Angkor Thom

Now this post will be about the photos. I have to choose which ones will get to grace these electronic pages. I hope you enjoy my selections.

first sight

Upon entering the walls of Angkor Thom it was still a few more minutes  in the tuk-tuk. Driving through what is now forest but originally would have most likely been houses for the people, I began to see the temple.

 Only gods, kings and monks lived in stone for the rest it was wooden houses. Houses that have many years ago disappeared back into the earth.

The first thing I saw, of the temple, was  the spires then it was the blue tarps and the site office for some reclamation effort. At first slight disappointment overcame me. But Som our tuk-tuk driver continued on for a few more before pulling over and explaining where I  should go and where he would be. Turns out that sleeping in the shade of large tree is a big part of Som's day.

Som

After parting ways with Som I walked into the temple and any disappointment was quickly removed or perhaps crushed by the shear mass of the awe which struck me with full force and immediate presence.

A god-king?

Room upon room. Hallways that lead to more hallways. Carvings on every surface. It never ceased. This is not a temple of answers. This a temple of questions. This is a temple of beauty.

I was told that the central spire measures in at 43m tall. I believe it as it was immense.

It would take a month of Sundays to fully explore the whole of the Angkor Park. If you ever find yourself here give yourself plenty of time to enjoy this amazing place.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the one that everybody talks about but Angkor Thom is the one that most impressed me.

Angkor, I've been told, simply means city and these two places were certainly that. Cities and large cities at that. Now I'm not about to tell you what others have studied and written volumes about. I suggest you Google the topic and get acquainted with the history before you look at the photos. Or not it's up to you.

The first day was to be spent in and around Angkor Thom. Leaving Angkor Wat for sunrise the next day. Now to get into the national park I first had get an entry ticket. I chose the three day ticket. Easier said than done. Cost for a three day pass $40. Well worth it.
















To get to Angkor Thom you to have to drive past Angkor Wat

ha

the moat of Angkor Wat

and in truth it felt a little strange to drive past the 8th wonder of the world to see a "lesser temple". Driving past Angkor Wat gave me an impression of it's vast size.
And started me wondering about Angkor Thom.






Angkor Thom is bigger.

.

Angkor Wat

Much bigger


As we approached the portal that would allow us to pass through the ancient wall of Angkor Thom it struck me for the first time.  The tuk-tuk that I was riding in was traveling over a road that was first used over a thousand years before.  This immense gate before me is the same gate that elephants and their handlers  have use over and over throughout the ages. I was now about to enter their world.

our entrance way into Angkor Thom

This huge city is also surrounded by a moat and a bridge over the moat gave us access to the gate.

 

railing on either side of  the bridge

It was here, on the bridge, that the first indication of the attention to detail was seen. The railings alongside the bridge are intricately carved and huge. The carvings are of a mythical seven headed snake and a number of men holding it's tail. Once past these men I was now at the gate. The portal. There was no turning back.

Zombie's are self created

In the town of Pai one of the things that caught my eye was the number of falang sporting freshly bound wounds. Medical gauze must be one of the most purchased items in that sleepy little town. Hand, feet, elbow, knees you name it I saw it wrapped up in gauze.

in a few hours there will be hundreds of scooter and cars on these roads

The best place to witness this was at the Aya Van Stop and Motorcycle Rental Shop. Yes I bet you are starting to figure this out. Those damn little scooters mixed with idealistic utopian minded young adults who have never ridden a motorbike before, and who would never consider it in their own country, suddenly feel that now is the place to begin. In the chaotic traffic of Pai and on roads that are less than ideal is definitely not, in my opinion, the best place to learn BUT...

Whether it is the positive atmosphere of Pai or just blissful ignorance it doesn't really matter to this short post, or to me. Nope what matters is the fact that as an experienced motorcycle rider I took a great perverse pleasure in sitting and watching as scores of scooters left the rental shop piloted by young smiling faces.  All oblivious to the zombies who sat, stumbled and hobbled around the shop. Zombie eyed people sporting yards upon yards of fresh gauze. Yes all those fresh smiling faces completely  ignorant to these faces that no longer radiated confidence. Ignorant to the now sober, somber, painful faces of those more learned. And especially ignorant to the lone falang who quietly sat in his chair and smiled a most Machiavellian smile. Who was all the while thinking yep Thailand is not the place to learn how to ride a motorcycle unless your a Thai.

3.14 it is not.

Pai

I was told the song-tow that would be picking me up would most likely arrive late.   This was OK with me because on this day I wasn’t feeling at all well. As I laid on the bench outside my guesthouse, my head pounding and my belly in knots, I silently prayed the song-tow would not show up at all. 

Yes I was out the night before but not overly late nor did I overly indulge.  So I knew this feeling of ill was something more than a hangover and that I probably should not be traveling today. But how does that old saying go; don’t let fear or common sense get in your way. 

Now you know what it is like when you are down and hurting. I so wanted all the song-tows to be broken down that day. No taxis. No tuk-tuks. No song-tows. All I wanted to do was to continue lying on that bench while I slowly perished. But wouldn’t you know it, not only was the song-tow not broken it was on time this day and so began my trip to Pai, promptly at two and feeling like hell.

So long beloved guesthouse. So long amazing Chiang Mai. Hello journey.

Now if you haven’t seen or heard of a song-tow before let me give you a quick lesson. They are small pickup trucks with an enclosure over the box and bench seating for the passengers. People use song-tows much like one uses a public bus. Today was a bit different. This song-tow was hired to pick up passengers at certain guesthouses and bring them to a meeting place a short distance away.

a song-tow

With my backpack in one hand and a bottle of water in the other I haul my sorry butt up into the back of the song-tow and happily say “Good day” to the three passengers already seated inside. I quickly found out that two of the passengers were a couple from Belgium and the third was an arrogant older Frenchman.

Yes I know that to use arrogant and Frenchman in the same sentence may seem redundant to some but this is my blog and I will be wordy if I want.

I say he was arrogant because upon hearing my “Good day” he quickly spoke up and said “Oh an Australian” 

“No” I replied “Canadian”

“Uh... you’re English. You are all the same. English have it easy. Everybody speaks English.”

Luck was with this fellow this day because with my head pounding, a belly full of Pad Thai and Pepto-Bismol, I could do nothing more than take my seat and lower my head into my hands. All the while wishing this fellow would have a brain aneurism and roll out of the back of my song-tow.

As the song-tow and my belly lurked along the backstreets of Chiang Mai we stopped and picked up more and more passengers. Soon all conversation around me ceased as the number of passengers began to grow uncomfortable. Now a song-tow can hold six to eight people comfortably.  When we finished trying to pick people up we had eleven people and their backpacks all stuffed into the little red song-tow. 

People backpacks are for traveling lightly! Mine weighs in at 10kgs for my entire trip. This includes two cameras, a laptop, a first aid kit, all my clothes and some stuff I really don’t need. I see couples with a pack each; weight 20 kilos a piece on top of this they have a small pack across their front. Idiots I say. Sorry I digress back to the journey.

Yes the journey. We arrive at the spot where a van is to pick us up for the remainder of our trip. An air conditioned VIP van just for us. So as I stand on the sidewalk waiting for the VIP van I smile. I smile in spite of my health or lack of it. I smile in spite of the diesel fumes I am inhaling from the never ending stream of transport trucks passing by.  In spite of the fish sauce and the Chile peppers searing in the wok beside me that threaten to choke the very breath out of my lungs. I smile because soon I will be in an air con VIP van. Comfortable and content while cruising through the Thai country side on my way to the heaven called Pai.

I smiled like a fool for that is what I was, a fool working on his ever increasing mistakes tally and doing a good job at it.

Like a Venetian mask.

This post is a follow up to some of the questions that arose from the “What a F**cked up country” post.

The questions that I had and others gave me forced me to go out and ask some questions.  Now I didn’t go to the police this time for reasons that will become obvious. I instead went to a few Thais that I knew and a few long-time- in-country falangs (foreigners) that I had struck up a friendship of sorts.

The conversations were held one on one and all began quite benign in nature and this is where the similarities end.   I began by talking about the roadblock I had watched and how it struck me as odd how it was that even though it was illegal to ride without a helmet the police had no problem letting people ride away without a helmet once they were given a ticket.

Without getting into great detail here the difference between the Thai and the falang when I then asked what they thought of that and of the police in general was very distinct.

The Thai stiffened up and said very little. Basically, they said, police do what they have to do. They OK but don’t fuck them because they fuck you back real bad. And that was the end of the conversation. Not because the Thai said so directly but their body language and demeanour left no doubt in my mind that the conversation was at an end.

Now the falang not only reiterated those previous feelings but elaborated on them. It is important to note here that these people are off the grid so to speak. They befriended me and invited me into their homes.  What I heard was shocking and I believe truthful.

The police here are paid @4000TB per month or about 130$ Cdn. They have to purchase their own motorcycles and weapons but are given their first uniform. Prostitutes earn an average of 3000TB per night and gasoline is around 38TB per litre. Safe to say that police are poorly paid and that leads to pay offs, kick-backs, graft call it what you will. It is happening here in a big way.  This is the reason the officers don’t chase the motorcyclist that runs the roadblock.  It’s not worth their time. The police here will do that which is most profitable or do that for whom is willing to pay the most. This last sentence is why those Thais I spoke with were so curt with me. They are the working poor and have no resources to purchase their own justice/enforcement and they know to keep their mouths shut. Wise words if you are to believe the story I heard about the drunken Aussie. Seems he was in a very upscale drinking establishment and began bad mouthing the King and Queen. When asked to be quiet he did just the opposite. As the story goes a few minutes later two police came into the bar and one officer placed a burlap sack over the man’s head while the other officer placed a small calibre pistol against his head and proceeded to kill him on the spot.  The next day the papers reported that an Australian tourist had fallen victim to a robbery and had lost his life in the process. Thai police are investigating and hope to make an arrest soon.

As for the roadblock…well it looks good. It’s ordered from up above and everybody gets a little something extra at the end of the month.

What a fu**ed up country!

I was recently asked what the traffic laws around here were like and to be quite honest I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of police around. I haven’t seen one police car and only a handful of police motorcycles.  There appears be a general lack of law enforcement. At least that is the way it has appeared to my untrained eye. But that all quickly changed yesterday. While out walking I saw what appeared to be a roadblock. Now my curiosity got the better of me and I walked up towards it to see what was happening. Not something I was comfortable with. Previous experiences, with Canadian police, have taught me that the police do not like to be observed, really don’t like to be questioned and can become completely unglued if they see a camera in your hand. So it was with a wee bit of trepidation that I began my observation of the aforementioned roadblock. Hear me out here the term roadblock may be a bit misleading. There was a road but it wasn’t blocked as we are used to seeing. If I may take a bit of journalistic license here let me call this a road-if-I-wave-my-hand-at-you-would–you-please-pullover-area. Now for a people who pride themselves on their minimal effort philosophies the road-blah-blah-pullover area name does seem to be a whole lot of effort if you are to compare to the our word; roadblock. At least that is what I thought at first. How quickly I was to learn that, yes I was once again mistaken. Which is fine for once I understand a mistake has been made I must be getting closer to understanding what really is taking place. Right? Oops there I go again, increasing that mistake column but now back to the Coppers.

There were eight of them standing along the road that day. Six of them impeccably dressed in light brown trousers and shirts, with creases ironed in just the right places. Forge caps, ties and dark black boots finished the uniform. The other two officers, whose uniforms were more a grey colouring and perhaps a bit less impeccable than their fellow officers in brown, also stood on the road that day. The other noticeable, and a very noticeable, difference between the two uniforms was the fact that the guys in grey had pistols on their hips. These were actually the first firearms I had seen since arriving in Thailand. Another misconception of Southeast Asian countries exposed. I thought all the cops carried M-16's. Damn that mistake list is going to be large.

So with my  bottle of water in hand I stood across the street and began to watch in earnest the shakedown by the Coppers I have heard is so common here in Thailand.  The shrill report of a starter’s whistle and the obviously practiced menacing loosed handed upside down wave was all that the officers used to bring the law breakers over to the side of the road.  No flashing lights. No barricades. Just a whistle and a wave was all that was needed. Pretty powerful stuff.

It was easy to ascertain the primary reason to have the police wave you over. It wasn’t because your scooter may have two, three or even four people on it. It wasn’t the fact that your scooter was seen carrying cargo, of any imaginable type, that was both larger and heavier than you and your bike combined. Even the lack of a license plate or lights drew nothing more than a mere glance. No what these conniving Coppers were after were those who dared ride around without a helmet. Or more precisely without a helmet on their head which I mention because many of those pulled over did in fact have helmets with them but not on their head.  Ya I don’t get it either.

Now after watching this for a while I noticed that the police were also watching me. This began to make me feel a tad uncomfortable especially when I saw one of the officers nudge his buddy and nod his head my way. I was quickly relieved though when they both looked my way and gave me a smile with a slight bow of their heads.  This is not the menacing cold dark eyed stare, which is I am certain is taught to the RCMP, that I was expecting.

OK so here we have eight cops and that many if not more motor scooters alongside the road when all of a sudden I see this motorcycle round the bend coming towards us and the driver had no helmet on his head. The officer in grey blows his whistle waves his hand and the cyclist drives right on by. OMG, I think to myself, the chase is on. Well nothing and I mean nothing at all happens. The officer did turn his head slightly but that was it. He didn’t draw his weapon. He didn’t get on his radio. He merely continued looking forward into the traffic waiting for the next helmet-less rider to come his way. After a short while and few more victims another cyclist sans helmet drove right around the menacing hand wave and the shrill whistle blow only to incur a hasty two quick steps of an officer in the direction of the fleeing criminal. This time for sure something was going happen. Maybe some helicopters or at least a motorcycle chase for Pete’s sake. Nope, nothing at all.   OK what was going on here? Was there perhaps a car hiding around the next corner waiting to give chase or a spike belt laid out to send the bike and evil rider into a death wobble? Surely something was being done to bring these rapscallions to justice. 

OK I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to find out what’s going on. So I screw up my courage and walk across the street to speak with the police. Something I would never do at home. At first the officer in grey looks at me and bows his head slightly and I reply in kind though with a more pronounced bow and a bringing together of my hands. I say hello and ask him what is the fine for having no helmet and the man grey informs me the fine is 400 Baht ($13). I then ask him if there is more police around the corner waiting to capture those who drive by without stopping and he looks at me with this look of unknowing on his face. I try the question again and again the same blank look so I thank the man with the gun and make my leave. Once across the street I pull out my camera and take a few pictures to which the officers look at me and smile. No dogs. No batons. No Tasers. Just smiles.

What a fu**ed up country.

A foot note to all this, I found out later, is that if the officer were to have taken three steps instead of the two that I had witnessed, well that would have meant the officer was probably almost really mad. Boy am I ever glad I didn’t have to witness that. Oh ya and everyone who didn’t have a helmet was allowed to drive away with nothing more than a 400 baht fine and a smile.