Southeast Asian Adventures

One week before leaving Korea, we decided weren't going to be flying enough, so we made a last-minute trip to Thailand and Cambodia. In the span of one month, we traveled 17,240 miles (70% of the way around the world) via 7 airports (Seoul, Bangkok, Krabi, Phnom Pehn, Siem Reap, Shanghai, Doha, and Chicago). And yes, I took the time to calculate it. What else was I supposed to do when I needed to procrastinate on packing and writing final lesson plans? 

The first stop was Bangkok. We spent scarcely 24 hours there, but it was cool, and mostly looked like this:

Well, that plus a bunch of tourists and reptiles and amazing street food. 

From Bangkok we headed to the real deal: Krabi. 

The presence of wifi in our bungalow nearly discredited its identity as a "bungalow," but the large monitor lizard that waddled past us on the abandoned jungle trail reinstated some of its validity. Upon arrival, the bungalow's owners offered us a neon green beverage that probably glowed in the dark. I'm not sure what it was, but my only realistic guess, of course, was lizard pee. It was delicious.

Weirdness aside (or perhaps because of the weirdness), Krabi, Thailand is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and possibly will ever go. I won't be silly enough to describe it with words, so....... 

The beauty could be trumped by nothing, even the tropical gut bug that violated my body the second day (WAS that chicken cooked?!?). After about an hour of wallowing in self-pity, I realized that there were worse places in which I could suffer an illness than paradaisiacal beaches. So I shut up, found a good spot to sit, and took it all in (except food.... my body didn't take any of that in very well).

That night, as I lay in the jungle bungalow, I repeatedly chanted to myself, "If I make it a whole night without puking, that means I can handle sea kayaking tomorrow." Surely no good thing has ever begun with such a sentence, but little did I care. Early the next morning, having passed a sufficient number of vomit-free hours, I found myself stepping into a kayak at the edge of Phangnga Bay.

I need to make known a few things that will hopefully elicit some sympathy from the audience: 1. I cannot swim at all. 2. I spent my entire pre-Korean life landlocked. 3. I was not wearing a life jacket on this particular morning.

So, with the absence of a buoyant device, swimming abilities, and any other human beings, we embarked. The splendor of the cliffs and the spirit of adventure drowned out any paranoia I may otherwise have had, but it wasn't long until I notice holes in the bottom of the boat. Any experienced kayaker — or even any reasonable human being — would probably have been aware of the concept of scupper plugs, but I was not. My mini sea voyage ended in a flurry of flailing and paddling and more hysteria than I'd care to admit. Give me mountains, give me forests, give me reptiles, give me terrestrial danger, but do not ever give me waves or holey boats or any other aquatic nightmares.

To redeem myself and assuage my bruised ego, I climbed a cliff and even pretended not to care about the precipitous edge.

The next morning, we took a long-tail boat to Krabi City, a songthaew to the Krabi airport, and then a tiny airplane plastered with Taylor Swift's face to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

For reference:

Long-tail boat

Riding in a songthaew

Taylor Swift airplane

(I didn't take a good photo of the songthaew, so just imagine a pick-up truck with some benches thrown in the back.)

As we walked out of the Siem Reap airport into the humid darkness, we were met by an all-too-eager tuk-tuk driver, thus marking the beginning of an endless stream of solicitations from the locals. More on that later.

Our first night in Cambodia involved "Asia's best Mexican food" (I was desperate, ok?), lots of lizards, $1 draft beers, and Nickelback emanating through the streets.

Proof that it WAS the best Mexican food

The weirdness didn't stop when we went templing the next three days:

Awesome, right?

But despite the incredible temples (some dating back as early as the 9th century), the exotic jungles, and the fact that Siem Reap has "Asia's best Mexican food," the thing that fascinated me the most was the Khmer people and their history.

A detailed Cambodian history was missing from my education (and, I am pretty sure, from most Western people's educations). So I knew little of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge before researching it prior to our trip. I won't launch into a full explanation here, but I fully urge everyone to investigate it themselves. 

After the nightmare that was the 1970s in Cambodia, (approximately 25% of the population of Cambodia were slaughtered under the Khmer Rouge regime), the people have been slowly re-building and recovering. A five-day glimpse of this was enough to be utterly amazed. 

Poverty is widespread of course. Tourism has become a rapidly growing economic sector the past few years, hence the constant solitications referred to above. The money pumped into the country by Western tourists is so valuable to them they even use USD as their primary currency. 

One day, eager to see the Khmer people outside of the tourist setting, we rented a pair of rickety bikes and set out to the countryside. There we saw the people's homes and subsistence farms. It was also some of the loveliest scenery I've seen: 

The closest we could come, as naive outsiders, to understanding this brutal piece of history was to visit one of the killing fields and one of the prisons, both of which were prominent locations of the Cambodian genocide. I did not take photos, for obvious reasons, but the skulls, scraps of children's clothes, mass graves (pits in the ground in which they threw the bodies, dead or alive), tiny prison cells in what used to be an elementary school, and hundreds of photos of victims, were enough to make any heart heavy and stomach unsettled. 

Those five days spent in Cambodia were unique. The locals were some of the friendliest, cheeriest people I have ever met, despite their heavy past. As cliche as it may be, it was humbling and inspiring. I would love to return one day.

Also, it is the only Asian country I have travelled to but not thrown up in. I'm clearly not finished there.