Angkor What?

If there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s my skill as a travel photographer. Not to show off, but here’s a photo of Bangkok’s Grand Palace:

And to make sure I truly captured the full grandeur, here’s an even more dramatic angle:

I can’t believe National Geographic hasn’t hired me for a Thumbs of the Serengeti feature.

Anyway, I survived the fifteen-hour flight from San Francisco to Bangkok. I watched two movies, slept about six hours and ate an airplane meal of “scrambled eggs” that did not appear to contain “eggs” or “scrambled.” It came with a sausage link that I’m fairly certain was made out of hyena loin.

Upon landing at Suvarnabhumi airport (pronounced “JFK”), I whisked through customs and immigration and caught the Airport Rail Link train to the BTS train to another BTS train to get to my Airbnb. It was too early to check in, so I stopped in at the nearest massage shop and grabbed an hour-long foot massage ($7.43), which also included a vigorous shoulder massage because apparently my head looks like a giant toe.

“You stiff. You need Thai Massage,” said the massage lady. The fact that she was able to diagnose my lack of flexibility from just my feet was both disconcerting and shockingly accurate.

My Airbnb was on the ninth floor of a condo building overlooking the Chao Praya River. There were signs in the lobby announcing that it was forbidden to rent apartments for short-term occupancy, but luckily I was able to slip past the security guard in the lobby with a combination of stealth, a few words on Thai, and the fact that she did not look like she would have cared if I walked into the elevator carrying a bazooka.

On my first full day in Bangkok I took a commuter ferry to Wat Arun, a beautiful riverside temple that I had not visited on my previous trip. This involved a short walk, a two-minute ferry ride across the river, a ride to the wrong ferry stop, walking back to the correct ferry stop, and another cross-river ferry. If I’d been in charge of the Lewis and Clark expedition we would have taken a wrong turn leaving St. Louis and ended up discovering Kansas City. Also, my name would be Meriwether, which probably would have been tough in junior high.

Depending on whether you believed the Internet, the back of the 50 baht entry ticket, or the sign on the gate, Wat Arun opened at either 7:30 a.m., 8 a.m or 8:30 a.m. As it was 7:45 a.m., I walked through the gate that had the sign saying it opened at 8:30 and explored before any tourists showed up. It was pretty and I saw a cat.

After grabbing the traditional breakfast of meat-on-a-stick and sticky rice, I headed back to the Airbnb for some relaxation and to finish up work. I’ve been keeping US hours while I’m here, which means sleeping from about 4–11 p.m., then working from midnight until dawn. It’s working surprisingly well, with the bonus that I never had to fight jet lag. The only weird thing (besides going to bed at 4 p.m.) is remembering to end my workday at 8 a.m. so I can go out and explore. It’s hard to get out of the mindset of “8 a.m. — time to start work!” I’ll be really interested to see if this reduces jet lag when I get back to the USA, because the last time I flew home from Southeast Asia I was wackadoodle for a week.

The next day I decided to walk to Lumphini Park, which was about two miles from my Airbnb as the crow flies, assuming the crow has a better sense of direction than me. As it is, I got completely turned around about 20 minutes into my walk and almost ended up going in a complete circle. Eventually, through the power of Google Maps, I found the park, which is one of the few open green spaces in Bangkok. It was a nice respite from the hustle-and-bustle of the city, and I sat on the grass, soaking in the sun and enjoying the … WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GIANT LIZARD COMING TOWARD ME?!? AAAAAAAAAGH! AAAAAAAAAAGH!

It turns out that, besides being a small taste of nature in the center of Bangkok, Lumphini Park is also home to over 200 monitor lizards, which look like what you would get if an iguana and a velociraptor hooked up at a party. A frantic perusal of Wikipedia revealed that monitor lizards are harmless to humans, although I would like to point out that Wikipedia is compiled by the humans who survived.

Sure enough, on my walk through the park I saw dozens of monitor lizards. Some were basking in the sun. Some were swimming in the lake. A few were auditioning for Game of Thrones. Ha ha, I jest. But seriously, some of these suckers were over five feet from head to tail, which is also a lesser known Lisa Lisa song.

I took the BTS train back to my Airbnb to avoid accidentally ending up in Kansas City, and the next day flew out to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The 20th century wasn’t super kind to Cambodia, but the country is making a resurgence. While still very poor and rebuilding from the war, it’s heartening to see that a nation can rebound from an insane, despotic leader, in case anyone is worried about that right now.

The primary form of public transportation in Siem Reap is the tuk-tuk, which is a motorcycle pulling a two-wheeled carriage. It’s basically the country’s way of saying “We’ve ditched horses, but we’re not 100% ready to commit to cars yet.” I took a tuk-tuk from the airport to my Airbnb. Buses, cars and motorcycles whizzed past us on the highway from every side and in every direction, since tuk-tuks top out at around 30 mph. I was also getting wind blasted and sandblasted, and it was a long but charming 25 minutes.

Siem Reap is crawling with tourists, being the gateway to Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s top tourist attraction. The downtown area is filled with restaurants, massage shops, souvenir stalls, and carts selling deep fried tarantulas, snakes and scorpions. Motorcycle and tuk-tuk drivers fly through the streets shouting at pedestrians and everyone uses US dollars, even though the official currency is the Cambodian riel. The only time people use riel is for fractions of a dollar. Fifty cents is 2,000 riel, which gives you an idea of the exchange rate. Yes, it’s strange to carry four 500 riel notes for half a buck. Loose change in Cambodia is like a ticker tape parade.

On my first full day in Siem Reap I went to a cooking class, which started with an Indiana Jones-quality tuk-tuk ride into the countryside, through crowded alleyways and busy roadside markets. At the cooking class we were taken next door to visit a local family and learn about traditional country life (spoiler alert: poor) and we were taught to cook three traditional dishes.

The first dish was fish amok, which sounds like a lost Star Trek episode starring Abe Vigoda, but which is actually a whitefish in curry. Delicious! The second dish was mango salad, made with shredded green mango and a sweet fish sauce dressing. Stunningly good. The third dish was bananas in caramelized palm sugar, which makes a Snickers Bar seem like a low-glycemic treat. It was tasty, but incredibly sweet.

After cooking, we sat on the outside patio and enjoyed our lunch while a local cat rubbed up against our legs and the eight of us slowly went into insulin shock. There wasn’t a lot of conversation because of the language barrier — it was a family from China, a gal from South Korea, and three business executives from Chicago. I mostly chatted with the gal from South Korea, as she was the only one I could understand.

The next day was my big tour of Angkor Wat. Most online articles suggested that one would need a minimum of three days to fully appreciate this ancient and holy destination, so I booked a half-day tour. I have a fairly low tolerance for looking at stuff.

My Cambodian tour guide, who went by “Mr. Chet” (actual name: “JFK”), met me at 8 a.m. in his mercifully-air-conditioned late-model Lexus SUV, and we drove alongside tour buses, minivans, tuk-tuks and motorcycles to buy my ticket for the historical park. It is not an exaggeration to say that every tourist in Siem Reap had the same plan this day. Nobody comes to Siem Reap just for the deep fried scorpions.

I had chosen a private tour because all the group tours were too long, and I have a low tolerance for sitting on buses with loud Austrian tourists. I had failed to realize, however, that a private tour meant four hours of making conversation with Mr. Chet. And Mr. Chet was not shy about conversation. He was determined to give me my money’s worth on this tour, so he began a stream-of-consciousness narration the moment we pulled into traffic. In the first 15 minutes we covered Cambodian history, geography, the war, the current political situation, the king and the US healthcare system. I was exhausted and we hadn’t even hiked around any ruins yet.

Angkor Wat is a giant temple complex built in the 12th century, one of the largest religious monuments in the world. According to Wikipedia, it was originally constructed as a Hindu temple of god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century. (Also according to Wikipedia, monitor lizards are harmless to humans, so you decide what to believe.)

Like Betty White, Angkor Wat is remarkably well-preserved for something from the 12th century, and it truly is a spectacular sight. It also remains an active religious temple, so one is required to dress “respectably” while visiting. That means no shorts or skirts above the knee, no bare shoulders, no assless chaps, etc. We stopped inside the temple at a statue of Buddha so Mr. Chet could give me a 20-minute lecture on the various flavors of Buddhism in the world. It was hot and I was sweating and wishing I’d worn my assless chaps.

We visited a couple other sites near Angkor Wat, my favorite of which was Ta Prohm, a temple that has been overgrown by tree roots over the centuries and that was used in the movie Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie. Apparently the temple was only a minor tourist destination until Tomb Raider, and now it’s the #2 destination in Cambodia. I gave it two thumbs up and looked forward to the sequel.

After four hours of heat, humidity and non-stop dialogue with Mr. Chet, he dropped me back at my Airbnb, where I put on dry clothes and went out for a $4 foot massage, which, in Siem Reap, is a splurge. Cost-wise, Siem Reap makes Bangkok feel like Zurich. For dinner, I enjoyed a banana leaf salad with tree ant dressing, which is just what it sounds like: they make a tangy, sour dressing by boiling tree ants. It tasted like a lemon vinaigrette with a hint of wasp.

The next day I flew to Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I am currently relaxing in a bright and quiet Airbnb on the fourth floor of a nice condo overlooking the mountains. Compared to the crazy noise and tropical heat of Bangkok and Siem Reap, Chiang Mai is peaceful and cooler. I’ll be here for a week before heading home, enjoying some relaxation and light touristing. Yesterday, for lunch, I strolled over to a crowded outdoor restaurant that the locals enjoy and slurped up a delicious bowl of khao soi moo — soft and crunchy rice noodles with pork in a curry broth. It’s one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten, and cost a buck and quarter. I could get used to life here. Here’s a photo of the restaurant: