Up and Away

Wow, feels like it's been a really long time since I updated this thing! Since the last post, we haven't really moved much... we've simply been exploring Bangkok... and we love it! We both agree that it's one of the coolest cities we've been too, and neither of us would have a problem living here if we needed to for one reason or another. It' s huge... we didn't even realize how huge until we got here. For comparison, New York City comes in at about 8.3 million people right now.... Bangkok comes in at 8.1, so they're very similar. We've covered quite a bit of ground here, using taxis, tuk-tuks, buses, minivans, and the famous Skytrain (think the subways of London, but above ground).

Probably the most eventful thing we've done lately is Christmas shopping. Shopping in Bangkok is a thing to experience. We started by going to "The Mother of All Markets". It's a market that's only open 2 days a week, and it's 15,000 stalls of everything you can imagine. Over 200k people visit it per day, and you can absolutely get lost walking around it. They sell everything from food to clothes to antiques to electronics (real, stolen, and fake). We got most of our shopping done there, for budget reasons. After that, we headed to the Siam Square, which is the most impressive mall complex I've ever seen. It's divided into 3 separates malls, each between 5-8 floors with bridges crossing in between over the streets. Ice Skating, a massive aquarium and restaurants are everywhere, and Lamborghini, Porche, Bentley, Audi, Lotus, and Maserati all have showrooms filled with ultra-expensive cars. Anyway, cool stuff.

In 2 days we are heading to Myanmar! We don't really know what it will be like, and are very anxious to find out. We've read that cell phone access doesn't exist, and that internet access can be hard to come by. What's more, being in that it's an oppressive military government, internet access is extremely monitored. Some basic websites such as Hotmail are often blocked, so if we don't update anything for awhile don't be surprised!

Oh, and we haven't seen a drop of rain since Nov. 16th. The dry season here is DRY.

Since we are back in Thailand make sure you check the Thailand link on the right side for new pictures, all of the ones we took in Bangkok are posted!

That's probably about all for now. Merry Christmas!

Finishing up Cambodia

I almost feel guilty writing this post, because I assume most people reading it have spent the last week at home working in very cold weather. Jason and I spent the last week on a beautiful beach on the southern coast of Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand! The town was called Sihanoukville, and we chose to stay on Otres beach, which is the quietest one there. There haven’t even been places to stay until the last year, and now there are a handful of very simple places right on the beach. We paid $5 for a room about 10 yards from the water’s edge, and almost had the place to ourselves. Our days consisted of swimming, reading (I finished War and Peace!), and eating. The water was so clear, we could go out to where we couldn't touch and still seem the bottom. It was perfect sand too, no shells or rocks. One day we splurged and went out on a boat to an island about 2 hours off of the coast. It was amazing!! The boat was 3 levels and owned by a guy from Germany that takes people out on different tours. There was free good food all day (we’d eaten very little to save money for it so it was nice to feel full!). There were about 25 people on board, and the first stop was for some snorkeling by an island about 45 minutes from the mainland. The snorkeling wasn’t spectacular but still great fun. They prepared a delicious lunch for us, then we went to an uninhabited island with perfect white sand and a calm lagoon. We went on a short hike through a mangrove swamp on the island, and then went swimming and played on the beach. It was so great to be out on the water, and everyone on the boat was so fun! We got really lucky too—we happened to go on the day that 2 guys came to celebrate one of their birthdays, and they both work for Angkor beer, the main beer company here. One of them is like 2^nd in charge there sooooo…..we got free Angkor beer all day!! It was great because we wouldn’t have spent money on it otherwise, but we (actually I) definitely got our money’s worth of the free stuff! So needless to say we’re very happy, relaxed, and tan! And it was just a preview of the gorgeous beaches to come! But before that we get to go to Myanmar! We’re slowly working our way to Bangkok where we fly to Myanmar on the 22^nd. We will probably cross into Thailand tomorrow (however I woke up with a cold this morning so if I’m all sniffly they might not let me in!). Jason got his 3^rd rabies vaccine, so only 2 to go! We have lots of pictures that will probably go up once we get to Bangkok and have a good internet connection. We'll post again before Myanmar, but have heard mixed things about the internet there. Apparently the government tries to block it like they do in China, but doesn't do it very well. So we may have trouble accessing email and the blog, but I'm assuming we'll be able to at some point. We'll write again soon!

Rabid Monkeys and Salesmanship

Well we're pretty much killing time now. We were originally supposed to leave Phnom Penh a week ago, but then found out that getting a Burmese visa takes 7 days and that'd we'd get it on Friday the 4th (yesterday. However, as Michelle noted in the last message, I got bit by a monkey, which has made things more complicated. I e-mailed a western doctor in town asking if there was any risk from the monkey I 'met', and also did a lot of searching for information on the rabies threat specifically within Phnom Penh. I learned that rabies kills more people here than Dengue Fever and Malaria combined, and the doctor responded immediately telling me to come in ASAP. I visited him on Thursday and started the 5 shot vaccination plan. You have to get the shots on certain days, and Phnom Penh is the only city in the whole country you can do it, so we're going to have to stay here a bit longer to get the first 2, go to the beach for a few days, and then head to Bangkok where we can get the rest right before we fly to Myanmar. I'm fine though, insurance covers most of the vaccination (after you're bitten, they won't cover anything preventative), and we're both glad I'm not taking the risk by skipping the vaccination.

We've tried to illustrate in some of our previous blog posts how aggressive and numerous the salesman are around here. Be it for food, taxi rides, books, or anything else, we seem to be under constant assault (as westerners) from these good people who are trying to scrape out a living. In an effort to give a better picture of just how many of these people there are, yesterday I counted how many offers we got. This came about partly of boredom, but I thought it could be interesting too. The offers I decided to count are ONLY for transportation services such as taxis, motorbike rides, and tuk-tuks (a kind of 2 wheeled carriage hooked to the back of a motorbike). When walking the city these drivers will ask if you want a ride, and if you say no they'll often start shouting out the names of tourist destinations, presumably hoping to hit one that interests you. Anyway, the grand total for yesterday was 103. In about 4.5 hours of walking, we got offered a ride 103 times, not including duplicate offers from the same people. This also doesn't include the infinite number of offers for drinks, books, restaurants, pot (very common for me), cocaine (rare), opium (even more rare) or just general begging on the streets. [Note: we don't any drugs, period]. We've known we get asked a lot, but eventually you just learn to ignore it and you start to forget how often it really is.

Assuming everything goes smoothly, our next post should be from the beach!

Still in Phnom Penh....

...but heading to the beach on Saturday! We've been hanging out waiting for our Burma visas, which should be ready on Friday. I'm totally recovered from Dengue, but Jason got bit by a monkey in the city so we're keeping an eye on that. It doesn't appear to have broken the skin, but we're still aware of the risks it could pose. We were visiting a Wat in the middle of the city that was surrounded by trees, and there were a bunch of monkeys all over! It was pretty crazy to be so close to them, they didn't seem too bothered by the people around. Jason was sitting taking some pictures and a very small one walked right up to him and bit his arm.

Today we visited the Killing Fields, which is one of the mass grave sites that the Khmer Rouge murdered and buried people. After being imprisoned at Tuol Sleng which we visited last week, truckloads of prisoners were taken out to this area about 15 km outside of the city. The centerpiece is a large memorial stupa, which is filled with skulls, clothing, and other bone fragments of victims that were found at the site. We could go inside of it and the skulls are actually out in the open, not behind glass. It got to me a bit being so close to over 5,000 human skulls. Outside of the stupa are markers indicating where mass graves were discovered. The largest had 450 bodies, another had 166 headless bodies, and another was 100 bodies of women and children. There are countless small pits in the ground that were smaller graves. Over 8,000 people were killed and buried at Choeung Ek, which is the site we visited, and the largest of the Killing Fields. When walking around the area there are still remnants of clothing sticking out of the ground, as well as bone fragments scattered in different places. A sign marked a tree that was used by executioners to beat children and babies against, and a pile of bone fragments laid beside it. The whole experience was really overwhelming, and I'm glad we didn't go on the same day we went to Tuol Sleng. It's just so hard to understand how something like this could happen, and has happened many times before, and continues to happen today. I always wonder about the Cambodians I see that are old enough to have been alive during the Khmer Rouge regime--did they work under the Khmer Rouge, were they forced into labor or tortured by them, were there families killed by them? Jason said it would make an interesting book to go into the city and talk to people about their experience and role during that time.

On a lighter note, on our ride back to the city from the Killing Fields we drove past a motorbike that had a whole pig sliced open draped across the back of it. It was so disgusting; its hooves were dragging the ground, and its insides were totally exposed. It looked like it was probably alive this morning! We got a picture of it so hopefully it will get posted soon.