Siem Reap and Dinner With an Amazing Stranger

I bet EVERY American tourist who hops into this starts the conversation with:
"To the Batcave!"

Siem Reap is about 320km (200 mi) to north-northwest of Phnom Penh. The drive wasn't too terrible and I ended up sleeping most of the way anyway. Including a 30-minute stop, we got into Siem Reap in the early afternoon.

As soon as I hopped off the bus I was hounded by tuk tuk drivers wanting to take me to my hostel. I figured it was probably pretty close but I kind of didn't want to deal with the hassle of finding it. When I told one of the drivers where it was, he said he would take me there for $1. Deal. The ride took all of one minute, but that's fine.

I arrived at my new hostel, checked in, put my stuff down, and immediately took a shower. Feeling a little bit more refreshed, I went out to explore the town. I headed back toward where the bus had dropped me off and walked around there for a while. Some people had told me that Pub Street is the big tourist hub of Siem Reap, so headed in that direction. At this time of day though, there wasn't much to see.

I wish I could think of a witty caption, but
it's hard to top how hilarious this is all on
it's own

Overall, things look pretty similar to Phnom Penh, but slightly nicer. I've noticed a theme in this region of the world is to name things after American/global (which it turns out are often synonymous in this context) cultural phenomena (see Pretty Woman Bar and Katy Peri's Pizzas, so it wasn't all that surprising to see a 6-Eleven convenience store as I walked through the streets. I also found a KFC (a real one) and got myself some ice cream. Yea, that happened. And it totally hit the spot.

There streets here are a mix of larger paved roads and many smaller dirt roads. Like in Phnom Penh, there are tuk tuks everywhere. Which is awesome, because it makes it pretty easy to go anywhere you want. There are a lot of ancient temples in Siem Reap; it's one of the main reasons a lot of tourists come here in the first place. I had asked at the hostel how much it would be to have their tuk tuk driver take me around the city for the day. The price they quoted sounded like your typical "everything is more expensive when you book through the hostel" price, so while on my walk I asked a few tuk tuk drivers how much they would charge. I ended up having a good conversation with one of the drivers I found who spoke decent English. I told him I wanted to start the day early tomorrow and see sunrise at the first temple. We shook on a price and I was all set for tomorrow. One less headache to worry about.

Not too shabby, Siem Reap

The day was starting to wane as I stumbled upon this city's Night Market. Same concept at the one in Phnom Penh, except this one turned out to be a lot nicer. The aisles were wider, the tarps overhead were higher and there were lights. These few small things made a huge difference in terms of the experience. The merchandise was pretty much the same as in Phnom Penh though, and I've been resisting buying stuff as much as I can because I don't want to carry it with me.

It was getting kind of dark, so I started heading back toward my hostel, hoping I'd find food along the way. Turns out I found a lot more than that. As I was walking down the street, I passed by a restaurant that I thought about eating at, but the guy out front was kind of aggressive in his sales pitch and I wasn't really in the mood for that so I said "no, thanks" in my very American accent. I noticed there was this blonde girl kind of staring at me as I said, "no," to this host. A few seconds later we walked past each other and about five seconds I turned around to see if she was still there. She wasn't. I assumed she had gone to sit down in the restaurant. I thought about it for a few more seconds and for pretty much the first time in my life in this kind of situation I asked myself, "what do I have to lose?" so I turned around, walked back to the restaurant and found her sitting alone at a table. Now, what happens next may not be a big deal for you, loyal reader, but for me, this was literally, literally the first time I've done anything remotely close to this in my entire life. I walked up to her table and said, "Excuse me, are you eating by yourself?" She smiled and said "yes" so I asked her if I could join her and she said, "Sure!" gesturing toward the seat across the table from her. Wait... what just happened?

It turned out to be a really great dinner. FL was an Argentinian girl about my age and is in the middle of several months of travel. At one point in our conversation, she admitted that she had noticed me earlier because I looked/sounded out of place when I was saying no to that host. Yep, that sounds about right. We had a great conversation for a couple of hours and then I walked her back to her hostel a few blocks away. I was doing my temple tour all day tomorrow and she was leaving after that, so we couldn't make any plans to hang out again. Being the gentleman than I am, I stuck my hand out for a handshake before I walked away and she was like "no, let me show you how we do it in Argentina" and did this cheek kiss thing that I'm not totally familiar with but totally support. [Update: I'm in Argentina now and I totally get it.]

I made my way through a couple dimly-lit streets and found my way back to the hostel. When I got back, I met some other people staying in the hostel, exchange students who were currently studying abroad in Singapore. They invited me to go check out Pub Street with them and the night was still relatively young, so I tagged along.

New friends, if only for a day

The six-ish of us made out way out to Pub Street a little while later. THIS was the Pub Street I had heard about. Flooded with tourists. Far too many massage parlors. The constant sales pitch for "boom boom" from... basically everyone. It's so prevalent, you can't even get mad about it, you just have to ignore it. We sat down to eat some food. I skipped out because I had just eaten. I didn't however, skip out of getting some dessert afterward. Of course. We walked around a little more and made our way to one of the bars. There, they ordered a platter of exotic meats. I don't remember exactly what we tried, but it kind of all tasted like chicken anyway.

One of the guys, JS, mentioned that tomorrow in late afternoon he was going with another girl from the hostel on a boat ride to a place called the Floating Village, if I wanted to tag along. We exchanged contact info and I left around midnight. I was getting exhausted and I had to be up super early for my temple tour tomorrow! I walked back again through some sketchily-lit street but made it back to my hostel in one piece.

Today was for sure a win.

CONTINUE ON to Siem Reap Part 2: [R]: Tomb Raider and the Legend of Angkor Waaaaat?!

Calangute Beach and Yes, It's Still Fully Clothed

This photo is from the website, so it looks particularly nice.
To be fair, it actually was a pretty nice place.

For a multitude of reasons, I decided to leave this particular hostel and head to a different part of Goa. I found a place a few minutes south near Calangute Beach. When I arrived, my room smelled like smoke. As with most things in India, it's just a matter of finding the right person to fix your problem. The first two people I talked to were like "what? No it's fine, don't worry about it" but the third guy I talked to was the manager and he moved me to a new room right away. This place was actually pretty nice. It has a pool (which apparently never gets used at this time of year) in the courtyard. Oh, and a courtyard.

97:1 - the ratio of people outside the water vs. in it

After getting settled, I walked down the road to Calangute Beach. I'm still kind of sick, so I wanted another relaxing day. I got down to the beach and there were a lot of fully-clothed Indian dudes and a handful of fully-clothed Indian ladies. I walked along the beach for about 45 minutes or so. I was only accosted to buy things about five times. Which is better than average. The weather wasn't ideal, which, again, my fault for coming here at this time of year. I walked down (technically up) to Baga Beach, which is connected to Calangute Beach. Once I reached the end, I found a spot to get some food and finally did what I planned on doing since I got to Goa: busted out the first book of Game of Thrones, which I bought waaaaay back in Bangladesh.

Yes, I read a book at a place called La Shack. In India.

While I was reading/eating, there was a band of kids walking up and down the beach performing various circus tricks. I've seen kids all over the place, but something struck me as particularly sad about this scene. I think it was the security guard at one of the restaurants shooing them away, but even him showing them some compassion by letting them perform for a few seconds so they could collect some money from the Asian tourists at the next restaurant over before he shooed them away.

I've also decided to open my own tattoo
parlor. You're welcome, world.

I saw a KFC on the way to the hostel so I decided to check it out. I wanted to explore a little more of the area on foot and was in the mood for some Western comfort, so this was perfect. The food was fine, but this KFC was actually really, really nice. I sat in a comfy, leather seat with Game of Thrones and read for a while before heading back. It started pouring rain on my way home. Of course. I spent the rest of the night relaxing back at my hostel. I'm really glad I came to this new place; I'm much happier here than I was at the last one.

Go on to Goa Part 4: This Doesn't Happen At Home

Introducing KFC Chicken Strings

I met an adviser to the prime minister's cabinet today. His name is H. T. Imam. And he rolled into the butterfly park with a HUGE entourage, maybe five or six cars, police escorts, the works. He was meeting with the family of MRA, just because. Officially he was there to check out the butterfly park. Unofficially, unclear.

After that we spent the day in Chittagong touring some other businesses. First we went to a cement plant. At this point, I've been to so many random businesses that I have no interest in that I was kind of like "ok cool, you make cement, that's cool I guess, let's move on." After that, we went to a towel factory. Which I thought was also going to be more of the same but it turned out to be way more interesting than I expected (more on this in my next post).


In the evening we went to a replica park, which kind of sounds like it's out of a scifi movie, but basically it's a park with replicas of all the major monuments in Bangladesh. Who needs to tour the country when you can just come here? Dad wanted me to taste what KFC was like in Bangladesh, so that's where we ate for dinner. The chicken strips I had would have been more accurately called chicken strings. Dad claims the chicken here tastes better because it's all raised organically, etc. but I can't tell the difference. Maybe that's because we have good chicken in San Francisco too.

That night we stayed at the Agrabad Hotel, one of the best hotels in Chittagong, and owned by MHA. Something I'm coming to realize is that top-of-the-line in the 3rd world is roughly equal to "pretty good" by American standards. The rooms still don't feel quite as clean or in general as nice as you would find at home.

Bonus anecdote: Tonight, traffic was so bad that our driver literally started driving on the opposite side of the road directly into oncoming traffic. This actually happened. As in, the road has a divider between the two sides, and my driver crossed onto the wrong side of the road when there was a break in the divider. Not just in a "I'm gonna pass this car and get back onto the correct side of the road" kind of way but in a "oncoming cars, I hope you are paying attention because you need to dodge me as much as I need to dodge you" kind of way.