from my tattered brown travel journal:

Entries from my travel journal: Bangkok and Cambodia

Sawasdee House, Bangkok, Thailand July 31, 2005

There is something immensely freeing about being somewhere completely, utterly removed from home, where all you lay claim to in this world fits into a small backpack.
Spending the afternoon sipping cocktails and lounging around on a triangle cushion. Being able to say when someone asks you where you will be tomorrow: “I don’t know.”

The bottoms of my feet are not black yet, which means I haven’t yet really begun to travel.

I have been eating everything in sight lately. The street stalls are so enticing, especially those that have huge pots of god-knows-what that you just gesture at for a scoop.

August 2, 2005

Last night Stella and I went drinking at this mobile bar that folds out of a van. It’s called Shark, and they serve 180 baht (approx. US $4.50) huge buckets of alcohol. The guys who throw this party were there drinking, and they attached a big bell to the top of the tarp that formed a makeshift canopy. Every time one of the guys got up and rang the bell, everyone at the bar got a free drink. The drunker the guys get, the more often they ring the bell. Stella and I started out with two buckets of alcohol, but then the guys rang the bell and we had four buckets of alcohol. They ended up ringing the bell 5 times.
We got smashed and met a group of cool travelers. When the bar-in-a-van closed, we somehow fit all eight of us in a tuk-tuk (which comfortably seats three small people) to go drinking some more. Fun night!

Siem Reap, Cambodia August 3, 2005

WHAT A DAY! Woke up at 6am in Bangkok to catch the bus to Siem Reap, which was supposed to take 11 hours. Of course, everything was delayed and it ended up taking us 18 hours to get to Siem Reap.

Before the border at Poipet, we got kicked off our comfortable double-decker bus and into the back of a modified pickup truck, which we rode to the border. Then they took us to an exchange house that looked very official but ended up totally scamming us on the exchange rate. My fault, though, for not checking the exchange rate before I left Thailand.

After the exchange scam, about 20 of us were herded into the back of what can only be described as a cattle truck, and we rode for about 2 hours on a bumpy, dusty dirt road, trying to avoid falling through the holes in the floorboards. The dirt eventually turned into mud, and we were forced to get out, put on our backpacks and walk 2 kilometers in the mud and heat to our dingy, waiting bus.

We didn’t arrive in Siem Reap until almost 1AM.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia, August 5, 2005

I don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of sitting here, writing this. I am near the central tower of the sanctuary of Angkor Wat (equal in height to the towers at Notre Dame). A strong, cool breeze blows at my back, I am seated facing inside, looking into an empty basin that may have been used as a reflecting pool.

This place is breathtaking in its harmony, immensity, detail. Every inch is covered with the most intricate carvings. It feels so great to have finally made it here.

Seven wonders of the world: two down, five to go.

Smiley’s Guest House, Siem Reap, Cambodia August 6th, 2005

What else can I say about Angkor, except that words cannot do it justice? Climbing around the temple-mountains, staring face-to-face with the Bayon, I could not find the wherewithal to write.