qWT2K9--the quasi World Tour 2009: Week 8: Siem Reap to Bangkok to Kolkata

We made our way at the start of last week from

Cambodia

Thailand

. We had heard a lot of horror stories about crossing the Cambodian-Thai border, but we encountered no problems. Well, we had one. There was a tourist on our bus who got stuck with a seat in the back row. Above her were all of the backpacks for the entire bus and she was very upset because her head was resting on bags and not the backrest. While this would be annoying to anyone, the other 4 people sitting in her row did not seem to have a problem, in fact, they were all asleep until she started yelling “EXCUSE ME I NEED ANOTHER SEAT”. There were no seats available. The driver sort of ignored her, which prompted her to climb over all of the bags with her $2000 canon super SLR camera around her neck, stepping on additional travelpacks that were laying in the aisle from the back of the bus to the front. There was truly nothing that her complaining could do, the bus was already over capacity. One guy had to sit in a plastic chair placed in the aisle because there was no seat for him. After about 10 minutes of her complaining, (including a bit where the driver tried to throw her off the bus) a brave dutch girl shouted “SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, THIS ISN’T A PALACE, IT’S

CAMBODIA

”. She was right after all, we were on a 10 hour bus that only cost $15 where there were plenty of other options that would have been much more comfortable. I may or may not have started to applaud which then caught on and others cheered and clapped as the woman swallowed her pride and sat down. She didn’t cause any problems after that.

Thailand was a much more developed country than I had been expecting. It definitely had a mixture of rich and poor, but Bangkok was much more modern that I had expected. For my birthday Chels and I made our way to a Karaoke Bar that Lonely Planet had said was always packed. We arrived and made our way up to the second floor where the karaoke was to find tumbleweeds and crickets chirping. Only the bartender was there, which was the best way to ring in 28 because I got to sing for just under 2 hours! My second song was “All by myself” and did so because I was singing in a room (other than chels and the bartender) all by myself. I was only interrupted twice by a guy who sang “hero” by Mariah Carey and “my heart will go on” from Titanic. He was hilarious and said his name was Rabbit and we became friends for the rest of the time at the bar.

We spent a day at Ayutthaya, an ancient city north of Bangkok. Located there are a series of religious temple ruins, buddhas and the Summer Palace of the royal family is not far off either. On the bus there I happened to sit next to a woman who lives in Hamburg-Altona, the same neighborhood as Elisabeth and Chris, my German hostparents from when I was an exchange student way back when. How small the world can be. We talked about Altona and in broken german I gave her some recommendations for hotels in Cambodia as that was where she was headed next.

I wish we had allowed more time in Thailand to have traveled outside of Bangkok, but there’s always next time to come back. We left for Kolkata on Monday. The contrast between Bangkok and Kolkata (new spelling for Calcutta) was on par with the contrast of their airports. Bangkok has just built a new airport that after passing through security is like walking down 5^th Ave in NYC with every high end shop you could imagine that you cannot afford. We landed in Kolkata, got off the plane and took a bus from the tarmac to the terminal. The health screening was more or less just a table where you handed your health card. The building was not kept up well, there were water stains on the ceiling, plaster and paint peeling, etc. There was no ATM in the international terminal, which wasn’t really a terminal but more of a small building of a few rooms with 3 baggage carousels in it. We walked out to the taxi queue to find only 3 old cabs with equally old grumpy drivers. Traffic was pretty bad and the persistent honking was a bit odd. The cars were old as were the horns, so it sounded more like the opening scene of Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” than a present day traffic jam. Bright blue buses would pass by crammed full of people seen through window bars (no glass, just bars). The buses, though old, looked beautiful, bright colored flowers and Sanskrit painted on the sides. It was also raining, making the experience even more chaotic, seeing cars drive through what was at some points deep water. After taking what seemed to be a long and circuitous drive, we had arrived.

The next day we walked around the city, which is a strange contrast between the remainders of the British Empire and the poverty that surrounds it. The Victoria Monument to Queen Victoria which was described by Lonely Planet as a mix between the US Capitol and the Taj Mahal is quite large and grand structure sitting in the middle of a fairly well maintained park. Just across the road however, is a much larger park called “The Maidan” which is a less than cared after park with horses and cows roaming looking for grass to eat. Walking through the city to the big market we passed men pulling rickshaws, goats tied to buildings, men typing letters on typewriters outside of the post office for people, people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalks, etc. It was truly a place like no other that I’ve experienced. With that said, the city seemed relatively hassle free for us, there was hardly any begging and generally people did not approach us. It was definitely an eye-opening good start for our month in India as we make our way to Varanasi, a Hindu pilgrimage city that has been described by friends and things I’ve read as “a city that takes no prisoners”, “hell on earth”, “magnificent”, “mystical”, and “real India”.