Ian and Nisha's Asian Adventure

Thai Train Guide

2008-02-13T07:31:00.005-05:00

Hopefully my Indian Train Guide will be useful to other travelers, I noticed that it is already #2 on google, so it is pretty easy to find. With that in mind, I figured I might share some wisdom about long distance transport in Thailand, where the bus and train are both important. This is a little better documented in Lonely Planet, but I still feel like more information is better, I certainly would have liked to have access to more before I left. Anyway, here is my Thai Train Guide, the Bus Guide will be later.

THAI TRAINS

CLASSES

We took two classes. We only took two trains, both overnight, so I cannot vouch for how the regular chair classes would be during the day, or at night. The two classes we took were both quite nice. One thing is that Thailand works on a narrow gauge rail system, so all cars a quite a bit narrower then in India, or on most train systems, the configurations reflect that.

1st Class Sleeper

In this class you get your own private room with 2 bunk beds. Although the privacy is nice, this is not the orient express or anything like that. The rail cars were clean enough, but not immaculate, and the room is pretty small. Everyone on our car to Chiang Mai was a tourist, including some drunken brits who brought a bucket full of beer (they were actually not particularly loud or anything). One nice thing about Thai Railways is that they make up your bed for you. Around bed time in the evening the conductor will start working the hallway asking if you want your beds made for the night. When you grab him he will convert your room from daytime configuration to bunk beds and make your bed with clean sheets, very nice. In the morning they convert your room back to daytime configuration.

Another consideration is that, as opposed to some train systems, 1st class is only 50% or so more then 2nd class, rather then 100% or so as you sometimes see on other rail systems. I still think 2nd class is a much better deal, but if you have to take 1st class it is not a killer.

2nd Class Sleeper

This is very nice as well, better then anything, except maybe 1st class, in India. It is a setup where on each side of the aisle of the car there are two single seats that face each other with a table in the middle, in daytime configuration. At night it turns into bunks, two high where the two seats are. The nice thing is that each bed is almost like a little pod, with a nice large mattress and a private curtain. This would be a much nicer setup for a solo traveler then in India. As with 1st Class, they come and make your bed at night and take your bed apart in the morning. On our train from Chiang Mai the vast majority of people in this class were also tourists.

FINDING YOUR TRAIN

This is a whole lot easier then India, there are only 4 main lines and they all radiate from Bangkok. The railway website has all the information you need. The only thing that I would keep in mind is that a few of the trains are Rapid (RAP) or Ordinary (ORD), I am pretty sure that these do not have sleeper cars. The ones most tourists take are the overnight trains that go to Chiang Mai and to the beach areas down south. These are the Express (EXP) and Special Express (SP EXP) trains, that have numbers less then 100.

BUYING A TICKET

This is the thing that is a pain in Thailand. The trains seem to book up very early, so you need to try to get a ticket as far ahead of time as you can. I was able to buy a ticket one day ahead of time to Chiang Mai, but there was no 2nd class left and I got the last 1st class on any of the evening trains that night. Going back to Bangkok, I was several days ahead of time, but there were still only a couple of 2nd class berths on one train.

As far as where to buy the ticket, this seems pretty easy. On the way to Chiang Mai I just went to the station in Ayutthaya (a little north of Bangkok, where we were leaving from). There was a desk in the station for advance tickets with a very nice guy who sold me the tickets. In Chiang Mai I used a travel agent. This worked fine as well, I got legit tickets for only a small fee. The nice thing about this is that quite a few of the Thai train stations are not in the middle of town, so it can be a lot easier not to have to take a tuk-tuk all the way out to the train station just to get the ticket.

AT THE STATION

Our experience at the train station was very easy. The stations are not that big and there was plenty of signage and information as to where the trains are and when they are expected to arrive or leave. You do not need to show any tickets to get on the platform, they are checked on the train. They did not have much in the way of concessions at the train stations I was at. At least there were generally some food stalls and convenience store nearby. You do not really need any food for the train, since they have plenty of stuff to sell. Keep in mind however that the food on the train is quite expensive (by Thai standards), so if you are a budget traveler it is quite a bit cheaper to bring something with you from the stalls or the convenience store.

ON THE TRAIN

As I explained before, the attendants are quite attentive and make your bed in the evening and take it apart in the morning. Other then that things are pretty obvious. They do also have a person who works for the catering service who roams the train in the evening, selling dinner (if the train leaves before dinner time), beer and taking orders for breakfast the next morning. The food is OK, nothing special, but acceptable. The problem is that it is very expensive. My recollection is that a meal is around 200 Baht and a beer was more then 100 Baht, which is quite exorbitant in Thailand. After I found this out I brought a collection of convenience store and stall food and drinks on the train, saving quite a bit of money in the process.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

One thing I wanted to mention, as it worked out quite well for us, is that there is a station next to the old Don Muang airport North of Bangkok. This is nice because we were able to hook up a trip where we traveled all the way from Chaing Mai to Surat Thani leaving in the evening and arriving before lunch the next day, without having to buy two plane tickets, or pay the expensive fares for the direct flight. It was quite easy to get the evening train from Chiang Mai, get off at Don Muang, walk the 20 minutes over to the one terminal of the airport that is still open, and catch a morning flight to southern Thailand. A good way to go, and saves a night in a hotel. The walk to the terminal is kind of freaky however, since the part of the airport near the station is closed down, just walk about 20 minutes south along the old airport terminal buildings and you will reach the open domestic terminal.

Indian Train Guide

2008-02-09T19:21:00.002-05:00

Before we left for India we knew that we would need to take the train as one of our major forms of transportation. However, despite reading up on the way the system works in the Lonely Planet and on the Internet, I found that I still had to figure out a lot of how to work the system on the way. With that in mind I offer my guide to how to take the train in India. I obviously do not guarantee any information to be current or correct, but if you are planning on going to India I think that this post will be very useful. Also, this guide that already exists is the best one available, so I would recommend reading it as well.

INTRODUCTION

If you are travelling in India you really owe it to yourself to take the train at least once. It is crowded, the trains are often late and it is very confusing, but it is also the quintessential Indian travel experience. It is how most Indians get around the country, and is a good way to experience everyday life. It is also vastly superior to any form of road transportation, bus or even private car. A car may be slightly more comfortable, but the bumps, curves and hair raising driving conditions make the ride a lot less relaxing. A flight is better, but taking the overnight trains is a great way to save money on hotel rooms and quite a bit cheaper.

CLASSES

There is really only 4 classes that you need to be concerned with on Indian Railways.

AC Chair Car - This exists only Shatabi Express day trains. It is the standard recline chair setup that you are used to on Amtrak or any European train. This is the only class where free food is served.

2AC or 2 Tier Air Con - This is the one that most people should take. It has air conditioned cars (sometimes a little too air conditioned), and is relatively clean (keep in mind this is India however). The car is separated into 6 bunk sections, 2 of the beds are on one side of the train, one above the other, lying parallel to the direction of the train. Then there is the hallway, then there is an area with 4 bunks, one on top of the other, on opposite walls, lying perpendicular to the train. At night curtains separate the 2 beds on the side from the hallway and the 4 beds from the hallway. During the day the bottom beds are used as seats for the 2 people in the bunks on that wall. Linens are provided, but you make the beds. Your cabin mates will be middle class Indian businessman types and some western travellers, depending on what the route is. We travelled this class on all overnight trains and we always got a very good nights sleep. The prime berths are the bottom bunks not on the side. The side bunks may also be good if you are travelling solo, as you have complete privacy when the curtains are drawn, rather then sharing the area behind the curtain with the other 3 people on the wider side.

3AC or 3 Tier Air Con - Same as 2AC but with 6 beds where there are 4 on the wide side. The beds are 3 layer bunks rather then two. We never travelled in this class, because it was not that much cheaper then 2AC, but it seemed like it would be fine as well.

Sleeper - Same setup as 3AC but with no AC. Dirtier cars as well. This has the open barred windows that you have probably seen in classic Indian train photos. We took this a lot during the day, as it was never crowded during the day and the fresh air can be quite pleasant. It is also much cheaper, so why not save money during the day.

SCHEDULES AND AVAILABILITY

One of the hardest things to do in the Indian train system is figure out what train to take. There is no Internet application that figures out the most efficient route, including transfers, from one place to another. Rather, the Indian Railways site will only tell you if a train exists from one distinct station to another. This is really not as big a deal as you would think, since it would be very difficult to ever pull off an Indian railways journey with transfers. For most people there will always be a train that goes from any common origin to the next logical destination. If it is a place where there is no train, then you might need to take a bus. Another good way of figuring out where you might need to route your trip through is to look at a map, like in Lonely Planet, that has the railway routes on it. By looking at where the railways go you can figure out where you would probably have to connect.

The most impotent resource for finding your train is the Indian Railways website, it is very poorly designed, but does have a lot of useful info on it. There are two primary sections of interest both accessible from clicking on the top, "Trains between imp. stations", which has drop down boxes of all major stations (FYI. there is no station for Goa it is called Madgoan), and "Train/Fare Accommodation", which can look up any station in the Indian Railways network. On this page first you type in part of the station name, and then you will get drop down boxes of stations that match what you put in. The resulting information is the same, it is just easier to use the first if you are going to be using major stations. Please note that some cities have many major stations, so if there is no train between two places that obviously should have one, look for another station in the same city. Such as, if you put in New Delhi and Agra City you will get no trains, that is because the main station in Agra is called Agra Cantonment (AGRA CANTT). Sometimes you may have to refer to the Lonely Planet, since that is the only place you are going to find out things like that the main train station in Kolkata is called Howrah.

Once you have found your two stations, you pick your class and day and hit the button. The class is not totally impotent, I usually pick 2AC for a night train and sleeper for a day train. They show you a lot of the other classes too, so you do not necessarily have to pick the class you want. The next page shows the trains that run on the day you want to go. In order to find out how many seats are on any given train, click the radio button next to it and hit the "Get Availability" button. The screen you get show the availability in the class you selected earlier (as well as one class down) for the 6 days starting on the day you picked.

Now we get to the tricky subject of the different types of availability. In my experience there were 3 different statuses that a train would be in:

AVAILABLE - Obviously this is the best, it means there are seats still available. If you go to an advance ticket window they should be able to give you a ticket with a seat number on it.

RAC - Reservations Against Cancellations - I was never completely clear about this, but my understanding it that it means that they cannot give you an actual seat at this time, but you will have a seat on the train.

WL - Waitlist - This means that there are not enough seats right now, and you are buying a seat betting that others will cancel. This sounds really bad, but for some reason, there are always a lot of cancellations on an Indian train. I was told by several locals and family members that a number less then 10 in 2AC means that you are pretty much certain to get a seat. I would assume that number would be quite a bit higher in a class like sleeper, since there are a lot more cars and seats in sleeper then in 2 or 3 AC. We never had a WL ticket not work out, but according to the sign on the wall in the station you should be able to return your WL ticket, if a seat did not open up, and get your money back.

Little sidebar here...

If you do buy a RAC or Waitlist ticket there are two ways that you can find out what seat you are assigned to, or if you have a seat at all. The first is to go to the Indian Railways website and click on the link at the top that says "Passenger/PNR Status". On the resulting screen enter in the PNR number that is printed on the top of your ticket. The website will show you the current status of your ticket and your seat, if you have moved up on the list enough to get one. The second method is more basic. When you go to the train station there will be big dot matrix passenger manifests for every train tacked to a big board, usually around track 1. Look on these sheet for your train and class and you should find your name, and the name of everyone else on the train with a seat. This is the final authority on where you are sitting. They also sometimes stick these sheets to the side of the actual rail car and the conductor will always have a copy, which is what he uses to figure out what seats are empty.

Sidebar over, back to the website.

One additional important thing to use in this section of the website. Please note on the screen where you pick your train there is a box that says "General Quota". When you search under the General Quota you are looking at the seats that anyone can buy, you should run your search this way first. Luckily for non-Indians there is also a "Foreign Tourist Quota". These are seats that are only sold to people who have a foreign passport and are on a tourist visa (although probably any westerner will have no problem getting a ticket). In order to search for these change that box to "Foreign Tourist Quota" before you click "Get Availability".

I know these tickets sound great, but as with all things Indian, there is a catch. First of all, there are not foreign tourist tickets on all trains, only ones between major tourist destinations. Second, as near as I could tell, you can only buy these tickets at the special places for foreign tourists to buy tickets that exist at major (like Delhi, Mumbai, etc.) stations. The lonely planet can help you out if you want to find out if there is a special foreign ticket area in the city you are in. Basically, don't expect to just stroll up to a window at any one horse town along the line and be able to purchase a foreign tourist ticket. Also, the foreign tourist windows sell regular tickets as well, so even if there are only regular tickets and not foreign tourist tickets you can still go to the foreign tourist area.

One other scam to note here, which I saw only in Delhi, was that we were trying to walk into the train station to get to the foreign tourist ticket area and a man stuck his arm in front of me and asked for my ticket. He then tried to convince me that I needed a ticket to get in the station, and to go with him to an office (certainly his friends) to buy one. This is just a scam, there is no area of an Indian train station that you need a ticket to access, and most tickets are sold inside. The only place that anyone legitimate will ask to see you ticket is on the train.

BUYING A TICKET

Now that you have figured out what trains you are interested in, and if there are seats remaining (or a reasonable number on the waitlist) it is time to buy your ticket. For clarity sake I will separate this in to two sections, advance and day of tickets, as they are two very different systems.

Advance Tickets:

The line is a little uncertain to me, but supposedly as long as your are 24 hours before the train leaves you can buy an advance ticket. If you are in a big tourist destination, then your best move is to go to the foreign tourist area to buy tickets. The Lonely Planet can tell you where this is. I went to two of these, the one at New Delhi station is upstairs in a large office. In Mumbai CST (formerly Victora) it is a special window in the upstairs ticket window area. They have some system in Mumbai where an unruly mob of people get numbers for the windows upstairs in a chaotic pen downstairs, but if you are a tourist, just go upstairs, you just queue up at the window. These are the best places to buy tickets because the people who work there speak English and they sell foreign tourist tickets (if available).

If you are in a city, or major population center, that does not have a special foreign tourist area, then they will at least usually have a designated advance ticket area that is used by the locals as well. Once again, Lonely Planet can tell you where this is. Also, for those in Goa, there is one of these offices in the main bus terminal in Panjim, which is convenient since the train does not run by the coast. From my experience these windows usually have a system where you get a number and then they call you to a window, so it is not a total madhouse from a queueing prospective. These are OK, they just might now speak as good English, and as far as I know they cannot sell foreign tourist tickets.

I never had to do this, but if you are in a out of the way place, that does not have any of the above mentioned offices, then I am pretty sure that you just head up to the regular ticket window. There has to be some system to buy advance tickets in these places, so I assume this is it. Every time I bought tickets from the regular window it was on the day of the train, which is a different deal.

Another, quite reasonable, option is to pay someone else to do the leg work for you. Most backpacker type hotels and travel offices should be able to get a train ticket for you, probably for a 50 or so rupee surcharge. One catch is they will not be able to get you foreign tourist tickets. We did this once and it worked out fine. One caveat I would add is that it might be a better idea to do once you know what a real Indian train ticket looks like, so you might want to think about buying your own first. If you have not already seen one, they are printed on a dot-matrix printer on thin 1980's line feed computer paper forms and are about 8 inches by 3 inches. I would look at anything else with suspicion.

Day of Train Tickets:

If you cannot get tickets ahead of time for the train, you can get tickets at the regular window the day of the train. The thing about this is that you cannot get a seat reservation the day of the train.

The reason for this seemed to be that while the train is still more then a day in the future, the seat reservations are managed by the computer system and thus can be given out to people who want tickets. On the day that the train is leaving they print up these big passenger manifests that have the names of everyone on the train, as well as assigning all the people in RAC and Waitlist statuses to a seat, if they have one. Once these lists are printed up they are posted at all the train stations, as well as one that the train conductor maintains as a master copy, where he can move around people or put people in different classes as he sees fit. Thus, after these manifests are printed there are no more seat reservations.

We had two different experiences buying day of train tickets. Several times we took trains for a fairly short (less then 5 hour) ride in the middle of the day. When doing this I just went to the regular window and asked for a sleeper ticket to my destination (I was told I could not buy a ticket for any class higher at that time). They handed me a little printed chit that had the two station names on it, but no specific train or seat. So, when the train arrived we just hopped on and took a seat in a sleeper car. The thing is that the sleeper cars in the middle of the day were always nearly empty, I assume because most Indians do not want to pay for the relative luxury of sleeper during the day when they could travel in a lower class. So, we just gabbed an empty seat, the conductor came to take our ticket and everything was fine. Also, sleeper is perfectly comfortable in the middle of the day, all the windows are open so there is plenty of air.

One other time we had to take a night train from Varkala to Chennai without reservations. Before we went to the station I checked the loads on the Internet and found that there were two trains, one left 2 hours earlier, but had tones of extra space in 2AC. The later train was full. With this information, we decided to take the earlier train, and attempt to upgrade on the train. This time at the station I was told that I could only by unreserved 2nd class tickets (the lowest class). I think the reason I was not able to by sleeper at the window like before was probably due to it being an overnight train. So, we just got on the train and sat in 2 empty seats in 2AC. When the conductor came by we asked if there was room in 2AC, which there was, so he just took the difference in the fares (it cost 1000 rupees more a piece to go from 2nd class to 2AC, but believe me it is worth it) and assigned us seats in 2AC. So, the moral of the story is that it is possible to upgrade on the train, but you are probably best off making sure that there are plenty of extra seats, unless you are happy squeezed in the lowest possible class on an Indian train.

Also, keep in mind that if you do buy day of tickets you will have to deal with an Indian ticket queue. These things are a full contact sport, so don't go in without the right attitude. People will press up against you in ways that are pretty uncomfortable for a foreigner, you just need to get used to the fact that being in constant physical contact with other, often sweaty, people in a queue is the norm in India. Also, when you get up to the window people will try to reach around you with their money and hand it to the agent. Use your large western body and elbows to shield the area in front of the window, and have enough rupees in your hand so you can quickly shove them in front of the person who sells the tickets.

GOING TO THE STATION AND GETTING ON THE TRAIN

So now comes the big day and you are ready to get on the train. An Indian train station is an experience like few others. They are dirty, chaotic, confusing and often full of people who want your money (especially in big tourist areas). The layout is usually the same everywhere. There is a building with a central lobby where they sell tickets, and sometimes have some food vendors. Then there will be between 2 and 15 tracks (depending on if you are in a big city or a small town). There will be island platforms off in the middle of the tracks that are connected to the main building via a tunnel, or usually a footbridge (which only about half the locals use, the others just run across the tracks).

When you arrive the first thing you will see in a main station is usually hundreds to thousands of people sleeping on the floor of the lobby and sometimes out in the street in front of the station. These people are changing trains and have to kill many hours at the station, no big deal, there is always a pathway through them to the tracks.

In big stations they will usually have digital boards in some degree where you can look to find out on what track your train arrives. If these are available, try to find out what track you need to go to. The thing is that often the boards are broken, or if it is a small station they do not exist. If it is a small station then it is no big deal, usually there will just be one track running in either direction. In this case just ask around as to which side the train is going to show up, or if your train is in the near future and there is a big crowd on only one side, that is probably the side you want to be on.

When the boards are not working at a big station things are a little more complicated. They do generally have announcements in English on the speakers when the train is pulling in to the station, so that is one way of figuring it out. This may sound crazy, but if all else fails you can just pick a platform and wait on it, then carefully look at the placards that are on the side of the train as each one pulls into the station. What happens if the train pulls into a different platform then you are on, you might ask. Well, keep in mind that an Indian train pulls into and out of a station like a ship pulls into a dock. It is not like Japan where the train pulls up, the doors automatically open and you have 1 minute to get on. First of all, in India the doors are open on the train the entire time, even when it is moving. Also, trains usually stop for at least 5 minutes, sometimes much longer, up to 20 minutes. So, if you see your train at a different platform just hustle over there using the bridge or tunnel and you should be fine. Also, even when the digital board has the track number on it, you really should keep your head up and watch where the crowds are in the station and what trains are pulling in. It certainly would not be out of the ordinary for a sign in India to be wrong. If you ever find yourself waiting alone on a platform for an overnight train at a major station, you are probably in the wrong place, and should try to figure out where to go.

If there are digital signs you also might be able to see when the train is expected to arrive. Trains are almost always late, sometimes by as much as several hours. If there are no digital signs then there may be a chalkboard or some other means of telling you when the trains are expected to arrive.

So, now that you have found your platform the only thing left to do is wait. Now is usually also a good time to stock up on snacks and water bottles from the vendors in the station. You especially may want to get some water as it can sometimes be hard to come by on the train. Another thing is that you may get bothered by occasional beggars in the station. This is one of the few times that I recommend just giving them 5-10 rupees or whatever you think it will take to get them to leave. Unlike most situations where you can just keep on walking, you have to wait in the train station, and since they know this they will be very persistent.

One other note is regarding ticket scams. We never had any big problem with this, but just to reiterate from above. The only person who you need to show your ticket to is the uniformed Indian Railways conductor on the train. I would be very, very suspicious of anyone who asks to see your ticket in the station, as this is not something that is done, as far as I know. Also, all Indian Railways personnel wear a uniform, so do not show your ticket to anyone who does not. If for some reason you feel compelled to show your ticket to someone, I would not hand it to them, just hold on to in yourself and show it to them.

ON THE TRAIN

This part is pretty simple. You just sit in your seat, or go to bed, and watch the world go by. Often your fellow travelers will be pretty friendly, and talking to them is a great way to meet some everyday people. As far as security, the good classes of trains seem very safe, although most people chain their bag to something when they go to sleep. We used a bike cable lock for this and never had any problems.

As far as food goes, sometimes there is way too much of it offered, sometimes not enough. Guys basically just walk down the ailes and sell stuff, which can get annoying when there are too many of them, but that is part of the charm. Tea and coffee guys are always around, and there will be an occasional guy with water bottles. Usually around meal times they do come around with some small food items, aloo paratha and such. Occasionally, especially when we got on a train that originated before dinner a person would come around and ask if you wanted dinner, then return with some food later.

The thing about the food and the water is that it pays to make sure you have enough food and water to go the entire trip if you really need to. We learned this lesson when we got on a train midway down the line at around 9 PM at night. Basically all the food guys were done for the night, so we did not get anything, and had to eat glucose biscuits for dinner. Also, we never had any problem with food sickness from the train food or the platform food, but it is generally prepared with the same level of cleanliness as most Indian fast food, so you may want to be careful if you just arrived.

One other approach for getting food and drinks, which I have done many times but cannot wholeheartedly recommend is running off the train during a stop. As I said before, Indian trains generally stop of quite a while at the station, so there is theoretically enough time to run off and grab drinks or pre-made food. You can generally figure out when the train is leaving the station because they blow the whistle right before the leave, and you can watch the conductors, who usually hang out on the platform during the stop. When the conductors start moving back to the train, you need too as well. Since the doors are always open on Indian trains you probably could get on the train, wild west style, after it starts moving, but I never waited that long.

The open doors are also nice for another reason. On a long trip, when you want to stand and get some fresh air, it can be pretty nice to hang out by the open door and watch the world go by. You can even hang out the side a bit and see where you are going, but just look carefully and stick your head out a bit at a time to make sure you don't get hit by a pole or anything.

GETTING OFF

This can be more challenging then you think. Often when you arrive at a stop there is no sign saying what stop it is right out the window. Obviously one thing to do is to stop out of the train and look down the platform, then you can usually see a sign. Another thing is to ask other people, but be sure if you do this you ask "what stop is this?". If you ask "is this .....?" people will almost always say yes, even if they do not understand you. Another good thing to do is write down or print out the schedule for the train that you can get from the website. That way you will have an idea of what the stops are leading up to yours.

So, there you have it, my brain-dump of how to ride the Indian train, and as the say on the top of the tickets, Happy Journey!

Cruising Halong Bay

2008-02-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

This has been in the works for the last month:

Ian and I despise tours. You and 10 - 50 some odd people pile onto a bus made for tiny-framed Asians. You are driven around terrible roads for hours until you arrive at an attraction. After disembarking the bus, you have 15 minutes to see it before you get back on to be taken to the next sight. If you are lucky, you get no food. The less lucky are taken to restaurants making food the locals wouldn't feeds to their dogs. All tours stop at the tourist trap retail "wholesale-for-you-only" store for at least an hour.

Why then did we deliver ourselves and money into the hands of a tour guide for a 3 day 2 night tour of Halong Bay? Partly because to see the area, which is 150 km from Hanoi, on your own requires such planning and time that even Lonely Planet suggests you take a tour. We went with Handspan, a Vietnamese owned well respected tour company.

After a 3 hour bus ride, Peter, Ian, and I board our junk in Halong City. Over the ensuing 72 hours, we fraternized with our fellow shipmates - a fun mix of 9 other tourists from Canada, NZ, Australia, and Ireland. Cruising around Halong Bay is of course stunning, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited the Amazing Cave (actual name) which was quite touristy with lights and walkways. This was fine for me. Spelunking with minimal equipment is something I have already done in Hungary, and would like not to do again. The famous fog over Halong Bay made for an incredible sunset, competing with the group jumps off the upper deck of the boat. We spent the evening playing drinking games (such has Jenga on a rocking boat!) with some horrid rice whisky that smelled like rubbing alcohol. After 3 hours of playing, the majority of us were completely wasted, and I sneaked away never having lost and therefore never having to imbibe the Vietnamese rocket fuel.

The next day was a rare perfect sunny warm day in Halong Bay. We spent the time kayaking around a few of the thousands of coves and lagoons. Sprinkled all around the bay are floating fishing villages. These villages are made up of small wooden houses mounted on styrofoam or air filled tubes. Most have fish farms below or aside the houses. There is even a school. Some people have generators and pet dogs. We were awoken at 8 AM on the boat by some breakfast time karaoke in one of the floating houses. I though a cat was being killed.

After a perfect day of kayaking, we were then dropped off in a fishing village on Cat Ba Island and taken to the Sunrise Resort. I had not expected such a classy resort as part of an organized tour. We spent the night drinking bia hoy (fresh beer) with the Aussies. It was too cold for the beach or pool, but perfect for a Vietnamese massage (by the way, these are much better than the Thai massages. I don't feel like I am being tenderized).

Overall an extremely amazing tour. Highly recommended. Tours aren't now totally forbidden in my book. You just have to pick them well and add plenty of Vietnamese rice whisky.

~ Nisha

Saving the Best for Last

2008-01-02T22:31:00.000-05:00

Hong Kong was obviously our last destination, and I have to say, that it was probably my favorite big city that we visited the whole trip. It is a really incredible mix of east and west, a efficiently run place with perfect subways and clean sidewalks, but also a place where you can get cheap Chinese food on a plastic table late into the night.

I covered most of our first several days in Hong Kong in this post, but I just wanted to talk about our last day in Hong Kong, where we decided to go check out the Hong Kong countryside.

One of the most unique and cool things about Hong Kong is the amount of nature that surrounds the city. My first taste of this was the Bowen Rd. path on Hong Kong Island. I like to get out and do some running in every place we visit, and thus I was pleasantly surprised that the Conrad Hotel had a little laminated card in the desk that gave you directions for how to get to Bowen Rd., which they billed as one of the most popular places to run in Hong Kong. As I found out quickly the first night when Pete and I ran up there, running in Hong Kong is great for those who like hills. We ran up probably around 400 feet of elevation in a half mile to get to Bowen Rd. Once you get there however, you are rewarded with the best running paths I have ever seen. Bowen Rd. clings to the side of a steep mountain, with constant views of the Hong Kong Island skyline. There are a whole bunch of other paths and lightly used roads up on the ridge as well. On one day I ran for 1:15 and made it quite a way up the top of the ridge towards The Peak.

We also spent a nice time up at the Peak after dinner one night, taking the tram up to The Peak and walking around the paths that circle the top. Looking down on Hong Kong Island on a cool night drinking beers from a backpack has to be one of the more atmospheric ways to spend an evening.

Anyway, our travels into Hong Kong nature culminated with our trip to the "Big Buddha" (officially called the Tain Tan Buddha) high on Lantau Island, an island of similar size to Hong Kong which is a 30 minute subway ride away and also houses the airport. Lantau is pretty lightly populated, by Hong Kong standards. Most of the inside of the island is a big forested park and there are just a few population centers around the outside of the island.

We arrived at one of these centers at the end of the subway, it consisted of around ten large (probably 40 stories) and new apartment buildings around a small mall. There is a 5 mile long gondola that normally takes you up to the big Buddha in a few minutes, however, evidently a gondola fell off a few months ago during maintenance, so the gondola is out of commission. So, on to the bus we went. The problem is that there is no road directly to the Buddha, so this bus takes you all the way around the mountain on a narrow road that is under construction, for a trip of about an hour. It was easy to tell who the veteran travelers were in our group as we were all sitting in a three across seat, Nisha asleep, me relaxing and looking out the window and Pete getting aggravated trying to figure out why the bus was taking so long.

We get off the bus to a rather uncrowded parking lot and the Big Buddha looming over us on the top of a small hill rising over the ridge. You can go up the steps to the Buddha for free, but it costs 80 HKD for the combination of the museum inside the Buddha as well as a vegetarian lunch. The Buddha itself is quite nice, he is a very peaceful and calming image, with only the sky as his backdrop. The views from up on the ridge are obviously quite impressive as well.

The vegetarian lunch was actually a very good deal. The food is served in a big Chinese dining hall in the monastery below the Buddha. It is all set menu, you just grab a seat and they bring 5 big bowls of vegetarian food and rice to your table. The food is actually quite good, and the portions are huge.

To get back to the subway, I looked at some maps and it appeared that we could get there with a 1 1/2 hour downhill walk. Comparing this to the 1 hour bus ride the choice was pretty obvious. The walk was very nice, kind of strange since you are basically on a paved sidewalk out in the middle of the woods. The views of the airport and the cluster of apartment towers around the subway station was quite a contrast to the undeveloped hills.

After walking by a few small monasteries and a few random houses out in the woods we finally got to the cluster of buildings. It is very abrupt, one minute you are walking through a field, then the next your are among the towering buildings. There were actually two groups, one a little older with about 15 buildings and the newer cluster right next to the subway. These had this strange kind of perfect/imperfect ideal society thing going on. It was kind of the perfect efficient socialist development, there are no cars and just some pedestrian courtyards surrounding grocery stores and shopping in the middle of the complex. It was quite bustling and everyone there looked pretty happy, but is certainly is depressing for me to think of living in Unit 1634 of Building E of the XYZ complex. Hard to think of yourself as anything other then just another bee in the hive. On the bright side, the new mall next to subway station had a nice little patio bar that had specials on giant Hoegaarden beers, perfect refreshment after a long day in the hills.

War From the Other Side - Vietnam

2007-12-23T08:19:00.000-05:00

As I posted earlier from Japan, seeing a counties war sites and museums is certainly a interesting experience when your country was the adversary. However, the surreal level really cranks up when the war in question is viewed by the other country as their glorious and successful revolution, rather then a unfortunate mistake in the past. We went to three major war sites in the Saigon area:

Reunification Palace - Saigon

This building in Saigon was the seat of the South Vietnamese government and was where the North's victory was made official in 1975. The war ended when North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates and then troops demanded the surrender of the president of South Vietnam. Interestingly, the president was not Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the leader for most of the war, but Dương Văn Minh, a poor sap who was handed power 48 hours before the tanks rolled through the gate.

The building is a piece of 60's architecture that would look at home on most US college campuses. It would be the semi-modern building that would look out of place and everyone would hate. It is only as old as 1966 because the original was bombed by the South Vietnamese (you read this correctly) Air Force in an assassination attempt of the unpopular president, Diem.

From an architectural standpoint is does improve once inside, where there are large open foyers that actually give the building a very open feel. The stuff on the main floors is mainly the official presidential offices and meeting rooms for foreign dignitaries. The main thing that struck me about this area is the chincyness of the whole place. It is trying to be fancy in a Chinatown restaurant kind of way and does not look like a place of any real power or history. Disturbingly it pretty much looks like the seat of a low budget government, which is pretty much what it was.

In the upper floors of the building is the presidents residence, which is quite modest with the exception of a collection of stuffed elephant's feet. Also on the top levels is a small movie theater with vintage projection equipment and a helipad with a vintage US huey parked on it. There is also a lounge and game room that Austin Powers would be happy to have in his flat, for the use of top government officials.

Next you go to the basement where the command bunker facilities are. It is a really dank and almost claustrophobic place. There are seemingly endless rooms, all with gray painted concrete walls, that have crappy institutional desks and chairs, as well as vintage US radio equipment. You definitely get the feeling of how maddening it must be to command a country from such a dark and cut-off place.

For the last bit of the tour they drop you off at an area where they play a government produced video of the history of the building. The narrator was really hard to understand and we walked in at the end, so we only stayed for a few minutes. The only memorable part was the song they played during the video montage at the end. It had marching band type music as a background and then a choir singing "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh..." over and over and over again.

War Reminence Museum - Saigon

This is the museum set up for the Vietnam War and the conflicts of that era. Evidently is used to be called "Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes", but was renamed to something a little more subtle when Vietnam reopened to the west.

The museum is three smallish halls surrounding a courtyard filled with captured American tanks, artillery and planes. The first hall was actually a very nice photo exhibit dedicated to news photographers who died in the war. It was actually sponsored by a bunch of western companies, I believe FedEx was one of them. This had a lot of great pictures from the photographers, most of which were published in magazines at the time, and often pictures of the photographers themselves before they died. The photos that I found most affecting were of a female war photographer who's name I cannot find. They had many of her photos as well as one of her in cammo garb. They also had a photo taken by another photographer of her being read the last rights as she lay dieing in a field of tall grass.

The second hall was mostly photos of terrible stuff that was done by the US in the war. Topics covered included My Lai, Agent Orange and the massacare that was admitted to by Bob Kerry in 2001, which I had actually never heard about. Of these the Agent Orange photos were quite disturbing, as well as a very grisly one I had never seen before of a Marine holding up the head and shoulders of a exploded corpse.

The third hall focused on the cruelty of the South Vietnamese regime as well as the French. For the South Vietnamese they had a waterboarding type of device as well as mock ups of the little cages that they used to keep political prisoners in on a deserted island. For the French they had one of their old Guillotines. It makes you jump about three feet back when you look though the little slit into the dark cage and find out there is a wax figure of a prisoner looking back at you. They should really put up a sign about that.

Chu Chi Tunnels - Chu Chi

There are several networks of tunnels that were built by the VC during the war, these are the most visited because they are right outside Saigon and have been set up into kind of a campy war tourist attraction.

Evidently this village of Chu Chi was a hotspot for the VC and war right near a big US military base. The VC in the area fought with the US for the length of the war by using a massive network of tunnels, a few of which have been enlarged for the viewing of tourists.

After buying your ticket, the first thing you do is go in a room where they show a propaganda video that was actually produced by the North Vietnamese during the war. It follows, in its own way, the story of the "Chu Chi Guerrillas". The movie starts with showing the peace loving villagers of Chu Chi tending to orchards and rice patties. Then the US starts bombing the village and kills many innocent people. The ingenious and determined Chu Chi Guerrillas then fight back the US with their network of tunnels, as well as hiding anti-tank mines in rice baskets and other guerrilla war tactics.

The strangest thing is the part where they follow one male and one female (who is quite attractive and made-up for a guerrilla fighter) member of the Chu Chi Guerrillas. They both win the "Killing Many Americans Award" (exact quote) for their mine planting and sniping abilities. I do not know if it is mainly just an issue with the translation of if that is actually the name of their medal of honor. Needless to say, I have never heard of a WWII medal called the "Killing Many Japanese Award".

After the video you get a free tour guide and they take you into the park. The first thing is an old entrance to a tunnel that is just a tiny hole in the ground. If you are skinny enough you can slide down into the hole, but not into the tunnel that leads away from it, and get your picture taken half in the ground. After that there are some bomb craters, a burned out US tank and many surface level bunkers with exhibits of how they were used to make weapons, treat the wounded or cook food. The kitchen is kind of neat because they have an underground chimney that lets the smoke out 20m away from the bunker. There is also a workshop where they make sandals out of old tires that were supposedly used by the VC in the war and were supposedly invented by Ho Chi Minh.

We declined the offer to go to the firing range where you can shoot an M-16 or AK-47 for one US dollar a bullet.

Our tour guide was a really nice and funny guy, but his habit of referring to US soldiers as "your army" made everything sound even more disturbing. When you are in the area where they have models of various sharpened bamboo traps he demonstrates each one by saying "your soldier step here then... whap!".

As for the tunnels themselves, you can walk about 200m through a tunnel that is only barely big enough to allow you to walk through bent over rather then on your hands and knees. There was a little bomb shelter room in the middle, but mostly it was just a tunnel. The air is really hot and stuffy and since only the guide has a flashlight, the person at the back walks mostly in the dark. It is a short experience, but the fact that people spent years living in this underground environment gives you an idea of how determined the VC was to win. The fact that after 5-10 minutes in there I was drenched in sweat also makes you appreciate how tough they were.

Conclusion

Let me start by saying that I in no way think that the Vietnam war sights are presented in any balanced way. The point of these places is to celebrate the glory of the current regime and they certainly in no way say anything about the ruthless tactics of the VC and NVA. However, the effect of these types of places, at least to me, is to emphasize how terrible war is, regardless of who is right and who is wrong.

It is also a little disappointing how few Americans are exposed to pictures of mangled corpses and deformed children that are the result of modern war. There is such an effort in our country, in newspapers, museums and on TV to shield us from any objects or images that disturb the myth of the glory of war. I would love to see someone build a place like this in DC. I don't think the effect of more exposure on people would be to make them never want to fight when it is necessary, but it may temper the belligerence that exists around how we need to bomb this country or that. It may also give people an idea of what it means to "Take the Gloves Off", which is too often floated as a solution when wars are not going well.

On a side note, as Japan made me want to do some more research into the endgame of WWII, Vietnam made me want to look more into the use of Agent Orange. I would be interested to know how the people who approved the use of a powerful chemical that killed all vegetation, and had effects on humans that were not fully understood at the time, would not be classified as war criminals under most accepted definitions. On one level it seems rather obvious that such a powerful chemical would have some adverse effects on humans. On another level, going on a focused campaign to destroy the natural environment of a country is not very ethical either. If we had sprayed Vietnam with a chemical that was designed to bring about chronic illness and birth defects that would be a war crime, correct? Ignorance of these obvious side effects does not seem to be a very compelling defence.

Home at Last

2007-12-23T08:11:00.000-05:00

After 5 months away we are finally back in the US. The flight was fine and was actually a piece of cake when you have the travel zen gained over many hours on Indian buses.

However, the blog is not over.

Because of issues with getting on the internet, as well as wanting to pack more activities into a short period of time, I left out a bunch of stuff from the end of the trip. So, stay tuned as I will be writing up the end of the trip as well as some overall thoughts and small travel guides over the next few weeks.

Last Quick Update?

2007-12-17T03:57:00.000-05:00

- Only one more day in Hong Kong, so this might be the last of the updates. I have mental notes on a bunch of things however, so I am probably going to write quite a bit when there is some Christmas down time in Baton Rouge.

- Hong Kong is great. Probably the most "international" city on earth. It is certainly Chinese, but the British influence is still very strong here. There seems to be a large Ex-Pat community in the mix as well. It is certainly as easy as anyplace we have been to get around with English here. Almost everyone seems to speak it quite fluently.

- Pete was nice enough to use hotel points to put us up in the Conrad Hotel for the first three days. Needless to say, staying in a high end hotel in Hong Kong is pretty nice. He also has a gold card so we got free breakfast and evening drinks, really great food as well.

- Speaking of great food, we have enjoyed a great Lunch and Dinner courtesy of our family friend Bob's sister Cecilia and her husband Hans. As usual with Asian cuisines they have meats and ingredients here that are just not available back home. The food was so good I even enjoyed eating a whole fish, which is pretty unbelievable for me.

- We had the latest night out of the entire trip in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong's nightlife district. Great place where you can drink on the street and there are loads of bars. There was also a charity event going on where for 300 HKD (about $40) you got a Santa suit and 10 free drinks. As you can imagine this resulted in a whole street of drunk people in Santa suites, definitely a sight to see. If we had gotten there earlier, before we had a bunch of drinks ourselves, I would have thought about forking over the 300 HKD.

- Another strange thing. Often on this trip we have tried to avoid what we call "Human Zoos". By this we mean a tour where you go to see tribal people, boat people, etc., and seeing the people is really the only attraction. In Lan Kwai Fong there is a very mixed crowd of drunks, but a good amount are westerners. This results in quite a few rich Chinese and Japanese tourists walking down the street doing the human zoo tour of drunk westerners, snapping photos indiscriminately. Weird to be on the other side of the glass.

- The amount of money spent on luxury goods in this city is crazy. A Louis Vitton or Channel store is about as common as the Gap is in the US. It is kind of annoying because they do not really have regular shopping centers. A mall of the Copley Place quality is as low rent as it gets here. Evidently most of this consumption is fueled by mainland Chinese. Definitely boom times out here.

- The currency of Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Dollar. Interestingly it is issued by one of three private banks, Standard Chartered, HSBC or Bank of China. This makes it a little confusing because the notes from the three different banks all look different, but are the same basic color, based on the amount. There is something a little strange about money that is not issued by the government. I was thinking that if we had a similar system in the US banks would probably start printing the bills with "Free Checking", "New Low Rates on Home Equity Loans" or some other form of advertisement.

Back From Halong Bay

2007-12-14T10:30:00.002-05:00

We just got back from our tour and it was actually a great success.

The first day we spent on a nice cruise boat Junk kind of thing, had a good food and lots of drinks. The second day was two kayak sessions followed by a night at a really nice resort on Cat Ba Island. Third day was a half day at Cat Ba followed by the transport back to Hanoi.

As usual these days I do not have enough time to write a big post, but it really was an incredible natural environment. The giant floating villages were something very interesting as well.

Nisha is uploading some pictures right now and we are flying to Hong Kong tomorrow.

Perhaps I will have a little more time there to write.

Quick Update

2007-12-11T10:42:00.000-05:00

- We flew successfully up to Hanoi today and checked out the town. Very nice city, a lot different from Saigon since it is an older city with small little streets rather then wide boulivards. Still at lot of motorbikes however.

- Dispite our usual problems with orginized tours, we signed up for a 3 day trip to Halong Bay since it really seemed like the only practical way to do it. We will be on a boat the first night. The second will be on Cat Ba Island.

Quick Update

2007-12-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

Since Pete is now here we are a little more busy, so I might be in quick update mode for a while.

- Checked out the old South Vietnamese White House type building and the American War museum. Will probably write something serious about that later.

- Had a really full afternoon and evening in Saigon yesterday. Highlights below.

- Went to the Dam Sen water park. This place was really fun, normal water park setup like the US, but only 5 bucks to get in. They had about 10 water slides, including one I had never seen before. The new one sent you shooting down a tube at incredible speed and then shot you out into a big toilet bowl kind of thing. After circling the drain as many times as you could go around, you fall out the bottom of the bowl into a pool. The first time I rode it I thought it was the scariest water slide I had ever been on.

- Drank some Bia Hoi, or "fresh beer" on little sidewalk tables. This was in the real neighborhood near the water park, so we did stick out a bit. Bia Hoi is beer that is made fresh without preservatives and delivered to bars that sell it out of a big metal tank. It is sold by the liter and is the worlds cheapest beer at 25 cents per liter. This was our first time having it, and we ended up getting 3 beer mugs filled with ice and an old 2 liter plastic bottle, that looks like something you would use for petrol, filled with Bia Hoi. Mixed with the ice it was pretty good, very light and refreshing.

- Went to this big faux western music bar near the hotel. In this palace of varnished wood walls and giant totem poles they had the most bizarre cover band I have ever seen. It was a long haired guy and two scantily clad girls backed up by a normal set of musicians. The three singers with switch off on who was the lead vocalist and they covered everything from Beyonce to Roxette to Metallica. Really bizarre hearing two Vietnamese singers playing the roles of Beyonce and Jay-Z. They actually were really entertaining.

The Last of the Beaches

2007-12-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

Ian and I left our last beach location today. Let's see, we have been to Diu, Goa, and Varkala in India. Koh Samui, Koh Tao, Koh Phagnan, and Railay in Thailand, then Mui Ne Beach in Vietnam. You may be thinking that we have spent an inordinate time at beach places, but can you really ever have too much? Especially since it's 19 degrees in Boston, where we are headed on December 19th.

Mui Ne was a spectacular beach. I'm glad we didn't take the advice of a Australian-Norwegian couple we met on a bus. They live in the Mekong Delta and said that Mui Ne stunk. Stubbornly, we headed there anyway. Like Railay in Thailand, it has large sporting activities - kite-boarding and wind-surfing, neither of which Ian or I tried.

Our foray into the giant surf was to rent a divorce-boat (two person kayak). We have done this a few times before without incident. Unbeknowest to us, this particular kayak had a leak that let in water when it was turned over. We would be kayaking on an extremely wavy and windy beach, swimming in which made me nervous. We were paddling happily near the breaking surf when we had our first dump. Ian righted the kayak and we hopped in, prepared for such an event. In the next 5 minutes, we fell over 2 more times until we realized the kayak was sinking. We decided that Ian would kayak back to shore. He suggested that I swim back to shore, about 200 meters in very heavy surf. Instead, I held on to the back until 10 meters from the shore and swam hard the rest of the way. No papers served.

The rest of the three days we spent on the beach, at the pool, and checking out the local attractions. Due to the geography of the area, the beach gets very high winds daily and is relatively dry. We visited a stretch of picturesque sand dunes. Similar to India, it is difficult to visit any attractions without various people following you around try to peddle something. It looked like every tourist was on some desert expedition. Two kids followed us for about 20 minutes asking us if we wanted to rent a sled to slide down the dunes. Not quite sledding on snow, but it was fun nonetheless.

I highly recommend Mui Ne beach to anyone visiting Vietnam. The long, clean, and white stretch of sand is not overdeveloped. There are excellent Vietnamese and international restaurants. We went to an Italian one that we recognized by Slow Food International. There are many activities around the area if you get bored of baking in the sun. The Vietnamese people are surprisingly and extremely friendly. Most of all, unlike Thailand, there was no trance music or hookers.

- Nisha

One of a Kind

2007-12-07T08:39:00.000-05:00

I have been reading this book The Glass Palace the last week. As a historical fiction fan I have found it quite fascinating because of the different prospective that it offers. It is written by a Bengali author, in English, and is about the British empire from the late 1800s to WWII from the prospective of an extended Indian/Burmese family. It is a nice change to read something, in its original language, about the colonial era from the prospective of those being colonized, rather then the British colonialists.

The reason I am writing about this is that a part in the book, as well as being in these countries torn apart by violent revolutions, makes me finally "get" Gandhi. As I wrote earlier, I read an autobiography of Gandhi awhile ago and this gave me a much more full picture of his life then I had before. I now know him as more then just a peaceful, Dohti wearing guy, but I still thought before today that he was too much of an idealist.

The thing about Gandhi is that even though he wanted India to be free, he wanted even more to solve India's social ills. In fact, he said that he did not want the British to go until India was ready to rule itself in a just way. Even at the point of independence, he still thought India was not really ready to rule itself. Also, he never wanted there to be a violent revolution. Despite the fact that it took 40 years for India to gain its freedom, he fought ferociously against the elements that wanted to go to war with the British.

When I first read this, I thought it was very admirable, but I did think that it was a little weak. Granted his strategy did work, but it took an incredible amount of time, and only worked because the British got tired of ruling a country that did not want them there. I did think that perhaps if the Indians has taken a more active course they may have still had independence, but just a lot sooner.

The thing that I did not take in to account is that, in general, even if your violent revolution is a success, you end up with a country ruled by violent revolutionaries. The problem is that the kind of people that are effective at fighting a war are also terrible, ruthless leaders after the war is over. A large part of the reason why a chaotic country like India became a stable democracy is that its political revolution resulted in politicians, not generals, becoming its first leaders. I am not an expert on Nehru, nor do I agree with all his ideas, but at least he was a secular politician who believed in democracy. The chances of a violent revolution producing a leader who fits that description are slight at best. The problem is that there is only one Gandhi, so violent revolutions will exist for as long as there are people who do not like their government.

Incidentally, I do realize that the American revolution is the one example I can think of where a violent revolution did not result in an early government with totalitarian tendencies. I am not sure yet why I think this happened the way that it did. One thing I can think of is that it was a different era, and it was English colonists fighting against the English crown, not another race or culture of people. It also, however, makes one think about how unique the early Americans were to take power for England but then give all that power to a democratic government. Perhaps they were one of a kind in their own way as well.

Quick Update

2007-12-06T20:18:00.000-05:00

- We have been doing the last real beach stay of our trip on Mui Ne beach in
Vietnam. Is one of the top beaches that we have visited. There are
quite a few hotels, but it is pretty mellow. The beach is very long and nice, with pretty big surf, a nice change after Thailand;s calm waters.

- We really stuck gold with a hotel here. After a few places were
full we ended up with a bungalow literally 5 steps from the beach. The place is undergoing renovation, so there is construction, but it is just painting and quiet stuff. Because of the construction our room is half price and we get free breakfast and use of the big pool next door.

- Mui Ne is evidently one of the worlds best Windsurfing and Kitesurfing locations. Every day a sea breeze whips up that must be up around 25 knots in the middle of the day. This makes it a little annoying to sit on the beach (it is calmer before 10 and after 3), but watching the guys out there surfing is amazing. I have not windsurfed because it is really advanced and everyone seems to know how to do an in-water start and a carve jibe, which I never learned how to do. Also, since everyone else windsurfing is very, very expert I do not want to get in over my head and make an ass of myself.

- Kitesurfing has to be a pretty dangerous sport but is incredible to watch. Most people seem to keep their board on the water and just zip back and forth, but a few people do jumps, which are amazing. When they jump they look like they go about 10m in the air and stay up for at least 5 seconds. The really good guys make it look like a cross between windsurfing and hang-gliding.

- I might write more about this in the future, but I am kind of amazed how hard the Vietnamese work. At the construction in our hotel and around town in general, they get started at around 6 in the morning and are often still painting and sanding by the light of big florescent tubes until 8-10 at night. This is typical as people here in general are up and about at 5:30-6 in the morning and ofter are still working late in the evening. A Vietnamese construction site is pretty serious too, not much standing around. Seems like it could be part of the reason they were such worthy adversaries 40 years ago.

- Today we go back to Saigon (I am using the old name in this instance because that is what it is universally called here by the south Vietnamese, it is only written down as HCMC). Tomorrow we pick up Pete at the airport, he will be with us for the rest of the trip.

First Impressions of Vietnam

2007-12-04T00:53:00.000-05:00

Another country, another one of these articles.

- The official currency of Vietnam is the Dong, which is fun because the name is pretty great to say, and it is 16,000 Dong to the Dollar. Becoming a Vietnamese millionaire is as easy as one trip to the ATM.

- Interestingly enough, the US dollar is also very big here, especially for hotels and other higher priced items. So much for the capitalist pigs.

- Vietnam might be the cheapest country yet of the tour. 15 dollars will get you a pretty decent hotel room (AC, TV, hot water, sometimes fridge) and food is dirt cheap. Our dinner of two bowls of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) last night was less then 2 dollars.

- Every bowl of Pho we have had in Vietnam has been spectacular. At less then a dollar is most places, and very healthy, I think we will be eating quite a few more.

- Even after seeing the rest of Asia, Vietnam is the small motorbike king. There are a few more cars in Saigon, but in the Mekong Delta where we were before I would estimate that %99 percent of all vehicles on the road are a motorbike. We rented one to look around Chau Doc and on the main road out of town you could see at least a mile down the road, and every vehicle was a motorbike, hundreds of them.

- The people of Vietnam are the friendliest so far. People smile and say "hello" all the time. Kids love to see you and get so excited if you pay attention to them. For the most part this friendliness seems very genuine. Even annoying hawkers can be fooled around with, and will often want to just chat with you, after they figure out weather you want to buy anything.

- After all this time we finally had a cab man try a meter scam on us. When we arrived in Saigon, we got in a cab and after less then a KM I noticed that the meter was already at 5 KM and 28,000 Dong. I complained and he said, or so we thought, that if would only be 14,000 Dong to take us to where we were going. When we got there he tried to take 50,000 and not give us any change. Nisha took the lead in bitching him out while I got change and ended up giving him around 20,000 Dong, which is about what the meter should have been.

- We have been travelling on a lot of speedboat ferries lately. First we took one from Penom Penh in Cambodia to Chau Doc in Vietnam and then from Can Tho to Saigon. Great way to travel around the Mekong. As fast as a bus and more comfortable, with a better view. They are a kind of long thin fiberglass boat with a roof and windows, set up pretty much like a bus inside. There is sometimes a little deck on back you can hang out on as well. Powered by twin I/O engines, these things move along over 30 knots. On our trip to Saigon, there was some driving down a crowded delta canal filled with sand barges that would make the average New Hampshire Marie Patrol officer pee his pants.

Thailand Beach Wrapup

2007-12-03T07:12:00.000-05:00

This is more for random people searching on Google that anything else, but I wanted to write up the five beaches that we stayed at on Thailand. The thing is that they all have their strong points, so picking one to go to is really a case of just finding the right one for you. Please note that all these visits were in mid to late November.

KO SAMUI - HAT CHAWENG

This was the most crowded and developed beach we visited. There is a main road that forms the "strip" of town, and most resorts are in the 300m or so from this road to the beach. The strip was a pretty lively place, however a good deal of the partying was hooker related. The strip also had a lot of very sleek bars, nice and expensive restaurants, as well as Starbucks, McDonald's and plenty of 7-Elevens.

We stayed at a hotel that was on the strip called The Wave Samui, which I was not a fan of. Besides my issues with the hotel, I did not realize what a pain it would be to not be in a place with beach access. There is only one place where you can take an actual public road to the beach, so most of the time we had to sneak through a resort to get out to the sand. There were a couple of relatively cheap places with beach access, I would check out those if you want to go here. If you want to pay 500 Baht for a bungalow on the beach, go somewhere else.

As for the beach itself, it was very nice. A little crowded, but not overwhelmingly so. The water is clear and the swimming nice. It can be a little hard to find a place because all the resorts put chairs out for their guests, but space can be found. There is also a strip of bars near the Ark Bar that have raised futons on the beach, and are pretty fun at night as well. You can hang here is you want to buy drinks. There were several kayak and sailboat rental outfits on the beach, and we had a lot of fun with a little Hobie Cat. There are a few hawkers, mostly of junk souvenirs, but they are manageable.

Go here is you want to:

- Party, mostly with Euros and Brits
- Listen to trance music
- Get a hooker
- Have a lot of activities, food and drinks available on the beach
- Eat at high class restaurants
- Spend a lot of money

Don't go here if you want to:

- Have a peaceful vacation
- Go to chill bars
- Really get away from it all

KO SAMUI - HAT LAMAI

I will not do a full review of this, because we used Nisha's leftover Marriott points to stay at a high end beach resort at the very end of the beach. From what I did see, it looked busy, but far less so then Chaweng. The beach was nice here, but very shallow. You could walk for probably a kilometer out into the ocean before having to swim. It was great for Frisbee in the water, and there was some snorkeling by the rocks at the headland.

If you want to know about the Marriott Renaissance, read up on it here.

KO PHA-NGAN - HAT KHOM

This was our place to do the real beach hut thing, and I don't think we could have found a better place. Hat Khom is a small beach, only about .5KM long, in a cove on the north side of the island. It is accessible from the main village on the north side by a dirt road that can be negotiated via pickup truck or motorbike. The road can also be walked in around 25 minutes. The beach has occasional boulders that add to the scenery, as well as a reef that can be snorkeled. Swimming is also good as there is a deep sand bottom area between the beach and the reef.

The only business here is the four beach hut resorts that line the beach, as well as their bar/restaurants. We stayed at the Ocean View, which seemed to have the best rooms and had the best food at the restaurant, but they all seemed OK. The huts all seemed to be in the 300-800 Baht range. There is no Internet and the only nightlife is the resort bars. One of the resorts rents Kayaks for very cheap and the Ocean View had free snorkeling equipment.

Go here if you want to:

- Stay right on the beach
- Only hear the sound of the waves at night
- Hang out with a backpacker crowd
- Be on a secluded, quiet and beautiful beach
- Not spend a lot of money
- Shower with only cold water and only have electricity from 6PM to 6AM

KO TAO - HAT SAIREE

We stayed here mainly because Nisha was getting here dive certification. This beach is very long, but also very thin. The resorts in the area push right up to the beach, so there is only a little room in front for swimming and putting a blanket down. The swimming is pretty good, but there are quite a few boats tied to the beach and ropes to watch out for. There is a place in town that rents Kayaks and sailing equipment, but not on this beach. One really nice thing here is that the main road is not anywhere near the beach. Along the beach is a brick walkway which is only used by pedestrians and the occasional motorbike.

This is kind of a middle ground between an overdeveloped beach and a quiet beach. The beach is fully developed, but there is still some open space and small hut resorts. There are a couple of 7-Elevens and plenty of Internet cafes and resort restaurants. There is also a area near the far end of the beach with some bars and restaurants that are independent of a resort.

One thing is that how quiet the beach is will have a lot to do with where you stay. We stayed at the AC resort, and the bar there pumps music until late at night, so our room was pretty loud. At other locations that are not near a big time bar, things would probably be pretty quiet. As far as the nightlife, it was still low season, so things were not really hopping yet, but it seemed like in season there would be a lot of partying going on. However, not many hookers and you could get away from it if you wanted to.

Go here if you want to:

- Get SCUBA certified easy and cheap
- Party, but not be in a total madhouse
- Spend a moderate amount of money
- Have plenty of modern amenities, but not feel like you are in a city

Don't go here if you want:

- A really nice beach
- To really get away from it all

KRABI PROVENCE - RAILAY

Railay is a peninsula attached to the mainland, but inaccessible by road due to the massive cliffs. The only way to get there is long tail boat. The peninsula is about 500m across, and has beaches at each side. The west beach is pretty nice, with giant cliffs at each side. It is wide with hard and flat sand. The swimming is calm and good, but the water is very warm and there are quite a few long tail boats. The east beach is muddy and used mainly for long tail boat arrivals. There is also another beach you can walk to in 10 minutes that I did not make it out to, but Nisha rated as one of the better beaches she has ever been on. There are some hawkers who work the beach, but they mainly sell beer, so I find them quite useful.

All the area that can be developed has been, all the flat area between the beaches as well as the area up the hill that we stayed in was used for resorts. Up the hill in back was the only place for budget accommodation (besides the far beach around the corner that is, but I am talking about the main part of town), but where we stayed at the Highland Resort was very quiet and only about a 10 minute walk to the good beach. However, since there are no motor vehicles, the place has a pretty low key feel, even more so then Ko Tao. There are a fair number of bars and restaurants, but no bars really pump music, it is more of a Bob Marley kind of place.

The rock climbing is also a real attraction here, I went twice and loved it. Things are a little expensive however, you definitely pay island prices, not mainland.

All in all, this was my favorite beach.

Go here if you want to:

- See great scenery
- Go to first class beaches
- Rock climb
- Enjoy chill, but busy, nightlife
- Spend a moderate to high amount of money

Don't go here if yo want to:

- Get a hooker
- Listen to trance music
- Eat top flight international food
- Really get away from it all

Meeting the Bogey Man

2007-12-03T07:11:00.000-05:00

I traveled to both Cambodia and Vietnam with reservations. My hesitation in going to Cambodia was because I had read about terrible bribery and scams at the border. we had been very well informed and therefore did not fall prey to any of these. I'll write my thoughts on staying in Cambodia later.

However, I had much irrational trepredation in coming to Vietnam. Irrational because I have heard many people say they had a great time here and know that it is a safe tourist destination. But this is Communist country. All the bogey men of my childhood were communist. They tortured you, imprisoned you for looking at them, started all the wars, and left you to die in the endless Steppe. These were all things I was told in elementary school and their sentiment has subconsciously lodged in my brain. Then top that with a large helping of resentment from the "American War" (that's what they call it here).

Of course, I have seen nothing of that here. I am stunned by how different this communist country is from my elementary-school imagination. Part of this could be due to the fact that they are more a socialist dictatorship rather than Soviet-style communists, but nevertheless. First, they love tourists. Of all the places we have been, the people in the small Mekong Delta towns of Chau Doc and Can Tho are overwhelmingly the most friendly. Nearly everyone smiles or says hi to us. Kids under 6 generally start yelling and screaming "helllllooooo" while gesticulating wildly. Just while walking down the street, a man offered for me to taste the soup he was making (it was yummy!).

Scary communist? Not in my observations of the last 48 hours. They take their kids to dinner. They go on vacation. They study engineering in college. I am at an unregulated internet cafe filled with kids and adults searching all corners of the net. We visited temples and have seen monks walking. There are no scary dudes in military vehicles in the streets. Though they do have a giant statue of Uncle Ho in the center of town and propaganda and calisthenics over the loud speaker awoke us at 5 in the morning.

The Anti-Ameriancism? I have not experienced any so far. They wear shorts with the US flag on them. The toilets are "American Standard" brand, thankfully. Most want any chance to practice their English and nearly everyone has relatives in Canada or the US.

I know this may be different when we travel to the north of the country. However, so far I am amazed and pleasantly surprised, though hopefully you knew this already.

Beach Reading and More

2007-12-02T06:55:00.000-05:00

While traveling through Asia, I have tried to rectify my deficient knowledge of world history by reading Asian history or historical fiction. No this is not beach reading, but I have never been the type to read about poor beautiful girls in New York trying to find a rich husband. Shogun gave me insight to Japan's rich feudal heritage. In India, the Lewis Fischer's biography of Gandhi and William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali taught me a great deal of Indian history. Thailand has few authors that write about anything except finding oneself, doing drugs, beaches, time in the infamous Bangkok jail, and marrying prostitutes. The real winners combine all 5 in one. Cheng and Eng, a fictional book based on the real Siamese twins, gave me a glimpse of 1800's life on the Mekong in Thailand. Ambitv Gosh's The Glass Palace concentrated more on colonial Burma, India, and Malaysia with a little of Thailand mixed in.

Volumes are written about places where terrible things have happened. I started my breif studies on Cambodian history with First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung. I tore through this 250 page book in only 6 hours on the ferry from Koh Tao. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in a first hand account of what the Khmer Rouge did. In brief, the Khmer Rouge overtook Phenom Pehn in April 1975 and drove the inhabitants of this city and others into countryside work camps. In the following 4 years and 8 months, they enslaved their population in farming camps to fulfill some Utopian communist dream. They summarily executed those with higher education or loyal to the former government. They tortured and killed some 14,000 - 20,000 men, women, and children in a high school in Phenom Pehn now know as S-21 or Tuol Sleung.

Ian and I visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum yesterday. It is quite ironic that the tuk-tuk driver's touts to tourists usually start with "hello, want to see the killing fields and S-21?" The class rooms of this sunny high school were turned into between 1 - 30 cells each. Prisoners were kept shackled to the floor and tortured. Like the Nazis, the KR were fastidious about their record keeping. They took photos of each person alive, and many dead which are all shown in the museum. The people were taken to the killing fields, about 15km away, and bludgeoned before being left to die in a mass grave. In Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp which I visited in 1997, the solemn grounds have been able to mellow after 60 years. However, the barbed-wire wrapped Tuol Sleung still has violence in the air. There is a photo exhibit of men and women who worked (likely forced) in the prison. They are still living among the people of Cambodia, many of whom lost loved ones. There is still blood on many of the floors of the cells. The pictures of the main architects, one was Duch who will received a hearing on Monday in the war crimes tribunal, are scribbled with angry Khmer graffiti. There exist the actual tools of torture, including a water-boarding tank. It's nice to know that some of our presidential hopefuls endorse the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge.

Finally the North Vietnamese, having recently defeated the Americans and South Vietnamese, invaded to end the Khmer Rouge reign in 1979 because the KR were massacring Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta. Sadly, the KH were responsible for the extermination of between 1.4 - 2.2 million Cambodians either directly or through starvation and tens of thousands of Vietnamese in South Vietnam only 4 years and 8 months of their reign.

Henry Kamm was a NYT correspondent in Cambodia from 1970 - the 1990s. He skillfully penned Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land and answered many of the burning questions I had about the rise, reign, and fall of the Khmer Rouge.
I also highly recommend this book as a thoughtful history and analysis of this dark period in history. It's not exactly beach reading, but that's not what I'm here for.

Check back in a few days for links to pictures I took at Tuol Sleng.

- Nisha

Government Matters

2007-12-02T06:44:00.000-05:00

In the US these days, most talk about government or politics focuses on the high level philosophical stuff, Foreign Policy, Abortion, Church and State, etc. Not to say that this not impotent stuff, but this trip has highlighted for me that there is another dimension to government that is rarely talked about, overall competence.

By overall competence I mean the ability of the government to build roads, run schools, keep basic law and order. Basically its ability to provide a stable environment for people to live and work. As I have seen on this trip, the ability of governments to do these things is not necessarily related to how they are selected or what high level positions they believe in. At the highest level we have been in countries that range from stable, multi-party democracies like Japan and India, to Vietnam and Thailand, which are both currently run by unelected governments. All are basically capitalist countries, with somewhat of a socialist bent (Vietnam is officially communist, but that is not very true in practice).

In terms of overall competence I would have to obviously rank Japan as first. The infrastructure is top notch all over the country, the trains are amazing and crime is non-existent. Thailand I would also give high marks to, because it does a lot for how much money it has. Most things there seem to run at more or less a US level of quality, but I assume that they spend a lot less money to get there. India and Vietnam are similar in a lot of ways, because things seem to run OK, but you still run into some substandard roads and bad trash collection. Also, while some people in these two countries are doing very well, others are left behind in substantial poverty. Cambodia's one-party democratic government is basically a failed state. No one has any confidence in the government to do anything, and almost every road and school in the country has a sign out front thanking the country or NGO that built it for them, usually Japan.

The interesting thing about all these countries, as well as the US, is that a good number of people in all of them think the government is run by a bunch of crooks. Most of the time these thoughts are backed up by evidence. The accusations very from the money just disappearing, like in Cambodia, to the usual shady government contract deals that exist pretty much everywhere there are politicians with money to spend. Pork barrel stuff also shows up pretty much everywhere, like Shinkansens (bullet trains) to nowhere in Japan. However, even if crooks run the show everywhere, their output quality varies immensely.

The aggravating thing about this is that although the competence of government matters so much, I am not sure how one controls it. Why should India and Vietnam have similar public services despite the fact that one government is elected, and the other is authoritarian? As a voter in the US it is annoying that this never even really comes up as an issue. We know politicians positions on almost every philosophical issue, but not if they can build a decent airport.

My last thought is as to how the US fits within the ranking of countries above. Overall our government is fairly competent at basic service. We have very good roads, there are a reasonable number of cops and garbage does not stack up in the streets. However, we also pay a lot of money to achieve this decent level of service. I think our biggest problem is that our expectations for the final product of the things our government builds is so low. I am sure in Japan, Japan Railways (JR) is a giant pit of patronage and wasted money. I am sure there were all sorts of shady dealing with building the new airport in Bangkok. But, at least in these places they get an incredible train system and a really nice looking new airport. The most upsetting thing is that we get ripped off, as every country does, but often do not even get a world class product.

I guess my conclusion is that Americans should raise their expectations of government and not buy that things cannot be done, or cannot be done well. If the semi-authoritarian government in Thailand can build a nice new subway line, why can't we do so in New York or Boston? We might get ripped off, but it is better to at least get something for your money then nothing at all.

Thai food II

2007-12-01T21:32:00.000-05:00

Here were a few of our favorite meals:

Steamed Sticky rice in Bamboo - Our guide in Chiang Dao brought us to this road side place where a woman makes steamed rice in bamboo. The rice, sugar, and coconut mixture is stuffed into a hollow bamboo segment capped with hay. It is BBQed over a wood fire until steamed. The outer husk is then hacked off, the rice left to cool, then it's ready to eat by peeling away the bamboo from the rice. Simply amazing.

Crispy Aromatic Duck - This was tasty take on Peking duck that we have many times in Chinatown. - Chopsticks, Koh Tao

Malee's Buffet - We stayed in Malee's Guesthouse in Chiang Dao, north of Chiang Mai. The first night we went to the renowned Europen-Thai fusion restaurant next door, which was fabulous. The next night we dined on Malee's buffet. She served my favorite Thai curry, Green curry with chicken, mashed squash with egg, a huge platter of fresh fruit, and many other dishes. It was like dining in someones home. Not to be missed - Malee's GuestHouse in Chiang Dao

Thai Iced Tea - I am self-proclaimed iced tea snob. Northern restaurants on good days make me laugh with their version of iced tea, on bad days make me scream with horror. Thailand is where I surprisingly found excellent iced tea. They brew it extra strong, stronger than even the South. They they pour it over crushed ice and finish it with condensed milk!

Family meal at the Highland Restaurant - The restaurant at our resort in Raliay was the best in the area. We had no idea what to expect with the "family meal." You know a meal is going to be great when it starts with "maybe you should move to a bigger table." Our came a hot charcoal cauldron with a grille on top, a bowl of broth, a platter of veggies and rice noodles, and a plate of beef, chicken, fish, shrimp, and squid. We were instructed to coat the top with butter and then grill each. The resulting soup made from the meat drippings was delicious.
- Highland Resort, East Railay

Coke Zero out of a Glass Bottle - For fellow Coke Zero lovers, no more needs said.

You may notice on this list the abscense of Thai dishes in served in the US. They were there and we liked them. However, most good Thai resturants are very similar in the US. Therefore, it's just plain boring to write about Pad Thai.

- Nisha

Just Another Day in Bangkok

2007-11-30T07:39:00.000-05:00

The scene is a crowded Bangkok Internet cafe. The protagonist is a pudgy, 50 something American with a southern accent. The man sits down and calls his family on Skype. Because on Skype you use headphones (there is no phone booth) and because of his projecting voice, we hear a several hour phone call I never thought would be so public. Things about this nice man Nisha and I now know:

- Evidently he has been married for 2 weeks to a Thai woman (we did not hear how they met), I am assuming some kind of mail order bride.

- She does not know much English, but their connection is like nothing he has ever felt before.

- He has never been so happy in his life, every day keeps getting better and better.

- The lord and/or Jesus are responsible for the proceeding.

- His new Thai wife likes to sleep draped all over him in a non-sexual way.

- She is a massage lady and he hopes that she can get a job as such in the US.

- He knows someone who knows someone who works in Dick Durbin's (US Senator) office, thus her Visa is assured.

- He gives her a $20 dollar a week allowance, which goes a long way in Thailand.

Gotta love Bangkok!!!

Thailand Wrap

2007-11-30T06:48:00.000-05:00

Thailand was a very nice place to visit.

That, for better or for worse, is about as strong a opinion as I can muster about it. I know it is not all that profound, but honestly, Thailand is not that profound a place. It is just a nice, well run country with really nice beaches and people. It is also quite cheap to travel around, although not as cheap as places like India and Cambodia.

We did have a very good time in Thailand. But, I am really glad that we went there after Japan and India. While those parts of the trip felt more like a real adventure, Thailand felt more like a nice extended vacation. The first reason for this is that the travel in Thailand is so much less challenging. The train and the government bus run quite efficiently. People speak enough English, and westerners are a dime a dozen, so you do not ever feel particularly out of place. There are 7-Elevens, fast food and Internet cafes pretty much everywhere. The touts are quite tame by Asian standards and the beggars are virtually nonexistent.

The other reason why Thailand is different is that everything there is less dramatic. Their sights are kind of interesting, but nothing like the Taj Mahal, Angkor, Hiroshima or even Shinjuku. You may get a little aggravated with the occasional Tuk-Tuk man, but you never have to deal with the stress of an Indian train station, or figuring out how to order a meal in Japanese.

If you come to Thailand to find yourself, learn Thai culture or experience real travel adventure, you will be disappointed. If you come to Thailand for a nice vacation, you will probably love it.

In conclusion, a few highlights and lowlights:

UPSIDES

- The beaches are really nice, often with very litte waves and prefect conditions to swim or play Frisbee in the water.

- The north was pleasant as well, but we enjoyed it much better on our trips outside Chaing Mai on a rented car or motorbike. Downtown Chaing Mai can feel like one giant tourist trap.

- There are really not many places in the world where you can pay $15 dollars for a hut right on the beach.

- Bangkok is an interesting city, good, cheap shopping and some of Thailand's best sights.

- The quality and availability of cheap food is incredible. Eventually we figured out that for Thai food, the cheaper the place, the better the meal.

- There is also a good variety of quality food from all over the world at every tourist destination, at very reasonable prices.

- Most Thais are very nice people. They do indeed seem to smile all the time, and are usually quite helpful and friendly.

LOWLIGHTS

- Some Thais, especially ones who work in tourist trap places, are not very nice. This is the cost of Thailand being so well covered by tourists.

- I really don't like the parallel transport system of buses, boats and taxis that are only there for tourists. The service on these is usually really bad, and it is not a good way to experience the country. Unfortunately, sometimes this network can be the only practical way to get from one place to another. Often this is because the government bus terminal is not near downtown or the train is sold out.

- A great number of your fellow tourists are either British frat boy types or mid-market package European tourists. Also, a good proportion all westerners are sex-tourists. This is especially bad in Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Ko Samui. This may not be a problem for other people, in fact it may be what you are looking for. However, all these groups get a little tiresome for us at times.

- You will learn to hate Trance music if you stay in the wrong room at the hotel.

- Thailand has the worst waiters in the world. Getting the bill is a constaint ordeal.

- Thais care a lot about "face" and thus make for really annoying touts. I do not care if people want to aggressively tout stuff to me. However, the fact that I need to be polite to the touts, in order to prevent unpleasant behavior by them, is really annoying. At least Indian touts know their place in the world and have a thick skin.

- As Nisha has covered in some detail, Thai bathrooms suck.

- The amount of obvious Hooker-Westerner couples did not really bother Nisha and I. In fact it was kind of a game to speculate if the girls were hookers or not, then sometimes if they were really men or not (on a side note, I never imagined that any culture would be as accepting of transvestites as Thais are). However, if this kind of thing bothers you, then best stay away from the big three locations I mentioned above.

Thai Food I: Street Food

2007-11-28T23:51:00.000-05:00

It took me quite awhile after arriving to Thailand to get into the food. It was not because a dislike of Thai food, since it is one of my favorite foods in the US, more more a dislike of where one eats Thai food. The restaurant culture of the US, India, and every other place I have been does not really exist here. There are restaurants, just not Thai ones. It seems that Thais will go a nice enclosed AC restaurant to have pizza, Chinese, or any non-Thai food. However, except in Bangkok, all Thai restaurants if not catering directly to tourists or in a 5-star hotel, are ramshackle open-air establishments or food carts.

The carts are not really permanent, since they are put up and taken down everyday, but they occupy the same location every night. They all have wheels to be pushed away at the end of the night. They do not have running water. They do have electricity and even meters to presumably pay someone for the power. The prices are all between 5 and 40 baht (10 - 80 cents). The ambiance matches the price - you eat on metal folding tables and plastic stools. Many are arranged in the same place to constitute a day or night food market. Some are simply a swerer or fruit seller attached to a sidecar.

In India street food is either sworn off or you know it will cost you some serious bathroom time. We had great hesitation in delving into the multitude of street eats. During our first week here, we ate primarily at tourist restaurants, which besides McDonald's, this is the place you can go to guarantee eating the worst food any locale has to offer. Slowly, as we saw more Westerners eating from them and not in the hospital with IVs, we too entered into the makeshift street restaurants.

What do they serve? Everything on a menu of a typical US Thai restaurant and more. The diversity is stunning. Curry carts offer over 10 types of succulent meat and vegetable curries. Soup carts offer something akin to Vietnamese Pho with sliced meat or shrimp, or duck. There were numerous BBQ carts with various processed meats creatively sculpted on the wooden skewer. The carts catering more to Thais include BBQed hanging offal, looking much like an anatomy class. There were stir-fry and pad Thai carts. Many served various types of iced tea - black, chrysanthemum, hibiscus, and ginger finished with condensed milk. Dessert carts had banana and nutella crepes, silver dollar pancakes filled with a coconut mixture. On every corner is a fruit cart filled with carved and chilled pineapple, banana, mango, dragon fruit, jack fruit, and watermelon whether for immediate consumption or to be whipped into a shake. The one I always looked out for was the mango and sticky rice cart. At first I scoffed at such a pedestrian dessert made with rice. However, it's hard to describe the unbelievable marriage of a silky fragrant mango with slightly salty, sweet, coconut stewed rice.

After a month in Thailand, food carts instilled in me, rather than fear and terror, a Pavlovian response of salivation. Some of the best food we had in Thailand came from these lowly eateries. Next post - more about specific dishes.

First Observations of Cambodia

2007-11-27T21:09:00.000-05:00

- They have yet another form of Autorickshaw here, also called the Tuk-Tuk as in Thailand. The design is totally different however, as it is a regular small motorbike, like a Honda Dream, with a trailer attached that holds up to 4 people. It actually is the nicest ride of all of them, because it is not enclosed, so you get a lot of air and can see the view. They also drive at very safe speeds since a 125cc motorbike is not exactly designed as a towing machine. Here is a photo of one, from someone else.

- We ran into one of Nisha's classmates in her SCUBA course at Angkor Wat yesterday and got a first-hand account of the Koh San Road/Bangkok tourist bus to Siem Reap. Evidently everything was fine until the border where aggressive touts convinced half the people to change all their Baht to US dollars at a really terrible exchange rate. Then the ride that took us 3 hours in a cab takes 9 hours in the bus, so they can deliver you to a second rate guesthouse at the edge of town. Since you arrive at 22:00, it is difficult to get onward transportation, so you end up staying there until the next morning. If you are doing this trip, read our post and this website, do the trip yourself.

- It is really strange how upscale the center of Siem Reap (Bar St.) is, especially considering that the rest of the country is on the India level of rural economic development. There is basically a whole area here of upscale cafes, bars and restaurants which are up to western standards of sophistication, food and service. To give you an idea, we had pizza from a real brick oven and home-made raviolis last night. One thing I have read is that a lot of these establishments are run by westerners, as there are no regulations here that make owning a business difficult for foreigners, as in most Asian countries. This may very well be true, because some of the restaurants go out of their way to say that they are run by actual Khemrs (Cambodians). This may not be great for the locals, but is good for the consumers, as the level of service is high in both the western and local owned establishments. Lets here it for open market competition.

- Strangely enough, the fact that they use US dollars here, rather then some foreign funny money, makes us feel poorer then in India or Thailand. Things are about the same price here, but when you pay 240 Baht for a nice pizza in Thailand, you do not really think about it as 7 dollars or so, it just seems like some small amount of your total wad of usually over 10,000 Baht. Here the pizza will still cost 7 dollars, granted this is a tourist place and it is as good as pizza I pay 14 dollars for at home, but it still seems expensive. The same goes for beer costing $1.50 rather then 60 Baht. Actually the main thing that is cheap here so far is accommodation (15 dollars for the best value hotel of the trip - Golden Temple Villa) and the Internet (75 cents an hour). Food is the same price as India or Thailand for the level of quality, but the cheap food carts here sell roasted snakes and entrails, and are not really set up for westerners. No more 25 Baht noodle soup for us.

- Even though Siem Reap is very touristy, it nice to be back in a place where people are more happy to see the tourists and their money arrive then in Thailand. Thais are still very nice, but they can often seem jaded at the endless cycle of budget travellers that tromp around their country. Especially since many of these travellers are drunken assholes or sex-tourists, their attitude is somewhat understandable. Khemrs have so far seemed much more honestly friendly and happy to talk to you, and the scene here is a little more grown up, and less like Cancun.

- Do your self a favor and search for something dumb like "Cancun Drunk" on flickr. There are a lot of gems out there I found while searching for that picture. Like this.

Overland to Cambodia

2007-11-26T22:31:00.000-05:00

So, we completed the much dreaded Bangkok to Siem Reap overland journey yesterday. Rather then taking the tickets from Bangkok sold for backpackers, which can be a decent deal, but often involve bus scams and annoying delays, we did the trip ourselves, using a myriad of transit options. There may be annoyances along the way when you plan the trip yourself, but I prefer to at least make my own problems and have the flexibility to what I want to solve them.

The Result:

1) Leave at 7:00 in a taxi to go to the North Bangkok government bus depot (Mo Chit). Get stuck in Bangkok traffic, trip takes a little under an hour.

2) Take a government bus at 8:00 (no scams unlike backpacker buses) to Aranya Pratet.

3) Arrive in Aranya Pratet at around 12:30, pretty non-descript Thai border town. Decent roads, 7-Elevens, usual stuff. Take a 5km Tuk-Tuk to the border.

4) Check out of Thailand, walk across the little bridge to Poipet, Cambodia. Funny thing here, there is a border market on the Thai side that Cambodian merchents can get a pass to go to for the day. Evidently it is a way to sell goods of dubious origin to the Thai people who have more money. Going the other way on the bridge there were pushcarts full of new $800 Trek bikes as well as one with guitar amplifiers.

5) On the Cambodian side of the bridge go to the visa office to get a visa, since we did not get one before arrival. There is a sign that says that a visa costs $20 US (US currency is the de facto currency of Cambodia, although Thai Baht and their own currency can sometimes be used). Because you are supposed to have six months before expiration on your passport, and Nisha only has five, I pay 1000 Baht each (30 dollars) to the guy who "helps" you get the visa. Visa comes back no problem.

6) Walk down the strip of new casinos that are in this no mans land for Thai gamblers. Errie sight, especially seeing the Indian street scene beyond the immigration gate.

7) Wait behind a bus load of westerners to actually pass immigration.

8) Enter into Cambodia and start trying to work out the taxi situation to get to Siem Reap. There are a bunch of taxi guys right beyond the gate who seem pretty disreputable, and want $40 US to drive just the two of us in a Toyot Camry to Siem Reap. There are also guys wearing yellow shirts who try to get you to go on a bus where they say they sell you a seat in a share Toyota for $15 US each.

I don't really like the vibe from the guys who are right there, and the lowest they will go is $35 dollars. However, we see that the bus goes just 200m up the road, and a yellow shirt guy on a scooter keeps telling us to go there. So we head walk up there to check out the deal. This is a crappy little office, but does look to be where most people are getting trasportation forward. It is either $12 for a seat on a bus, or $15 for a seat in a cab that leaves right away. We take the cab and end up sharing with two solo people, a Swiss lady and a friendly young guy from Hong Kong.

9) From around 14:00 to 17:30 bounce down the atrocious dirt highway from Poipet to Siem Reap. Looks like we are back in India, shocking trasformation from Thailand.

10) Get dropped off in the taxi depot on the edge of town. Negotiated for a Tuk-Tuk with the Hong Kong guy for $2 US dollars into town.

11) Go to "Bar" St. in the center of town, find a suprisingly really nice and classy tourist area in the middle of town. Find a really nice little hotel in the area called the Golden Temple (or something like that) for $15 US a night. Get free beer opon check in.

The result, not that bad. Did not cost too much and relly the only problem was figuring out the taxi deal in Poipet, but even that worked out fine. Siem Reap is actually very nice, and today we head out to see Angkor Wat.

Flaming Floating Lotus Flowers

2007-11-25T02:14:00.000-05:00

Experiencing different festivals of the world is one of my passions, so you can imagine my delight when I found out that we would be in Bangkok for the Loy Kratong Festival. During the festival times, normally tourist-weary locals are more talkative, open, and generally in a better mood. The city is cleaner and the excitement in the air is palpable.

So far we have been extraordinarily lucky - we hit the Asakusa Samba Festival in Japan, the Ladakh Festival in Leh, the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Diu and Mumbai, Dandiya in Chennai, the Durga festival in Calcutta, and now we were in town for the Thai's second most important festival of the year. It has been chance all except for Calcutta (most of these run on the lunar calender making it hard to find the exact dates).

Possibly hinting at Indian roots, the main activity of the Loy Kratong festival is to buy or make a kratong and release it with lit incense and a small candle into the river. Unlike the Hindu festivals we have attended, this one seems to have unclear origins. It seems that the Thais take is as a festival to mark the beginning of the cool, dry season and releasing of the kratong as good luck.

The kratongs are usually made of a disc of banana tree, bread, or styrofoam (think the kind that you caulk windows with). Trying to find a less environmentally damaging one, we picked was a simple lotus flower. They are decorated with folded banana leaf, flowers, incense, and candles. I read at sometimes there is money in the center which explains the three women in a longtail boat downstream from the releasing point fishing them out, dumping the contents in the boat, and throwing them back in the water.

Some of the main events took place in the park near our guesthouse in the neighborhood of Banglampu. There were plenty of foods stalls (more on that to come in another blog), balloon sellers, and 2 stages. One stage was for beauty contests and traditional dance and song. The other larger one for a Thai rock band. It was all very well organized with marine patrol and Mardi Gras barrier corrals to wait in before releasing your krathong.

The floating kratongs in the Mae Nam Chao Phraya river and the Mardi Gras-like floats parading down the river made for a magical night. We released our krathong with the help of a man down the walkway from the festival. He was using a fan cover attached to ribbon to hoist up floating krathongs. I thought at first he was looking to take the money out of them as well. However, all he did was insert a stick topped with a alcohol soaked sponge, light it, and release the flaming kratong back in the water. I guess he was looking for lots of luck.

- Nisha