Plaid is this year's pink.

It's been a pretty normal two weeks here for J and myself.  I've been staying busy with sub jobs (thank goodness) and J has been working hard at school. I recently took on an after-school job as a tutor to help add some stability to my schedule, so every afternoon Monday through Thursday I tutor an eighth grader here at the apartment.

My student, we'll call him Paul, is a fourteen year old eighth grader, repeating the grade to switch over from an all Chinese school into an all English school. He tested on the third grade reading level for English, and having subbed in the third grade this week I can attest to the correctness of that diagnosis. (Honestly, my third graders have a pretty good lead on this guy, but they do go to an uppity kind of school so I'm giving him a break in the comparison).

Now, obviously Paul is brilliant to be able to make the transition at all. He's still excelling in all his non-language based courses like math and science, but that being said, his English is awful (a word he doesn't know-but I'm not judging. My Chinese is virtually nonexistent). We've had some pretty hilarious conversations. It takes us about an hour and a half to go over the twenty vocab words he gets each week. Words like "detriment" and "oblique" take a bit of explaining. He's doing his best.

I've learned a lot from Paul these past two weeks. For someone with such a small English word bank, he still manages to wax philosophical in his own way.

Important observations

First: He wears plaid shirts exclusively, usually in shades of red and black. On what I can only assume is laundry day he has a bright green tee shirt that he subs until the plaids are good to go.

Second: He always runs up the stairs to our apartment (listening to the sound of the thuds, I think he averages three stairs a stride) so he arrives at each lesson completely out of breath.

Third: He laughs every time he reads a word he doesn't know, or when he learns the meaning of a new word, or when he finally understands the meaning of what you're trying to explain. Even if you're talking about something that isn't funny at all. (Last week we "discussed" poverty, martyrdom and the plague...yep. he laughed right through).

Fourth: He is very, very Chinese.

In our first meeting, I was trying to ascertain the most difficult thing about learning English in his view so that I could help him improve. He managed to explain that the hardest part of the process was making the decision to commit to the language, because he knew that becoming fluent with a language means taking on a portion of that language's culture, and he wanted to make sure that I knew that he really despises Western culture, its values, its slang. In essence he was holding back because he didn't want to become more like...me.  He finished by saying that in the end, he knew his future would be vastly improved by learning English so he had made an intellectual decision to plunge forward with English studies, but it made his heart ache.

He wishes he said it like that-what he really said was something like "emotions- no, but intell...ect?" (pointing at his head) understand this is more good."

While slightly aghast at his candor, I was sincerely impressed with his insight. (And yes, he now knows to say "better" instead of "more good" in case any of you were cringing).  It's true that once you learn a language well enough to let your thoughts roam about in its words, you naturally give a part of yourself over to it. How else could you ever understand metaphors or, harder still, idioms? All this coming from a boy who doesn't know what a comma is, or the words "assignment" or "essay" (yes, we started working on those first). Sheesh.

The one with the beach from The Beach.

For the record, I hate ferries, or boats of any kind, really. It always happens that just enough time passes between the ferry trips of my life that I forget this fact only to realize it when I'm already out at sea where I have no option but to suffer through the trip til we reach land.

So in the future, if it comes up, remind me that I don't want to take the ferry. I'll be thankful.

Upon disembarking from our ferry, we arrive in Ko Phi Phi late in the afternoon with no place to stay, so our first task is to find a hotel. We'd scoped a few out online, but we have no clue how to get to them on the island. We see a free longtail boat at the pier to take us to one of our prospective places, so we decide to check it out first. After a brief inspection, I give hotel "A" the thumbs down, and we set off back towards town in search of a new place.

Since we arrived at our location by boat, we had no option but to follow the coastline back toward the pier. Unfortunately, the beach was only nice and sandy for about half of the journey and a series of rocky entrapments for the other half--if you're picturing giant, slippery rocks with no handholds and tons of terrifying looking black creatures scurrying in and out around your feet you'd be dead on. J and I were both wearing our big backpacks and balancing our carry ons as best we could while we climbed. We were slipping and sliding our way across the rocks when the inevitable happened, J's feet went out from under him as he attempted to cross a particularly treacherous rock. Backpacks and carry on went in separate directions, as did his left foot, which struck one of the large rocks, and the rock hit back. Hard.

Poor J still had to walk a really long way to get into town, through the saltwater and the sand, which isn't fun on an open wound. He left a nice trail of blood behind us, like Hansel and Grettle, vampire edition.  We finally found a hotel to settle into that was located two doors down from the island clinic, and the doctor there was wonderful. He was so friendly, and we assume he had some kind of medical background.

He's splinting the toe. Very official.

Even though J wasn't supposed to get his foot wet, we still went snorkeling on the last day of our stay. We rigged up this high tech system to block out the Andaman sea.

It didn't work, obviously, but at least we tried.

Joel was quite a celebrity during our stay in Ko Phi Phi. I tried to get him to tell people that the bandages were from a shark attack, but he wouldn't. Anyway, on our snorkeling trip we went out for about 5 hours on a little longtail boat and saw all these beautiful islands and bays, including Maya Bay, the island paradise where they filmed "The Beach" (with Leo Dicaprio).

The Beach

Panorama from the beach looking out on the bay. In the movie it looks like those rwo rock cliffs close in the bay, but they don't.

Views from the boat...

We flew back through Bangkok (after a second installment of the dreaded ferry) on our way home and spent the night at a hotel close to the airport for convenience. Little did we know there was an all-out bazaar waiting for us in the parking lot. I'm happy to report that we were the only Caucasian people in premises, and that people gleefully and openly laughed when they saw us walking through the stalls. We amassed a feast for our dinner from about eight different vendors who all seemed delighted to have us as patrons. We arrived home very late on Saturday night, and have been enjoying being here in what's starting to feel more like a home, since then.

Legends of the Hidden Temple

Just in case you were worried that I might be contemplating the undertaking of some epic blogging feat for our trip- a post for every day we were gone in full detail- I wanted to clear the air and say I have no intention of doing any such thing.

Now back to Siem Reap. We got up early Saturday morning and went to breakfast on the rooftop bar of our restaurant where we enjoyed the best freshly baked baguette either of us has ever had. Didn't see that one coming. [sorry France, I still love you.]

So we knew that our hotel was relatively close to Angkor Wat- probably a 10 minute drive- so I decided it would be fun to rent bikes for the day and explore the temples that way.  In case you aren't familiar with Angkor Wat, it's an entire ancient city full of temples that are spread out over a...really big space? [wishing I'd bought one of those handy guidebooks right about now...].

Anyway, even Lonely Planet told us we couldn't take in much if we were just walking so bikes it was! We're adventurous. We like exercise! And who cares that I haven't ridden a bike since I was in elementary school [yes, literally]; The "It's like riding a bike" thing is an expression for a reason, right?

We rent our bikes from the hotel. They're a little rusty, but it's not a big deal. The real problem is that they can't adjust any of the seats on the bikes to be short enough for me [darned Europeans- I promise you, every backpacker you'll see in SE Asia is European and they're all gigantic. Even the lady Europeans could eat me for lunch-they're that huge] so I have to kind of jump off the bike to one side when I need to stop since my feet can't touch. Oh well, I'm game.

We set off, and I very quickly realize that I've made a horrible mistake. I don't remember ever riding a bike now that I'm on one in the middle of the street and cars and motorcycles are whipping around me. I ask J how far it is, and he doesn't know. After a good while we stop for directions and realize we're going the wrong way and the street that we need to take to get back on course is only moderately paved. I'd rather have dirt road than slimly paved: there are so many potholes you can't avoid them and after another ten minutes (each one of which I'm sure will be my last) of bouncing clumsily down the backroads, something the locals were finding vastly amusing [that and my hop-to-the-side/breaking-dismount], I told J I wasn't so much feeling the bikes anymore.

And like an angel straight from heaven Jieh (Gee-uh) came to our rescue. He loaded our two bikes onto his tuk-tuk, took us back to the hotel to drop them off, then carted us straight back to the temples and chauffeured us all day long around Angkor Wat. Lord love him. At least I tried (right, Uncle Doc?)

Guilty.

And this is what we saw:

View from the top of one of the major temples.

Incredible old trees have taken over this temple.

I don't know how it stays like that. It doesn't seem structurally sound.

A friendly visitor.

The most impressive thing about this picture is the fact that I climbed those stairs.

After a day at the temples we headed back into town for dinner and a trip to the Night Market.  We loved Cambodia. It's my new favorite country. The next morning we left to do the same taxi/bus trip in reverse to make it to Bangkok in time to catch our flight to Phuket.

This dish is the specialty of Siem Reap. It's fish served in a bowl of banana leaves in a coconut sauce.

An inauspicious beginning

When we found out that J had a ten day break in October, it was quickly and unanimously decided that we had to go to Thailand. We bought our tickets to Bangkok, and we were ready to start planning ourselves a trip. I, however, decided that one country in ten days was not good enough and began campaigning that we hop over to Cambodia while we were there. J was not in agreement with me about this; he felt that would be rushing things too much [blah, blah, blah..] Needless to say, I was the victor in that argument, and now you can read below about just how right I was. [I feel like I should probably tone down the smugness there, but I really don't want to.]

A little eighth wonder of the world, anyone?

Ok, I got a little ahead of myself. We really need to begin with how we got there...

Like I said, we bought tickets into Bangkok from Shanghai. We went to the airport to catch our 11:00pm flight, where we encountered our first dilemma. We hadn't had time to eat dinner, and the only food option that was open after we got through security was KFC.  For those of you who don't already know this I detest KFC. I think it is disgusting. I promised myself years ago after a very unfortunate experience (involving those despicable "bowl" creations that mushed corn, potatoes friend chicken bits, you name it- into a single eating entity. you remember.) there that I would never ever eat there again, and I had no intention of breaking that promise in China of all places.  The problem was, I was starving, so I agreed to make this one exception.

I used the picture menu that they hand to foreigners to order (if you haven't done this before, they basically hand you a laminated copy of what's on the board and ask you to point to what you want). I ordered the smallest chicken sandwich on the menu that said "snack size." If I had to eat KFC I wanted to do it minimally. Ten minutes later they bring out my sandwich, it looks harmless enough, so I take a bite: THE HORROR. What have I just put in my mouth? The textures I am chewing do not make sense, so I steal a glance at the "chicken" "sandwich" I have just partaken of. I see...bits of green, orange, yellow and white fluff. It appears to be some kind of hodge podge of frozen vegetables and indeterminate protein? maybe?...

And it's time to board.

Now we're traveling on the cheap as best we can, so we've booked the discount fare that has an overnight layover (1:30AM to 5:30AM) in the Shantou airport (still in China). We'd already prepared ourselves for sleeping in the airport, clutching our bags. At least we'd be through security, right? Wrong. It turns out that the Shantou "International Airport" is about 100 square feet and closes down at 2AM. They kicked us out right as we arrived. So we were stranded with nothing but a bunch of con artists taxi drivers to, ahem, help us.

It's a very frustrating thing to know that you're being screwed over and having zero power to do anything about it. I won't go into all the details of this terrible evening. To sum up: When bargaining is the m.o. for an economy it's not a good thing for you when the person you're bargaining with knows without a doubt that they are your only option for transport and/or shelter.

We make it back to the airport in the morning, catch our flight and arrive in Bangkok before lunch. We take a hot pink Corolla taxi to the bus station across town and make it just in time for the 1:30 bus. Woo hoo! Things are looking up. We grab a quick lunch- some kind of delicious, fresh local curry, and get on board. The bus is nice, air conditioned, and the scenery is beautiful.

View out of our window as we were leaving Bangkok.

On the bus. Eventually he'll learn that by refusing to smile he's only hurting himself. eventually.

After a five hour ride we eventually come to Poipet where we catch a tuk-tuk to take us to the border. They stop once to try to scam us into buying fake visas but we were prepared for that so we staged a protest and insisted on being taken to the real border.

I liked his decorations. Those lights actually light up when he breaks and such.

 After about an hour there of figuring out who the real police were and who we could trust (as it turns out, the answers were "everyone" and "no one" respectively) and walking way too far with our backpacks in an attempt to find the real taxi station that had shut down for the night as good luck would have it, we finally settled into a cab that took us to Siem Reap, where we booked a room at the Garden Village Inn for $7 a night.

Our hostel from the entrance.

Bare bones, but the bed was extremely comfortable.

Stay tuned for scenes from our next episode: Day Two: Angkor Wat.