Nana Bangkok

Last day in Bangkok... tomorrow we will fly to Singapore to catch our flight to India, Delhi. Bangkok trapped me and we stayed here longer than I thought I would. We found a very comfortable and affordable hotel here and we felt tired after our touristy trip to Cambodia. 

Bangkok is a big and busy city where the king and the queen face are in every corner... It's kind of brain washing and I started to like him without even knowing anything about him. They posted stores dedicated to him, the queen and the country flags around the schools. The king have to sympathize with his people as early as he can.... 

Fruits are delicious and very cheap, I had some of the best rambutan, mango and logan... mango shakes are just unbelievably delicious (60 cents).. 

Tourist are everywhere, markets fill the streets and keep people busy buying after work...

We visited the week-end market, the biggest market on earth I read... It was really big I agree, so big that I thought I would never see the end of it. 

We visited golden Temples and saw golden gigantic Buddha... walk along the brown river...

We rode noisy Bangkok tuk tuk and visited tailor shops to help out the driver to get a commission...

Coming out of our hotel and having people calling us and our money for a ride... is as aggressive as the heat and the sun when you come out of an air-conditioned shady place. Well take it positively and just laugh about it or you will hate Bangkok...

Poema

"Suostey" Cambodia

We left busy touristy Bangkok by bus to see one of the wonder of the world, Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia. We rode the bus full of tourist for 8 hours cross a chaotic border where tourist are lining to get into the country of the Cambodian Khmer heritage. Buses, wooden wheel cart, casino shuttles and taxi are driving in every directions. The poor cambodian pushes his wheel cart on a dusty road in front of the Las Vegas look a like casino. After driving 10 minutes in a town unbalanced between poverty and money palace, we drove thru empty rice fields to get to the most popular town in the country... Siem Reap. Huge massive newly built hotels welcome you to the Temple town. Then we hit the busy dusty town centre, scooters everywhere, bicycle, wheel cart, wooden houses, new concrete colorful houses, Hotel, restaurants...

Tuk tuk driver offer you a sunset ride to the temple for 5 dollars. Everything works with dollars, even ATMs spit dollars. Before sunset the street are changing faces, lights everywhere, girls walking in high heels on muddy road looking for a charming foreigner prince, beggars all around, kids selling postcards, bracelets, food stands on the walkway, night market...

The market is generally cheaper than Bangkok and much nicer, people are not aggressive. Tintin have his stands, he even went to Cambodge I saw... I'm not so sure about that, I have to check it out. 

We left the hotel at 5 am in a Tuk tuk (a scooter with a home made wooden covered cart in the back). We started by Angkor wat. The entrance cost 20 USD per person for a day.  Tourists are everywhere like ants, I guess that's how it is everywhere recognize as a world wonder, I don't like it but I have to deal with it or find ne wonders... The temple is huge, carvings everywhere, it's beautiful and it's makes you realize how talented and patient were the people in the ancient times. Most of the statues lost their heads but carved walls are still telling stories and woman carvings seems to be alive and dancing... Angkor Thom is the next with elephants caring tourists around. So far it's my favorite temple, hundreds of faces and details, broken colums. 

Check out the picture from our Cambodian trip on the right colums with more details...

Take care

Poema

For more info about Angkor Wat  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat

Welcome to Thailand

We left Kota Bharu yesterday and took a taxi to the border. We filled our papers and crossed the bridge to go thru Thailand customs. Then a nice local muslim gave us a ride to the train station with his three wheels home made motor bike. 

At the entrance of the train station some army guys with guns were filtering the crowd and were patroling in the station... I was wondering why...

We had to wait for the second train trip leaving at 2.30pm so I went for a walk in the not so clean border town, Sungai Kolok. I bought some ramboutan (45 cents USD/kg) and logan (1.5 USD/kg). By buying a plastic bag, I ended up giving a pronunciation-reading lesson to the owner daughters whom are going to participate to a speech contest very soon. I spent an hour with them... I learn a little bit more about the town, that they have terrorism, murder, drug traffic and bomb attack, which got me a little worry for a second but I had a good time and I forgot about it very fast. They offer me thai candies for my help and some water. 

30 minutes before getting in the Express train, we found out that the southern line we were on had been bombed several time and was shoot.... pretty crazy and a bit scary, sometimes it's good to not know too much about were you are going !!! 

Some friendly military with guns boarded with us and I understand why they were all around... to protect us from the terrorists. I heard that the people that are bombing the trains are separatists muslim, they want to have their own country and not belong to Thailand anymore. I saw muslim womans in black with their face covered for the first time in Kota Bharu and Sungai Kolok, it's pretty impressive. 

We were in the 2nd class sleeper cabin and they were very comfortable, with a lot of muslim, ouf !!! We thought they were going to put all the tourist together to make it a better target.... Once we past the south part of Thailand, more and more food seller were boarding and inviting us to buy their product. 

We arrived after all safe and in one piece in Bangkok. We took the cab and had a difficult time with the driver as he wanted to charge us 7USD instead without turning his meter on. He got upset when we told him to turn on the meter but we ended up paying the real price... 2 USD. 

Seems like people working with tourist in Bangkok are not happy with what they are doing and they aren't very pleasant, never smile or say a nice word, they are all about your money and if you don't buy right away or ask too many questions they start to speak in Thai, complain and have their bad face... 

Tonight we have a room in Pahtit, a "safe" area in Bangkok, for 22 USD. Fried rice or noodle cost around 1 USD. It's right by the most touristy part of the town, Kao San Road. It's full of tourist, tailors, silver seller and wedding dress shoppes.

We met some friends from USA, Myrna, and Chile, Ximena in the street and we are going to Cambodia to visit the Angor Wat temple.

A bientot,

Take care

POema

In Malaysia

Hi everybody,

I haven't been a very good blogger since Indonesia and I apologize for not writing anything since then. I will try to summarize our Indonesian trip later... 

We left Singapore today and rode the train for 16 hours to reach Malaysia border town to Thailand, Noah's first train ride !!! 

We went thru Singapore and crossed the bridge to Malaysia. We paid in total 29 USD for today's trip.

We slept a lot during the train ride, comfortable seats and air conditioning. The "Jungle train ride" was good, nothing spectacular though. The jungle (from the train) is not that impressive and sadly they are replacing the original forest by palm trees and rubber trees plantations.

The population is mostly muslim here and it feels weird to see that it kind of make the women (mostly) look the same, from Indonesia all the way to Malaysia, leaving them without any cultural specificity. The same thing is happening to the nature, by turning the orignal and full of life jungle into a monotone palm tree plantation... 

We are in Kota Bharu for the night. On the way to the hotel we saw our world tour companion, Mac Donald... 

Take care

Poema

 

Bali

Notre periple a Bali-Lombok et Java

Bisou

Poema