Shopping With Jeff and Randy

Seth:  I have never had so much fun shopping as I did this night in Siam Reap. It’s truly a shame that I only caught one of the ten minutes of this hilarious exchange.  

“Tlai Na”, uttered with such sorrow at the beginning of the clip, means “expensive” in Khmer.

I Like Stuff White People Like

AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Oh man, you have to check out Stuff White People Like. I’m dying right now. So far, I’m only down to #75: Threatening To Move To Canada, but I can’t stop. Read it right now!

Thanks to Eric for passing it along.

Why I Voted For Obama

Seth: A few days ago, I voted for Barack Obama in the Texas Democratic primary, thanks to Randy who hand-carried my ballot across the Pacific.

I voted for Obama because his views are somewhat similar to mine and he has somehow managed to catapult himself into the foray of “electibility” without having kissed a lot of ass in Washington for eons. To me, being in Washington for decades translates to “owing favors to lots of people I don’t like”. Others call that “experience”.

I think a lot of people have the capacity to be a great president. A president has to hire thousands upon thousands of folks to be cabinet members, undersecretaries, ambassadors, trade envoys, etc. These folks are the ones who really run the country. The president just has to be smart enough to trust the right people and brave enough to lead the country in the right direction.  So I am not a fan of voting for the most experienced candidate.
Obama seems to speak from his soul. Maybe that’s why people keep flocking to hear him speak.  He’s an incredibly gifted orator who can convince cynical people to take a chance on him. As a president, that power of persuasion would be crucial, whether used with Congress, foreign leaders or the American public.

The only time I heard him is when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 DNC. I was floored.  And from what I read on the internet about his rallies, I am not the only one.

Clinton, on the other hand, doesn’t seem so convincing. Plenty of people hate her. I’m not sure really why this hatred is so strong, but it doesn’t matter. A despised politician inherently lacks persuasive acumen, and that translates into having a harder time reaching compromises and getting things done.

Right now, our democracy sucks. Normal people feel disenfranchised, so they don’t vote, don’t pester their representatives, don’t form citizen’s committees and are generally not engaged in the political process. The gap is filled by people and corporations with vested interests in specific legislation.  They concoct bullshit names for their faux-grassroots efforts like Americans For A Better Way. I just made that up, but it probably is a real group, and they probably advocate something I hate.

I haven’t drunk the Obama Kool-Aid as much as some of y’all.  I have strong problems with his vocal support of ethanol, which I truly believe is a crime against humanity.  But I will spot him one.  If he can motivate unprecedented numbers of Americans to engage in our democracy, than all of us will benefit.

************************************************

And as long as I have your attention, vote to re-elect Lupe Valdez.  Having a lesbian Latina sheriff of Dallas County for the last four years has helped me defray negative Texas stereotypes held by Texas-haters around the world.  Well, mainly in California…

Bangkok to Siam Reap Adventures, Part III

Seth: Once we got to Sisophon, we saw an incredibly full (and yet not full enough!) pick-up leaving for Siam Reap. We got out of the first truck and clambered into the second. This one was considerably more full.

The first driver told the second how much we paid for the first ride, so he could accurately gauge how eggregiously he should overcharge us. He said $5 each. We had remembered from the website that we erred in negotiating beforehand. Had we just gotten in and not agreed to anything, we would’ve gotten a better price at the end of the trip. Lesson learned. First time shame on you, second time shame on me.

So we shoehorned ourselves into the new pickup. This truck had 16 people in the back of the truck, including ourselves and myriad piles of miscellany. This photo was taken then, when I could still move my arms enough to take photos.

We roared out of the bus station, drove three blocks and stopped. The guys loaded in more people and precariously arranged everyone’s stuff. Then we roared back to the bus station, where the truck gives the impression that we’re REALLY LEAVING this time. We repeated this cycle a few times until we actually left. Final total: 18 people in the back, 5 on the roof, and 7ish in the cab.

The driver drove just far enough for it to be too far for us to walk back to the station and stopped. He got out and began negotiating our fare. We ignored him until we couldn’t, and then I firmly said 50 baht each. There was a significant language barrier. At first, he thought I was saying $5 each. Then he understood, and a protracted bargaining session ensued, much like our previous session with the visa official.

At one point, a woman got out of the cab. She started haranguing me in Khmer. I held strong. Eventually, she thrust a pink cell phone in my face. At first I was confused, but she and the driver motioned for me to hold it to my ear. I did, and some English-speaking relative of hers continued the negotiation with me. He said 50 baht each was less than what locals paid, which I didn’t believe. Anyway, we finally settled on 100 baht each. They wanted it up front, but that’s just giving them permission to kick you out somewhere down the road to cram in locals with more common sense.

We refused, and we set off for real. The first hour was still awesome, but my happiness-quotient began dropping after that. This ride was much less comfortable than the previous one. It sounds silly, but 18 people in the back of a pick-up is considerably more than 9. There was no rain (or water trucks!), so the dust was pretty bad. The crowd was less congenial, and everyone’s legs fell asleep or were otherwise contorted. Since it was only 103km, we thought it would take about two hours, but it ended up taking closer to four.

At one point, we stopped for a pee/food break. All the Cambodians busted out bags of rice, skewers of meat or bundles of fruit. This reminded me that although I’d been awake for 12 hours by this point, I’d only eaten a bag of chips, half of one of these and a handful of peanuts. So I was hungry, and didn’t have much left to eat.

It got dark, and the lack of street lights or 100% vehicle light participation made the last stretch a little harrowing. Those of us perched on the sides or back of the truck had been depending on the daylight to allow us to predict which way to lean on turns. After that we sorta guessed.

Eventually, we saw an airplane in the distance, which foretold paved roads and Siam Reap. Soon afterwards we lumbered into town, and found the greatest $5 hotel room we’ve ever seen. Attached bathroom, cable tv, towels; the works! We were grimy, and our showers felt amazing.

The whole pick-up experience was fun, although we could’ve done with a little less of it. But at then end of the day, we felt like we really had an adventure, unlike more tame stretches of our trip.

Bangkok to Siam Reap Adventures, Part II

Seth: Once we had our entry stamps, we were surrounded by moto drivers. These were sketchy young men who put you on the back of their motorbike and shuttled you to wear you wanted to go, or more likely, where they wanted you to go.

We could’ve chartered a Toyota Camry share taxi for about $50, but that was way more than we had to spend, even with splitting the cost with our new Swiss friend. So we asked to be dropped off at the pick-up trucks, which leave when full.

As we learned, “when full” is a relative term. We thought the price should be 30 baht per person for inside the cab, but the pick-up driver, moto driver, and eight random dudes hanging around just laughed at that. Negotiations went swiftly, and we settled on 100 baht each for the bed of the truck. It was starting to rain lightly, and I wanted to get the show on the road.

It seemed like 300 baht total was quite a windfall for the driver and his surprisingly large entourage, since multiple people kept confirming the price in the span of two minutes. So we hopped in the back, drove around for five or ten minutes to find more people/stuff to pile in, and then left. Then we stopped again, the driver got off and ran down a side road, reappearing five minutes later with more stuff.

By this point, there were nine of us in the back of the pick-up, and quite a few more inside. At the time, I thought it was pretty full. After a few more stop-and-go’s, we left for good.

The ride was a blast! Literally. Five minutes of light rain knocked down the dust, the breeze cancelled out the heat, and we reumbled along the semi-paved road with the wind in our hair and not a care in the world. For the first time in a while, our trip felt like an adventure.

I felt like I was back at Burning Man. After all, I was in a ridiculous form of transportation through a dusty hellhole, but was having an amazing time with newfound friends. Most of us had various forms of eye/mouth dust mitigation, just like at Black Rock City. We passed a water truck in one of the towns that sprayed water to beat down the dust. It started its spray cycle just as we passed and doused me. Everyone shared a laugh, including me.  Definitely brought back playa memories.

We got to Sisophon in about an hour, and I was sad to leave the pick-up. I was especially not looking forward to another negotiation session.

Bangkok to Siam Reap Adventures, Part I

Seth: Our journey from Bangkok to Siam Reap, Cambodia was nothing if not exciting.

The fun started at 2AM the night before we left. We were treated to the loudest, oddest and most ridiculous sex sounds we’ve ever heard, thanks to our neighbor and his prostitute. Eventually we got to sleep, but 5:15 came waaaaaayyyyy too early. We got up and, to our pleasant surprise, quickly caught a public bus to the appropriate bus station (Bangkok has four).

Even though we got to the ticket office at 7:25 and could’ve taken the 7:30 bus, we decided to take the next one at 8:00 so we could buy snacks/breakfast/lunch for our journey ahead. We got on the bus, and after an uneventful 4-5 hours we ended up at Aranyaprathet, the Thai border town.

We caught a tuk-tuk to the border, and the efforts to scam us began. Our driver dropped us off about 100 yards away from the border, and as soon as he stopped the rickshaw, he ran behind a truck to get his friend. This guy told us that he was with Cambodian immigration and we needed to buy the visa from him. We ignored him and walked toward the border. We managed to successfully walk the gauntlet of assorted thieves, beggar-kids, scammers and touts to get out of Thailand and into Cambodia.

There we had to walk past two casinos to get to the visa office, where we steeled ourselves for some tough negotiating.

Above the office was a dusty sign that said “Tourist Visa – 20USD”. The office itself consisted of about half a dozen guys, some wearing uniforms and some not, sitting around a table watching CNN’s US election coverage. When we got there, some of the officials informed us that the visa cost 1000 Thai baht, which works out to be US$30. We’d heard this repeatedly during our walk down the tout gauntlet, and as this badass website had informed us, knew it to be untrue. Ignoring them, we put a $20 bill in our passports and handed tehm over along with the entry forms. Thus began a repetitive, unfriendly dialogue. Here’s the short version. For a fun drinking game, take a drink everytime you read the word “no”:

Corrupt Cambodian Visa Official: Cambodian visa is 1000 baht.
Seth: No, it’s $20.
CCVO: No! 1000 baht!
Seth: No, it’s $20 (pointing at sign above my head).
CCVO: No, the sign is old. It’s 1000 baht.
Seth: I’m old. So no, it’s $20.
CCVO: 1000 baht!
Seth: No, it’s $20.
CCVO: The law changed, the sign is old!
Seth: I’m old. So no, it’s $20.
CCVO: Everyone pay 1000 baht.
Seth: No, it’s $20 (pointing again).
CCVO: Sign is old. 1000 baht.
Seth: I’m old. So no, it’s $20.
CCVO: Ok, 20$ and 200 baht (US$6).
Seth: No, it’s $20.
CCVO: No! The sign is old, the rule changed! $20 and 200 baht.
Seth: I’m still old. So no, it’s $20.
CCVO: If you only pay $20, you’ll wait for two or three days!
Seth: That’s ok, I’m patient. I’ll be sitting right over there. Here ya go.

So we handed off our passports, $20 bills and entry forms and sat down in the conveniently provided chairs, hoping our bluff would pay off soon. Note that the riel, Cambodia’s currency, was never mentioned as an acceptable medium of payment.

Sure enough, one of the officials came by 5-10 minutes later with our visas/passports. Strangely, he was really friendly and smiled profusely, as if our terse conversation had never taken place. We thanked him, he wished us well, and we walked toward the entry desk, pleased as punch.

The Trials and Travails of Transport

Erin: The worst part about long-term travel is getting from place to place, especially since Seth and I are trying to travel overland as much as possible instead of taking airplanes. Generally, these days involve totally disrupting our sleeping habits and reducing food and water intake to the absolute bare minimum to avoid doing the pee pee dance (or worse!) in your seat until the driver decides that he wants to take a smoke break several hours down the road. Here’s a little story about our most recent trip from Tonsai to Bangkok and how Paula saved the day…

Towards the end of our stay in Tonsai, Seth and I started discussing how we would make our way to Cambodia, the next stop on our itinerary. Based on the research we had done, we knew that we could either take a train or a bus, and that either would pass right through Bangkok, so we decided to spend a few days there. The train would have been our most comfortable option as it left late in the evening and if you reserved a sleeping berth you could basically just wake up in Bangkok. Unfortunately, the travel agents in Tonsai told us that the sleeping berths were booked for several days and our only option was to take an overnight bus.

Several companies offered us tickets for 500-600 baht (approximately $16-19) for the 12 hour ride, but we learned from many travelers that the reason those tickets are so cheap is because the cost of the ticket is “subsidized” by thieves on the bus (working with the companies) who root through passengers’ belongings when everyone is asleep. Every single person we talked to who had been on one of these “tourist” buses knew of several people on their bus who found out later they had been robbed. We consider ourselves fairly savvy travelers and thought that we could avoid these problems by keeping our small bags with us and all our valuables hidden on our bodies, but we just couldn’t get comfortable with the idea of knowingly supporting the scam and such dishonest business practices. We also didn’t think we’d get much sleep that night constantly having to be hyper-aware of all our stuff.

Our alternative was to independently make our way to the government bus station in Krabi and book bus tickets there. Once we arrived, we surveyed our options and concluded that the only way we’d get much rest at all was to take a VIP bus (wider seats that recline further, with pillows and blankets, a toilet onboard, snacks, etc.) It was slightly out of our budget, but then I remembered my good friend Paula’s birthday offer to cover an upgrade of our choice. So here’s a big thank you to you, Paula, for the sleep we were able to get that night! As I promised, we took pictures of ourselves thoroughly enjoying the VIP amenities (most importantly, the comfy seat I am modeling above): bottled water, pepsi, mung bean cakes, onboard toilet (use your imagination on that one…on second thought, dont!) pirated movies, and a moist towelette to refresh yourself when you roll in to Bangkok at 3:30 am, the time of the morning which we have lovingly come to describe as “ass o’clock”.

We then split a cab with another guy to the heart of the backpacker area, Khao San Road. There, we learned that if we wanted to check into a hostel right away, we would have to pay for a full night’s accomodation just to get a few more hours of rest. If we waited until 6 am, we would only have to pay for one night’s stay and get the room until check out time the following morning. Now, the fact that we chose to wait until 6 am and save the cash probably sounds completely ridiculous to most of you reading along right now, but I assure you that in our backpacker minds it made total sense. We walked around for a while looking for a place that had availability, and then stalled some more by having a few juices at a cafe, then I camped out with our bags and Seth went to look at a few more places. He found a good deal for us and promptly at 6 am, we checked in and went back to sleep.

Our next adventure is crossing the border into Cambodia, which we’ll attempt to do tomorrow. It’s another 12+ hour adventure, but this time I’m actually nervous about it rather than just thinking about enduring it. Again, there’s a cheap tourist bus that sounds too good to be true and involves several scams: overpaying for your Cambodian visa, being “sold” to a hostel in Siem Reap for the night, and delaying the journey so long that you arrive there late at night and are intimidated into staying at the place that paid to have you delivered to their doorstep regardless of what other reservations you might have made. The independent travel alternative (what we’re attempting) is really not much better and involves fending off a multitude of people who try to cheat you on prices for various forms of transport, pickpocket you, and ask for bribes to process your visa. One you cross into Cambodia, your onward travel choices to Siem Reap include such enticing options as being squished into a pickup truck for several hours or paying a large sum of money to the taxi mafia to be squished into a Toyota Camry share taxi, all along a road that’s in pretty poor condition. There’s an incredible website that details the journey step by step, complete with diagrams and all! We certainly are thankful for travelers who have shared their experiences about these sorts of things. I’m sure we’ll be just fine, but I will certainly breathe a sigh of relief when we check into a hostel in Siem Reap tomorrow night.

Rats, Mosquitoes and Blue Monkeys

Seth: For the first ten days or do in Tonsai, we stayed in quite a hellhole. It seemed nice at first: we had a patio, mosquito net and attached bathroom. Unfortunately, the mosquito net had holes in it. We were massacred each night.

If the mosquitoes were having an off night, the monkeys took over. They camped out in the trees above our bungalow, and dropped half-eaten fruits and stolen goods onto our corrugated-metal-roof. Such noises are rather startling at 3am. The owners said the ruckus was due to “leaves”.

After one particularly obnoxious night, we woke to find our neighbor’s (empty) missing bag of peanuts, with heaps of peanut shells lying around. “Leaves”, huh?

One night was particularly bad. I forget if it was the mosquitoes or the monkeys who were screwing with us that night, but we’d barely gotten any sleep. Towards the end of the night, Erin and I half-woke to hear a chomping sound. It sounded like it was coming from inside the bed. Erin asked me to see what it was, and I replied that I thought it was her chewing a breath mint.

Now, I’ve never known Erin to enjoy breath mints or to be too concerned with how I find her morning breath. I don’t know what I was thinking. She didn’t either, and wasn’t particularly satisfied with my response.

There were planks blocking the underside of the bed, so we couldn’t actually find out. Sufficient to say, I’m pretty sure it was a rat, not Erin.

Deep Water Soloing

Seth: One day I went deep water soloing near Tonsai. A climbing guide took us to an island with overhanging rock. We chalked up on the long-tail and then the guide kayaked us to the rock. We clambered around until we got tired, then we just plopped into the water.

There was a gargantuan jellyfish was hanging out in the area where we fell. This thing was as big as a monster truck tire, and had all these crazy colored “I’m gonna fuck you up” barbs trailing behind it.

None of us got stung, but the extra motivation helped us stay on the wall a little longer. Here’s the rest of my deep water soloing photos.

Papaya Salad and Mango Sticky Rice

Seth: The papaya salad and mango sticky rice are shown here. Soooooooo goooood…

Papaya salad is made by shaved carrots and unripened green papayas, mashed in a mortar-and-pestle with lime juice, fish sauce, sugar paste, roasted peanuts, raw garlic, tomatoes and chilies. It’s spicy, tangy, cheap and delicious.

Mango sticky rice is the perfect accompaniment to papaya salad. It’s simply sticky rice doused in sweetened coconut milk and topped with half a ripe mango. This has always been one of my favorites, and this being mango season, we hit this one hard.

Our Favorite Stall-Wallah

Seth: One of the only bad things about Tonsai was the comparatively high cost of living. Since everything had to be brought in via long-tail, prices were steep at restaurants.

Luckily, we quickly found the two non-pancake food stalls in the area. We usually ate one of our two-ish daily meals there, which consisted of some combination of green papaya salad, mango sticky rice and rice noodles with coconut curry.

Erin was a fan of the pancake stalls as well. For about a dollar you could get a pancake (more like a crepe or a Singaporean prata) stuffed with whatever you wanted. Erin was partial to the chocolate-peanut butter-banana pancakes, but I was unimpressed.

Two For One, Tonsai-Style

Seth: On Valentine’s Day we decided to have a big night, or as big a night as possible on Tonsai. One of the climber hangouts had 2-for-1 drinks, so we ordered one vodka-tonic for me and one vodka-orange for Erin.

This is what we ended up with. We ordered 2-for-1, and got 4-for-2. It was fine with us, until I got horrendously sick that night and puked for the second time this trip. I don’t think it was only alcohol-related though, because 36 hours later Erin caught whatever I had. Not fun.

Tonsai From One Of The Walls

Seth: This is about 3/4 of Tonsai. I took this photo from the base of one of my climbs. To the right of the big cliff on the right is Railay, a more upscale area. Around the corner from that was a resort where the lowest rooms were $600 a night. And that’s now, not high season.

We didn’t stay there.

Climbing

Seth: Since high school, I’ve had an on-again-off-again infatuation with rock climbing. I remember drooling over Tonsai when I was really devoted to climbing ten years ago. But life went on and I forgot all about it, until Erin and I found ourselves nearby.

When Erin and I lived in Mountain View, I climbed a few times a week at a local climbing gym. Once we moved to San Francisco, my interest in climbing faded as beer-brewing, bike maintenance, pickling and (sadly enough) commuting ate into my spare time.

But in Tonsai I got back into it. My muscles and callouses were gone and I couldn’t conquer anything terribly burly, but I still had a blast.

Tonsai Beach

Seth: After Erin’s birthday, we went to Tonsai Beach. It was only a ten minute long-tail ride away from Ao Nang, but it felt like a different world.

Tonsai is a climbing mecca, and the beach is ringed by huge limestone cliffs. Since the beach isn’t as nice as neighboring beaches, the overweight two-weekers aren’t interested, and the big resorts haven’t squashed the little bungalows.

So it’s just a bunch of climber-folk and the beach bars that cater to them. Flip-flops are the norm, hammocks abound and Bob Marley is ever-present. It wasn’t an intense party scene, just folks climbing by day and relaxing with a few beers at night.

We planned on spending two or three days there and ended up staying for two weeks.