watch. Like all the other restaurants in Southeast Asia, the menu was ridiculously huge and unorganized. Bigger is not better. We settled on some more Khmer food, and it was pretty tasty.

When it was time to go, we started talking to the drivers. Our ride form the guest house to Pub Street cost us US$1, so we were determined to pay the same to come home. The drivers wanted $2, then $1.50. Then they wanted to talk to us about how fair the price was, and then they started talking to us about how it was late and it cost more than $1 when it’s late. All BS. With 18 drivers behind them wanting our business, they had no ground to stand on.

Doug and I committed to finding a driver who wasn’t annoying and would take us for US$1. Finally, one of them reluctantly accepted. When we arrived at the guest house, I gave the driver an extra $1 tip as a kind of thank you for not being annoying. The expression on his face was priceless. Doug and I are determined to make the tuk-tuk experience a little better for future travelers to Southeast Asia.

Doug is now trying to get a gecko out of the room by smacking on the door with a remote control. Good night.