Juniorbird.com

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable – plugged straight into Kurtz.
No wait, sorry, wrong trip up the Mekong. Mine was actually kind of nice. No “terminate with extreme prejudice” or anything, although, you should be aware, this entry does not exist, nor will it ever exist.
After “Saigon”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002696.php, my next stop was Cambodia — specifically, its capital, “Phnom Penh”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002695.php, and the “famous ruins at Angkor Wat”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002697.php. Now, I could fly up there, which was both quick and inexpensive (thank you Vietnam Airlines, Air Asia, and Bangkok Air!), but what fun would that be? No, I decided to take a tour up the Mekong river, seeing the sights and the local minority peoples and drinking with other English-speaking tourists. Yes, it promised to be a bang-up time.
(A note to my readers: this is how I write when I’m jet-lagged, apparently.)
We took a bus upriver from Ho Chi Minh — for some reason, none of the boats left straight from the city — and then caught a boat after a couple of hours of driving. The boat took us on a quick turn through the floating market at Chau Doc, a scenic assemblage of riverboats carrying all manner of products — I saw fish, and birds, and even someone motoring around offering cold drinks to the participants. Many people, it seems, live on the Mekong (I was told that there’s no property tax on the river, so it’s cheap to live there, although most families have done it for generations, probably since before any “doi moi”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_moi property-owning liberalization and taxation), and these floating markets are the way that people get their food and supplies and other sundries. The boats looked old but my guide said they were overhauled and repaired every year; the gray wood on their sides and peeling paint at the nose was just a side-effect of the general rot of the tropics.
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From Chau Doc, we went up-river; first the Mekong opened up into a wide, placid body of water — it’s up to 10 km wide at points — and our boat crossed from one side to the other, cutting across the tracks of big, wooden, round-prowed cargo haulers, painted with the same red prow and big eyes that graced every boat on the Vientam end of the Mekong, supposedly to scare off the crocodiles that once infested the waters. Then the pilot took our big boat down a small inlet that split, invisibly, the jungle that lined the river. Everybody we passed on the inlet waved at us, even though we must’ve been the fifth boat that came by that morning. At the end of the inlet was a family making coconut candy and snake wine, clearly for tourist consumption; the took coconut milk and cooked it down into a tasty taffy, flavoring it with chocolate and leaves and nuts, then wrapping it in rice paper so that you could eat the entire, wrapped nugget. Snake wine is made from rice wine, with a cobra inside; it tastes like bourbon and has a little bit of an extra charge to it. Legend has it that two cups a day brings long life and enhanced sexual function.
Out of the inlet, further upriver, we stopped at a village selling candy made from puffed rice — it was remarkably like Rice Krispies treats — and then got on small rowboats to navigate a dense archipelago of square, three-walled houseboats that formed a city of fish farmers — each houseboat had a small farm inside, with room for the family to live. Past these we docked at a 40-foot pier, maybe two feet wide, made of the same rotten-looking gray wood as everything else; at the end was a Cham village. The Cham are a Muslim, Indian-influenced people who once ruled southern Vietnam, until the Viets took it away two hundred years ago. Now there are just a few thousand un-assimilated Cham in Vietnam, and we got to see them pray, sing, and sample their traditionally-woven cloth.
On the way back, our big Western asses broke the pier, sending half of it slowly tilting into the delta.
They switched us to a big boat, then, with a spacious top deck with comfortable chairs, and a nice, large, shaded lower deck. The only downside was getting onboard, over a narrow, long plank just about eight inches wide, schlepping our bags and ourselves on. But nobody fell, and, once onboard, we took quickly to the 50-cent “ba-ba-ba” beer from Saigon, stamped with its famous “333″ crest (the letter 3 is, in Vietnamese, said something like “ba”). The Mekong opened up in front of us, big cranes lining its commercial width.
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The night was spent at a cheap guesthouse, with a bar next-door that served food from an all-Vietnamese language menu with an all-Vietnamese-speaking staff. I was the only Westerner prepared to eat the fish-sauce-saturated food, a sad indictment of the backpacker culture.
The next day brought more river trip, as we got closer and closer to Cambodia; still, the river teemed with boats, small and large, and the Vietnamese were friendly and waved non-stop to us, every time they recognized a Westerner.
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We stepped off the boat to walk across the border ourselves, here up where John Kerry supposedly illegally crossed the Cambodian border during the Vietnam war. On the other side of the border waited the smaller, beat-up Cambodian river boat. I was shocked to climb down the undeveloped bank — no pier this time, or even gangplank — and see a tour boat from the River Seine, rusty, peeling paint, looking hot in the direct sun. We piled inside, and they made some of us shift from the right to the left, as we had begun to list to the right with everyone avoiding the sun. Temperature climbed into the high-nineties in the poorly-ventilated boat, but the only option was to sit inside and bake, or on the top and be broiled, unsheltered from the mid-day sun.
Commerce on the river disappeared when we crossed the Cambodian border, with no large ships left, just a few canoes being paddled across the river. Villages became less dense, with large expanses of green on either side of the river, but suddenly cows were everywhere (later I would discover that cows were everywhere in the entire country, even all over the ruins of Angkor).
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In the rickety boat, sweating off any residual pounds I kept from the twenty I gained in b-school, I actually began to appreciate the size of the Mekong. I can swim about a half mile without drowning, and I started worrying as the pilot weaved back and forth across the river, worrying how far I would have to swim if the Seine Cruiser went down. The Mekong was a deep brown and looked thick and silty enough to plow. The Cambodians were as friendly as the Vietnamese, and every person we passed waved.
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Upriver, they piled us onto an even more rickety minibus, with the seats perched on top of cinderblocks (actually, we never would have made it away from the landing spot, had not the Israeli memeber of our group started making a stink, because the bus-driver wanted to wait for us to buy pate sandwiches, made on stale baguettes, sold by an old lady at the landing). Half of the group was piled into a brand new-looking minibus, and we were jealous until the radiator on that vehicle spectacularly exploded, sending jets of coolant spraying below and behind the bus. Somehow the Cambodians patched it and we made our way on to Phnom Penh, where they tried to drop us at a guest house in the middle of nowhere. I asked to see a bathroom and was, instead, taken on a tour of the premises; when I hopped into a tuk-tuk and headed off to my hotel, I assume I cost someone money, either depriving the tour operators of a commission or making the hotel operators pay a commission on someone who didn’t stay. Either way, I appreciated causing the inconvenience.

I’m back! That’s right, I survived four hours of flying from Bangkok to Taipei — including an unexpected and free upgrade to business class — followed by a five-hour layover in Taipei, capped off with an eleven hour flight home (it was supposed to be twelve, but I guess we caught a tailwind, which was good since it took an hour for my bag to come off the plane).
After all that, what could I want but good ol’ American food? So I headed for In-n-Out for a meal that I can only describe as “bland”. I hope that my tongue can reaccustom itself to food that doesn’t include the flavors of chile and of dried/fermented fish products! This morning I tried to make Vietnamese coffee, but only got a mid-strength brew, so maybe this “bland” is catching. At any rate, I’m too caffeinated to try again already.
I just realized I never wrote an entry on my trip up the Mekong, so that’s on deck for later today. Until then, I can’t wait to see all y’all!

I’m back in Bangkok, picking up a few last gifts before I get on a plane home tomorrow (if you’re reading this entry, it’s probably too late to put in a request for a tchotchke or a small Thai slave). But it’s not the tourist goods that I’m thinking about now, it’s the evil-looking gray cloud that grabbed my attention as I flew to Bangkok from Chiang Mai.
Now, I’ve seen a fair number of clouds in my time. I probably flew on my first plane when I was 6 months old, and I actually remember flights as far back as when I was six or seven. I can easily recall the fascination I felt flying through clouds — watching the wispy fabric slowly envelop the plane,seeing the outside world fade away and then the tendrils touch our wing and surround us. I always loved every moment, I would stare at the slight variations in textures for minutes as we flew through, regret it when we broke into sunlight, and smile and laugh when the plane bumped in the turbulence. I loved clouds, so long as they weren’t tall and gray and stormy, portending darkness and more than our fair share of rough flying.
But these clouds were different — they were thin and diaphanous and, worst of all, a dark grey, stretching out as far as I could see, six miles up. At first I tried to come up with reasons that such a flat cloud would be so dark, and I made up stories about reflected light, about the angle of the sun and how it might be lighting the cloud through its long axis, and about odd-sized dust particles, but nothing could explain such clouds — at least not at over 30,000 feet. I was so busy figuring out what the cloud was, I forgot to take a picture.
Then I realized: it was the “Asian haze”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2182783.stm. Here, at cruising altitude, I was seeing air pollution. So tonight I’m breathing that bad air for you, my readers, so that I can buy you a few last gifts. Or, if you prefer to think like my cab driver does, I’m breathing them so that I can catch a last ping-pong show in Patpong. Either way, I think I’d better add up my pollution credits and make sure that “I’ve adequately offset the pollution from my travels this summer”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002676.php, because I don’t want to be adding to that smog more than I have to.
(Oh, and the headline: clouds up so high block out some of the sunlight but refract the rest, creating a general grey-white light source from above, rather than one point source, surrounded by blue. So, the sky appears white. Of course, there are other reasons all of my skies are white, but that’s another entry.)

Chiang Mai is a small city in Northern Thailand, but Thais seem to think of it like their second city. I came here because it’s in the hills, and I thought I’d like a little cool weather to end my vacation. The weather has been quite reasonable for this area, although of course with the humidity of the jungle. Yesterday, I tromped about town — it only takes a half hour to walk from one end of the old walled city to the other — visitng as many of the city’s old and beautiful wats, or Buddhist temples, as possible.
One of the first wats I saw was Wat Chiang Man, the first wat in Chiang Mai, a beautiful old campus that dates to the end of the 13th century.
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After that I swung by Wat Chedi Luang, also spelled Jedi Luang, which just makes me laugh, which features a massive 15th-century stupa that is falling down quite a bit, but is also being restored
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The day brought more wats — Wat Prasat, Wat Phan Tao, Wat Phra Singh, Wat Chetawan, Wat Mahawan, Wat Bupparam, and Wat Sisuphan. That’s a lotta wat!
Now, wats are nice, but I do kind of wish that I’d gone to, say, Koh Samui, one of Thailand’s famous and beautiful islands. The fact is that I’m quite tired out from my month tromping about, and a bit of time on the beach would be welcome. Guess it’s a good thing I’m headed for Hawaii soon!
Anyway, today I visited a market, had the typical curried noodle of the Muslim minority in Northern Thailand, and next I’m headed for a real-live Thai cooking lesson. Updates as events warrant!
* “wat-a wat-a wat-a” — I didn’t say it was a good joke!

I’m back in Thailand, whose traffic had “scared me a bit”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002679.php, it’s true, and I’m still surprised to see the oncoming traffic on my right, not my left, but the fact is that there are lights at the intersections here, and everyone’s instrument cluster works (how does the entire population of Vietnam get along without a single working gas gauge or dipstick?) so I must be back in civilization! We’ll see later when I take a moto ride with a friend who I’ve unexpectedly discovered is living in Chiang Mai.
But, rather than going on and on about Chiang Mai and my flight here — which was exceedingly comfortable and provided by the courteous and English-speaking staff of “Bangkok Air”:http://bangkokair.com/ — I’d better sum up the last two days of ruin-viewing at Siem Reap, seat of Cambodia’s unforgettable Angkor Wat and related temples.
It’s always hard to imagine what to say about ruins. Often, they’re unbelievable, filled with fascination and unequalled art; just as often, they’re dull. The ruins of the Angkor civilization were neither. On my second day visiting the ruins, I got to see the mysterious smiling faces of the Bayon, a temple projecting serene Buddhist acceptance; the Terrace of Elephants, shockingly lined by carvings of Elephants; the beautiful and massive Ta Keo temple, abandoned right before completion when it was, inauspiciously, hit by lightning; the incredible, early, brick Prasat Kravan; and the mysterious Preah Khan, twin to Ta Prohm, also overgrown by the jungle. Yeah, you keep all those names straight!
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The rainy season showed us it was here, too: the afternoons of the second and third days brought rain, but on the second day it was a true downpour, flooding paths and especially the hallways and rooms of the temples — the Angkorian Khmer, you see, built their doors with foot-high jambs all around. Fortunately, the rain also washed away the innumerable children aggressively selling tchotchkes, t-shirts, cold drinks, and scarves.
On the third day, we ranged a bit further, seeing temples away from the major “small circuit” that comprises the essentially mandatory temples around Angkor Wat. Morning brought the deep and stunning bas-reliefs at Banteay Srei, the well-preserved but quiet burial ground of Banteay Samrei, the thousand-year-old stucco artwork at Preah Ko, and the sky-high Bakong, looking down over the whole ancient site. We even made it to far-away Lolei, in the midst of an ancient reservoir, now turned to rice paddies.
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I finished it all up with a sour fish soup, both traditional and quite tasty. There was more to see at Chiang Mai — museums of culture and war, artwork, and even many temples, some ancient, some new, but that was just three days and I’m out of time. So, now, Chiang Mai, where it’s already pleasantly cool. I think I’m in for a change!

Until today, I had, in all honesty, been disappointed by the food I’d had in Cambodia. Khmer cuisine was supposed to be the undiscovered jewel, but it had seemed bland compared to Thai cuisine, which was spicier, or Vietnamese cuisine, which was more flavorful. And then I got a cookie on the street, and had dinner at what is purported to be Mick Jagger’s favorite place in Siem Reap. That Mick, he’s a smart man. Oh, and I also saw that wonder of the world, Angkor Wat, etc. etc. etc.
First things first: the food. I’ve been craving sweets, since the only sweet that Vietnam has is ice cream (there are other, native desserts that purport to be sweet, but not by any Western definition of the word; that said, the Vietnamese like both their tea and coffee quite sweet, but that’s not the same thing at all). To my delight, there is a bakery just down the street from my hotel. Yesterday, I got tasty sweet bean balls there, but today I tried something they called a “Cambodian Cookie”, which, for the frankly outrageous price of 2000 riel ($0.50), is about a 4-inch-wide disc of goodness made from what tastes like sesame, coconut milk, what I suspect is palm sugar (quite common around here), and some somewhat cakey, yellow flour, which I suspect is made from taro (also common around here). That, ladies and gentlemen, was a cookie. I wish I’d bought a gross and shipped them home.
Then I walked to the popular part of town and ate at a place my guidebook says is Mick Jagger’s favorite in Siem Reap, the city, near Angkor Wat, in which I’m staying (fun etymology note: “Siem Reap” means “Siam Defeated,” yet the Angkor empire that built the city was ultimately destroyed by Siam, and it was probably only the untimely invasion of Southeast Asia by France, and setting up of a French protectorate in the same, which prevented Cambodia from being permanently absorbed by Thailand and Vietnam). Now, I didn’t just go to the restaurant because the Sultan of Lips eats there — the place is reputed, at least by my guidebook, to be a good, moderate-priced source of authentic Khmer food. I’d read, again in my guide book, about a food called _trey ahng_, grilled fish served with _teuk trey_, the Cambodian* version of Vietnamese fish sauce, _nuoc mam_. Now, _teuk trey_ may be the greatest sauce ever invented in the history of mankind, althought it is possible that this underrates the sauce’s excellence. My guide book states that _teuk trey_ is like _nuoc mam_ with peanuts, but the peanuts are very little, the chilis are very much, and they’ve seriously kicked the thing up with lime — the perfect companion for a hot day. It’s not overstating things to say that, with this dinner and cookie, I’ve had the best food today since I came to Southeast Asia; in fact, it breaks my heart to say that, given some of the great _pho_ I had in Hanoi, but sometimes the truth hurts.
(Fun fact: somehow, I’ve gone from spending about $4/day on food in Hanoi and Hué to spending $4 just for dinner tonight. What’s gone wrong? If this is what the free market does to food prices, up with Communism!)
Now, that’s good food, but I should probably say something about Angkor Wat, given that it’s supposed to be one of the world’s greatest accomplisments and tourist destinations and all. Um, it was all that. Seriously, we got to the _back gate_ of Angkor and I was like, damn, this is a great frickin ruin here. I could’ve spent the whole morning just at that gate, but my confused-looking guide kept dragging me on, and it swiftly became obvious why. Angkor is not only enormous, every inch of it is covered in beautiful, unique detail, and nothing in the world looks like it at all. The bas-reliefs are incredible, the carving is unbelievable, and I’m stunned that a civilzation could have made something like this just as a *temple*. I was so blown away by the place that I actually climbed the 70°-steep steps, maybe 40-50 feet high (my guide book suggests the unreasonable height of 25 meters), to get up to the third level, see the central tower, and visit the most revered spot in this stunning temple complex. Well, heck, I didn’t come 12,000 miles, or whatever, just to be stopped by 75 feet!
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(Yes, those are the stairs, seen from the top! Note that the man in black and the woman in the white hat are about halfway down, but are almost directly below the people at the top of the stairs.)
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Next came the broken-down Banteay Kdeay, which was partially destroyed by the Khmers themselves — the king who built it was Buddhist, while his successor, like most of the kings of the Angkor era, was Hindu, and his successor effaced virtually all of the carvings of the Buddha on the walls. The broken-down feeling of Banteay Kdeay was a great warm-up for the jungle-dominated Ta Prohm temple, which you may recognize either as:
# The temple with the trees growing from it
# The setting of Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie
At Ta Prohm, balsa-like trees grow directly from the temple itself, with their powerful roots cutting through gaps between the stones to seek water from the ground. In some places, the trees rend thick walls apart; in others, they support ancient arches that would otherwise have fallen. Today, one of the key trees is dying, attacked by a parasitic plant, and archaeologists are arguing about what to do when it dies and can no longer hold up the arch it sits astride.
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Then, on the way back to the car from Ta Prohm, the sky opened up. “It is the monsoon season,” my guide explained, “if it rains hard then it will be done in a few minutes, but, just a drizzle, it will last all evening!” Unfortunately, it was soon explained to me that the torrent pouring down from the sky was more by the way of a drizzle, and the drip did keep up, on and off, all evening. But that’s ok, I got my food, and I got my socks blown off by Angkor Wat, and I’m off there again tomorrow to see some more stunning stuff.
* Pedants, please note that I use the words “Cambodian” and “Khmer” interchangeably here, which is essentially true as virtually all Cambodians are ethnically Khmer, and the about 5% of the population that are minorities are mostly stone-age jungle dwellers, what with the Khmer Rouge having killed essentially all of the Chinese mercantile class. I wouldn’t make the mistake of, say, equating “Vietnamese” and “Viet” in the same way.