The Fryhole

Our trip is rapidly coming to a close — just a few more days in Bangkok left. Bangkok’s not a very clean city, but it is a nice place to shop and buy poison traps souvenirs for everyone back at home.

Hahahaha I had you going there didn’t I? You’re not getting anything.

Yesterday we (”we” being myself and Angela) shopped around a fair amount and even visited the adult district of Bangkok — honestly, I was underwhelmed by it. The shows didn’t strike me as erotic or sexy at all; rather just… weird. Somewhat disturbing. Strange. It’s like watching a freak-show. It was worth seeing once; but not at all sure that I would go back again. Angela’s more happy though; ’cause apparently she was treated much better due to being in the company of a boy (last time she went it was her and a female friend and apparently they were denied access to a few of the clubs, the ones with the ‘best’ shows, etc.) So it was perhaps her first time seeing some of the… weird… stuff, as well.

I’m proud to report that I witnessed the second coming of Jesus yesterday evening, though — and he’s no longer a dude! He’s now a very nice lady that can turn water into cola like magic. I’ll leave that for you to imagine, considering the preceding paragraph. You read it, you can’t un-read it.
Mom and Dad are spending their time visiting the palace and temples, etc., but honestly I am pretty temple-ed out at this point, and Angela has already seen all of that… so we’re spending our time out and about, trawling the shops for cool things and just generally being pretty lazy. It works out well.

It is raining right now, though, so we opted to spend some time doing posts and documenting things, catching up on what we’ve been slacking on. So, for your pleasure (beyond this nightmare-inducing post), we’ve also written about:

• Nara, on November 9.
• Osaka Universal City, on November 10.
• Osaka Castle, on November 11.
• Himeji, on November 12.
• Hiroshima, on November 12.
• Fukuoka, on November 13/14/15.

I promise that none of those posts will leave you as scarred as this one did.

We left the comfort of our Phuket resort on November 25, and headed to Chiang Mai (sadly, via that retarded Bangkok airport again). We basically spent the next 4 days on the opposite end of the spectrum - having gone from 5-star to… well, a place that probably doesn’t even register on the star rating system. I had organized a 3-day trek in the mountains of Northern Thailand - through Doi Suthep - Doi Pui National Park. During the trek, we slept in huts in a Karon (a hill-tribe) village. For the nights before and after the trek, we stayed at a guesthouse called Eagle House 2. Apparently Eagle House 1 isn’t too bad, but Eagle House 2 is… well, loud to say the least. It’s right next to at least 3 nightclubs. So it was a little different from the resort. Fortunately, we were only there for a minimal amount of time, and the trek was great! So… on to the trek…

We left early Sunday morning. There were 4 Canadians (i.e. Mom, Dad, Remi, and I), an Irish couple (Aine and Richard), a Scottish couple (Swampy and Janey), 2 English couples (Ben and Kate, and Dan and Sarah), and our 2 guides, Date (pronounced like a cross between Dat and Det) and Sor. We loaded all our stuff and ourselves into a pick-up truck, and were off!

Our first stop was a market for supplies, and then we got to ride elephants.

The elephant that Remi and I rode was extremely large (even compared to the othe elephants), and hence - very, very hungry. We bought a couple of bags of sugar cane and bananas for him, as well as a package of Mentos, but he also made our ride more interesting by continually wandering off the path into bamboo groves, and proceeding to systematically rip them down and eat them. It’s a good thing that bamboo grows very fast, as this elephant alone could eat a bamboo forest, I’m sure.

After the elephant ride we all clambered back into the truck and drove for a few hours to the start of the trek. The drive wasn’t so great, as the road was terrible - there were many potholes, bumps, and curves - so we were all very relieved to start the trek. Our trek took us up and down the Thai mountains, across various rivers (some with bridges, some without; we later learned that we were simply criss-crossing the same river over and over again), and through rice fields - much to Dad’s delight.

Of course, 3 hours later we were a little tired, but by then we had reached the Karon village where we spent the night.

The Karon people were very nice, and brought us various merchandise to purchase (including beer!).

They also invited us into their homes for tea, and answered our many questions very patiently (courtesy of Date’s translation services). Of course, there was only one gentleman in the house that we visited, as the rest of his family was up at the house with the satellite TV, watching soccer.

The next morning we all huddled by the fire, as it really gets cold in the mountains at night. Dad and Dan built a rack to help dry the shoes that had been soaked in the various river crossings. Remi and I also attached various wet socks and sarongs to our backpacks, to let them dry while we were hiking.

After breakfast, we visited the local elementary school, and gave the kids candy. Apparently, the villagers like tourists to do that as it provides positive reinforcement for going to school.

Then, we were on our way!

We stopped for lunch at a little hut near a stream, where we ate fried noodles out of banana leaves, using young bamboo sticks as chopsticks. The ultimate enviro-friendly lunch!

After a few more hours of trekking (and crossing rivers on rickety bamboo bridges), we arrived at our camping site for the evening.

We spent the evening relaxing, swimming in the river, and Ben entertained us around the camp fire. He plays guitar quite well, and is part of a band back in the UK: The Day Brakes.

The next morning, we awoke to find Date making sticky rice in a bamboo stick for us.

To make bamboo sticky rice: fill the bamboo with rice and water and let soak overnight (stuff leaves in the top end so there’s no bugs) then cook over the fire in the morning until done.

It was good!

After breakfast (including the sticky rice, but also some French toast - or as the Brits & Irish called it, “eggy bread”), it was time for the rafting portion of our trek. There were 3 rafts, built right on the river next to our campsite.

There were 4 or 5 of us standing on each raft, along with our backpacks on a tripod at the front. Each raft had at least one guide, who took the front position. Then, we set off down the river.

Some areas were more exciting than others…

But all of it was fun!

After disembarking, we hiked for another little bit, until we met up with the truck again. We drove for about an hour to a restaurant for lunch, where we met this little guy.

Then we drove another hour or so to the Great Holy Relics Pagoda of Nabhamethanidol-Nabhapolbhumisiri, built to commemorate the birthdays of the King and Queen (Stupas).

Then, another little bit of driving to the Mae Sa Waterfall.

And finally, we drove back to Eagle House 2. That was the end of our Thai trekking experience.

Mom, Remi, and I took a Thai cooking class at our resort. We went to a local market just off of Phuket (over the causeway), and learned that there are many, many different kinds fruits, vegetables, and herbs, far more than we have at typical Canadian grocery stores. (Fortunately, the Chinese superstore is more varied.)

We also got a demonstration of how fresh coconut milk is made.

Then, we went back to the resort for breakfast, followed by our cooking class. We learned to make gaeng keaw wan (green curry with chicken), som tum (spicy green papaya salad), and pad thai with shrimp.

Our instructor was the head chef of the resort’s Thai restaurant, and was very good at explaining how to balance flavours. Of course, she had a sweet tooth, so she was forever adding more palm sugar.

We learned a lot - most importantly, that Remi can make much more than spaghetti!

It was a delicious day in a beautiful kitchen!

On Thursday, we went on the John Gray Sea Canoe Tour of Phang Nga Bay. We kayaked through (or rather, a guide gave us a tour of) various limestone islands and caves in the Bay. We also went through the caves into lagoons in the centre of the islands, complete with mangrove trees.

There are reputedly monkeys on the islands too, although we didn’t see any. There were lots of eagles though, that the boat crew enticed with bits of chicken.

We kayaked around Hong Island for a while, looking at the caves, the little crabs on the rocks, and the lungfish (a.k.a. Muddy Mudskipper). And we relaxed in the sun.

Remi and I also managed to scare the crap out of Mom, by boarding her’s and Dad’s kayak in an attempt to steal their treasure. Yarrr! Unfornately, we didn’t get a picture of that.

Once the sun set, we went out into the caves again, and played with the bioluminescent algae. It makes the water sparkle when you move your hand through it, as the algae reacts to pressure changes. No photo of that either, as it probably wouldn’t have turned out anyway.

First a note about IE7: I’ve never before seen such a horribly mangled and confusing interface to webpages. Kudos to MS for out-doing themselves once again. At least the pain is spread evenly between the users and the web-developers for this revision. If the web browser is going to be hard to develop for; it should be hard to use as well. It’s only fair. Perhaps there is a setting somewhere to ‘fix’ the interface; but I surely know that I don’t want to open that particular Pandora’s box. Oh, and what interesting render bugs, as well!

Fortunately, today was clear and sunny again — though sorry, still no pictures. Began the day with a wandering down the beach to see the sand crabs that Angela reported yesterday. Took about a 30 minute walk to get down the beach far enough to see them; but see them I did! Most are very tiny, with only the odd larger one. The tiny ones seem to let you get closer to them than the large ones do… as soon as you draw even a little bit close to one of the larger ones it scuttles off into the foam and is lost to the ocean in a few seconds. I guess the little ones are younger and not yet seasoned enough to evade humans with such proficiency.

After that adventure and a brief interlude at the room to get ready we were off to the dive center. Took about a 20-30 minute ride from the resort to the dive center; which is in the Royal Phuket Marina on the east coast of Phuket (opposite coast from the resort). It is a very nice establishment and immediately upon arriving there we jumped aboard the diving speedboat that was all prepped and ready and headed off. The boat moved really quick and about 30 minutes later we were at Shark’s Point and ready to go into the water.

During the first dive of the day (a 1-hour, 17 meter dive), we actually did see a leopard shark — it was very cool; just sitting along the bottom of the ocean and remaining still — perhaps all the divers that were swirling around it were actually scaring it. It was difficult to see because there were so many dive groups around the shark — I’d say about 10-15 divers total, all clustering around the shark. Poor thing, but it really was a sight to see.

While the leopard shark was undoubtedly the hilight of the first dive, we saw quite a few underwater critters as well… there were alot of sea urchins out there, as well as scorpion fish, angel fish, and rock fish. The other rather cool critter we saw we aren’t sure how to identify. It was squid-esque, but it had very short tentacles and a rather large, oblong head around which a fin circled. The dive master tried to close in on it a bit; but when he got too close (a few meters), it suddenly shot off into the ocean… all that was missing was the cloud of ink and it would have been the perfect squid-escape.

For the second dive we went down to a place known as Ko Dok Mai (a 45-minute, 14 meter dive) — it is a towering island of stone (cliffs all the way around), lording over the ocean by something around 50 meters. You dive down the side of these cliffs; and after they enter the water they become the basis for a reef-like environment. There were quite a few sea urchins, though not as many as at Shark Point, and more varied fish — barracuda, parrot fish, grunts, groper, and then scorpion and angel fish again. Living in the little reef were also a fair number of moray eels, which were cool for me to see as I hadn’t yet seen them down under the sea in their habitat. Normally they just sit inside the reef with only a bit of their head visible; so the dive master kept trying to get them to try and bite his finger (they were smaller ones) to draw them out so that we can see, but they didn’t take the bait. We got lucky later, though, and got to see one that was outside of the reef, undulating as he was swimming up it. Very neat.

After diving we returned to the resort, where we sat down and had a meal at the Marriott Cafe, which had fantastic service and wonderful food.  \o/

Updated! Pictures added.
Sorry at the lack of updates. We’ve been crazy busy. Since the last post, we’ve been through (as long as I haven’t forgotten anything):

1. Nara, Japan Done: Nara, on November 9
2. Osaka, Japan Done: Osaka Universal City, on November 10 Osaka Castle, on November 11
   
3. Himeji, Japan Done: Himeji, on November 12
   
4. Hiroshima, Japan Done: Hiroshima, on November 12
5. Fukuoka, Japan Done: Fukuoka, on November 13/14/15
   
6. Flew from Fukuoka, Japan through Tokyo, Japan (said goodbye to Andrew ); through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended up in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
7. Siem Reap/Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
8. Flew from Siem Reap, Cambodia through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended in Phuket, Thailand; where we promptly checked into the JW Marriot Phuket Beach (possibly insert other modifiers here) Club for our 1-week stay at the resort.

I know, we have a lot of updates to do. We basically didn’t have time as we tried to squeeze all the time we could into our last days in Japan and our short stay in Cambodia. Even now (during the 1-week stay at the resort); I won’t be filling in all the blanks. As to why, I have a simple answer for you: swim-up bar with waterfall. What I will try to do is post about today (our first full day at the resort), and will try to stay on top of posting about Phuket, so that it doesn’t build up any more than it already has!

So, today was our first day at the resort. A quick walk along the (magnificent) beach in the morning apprised me of two facts:

1. There is a significant undertow; though it is manageable (this would be what their little yellow flag that is tagged as “Experienced Swimmers Only” refers to, I would bet).
2. The ocean in Phuket is warmer than our hotel pool was in Siem Reap, Cambodia (I think the pool was cooled purposefully though, so take that with a grain of salt).

Angela went further down the beach than I did (I stayed closer to the resort), and ended up finding a lot of sand crabs a ways away from the resort. I’m looking forward to going down myself tomorrow or the next day and checking them out.

After a light breakfast I decided it was time to check out this swim-up bar that I had noticed in the resort map; so Angela and I set off. When it came into sight, I said “Wow! Nice Bar!” and Angela said “Sweet! Nice Waterfall!” She sorta missed the fact that behind the waterfall was a bar. We drank there for a few hours (UHmm… it was time to drink in Canada, I am sure! *cough*), from about 10:00 to Noon. After enough drinks we decided it was time to swim (well, really we were swimming during/between the drinking; but I mean in the ocean), so we all set off for the beach (by this time Mom and Dad had joined us as well) and Mom stayed ashore as the rest of us dove into the waves.

It was a very pleasant swim, very warm water and all that; but I wanted to try the sailboats that the resort provides for the use of their patrons; so we weren’t out very long before returning to shore to the sailboat sign-out place. Shockingly, it turns out that they won’t just hand a sailboat out to just anyone. We had to undergo training first! So we scheduled our training for later in the afternoon and had lunch while we were waiting.

When the time came we were all ready, and after a short (read: 2-minute) lecture about how a sailboat works in general - Hint: travel perpendicular to the wind for best results - we were off! Angela opted to not go first, so it was the trainer and I in the small one-person sailboat, heading out from the beach. He showed me how the ropes and whatnot worked, how to turn, and then nonchallantly told me to take the helm. Was kind of nervous; but I did OK… though I was never able to turn into the wind properly. Turning into the wind is safer (less chance of a capsize) than turning away from the wind, but harder to do, too. Turning away from the wind I can do, but into the wind will take more practice.

Anyway, we played around for a little bit and then headed back into the beach, intending to switch me for Angela. However just at that time the resorts bigger sailboat was beaching to discharge it’s passengers, so the trainer just turned it around and boarded all of us (Angela, Dad, and I) and headed out to the open sea. The bigger sailboat was lots of fun to ride (I never drove it; but it was fun to ride) — it has a larger sail area than the small one-man boats (obviously), and thus goes faster (…and almost capsizes when some crazy sister catches too much wind and even the weight of the passengers can barely keep it more-or-less upright. Not listing any names…). Apparently it’s also more stable (owing to the twinned hulls) than the one-person sailboat; but you’d never know it with the people that were driving it this time.

That drew to a close our sailboat training; but it was just as well as it was clouding up a bit and the wind was really starting to come up, so we headed to the beach and dinner. I had originally planned to go into town to a club that I saw a flyer for; but tonight is apparently the once-weekly all-you-can-eat steak-and-seafood grill-fest, so I cancelled that (will have to do later) in favour of staying at the resort. The dinner was superlative, what more can I say? They had a beautiful ice sculpture by the desserts table…

A little about the resort: it is on the west coast of Phuket, quite a ways from Phuket City. In fact, it is far away from everything — the City is about 40-50 minutes away, driving. This has it’s negatives (difficult shopping, have to put up with resort prices, etc.) but also it’s really big positives (absolutely huge expanse of very nice beach with no-one on it, basically no-one around, no traffic, etc.). The resort itself has been great — service is exquisite, and they’re nice enough to add a 10% service charge to everything so you don’t have to worry about who you need to tip (and by how much). That sounds a little sarcastic; but it isn’t meant to be — in this case, a built-in service charge is much better than having to worry about tipping. For example, all you need to know is your room number; and then charge-back everything to the room and sign for it. If you had to worry about tipping; you might have to carry cash to tip the people that weren’t directly involved in you signing a receipt. There’s a lot of water around — said cash might get wet — say when a big wave hits your sailboat, for example.

The weather in Phuket is pretty nice — about 30-35 degree days, it seems like, (and I already mentioned a very warm ocean)… so no complaints on that account! I want to post pictures of the resort and whatnot (and I wish I had some of us sailboating), but unfortunately can’t right now… tomorrow is diving… and I have a feeling there is a drink out there somewhere with my name on it for tonight.

Some general photos of the resort (some in the day, some at night with the torches on):

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On our last day in Cambodia, Joey took us to Tonle Sap, the river/lake that connects to the Mekong Delta. There’s a floating village about 5 miles out from shore.

In the dry season, much of the Tonle Sap in this area dries up, and they build a road out to the village. Mom claims it is just like the ice road across the MacKenzie River. Or at least the Cambodian counterpart.

The floating village also had some tourist shops (of course), and a crocodile farm.

This was our last excursion in Cambodia. Joey took us to the airport, we said goodbye, and braved the two flights (via Bangkok ) to Phuket.

Our first two full days in Siem Reap were spent wandering the ruins of Angkor, for as long as we could stand the heat. Which was about 6 hours or so. After that we needed to go back to the hotel and swim, as going from 15 to 33 degrees in a day is a real shock to the system.

There are more pictures in the gallery, so I’ll just post the highlights here.

Our first stop was the ancient city of Angkor Thom. We arrived through the south gate, which has a “naga” (7-headed serpent) bridge leading up to it, with gods lining one side and demons lining the other, both carrying a serpent.

The bridge leads to a gate with 3 towers carved with 4 faces (on the cardinal points). At the base are 3-headed elephants plucking lotus flowers with their trunks, forming the supporting pillars.

Inside the city of Angkor Thom are:

The Bayon, with its famous face towers

The Baphuon, a 5-tiered pyramid that is being restored

The Phimeanakas or Royal Palace

The Elephant Terrace

And, of course… monkeys!

After Angkor Thom, we went to Ta Prohm, a temple that was chosen to be left in its ‘natural state’ as an example of how most of Angkor looked on its discovery in the 19th century.

After lunch, we went to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor temples. It actually has 5 towers (one in the centre and 4 on each corner), although most pictures only show the 3 you can see when you are directly facing the temple. Here, you can see 4 of the towers.

By that point (about 15:30 on a very hot and sunny day), we were done. So, Joey took us back to the hotel, and we swam and relaxed until about 18:30, when he picked us up to go to a restaurant he recommended - the Angkor Mondial Restaurant. It had a buffet of various Cambodian and other SE Asian cuisine, followed by Apsara dancers.

The evening would have been wonderful, had it not been for the large tour group of obnoxious French people (is that an oxymoron?) that arrived extremely late, and then had to mill about while deciding where to sit, get up many times to get food, and stand to take pictures, even though their table was front and centre. Jerks.

The next day we got up early to travel to Banteay Srei, a beautiful out-lying temple. On the way we stopped at Pre Rup.

Banteay Srei is a beautiful little temple made of pink sandstone. It has very detailed carvings over its walls, doorways, and towers, which are still mostly intact.

Sadly, the same group of French jerks showed up with their cloud of smoke (many of them were smoking despite all of the “No Smoking” signs), so we left.

On the drive back to the main temple area, Joey stopped at a friend’s market and showed us how palm sugar is made.

Then, we toured:

East Mebon, with its elephant statues

Ta Som, that has a large strangler fig tree over the east entrance

Neak Pean, with 4 ponds surrounding a central pond and Sanctuary Tower

And finally, Preah Khan, with Dad helping to guard the north entrance

Then, it was time for lunch!

By this point, we were pretty much templed out, so we decided to give Joey the rest of the day off, and just relax in our hotel for the afternoon.

In the evening, we wandered around Siem Reap for a while, and saw a flock of bats (is that what you call a group of bats?) over one of the central gardens. They were everywhere - it was kind of creepy, for no good reason. Stupid Hollywood-esque social conditioning.

Our journey from Fukuoka to Siem Reap (the town near the Angkor ruins in Cambodia) was a bit long, as there were 3 flights involved, and one of them involved a transfer in Bangkok. We may have mentioned this elsewhere, but the “new and improved” Bangkok airport isn’t so much improved. For one thing, they have some rather confusing signage. For example, when you see a sign that says “International Transfers” and arrows pointing both left and right… well, it just leads to confusion. And since it’s a new airport, the staff are also unfamiliar with things, and give conflicting directions.

After much wandering around, we eventually found the correct check-in point - only to learn that our luggage had not been checked through. So, I got to go through Customs and Immigration, find all of our backpacks (which I found in the nick of time, as they were about to be carted to the “Unclaimed Luggage” section), check them all in (while explaining to the check-in staff that there were 3 other people already inside and all 4 bags weren’t mine), pay the departure tax, go through Immigration again, and find the gate.

I don’t really like the Bangkok airport.

While I was doing this, Mom, Dad, and Remi were trying to find the departure gate. Of course, as I mentioned, the signage in Bangkok airport leaves much to be desired. Somehow they managed to wander into the Domestic Terminal, as it wasn’t very clearly marked and the security people didn’t really care if they were wandering out of the secured section. They definitely did mind when Mom, Dad, and Remi wanted back in to the secured section though. :O Fortunately, one of the staff understood the problem and escorted them to the correct area.

So, when we arrived in Siem Reap, we were rather tired, and the incredible heat and humidity that greeted us didn’t help matters much. All of us were in need of a shower and some sleep.

Fortunately for us, there was a licensed taxi stand just outside the Siem Reap airport, and we meet Joey.

He asked us where we would like to go, realized that we had absolutely no idea, but Mom required air conditioning, and so took us to a nice new hotel, complete with a swimming pool that we took advantage of as soon as we were checked in.

Joey owns his own car, knows Siem Reap very well (having lived there his whole life) and speaks good English, so we hired him to be our driver for the next 3 days. If any of you are going to Cambodia - look him up. His actual name is Mr. Hout Choy, but he goes by “Joey” for tourists who would just mangle his name anyway. His phone number is 855-1241-9944 and his email is houtchoy@yahoo.com. We highly recommend him.

On other thing of note - Remi and I had a gecko in our hotel room. Hee hee!

Our last couple of days in Japan were spent wandering around, shopping, eating, playing arcade games, and watching sumo!

For those that don’t know, sumo is the greatest spectator sport ever! It’s got something for everyone - tradition, ceremony, history, and two fat bastards hurtling themselves at one another. Plus, if you only like some of those aspects, you can tune out the ones you don’t like. So, for example, you can sit and drink beer with your friends, and ignore all the symbolic stuff, and just watch the action.

Although, to be honest, the stamping and preening beforehand is pretty fun too - you get to watch the rikishi [wrestlers] attempt to freak each other out.

It was a good note to leave Japan on - two days of a sumo tournament, including lots of good food. And, of course, video games for Remi and Andrew.