Home in San Diego

Tuesday, December 19

I got home late last nite after flying back on Thai Airways.
The BKK-LAX flight got in an hour early after being aided by big tailwinds...only 13 1/2 hours.
But LAX was a mess transfering luggage thru customs and connecting to United Express to San Diego.....new TSA procedures had inadequate staffed personnel to handle them.
Plan is to get a month's worth of mail at the post office today and re-program my brain to the new time zone.

Saturday, December 16

Well, I am not bored yet in Pattaya. Same routine with a variation today. Went to an island off the coast that was a terrific change of pace, but not too much of a change. Unfortunately, I was stoopid enough to leave my camera's SD card in my computer's card reader back at the hotel room. So when I took out my camera to take the first of several great photos, I noted the empty card slot and was very pissed.

I took a ferry boat for a 40 minute ride to the island of Koh Lan. Then jumped on the back of a motorbike for a 10 minute ride to Monkey Beach. I spent 3 hours eating lunch, reading, and swimming in the nice water. Got back around 5:30.

One more full day here and then on Monday I catch a car to the airport for a 7:20 pm evening flight back to usa.

Relaxing in Pattaya

Thursday morning, December 14

My last week in South East Asia is at the Marriott Resort & Spa in Pattaya, Thailand.

Pattaya is a beach town 2 hours southeast of Bangkok populated with assorted characters. It was popular with American GIs on leave 35 years ago and it has grown to the largest beach resort in Asia. It has local Thais on holiday, as well as other Asians especially Japanese and Koreans on tour, and a slew of expatriates living here for various reasons......cheap retirement, easy sex and alcohol, etc. There are many Brits, Russians and Germans as well as some Americans.

My day here consists of late wake-up, going to the hotel gym for 30+ minutes on the exercise bike and some light free weights, then lunch and then going to the beach where I rent a chair under the umbrellas, get a massage and get served refreshments. Then back to the hotel for a swim in the pool and nap. And then dinner and sampling the nitelife. So far, I'm not bored but there are about 15 golf courses near Pattaya that are inexpensive if I want. Golf is extremely popular in Thailand even before Tiger Woods and his Thai mother.

A panorama of the beach here (click to enlarge) :


A view from my beach chair:


And a Thai beach massage boy attending to a customer:
I'm not sure whether I will add another post, since life is very similar each day. I return on Monday.

Kanchanaburi: River Kwai and the Tiger Temple

Sunday Evening, December 10

I have been taking it easy the past 2 days after returning to Bangkok. I slept late, went to the hotel gym. And in the afternoon on Friday, I went to a movie. On Saturday afternoon I went to visit the Panthip Plaza which is a 6 floor shopping mall dedicated to selling digital and computer items....a great place to watch people. Last nite I met Cousin Jean Walzer again for dinner and we went to a small French restaurant....Le Bouchon.....a favorite of hers that is tucked away in the middle of a notorious redlight district.


Today, I went with a guide and driver to Kanchanaburi which is about 135km northwest of Bangkok. It is along the route of the Death Railway, the 415km WWII supply route the Japanese tried to establish from Bangkok to Burma using forced labor of 30,000 Allied POWs and 200,000 local impressed laborers from China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia. Of these, 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 laborers died of disease and starvation.
A bridge along this route was made famous by the movie "The Bridge Over the River Kwai."

We visited the site of the bridge, which is a pretty riverside tourist trap....I bought a tee-shirt. We also ate a good lunch at a floating restaurant:

The area is memorialized by a well kept cemetery of prisoner graves:

As well there is a museum about the working conditions and hardships of the laborers called the JEATH Museum. JEATH stands for the countries involved: Japan, England, America and Australia, Thailand, and Holland. It is a very solemn experience.

After lunch we took a half hour long-tailed boat ride down the river. This is a photo of a chinese-type pagoda on the riverside:


In the afternoon we stopped at the Tiger Temple with started as a Buddhist monastery, and has evolved into an animal sanctuary and now a petting zoo of sorts. For a small donation you may have your picture taken among the tigers that they have there:

It is under fairly controlled circumstances with an experienced Monk there to keep the tigers docile (although one wonders if they are actually drugged) and strict rules as you are led by hand through the area and you must leave any hats outside and you can't wear a bright colored shirt. They claim that no injuries have been incurred by tourists.


Tomorrow I go down to the beach resort of Pattaya for a week to end the trip.

Angkor Wat

Friday morning, December 8

I flew back to Bangkok yesterday afternoon. This the entry about my last day in the Angkor area.


Angkor Wat is the most famous and most photographed ruin. It is also on the Cambodian flag as a symbol of the former grandeur of this recently war troubled country. It was built over 30 years in the early to mid 12th century. The central temple tower is about 65 meters (200 feet) high and the outer wall is 1300 x 1500 meters. It is surrounded by a wide moat. And has extensive bas-relief carvings. There are 3-levels and an outer wall.

The central temple tower:
The climb up the central tower:

An example of the bas relief carving:
The moat surrounding the entire Ankgor Wat complex:



A lily pond in the extensive front courtyard lawn:

In the afternoon we visited a couple of more ruins
All of these buildings in Angkor were temple complexes used by priests and monks and built using slave labor by the various kings over 3+ centuries. The houses of the common people living here in the capital city were built of wood and have decomposed and disappeared over the years. At it's peak it is believed that almost a million people lived here.

During the 13th century the Thai people from the west invaded and caused the abandonment of this area and the capital moved south to the Phnom Penh area. The jungle invaded and it was rediscovered in 1860.



Here's a picture of my guide and the driver with "our" car during the last 3 1/2 days in Siem Reap/Angkor area:

Angkor

Later Tuesday evening, December 4

After a lunch break, we went back to the Angkor area to visit a couple of ruins. As you can see by this picture of elephant sculptures, the decorations can be quite intricate around these temples:

Ta Prohm is a temple ruin that illustrates how these structures were taken over by the forest after being abandoned in the 13th century. It was decided to leave the trees intact when restoring the area to let people see how it was rediscovered in the mid-19th century.

Bayon in Angkor Thom that is a late 12th century temple that has 4 smiling faces facing in all four directions on each of about 25 towers. You can imagine the shock of the explorers on seeing these figures when they appeared as they they worked their way thru the jungle.


Tomorrow we spend the day at Angkor Wat.

Ton Le Sap Lake

Tuesday Evening, December 5

This morning we drove out to the largest freshwater lake in Asia…Ton Le Sap Lake…about 15km south of Siem Reap. The edges and depth of this lake vary greatly throughout the year as it rises and falls with the monsoon seasons. The lake area can vary up to 5 times from dry to wet seasons. Therefore the folks who live there have houses that either are built on stilts or are floating. It has 10% of the country’s population living on it and its commercial fish industry is important to most of South East Asia. Today the lake level was down about 2 meters from its maximum a couple of months ago in late October.

This is typical of the floating houses and the boats used to navigate around:

Sometimes the kid has to come with you:
But don't let children...or the dog wander away or they may not come back:

These crocodiles inhabit this lake...these were at a fish farm exhibit.


Apparently about half the people on the lake are Vietnamese and half Cambodian. The Vietnamese came here after their Army invaded and rescued Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge who killed over a million Cambodians:



All in a days work on the lake:

This afternoon we went back to the Angkor ruins and visited the “jungle temple” (Ta Prohm), so called because it has been left in the condition it was found 150 years ago by the French explorers. And then to Bayon, with it’s inscrutable smiling faces. This will follow in another entry.

Angkor

Monday Evening, December 4

Caught an airplane from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap at 8am…a 40 minute flight…and was met by my guide and driver on arrival.

Siem Reap is a fast growing city of 35,000 people at the center of the Angkor area which has become a major tourist attraction in the last 5-6 years. This was the capital of the Khmer Empire from the 9^th to 13^th centuries. This was the most dominant civilization and culture of the time in South East Asia extending over the present area of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and parts of Burma and Vietnam. It is strewn with temples, housing, moats and irrigation systems. It was conquered by the Siamese in the late 13^th century and the Khmer capital was moved south near Phnom Penh. The buildings of Angkor were deserted to be reclaimed by the forest. They were rediscovered by a French archeologist in the 1850’s and have been reclaimed and restored piecemeal by the French and local authorities.

We are exploring these ruins in chronological order and today visited early ruins of the 9^th and 10^th centuries. They evolved form brick and stucco to sandstone.And they primarily celebrate Hindu Gods. Buddhism was introduced to the area by Khmer kings in the 12^th century and then the decorations evolved to celebrate the Buddha and his story.

This photo is to prove I was on the trip. Taken by my guide at one of the ruins leaning on a sandstone lion. But there are no real lions in Cambodia. only tigers.

The next pic is at a ruin that has sculptures of elephants at the corners of each level:
This was taken at Angkor Artisans, a non-profit organization that takes in poor youth and teaches variuous arty skills and then places them in jobs. Many of the kids are disabled, a large number are deaf. This girl is creating carved and painted wooden figures:

The next 2 pictures show some of the kids that are around the temple ruins, waiting for tourists hoping to sell them books, post cards and other trinkets:

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Sunday nite, December 2

Today, I flew to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to embark on a 5-day, 4-nite tour of the country including 3 days at Ankgor Wat, the 1,000 year old complex of cities and temples of ancient Khmer civilization.

This country is definitely 3rd world. Motorbikes are the main form of transportation for all ages. In fact it often acts as the family car. The most I saw on one motobike was 5 people....Dad, Mom and the 3 kids..but they sped by before I could get a photo. But here's a snap of 4 on a bike.
Here is a typical traffic scene (except for the Land Rover):

And there are a lot of kids here, most of whom are begging. It's hard to know who is legit, as they are all great at looking pitiful and vulnerable. My guide said to just ignore them. If you are taken by one and hand it a dollar, the word is spread to the others and you are surrounded by an entourage. Of course the problem is many of them obviosly need help.
An some are obviously set by their family with their baby sister in arms.
They are at every tourist site in town...and I am told it will be worse at Angkor. The government is pretty ineffective at working for it's people so there are a lot of helpless poor.
The worst is the beggars who have missing limbs due to old, leftover mines from the Khmer Rouge-Vietnam war days of the late sixties.
Of course some of the street kids are just happy and cute.
But eventually they get around to asking you for a dollar.

By the way there are 2 currencies here...the Cambodian Riel and the US Dollar. But only 1,5, 10 and occasionally 20 dollar bills.....they give change in riels if you need coins. 1 USD = 4,200 riels.

After being picked up at the Airport and paying the $20 tourist visa fee, we went to the National Museum, the Wat Phnom, and the Royal Palace and a rickshaw ride along the Mekong River front.
A beautiful building on the Royal Palace grounds:


And a Temple on the Royal Palace grounds:
And the Mekong River Waterfront on a Sunday afternoon:
Tomorrow at 8AM I take the 45 minute flight to Siem Reap and 3 days at Angkor.

Hua Hin

Sunday morning, December 3

Yesterday, I arranged a driver and guide to do a day trip to Hua Hin- a beach area that was and is a favorite area for the royal family for the last 150 years. It has also involved into a nice beach area for long resort stays or for weekend excursions from Bangkok to escape the hot, polluted city.
On the way we stopped in Petchaburi to visit the hilltop palace built by King Rama V. It is in the classic Thai style of architecture. The grounds are thickly filled with trees and plants. And there are hundreds of monkeys all over the grounds, begging for food.
Then we stopped at the Palace built by Rama VI which is in a classic European palace style.

Then we drove into the resort of Hua Hin proper where we ate a late lunch at a seaside restaurant built over the water. We had terrific seafood cooked in Thai style.....fried rice with shrimp with fish sauce; fried cottonfish with mango sauce; and large shrimp rolled with bacon in a very good sauce of some sort. And ice cream for dessert.

After we walked along the beach. Here it is quiet with beautiful water and dotted with resort hotels. As opposed to Pattaya where it is noisy & crazy, with questionable sea water and packed with hotels. But there is a lot more to do in Pattaya other than laze by the pool or water.

Friday, December 1

Yesterday was a camera free day as well. I got up late in the morning and went to explore Siam Square which is made up of huge shopping malls. I ate lunch at the food court there which has an amazing selection of varieties including USA fast food brands…McDonalds, Burger King, KFC & Subway….. as well as local Thai favorites and other asian foods such as Japanese and Chinese. I viewed the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, BMW and Porsche showrooms. I only bought a pair of fast drying nylon hiking cargo mid-length shorts as I am sweating through the 2 pair of shorts that I brought.

Then I went back to the hotel and before dinner had a 90 minute Thai massage which was terrific, relaxing and refreshing.

Today, I took the Skytrain to the river and hopped on the boat to visit the National Museum. This also required a walk through some interesting neighborhood sidewalks that were filled with tourists and hawkers of various items with people bargaining and inspecting the merchandise looking for fakes. After the Museum I got a Tuk-tuk ride to go back to the boat pier to eat a late lunch at a restaurant I remembered I liked from last year. However the driver didn’t want to take me to that pier and took me to the pier 2 stops further up the river where there, indeed, was a boat pier but no restaurant. Tuk-tuk drivers often take you where they want you to go, not where you want to go. Luckily he didn’t take me to a tailor or gem shop. So I finally got lunch and am relaxing at the hotel until dinnertime….late at about 9pm.

Photos of today will follow if I can find a faster internet access....

Here they are:

First some young Monks on the public riverboat:
A longtailed boat speeding up the Chao Phraya River:

And a child of a vendor. The children were everywhere as the vendors apparently brought them with them:

A vendor who has set up her wares to sell to passers by: