Goodbye Bangkok (and Asia)

The last few days in Bangkok have been fantastic, but it feels like a sweet-sounding swan song to our entire journey. We've returned to the trip's birthplace, our metaphorical glasses coloured by our many weeks abroad. To tell the truth, Bangkok looks very different after being through the rest of Southeast Asia. Initially, what I found exciting yet frightening, offensive yet exhilirating, I still manage to find a way to love.

I've said to Taylor that I intend to visit back to Bangkok when I'm rich and eccentric (when, not if) although it will probably happen sooner.

On our first full day back, we ended up crossing to the other side of the dirty, dirty river that runs through Bangkok, our destination being the Forensic Medical Museum we had heard so much about. This was...probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I've decided to attach a picture of an elephantitic scrotum I furtively snapped (photography wasn't allowed) in the less disgusting part of the museum.

If you zoom in below the scrotum in the display case (about one foot in diameter) you can see the picture of the guy it actually came off of. This was actually the less empty and less disgusting part of the museum. The real treat was the area filled with pictures with captions such as "bullet wound through skull" "beheading due to car accident" and "grenade in torso". Part of the exhibit was a bloodied shirt that was the result of a stabbing death by a sharp dildo.

Needless to say, this was in Lonely Planet under the section "Quirky Bangkok". We walked around the other, safer parts of Bangkok for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, Taylor and I acquired a tailor, and had shirts made. Needless to say, these are of excellent quality that we'd never find in Canada. The tailor will actually keep our measurements for five years, so we can both now say "We have our shirts made for us in Bangkok". We also wandered the world's classiest mall. We ALSO saw 28 weeks later, in possibly the nicest theatre I've ever been in.

Today, we spent the day at Chatuchak Market, with somewhere between 10,000-15,000 individual stalls, spending an incredibly small amount of money for great stuff. I bought a sword. We picked up our shirts, and had possibly the most satisfying meal of the trip. I broke down and had a Guinness on tap with a Burger. Taylor had Laphroig and another Burger. Delicious

Then, we took a taxi/skytrain to where our bags are being stored. We walked down Khao San Road for the last time, pictured below. Taylor, my loyal Sherpa, is on the right.

We have little money left, but we think we can make it home. 36 hours left!

Putting an end to sappy comments

Alright. We really appreciate the love and all, and we're glad you're following the blog closely. But what's with all this "We're so proud of you" and "We love you" stuff we see in the comments? Come on guys. You're making us look bad. Save that sort of thing for emails.

Innundation at Ta Prohm

Hey there! We're back in Bangkok, and thanks to censorship I can't put up videos using youtube or metacafe. Fortunately, dailymotion is still allowed, so here we go!

Ta Prohm
Uploaded by monkeyenterprises

Also, check below for the pictures I FINALLY added to "Around Angkor"

Things not carved in stone

I figure we've been posting lots and lots about the temples themselves, but that gives a bit of a false impression of what our time here in Siem Reap has really been like. Not that Angkor wasn't the reason we came here, of course, but there are lots of other strange things to happen over the past few days. Here are the headlines.

Monkey attacks Taylor:

That's a bit of an embellishment, but close enough. Angkor Wat is a jungle gym for small, furry mammals like this particularily evil one, and for the most part they're pretty cool until they show you their teeth. One of them had decided that he was going to camp out in a stone doorway. This happened to be a stone doorway that I wanted to get through, so I figured it would be a great opportunity to get close to a monkey. Anyways he asked me the usual questions, about my name, my quest, favourite colour, but when I couldn't answer that one he got pissed. He lunged at me, opened his mouth to reveal some hideous dentistry and hissed. I decided to back off at this point, good thing to or I'd probably be in Bangkok getting rabies jabs.

Dustin mounts tuk tuk:

I wish I had a picture of this one. It's our unspoken mission to do as many things as possible that are illegal in Canada, but okay here (I'm still recovering from my opium and coke bender last night), so in the spirit of things, Dustin decided to stand on the rear fender of our tuk tuk and ride that way, looking over the roof. Both of us have been talking for a long time about driving one, too, but when we brought that up our driver said no. And that was even AFTER the beer we bought him.

Woman throws stick at cow:

About as interesting as it sounds. But it cracked us up so hard we almost fell out of the tuk tuk.

Conversations with monks:

During our final day at the temples, we stumbled upon a group of monks smoking cigarettes and chatting on their cell phones. No alcohol, but tobacco's okay I guess. Everyone needs their vices! They were pretty keen to practice some English and spread the faith, so asked us to come sit with them, which we did for about an hour. Anywho, they'v got lots to say, which we thought was great considering the number of foreigners that must pass by every day and try to talk to them to make their experience 'more authentic'. They encouraged us to ask questions about Buddhism, they took pictures of us with their phones, and one of them bashed the monkey who was sleeping in the middle of the circle with an empty waterbottle. Here he is wearing my sunglasses.


Enough crocodiles to scare Steve Irwin:

Vita, the girl who works at our guesthouse revealed to us that for four nights we'd been sleeping within about 25'of over 150 full grown crocodiles, held in a secure pen of corrugated iron and chewing gum. They farm them, eat them, and sell shoes to tourists for outrageous prices, even though you'd never get across the border with them. Their eyes make for one crazy picture at night...I'd upload it but don't have another half hour. BAH!

Anyways, our time in Cambodia is at an end, and it's starting to feel like our trip is too, since we're heading back to Bangkok tomorrow morning, braving the dirt road from Siem Reap to Poipet. Wish us luck. God I miss street food.

Around Angkor

"Around Angkor" is how our guidebook describes the Angkorian buildings that are a day or half-day trip from Siem Reap, Cambodia. We visited three of these today: Kbal Spean, Banteay Srei and Beng Melea by a rented tuk-tuk with our driver, Gao. For over 150 km of driving over bumpy backroads, we paid $40 (and a cold beer). But, before I get into that, first things first. In the desire to experiences temples more perfectly, I purchased a hat. This is what it looked like:



Kbal Spean

This is the location of the "River of a Thousand Lingas", Linga meaning "penis image". Now, before you start laughing like a five-year old, you have to realize that Angkorian culture did not hold similiar tittilations about looking at/making pictures of penises. In fact, at the end of the river there is a hollowed-out area where the king at the time would bathe in the running water after it had been "made holy" by running over all the penis carvings upstream. I have Western Culture to thank that I don't think I'd ever want to bathe in water that many other penises had been in, ceramic or otherwise.



When we got to the top of the 3 km path, I noticed several bumps in the river, which was pretty interesting. I hopped over a rope fence to look at them. Using guesswork, I assumed they were made to aerate the water for fish. Taylor and I argued for a bit over how old they were, but assumed they must be recent because otherwise they would have worn out. We kept going up and up, until finally we met a local who was working on maintenance, and he showed us around a little. There were some interesting carvings in the rock where we met him.



So, we walked back down the river where he pointed out the Linga. Well, guess what? All those bumps I had been stepping on earlier were actually the bases of what used to be stone penises coming up out of the river. Had we not met the guide, we would never have realized it! He showed us quite a few things, including an arrangment of linga and some other carvings that was supposed to represent a vagina. He also showed us the bath that I already mentioned. At the end of the tour, we gave him a dollar for his troubles, which seemed like the right thing to do.

Banteay Srei

Next, we went 18 km back down the road to a temple that is well known for its ornate carvings, and considered the best in the Angkorian group. It was rather small, but incredible to look around. There's not much to say here, but I can post a few interesting pictures.







This was around noon, and I looked down and realized how incredibly small my shadow was. Living at 45 degrees above the equator normally, I have actually NEVER seen it this small, so I took a picture. Doing some rough calculations in my head...We're about 11 degrees above the equator right now, and its near the summer solstice, so 15 - 25 degrees means a 10ish degree angle shadow. Science!



We ate lunch one of the various restaurants next to the temple (postcard? no bracelet? no Okay, maybe later you want one you buy from me. No!) while our tuk-tuk driver rested in a hammock.

Beng Melea

Finally, to the climax of the trip...Beng Melea. While the same size and floor plan as Angkor Wat, it has been utterly consumed by the forest, while is extremely cool and sad at the same time. We were hoping we could roam free, but a guide found us and we had to follow him, which actually wasn't too bad. He would stop me from doing things like scaling walls and other stupid ideas, but he was very informative and brought us on a tour of the temple through areas that we otherwise could have missed.



Of exploration was aided alot by a wooden walkway that was constructed in 2004 for the filming of a French movie called The Two Brothers, but we also spent a significant amound of time scaling rubble.



While most of the ceilings had caved in, there were several huge arched hallways that could be explored.



It was surprising how fully nature had taken over the entire structure. Here is me, standing where the ceiling would have been on top of one of the library, looking at nature driving back civilization.



It was a long day. Taylor rewarded our tuk-tuk driver, Gao, by giving him a beer, which he knocked back surprisingly fast.

Harrison Ford eat your heart out

Today was our first day, of our three day pass, wandering the ancient city of Angkor north of Siem Reap. Actually that's not totally true, we were there yesterday as well at Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset, which looked like something out of a movie. I kept being reminded of Jurassic Park, which is kind of how the whole thing felt minus the velociraptors. While we were up there we kept hearing this dull roar that made even the stones shake.

Taylor: "That must be the T-Rex"

Dustin: "You have a T-Rex?"

Taylor: "We have a T-Rex!"

It didn't take us long to realize it was the airport, which is pretty close by.

To start the day off, we did something that probably only our fathers would have done (not that we like to admit it) and got up around 4 a.m. to watch the sun rise over Angkot Wat. Well, our fathers and about 900 other tourists from Japan unloading from air-conditioned buses with cameras that made ours look like a cellphone. We had sorted out transportation the night before, and ended up renting single speed bikes from our guesthouse which we rode through the unlit streets of Siem Reap 7 or 8 km to the main wat. Stunning.

To try beating the crowds we figured we'd check out some other temples that people hadn't gotten to yet, then redo the main temple on the third day. This turned out to be a good idea, as it gave us about 20 minutes alone at a temple that turned out to be my favourite, Bayon. Let's jsut say that if Indiana Jones and Lara Croft had a kid, it would look something like this:

After that we wandered/pedalled pretty aimlessly, dodging kids selling postcards and ladies trying to seduce us with cold drinks along the way. I'm serious, they have it down to an art that's almost sexual...."Sir you want coooold drink? Mmmmm, cooooold?". Needless to say, we succumbed more than once. As for the postcard selling children, we developed a unique strategy to deal with them. When they ask us to buy, buy buy, and they don't let up, we play a little game.

"No no, you've got it all backwards. WE sell YOU postcard! Special price for you, three for $1."

This tends to perplex the little kiddies a bit, sometimes enough that they stop bothering us and other times just enough to get them to like us so they'll NEVER leave us alone. Which isn't such a bad thing, their English is often great and knowledge of Canadian statistics staggering. AT one point Dustin tried to explain to one of them what a biplane was. So now you understand why watching him talk to people almost kills me. Anyways, once we talk to them long enough we just give them a postcard of Kingston, or the 1000 Islands or something. Yep, that's us, spreading Canadiana all over the world. You can thank us later, Stephen.

Here's one of the temples we fund along the way. Lets just say that if Indiana Jones and Lara Croft had a kid, it would look something like this:

So that's our day, all 12 hours of it. Temple of the day? Well, Angkor Wat, I guess. Because frig. It's Angkor Wat. Anyways it's past 8:30 now, and my body decided it was bedtime hours ago. That and we've got another early start tomorrow, we're planning to hijack a tuk tuk and make the driver take us to far away temples. If that fails I guess we could just pay him. More to come (uploading pictures in uber slow here)!