MannyTan's Blog

Nepal days 1-3

I felt chills as I look out from my airplane window, watching the clouds and fog working it's way around the mountains and said to myself, "holy shit i'm in Nepal!" After my moments of giddiness subsided, I headed out from the airport to Thamel, the main touristed area in Kathmandu. If you took a standard city grid and started erasing streets randomly and then make all the streets half as wide as they should be, you get the layout of Kathmandu. It's an extremely congested and polluted city, yet everywhere you see natural and urban life surviving amongst the backdrop of a city with an ancient history. It felt good to be traveling with a purpose again after aimlessly roaming around bangkok waiting for my cold to subside. I came here to see the Annapurnas, a mountain range withing the Himalayas known for their breathtaking views via trekking.

The trek itself is known as the Annapurna Ciruit Trek. It's a 2-3 week uphill climb that rises to the height of 15,000 ft above sea level at it's center which is more commonly known as the Throng La Pass, the largest pass in the world. If the pass is too dangerous (due to wind or snow), you either wait at the top until the weather breaks or you head back down where you came from, something I prefer to not do.

I luckily got the low down on what to buy during the trek from a few people i randomly met who just finished and spent the next few days here and in Phokara buying and haggling over everything, from sock liners to sleeping bags.

Thailand day 1-6

The quiet sleepy towns of Cambodia left me in massive culture shock as i entered Thailand. All I could see were gigantic malls, 7 11 shops, a ton of fast food restaurants, and nail biting traffic all over Bangkok. To make matters worse I stayed in Kao San, the biggest nastiest backpacker's ghetto in the world. Here you found hipsters and hippies of all ages getting tattooed, braided, and drunk along a span of a city block and enough neon lights to make it feel like i'm walking around in a big casino. After a couple days of sleepless nights due to extremely thin walls that did nothing to drown out the cover band that was playing 'mustang sally' while a protagonist on the microphone was ushering everybody to do the moonwalk, i decided and thankfully found a hotel close to my friend's travel agency/cafe where peace and quiet prevailed. The hotel and the area actually made my stay in bangkok quite pleasant and relaxing. The hotel was pretty damn cool. If you took series of 4 story buildings adjacent to each other the length of a city block  and knocked down the walls between the buildings and decorated it with enough natural shwag to make it feel like a viet cong tunnel then what you get is called Suk 11. I spent most of my time sitting, chilling and smoking(yeah i started again so what?) at my friends cafe which makes a rather delicious breakfast sandwich and a shake to die or kill for. Randomly met up with a brit and spent most of the day in shopping malls enjoying the lovely air conditioning and eying some crazy japanese cell phones. that was my trip to bangkok.

Cambodia days 19-21

After rabbit island it was time to depart from my group of four and went merrily on my way to kampot, a small sleepy town only a few minutes from kep. I found accomodations at a rustic guesthouse a few minutes walk from the river where I surprisingly met up with one of the other travelers I met in ban lung. we all went on a tour of bokor station, an abandoned casino resort town in the mountains. to get there, you had to travel for 2 hours up one of the shittiest roads I have ever seen. to make it more interesting we crammed 8 of us in the back if a pick up truck to get there. Every few  inutes someone would yell 'tree' and we would all duck for cover as the low hanging branches have a tendency to hurt when it slaps you upside your head. The casino itself was completely desolate and would have make an awesome place to play hide and seek or paintball. after seeing a few more abandoned buildings and a light trek through the cambodiaqn jungle, we spent 2 hours going down the mountain repeatedly ducking for cover and holding on for dear life as the truck swayed from the massive potholes and rocks scattered across the road. we ended up at a peir and went on a very relaxing and non bumpy boat ride down the river, drinking beer and occasionally taking a dip into the water to cool off. our tour group of 12 got a long real well so we properly drank the night away at the guest house. The rest of the days I spent just relaxing, reading and walking around town. After all my sight seeing of the past few couple months, it was nice to just spend some time wandering and not worrying about the itinerary.

Cambodia days 15-18

after ban lung, our group of four started our way back to Phnom Penh but we were having so much fun we decided to cut across the other side of Cambodia to Kep, Rabbit Island. Kep was just a small town close to the beach, it had only a few guesthouses and no really center of town. What it did have goin for it was it's seafood. Without too much exaggeration, kep had the best seafood I have ever tried in my life. We ordered some crab and a cook's soon went to the beach to look for some for us to eat. I turned of my environmentally conscious meter and had some grilled shark. It was all cartilage so you could eat everything. Next came the shrimp with vegetables, completely overflowing this large plate it was served on. And finally the squid with fresh Kampot peppers came. It is so hard to explain how good the stuff is. I think I had that dish 6 times in a stretch of 3 days. It's that good.

The next day we headed off to rabbit island. it was generator powered with no real plumbing system. If you wanted to take a shower, just jump in the ocean. They had an ample amount of hammocks so we spent the most of the day chillin, swimming, talking, tanning and reading. because of it's remoteness, we joked about going to the disco and dancing in rabbit island. Sure enough around dinner time, a gaggle of cambodian university students came by boat and proceeded to hook up speakers and an assortment of electronics after the finished eating. The music started soon after they made a bon fire with loose coconut shells and we were invited to their full moon festival. We learned some khmer dance moves involving smooth hand motions and capoeria-like dance steps. After a few traditional dances, they unexpectedly switched over to some hardcore Atlanta hip hop and to some pop music which we proceeded to show them how to dance the robot which included the swinging arm technique. we didn't go to bed until really late that night because the moon was amazingly lit up. This was the most surrealistically fun day I've had in ages.

Cambodia day 11-14

My new found friends in kratchie turn out to be my travel companions for the next few days. I'd have to say that north east cambodia wouldn't of been as much without them. After driking heavily the night before we made a plan to head to ban lung, an area known for their waterfalls, lakes and elephants. we took a shared taxi and rode for roughly 4 hours and change cursing our back and neck muscles for not being strong enough. Once we arrived, we noticed that ban lung was basically caked with dust and dirt from the road, making it impossible to wear white shirt and keep it white the entire day. We officially earned our titles of dirty back packers as we wore the same stank nasty clothes for the past three days trying to minimize the amount of laundry we'll need to do later.

Aside from that, teh sleepy town of ban lung was awesome. we spent the next few days going to tribal villages and getting lost trying to find a particluar waterfall and then headed off to a perfectly circular lake that had amazingly clear water for sunset views with beer. One of the more fun things we were dong was climbing into and up a waterfall and then cliff diving from a precariously high rock. It wasn't all smooth sailing though. when we rented 2 motorbikes we each had a flat tire and had to do some minor hiking to  the nearest repair shop. my bike ran out of gas and we had to do a little more hiking in the night and the best problem was trying to drive a motorbike with a passenger and using only a headlamp(because the lights didn't work on the bike) with about 3 meters visibility due to swirling dust while dodging massive potholes and sand piles after 4 or 6 beers. it was quite fun actually and something we would never be able to get away with in the states.

Cambodia day 9-10

Traveling from Siem Reap to Kratie was a bit of an experience. Although The 5 hour was uneventful, the 3 hour shared taxi was a bit crazy. It started off with this japanese fellow and myself crammed in a car that was already filled with 9 people. The driver had to sit lopp-sided so someone else can fit to the left of him kinda of crowded. I was crammed in the back sitting at a really bad angle and we drove for about an hour hoping that my back didn't give out from the super bumpy road. In one instance we almost ran into a family of pigs and the driver becamed a little unnerved so he cracked open a beer to calm down. We stopped off at a large courtyard where a wedding was taking place and bought some fruit for the ride there. All of a sudden a mass of school children came streaming out of a building which I assumed was the school carrying little flags of cambodia. They aligned themselves to the left and right of us smiling and holding hands all the way. I assumed it was all for us before I saw a few cars pull in which ended up being the wedding party. We drove off before I got to take a photo and went along our long and bumpy way. We stopped off along the Mekong river and dropped off all the passengers, finally along me to spread out and relax for a little bit before our driver switched from tape to cd to listen to the most gaudy techno music I have ever heard. It was a sureal experience passing through wooden houses and rural locals listening to a base heavy drumbeat but I didn't care, I finally had room.

Arrived in Kratie late in the afternoon and had a pleasant dinner and met a young couple from france that bicycled from france to cambodia. They have been traveling now for over 14 months which included a 14,000 ft ride up and over the himilayas. The next day, I woke up and saw some fresh water dolphins along the mekong. Their numbers were declining and I met some volunteer workers later that were tasked to find out why. They were having a problem with documentation because they always found the dead dolphins (20 died last year) at such a decomposed states that a proper autopsy was impossible.

Spent the next few hours relaxing at a small rapids, even diving in for a spill. This was the coolest I've felt in cambodia, foregoing the use of air-con over fan for budget reasons and I reveled in it. Double checked for any leeches(none thank god) and made my way back to the village for a quiet dinner and drinks with some new found friends.

Cambodia Day 4-8

Arried at Siem Reap with my first sunburn of the tip and made the mistake of not booking ahead during what was the busiest week the city ever had, Chinese New Year. Every temple I visited had bus loads of chinese people people yelling and making the dopey peace sign during every photo op whether it be at the giant smiling faces carved out of rock at Bayon of in front of a regular rock. This pretty much shattered my expectations of a peaceful week at the angkor temples. i have to thank Angelina Jolie for revitilizing the tourism industry here(tomb raider reference). I did manage to find a few temples with few tourists only to be hounded by little kids wanting you to buy flutes and postcards which made it hard to do any real retrospective thinking. My driver was good but the motorbike wasn't. It was rather slow going because the trips between the temples were done in low gear due to some engine issues. The only thing it had going for it was that it was easy to spot amonst a sea of motorbikes because of its bright pink color. I did however meet and old shaman woman at the top of Angkor Wat who showed me how to pray to the Bhudda as well as bestowing upon me a luck ritual of sorts after a small donation. Before, my belief in dieties was non existant but now I'm reconsidering because I finally found some peace and quiet at a remote temple in Angkor Thom that had a few enourmous trees growing on top of it and the next day turned out to be one of the better days I've had in Cambodia. My new driver turned out to be a bit of a race driver and we shaved off 30 minutes in what normally would be a 2 hour haul from Siem Reap to Beng Mealea. The temple itself was astounding. It looked like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie sans nazis. The temple was completely devoured by the jungle unlike TaPprohm which was  a more manicured version. Trees and vines covered many areas and getting around required walking over debris  created from said trees. The best part about  it was that no one but my guide and I were there. As I was leaving a gaggle of stereotypical Chinese tourists came roaring in in 3 large buses. I actually saw birds fly away when they stormed down the walkway to the temple. I got back to town and took a rented bicycle over to a small workshop known for their minitures of the giant temples of Angkor. I was lead by a lovely old man that showed me around a his studio of all the casts he made. It took him a couple years to get every detail of some Angkor temples and even more to sculpt the wax castings. We walked over to the back of the studio where he jumped up on a concrete platform to look over a wall. I had no idea what to expect. What I didn't expect to see was 50-100 crocodiles relaxing in an enclosure, some sunbathing, other swimming in a moat of sorts. They were being farmed for their skins which costs an estimated 3000 dollars per gator. I was thoroughly impressed and horrified at the same time but at the end of the day they were bred from birth for their skins and were not captured from the wild.

Cambodia Day 1-3

Arrived in Central Market in Phenom Penh completely surrounded by taxi drivers wanting me to stay at their "uncle's" house. Fortunately, I got a great recommendation from some friends I met in Saigon and stayed along this lovely stretch of pier overlooking the lake. The ammenities were nothing spectacular but it had ambiance that had a lot going for it. Spent most of the the time walking all over the city, occasionally stopping for food, beer or both. Some of the traditional architecture was quite spectacular and the sculptures gave me some pretty good ideas for a new tattoo I'm thinking about.

The notion that Phenom Penh was similiar to the wild wild west was slightly exaggerated. I did get a string og bad luck however; my trip to the s-21 and the killing fields blew out the tires of the motorbike twice, another motorbike completely seized up and shredded a gear and I now know the sound of a bathroom sink smashing into a jillion peices after the mounts slid off and landed on a very hard bit of concrete flooring. A fight almost broker out between some africans that reeked of ex-paramilitary and locals in my guesthouse due to the language barrier. I said 'almost' because I for some reason or another interveined and told everybody to calm down because I was in the middle of watching the jungle book and they were all blocking my view. People laughed and everything chilled out afterwards. In hindsight it was probably a stupid thing to do because the african was holding a bottle ready to swing at anybody and a member of the staff was holding a meat cleaver. I only found out later that night after drinking with the owner that he had a couple hand guns behind the counter if things got out of hand. The morale of that story was, don't fuck with the locals.All in all it was quite a fun and boisterous week.

vietnam day 23-24

I spent these days at the Mekong Delta, visitng the owns of Vinh Long and Chaudoc, known for their floating markets and rice batter production. Our tour group tranferred from boat after boat which slowly got smaller as the day went by. I ended up having to help row a small boat filled with 6 people. I now have a new found respect to the locals once my arms and back started aching while the local young girl in front of me wasn't even breaking a sweat. The next day revolved around sitting in a small boat and watching the locals go about their business of buying and selling goods from the larger river boats which I'm sure was the inspiration behind jaba the hut's floating boat ship thingy. Spent the rest of the day traveling back to saigon. We stopped over at an incense making factory but the place was closed due to tet festival. I had dinner and drinks with a few people from the trip and went about preparing for my bus ride to cambodia the next day.

vietnam day 21-22

I arrived in Saigon early in the evening to find the hotel I wanted to stay at was fully booked and was asking for a rather rediculous price for staying the night after. I settled on the hotel next door which, to my astonishment gave me an ACed room with my own private balcony overlooking a large park charging way less than its neighbor. After eating a sensible dinner, I headed over to a pub and met a few expats from all over the world, mimicking a drunken version of the United Nations. We somehow won a free pitcher of passionfruit with vodka and had an even better time. They invited me to a club but I had to decline primarily because I was drunk off my ass and ready to fall over and proved it by falling over. In fact, I was so drunk I forgot which hotel I stayed in, which btw was literally a block from the pub. Panicked, I tried drawing a picture of a fishtank which was the only thing I remembered about the hotel to some random guy on the street. It was a rather good drawing actually and I have no doubt in my mind I will whip all your asses in Pictionary if drinks were involved. It took me a few minutes but I finally found my way back to the hotel, which looked very different when they half closed the gates and turned off all the lights in the place, including the fishtank. Passed out in a span of 10 seconds after I locked the door and took an extra long time waking up the next day to my alarm clock. I decided to spend the day walking around all of Saigon and with map and water in hand I set forth on my tour of saigon. 7 hours later, I found myself relishing my cold double nozzle shower, washing the caked in dirt, dust and dried sweat accumulated throughout the day. I found myself wanting turkish food but found an indian restaurant serving delicious garlic naan and chicken curry. I headed over to the same pub to drink the same drinks and hung my head in shame watching two americans that perfectly fit the sterotype of being loud, boorish and inconsiderate to the staff. I left graciously and decided to apologise to the staff on behalf of the ingrateful americans by leaving with smiles and a large tip. Walked home easily now that I knew how to get there and watched a poorly dubbed version of an xmen cartoon before I sat in my balcony, and for the first time in this trip, actually started to not worry about things and truly relaxed.