living on the cheap, cambodia, and other eclectic tales

here is a motley collection of thoughts. but first, let me just update you on my location. i’m back in bangkok (after a month and a half of being away), and boy, is it good to be back in a first-world-ish country with street lights, traffic lights, orderly traffic!!! (no darting through whizzing motorbikes!), crosswalks, metered taxis, smooth paved roads, highways, billboards, skyscrapers, 7-elevens (with price tags!), and plush busses that i took for granted and thought were shitty compared to the busses in korea and the states more than a month ago.

my notions are true, it’s been confirmed. thailand IS much cheaper than most of the southeast asian countries, considering it’s 10 times more developed than its neighbors. cambodia and lao were somewhat expensive, as they tried to milk as many dollars off of backpackers and pure tourists alike as was possible. vietnam was actually pretty cheap considering that it’s developing (and having heard that it wasn’t), but that involved sharing rooms with other friends or staying at hostels which were awesome, and eating at a lot of street stalls (great food, mind you). i think i was also totally turned off by the rude hawkers, and the more they said “you buy something lady? you buy from me lady? buy here lady?” or “tuk tuk? tuk tuk? motorbike?” at every turn and step, the more i didn’t feel like buying from them. (literally, you couldn’t walk down a street with a stall, store or tuk tuk/motorbike driver in vietnam without EVERY SINGLE one of them saying at least one of those things. that was the part of that country i was disgusted with. feeling like a walking atm machine.) what wasn’t thifty was that i spent loads on getting clothes tailored (some unnecessary in hindsight) in hoi an, the town known for their tailors.

price comparisons: scarves cost a dollar more in cambodia than in thailand (but i bought 3 silk scarves anyway – probably a dollar or 2 too much, but i didn’t know if they’d have the same variety in thailand). besides, i’d like to think i’m contributing to cambodia’s economy, one of the poorest nations in the world. interesting side note: laos is supposedly poorer than cambodia and it was one of the most heavily bombed countries in the world. however, the people there seemed very content and satisfied living a pastoral lifestyle, which differs from the outlooks of cambodians it seemed, as they were all about money, money, money. i never saw a beggar in lao and very few prostitutes. in cambodia, beggars, amputees, children, and prostitutes asking for money were everywhere. bottles of water and snacks are cheaper here in thailand compared to cambodia also. so are food and fruit shakes (almost by $2) and bracelets too (was quoted $3 for a bracelet in cambodia that’s 60 cents here!).

when i’m by myself, i’m borderline ridiculous in frugality. i’d rather skip a meal or walk for 30 minutes finding a street stall rather than spend $2 or $3 (expensive by SE standards) on a meal at a western restaurant. and i’d rather walk a half-mile with my heavy pack and daypack in the boiling heat under the scorching sun than get ripped off by annoying tuk tuk drivers pestering me with “tuk tuk lady? where are you going?”

that said, i love traveling with other people i’ve met on the road and actually prefer it, although i usually can’t be as thrifty as i want to be (though i was on the same page with most girls). i’ve found that traveling with girls is much much cheaper than traveling with guys. girls are generally overly conscious of their spending, especially if it’s not on clothing and jewelry. we’re cheap with food and accomodations. we’ll skip a meal and shop around multiple stalls rather than settle for the first place we see. yet guys, who i find are actually better traveling companions in terms of conversation and humor and what not, do generally settle. if they’re hungry, they’re hungry, and they’ll go wherever there’s good food. they generally prefer comfort over thrift. they eat 3 square meals a day, if not more. just my observations.

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i arrived in bangkok last night from siem reap, cambodia. i spent 2 (or was it 3?) nights in phnom penh (creepy town), 2 in sihanoukville (a quiet beach town, though still very touristy and lined with bars and cafes with thatched roofs and deck chairs), and 2 more in siem reap. the angkor temples, needless to say, were extremely impressive. but surprisingly, i enjoyed angkor thom and the other temple where tomb raider was filmed (forget the cambodian name) much more than angkor wat itself. it rained when i got to those two temples, and they had a charm and enigma that was far greater than the super touristy, overly commercialized angkor wat. i loved that angkor thom had large contented, smiling heads carved on the temple and tiles of the dancing vishnus (or shivas?). the tomb raider temple, overgrown with trees and accessorized by monkey screeches high up above, were simply surreal. loved it.

after one day at angkor, i walked around the city of siem reap alone the following day, having seen mark, my dutch travel companion of more than a week, off. i was slightly disturbed by cambodia though, and find that i couldn’t think clearly. i don’t know what it was. maybe it was phnom penh, visiting the s-21 prison museum and having had nightmares for a few nights afterwards, or maybe it was all the beggars and desperate people i saw on the streets, or the high tourist prices everywhere. or maybe, even, it was the slow internet connection that i couldn’t bare! or still yet, maybe it was the slight sadness i felt after breaks and goodbyes with friends leaving, traveling elsewhere or on a different schedule and feeling cerebral traveling alone with so much time to myself. but the point is, i really wanted to leave cambodia. and now i kind of regret it! i wish i could’ve done another day at angkor too. well, i suppose it’s a good thing that i’m in want of having seen and done more. you can’t do everything everywhere, i know. and even the days that were a waste were still better than not having done them at all…

but the biggest reason for this regret actually is that i wanted to volunteer in cambodia (which i knew i might’ve wanted to do even before getting there) either at an orphanage, hospital or school. but because of my personal selfishness to get out of the depressive poverty and to meet up with people in bangkok, i left early. i say this now after feeling relief last night at getting back to bangkok (as my first paragraph in this post tells). but now that the consumerism, materialism and commercial mini-culture shock has set in, i’m longing to do something productive. i’m not sure that i can find any good opportunities in thailand. regrets man, they suck.

anyway, after bangkok, i’m headed south to the islands of ko phi phi, krabi (not an island), ko phagnan and ko samui (these last two for the full and half moon party). then after, i think i’ll head to malaysia and indonesia i think, where perhaps i’ll find volunteer work. but if i can afford it and have the time, i’m actually considering going back up to cambodia to fulfill that guilty desire i have… not sure if i will, but it would be nice.

the locals

i’m currently in phnom penh, cambodia, headed for sihanoukville tomorrow. good ol’ eli b. brings up a good point in his comment on my last post, so i’ll dedicate this post to my experiences with the locals which i’ve been remiss about as of late.

truth be told, i wasn’t very fond of the vietnamese, although i love thais and laos (i think i mentioned this in a previous post). let me explain why. these are generalizations, but for the most part, the vietnamese are very rude and basically only care for your money. they will talk to you and approach you only to offer you a motorbike or cyclo ride. “motorbike miss? motorbike madam?” are encountered at every corner a thousand times a day. it gets immensely annoying after a while. it’s hard to simply ignore them when they also follow you down the block. (also imagine being a solo girl with a huge pack when you’ve just gotten off a bus and have to look for the right guesthouse or hostel, and you’re basically just being bombarded by a chaotic mass of motorbike drivers thirsting for your money). so you’re either compelled to be rude back at them or pretend they don’t exist.

here’s a solid example of rude behavior in vietnam (also bear in mind that my image of the vietnamese was tainted by the hellish 29-hour bus ride and the incident at the food stall – go back a few posts for that story): you cannot simply browse or window shop in vietnam. if you touch something, the saleswomen will scurry over to you and say “very nice, i give you very good price.” and whether you intended to bargain and buy it or not, if you don’t end up purchasing it, they’ll hastily and roughly snatch the item right out of your hands, turn away with a loud “hmph,” speak loud insults in vietnamese, and turn abruptly to another customer.

in another instance, i bargained really well for myself for some fruit, and the lady just snatched the money right out of my hands because she wasn’t satisfied with how much she was getting. (and another thing is more often than not, you need exact change or they will simply take all the money for themselves.) there are countless, COUNTLESS stories of these things happening in vietnam. also bear in mind that i almost didn’t go to vietnam because of all the bad reviews i’ve heard about the country. many fellow travelers have said they would never go back to vietnam again because of all the brusque and unappetizing attitude of the locals. and this is not taking into account just the general loudness, ill/strangely-mannered behavior of the people there (particularly men, who’ll just whip out their members on the side of the road in more rural areas and just take a piss right in front of you). and YES, i realize that’s part of being immersed in a different culture, and i take all of these sights with a grain of salt and understand that this is how the people here live, but it’s something that’s hard for a lot of westerners to digest – even for any open-minded person.

to be fair, the people in the north were much more abrasive than the southern vietnamese. still, i got the sense that they all only really cared for you money. you essentially feel like a walking atm machine. they don’t care to get to know you at all, which is also a fairly big contrast from the laos and thais. even when we went on a small excursion up a river known as the fairy stream in mui ne, little boys (9 and 14 years old, who really looked more about 6 and walked beside our group. but we rarely spoke back to them as we all knew what they intentions were: money. i finally caved a bit and talked briefly to the boys, and they told stories of how their parents had passed away and that they were very poor (but one of the boys had dyed hair – hm, how could he afford that?). at the end of our little trip up the stream, they demanded “MONEY MONEY MONEY!,” and started screaming and throwing huge tantrums. this is my general perception of the vietnamese. they won’t hesitate to cheat you for more money – not in the slightest.

the vietnamese are a hardy people. even their landscape is really rough. they’ve been through a lot for sure, but so have the laos and the cambodians. i’ve only been in cambodia for a day, and i haven’t encountered the same kind of rudeness i did in vietnam. sure, they still want your money here, but they’re never short of a smile back at you. i feel i’ve rarely seen the vietnamese smile other than to make fun of something.

so this is why my posts in vietnam lacked anything much about the people there.

it’s also tricky business being a female traveler in these countries. in lao, my aussie friend and i befriended a 25-year old local guy who worked at the bar we were chilling at, and although he was very friendly, extremely nice and probably totally harmless, he was clearly talking to hit on us and flirt with us, particularly my white aussie friend.

in thailand, i had befriended a few locals through couchsurfing (i think i’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a super awesome networking sight for travelers) and they were great. but the problem i had with them was that i couldn’t ever get them to talk about anything serious. they didn’t really want or care to talk about the real conditions and situation in their country. they also liked to drink LOADSSSSS of alcohol, and i couldn’t keep up with them and really couldn’t handle hanging out with them much more towards the end of my stay in bangkok and chiang mai as they wanted to get drunk literally every night!

so far, here in cambodia, i’ve met one nice 19 year old guy. i sat next to him at a food stall yesterday in the late afternoon, and he just started talking to me. he spoke great english for a guy who didn’t learn the language in school.  i learned that he was a car driver (i don’t believe they have real taxis here, so he just picks up anyone who wants a ride for a small fee). that was nice, but we didn’t get very far in our conversation. i think he mentioned something about being poor and still living with his parents (which is very typical here even as adults). still though, this conversation was a nice reprieve from the quite literal animosity i felt in vietnam. i can already tell the cambodians are friendlier than their eastern neighbors.

speaking of cambodia though, it’s definitely a very poor country. i don’t know if it’s supposed to be one of the poorest or not.. however, phnom penh seems to be rapidly developing (with the help of korean construction companies it seems, as i see korean construction, restaurant and store signs everywhere. in fact, it was also like that in saigon. i think korea must be doing a lot of development work in this region). anyway, the biggest difference i notice from cambodia and vietnam or thailand is that although the main road is paved, the side roads are not at all. and although lao was quite poor, it was mostly that the entire country seemed rather underdeveloped and pastoral. i didn’t see so many beggers even in their biggest city of vietiane like i’ve already seen here in phnom penh. for some reason, although lao has been through a lot, the people there always seemed happy. here, i get a slightly mixed sense. i guess the people are still trying to recover from the khmer rouge days.

speaking of this, i went to the s-21 museum today, the prison where they used to confine, torture and execute thousands of people during the khmer rouge revolution. really gruesome stuff. it really dampened my afternoon, and i have decided i don’t want to go to the killing fields. i think today was enough.

as far as the war remnants museum in saigon, there was a lot of terrible stuff there as well. america did a lot of horrible things for sure, agent orange, napalm and the whole “burn all, destroy all, kill all” policy. and although there was one exhibit about the american soldiers who died sponsored by some american foundation and another exhibit about the war protests around the world, it was quite one sided, as was the cuchi tunnel tour and the hanoi hilton museum. i suppose it’s all propaganda and that’s just how it is… it got me thinking though, does america have a substantial exhibit or museum dedicated to slavery? i know there are native american museums, but i haven’t yet been to one solely dedicated slavery, and i’m quite curious to see what’s shown and exhibited.

oh, i get stared a lot here! like, a LOT! i got stared at in vietnam (in hanoi and saigon especially) and most thais and laos assumed i was japanese or korean. but MAN, i can’t avoid it here at all! and i’m not even white! i was walking with my dutch friend mark today and i felt that they were staring more at me than at him.

anyway, off i go to take a much needed shower – it’s boiling here! contemplating eating a ‘happy’ pizza tonight. can you guess what that is? hmmm…