Asian Walkabout

Click on the points of the map for photos from each location....

If there’s one ideal place in Asia to spend gobs of money on pirated goods, hospital treatments, handmade gifts, and T-shirts, it’s Bangkok. This thriving metropolis was the last stop on our journey, and boy, did it provide. Like a fertile mother, Bangkok gifted us DVDs (pirated), music (pirated), Lacoste shirts (fake), Diesel jeans (fake), and delectable street food (real), enough to bulge our bags to the seams.

I even tried my hand at medical tourism, visiting the gleaming, ultrasuave Bangkok Hospital to get a wart removed. This would cost a cool $200 in the States. Here, arguably under better conditions, it cost $50. They had an Arabic Hospital, a Japanese Hospital, an International Hospital, a Beauty Hospital (read: cheap facelifts), a Heart Recovery Hospital, and all kinds of other divisions. It’s a big industry, and thousands of people a year come for affordable, quality medical care.

The next time I catch something, I’m flying to Bangkok.

And then it was over. On May 19th, at 5 am, we found ourselves in the check-in line at Bangkok Airport. 27 hours later, at 9 pm on May 19th, we were standing around the baggage claim at DIA. Time to replace taxi bargaining with bids for assignments; $6 gourmet meals for bean soup and other recession-friendly meals.
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“I don’t want to buy your book.”
“But you told me you would! You made me take out all my books and show you, and now you say you can’t buy it.”
“I told you, I don’t have enough cash on me. My debit card is in my hotel room, and I have to go to an ATM from there to get cash. If you’ll wait for me…”

He didn’t get it. “You ruin my business for the night by not buying! This is very bad for me, you know?”
“I’m sorry, it was my mistake.”
“Buy the book! You say you want to buy the book, so buy it!”
“Please go away.”
“No.”

Thus ended my second serious argument with a 10-year-old street hawker in two days. The first one offered a contest of tic-tac-toe on a tiny piece of scrap paper. If I won, I got a free postcard. If I lost, I had to buy a postcard.

I lost. And he failed to mention that it wasn’t a single postcard at stake, but an entire $4 pack of them.

I refused the pack. He accused me of cheating him. I tried to push him away, all 90 pounds of him. He planted his feet and proclaimed “It’s my country!” His angry glares only stopped when a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxi) driver pulled him aside and said something to calm him down.

Four days later, a boy of similar age, built like a string bean, would try to push me in the bushes and molest me. He failed miserably, but it didn’t exactly sooth my nerves.

Hello, Cambodia.

Flat as a Texas highway, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh offer little in the way of natural scenery, but lots of heart. A bright red, gushing kind of heart. Between 1975-1979, the ultracommunist Khmer Rouge made the brilliant calculation that murdering huge numbers of bourgeoisie would be the fastest road to liberating peasants. So leader Pol Pot and his henchmen rounded up every intellectual, doctor, lawyer, writer, artist, and other “New Person” they could find, arrested them and sent them to work camps. They were worked to the point of exhaustion, then carted off to specially designed killing fields to be “liquidated.”

The Khmer Rouge killed more an estimated 1.7 people between 1975-79. That’s 1,550 people a day.

Cambodia was practically catapulted back into the Stone Age. Fortunately, neighboring Vietnam stopped the regime before it continued to cannibalize its own citizens. These days, all that’s left of the killing fields are several memorials and a haunting pagoda containing a 20-foot high tower of human skulls.

The genocide, new enough to be raw, old enough to be overgrown by crabgrass and banana trees, still lingers on the faces of the Cambodian, or Khmer, people. Many carry visible psychic scars in their expressions, a sad cast about the eyes despite their delightfully wicked humor and unquenchable optimism.

So you have this country full of vulnerable, sad, laughing, haunted, living, smiling people who openly carry their moods on their faces. Cambodia is so human, and that makes it endearing despite its many tragedies.

otos/126264/Angkor122.jpg thumb=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/126264/thumb_Angkor122.jpg]Then, there are the monuments. The most famous, Angkor Wat, looms majestically inside a 15-foot wide moat, its five crumbling towers marking the edges of the biggest religious building on the planet.

But the great monument’s physical beauty pales in comparison to the collection of temples around it. From the 267 meditating faces carved into the Bayon, the Angkor God-King’s temple, to Ta Prohm, a Tomb Raider-like ruin where massive tree roots hug piles of ancient stone, it is the surrounding temples that make the magic.

Little is known about the site, which houses more than twenty mysterious temples. The stunning bas-reliefs of elephants, devas, and, of course, peacefully meditating faces make the imagination run wild.

We spent around 5 days exploring the beauty, mystery, and tragedy that is Cambodia. It was a roller-coaster experience that intermittently stunned, awed, sickened, and soothed the senses. We also provided the fun-poking Khmers with a few good laughs along the way. I have no idea why—the only spoke Khmer—but come to think of it, two grimy backpackers with Buddha necklaces and fake designer sunglasses are pretty entertaining.

Even to our tired, worse-for-the-wear selves.

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We did a quick 5-day jaunt into Vietnam for a look at Hanoi and the epic Halong Bay. It wasn’t nearly enough time to do the country justice, but the dose we did get was tantalizing.

Vietnam didn’t exactly embrace us from the getgo. We landed at the airport and found out the hard way that only one out of ten ATMs in this country actually give you money. The rest of the time, they come up with excuses ranging from ACCESS DENIED to SORRY, THIS MACHINE IS OUT OF CASH. None of the eight ATMs at Hanoi Airport worked, so we had to beg a tour salesperson to give us a cash advance.

Things improved after that.

After a decadent night in an air-conditioned real hotel (as opposed to guesthouse or lodge, the Southeast Asian pseudonym for “cheap”), we took a van to beautiful Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site containing nearly 2,000 limestone islets on 1,500 square kilometers. The bay is 500 million years old, and was used as an international trading port before someone figured out that its beauty might prove even more profitable.

These days, thousands of tourists in hotel boats modeled after Chinese junks cruise the main channels of the bay. The scenery is dramatic and surreal, like thousands of Thailand’s Ko Phi Phi islands thrown into the same emerald waters.

We spent two days on a faux Chinese junk with a white-coated waitstaff and carved wooden interiors designed to make you feel like an old-school Asian aristocrat. The scenery was enchanting, and our fellow tourists some of the most diverse and interesting people we’ve met on this trip: a French-American lesbian expat couple with two kids living in Singapore, two family doctors from Spain, a professionally trained Japanese singer, a Chilean couple, and a handful of others representing countries around the world.

When you’re floating on a big comfy tourist boat, you rarely get to penetrate the essence of a place. Instead, you breeze through several highlights, then spend the rest of your time focusing on self-indulgent pastimes such as drinking cold beer, eating fried food, and basking in the sun.

One of the highlights were fishing villages floating on bright blue bouys, a phenomenon typical of Vietnam. The people inside them make their living off the water. Instead of walking from place to place, they use wooden pedal-powered boats. The poverty was shocking—family homes were often tin shacks with laundry hanging on the family boats parked outside—but the unique lifestyle preserves a cultural heritage barely seen anymore in today’s rapidly developing world.

Another highlight was a cliffside cave deep enough to support a Broncos game. The stalactite-rich innards produced a scene akin to a sci-fi special, with heart-pounding bay views at the top.

We also enjoyed local seafood that was nothing short of glorious. The Vietnamese are known for flavoring their meats with herbs, resulting in unique and scrumptious cuisine that leaves you surprised—and craving more. Mango leaves and peppermint add culinary life to fresh prawns. Salads containing lotus seeds and green mango go well with fried fish caught just half an hour ago. Sea snails and boiled bananas in chicken stock comprise their hearty winter soup. Absolutely amazing. Exotic delicacies like swan and dog were also common, but we didn’t go there.

We spent two nights on the water, in an oiled mahogany boat cabin. The first day was excellent; the second, a welcome and relaxing addition. We headed back to crowded, high-energy Hanoi to spend the final day. There’s so much motorcycle traffic in the city that you basically have to walk into oncoming traffic to cross the street. The trick is to step slowly, so the mopeds have time to swerve around you. Running across the street is more likely to get you hit. And crosswalks…well, they might as be invisible. Hanoi needs signs saying “Cross At Your Own Risk.” Then, in small print, “People’s Government will not be held responsible for injuries caused by high-speed mopeds carrying three people and a dead pig on rear.”

It’s a busy, stuffy, nonstop, upwardly mobile city with a burgeoning middle class. Vietnam in general is on a strong economic upward swing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s as developed as, say, South Korea in the not-too-distant future. And the population has its eye on culling every resource their bountiful land has to offer. Environmental protection is not a priority. It’s a beautiful country, and probably one that must be visited sooner rather than later, before old-school fishing families go big industry, and verdant hills are flattened to support additional development.

After a whirlwind 5 days, we’re flying to beautiful, sweltering, and refreshingly laid-back Cambodia for some ancient temples and a hard lesson in one of history’s worst genocides…

“I can handle this."Handle" is my middle name. Actually, "handle" is the middle of my first name.” Chandler Bing, from an unnamed episode of the hit 1990s TV show Friends.

Vang Vieng, Laos. Before the invasion, this small town nestled against the banks of the Nam Song River was a slow-paced fishing village populated by ethnic Loatians and tribal Hmong people. Soaring limestone karsts provided a stunning backdrop to the sunkissed rhythm of daily life. Women caught crabs with their bare hands on the riverbank, while men in pole-driven skiffs searched for bigger fish.

Then they came. At first they visited in a slow trickle, scouting the land for appropriate resources. When they discovered its bounty, they started coming in droves, changing the face of the town forever.

I should interject something here. Marijuana is a form of traditional medicine in Laos. As more and more tourists started visiting this beautiful, landlocked strip of Southeast Asia, the pot found its way into pizzas, where it gave birth to a traditional tourist delicacy known as the “happy pizza.” This snack evolved into a host of other laced delights with names reflective of the states they induced: the space shake, for example, might contain psycosilibin mushrooms along with the traditional weed. The Lonely Planet says to watch out for anything labeled “cosmic.”

So when you combine copious amounts of weed and Beer Lao with stunning scenery and a slow-moving river, you get creative. And when you get creative, you realize that inflating a tractor tube, bringing a few beers along, and floating down the river is not a bad way to spend a day.

Then the locals get creative and realize that tourists like booze, Bob Marley, and rope swings. So they line 90% of the river with bars, blown speakers blaring Bob, and rope swings. Thus, the formerly sleepy fishing village of Vang Vieng has become a party village.

In the midst of all this, there is, inexplicably, Friends. Ross, Courtney, Phoebe, Joey, Rachel, Chandler. Their sitcom lives play out 14 hours a day on Vang Vieng’s main drag, to an utterly stoned—and often passed out—audience. The idea is to get a happy shake and happy pizza and zone out. But only to Friends. The bars, which are identical in color, size, and TV screen placement, show nothing else.

It starts at around 9 am and lasts well into the night. It is also utterly creepy. You see one bar playing out the episode where Joey finds Rachel’s erotic book (Season 7, Episode #2), then you turn the corner and see the exact same thing. Same happy shakes, same mustard-yellow Beerlao tablecloths, same creepy studio laughter echoing down the main drag. Same erotic book. After passing the third or fourth such establishment, you have to pause and wonder whether you’ve walked into a space-time rift, where it is actually the same restaurant, time and again, containing the same people.

OK, so it’s not, especially if you’re sober—but you see my point. We spent a day in Vang Vieng tubing a river so slow that our tubes often stopped completely. The next day, we kayaked/songtheawed to Laos’ capital city of Vientiane. That river was much faster: They sent us down a Class III rapid, then had us jump off a 25-foot cliff, if we so desired.
That was scary. But I still don’t think it was quite as frightening as the Friends thing.