Cambodia Part III: Kampot: 'Chill Out'

At long last, almost exactly 1 month after The Trip, we have reached the 3^rd and final blog entry on my adventures in Cambodia. Admittedly, the last leg of my vacation was likely the least adventuresome/ancient, but also the most enjoyable, so I will try to convince you of the amazingness of Kampot, not with danger and intrigue, but with tales of recreation & relaxation and, of course, more pictures. Off we go…

With the beauty of Angkor Wat thoroughly recorded on my camera, it was time to get my relaxation on, Cambodia style. I was tipped off to the glory that is the Southeastern Cambodian town of Kampot by a close friend who will remain nameless for no particular reason (love the phrase “who will remain nameless”) and decided that I would spend 3 days experiencing what it had to offer before spending the last 1.5 days of my trip in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia’s capitol and my point of departure. So I organized an overnight “sleeper bus” from Siem Reap to the coastal town of Sihanoukville, where I would connect on to Kampot. I was promised a “bed” on the bus, but as I don’t usually consider buses a suitable place for a suitable bed, I was skeptical regarding the actual comfort level of the seating (or bedding) situation. My skepticism, as usual, was validated upon boarding the bus..

My cell for the evening...

Cambodia Part 2: Angkor Wat: The SUPERPIX

After the novel-length entry I posted about my first day in Cambodia, I promised that I would keep this one light on the text and heavy on the pix. I aims to please ya’ll, and pictures are my preferred technique of encouraging reading; it’s positive reinforcement! It worked when I was a kid, and I still prefer books with pictures…

Welcome to Angkor Wat

Bigger than it looks, if you believe that

A small portion of the innumerable elaborate stone carvings littered about these temples

Continue on after the jump for a little more background and a lot more of my favorite pictures.

Cambodia Part I: Siem Reap: The Good, the Bad, and the Flooded

Some of you may know that I recently took a trip to Cambodia for various reasons, primarily pertaining to matters of visa renewal, sightseeing, and relaxation. I accomplished all of my objectives as planned. This is the first of what will likely be another 2 or even 3 part tale of my travels, so you better read it so you’re not behind when the next one comes out! That is how I grow my readership: unintimidating threats, lightheartedly delivered! Let’s do this thing:

October brings with it a month long semester break for schools, similar to that which we call Winter Break at home. So, as a teacher, I also get some time off, and decided to take a trip to Cambodia, a bordering country which is very much on the South East Asia Backpacker Trail, and boasts some beautiful scenery, fascinating culture, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Angkor Wat. I decided to go check it all out, and while I was at it, I could fly back in to Bangkok on the return trip, renewing my visa for 30 days rather than the 15 you get by land (my visa situation is a very long, boring story, so just trust me that the trip was beneficial and let’s move on to excitement).

I left Chiang Mai on the over-night bus to Bangkok at 9pm on Monday, and after a series of buses and taxis, I was in Siem Reap by 4pm the next day.When I arrived in Siem Reap, I couldn’t get dropped off directly at my hostel because of flood water. Lots of it..

What Atlantis looked like, before things got bad...

(Find out if I eventually found my way or not after the jump)

Ooo a Food Blog?? Fun!

I thought it would be refreshing to once again take a break from the adventure/excitement posts for a moment and try something a little more domestic: Food Blogging. This is my latest in a long line of efforts to convince you to come to Thailand/make you hungry.

Yes, I feel it's time to try my hand at the food blogging thing. Not because of any sort of hobby/career aspirations, but just because I ate some really good food, and I happen to have a blog. And as the saying goes: if the shoe fits, write a cliché blog about it.

Just so you have some background into how this came about: I ate a hamburger.

When I ate the first burger, I knew it was special. When I ate the second one, it inspired me to write about it. When I went to write about it, I realized I needed to eat it 2 more times: once to notice the details of how everything is done and what the place is like, and once to write about it as I eat it or shortly afterward. Point is: I’ve eaten this burger a bunch of times, so you can trust that my research process has been thorough. I try to keep things professional around here.

Fits in the palm of your hand. Ergonomics are the hallmark of the Sandwich industry.

It all started when Will suggested we walk in the opposite direction from the restaurants we usually go to for dinner. There was the mention of some “Curry Place,” which is a perfectly normal and legitimate possibility in Thailand, but we never actually found it. Instead we happened across a little shop whose sign advertised a 25 Baht burger. Could be a tourist trap, or more of that bad imitation western food that plagues parts of the city… but it’s not in an area that sees many/any tourists… and the sign and banner is written completely in Thai… better check it out…

We walk over and ask what the best burger to get is, and the woman behind the counter says beef, which ended up being 27 Baht, and a short 5 minutes later Will and I were sharing the best burger I’ve eaten in Thailand. Allow me to elaborate.

Mae Hong Song Loop Pt 2: Mae Hong Son: Daytrip Masterpiece

Welcome back, and please enjoy the follow up to last week’s action-packed post on Part 1 of our first trip to Mae Hong Son Province (Pai withstanding), as promised. There is less action then we’ve come to expect from recent posts, but I will compensate with lots of pictures. Without further ado (fancy word right?):  Part 2

After a run-of-the-mill (yet comfortable) bus ride through the baffling scenery and terrain of the North-westernmost region of Thailand, we arrived at our destination of Mae Hong Son (the town) in the late afternoon. We took a tuk tuk from the bus station into the center of town, a journey that was easily walkable, showing our inexperience with the area, which we generally try to avoid. Embarassment quickly forgotten, we started walking around in order to get acclimated and find a guesthouse. We eventually settled on a cheap little number by the man-made lake at the center of town, and set off quickly to make the most of the remaining hour-ish of sunlight. We saw a temple on a hill at the edge of town, so we went there. Turns out it’s a fairly big deal. Also turns out you can drive up… no one told us, so we walked. Worth it though, I would say:

We headed back down the mountain, excited to get out and about the following day to explore the landscape we’d just lusted after. On the way back down, we happened upon a collection of very old monk statues that I think are funny enough to include at this point:
(pictures and further adventures after the jump)

Mae Hong Son Loop PT 1: Mae Sariang: We like a little danger in our sleepy river towns

A four day weekend had fallen upon the teaching community of Thailand, and that meant that it was time for my friends and I to get out of town for a few days. Nick was going down to Ko Chang, an island in the Southeast, Will and Elise were going to go to the relatively nearby towns of Mae Sariang and Mae Hong Son (in Mae Hong Son province just to the west of Chiang Mai province), and I was planning on visiting a Thai friend in Bangkok, then spending a few days in nearby Kanchanaburi, location of the legendary Bridge Over the River Kwai (note: “kwai” translates in English to “buffalo”, so it’s understandable why they didn’t translate it for the book/movie. “Bridge Over Buffalo River” sounds more like an episode of Dora the Explorer than an epic war story..) Lucky for Mae Hong Son, this plan fell through, and I was able to grace the province with my eminence, along with Will and Elise for 3.5 magical days.

We left Chiang Mai by bus on Thursday night, headed for Mae Sariang, the first of several towns along what is commonly referred to as The Mae Hong Son Loop. Observe:

We made it to the bus just as it was pulling away, and crammed ourselves into the remaining seats. When I say “crammed”, I mean we fit ourselves into a “3-seater” bench, with Will wedged up against the window, Elise nearly on top of him the whole ride, and me with half my butt on the bench and my left leg spread all the way across the aisle and into the foot space of the next seat over just so I could balance and stay upright. Fairly standard 4 hour bus ride for about $3 a pop. We pulled in to town around 1 AM, found our guesthouse, and promptly passed out, visions of sugar plums  day markets and Shan-style temples dancing in our heads.

After doing a bit of detective work the following morning, we decided it would be cool to head to a market village we’d heard about called Mae Sam Laep; it is about an hour outside of town, right on the Burmese border, and there is a great deal of trading (and smuggling) that passes through this remote market. It ended up being a far more eventful  ride than we expected.

Wake UP!: It's Like an Alarm Clock (Woo WOo!)

So last night I get woken up at 2:55 AM to the sound of: “EVERYBODY, WAKE UP. FIRE!! WAKE UP!!”

What.

I literally jumped out/off of my bed, hurled down the stairs and rounded the corner to find my roomates pouring any water they could find on top of our refrigerator, which was aflame. A truly foul smell filled the house and dark smoke was flowing steadily out of the kitchen. I had been dreaming literally seconds before seeing this, but it felt just as surreal as any dream I may have been having.

And then seconds later, the fire was out. At its highest, the fire was about a foot-and-a-half above the top of our chest-high fridge, and took 3 frantic people to put out. It was caused by an electric-kettle water-heater-upper thing, which had somehow stayed on for who knows how long, causing the heating element to melt the plastic kettle, then set it ablaze. The worsening destruction was slowed when the cord of the kettle was melted, causing the cable to short circuit and throw the breaker. While this did help prevent the element from continuing to melt/ignite everything in its path, a good deal of melting/igniting had been caused already. To make things worse, when the power is out in our house, so is the water; this meant that we were only able to get to the water that was already in the pipes and toilets, and any drinking water we had in our water jug. Luckily, that was enough to put out the flames, without even having to go in to toilet territory.

Lucky seems to be the theme of this fire. All we really lost was our hot plate and the strong-willed kettle itself; the fridge still works despite obvious aesthetic setbacks, and the mess/stench have been mostly dealt with. However, things could’ve gone WAY worse had a lot of things not worked out in our favor. The list is long, and ill spare you the minute details, but had things not gone just as they did, I don’t know if I’d be posting this right now.