the occasional luxury that's worth the money

Once in a while you just have to splurge on a multi-sensory dining experience: attentive service, innovative chef, great setting.
I've only had excellent culinary and service experiences at Sirocco (euro- fusion) and Breeze (asian fusion). For sunset drinks splash out at SKY bar and Distil. These are just a few of the establishments at Lebua at the State Tower in Bangkok.

Cambodia: How to do the Poipet Border Crossing

Border crossing from Arranyaprathet, Thailand, into Poipet, Cambodia, is more stressful than the other way around. The casinos are right on the border, with sellers and market stalls outside. $40 rooms are had here if the onwards journey is postponed and a night's stay is necessary. Otherwise, the main street just straight out from the border is lined with guesthouses of various price ranges. My $3 room was clean with a solid lock on a rickety door. The bus station was off this main road to the left, if walking away from the border, for my early morning bus ride.

If you purchased a trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) or Bangkok-Phnom Penh, there is the possibility of a scam in Poipet. This can go along the lines of the bus breaking down, so if you want to get to Siem Reap or PP by nightfall, you have to pay extra to get on a bus that was leaving "right now" and happens to have extra seats. That's an extra several dollars to $15.

If you took the train from Bangkok it will be around 2-3pm by the time you cross the border and need onwards transport. Touts of all sorts will approach you with options. Be mindful of the following ticket prices to adjust your bargaining (Phnom Penh-Siem Reap is roughly the same distance as Poipet-Phnom Penh, and also Poipet-Siem Reap as this latter trip's road is in BAD shape):

A one-way ticket on a comfortable, clean, air-conditioned bus with a bathroom from Phnom Penh-Siem Reap costs around $12-$16. The cheapest ticket option where locals can ride roofside on a packed 'taxi' minibus for this same trip is around $3-6.

Just remember: If you haggle too hard, you'll get shafted and may end up in another town altogether, late in the evening with no options (like we did, see below). Keep your cool, ask questions, pay fairly, and you'll get safely to your destination.

My second trip through Poipet:
see my first border crossing into Poipet

First we stopped in Bangkok.

Although K has been to red light districts before, nothing quite prepared him—or me—for the Patpong mob scene in Bangkok. (Ah that mob scene was only the beginning...) That friendly smile…? It translates to “FRESHIE/SUCKER” hereabouts where people need just the slightest encouragement to keep harassing you for handouts or a sell. The gals came twelve-strong to our table in one of the fine evening establishments—with a ladyboy along just in case Keith’s taste ran the other direction—in a show of pressure that other foreigners walking in did not get. Tiny Asian gals crowded around K, who was trying to keep a shocked expression under control (unsuccessfully) at the whole situation and the vaginal acrobatics happening onstage. It was quite the amusing scene, until I saw one of them grab at his money and he let her take off with it.

--I did not! That was small change from the beers--- which was about 20 dollars for two bottles, I might add. {{Edit to add upon K's insistence that the girl only managed to get a 20baht note from him, which is about $0.50}}}.

So the next day I not-so-jokingly mentioned that if he EVER went out to Patpong for a bach party one day I will have to put a lock on him—

--A chastity belt-of-sorts? The boy asks, pleased at my apparent jealousy.

NO, a lock on your wallet, said I crossly.

Bangkok had all the comfort of any large bustling city. I was keen on the chocolate cakes here, which were moist and dense like a good cake should be (Cambodia did NOT get this memo). There is clean food (or minimal rotavirus--hey what's the plural of virus? virii? viruses? anyone?), malls (there are no malls in Cambodia--not a huge loss, but the AC'd interior of a mall is nice once in a while, not to mention clothing designs that run around the vicinity of "normal"), and movie theaters (my movie critiqueing is getting dull by the day in Phnom Penh--we only have Khmer movies there). Oh and the pagodas and wats and the large Emerald Buddha that the Thais stole from Laos but tell tourists its theirs (the Laotians are quite bitter about this).

Bangkok was nice. But soon I sadly conceded that we must move on from the comforts of the big city. Onward ho, to a Kampuchean adventure.

K canNOT miss out on the experience of Poipet, so we did the do-it-yourself-border-crossing en route to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat in neighboring Cambodia. We hooked up with two female backpackers from the UK and New Zealand for the trip from Poipet to Siem Reap (and Angkor Wat)—for safety, I erred in assuming--and the combination of so much white skin put more than a bit of attention on us. The English hereabouts Cambodia is fine up until the actual exchange of cash, after which suddenly linguistic faculties fail and our deal with the locals to take us to Siem Reap went down the drain. There was no improvement in the road between Poipet and Siem Reap from when I came through a few months ago, so we bounced around the back of the flatbed of the pickup truck transportation we found, hanging on to our backpacks for dear life, which were sitting atop heaps of smelly days-old river catches. Those gaping patches of bridge?—our driver hummed right over them without hesitation. And what we thought was our transport to Siem Reap instead dumped us in Sisophon, three hours short of our destination, for a scam stop.

--As soon as our pickup truck rolled into Sisophon a feeding frenzy of the street sharks descended. Loud, broken English and Khmer were hurled about around us, and all we could make out was that they wanted us to get on another pickup and pay more. Now the thought of leaving the containers of fish I was forced sit on was appealing, but the deal we made was to ride this crowded (fish containers, old Khmer ladies, kids, and some dead unplucked chickens) pickup from Poipet to Siem Reap… not pay more money in Sisophon. The gals were quite aggressive back to our scammers, and they finally talked the guys down to a reasonable fee, but the journey doesn’t go smoother from here.

For some reason the men in the truck decided to abduct us. Having no familiarity with Sisophon, I looked at N, who through her work in the country knew the road we were taking was not the road to Siem Reap, but by then it was too late. They drove too fast for us to jump off, in circles to disorient us, and straight into a slum area, telling us we need to “come in and talk.”

Finally the vehicle slowed down and as the driver changed gears to reverse the truck into a gated house I jumped out of the back and grabbed everyone elses bags. N and the Brit followed suit. Luckily the Kiwi didn’t pass out from fright. Amid angry yelling back and forth from the men telling us we should come back and "be reasonable" we started trekking up the road away from the house, expecting at any moment to have a confrontation. They were demanding payment, for what I have no idea since they didn't take us anywhere. We were all truly apprehensive about the whole event and I was mentally calculating which of the men needed to go down first should they decide we needed to be rounded up and marched back. I was afraid they might come after us with weapons; from my readings on the web that scenario certainly was not so farfetched in this country. Thankfully they let us be, perhaps they were too dumbfounded at our decisiveness, or they thought we would be too scared to walk out of this neighborhood and come crawling back for their help.

Luckily N had her phone, via which she beseeched upon her Khmer colleagues back in Phnom Penh to guide us back on track. We were in the middle of slum areas, with no idea where the bus station or the city proper was, and everyone on the sides of the road looked for all the world hostile and unfriendly. Four foreigners sporting large backpacks trekking about lost makes for quite a target, but we were not hassled. N called her translator and asked her to tell people around us to point us in the general direction of the bus station, and she sought random women posing relatively small threat to us to hand to phone to so that the translator can instruct the lady to point us to the direction we were seeking to go. She did this systematically several times for over an hour to make sure we were still traveling in the right direction, so that we finally managed to arrive, haggard, hungry, dirty, tired--but in one piece--at the bus station.

The moment we arrived we thought we made another mistake. It was filthy there, with garbage everywhere and stray animals poking their noses into everything, searching for food. Several broken-down stripped pieces of improvised transport littered the area. There were only men there, about a hundred of them, all gaunt, rags hanging off their starved frames, eyes gleaming like hyenas looking for meat. We stuck out like a beacon and they all immediately descended upon us in droves to offer their services, tripping over each other and trying to outscream everyone else in their desperation to make some money that day. Fist fights broke out around us as they beat on each other for our attention, and Nathalie, unknown to me until much later, was punched in the lip in the melee. I steered the other two girls over to where I saw a uniformed officer. When Nathalie saw our intent she hastened over and told us NEVER to seek police help if we were in trouble. We looked around and there is literally NO help available should these people decide to get some mob action started to take our shoes, clothes, bags, or money, and that is the most sinking feeling in the world. In not so few moments I found myself cursing the existence of this country and wondered for the millionth time what my wife was thinking when she plunked herself down on this hellhole.

The Khmer street sharks did not leave us be, crowding around and forcing their services on us--a moto taxi, a hotel room, food, etc etc-- and we could not get a moment's peace to even converse with each other to get a plan in gear. You just can't think in that situation! Finally N broke away, snarled at the ones who followed her to get away, and got back on the phone. She asked her colleagues at the NGO in Phnom Penh to help us obtain a taxi out of Sisophon. Finally, after what seemed like days, via contacts of contacts from Phnom Penh to Battambang to Sisophon, her friends were able to help us get a legitimate taxi driver at the bus station and negotiate a fair fee for our onward transport. We were back on the road--the right road this time--to Siem Reap when the heavens opened up and poured down a storm.

Welcome to Cambodia! Why did we leave Bangkok???

And all this time with me yelling, “NO smiling! Hard look, hard look! You’re giving them reason to harass us!!!” Poipet is one of the most notorious border crossings, but nothing prepared us for that ordeal. I did not expect the chain of events we went through, and I just thank my lucky stars that I had some Khmer friends just a phone call away to help us.

Despite that nightmare, I am actually still quite taken with this country, which has a lot of potential and promise in its future. K understandably was not so keen on the whole scene, but after spending some time in Phnom Penh with me things slowly got better. It is still quite primitive for what he is used to. I think the way he handled the whole situation just made me fall more in love with him. Sappy I know, but how many people can find a gem of value in an experience like that, especially when it was unnecessarily forced upon him by someone who claims to love him?! What a trooper I married eh?

--Yeah, great experience of a vacation N, thanks-- {{I didn't hear sarcasm in that did I? he he}}}

Thailand: Scene in Bangkok

People believe that spirits share the space that humans inhabit. When a house is built, a similar-looking smaller house is built and placed at a prominent location on the property, to house the spirits that were displaced by the humans moving in. This is done to pacify them or else bad luck will befall the new tenants. Many accidents plagued the building of the Erawan complex in this photo. These events stopped when this spirit house was built and dedicated.


Khao San Road, the backpacking mecca of Bangkok.


Jasmine vendor. The smell of jasmine is just heaven!


Fish vendor. The smell in the meat market is NOT heaven!


The absolute BESTEST iced tea in the world is at this particular street vendor in Bangkok! Drinks are put into small plastic bags that look like mini grocery bags, they stick some ice and a straw in there, and voila! (Edit in 2007: sadly this site has been developed with four megamalls on each corner so my cafe vendor is gone :(


Iced coffee to go!


Boat Lunge-ing 101. Boats take you up and down the canals and river for a scenic view of Bangkok--for a mere 10cents each way. They come in at a sideswipe angle at high speed. The boat never comes to a complete stop and people just lunge on or off. I have no idea how they don't fall right in the water and get crushed.


This is at the Reclining Buddha. Keith was smitten by the wats, pagodas, and temples of Asia and we visited as many as he can get us to. These structures are actually resting places for prominent residents and monks.


Young monks were waiting with us for the boat to go down the klong (waterways).


Riverside dwellings along the Chao Praya

Thailand: Embrace the Chaos (Bangkok)

I was standing at a busy intersection waiting amid a large crowd of pedestrians to cross the street, when someone pinched my butt. I glared heavenwards at the asinine behavior before turning slowly around. And looked up. And up. There was a tree behind me. And it honked. Right in the middle of the Bangkok congestion, in rush hour, an elephant is standing behind me waiting to cross the street. Where else would you see this!! Alright, ok, it's still a novel appeal to me. I walked next to the massive creature for a few blocks, touching his trunk, his leg, a stupid smile on my face.

Thailand is the only SE Asian country to have escaped the good fortune of Western colonization, a subject of much debate as to why (that was sarcasm). Farming villages, especially those outside guidebook-assisted traffic, manage to preserve an authentic traditional culture. It is one of the last three countries in Asia (Cambodia and Korea are the others) to retain the unifying symbolism of its royal family. Like the typical middle-developing capital city assaulted by a rush of progress faster than its infrastructure can keep pace, Bangkok is dynamic, evolving, exhausting. It is extravagance and exotic refinement, hosted by a culture of reverence and hospitality, amid pollution, congestion, chaos. Streets are rapidly and irreverently stripped of local flavor in favor of sterile megamalls and concrete warrens of Starbucks, GAPs, multi-cineplexes. Professionals favor western garbs over finer traditional silks and prints. There is a concerning eagerness to emulate the standards of westernization ie Singapore.

Despite the clash of modernization with cultural identity, Bangkok offers the friendliest hospitality to newbie globetrotters and jaded planeteers alike. The population is highly literate; many people speak some english; western currency gets good mileage. Legions of tuk-tuks (tricycles), motorbikes, and taxis roar down the left side of wide boulevards that can be pedestrian-unfriendly. My jaywalking days were put to a screeching halt quite literally when I stepped off the curb looking for traffic in the wrong direction and was instantly plowed into, thankfully by only a tuk-tuk. A collective of older ladies peeled me off the street and helped me cross the street, holding my hands like I was a child. It was very cute.

Sensory speaking, I lived an impoverished age. From the moment I stepped off the plane my senses have been assaulted by the extremes of sight, sound, smell. Resplendent temple rooftops mark the signature skyline with their vibrant gold. Streets are lined with market stalls selling orchids, traditional handicrafts, knockoff-brand merchandise (of surprisingly good quality, I found), fine silks and textiles—it is a bargain hunter's disneyland and a premier destination for vendors in the country. Pushcart kitchens and bars are everywhere. A special Thai moonshine that I swear is straight rubbing alcohol is found only on these street bars.

Seekers of Siam Exotica are not disappointed. I passed a snake blood stand and watched the vendor hang an unlucky reptile, slit it open with a razor, and drain its blood for a fresh warm shot. It supposedly is restorative for many systemic ills; only the poisonous ones will do. For dire situations, king cobra venom mixed with a bit of whiskey is the ticket. Dried gall bladders, fried hearts, pickled genitals are all readily available as well for the uncompromising palate. Flash strips and the skin trade hawking Oriental decadence waken every evening next to swanky shopping centers. Drugs of all kinds are available with the right eye contact. The basest desires transcend linguistic barriers.

And the FOOD!!! Thai food from the best restaurants can't compare to the vibrant succulence that attack your palate and olfactory glands here. I found and devoured the remotest familiar fruit, drink, and concoction that I remembered from childhood in the tropics plus more (my palate thankfully had the good sense to stop at durian). Meals are so cheap that many apartments aren't equipped with kitchens. Portions are small for western standards (Keith will need to purchase the kitchen's reserves!). D and I are about a size 2 in the US; older ladies here grab our arms in good-natured ribbing and laugh at how "fat" we are (in the Philippines it was a compliment).

No standard system exists for transliterating Thai script into Roman so quick lateral adjustments are necessary. Ayutthaya on a map is easily Ayudhia on the street sign; ditto Chatuchak/Jatujak, Ratsada/Raitchada, etc. The tonal language subverts what linguistic logic I possess. Bound for Khao San, mecca for the backpackers, I kept accenting incorrectly. How many different ways one can intonate "Khao San" is beyond me, but I somehow accomplished it. I was dropped off clear across town from intended destination on the first try, and stayed to explore since I was already there. The next day I obliged the fates again after I insisted to no avail with the driver who took me to yet another part of town. Wondering if it's possible to run out of ways to corrupt this name, three days later I was finally brought to the right place. I haven't a drop of clue why.

There is a propensity towards kindness in the Thai personality. They're an inherently good-natured, friendly, and peace-loving sort. To illustrate, unlike in neighboring countries that share their faith of Theravada Buddhism, deities here are benevolent beings, epics and legends like the Ramayana end happily ever after. Merit seeking acts of kindness to insure karmic goals are a life-long endeavor. Of course, the occasional miscreant exists and they have nothing to lose but a propitious rebirth higher up the reincarnation ladder (I wish my pickpocketer an eight-legged existence). This accompanies a natural reverence towards fellow creatures and Mother Earth, which sadly is quickly being replaced by materialism.

Women--a curious subject in whatever city I find myself. This influence on the hearts and minds of the generations is a fascinating watch, before eyes dismiss, look politely down, or smile in courteous greeting. It's tough to miss the sheer will barely veiled in the eyes of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Indian women, for instance, despite seeming constraint of culture. That spirit seems rule, not exception. But in the Land of Smiles gusto is mistaken for exception. Across this continent exists a vastly different modus operandi than what has served D and I well in the West, buttressed by a philosophy that honey catches more flies than vinegar. D struggles through this challenge, and I see the same frustration awaiting me.

Thailand: One Night in Bangkok

How good it feels to be alive tonight
The moon is shining in the sky
Reminding me of so many other nights
But they're not like tonight –s.w.

It is lovely here, though in the first hours outside it did not take long for me to lose voice from pollution assaulting my vocal tracts. Happily my body is well on its way acclimating to undesirable environmental contaminations and I no longer manifest short term effects...

I don't normally do massages cuz I'm ticklish, but after the 28hour trip my entire left side was stuck in a knot from being curled up in a ball on those horrible small seats. So I went for a Thai massage. Do you know, they BEAT you vigorously with their fists, feet, elbows, and knees, it is not relaxing at all. In fact I think I forgot completely about the knot, drawn entirely to the pain the small lady caused me on that mat. When she was done I was left for dead, face-down on the mat. A small girl accosted me with a smile and a pleasant, "would you like some tea?" "Does that come with an ambulance?" I wanted to bark back.

Common sense—don’t leave home without it. My friend DX and I had different schedules when I arrived in Bangkok so I was on my own for my first days here. On my second night I was alone and wide-awake from lingering jet lag so at 10pm I headed to Patpong to check out the nightlife. I'd heard from some of you that this was worth seeing (ha ha you snort).

Like most international cities Bangkok doesn't sleep, even on a Tuesday night. And what I thought was an entertainment district aka dance clubs turned out to be the "entertainment" district aka the infamous red light strip. Hmm. I was wondering where that was. Well I wasn't about to high-tail it back home so I befriended some Australians and had drinks with them at an establishment where some very interesting skills were being performed onstage (who knew women could do that down there). All was good until I started home and found that the only transportation in which local language skills were not prerequisite to navigate was the skytrain (yey for pictures) and that shut down at 1am. My Thai is quite poor—nonexistent really if you count the fact that my tonal range is off. On top of that I was earlier in the evening pickpocketed and I only then realized my contact card for D was gone. I could not recall her number or address. I was positive her street was Pay Tai (it was not), and since my pronunciation was off by tones and missing a syllable I could not coerce the cab drivers into comprehending me: "No Pad Thai street Pad Thai food", they smiled humoringly, probably thinking, "stupid farang" (foreigner).

It is a downright sinking feeling to be lost in the middle of an unfamiliar city at the wee hours of morning, in one of the most hardcore red light districts no less, with little money, relieved of credit and calling card, and no idea where 'home' is. Luckily I had that day hopped onto one of the local buses for a round trip sight-see to check out a part of town, and the landmarks in the skyline I was able to recall from that trip guided me in the right direction. D was in full panic, contacting friends, the US Embassy, and the local police. The very next day she made me repeat her number fifty times, and marched me to a cellular provider to open an account. So now y'all can call me, +661.910.8214. She also tattoed her address and telephone number on my ankle with a permanent marker like I was a piece of luggage.

Ya, it's been interesting so far in Bangkok.