Meditation Retreat Day 0: The Silence Begins

We woke up around 6:45am when we heard the first hints of other people around us. It took us a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but it turned out that registration had already begun and some other overzealous retreat-goers had already showed up. I walked over to the registration table in the back of the dining hall and read over some information posted on large whiteboards. It all just had to do with logistical information, nothing too crazy.

After reading things over, I walked up to the woman sitting behind the table and told her I wanted to register for the retreat. She handed me a small packet of information and said that when I was ready, I needed to have an interview with one of the monks. I read over the packet, then waited for someone to be available for my interview. Eventually, I was beckoned over to another table where I met VW, a rather... odd human being. He was white, spoke with a German accent and an unusual cadence to his speech, and had these sort of bugged-out eyes that just make you feel a little uncomfortable. This was certainly not the monk I was expecting. If not for the fact that we were in a monastery, there would be no doubt in my mind that this dude was cracked out on something. Nonetheless, we continued with went on with a short five-minute interview. He asked me some basic questions about why I was here and he laid out the expectations for being here. The point of the interview seemed to be to make sure that participants understood the challenges of the retreat and that they were fully committed to spending the next 10 days here. Which I absolutely, 100%, without a doubt am.

The rules of the retreat are pretty much what your would expect:

1. No talking throughout the duration of the retreat
2. Stay within the physical boundaries of the retreat center
3. Follow the "Eight Precepts," or practices that monks follow, which include:
• Don't kill anything (particularly hard with all of the mosquitoes around)
• Don't steal
• Keep your mind and your body free from sexual activity
• Don't harm others with speech
• No drugs, alcohol, or smoking
• No eating between after noon and before dawn (more details on this later)
• No dancing, singing, playing, listening to music, watching shows, wearing jewelry, perfume, or makeup
• No sleeping or sitting on luxurious beds and seats
4. No reading or writing (more details on this later)
5. Everyone has a chore to perform

After the interview, I signed some papers, handed over my passport, my phone, my book, and some other valuables for safe-keeping, and received a key to my dorm. I also signed up for a chore, which I would have to do each day of the retreat. Each chore had a short explanation of what it meant and I don't think it really mattered all that much, so I chose to sweep around one of the halls. Other chore options included cleaning out the foot baths (?), cleaning the bathrooms, and burning the trash (...?).

This dorm probably doubles as a bomb shelter

With the logistics covered, I walked the couple minutes over to the Men's Dormitory. The men and women each have their own dormitories which are located in buildings right next to each other. Each dormitory building is a large, rectangular building with a huge, central, grassy courtyard. There are rooms on three sides, with the bathrooms on the fourth side. Each corner of the courtyard has a water well.

My room for the next 10 days. Lots of natural light.
Insulated walls. Every monk's dream dwelling space.
If they ever had desires for anything. Which they don't.

In the dorm, I went to a storage room to pick up my blanket and mosquito net. Then I headed over to find my room. The rooms are about as simple as they come: a concrete room with a wooden bed, wooden pillow (yea, I didn't know that was a thing either until this very moment), and a clothesline. There's a light switch by the door, but the electricity is only on for a few hours at night, before lights out at 9:30pm and in the morning when we wake up. It might seem pretty austere (and it is), but it felt... perfect. This room couldn't have been any more ornate or it would have felt out of place and unnecessarily luxurious.

I set my stuff down in the corner, gave the room a good sweeping, and went to work getting my mosquito net set up. It turns out I've never used a mosquito net before but I know enough to know that it's not something you want to mess up, so after trying on my own for about three minutes, I enlisted the help of the very friendly guy next door. He had that sucker up in no time.

Wooden pillow. It's glossy coat gives it the
rustic look you crave with the splinter-free
feel you need for a good night's sleep.
Also pictured: my "mattress".

With my room settled, I headed over to one of the main halls where I was supposed to pick up a small bench and some cushions. I was told these are what I would be sitting on for meditation. The benches are tilted slightly forward, which I found out later makes it easier to sit on. I also got one large, thin cushion, a smaller and fatter square cushion, and an even smaller and even fatter third rectangular cushion. I brought all of them over to the main meditation hall next door and picked out a spot. The main meditation hall is a huge, open-air, covered space that is covered in sand. There's a small stage at the front, which I assume is for the monks. Men sit on the left of the hall, women on the right. There are these coconut sacks spread out on the ground, neatly ordered, each one signifying a space where someone could select their spot. Your spot was your spot for the duration of the retreat. I set my stuff down about 1/3 of the way back from the very front, which I figured would be close enough to see the monks at the front, but not so close to the very, very front.

With my room settled, I met back up with FL and BE, and the three of us popped back into "town" for a little bit, backtracking our route from last night. There's an internet cafe there, where I shot off one final email to the family to let them know that I had arrived, I was alive, and that they wouldn't be hearing from me for the next 10 days. Then we walked down the road to a restaurant where I tried to order some non spicy food and ended up getting one of the spiciest meals of my life. Also what blew my mind is that the ice cream they had was from San Francisco too! What's up with Thailand's obsession with San Francisco ice cream?!

The little flower that could

We headed back to the retreat center around 3pm. The road was a lot less terrifying in the daytime. Someone made a video of the journey from the main road to the Hermitage, so if you want to see for yourself what the place looks like, you can check it out here. As we were walking back, I saw this single plant blossoming in a field of nothing. Something seemed so poetic about it but I could quite put my finger on what exactly.

My wonderful strangers-turned-friends
travel companions FL (left) and BE (right)

Back at the Hermitage, there's a little store there that sells some essentials so I bought some mosquito spray and powdered laundry detergent. I have this super strong mosquito cream that my dad gave me from REI but I hate the feel of it, plus it apparently ruins synthetic clothing, which is basically all I'm wearing, so I figured it would be good to have an alternative.

At 5pm all of the retreat participants got together for the first time for a quick walking tour of the facilities. There are about 80 of us here, split pretty evenly between men and women. The place is beautiful. The grounds consist mostly of large, grassy areas, gravel paths connecting various buildings (meditation rooms, dormitories, dining hall, etc.), and a few man-made lakes. After the tour, we headed back to the dining hall for "tea time" which actually means hot chocolate time! In case you didn't know already, I have the palette of a five-year-old, so there was pretty much nothing that could have made me happier at that moment. It's kind of a weird vibe at tea time. People are kind of chatting but not really. There's a lot of nervous energy among the participants. Understandably so. I think a lot of people here, myself include, don't really know what they're getting themselves into.

In the evening, we headed over to the main meditation hall and took our seats at the spots we had all picked out earlier in the day. This talk mainly covered logistics for the retreat. At 9:00pm, they rang a small bell, which signified the official beginning of the retreat and the beginning of the silence. We were dismissed to our dormitories, and everyone walked back. In silence. After climbing under my mosquito net and carefully tucking it back under the mat on my bed, I lied down for the first time on my wooden bed and wooden pillow. It probably would be more comfortable without the pillow at all, but I figure, it's here, so I might as well give it a try. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to go 100%, wooden pillow and all.

By 9:15pm, we were all in bed and it was lights out. I was exhausted but it was still hard to fall asleep with all of the nervous excitement. I have no idea what I'm in for but I can't wait.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Day 1: A Day In The Life

So What's All This About a Meditation Retreat?

I made it! Here's my "before" shot.

I've hinted about the fact that I planned on going to this retreat in earlier posts, but I haven't really discussed at length what it is or why I'm doing it. The explanation never really seemed to fit in anywhere until now.

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine, KA mentioned to me that she had attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand and that it was a really positive experience for her. At first (as I'm sure is the case with everyone when they hear about something like this) my reaction was, "you couldn't talk for 10 days?!" Impossible. Just... impossible. Can you imagine? But listening to her talk about what she had experienced and learned was fascinating to me. At that point in my life, however, the idea of traveling to Thailand was so far out of the realm of possibility that I never really thought twice about it. I had barely done any international traveling. The little that I had done was to Canada (which doesn't count), or with family/friends on vacation to nice, resort-y places, or for work. Plus I was in this great job and I'm not a planner when it comes to personal things so big vacations just never happened for me.

Fast forward a few years and I've decided to defer business school for a year to do... anything I want. And I knew at the very least that I wanted to do this retreat. No, I needed to do this retreat. Not a ton of people know this, but the last seven months or so I was at Google was one of the most personally difficult periods of my life. My best friend, who I saw pretty much every day, very precipitously became not my best friend in kind of a messy way. There were some non-ideal aspects of my work environment. I wasn't really involved in any extracurriculars because I had been spending all of my "spare" time slogging through essay after essay after application after application after interview after interview with business schools. And throughout the whole thing I was coming to terms with the fact that very soon I would have to leave the city I love, the company I love, and the friends I love to move into the next phase of my life which honestly, I just didn't feel ready for. All of this meant that while on the surface I kept a big smile on my face (Google is great! I love San Francisco! I'm excited to go back to school next year! Everything is rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs!), in reality I was going through one of the most severe depressions of my life. And it just kept dragging on. And on. And on.

What made it all the more difficult is that, well, on the surface, my life actually was awesome. And I will absolutely be the first person to admit that. I lived in one of the greatest cities in the world, I worked for one of the greatest companies in the world, I had graduated from one of the greatest schools in the world, I had a family that loved and supported me, I had tons of friends that loved and supported me, I was financially stable, I was young, I was healthy... honestly, everything kind of was rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs. Which made it all the more difficult to deal with something like this because it's sort of like, "cry me a river, your life is so hard." I felt guilty for not feeling happier when I had so much going for me already. But I just... wasn't happy. I was stuck.

Surat Thani Province, Thailand
(map courtesy of Wikipedia)

When I thought back to what KA had told me about how the retreat had helped her, I knew it was something that I needed to do because living life like this, putting up this front, just wasn't sustainable. And I'm sure the people closest to me could see that too, even if we never talked about it. When I found out that the business school I had decided on was going to let me defer for a year, this meditation retreat became the number one priority on my agenda. It was the whole reason I came to Asia in the first place. And it's why I'm so excited to be here right now. I hope that after these 10 days, I'll be in a place where I can let go of all of those things that I feel have been constantly weighing me down and start to enjoy life again. It's. Been. So. Long.

The retreat takes place at the Suan Mokkh Buddhist monastery in the Chaiya district of the Surat Thani province in southern Thailand. More accurately, the retreat is organized by the monastery but takes place down the road at the International Dharma Hermitage and is run by a mix of Western volunteers and by monks from the monastery. The retreat is designed specifically for Westerners and all talks are delivered in English. It starts on the 1st of each month and lasts for a full 10 days. The website for the retreat states that, "The retreat allows us to withdraw from our usual activities to a quiet and secluded place and devote our time to study, contemplation and meditation." Secluded is right. We are literally in a forest. Which is the perfect place for something like this.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Part 3: Day 0: The Silence Begins

We Made It To The Monastery! Barely.

When we arrived on the mainland from Koh Phi Phi, we made our way over to the bus station. As it turns out, the bus that we needed to take wasn't leaving for another FIVE hours. And this bus station was in the middle of nowhere, so we really had nothing to do. Also... we weren't 100% sure that this was the right bus we needed to take because there was a pretty strong language barrier between us and the station employees. There's no bus that goes directly to the monastery, so we had to get on a bus from Phuket to Bangkok and to just tell the driver where we need to be let off. Which... isn't so comforting when the language barrier is so formidable.

After we got out ticket situation sorted out and dropped off our bags at the storage area in the bus station, we walked down the road to find some food. We found this small, family-owned restaurant. When we got the menus, there wasn't a single word of English on them and a scant selection of photos. I managed to order a plate of fried chicken. I think. Unclear. After lunch we walked down the road to a cafe, which was... surprisingly nice. Super modern. The nicest cafe I've been to in a really long time. We killed a few hours there. BE started not feeling so hot and I felt really bad for her because this is not the kind of journey you want to be making when your sick. I gave her my jacket to use as a blanket as she curled up on the couch, but there wasn't really much else I could do for her.

We headed back to the bus station and found our way to our bus. We think. There was absolutely no way we could ever be sure. In any case, we got on, found our seats, and we were on our way! The bus made a few stops along the way. At 10pm, after about five or six hours on the bus it pulled over to the side of the road and someone told us "this is your stop." So the three of us got out of the bus and collected our bags. When I got off the bus, I took a quick scan around and saw... nothing. It was pitch black outside and all I saw was trees. I understand now why the retreat website said very specifically not to arrive after dark. So I asked the bus staff, "where is the monastery?" Actually I asked "Suan Mokkh?" which is the name of the monastery. But apparently I'm butchering the pronunciation because every time I've said it I've had to repeat it with slightly different intonations until I get to one that's close enough for the person to understand what I'm saying. The lady pointed to a sign that said "Suan Mokkh" on it. What a relief, ok great, at least we are in the right place. Miracles do happen. The bus drove away and the three of us were left here, in the dark, having no clue what to do next.

After a little more looking around, we did find the monastery next to the sign that said "Suan Mokkh" but there wasn't a single light on. Before I came on this trip, I bought this expensive flashlight the size of my index finger that's really powerful that I haven't used once in this entire trip. Except for now. Right at this moment I'm glad to have paid anything for that little miracle. I dug it out of my bag and climbed up the huge monastery steps to go investigate. When I got to the top, the doors were all chained shut. Great. I walked back down and informed the girls.

My favorite part of this map is the blue oval in the top-right. What?!
map courtesy of http://www.suanmokkh-idh.org

I had done some minimal amount of research about this retreat beforehand and I was pretty sure that the place we needed to go wasn't actually the monastery itself, but another building close by. FL confirmed as much and it turns out she had taken a picture of the map with her phone! I had seen that map online and it looked like it had been drawn by a 4th-grader so I basically ignored it, but oh man was I glad she didn't because now we had some vague idea of where we needed to go.

We walked a little bit up the road to where the "Pedestrian Bridge" is on the map so that we could cross the highway via the overpass above us. There was a pack of stray dogs on the steps going up and they were all staring us down. At this point in the night I was basically like, "whatever, I don't care, I need to get to this place no matter what" and was ready to face those dogs when FL was like "umm... I'm not going up that. Let's just cross the road." Oh. Right. I guess we can do that too and not face off with a pack of wild dogs. Good thinking. So we crossed the road and then kept going parallel to the highway until we came across this pitch black alley/road to our right. It looks like that's where the map was telling us to go... so we turned right and kept walking into the abyss.

BE was definitely not feeling well at this point and was really skeptical about the whole trip. At first I felt a little like, "come on, none of us really know what we're doing here, but at least we're trying," but I totally understood where she was coming from. It sucks to be sick. It sucks even more to be sick and in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night not knowing exactly where you're going.

We kept walking down this road with our huge, heavy packs, just trudging along. We took a couple breaks along the way, but never for too long because... well, we didn't know where we were or if it was safe to stop. On the map, there was this big blue oval that I assumed was water... but this place didn't look particularly watery. Luckily, about 20 or 30 minutes later we passed by a small body of water on our left and I thought, "that must be that blue oval on the map!" which was a huge relief because now we knew (or at the very least felt like we knew) we were on the right track.

Eventually we made it to where the road dead ended. We were met by a locked gate on our left... and a locked gate on our right. According to the map, the place was on the right. Hmm, ok, now what? It turns out that you could just... walk around the locked gate. I guess security isn't the hugest concern when you're a monastery in the middle of nowhere. We didn't really have another option at this point since again, there were no lights save my little flashlight and no one around at all. So I went first to make sure it was safe and made my way through some bush to the other side. It was a-okay so the girls followed. As we walked up the path, we saw a building with a truck parked out front on our left. We called out to see if anyone was there but didn't hear any answer. We kept walking up the path and found what looked to be a big open-air, covered dining area. There was a concrete floor with concrete benches and wooden tables with chairs. We walked around the side and saw what looked like a dish washing area. And on one side of the dining area there was... drumroll please........... A SIGN-UP BOARD FOR THE RETREAT! We were really, truly in the right place!

So here we were. No one around except the three of us. No lights except the moonlight and my flashlight. And we decided this was as good as any space to post up for the night. The three of us laid down in a row on the concrete bench.

This photo was taken the day after the retreat, but this is where we slept, on those concrete benches where people are sitting.

I would have gotten my sleeping bag out but it was SO hot, it would have been worse with it than without it. I leaned up against my backpack and tried to fall asleep. I was pretty unsuccessful though. It was really hot. There were insects everywhere. And we kept hearing this rustling in the bushes. Plus I didn't feel all that comfortable "leaving" the girls and being asleep while we didn't really know what else might be around.

None of that really mattered to me though. We made it. The whole reason for my trip to Asia was this retreat, and now I was here.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Part 2: So What's All This About a Meditation Retreat?

Goodbye, Koh Phi Phi!

I'm pretty convinced that Cipro is actually just magic in pill form. It almost makes me question the validity of science because it's unfathomable that science alone could transform me in just one day from the petri dish of death I was yesterday into a roughly 90% whole human again today. I don't really know what sorcery this is, but I for one welcome our new supernatural overlords because I feel SO much better today.

The plan was for FL, the random German girl from yesterday, to meet me back at my hostel at 8am. I got up too late to shower which... is going to be unfortunate for her spending the whole day with me. Sorry! I promise I'm basically always on point about showering at least once a day.

Right around 8am I saw FL walk up, and surprise of all surprises, she had BE (the Australian girl I randomly re-met a couple days ago) with her! I honestly thought there was a 0% chance I'd ever see her again, but here we were. Again. For the third time. So a la Wizard of Oz, the three of us set off down our own yellow brick road, which happened to be a beautiful Thai beach, on our way to see the wizard. Or, you know, whoever it is that lives in a monastery. I just assume it must be a wizard. And for the record, as we were walking down the beach, BE turned to me and very enthusiastically said in her wonderful Australian accent, "[R], you smell delicious!" I'll take it. Maybe I need to shower less often.

We made it out to the boat and took it back to the mainland. Goodbye, Koh Phi Phi! It's been real. Buddhist monastery, here we come!

Give Me Cipro or Give Me Death

There are worse places to spend a day being sick

I woke up this morning and I was deathly ill. I felt absolutely miserable. I got up and headed over to the girls' hostel to let them know that I couldn't make the boat tour we had planned. Then I went back to my hostel for a bit, grabbed my stuff, and brought it back to the girls' hostel because that's where I'm staying tonight.

Before I left for my trip to Asia, I saw about 6,000 doctors who gave me a million shots and lots of travel advice. I also got some Ciprofloxacin (aka Cipro), a hardcore antibiotic, for "just in case you're in the middle of nowhere and finding medical care is as common as riding a unicorn that shoots rainbows out of its... hooves." Well... turns out that "just in case" is right now. I've gotten sick plenty of times on this trip, but I only have so much Cipro and I wanted to save it for when I realllly needed it. But I'm going on a meditation retreat in a few days, and I can't, can't be sick for it. So I popped my first Cipro and waited for it to do it's thing. I spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hostel. Which was actually amazing because the bungalow is RIGHT ON the beach. I'm literally lounging here looking out onto the water. I also met some awesome Australians also hanging out for the day with me in the bungalow.

So it's mid-afternoon. I'm basically asleep. And I get woken up by a random girl I've never seen before:
Random Girl: Richard? [with a thick German accent]
Me: [in a sleepy stupor not having heard what she said] ...what?
RG: Are you Richard?
Me: No, I'm Rishan.
RG: Oh... are you going on a meditation retreat tomorrow?
Me: ...Yea [...totally confused]
RG: Oh cool, me too. Do you want to go together?
Me: ...Yea, sure, sounds good. Wait... what? Who are you?

So it turns out this girl was staying in my old hostel and had been talking to LI (the mysterious Norwegian girl with whom I came to Koh Phi Phi) who mentioned to her that I was going to a retreat tomorrow. It sounded to her like the same one she was planning on going to, so LI told her how to find me. But even still... I'm shocked she was actually able to do it. Props to her. We chatted for a few minutes, I was still in a tired/deathly ill state, but together we managed to figure out how to get off the island tomorrow and start our journey toward the monastery. I'm actually really glad she did because I had been putting off the logistics of the whole thing and honestly, I might not have even gotten it together enough to make it out tomorrow, which meant that I might have missed my retreat.

I spent the rest of the day at the hostel not doing much of anything. The other girls came back from the boat tour and said they had an awesome time. It still would have been a huge mistake for me to go; I made the right choice. I was going to go out with them later that night, but I was still feeling miserable, so I called it an early night at 8:30pm. There was music blaring outside but it didn't matter to me at all. It just felt great to be in a bed.

CONTINUE ON to Koh Phi Phi Part 3: Goodbye, Koh Phi Phi!

The Biggest Beach Party of My Life

The boat ride from Phuket and Koh Phi Phi was pretty uneventful. Toward the end of the trip, we saw some beautiful views of other islands though:

Cliffs. Vegetation. Standard.

With my "yes, I belong on this boat" sticker and rolled-up
pants, I was FOR SURE the coolest kid on the boat

Koh Phi Phi harbor. STUNning.

After disembarking, the four of us (LI, the mysterious Norwegian girl of Iraqi descent; BK, the Texan who carries around her beer bong with her everywhere she goes; and NS her French friend) started walking in the direction of BK's and NS's hostel. But the time LI and I had decided to join them on this island adventure yesterday, there were no spaces left for this first night. LI assured me that it was no problem and we could just walk around to find one once we got there. I was skeptical but she seemed pretty confident, so I went with it. About 20 minutes later, we reached BK's and NS's hostel. Which. was. AWESOME. It was literally a bodega ON the beach. LI and I continued walking around the area and made plans to meet up with the girls in a little while. LI and I then proceeded to spend roughly the next hour trekking from place to place with our huge backpacks trying to find a hostel. Let me revise that, a hostel that was up to her standards of price and quality. We found lots of hostels. With open rooms. But there was always something wrong with them. To be fair, some of them were terrible, but others were totally find, but like... more expensive than she wanted to pay. To put this in perspective, the total spread between most and least expensive was probably on the order of a $5 difference. ALSO, for someone who comes from Norway, which is literally the most expensive country on the planet, ...$5? Really? I definitely hitched my wagon to the wrong horse on this one (yea, I said it). Finally, we found an acceptable place. Which happened to also be the first place we looked it and then decided we'd come back to if nothing else panned out. I was perfectly happy with it. It was also a whopping four-minute walk to the other hostel, which was perfect.

We headed back to the girls' hostel, but they were no where to be found. We waited a few minutes but LI and I were starving, so we ate some food at the hostel. It was meh but it was food, which was the important part. Eventually, the other girls came back and we all went to the beach together. To be clear, we were already on the beach, but we went out to find a place with some beach chairs and more people. Which was a maybe five-minute walk down the beach. THAI ISLANDS. This is awesome.

Hanging out at the beach was glorious. The sand was beautiful. The water was incredible. NS and I went to go swim while the other two stayed behind. This was pretty much the first time she and I had a real conversation and it turns out she's awesome. She's just traveling around for fun right now before heading back home. And she's super funny, with a "whatever, I don't care what people think" attitude a la Jennifer Lawrence. As I was admiring this picturesque scenery around me, I realized this was another one of those "this doesn't happen at home" moments: I'm swimming in the water on a Thai island with a French girl that looks like she should be a model talking about how awesome our respective life choices were that brought us here. [Update: turns out she actually may have done some modeling.]

After spending some more time on the beach, the four of us walked around the little town. There were a ton of shops, but absolutely zero haggling here. Prices are prices. The vendors all had an attitude of "meh, I don't really care if you buy this stuff or not." Which was so weird! But only weird because everywhere else it is the polar opposite of that. We also booked tickets for this boat tour of some of the surrounding area for tomorrow, which sounds awesome.

Thailand is famous for it's Full Moon Party, a huge party that happens on Koh Phangan, one of the islands here. By huge I mean HUGE. Unfortunately, I'm going to be back in the U.S. for the full moon party. Luckily, on Koh Phi Phi they also do a Half Moon Party, not quite as crazy, but still crazy, and luckily, it was happening tonight! There are a bunch of bars/hostels that are right on the beach, and a handful of them put on shows to lure people to their section of the party, but basically the entire beachfront is just one contiguous party scene. It started maybe around 10pm. There was a massive amount of people there, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. This felt like the spring break I never had.

We ended up hanging out in front of one of the places with a huge fire show. They had amazing fire dancers, some of the most incredible I've ever seen.

Fire spinning!

After the fire show, they lit this huge ring on fire and people could jump through it. Which.. obviously I did (sorry, Mom!).

Then they lit the perimeter of the dance floor on fire so we went to dance for a while. You can't not dance on a dance floor of fire, come on.

You would think fire and thousands of drunk people is a bad combo but
somehow I didn't see anyone severely burned or horribly disfigured.
Only minor burns and slight disfigurations.

Our group ended up getting split up over the course of the night. Which was bound to happen with a party of this size. I ended up hanging out with NS most of the rest of the night. We had a long heart to heart which was... not what I expected to happen in the context of this massive party happening around us, but it was nice to have a real conversation with someone and not the typical "where are you from, how long are you traveling, where have you been, etc." conversations that are pretty standard among travelers.

I had not been feeling so hot since the beginning of the day and it got slightly progressively worse as the day went on. Nothing awful, but I still decided to call it a night at around 4am. It honestly didn't even feel late. This place is amazing.

Ain't no party like a Half Moon Partaaaaay!

So... this really crazy thing happened next. I walked back to my hostel and as I climbed the stairs onto the porch, this blonde girl asked me for a lighter. I looked up at her and told her I didn't have one and realized she looked really familiar. It took me a second but then it hit me, she was the same Australian girl from airport bus ride in Phuket! What?!?! Her name is BE, and we hung out for a while on the porch. She was incredulous that this was actually happening and asked me some more questions about the retreat I was going to. When we first met in the bus a few days ago she seemed really interested in it, but in a "that's so cool, I'd love to do that but... let's be real I'm just lying to myself and I'm never actually going to do that" kind of way. I told her that I was leaving in a couple days so if she wanted to come, she'd know where to find me.

After a while, I was off to bed. I'm really excited for our boat tour tomorrow!

CONTINUE ON to Koh Phi Phi Part 2: Give Me Cipro Or Give Me Death

Out of Phuket and Not Soon Enough

Can you say sunscreen? Because I suuuuure hope these people can.

I was out of the hostel pretty early the next morning along with LI, BK, and NS. Our shuttle came to the hostel pretty much right on time. I was exhausted, but happy to be getting out of here and going to my first Thai island.

About 20 minutes later, we arrived at the dock and boarded the boat. It was totally full of European tourists, which was unexpected.

See you in Koh Phi Phi!

CONTINUE ON to Koh Phi Phi Part 1: The Biggest Beach Party of My Life

Finally, a Nice Beach!

Awkward camera pose in front of the

Patong Beach sign. You're welcome, internet.

This might seem hard to believe, but travel is exhausting. Cry me a river, right? I'll be the first to admit this is totally a first-world problem (despite my presence in the third world at the moment). Don't get me wrong, it's incredible. But exhausting. Today was my first real vacation vacation day. I mean... this whole thing is kind of a vacation, but today was the first day in long time without tons of traveling or a crazy schedule of sightseeing, without a schedule at all really,  just a day to relax. And it. was. awesome.

That big, yellow thing in the sky is a parasailor. So. Cool.

I woke up on the later side and met up with MM and his German friend and we grabbed a quick bite to eat on the street before walking down the whopping, grueling five minutes to the beach from our hostel. Life is hard sometimes, you know?


The beach here is gorgeous. I mean... I'm on a beach in Thailand. There's absolutely no comparison to be made between this beach and the ones I saw in Bangladesh and India. We walked down a ways and found a good spot a little bit away from the crowded area (though none of the beach was really all that crowded). We paid to rent some beach chairs/umbrellas which was well worth it. The water looked fine and it felt great. The sun was pretty strong today so we definitely felt it. The water was warm enough to feel good being in but cool enough to help with the heat.

The beach was full of people trying to sell stuff. Mostly food and trinkets. But there were also these women carrying buckets of aloe. Not aloe in a bottle, but actual leaves (are they called leaves when they're aloe? They're huge.) of aloe. What they do is cut the aloe leaves, and this disgusting slimey ooze leaks out which they then rubs all over your body. You come out looking like a dinosaur just sneezed on you (and I'm not talking a dainty sneeze here, I'm talking the kind where your friends get super grossed out because you don't have a tissue or even a tissue substitute that could handle the quantity of snot you just inadvertently ejected from your body), but I imagine it feels great.

We spent a few hours on the beach, mostly lying down in our chairs, but I also went for a walk for a while. On my walk, I ran into LI, the mysterious Norwegian girl from the hostel last night. We chatted briefly about my upcoming meditation retreat and there was a glimmer of "ooo maybe I want to do that with you" so we decided to talk more about it that evening.

When I got back to my friends, I discovered that the German girl was Icarusianly fried to crisp. Which, ok here's the thing, if you're complexion leads you to often be confused with Casper the Friendly Ghost in your daily life, and you've been that way all of your life, shouldn't you know how to apply sunscreen by this point? I guess not. As it so turns out, one of those Thai aloe ladies was getting aloe handsy with the three European dudes sitting next to us, and when she saw the sad state of our German friend, she took pity and decided to use her last two aloe leaves on her for free. Which was incredibly generous of her and something I'm sure our German friend very much appreciated (and needed). Soon thereafter, we all headed back to the hostel.

Also this was a thing I found on my walk.
Which, obviously I had to share with
the world.

I wanted to explore Phuket a little more, so I headed out on my own to go for a walk later that afternoon. There are few things more striking walking the streets than the sheer number of massage parlors there are here. All of them have between two and eight women standing or sitting outside of the doorway trying to entice you to come inside. In front of one of them, one of them actually grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go when I tried to pull free. Aggressive. And then they acted like I was the weird one from wanting her to let go of my arm. This is a totally foreign culture to me. While I was in Cambodia, a fellow traveler told me that she had talked to one of the massage women there, who told her that they actually hate foreigners. Which struck me as odd at first, because... doesn't most of your money come from rich foreigners? But she said that they hate them because those dudes are terrible, terrible people who treat them with no respect. Oh, right, that, yea, okay I get it now. It's a sad commentary on and reality of the global sex trade. The other thing that struck me as I walked through the streets here is that, aside from the massage parlor women, the vendors here weren't nearly as aggressive in their sales tactics compared to the people I had encountered in Cambodia, which made for a much more pleasant experience of just walking around the city.

A little slice of home.
Again.

That night, I went out to dinner with BK (the Texan) and NS (the French girl). Remember how I said the French girl had given me a super cold reception? It turns out it was because she thought I was someone else! Apparently the night before last, someone who had been staying in my room got really sketchy with her friend BK. Womp womp. Mistaken identity at its worst (...probably not it's worst, but definitely not its best). It struck me as odd that two girls who were so young from totally opposite ends of the world were traveling together, but I think they knew each other from college. Yet another reason why it's worth the investment to send your kids away from college if you can. I doubt this would have happened if they had been living at home. I'm a little biased here, but I stand by my point. Dinner was fine, good company, meh food. BK and NS told me they were traveling to an island off the coast called Koh Phi Phi (hehe) tomorrow. Today hammered home the fact that I definitely didn't want to spend another three days here, so I decided I was going to join them on their island adventure tomorrow.

We walked around a little after dinner. And much to my surprise (though I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this anymore), we found another Swensen's!

We also explored a little bit more of Bangla Road. Remember that go-go bar I mentioned yesterday? Here's a closer look:

Note the creepy, old, white dude with two young Thai women at the table.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon sight here.

Inside the go go bar. It turns it's this place is
enormous. There for sure were over 100
of these "tables"/dancing poles.

Every so often, a huge chuck of bubbles
would go flying overhead

Back at the hostel, I met back up MM, LI and some other people in the hostel. One of the guys in the hostel has been staying and working here for a few months and he suggested heading to this famous rooftop bar place... called Famous, which sounded pretty cool. So about six of us headed over. We were a pretty eclectic group: American, Norwegian, Chinese, English, and a couple others in the mix. The place was about a 10-minute walk from our hostel. When we got there, we took an elevator to the roof and found... a kind of empty rooftop. Which was fine. We got drinks and headed over to a table. True to it's word, there was a foam party area, but with absolutely no one in it. The place was beautiful. I bet during the high season when there are a lot of people here, this place is probably awesome.

The bubble room. Doubles as an inflatable
boxing ring and the spare air mattress for all
of the Jolly Green Giant's friends from out of
town.

A few minutes after we got there, it started POURING rain, so we moved to a covered section. And then the power went out. Ha! Of course it did. Which meant that the bubble maker also stopped working, so about 10 minutes later the foam room was just a giant wading pool. No matter. We hung out for another hour or two, waiting out the rain and having an incredible cultural exchange. It turns out the Norwegian girl is also Muslim. And China isn't necessarily the totalitarian state you think it is. But sometimes it is. And even among educated people in Sudan, there's debate about whether or not a genocide actually happened. The fact that that's even a question seems ridiculous to me. This was probably the thing about the whole evening that surprised me the most.

After the rain let up, we walked back toward the hostel. But we weren't really ready to call it a night, so we headed out to the beach. Which was still beautiful and mostly empty. I was talking with LI about my plans to join the girls at Koh Phi Phi tomorrow and she decided to tag along as well. Then she dared me to go into the water. I'm not one to back down from a dare (... questionably true at home, but always true when I'm on a year-long adventure to explore the world), so I stripped down, got rid of my phone and wallet, and ran in. Even at 3am, the water was warm and incredible. Here I was, in the Indian Ocean, under the stars in the middle of the night. And it was amazing. This was one of those "life is good moments" that I won't soon forget.

I eventually made my way back out of the water, and joined my friends who were hanging out at a nearby bench. We hung out for another hour or so before heading back home for the night.

Goodnight world, you continue to surprise me in the best possible ways.

CONTINUE ON to Phuket Part 3: Out of Phuket and Not Soon Enough

Phuket: Where Morals Go To Die

Thank you, stereotypically Asian-style cartoon! It's great to be here!

I decided to take a shuttle from the airport to my hostel since it would be cheaper and I assumed it would probably take about as much time (in retrospect, I really had no basis for making that assumption). I was mostly right on both fronts.

In the van, I met this blonde Australian girl who is also exploring the world. She is traveling with a friend at the moment, though I got a really weird vibe going on between them so I assume their travels together did not end up being as awesome as they had originally anticipated. Whoops! She was super cool, but our itineraries didn't overlap at all, so about 20 minutes later, I hopped out of the shuttle onto Bangla Road, never to see her again. Story of my life.

Like most of the hostels at which I've stayed, I chose this one because it was highly-rated and because it was close to where a bunch of other hostels were, which is generally a good indication of it being in an area that is relatively safe and has cool stuff to do. It turns out Bangla Road is INSANE. I hopped out of the shuttle and onto this street filled with people. And lights! So many lights! And more ladyboys than (most of) you have ever seen before in your lives! And go-go dancers. And so many dudes soliciting tourists to come see ping pong shows. If you don't know what a ping pong show is, for the love of God, please DO NOT Google it. Some things can never be unlearned. The worst part is that these guys keep making this popping noise with their mouths after they approach you saying "ping pong show!" [Pop Pop]. WORST.

The biggest fake tiger I've ever seen.
And I've seen A LOT of big fake tigers. (...no I haven't.)

When I got to where my hostel was supposed to be, it was no where to be found. Instead, I found a go-go bar with a GIANT fake tiger roaring at me. What IS this place?!

I must have looked totally lost, because a few minutes later a stranger walked up to me and asked me if I need help finding something. So the thing about traveling alone in a foreign country is that you have to be super-vigilant at all times because you don't want to be that guy that is stupid and gets robbed and/or mugged and/or scammed. And especially when I'm carrying a 35-pound backpack, I'm in a particularly vulnerable position because I basically can't defend myself and/or quickly exit a dangerous situation. But sometimes you also have to fall back on the idea that most people are mostly good and want to help you out. Luckily, this situation was the latter. I told the guy what hostel I was looking for and it turns out he was an American guy who happened to know the owner of that hostel, so he pointed me in the right direction (which was basically across the street from the GIANT tiger) and I was on my way. Turns out Google Maps was actually right, but this hostel just sucks at signage.

This street is FILLED with people on a
Wednesday night. Don't you have other
things to do?! I guess Bangla Road IS the
thing to do on a Wednesday night.

After I checked in, I met a whole bunch of people in the hostel. There was my new English friend, MM, and his German friend who he met a couple days ago while traveling. There was also LI, the somewhat mysterious girl who is from Norway but is racially and somewhat ethnically Iraqi. There was also the girl staying in my room from Texas, BK. is basically the second American I've met while traveling, which seems crazy to me but... I'm pretty sure that's a true statement. We chatted for a while, she seems pretty cool. Later that night, I met her French friend with whom she is traveling, who gave me this super cold reception. What's the deal?! Whatever.

The night was still relatively young at 10:30pm and I just gotten to Thailand, so there was no way I was ready for bed. MM and I went to go exploring Bangla Road, which isn't really that big. We ended up at this bar pretty close to our hostel. When we got there, this kind of older Thai woman approached us and offered to play a game with us. Basically, there's a giant tree stump, and the game is to take turns trying to hammer in a nail into the tree stump using the back-end of the hammer. Whoever hammers in their nail first wins. She then tried to get us to wager that the loser buys the other a drink. I'm not one to buy drinks anyways, but this totally screamed scam to me (some Google searching the following day confirmed as much). In any case, we did play the game sans wager, and we both got destroyed by this woman, who had obviously had a lot of practice playing this game.

It turns out that these kinds of games are pretty common here as a way for the bar girls to get people to buy them drinks / give them money / spend more money. It is also common for men to pick up these bar girls to take them home. When that happens, the dude has to pay a "fee" of sorts to the bar for allowing the woman to leave work. There was a disturbing amount of gross, old white dudes with young, attractive Thai girls all over Bangla Road. Which I guess is what you expect when you come to Thailand, but... it's just so blatant. I guess it makes sense. I mean, who is going to see you when you're out in Thailand? Not your friends or your kids or your wife. You can do whatever you want out here because this is certainly not real life. So it makes sense that these dudes don't feel the need to hide what it is that they're very obviously doing. Prostitution has technically been illegal in Thailand since 1960 but enforcement of that particular law is... basically nonexistent. Surprised? Nope.

We didn't spent too much more time there and actually did call it a night around midnight or so. Five days of this? I might have to rethink my travel plans.

CONTINUE ON to Phuket Part 2: Finally, a Nice Beach!

The Singapore Airport is Awesome

My layover between Siem Reap, Cambodia and Phuket, Thailand took me back to the magical place that is the Changi International Airport in Singapore. As you may recall, my last adventure here was after an excruciatingly painful flight, so I didn't really stop to smell the proverbial roses while I was here. This time around, however, I had plenty of time to explore all of the wonders that Changi had to offer.

Jargony marketing speak: yes. Still delicious: YES. And in
case you were wondering, yes, this is me showing
self-restraint when it comes to my ketchup intake.

It turns out Maslow really did know a thing or two about priorities, so my first stop was the food court. In my quest to eat at a McDonald's in every country I visit (even for just a layover), I was pleased to find one in the food court. Whenever possible, I like to try out the local flavors McDonald's has to offer, so naturally I ordered the Samurai burger with seaweed fries. (Side note, "Samurai": way harder to spell than you think.) Which ended up just a normal burger but with teriyaki sauce, and normal fries but instead of salt, they give you seaweed flakes. Which turns out to be really awesome, actually.

With that taken care of, I decided to take a stroll around the airport. This place is ridiculous. It should be a tourist destination in and of itself. As I continued to walk around, I came upon the Sunflower Garden, an outdoor garden that is everything it promises to be:

If only there was sun

Back inside the airport, I found... the coy pond?!

Note: Fish in pond may be larger than they appear.

Next on the agenda... the indoor butterfly park!

Apparently butterflies like pineapple. Unfortunately, evolution didn't
bestow them with any semblance of a natural ability to actually eat
pineapple on their own. How they survived all these millennia is a mystery
that still baffles entomologists to this day.

...with a built-in waterfall?!

I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to.
Ok, I probably could, I'm a pretty good storyteller.
But you get the point.

And last but not least, the world's largest golf ball / control tower:

I'm pretty sure Zeus is still looking for his ball somewhere
near the Arabian Sea. Poor fool doesn't even know his
own strength.

Needless to say, this time around, Changi was a far better experience. No wonder it's won a heap of awards. Thanks, Singapore! Maybe I'll come back and see what else you have to offer someday.

War Sucks: Cambodia in Review

Cambodia showed me a side of Asia I haven't seen yet in either Bangladesh or India: a country still struggling from the very deep scars of a very recent conflict, and yet, undyingly optimistic and hopeful for the future. From the first hour I was there, I was shown hospitality from complete strangers that I haven't seen yet in Asia. I felt so much more welcomed here than I had in either India or Bangladesh (except from people I already knew in those countries, of course). There is a calmness, a peacefulness that the people have here that's hard to capture in words. When I arrived at my first hostel, I was welcomed with open arms, as if we were old, old friends even though we had never met before. On the Mystery Tour, BT talked to the rice farmers as if they were his family, though they didn't know each other at all. I suspect this is the result of two things. First, Cambodia is over 95% Buddhist, which I think hugely contributes to the overall calm demeanor of many of the people I've met here. Second, Cambodia is only now starting to pull itself up after being devastated by a dictatorship and massive genocide. I get the sense that among the people that are still here rebuilding their country, there's a sentiment of "we're all in this together."

The scars of war are in ever direction you look here. In the streets, beggars are missing body parts or horribly disfigured. Many of the most prominent tourist attractions or historic sites are direct reminders of Cambodia's genocide. S-21. The Killing Fields. The War Museum. Just to name the few I actually saw. There's still deep dissatisfaction with the government, though admittedly, a non-genocidal government has to be a step up, right? Protests are a common occurrence here and elections are a joke (Update: a recent op-ed in the New York Times talked about the roots of the current protests in Cambodia).

And yet, Cambodia still felt like the most developed country overall thus far in Asia (a gross generalization, I know, and skewed by the fact that I only went to the two most prominent cities in this country). I got the sense that infrastructural issues were ever-so-slightly less of a problem here. To be clear, they're still a huge problem. Roads are certainly in need of more attention. Traffic is a big problem, though not as bad as elsewhere. If you ever needed medical attention here, I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find it. At one point while sitting in a tuk tuk stuck in traffic, I looked over and saw a man sitting on the back of a motorcycle presumably headed to the hospital. He was clutching his foot, which was gushing blood, and clearly in a lot of pain. Motorcycle was the best way to get him to the care he needed.

In some senses, it does feel like stepping back in time a bit, though that paradigm is probably less specific to Cambodia and more broadly applicable to the differences between America and many parts of Asia overall. Many people subsist off of what they can grow or catch for the day. Villages do very much feel like little communities that rely on each other to make it through the hard times.

The biggest takeaway, though, is that people seem happy. It would be very easy to understand if there was a sense of depression or hopelessness given this country's past, but that's not what I saw. This country is proud of it's history, both the recent and the distant past. Some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring man-made structures and naturally beautiful places in the world can be found in Cambodia. And some of the most devastating historic artifacts are here as well. This is a country that proudly puts it's roots on display, as if to show the rests of the world how resilient a people they are. It's an empowering message.

Cambodia still has a long way to go. There are many segments of this society that are oppressed. The sex trade here is far bigger than I had imagined. The wages in general here are as low as you expect them to be. Tourism is a big part of the economy of the large cities. The unpredictability of the climate and constant thread of floods can cause havoc for farmers, homeowners, and squatters alike. But despite it's ongoing political issues, I get the sense that Cambodians have regained their identity and will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

Goodbye, Cambodia!

Fun fact: the motorcycle-to-car ratio in
Cambodia is what keeps Yamaha in business

I arrived pretty early in the morning back in Phnom Penh. The bus ride really wasn't that bad. I got off and had a couple of hours to kill before I needed to head to the airport. And I really wanted to shower, but... where was I going to do that? There was only one place I could think of so, I figured I'd give it a shot. I walked about 20 minutes from where the bus dropped me off back over to the hostel I was staying it while I was here a few days ago.

When I arrived at the hostel, I got the warmest welcome ever! They remembered me! I very sheepishly asked if it would be possible for me to use the shower and they said... of course! Whoa, I wasn't expecting this one, but man, this is awesome. So I took a shower and I felt soooo much better. I stuck around for breakfast there with none other than my old friends IL and MK, who were still here! It was a nice surprise to see them again. After a pretty leisurely breakfast, I had the tuk tuk guy from the hostel take me over to the airport. Best hostel experience ever, and I didn't even spent the night there (this time).

And so I'm off! Goodbye, Cambodia! It's been real. Next stop: Phuket, Thailand!

CONTINUE ON to War Sucks: Cambodia in Review

Best shot I could get of the airport without getting arrested or run over

The Mystery Tour and the War Museum

Around 11am, my Mystery Tour guide arrived to pick me up at my hostel on his motorbike. BT is in his late 30s and is a super jovial guy with pretty strong English skills. He told me I could drive the motorbike if I wanted. Drive a motorbike through the pot-holey dirt roads of Cambodia with no hospital in sight? Thanks but no thanks. The agenda for the Mystery Tour is that there is no agenda. Which at first can seem like a total scam, but it actually works out really well. The day's activities basically follow whichever way the wind blows.

That's not how you're supposed to eat it

Please don't kick my fish,
please don't kick my fish

It might look like a McDonald's hashbrown,
but I can assure your it's not. Actually, this
is Cambodia so I guess anything is possible.

The first thing we did was drive out to a market for some breakfast. This wasn't the typical touristy market though; this was where the locals go to shop and eat. It was pretty much what you would expect from a 3rd-world market: lots of fresh(ish?) meats / fish, some goods, some food. BT took me to a place to eat this... I'm not sure what it is called, but it's sort of like a thin pancake, closer to a crepe but not quite a crepe, and on top it's got some... vegetable-type things and you dip it into a sauce. It was surprisingly good, and dirt cheap, as I assume everything in this market is. For "dessert" he got me this palm fruit / rice thing wrapped in a banana leaf that was mildly sweet and really, really good.

Me trying to harvest some rice... probably the most
entertaining thing these people saw all day

With a full stomachs, we headed toward the next stop. Along the way, we passed by some rice fields. Before I left San Francisco, one the doctors who loaded me up with some vaccines told me very explicitly "don't visit any rice paddies while you're in Asia" for fear of contracting a rare but really awful disease called Japanese Encephalitis. Well... here we were so we decided to stop and check things out (sorry, Mom!). We saw some people harvesting the rice, so we went over to go talk to them. An interesting facet of this culture is the level of familiarity people exhibit toward one another. When BT approached these farm workers, he talked to them like he would old friends. He joked around with them. He asked them if I could try cutting some of the rice. They handed over their extremely sharp cutting tool and BT showed me how to do it (apparently, the way I was doing it almost certainly would have resulted in me chopping off a body part). I was so struck by their conversation that I asked BT if he knew them and he said no, he had never met them before. The people in Cambodia, overall, have been much friendlier than I experienced in Bangladesh and India.

Moooooove out of my way

We kept on making our way down the road. Much like in India, large mammals roam the streets here too.

Omnomnom trans-fatsssss

Out next stop was a Buddhist monastery. Monasteries are incredibly interesting from a cultural perspective. One of the first things we did when we got there was go to this fish pond. Monks believe that feeding these fish is good for your karma. BT had a couple of bags of chips that we tossed out one-by-one into the pond. I guess no one ever told these people that this type of food probably actually serves to kill these fish rather than help them.

Next we went to the cemetery on the grounds. It was incredibly ornate. And this wasn't even the most ornate monastic cemetery I'd seen.

Cemetery at the monastery

We continued to walk around the grounds of the monastery and BT told me a little bit about his history. It turns out that he himself has spent some time in a monastery growing up. He had some lofty dreams though. He left the monastery and went to go work somewhere. And then he started his own tour company. He also taught himself English and how to make a website and he used that to drive people to his business. His real goal is to make sure that all of the children from his village have the opportunity to be educated, in a way that he never really had for himself. Inspiring.

The buildings at the monastery are beautiful, both inside and out. I couldn't begin to tell you the significant of the designs or paintings, but I'm sure they all of their stories to tell.

There are huge murals on the inside of many of the buildings

...and the outsides of the buildings as well

Monks wear their traditional garb and sit on a elevated platform.
These kids obviously don't know what's up

Obligatory meditation pose photo

Watch out, pedestrians, cars, and small animals!

We probably spent around 30 minutes at the monastery. Over the course of the day I changed my mind about wanting to drive. I figured... I'm only here once, so make the most of it (sorry, Mom!). So I told BT that I wanted to try driving and he got really excited. I sat down in front, he hopped on behind, he showed me how to use the controls, and we were off! Driving the motorbike was AWESOME. The dirt roads definitely made for a pretty bumpy ride. Also... there were definitely times when I mixed up the gas and the brake (whoops!) and instead of slowing down into a pothole, I ended up speeding up into it. Yikes! But BT didn't care at all. In fact, he was totally excited about the whole thing. I'm pretty sure he didn't know the actual reason we were speeding up into potholes... I think he just thought I was being adventurous. I'll take it. We started off in an area with no cars, but quickly made our way back onto more populated roads. After about 10 minutes of driving, I was all set, so we switched back and BT drove us the rest of the way back to my hostel to drop me off.

Pina colada: it might not be authentic,
but it was still really good

Back at the hostel, I met up with IR and our other hostel friend JC and we headed out to lunch near Pub Street. We sat up on the second floor, overlooking the street below. It was a great view until it started pouring rain and the wind was blowing sideways so hard that our table was getting wet, so we had to move away from the open air area.

Afterward, we decided to grab a tuk tuk out to the War Museum. I had heard from some other people at the hostel that this place was a must-see, so I was glad to have a chance to see it. When we walked through the entrance to the open-air museum, we were greeted by a field of war tanks. Whoa.

Trees and cannons and tanks, oh my!

There is no fee for the tour guides at the War Museum, it's all tip-based. We got ourselves a tour guide and we were on our way. He seemed like a really interesting guy. There was something about him. He was soft-spoken, but there seemed to be this... pain inside of him. We soon found out why. It turns out that all of the tour guides here are war veterans.

The first place we went to was an enclosure that housed a shelf of huge, huge guns. I held an AK-47 for the first time. It was a lot heavier than I was expecting. But... I probably should have seen that coming. I also held a rocket launcher. Surprise: also heavy! Kind of crazy to be holding a real one. I'll refrain from putting a photo of me holding a large firearm on the web, thank you very much.

[Start aside] Before I go on with the rest of this description, I'd be remiss if I didn't share my thoughts on this place as a tourist attraction vs. the reality that lies underneath the attraction (a la my elephant ride in India). I certainly felt conflicted throughout this visit because, well, tanks and big guns are awesome! ...until you remember that these were all used to kill people. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people. Like... real people. Not in the movies. Real people with lives and jobs and families. The 10-year-old inside of me definitely wanted to be like "tanks go boom!" but the 20-something me definitely had to put a muzzle on that little guy for now. [End aside]

His helmet doesn't even fit him, I assume
because they don't make helmets in size
"too young to hold a gun"

Our tour guide told us bits of his story at each station. Even after so many years, the pain in his stories still felt fresh. I guess that kind of pain never really goes away. The same station had some war photos. One of the photos that struck me the most was one of a child soldier. I had heard about child soldiers before, but usually in the context of African wars and I never really internalized exactly what the concept of a "child soldier" really meant. But being here and being a little bit older gave these photos a sense of realness that I never saw before. I mean... children. Literally children. Carrying guns larger than they are. It's hard to imagine, even with the photo staring you in the face.

The next station housed grenades and landmines. The extend of my experience with grenades is:
1. Playing with grenade-shaped water balloons as a child
2. Throwing grenades in various Play Station games
3. Occasionally thinking that the country Grenada sounds like "grenade"

Exploded grenade

It turns out that grenades are filled with tons of little ball bearings that get fired out in every direction when a grenade explodes, kind of like if you had a gun that shot bullets in every direction at the same time.

Our tour guide showing us the wide range of landmines
used in the way by both sides

My experience with landmines was pretty similar to that with grenades, minus there being a country that sounds like the word "landmine." Unfortunately, our tour guide actually had some pretty intimate experience with land mines. One of his jobs in the war was to defuse landmines. One day a landmine that has been mistakenly thought of as dead exploded in his hand. I hadn't noticed until that moment when he showed us, but he was missing a few fingers. It turns out he also had a bunch of shrapnel blown into his body that he's slowly been saving up money to have removed little by little. He showed us a bump on his skin underneath which is the last piece he has left to remove. He says he only feels it sometimes, but that it still hurts. The cost to remove it is paltry by western standards (either in the tens or low hundreds of dollars) but it can take years to save up that much here. Fun not-so-fun fact: Exact information is hard to come by, but as of 2008, Cambodia still had an estimated 4-10 million active landmines; estimates vary from 10-100 years for when they'll be all be completely defused. Here, he also pointed out a photo on the wall of a friend of his that he lost during the war. I can only imagine how hard it must be to point out that photo for every tour group every day. He also shared with us that another one of his friends during the war had lost several of his limbs and that now he takes care of him because there's no one else that will. These stories, these photos, these artifacts, in one sense they make everything feel so real. So much more real compared to watching something on tv or learning about it in school. But in another sense, they're so extreme, so ridiculous, so far beyond what we (I) think of as within the realm of possibility, so real that they ironically start to feel... like just another story. Like none of this actually happened because it's impossible to imagine something so horrible actually happening to real people. This is the stuff that only happens in movies and then after two hours you get up and realize you're in a theater and the floors are sticky and careful, don't kick that cup on the ground because there might still be soda in it and I really need to pee and did I grab my jacket from the seat? Just like that.

You definitely don't want to
mess with these things

Up next were the rockets and bombs. There were a lot of them. In various bomb shapes and bomb sizes. It's always been difficult for me to comprehend the destructive power of something that look so small. One time in college my class too a field trip to the naval base in San Diego. While we were there, we got a tour of a nuclear submarine and I got to touch an actual could-be-used-to-start-world-war-3 nuclear warhead! The thing was the length of a pretty big room and about as wide as a horse. But still... when you think about the fact that a nuclear warhead can literally level an entire city, it's hard to believe that all of that power comes from something so... [relatively] small.

After the small arms, we got to go check out the tanks. And when I say check out the tanks I mean literally do whatever we wanted with them. No fences. No class. No ropes. Nothing. Did I climb inside of a tank? Yes. Did I climb on top for the tank and ride the main gun? You bet I did.

This is how you use this thing, right?

Hanging out with our tour guide

At the end of our tour, we posed for one last photo with our tour guide. As we were standing there saying our goodbyes to our tour guide, he noticed the shirt I was wearing. So... here's the thing: a few days ago when I was at one of the night markets in Phnom Penh, I wanted to buy a shirt, half out of necessity and half out of the want for a souvenir from Cambodia. So I found this awesome shirt that I really liked with a big map of Cambodia on the back and a funny backpacker-y tagline on the front that reads "I survived Cambodia". Fast forward to this morning: I have basically one clean shirt and it's this one so I put it on, not knowing that today I would end up going to a place called the War Museum and not knowing I would have a tour guide who fought in a war... in Cambodia. Fast forward to right now with our tour guide and he notices the tagline on my shirt and he very genuinely remarks "I like your shirt". The other woman working at the museum standing next to him, however, gives me the worst look of disgust I've ever seen. Cue the wave of shame that washes over me. I very sheepishly say thank you and goodbye, and the three of us head out.

On our way out, I realized that there was a helicopter and a fighter jet here too! Can we climb on those too?! Pshh, this is CAMBODIA, rules don't exist here. And sure enough, there was absolutely nothing and nobody to stop us from climbing all over them, safety risks aside (...sorry, Mom!).

I think she still flies. Wait, no there, just a giant hole where the cockpit should be.

This one however, definitely fl... wait, also a giant hole in place of the cockpit.

Of course I got the chocolatey-est thing on
the menu. Of course it was amazing.

Tonight was my last night in Siem Reap, so JC, IR, and I went out one more time. JC wanted something a little more Western, so we sat down at a pizza place. It was pretty good. Fairly standard pizza fare. But here's the crazy thing: there was ANOTHER Swensen's Ice Cream Shop next door! Apparently, Swensen's is actually pretty popular in the big cities here. So... obviously we had to have ice cream there. The funny thing is the menu is full of San Francisco references (e.g. one of the menu items is called the Coit Tower), but... clearly 0.1% of the population here actually understands what they mean.

Wanted: Fish masseuse.
Piranhas need not apply

After dinner we walked around for a while and decided to try out one of these "fish massages" that we've seen everywhere. You may have seen these occasionally in a mall in the U.S., but basically it's a tank of pretty small fish and you put your feet inside and the fish (warning: this sounds / is kind of gross) start nibbling at your feet. I've never done anything like this and I'm pretty ticklish but I figure I'm here so I might as well give it a shot. It's a pretty odd sensation. It doesn't hurt per say, it's just... weird. It turns out I'm definitely way too ticklish for it, so I didn't really get to enjoy it, but I stuck it out for the 20 or so minutes we were there.

Pub Street in all it's glory!

We had to make our way back to the hostel so I could catch my bus. The vast, vast majority of planes/trains/buses/taxis I've booked on this trip have been at most one or two days in advance. However, I knew what date I wanted to be in Thailand and I figured I'd only be in one city in Cambodia, so I booked my flight a week in advance. Turns out that was a mistake, because I only spent two days in Phnom Penh. So in coming to Siem Reap, I knew I'd have to make my way back down to Phnom Penh to catch my flight. So I'm taking a night bus to get down there. My taxi came and grabbed me from the hostel and took me down to the bus company.

A little while later, I boarded the bus. It's a sleeper bus so there aren't seats, just spaces where you lie down. It turns out... you don't have a private space to lie down. When I got to my compartment there was already a man lying down there. I'm literally spending the night on a bus sleeping about one inch away from a Cambodian stranger. Luckily, the man wasn't enormous, didn't smell, and seemed like a nice guy. We didn't really talk. I climbed into my side of the compartment, and almost immediately closed my eyes so I could get to sleep. It actually wasn't that bad, honestly. The bus was air conditioned. I had a window. And what do I care, it's only a few hours and then I'll be on my way. Goodnight and goodbye, Siem Reap!

CONTINUE ON to Siem Reap Part 4: Goodbye, Cambodia!