Hello everyone,
Sorry it’s been a few weeks since our last post. We’ve covered quite a bit of ground over the
last 3 weeks…
Executive Summary:
- Another day in Bangkok. Saw a lady-boy cabaret
Visited the town of Mae Sot on the Burmese border
- Went to Laos and spent 10 days in Vientiane and Luang Prabang (during the Lao New Year)
- Visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia
- Bus back to Bangkok. Went to the snake farm, and to cooking school (unrelated activities).
- Leaving for South Africa tonight!
Subsequent to our previous post, we were in Bangkok for one more day during which we
walked through the huge Chatuchak outdoor market, cooled off in the Siam
Paragon mall, and then… went to a “lady-boy” cabaret show. Transvestites are unusually commonplace in Bangkok compared to other
cities. These lovely ladies are actually
men. Quite entertaining.
market.
Scenes from the Siam Paragon shopping mall: Aldo and Elisabeth turn a critical eye to Armani’s
spring 2007 collection, Shawn visits the Lamborghini dealership, and a
musician performs on a hammer dulcimer.
Onward from Bangkok
Our travels onward from Bangkok were a comedy of errors. The three of us had originally wanted to go
to the very north of
Thailand – the beautiful hill country. However, a
combination of unusually severe seasonal brushfires (set by farmers prior to
re-planting of the fields) and adverse weather turned the north into a hot,
smoky mess that resulted in a state of emergency there.
So we changed our plans and headed to Mae Sot, a town on the border with Burma,
with the intent of doing a hiking trip.
Mae Sot's population is an interesting intersection of Thais, NGO workers, refugees, drug
smugglers, and military. In and around the town are tens
of thousands of refugees from the Karen minority group that have been driven
out of
Burma by civil war. The Thais don’t really
want them either, so most languish in camps surrounded by Thai military, while
aid groups try to make the best of a bad situation.
Elisabeth and I had been in Thailand for over a month by this
point and though we wanted to stay longer, our visas were about to expire. Due to arcane visa laws, we had to leave and
re-enter the country to be granted a new 30 day visa. Our plan was to simply cross into Burma and
return – a procedure that is very common.
Alas, international politics conspired against us! A diplomatic squabble between the Burmese and
Thai governments led to the borders being unexpectedly closed.
With no idea of how long the closure would last, and only
three days remaining on our Thai visa, we were forced to abandon our hiking
plans and hastily made our way by bus across the country to visit Laos instead.
Vientiane
Laos is
the least populated country in Asia and is largely agrarian, which means there
is immediate reprieve from the hustle and bustle of much of Asia. The capital, Vientiane, is home to only 200,000
people. It’s not a particularly
remarkable city, but there is a lingering French cultural influence from the
days of colonial occupation. The most
tangible result of this is that
Vientiane has wonderful French restaurants and cafés, fresh baguette sandwiches are made
on every corner, and grocery stores stock imported cheese, cured meat, and good
wine. We fully indulged for a few days.
Aldo’s time with us ended in Vientiane, and we celebrated our last night
together with a nice French dinner. It
was great having another traveling companion for three weeks, even though we
showed Aldo a less-than-stellar time: we
were sick for a week, then fires quashed our first plan, then the border
closures quashed our second plan, followed closely by a few other little
incidents... All in all, quite an
adventure! Thanks for being a good sport
Aldo/Papà – you will be missed.
Luang Prabang
With the Laotian New Year approaching we took a bus to Luang
Prabang, a quaint town in the northern hills alongside the
Mekong that once served as the capital.
The town is renowned for its French colonial architecture and its high
number of temples. The combination
earned it a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation several years ago. The setting is certainly beautiful, and the
town is nice, but it is saturated with tourists and guesthouses.
We climbed up to the temple on the hill that stands in the
middle of town. Amidst the Buddha
statues and pagodas of the temple, there are some sobering reminders of the
devastating Indochina wars. Below: An old anti-aircraft gun, now
re-purposed as a merry-go-round. Bombshells become flower pots.
A large reclined Buddha statue, adorned with offerings.
The view of the surrounding countryside. The haze is due to the farmer's brush-clearing burns.
Elisabeth earns some good karma by freeing a pair of
birdies. Around the new year, birds in
little cages are sold everywhere as offerings and opportunities for merit-making. But doesn’t karma follow thermodynamic-esque
principles? If Elisabeth gets good karma
for releasing the birds, what does the poor guy who catches and cages them get?
At another temple in town, we glimpsed the more mudane
aspects of holy life: laundry and renos.
Laotian coffee is a wonderful, wonderful thing! Sweet, thick, and strong. Arabica coffee beans are grown in the
northern hills, and freshly ground locally.
The preparation method is very simple:
Coffee grounds sit in hot water, they are then lifted out by a cloth
strainer before the thick black liquid is poured into a glass. About one fifth of the cup is condensed milk. At left: Lao coffee being made. At right: coffee before and after stirring.
A sleepy filling station.
Dinner comes cheap from the night market. We walked from stand to stand, pointing out
what we wanted. Food was quickly scooped
into plastic bags and tied off with rubber bands. Two vegetable dishes, too many fresh spring rolls,
a roasted chicken breast on a stick, a bag of sticky rice, and a big bottle of
“Beer Lao” cost less than $3.
Luang Prabang was a wonderful place to spend the three day New
Year celebration. Laotian New Year is marked by purifying
oneself, home, property, and friends by washing with water. After everyone has cleaned their homes,
motorcycles, and Buddha statues, the days turn into a celebratory country-wide
water fight. Hoses, buckets, and water
guns line the streets, and no one is off-limits (not even monks).
Their creativity is not limited to water as throwing talc,
colored water as well as smearing black makeup is all part of the celebration.
Here are some street scenes of the New Year celebrations,
including the parade, and the presentation of Ms. Luang Prabang. The Luang Prabang New Year beauty pageant is
renown across the country.
The chi-chi JoMa Bakery Café was a guilty pleasure on more
than one occasion. Outlets in Vientiane and Luang
Prabang! This receipt illustrates the tri-currency
nature of the Laotian economy. The
Laotian Kip is the only official legal tender but due to its instability, Thai
Baht, and the mighty mighty US Dollar are also used almost universally - from
street stalls to grocery stores.
Siam Reap, Cambodia
After spending a few days soaking wet, we flew to Siam Reap,
Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat itself
is only one of many ancient temple complexes around Siam Reap. After hundreds of years lying abandoned, the
jungle has tightly woven itself into the temples themselves. Pretty amazing. The pictures capture it best:
This sign hung in the lobby of our guesthouse.
Back in Bangkok
We took a bus back to
Bangkok after a few days in Siam Reap. We
visited Bangkok’s
Snake Farm, where poisonous snakes are kept to harvest venom for the production
of antivenin. Pictured here is the
Banded Krait.
Elisabeth took a Thai cooking class at the Blue Elephant, one
of Bangkok’s
top restaurants. The extremely well organized
course featured a trip to the market to learn about choosing ingredients,
demonstrations of each of the 4 dishes, each preparing our own dishes and
finally eating our creations. Pictured
here are Pad Thai with prawns and Som Tom, green papaya salad. We also made Tom Yum soup and Green Curry
Chicken. I learned that the orange
colour we sometimes associate with pad thai is due to ketchup which is not traditional. With the ingredients pre-prepared and chefs
hovering around, it was pretty easy to turn out stellar dishes. Now the trick will be to replicate.
Our real purpose in returning to Bangkok was to re-arrange our air
travel. We’ve decided to go to South Africa! We leave for Johannesburg tonight. That’s all for now!
Bye!
SK & EV
