Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Cambodi-odi-odi-o! Part 1 - Siem Reap/Angkor Wat

Part 1 Photos

Part 2 Photos


‘I’d like to purchase a visa please.’

‘It’s $30.’

‘But is says on the sign that it’s $20?’

‘You pay $30.’

‘I won’t pay $30.’

‘You wait then!’

And with that, the border official stood up and promptly walked out of his booth, purchased some snacks from a vendor and sat down on a bench in the waiting area looking annoyingly smug.

‘Uh, ok.’

Cait and I had arrived in Poipet after taking a local bus from Bangkok to Aranya Prathet, where we caught a tuk tuk with 2 Canadians we met there – Carolyn and Phetmany. As soon as we arrived, we were ‘greeted’ by touts ‘encouraging’ us to buy visas from them. We had been advised by good ol’ Lonely (Lonely Planet Guidebook) not to purchase ANYTHING from them, nor were we to trust that the border guards wouldn’t try to nick a few extra dollars for themselves.

So it was an American, 3 Canadians and 6 Chinese (who had preceded us in the line-up) against the Cambodians! We decided to unite and refuse to line the pockets of corruption – it wasn’t the money, it was the PRINCIPLE damn it! People want to come and spend their money in your country and this is how we are greeted, by getting screwed over at the border? So we threw on some more bug spray and sunscreen, popped a malaria pill and decided to stick it out until they gave in and let us purchase the visa for the REAL price.

Meanwhile, a tout was trying to negotiate with Phetmany (her family is from Laos so she speaks and understands some Cambodian) to purchase a visa from him in which we would only pay a few dollars more than the actual price, as opposed to $30. We knew he was in cahoots with the border officials and all of us were pretty adamant that we would not pay more than $20...but that was at hour 1. When we started to approach the end of hour 2, negotiating started to look more favourable as we still had a 4 hour journey to Siem Reap ahead of us, were filthy with dust and sweat...and even worse, hungry! Not to mention that Poipet is just not a nice place to spend an afternoon. It is stifling hot, polluted and loud. Being there feels like a scene out of a movie that you wouldn’t want to star in. These are the moments that I absorb as part of the cultural experience, but make me appreciate my home so much more.

So we reluctantly each paid $3 more than we should have and carried on through to the border crossing. But the fun wasn’t over yet! We still had to contend with the ‘taxi drivers’. At one time, the 4 of us were surrounded by 8 of them all fighting to get our attention and take their taxi. I would define these taxis as cars with no meters and no signage, looking like they have been used in one too many stunt scenes. He opened up the trunk for us to stuff our backpacks in and there was a big tank o’ ‘who knows what’. I presume it was fuel...this did not help alleviate any concerns for our safety on the road ahead.

The road to Siem Reap was unpaved the majority of the way. It was hopeful to see the construction workers putting down cement for future travellers as the state it was in was shall we say a bit haphazard. The taxi driver honked his horn continuously whilst cows, kids, cars, trucks, bikes and chickens fought for space on the road amidst the dust and potholes. At one point, the driver slammed hard on the brakes and everyone in the car braced themselves for a head on collision with a cow. Luckily, both driver and cow were both experienced in this regard and quick enough to avoid impact!

We arrived in Siem Reap at sundown where we got to see a splendiferous orange moon overhead! It looked like the harvest moons we get ‘back home’ but an even more brilliant orange. There is a ban on cars at night in the area of the city we were going to, so we transported ourselves the rest of the way via tuk tuk. Of course the tuk tuk drivers took us to their guesthouse of choice so they could collect their commission. Surprisingly, we actually liked the place and ended up negotiating a decent price. We EVEN had a TV w/ cable - what a treat this was. Cait and I stayed up late our first night watching Pet Cemetery!

We tried to see both the sunset and sunrise at Angkor Wat but it was overcast on both attempts! In the end, it actually worked in our favour as it wasn’t as stifling hot during the day! Angkor (meaning Holy City in Sanskrit) is just a few km outside of Siem Reap. It was built in the 12th century mostly under the rule of Suryavarman II. It is a culmination of 5 towers surrounding a central tower which symbolizes Mount Meru. Most of the wall space is covered with carvings of Hindu mythology but somewhere around the 14th century, Buddhism replaced Hinduism as the religion of the Angkor Kingdom will be apparent in my photos.

By noon, we were done with the heat, the insistent vendors and lack of sleep. We went back to Siem Reap for some good eats and chilling at a coffee house with Carolyn and Phetmany. The night before we left for Phnom Pehn, the four of us went to see a documentary about the Pol Pot regime and the genocide that took place between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia. This was the beginning of a heart wrenching historical journey that Cait and I embarked on in Phnom Penh (more on this in my next instalment).

I don’t want this to get too long so I will save the rest of Cambodia for next time. Our visit to the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum was extremely worthwhile and educational, albeit traumatizing but left me with many questions that perhaps I will have some answers to before I write my next instalment.

Thanks for everyone’s emails and photo comments – means mucho to me!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Pai Eating Sharks!


To view photos from Pai, click here.


I rolled into Pai from Chiang Mai on March 10th, after a 3 hour voyage by mini-bus involving hair pin turns, squealing tires and dazzling, precipitous scenery. I stayed about 3 km from town at the Sun Huts, highly recommended by my previous guesthouse in Chiang Mai. I was extremely excited that there was not only toilet paper in the bathroom but a bed with a REAL mattress even! That’s what you get when you pay the big bucks in northern Thailand (350 Baht or $11/night). A little too rich for my blood, so I later moved to Pravee’s House with Ada and Cait for a more economical 200 Baht a night. It was a safe and clean little place (this is all I ask for in Asia!) where I learned to co-habitate with several fly/mosquito hybrids living in my bathroom!

Pai is a small town of only 3000 consisting of mainly Internet cafes, sleepy restaurants and many, many choices for a Thai massage! It was nice to keep bumping into the same people over and over again. Every night the Thai ‘house band’, stationed in a bar in the nucleus of the town, played covers by The Eagles and Cat Stevens. With their straggly, long hair, faded bell bottoms and rock and roll t-shirts, they looked like they walked right out of the 70’s. Of course the image would not be complete without lit cigarettes and cocktails within easy reach.

Cait decided she wanted to take a 3 day Reiki course which left Ada and I wondering what we should do to keep ourselves busy. We decided to partake in a yoga class at a swimming pool called Fluid. The class took place in an open air beach hut, so every time I came up from a down dog, I caught a glimpse of the mountain peaks poking up at the sky or someone swimming laps in the pool nearby. It was there that we just happened to meet an instructor from Seattle, Tammy, who was free to lead us in some private yoga classes!

We coined our endeavour ‘Ada and Tracey’s Wellness Retreat’, which consisted of yoga at 10 am and 4 pm every day, one Reiki session with Cait’s Reiki teacher, Libby, Thai massage, swimming and not eating any sugar or wheat (this was not an easy feat what with the banana pancakes and coconut shakes beckoning us at every turn). The education I received from Tammy during our retreat was invaluable. She made sure that every vertebra was where it was supposed to be and not only gave us a great physical workout but challenged our minds and helped to enliven our spirits. The Reiki session I had was downright trippy. I saw beautiful, radiating colours and felt a weight literally lifting out of my right leg. Then there were the massages – oh the massages! I was stretched, cracked and tenderized in all the right places. They had me in positions I didn’t think were possible and I always left there feeling like I could fly! All for just 150 baht ($5) a session!

 
After all the yoga, wellness and goodness, we decided to move ahead with our journeys...Cait was heading towards Bangkok to deal with the red tape she needed to for teaching in Thailand and Ada and I took a minibus to Chiang Mai to catch our flights to Phuket and Bangkok respectively. I must say that Bangkok was a better experience the 2nd time around as I knew what to expect and had the company of Cait! We walked the streets searching for cheap food and drink, pissed off tuk tuk drivers, tried not to get ripped off and somewhere along the line, planned a border crossing to Cambodia!

Our last night in Bangkok, on the way to a movie in Siam Square, I was disgusted to see 2 restaurants that exclusively served shark fin soup. They had prominently displayed the dried shark fins in the windows of the restaurants to draw people in and by the looks of the interior, it was actually working.

Shark fins are obtained by a process called ‘finning’ - fishing the shark out of the sea, cutting all 4 of its fins off and throwing the rest of the shark, still alive, back into the ocean. Without its fins, the shark is unable to move, sinks to the ocean floor and either bleeds to death, suffocates from lack of oxygen (gained only by swimming) or is eventually eaten, defenceless, by other predators.

Shark fin is considered a delicacy in mostly Asian countries. With the recent trade and industry advances in China, the biggest consumer of shark fins, there is even more of a demand for this expensive, flavourless ‘delicacy’ that really only provides a gelatinous consistency for the soup. It is thought to give the consumer some sort of vital health but on the contrary, high levels of mercury have been found in shark fins, rendering them toxic to ingest.

Finning has contributed greatly to decreasing shark populations from 50% to 90% in some areas of the world over the past 50 years. It is estimated that 10-100 million sharks are slaughtered each year but a solid number cannot be obtained since so much of this fishing (long line) is done illegally in protected areas and may also be tied to organized crime.

People just don’t have the same sympathy for sharks as they do other fish that are not perceived as threatening. Steven Spielberg has not helped their case by churning out the blockbusting Jaws Quadrilogy - bloodthirsty shark with a taste for human beings. I don’t know about you, but I can’t so much as dip a toe in the ocean without thinking a fierce shark awaits close by to have a nibble. The whales definitely have a leg up, or shall I say ‘fin’, on sharks. ‘Free Jaws’ just does not have the same ring to it as ‘Free Willy’.

Canadian photojournalist, Rob Stewart, released a documentary about this very topic called Sharkwater. Check out the trailer for it here: http://www.sharkwater.com/. You can also watch Rob Stewart talking about the movie on The Hour here: http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1464.

I believe this is a very important and worthy topic that we should all be educated on but I didn’t plan on this blog turning into a ‘Save the Sharks’ campaign, so I promise the next instalment will entertain with corruption, drama and intrigue, namely ‘Cambodia’!




If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

- St. Francis of Assisi
From beasts we scorn as soulless, in forest, field and den, the cry goes up to witness, the soullessness of men.

- M. Frida Hartley
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.

- Paul Harvey