Around Bangkok

After staying for a few days in Bangkok we felt the strong urge to escape the noise, the pollution and the hectic. That's why we booked a day tour package to see some interesting places around Bangkok. Well we managed to escape noise and pollution... but not really the hectic. It turned out that our tour guide was a former army Sargent - at least this was our impression. We were more or less chased through the places at the various stops. It was actually a bit annoying but we enjoyed the trip nevertheless.

First stop: Military cemetery of the Second World War. A lot of soldiers died when Japan invaded this region. Many of them died during the construction of the Burma Railway. From Wikipedia:
The Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Thailand-Burma Railway and similar names, is a 415 km (258 mile) railway between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.
Forced labour was used in its construction. About 180,000 Asian labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) worked on the railway. Of these, around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the project. The dead POWs included 6,318 British personnel, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch, about 356 Americans and a smaller number of Canadians.

Second stop: The bridge over the river Kwai and the War Museum. The museum was mainly about the construction of the Burma Railway. The bridge was actually the most crucial point of the whole railway track. You might have heard of the bridge from the novel or the movie.

Third stop: Bamboo rafting and Lunch. Well, not much to tell here, wasn't exactly white water rafting...

Fourth stop: Waterfall. Nice waterfall and some lime stone formations. Due to the dry season it was a bit small though.

Fifth stop: Elephant riding. It's actually funny to ride on one of this big guys. It feels almost like on a ship.

Sixth stop: Tiger temple. The last stop was in the tiger temple. The temple had a tradition as sanctuary for various animals until one day a villager turned up with a injured tiger baby orphan. So they cared for this as well... and finally they got more and more and the grew bigger and bigger. Since they are used to people you can actually pet them. Still a bit scary though...

Seventh stop: Back to Bangkok. It was an interesting and entertaining trip. But sometimes the motto "less is more" definitely applies. If the schedule would have been less tight we'd enjoyed it even more.

Lewis Pragasam & Friends

Ever heard of Lewis Pragasam, eh? Well, I have to admit that I had never heard of him before Wednesday last week. There is a series of concerts here at NTU called the "Lunchtime Concerts", where they would invited different groups/artists for a one hour informal session. In the past I have seen a string quartet, the NTU Chinese Orchestra, the NTU String Orchestra and others. Last week's Wednesday Lewis Pragasam & Friends were invited.

Lewis Pragasam is an internationally highly acclaimed drummer and percussionist from Malaysia. The music they played is Jazz is the wider sense or World Music to be more precise. Anyway the concert was plainly breathtaking! It's been a long time I've seen such an awesome concert. I guess the last one on this level was Dream Theater two years ago... :-) Lewis' style of playing the drums is pretty unique. He seems to be sitting completely relaxed, hardly moving his upper body. But at the same time his arms move in an incredible speed and precision. The other musicians he brought with him were equally great. So it all added up to an amazing perfomance.The different pieces they played were very diverse and the hour was over much too quickly.

Enough words, listen to it yourselves!

Bangkok, Thailand

My second trip around South East Asia in December actually started in Bangkok, Thailand. I stayed there for one day before I went to Siem Reap in Cambodia. After that I came back to Bangkok and met Karin and Lola, my two friends from NTU.

The capital of Thailand is with a population of over 8 million in the city and probably more than 15 million in the metropolitan area unbelievably huge. Even when standing on some high building in the center you couldn't make out the end of the city. Since the public transport is very poor (2 skytrain lines, one subway line) the traffic is always congested. I believe in whole Bangkok is traffic jam from 8am to 8pm, or even longer. That's probably why the pollution in Bangkok is really immense. After a day walking around in the streets of the city I felt my eyes burning and my nose full of black grime. I actually found out that the best mean of transport is the river taxi on the Chao Phraya River and the canal taxis in the different side arms of the river. They have a fixed price and they get never stuck in the traffic jam. Of course you have to take one of the so called "Tuk-tuks" at least once, or your Bangkok trip is not complete. Their exhaust fumes smell probably worst, their drivers like to scam you and you almost every time end up paying more than for a cab... but the atmosphere of riding in these passenger trikes is just unique.
The city is very lively and there are a lot of interesting things to see. There is an uncountable number of bigger and smaller temples. Some of them are definitely a must see, like the temple of the reclining Buddha. The river banks and some parks are nice places to chill out. There is a lot of shopping, anything from cheap street markets to expensive shopping malls - and of course all the tailors (well I was talked into buying a custom made suit as well...). The nightlife is very diverse, from cheap booze on the backpacker's street Khao San Road to expensive clubs and bars. Not speaking of the infamous Pat Pong, but I actually left this one out, honestly!

The first major tourist place I visited was the temple of the reclining Buddha. All the temple buildings have this particular Thai style and are extremely shiny and colorful. The Buddha statue itself is gigantic - 46 meters long and 15 meters high. And of course all covered with gold. It is a very impressive view and I especially liked his cheeky smile. :-)

After meeting up with Karin and Lola we went to the Grand Palace. This place served for a long time as official residence for the Thai king - you must know that the Thai people are very proud of their king. But the current king is not living there. Here again the abundance of gold, china and colors is just overwhelming. Within the complex of the palace is the temple of the Emerald Buddha. There you can see one of the most famous Buddha statues - but it is actually made of jade...

Another very famous temple in Bangkok is Wat Arun - the temple of the dawn. It is situated directly at the river and from the upper level of the temple you have a nice view over the city. The stairs to reach this part are actually quite steep...

Being in Bangkok for Christmas we had to check out the night life for sure. With temperatures of about 30°C and just some very kitschy Christmas decoration in the shopping malls we never really came into a Christmas mood. But we enjoyed ourselves anyway. On Christmas eve we have been to the supper club. Its quite a famous club with branches all over the world. The special thing about the club were the beds on the upper level. The music was a bit too Latin but we had fun nevertheless. There was quite a big crowd there, especially a lot of Westerners - interesting how many people have nothing better to do then clubbing for Christmas. ;-)
Two days later we went to the skybar of Bangkok. This place was really amazing - I have never been to an open air bar on the 63rd (or something around that) floor. The view on the city was breathtaking - so it really helped that the air up there was actually fresh. It was probably 5 degrees colder than down in the streets and is was clean - at least much cleaner than 60 floors below. The drinks were a bit expensive (500 Bath - ~11 Euro) but it was definitely worth it!

The last day in Bangkok - before we went on further South - we visited the Chatuchak Weekend Market. This one crazy place! The market is really huge, more than 1 square kilometer big and several hundred thousand visitors each day. You can virtually get anything there: cheap clothes, antique furniture, used books, pet food, plants, knives, tools, jewelry, faked brand stuff... The two girls went on a shopping spree - I was rather wandering around and watching the crowd. I bought a memory card and a book though.
After that it was time to leave Bangkok and catch the bus to Ko Samui. In conclusion the chaos in Bangkok is sometimes really crazy. But the city has a unique atmosphere and we definitely enjoyed the stay there.

Siem Reap, Cambodia: Angkor

Time is still running. So it's about time to write something about my Thailand and Cambodia trip in December. Maybe you heard about the besieging of the Bangkok international airport. I was actually quite lucky that I wasn't affected by that. I was flying to Bangkok only one week after it was reopened. After spending a day in Bangkok (pictures to follow) I made my way to Cambodia.
This was actually the first trip I did on my own. It was an interesting experience and you meet many new people. But I'd say I prefer travelling in a small group with people I know - its more relaxing and you don't always have to be alert about scams and other hassles.
Speaking of scams: Of course I fell for the bus/visa scam on my way to Cambodia. I payed way too much for the bus ticked and they overcharged me for the Cambodian visa. But at least I arrived in Siem Reap before night - I heard much worse stories about that. In the bus I met a Russian guy (Alexander) who spends 9 months a year travelling. He is financing that with a job he can do anywhere just using his laptop - pretty amazing in my opinion. He was accompanying me on the tours around the temples.

To give you an idea of what these temples are all about I will just cite the introduction of the Wikipedia article:

The ruins of Angkor are located amid forests and farmland to the north of the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) and south of the Kulen Hills, near modern day Siem Reap (13°24'N, 103°51'E), and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temples of the Angkor area number over one thousand, ranging in scale from nondescript piles of brick rubble scattered through rice fields to the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument. Many of the temples at Angkor have been restored, and together they comprise the most significant site of Khmer architecture. Visitor numbers approach two million annually. In 2007 an international team of researchers using satellite photographs and other modern techniques concluded that Angkor had been the largest preindustrial city in the world with an urban sprawl of 3000 square kilometres. The closest rival to Angkor, the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, was between 100 and 150 square kilometres in total size. Angkor could have supported a population of up to one million people.

So you can imagine that the whole thing is damn big! The outer wall of the most known temple Angkor Wat alone is 3.6 km long. In addition to that the temple is very well preserved / restored so that it is definitely the most impressive one. If been there three times in total. Once in the early morning, once around noon and once in the evening. It is amazing how the colors and the atmosphere changes with the time of day. Its incredible how a building as sophisticated and huge as this could be built in the 12th century. Especially all the carvings in the walls are very impressive. The bas relief - total length of more than 100m - is incredibly detailed and tells a lot of stories of the Hindu mythology (On the left you can see the churning of the milk sea).

Another very famous temple is the Bayon. Its huge faces carved into the stones are very impressive - interestingly archaeologists couldn't determine for sure who's face it is meant to be.

The temple Ta Phrom is famous for the massive trees growing on and in between its walls. I really liked the atmosphere of this temple - you could feel this kind of struggle nature against man. It is amazing to see how the huge trees are growing on top of the temple walls. The roots are literally interweaved with the stones of the temple - in fact the temple is partly hold together by those trees. In the beginning of the restoration they tried to cut the trees and the affected parts of the temple collapsed.

One day we had to see the sunset on Phnom Bakheng of course. The sunset over the plains of Cambodia is definitely impressive. But it is not exactly lonely on this rather small hill temple...

As I already said the whole Angkor site is incredibly huge. The two days I have been there were just enough to get a rough idea about the place and to see the most important temples. I think if you really want to have time to explore them you should stay three days. And if you are keen on archeology than probably even a week is not enough! Anyways I enjoyed that place very much - on of the most impressive places I ever visited for sure. (I think I use this sentence quite often in my Blog - but seriously it's true!)
I just realized that I didn't include any pictures from the town Siem Reap itself. It is actually a nice small town, but incredibly touristy. Because of the popularity of Angkor Wat tourism was really boosted there. The have even a small airport now and a lot of hotels and restaurants. The prices have of course adjusted to the number of tourists. But at the street hawkers you can still get a meal for 1 USD - I won't complain about that. On the whole the town has everything to make your stay in Cambodia nice and comfortable.