No Regrets!

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.