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From Kanchanaburi, we go back to Bangkok to catch a bus south. We take an overnight bus to Ranong, then a speed boat to Koh Phayam.

(This entry will be brief because we check out soon to move to the other, better side of the island, which may or may not have WiFi available. We may be incommunicado for a week or so.)

As we move south, we look to repeat the experience of Lazy Beach. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

We google ‘lesser-visited islands in Thailand’ and come up with, among others, Koh Phayam.

From the place where the boat arrives, a trash-strewn village full of stray dogs, it’s not overly impressive. We spend a few nights at the giggle-inducing Nitiporn Resort.

We rent bicycles and explore. Things get better. The sun comes out. The island is largely forested with rubber plantations.

Rubber is like maple syrup, the gunk slowly drips into containers for collection.

Bicycling is good, even with the hills – we need the exercise.

On the other side of the island, we discover nicer places to stay.

We find a bungalow overlooking Buffalo Bay and move in.

This is the River Kwai, in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand. We arrive here after another overnight train to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, a taxi across town to the Thonburi trains station, and a few more hours by rail.

Below is the bridge on the river Kwai, as it appears today. In fact, it’s not a teakwood behemoth as built  by Alec Guinness in the eponymous movie. (Mention of which elicits blank stares and a background sound of crickets chirping when speaking to anyone under oh, say, age 45).

It’s a smallish steel bridge, destroyed several times during the war, the last and final time in 1945 by a 24-year-old Canadian pilot.

The movie plot is entirely fictional, but Kanchanburi was near kilometre zero on the Thai side for the Burmese Railway, a Japanese project to facilitate the invasion of Burma and beyond into southern China. Built by slave labour, 100,000 people (80% of which were fellow Asians) died during its construction from disease, starvation , beating, and neglect as Japan pursued its insane butchery of tens of millions of souls Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

A better movie about goings-on in the area at that time is the Railway Man, with Colin Firth, which is based on a true story.

The zone around the bridge today is a zoo. Acre upon acre of market stalls selling crap, food stalls, parking lots. When I was here decades ago, none of this existed. That’s progress.

Just kidding, it’s a shameful freak show. Thank God the Commonwealth War Graves in the middle of town are as immaculately kept as all the other CWGs in the world. 7,000 men are interred here, mostly transferred from graves along the track.

Besides the bridge and its lore, Kanchanaburi is a pleasant riverside town.

We have a wonderful lunch by the river at the Blue Rice Café.

On a blue theme, we stay at the Blue Star guest house, also by the river.

Among other attractions, we have alligator-sized monitor lizards on our property. You can’t see the scale in the photo – no pun intended – but this bad boy is about 5 feet long. The green stuff is some kind of pond growth..

You can see someone else’s giant Kanchanaburi lizard video here.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Kanchanaburi

Well, not quite Kanchanaburi. I forgot to mention when we touched down at Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, flying from Phnom Penh: it has a golf course in-between the runways. I’ve never seen anything like it.

After the overnight sleeper from Bangkok, we arrive in Chiang Mai for the third time this trip.

We’re here to meet our nephew, Danny. He’s been rock-climbing down south in Ton sai. Also here in the area of Chiang Mai.

We take in a few sights we haven’t seen, such as the Royal Gardens at Phuping Palace. Our shorts, modest enough for entry into temples, don’t cut it for entry to royal sites. We fabricate some impromptu longis.

We also visit the nearby Doi Suthep temple. We put our names on a piece of cloth that is wound around the pagoda. Hey, can’t hurt.

Among other things, Doi Suthep has a great view of Chiang MaI.

Nice tinkly bells, too.

It’s great being with Danny. We try to be good guides. For example, we take in a few markets.

We visit a few more temples, whose names I forget.

While resting, I come under attack from the temple guard dog, a merciless beast. I barely escape with my hat intact.

On the way to a dinner of roast duck, we come across a tournament of sepak takraw. The players move a rattan ball over a net with balletic overhead kicks.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Chiang Mai

January 10 is the birthday of both Danny and Maria. On the day, Maria buys candles from a shop around the corner, and sticks them in pieces of fruit.

Turns out they’re trick candles that keep reigniting. We finally douse them in water.

Danny and Maria treat themselves to massages as a birthday indulgence. We celebrate with a great lunch in an upscale-but-kitschy-in-an-Asian-way restaurant.

Danny returns to Vancouver via Phuket this afternoon.

…and the world’s your oyster! We finally depart Koh Rong Samloem by boat and bus it from Sihanoukville to spend one night in Phnom Penh. We fly early next morning back to Thailand to spend one night in Bangkok.

Back to where it all began. It’s enjoyably familiar. After a night spent at the Sam Sen Sam guest house, we visit the National Museum.

Besides an excellent temporary exhibit on the cultural treasures of Japan, we see lots of indispensable Thai regalia, like palanquins and elephant howdahs. The buildings themselves are impressive.

We also see these ridiculously elaborate puppets.

And some  masks. The one on the bottom resembles Donald Trump.

Some fancy headdress.

At ten in the evening, we catch the overnight sleeper to Chiang Mai. Better than Myanmar Railways by a mile.

Sight or Insight of the Day – One Night in Bangkok

• When we first arrived in Thailand three months ago, many people still wore black, in mourning for the late king. Now that he’s been properly mourned for a year and safely cremated (at the end of October), there’s more colour in town.
• While exploring a back alley near the river, we look down to see – a rabbit! Obviously somebody’s free-roaming pet, he doesn’t seem to mind the confined chaos of narrow alley life, or the danger from dogs, cats, or rats. We pet him expertly, to his great delight.
• Just before we left Canada, I read Anna and the King of Siam. Simultaneously, I read The Windup Girl, a science fiction novel that takes place in a Bangkok of the future. Interesting to contrast the past and the future with the rapidly-evolving Bangkok of the present.

Still on Ko Rong Samloem for the holidays. We move from the Jungle Bay Bungalows, to a nondescript guest house for two days, to the paradise of Lazy Beach.

Below is a place we stopped several times for lunch, the Dolphin Bay Resort. They have three puppies.

Because the simple bungalows of Jungle Bay were booked for the Dec 31 and Jan 01, we stay in a modest room behind a general store on the beach. Our friends Ulf & Susane move to the Lazy Beach Resort, a place they discover on their wanderings on the island. We join them for New Year’s Eve.

This is what we’ve been searching for. In three months of Asia travel, Lazy Beach is the best place we’ve seen so far, tropical-paradise-wise.

Too bad about the name, with its connotations of vice. I would rename it Butterfly Beach, because flights of enormous colourful butterflies are everywhere.

Oh, and  its LOGO sucks.

After a BBQ buffet, we gather on the beach.

I realize we’re holding beverages in every photo above, but it’s New Year’s Eve, after all.

The same day Ulf & Susane move out, we move in for our final few days on the island.

Lazy Beach has several things going for it.

• It’s isolated by a 1.5 kilometre jungle trail crossing the island. True to its name, this would deter 90% of humanity from going there. It does have its own boat to the mainland, which is how we go back.
• It’s run by a UK person, who had the stroke of genius to realize that people don’t equate ‘tropical paradise’ with ‘bags of fetid garbage’ and ‘mountains of discarded construction debris’ and ‘damaged speakers crackling out Bob Marley 14 hours a day’. It is spotless and tranquil.
• No WiFi or other connectivity. There’s an expression in IT: ‘That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.’
• It costs US$ 65 a day, which is a lot for this part of the world, but a fraction of what we’ve paid in other exclusive resorts. (The kind we stay in all the time.) (Well, once every blue moon.)
• Excellent food in the restaurant.
• There is no outside/through pedestrian traffic. It nestles between two steep hills. (See bullet one).
• It’s not listed in the usual booking websites, so it attracts an elevated level of clientele. Like us. (See bullet four).

The new inhabitants of bungalow 17.

We hike up to Sunset Peak to view the, er, sunset.

As the sloth of the holiday season passes, expect a return to more frequent blog entries.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sight or Insight of the Day – Lazy Beach

Something to add to the Koh Rong Samloem bestiary besides spiders and snakes – monkeys and hornbills!

As we walk to the Lazy Beach Resort, we pass an open area over which about a dozen hornbills fly from one tree to another. (I was not quick enough to get a photo – I borrowed this from someone else, but it’s a genuine Koh Rong Samloem hornbill.)

We also have monkeys. A troop of them inhabit the jungle trail between Saracen Beach and Lazy Beach. These are well-behaved monkeys that stick to the treetops, not like the manic, human-acclimatized delinquents in Lopburi.

From Otres Beach, we travel to the nearby island of Koh Rong Samloem.

This is Oreo, a cat we befriended in our guest house.

For Christmas dinner, we have grilled barracuda. We’re joined by Kim, a pleasant Scotswoman we met on the way here from Phnom Penh. She and her husband have been running marathons in the Himalayas, or something equally extreme. She also loves cycling in mountainous Northern Laos – the same area we traveled by bus, where I thought ‘Thank GOD we’re not cycling up these mountains!’. Very sporty, in other words.

By the time Christmas has come and gone, we think of staying elsewhere. The nonstop music at Otres Beach is getting on our nerves.

Our friends Ulf and Susane went to the island of Koh Rong Samloem.  This involves taking a speedboat – a powerful catamaran – from Sihanoukville.

The island is a LOT calmer than Otres. Ulf and Susane stay at the Jungle Bay bungalows.

We make an overnight trip to visit for Ulf’s birthday.

We decide to move, so we return to Otres for one night, pack our belongings and return to stay in these Robinson Crusoe-esque  huts.

This is the view from our balcony.

So we’re seeing in the new year on Koh Rong Samloem.

Among the wildlife here are cobras, tarantulas, and pythons. Which makes for interesting walks in the dark when returning on the trail to our bungalows at night from the village. Did I mention that these huts are wide open to the elements?

Sight or Insight of the Day –  Koh Rong Samloem

We enjoy the vibe here at Jungle Bay bungalows. In this photo are Caroline and Martin at each end, a Dutch couple that are volunteering here while on their way to New Zealand, Ulf & Susane, our German friends, Maria Lola Bueno in the middle, the Italian owner/manager, and of course Maria in the front with one of the property’s doggies.

 

Far from the dark places of Phnom Penh, we find ourselves on Otres Beach, south of Sihanoukville.

We stay at Pappa Pippa’s Bungalows and Restaurant. Originally started by Italians, the pizza’s great. We have a Gilligan’s Island-style bungalow.

These small boats go to the nearby islands.

It’s steps from the beach. We get great sunsets from here.

The American who took this photo for us said ‘You look like a Forbes 400 couple.’ I have to agree.

You can run a tab if you like. So you don’t have to carry any money. Personally, I like carrying money.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Otres Beach

We meet again with Ulf and Susanne, our nice German friends whom we met in Luang Prabang (Laos) and Pagan (Myanmar). They arrive fresh from a gruelling bus trip from Saigon, Vietnam.

It’s a pleasant aspect of travel to run into people you look forward to meeting again.

(This caption is a paraphrase of the play on which Casablanca is based.)

 

 

We make our way from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.

On the way, we stop at a bus station serving up deep-fried crickets. With chillies. Mmmm.

Phnom Penh, like other places we’ve been (Luang Prabang, Vientiane),  is on the Mekong river. We have several errands to accomplish before spending Christmas at the beach.

(First warning – ’tis the Season to be Jolly and all that, but the rest of this entry is pretty bleak. You might want to stop reading now.)

After our chores are done, we go to a few of the obligatory dark places in Phnom Penh. One is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly known as S-21 prison, in what used to be a school.

This place is chilling beyond description. Very graphic and disturbing. We’re surprised that some people bring their children here. For little ones, we’re not sure if a lesson in Man’s Inhumanity to Man has to be this stark.

Later that day, went to this place, Choeung Ek, about 15 KMs south of Phnom Penh. After interrogation at S-21, 17,000 people were brought here, executed, and dumped into mass graves.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Phnom Penh

(Warning: quasi-philosophical musings, part 2, follow!)

Samuel Johnson said:

‘A man is seldom more innocently occupied than when he is engaged in making money.’

…or something to that effect. Being an arch-capitalist, I tend to agree.  The Cocal Cola corporation doesn’t want to take over the world. It just wants to sell Coke in every country in the world. Their ability to short-change consumers or underpay workers is constrained.

On the other hand, the inhumanity and cruelty of those advancing a world-conquering religion or ideology – like the Khmer Rouge and their Marxist nightmare – is staggering. Bottomless. Without limit.

Teenagers and university students may pound the dinner table in a petulant frenzy and splutter ‘But what about the Victims of Capitalism?’

You can direct them here.

In the twentieth century alone, the victims of ideologues number in the tens of millions. Any time people begin to speak of the Shining City on the Hill,  the new Golden Age, the 1,000 Year Reich, be very afraid.

You end up with Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia. (Or ISIS, beheading their way into Allah’s grace, one journalist or aid worker at a time.)

You will end up abducted in the middle of the night with your family. Loaded into the back of a truck. Stuffed into freight cars. Tortured, murdered, and filling a mass grave somewhere or as a puff of smoke trailing out of a crematorium. You end up with this.

Of course, hard-core ideologues will squeal ‘Oh, but that was imperfectly-realized <insert ideology here>. Next time, we’ll get it right.’

Or historical relativists will bleat ‘We’re just as bad as this. What about <insert trifling human-rights infraction here>?’

They should try saying so standing in front of this tower of human skulls.

</quasi-philosophical musings, part 2>

A strange thing happens as we leave our guest house in Siem Reap.

A woman (kiwi, I think) rushes up and says ‘Excuse me, are you Al Franken?’

We’re only vaguely aware of who Al Franken is. The name is familiar in connection with the rogue’s gallery of outed Men Behaving Badly.

I noticed this woman staring intently the evening before. Turns out she thought I might have been Al Franken, escaping to the other side of the world to get away from bad publicity.

(I doubt a senator – even an ex-senator – would stay in a US$12.00 guest house. More like the Four Seasons. On the taxpayer’s dime, of course.)

Al Franken looks like this.

I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

When I was younger, people would ask if I was Bruce Cockburn. Bruce Cockburn looked like this at the time.

From introspective poet to sleazebag politician. That’s progress.

But I digress. We spend the next two days ambling around Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat.

It features lots of these Apocalypse Now– style stone faces.

Among other things, Bayon is known for its extensive bas-reliefs. They even include rabbits, thus proving how enlightened they were.

Another view of Bayon.

This is Bapuon, another building in the Angkor Thom complex.

An arched corridor at the top.

In the neighbourhood is Angkor Wat itself.

As everywhere in Angkor, the stone carving is superb.

Last stop of the day is Ta Prohm. Angelina Jolie filmed a Tomb Raider movie here.  I’m sure the original builder (King Jayavarman VII, in 1186 A.D.) is well pleased.

Me and a really big tree.

Site or Insight of the Day – Siem Reap

While cycling back from Angkor, we pass the office of APOPO and slam on the brakes for a visit.

This is an organization that trains rats to detect mines. I recently saw an article somewhere about using rats to detect mines (probably in The Economist), so coming across this office is pure serendipity.

The rats are very good at it. And they’re too light to set the mine off. We get a demonstration.

Adrian is put through his paces.

Two handlers slowly guide Adrian on a line between them as he goes back and forth. He hits pay dirt with a small TNT-scented object and is rewarded with a piece of banana.

These are giant pouched rats (from Africa) – a different animal from the mangy urban vermin variety – so they have more of a cuteness factor.

We leave a donation and head back to town.

We travel from the 4,000 Islands in Laos to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the town nearest to Angkor Wat.

We cross the No-man’s-land between the two.

Cambodia uses the US dollar as its currency. Quelle surprise! Even though there is such a thing as a Cambodian Riel, it takes 4,000 of them to make a US buck. Even the ATMs only dispense crisp new greenbacks.

Angkor Wat. I’ve wanted to come here ever since reading about it in Volume 1 of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization as a youth.

We rented E-scooters again. Angkor Wat is about 8 KMs from Siem Reap. Our first stop was a site called Banteay Kdei. It was in small letters on the map, signifying a minor site, of lesser importance.

It didn’t seem very minor to us.  It’s like a poem in stone. Unbelievable skill went into building this – and every other site here. There is fine, fine stone carving on every surface. Even the roofs are made of stone. On one of its axes is this magnificent artificial lake.

After an hour or so of ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’, we move on to Pre Rup.

This is a temple made largely of brick. A multinational film crew is making some kind of documentary while we’re here, including drone shots.

After a healthy climb, we get this view.

Almost all the sites here have multiple stone lions as guardians.

On the road to the next stop. These E-scooters are a blast to ride.

We pass a baby water buffalo that doesn’t want to get out of the (mud) bath.

Next stop, Neak Prean.

Dates from the 12th century. What was going on in Europe in the 12th century? Quite a lot, in fact.

After lunch and a charge-up of the bikes, we arrive at Preah Khan.

We love these trees that take over the ruins.

Maria consults our guide book.

The 2 axes of the building meet in the middle. Looking down the corridors gives a hall-of-mirrors effect in every direction.

More buildings.

The roofs are impossible-looking arches of stone

We try to imagine what this looked like in its heyday.

Another ruin-devouring tree.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Angkor Wat

(Warning: quasi-philosophical musings follow!)

We are immersed in an ocean of history.

Like a school of small fish halfway to the ocean floor in the middle of the Pacific, we don’t need to be aware of more than the few cubic metres of water in our particular habitat.

People don’t need a knowledge of history to live, or even to thrive. Many people know absolutely none. Others know only what someone else has told them. Some learn just enough to buttress their own particular set of biases and beliefs, then stop.

But overarching all of these is a sort of uber-history: what has undeniably been, manifested in concrete form, unchangeable by the fairy tales and agenda-driven propaganda of history-as-an-identity-crutch.

Angkor Wat is like that – it’s overwhelming in its HERE-ness, the product of a million minds and hands from people long dead. Many things have changed in the intervening centuries, but Angkor Wat remains to boggle the mind. (Well, my mind anyway.)

</quasi-philosophical musings>