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Holiday in Cambodia: Day 4, Siem Reap to Battambang
Today, for better and worse, was what travelling is all about. Real travel, the stuff the stories get told about, where not everything goes as expected but everything turns out okay in the end. The boat. There are two ways to get to Battambang from Siem Reap, either by road or by water. Most people travel by road: bus, taxi, scooter, whatever. It takes a few hours and if you pick right you get airconditioned comfort. By road is fast, and cheap. Otherwise there’s the boat. When you google boat Siem Reap Battambang you’re soon waist deep in travel blogs talking about how “interesting” the boat ride is, and how…
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Holiday in Cambodia Day 3: Siem Reap
I should have wrapped up my previous post with the affirmation that I am still a fortunate traveller. That I am one of a minority in the world who can earn both enough money and enough time to hop on a plane or two in order to be a Goldilocks. So there, me, take that. Today was aiming for a take it easy day, as the previous day I clocked over 35,000 steps. How hard would it be to just have a quiet meander around the museum, grab some food, and maybe a good foot massage? 23,000 steps later, I think I missed the point. The museum at Siem Reap…
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Holiday in Cambodia Day 2: Siem Reap, Angkor Wat
I am a fortunate traveller. In the past 3 months I have both watched the sun set over Manhattan, and the sun rise over Angkor Wat. I know that I’ve also worked hard to be able to afford both the time and money to travel, so some of my fortune is of my own doing, but I’m in a count my blessings kind of mood. (Not that I’m going to literally count all of my blessings, but we can just say that I’ve probably got more than most but less than some.) Angkor Wat, a huge, impressive temple structure, symbol of Cambodia, world heritage listed, and a monument to Vishnu.…
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Holiday in Cambodia Day 1: Siem Reap
If I only make about as many typos this time as I’ve had hours sleep today then I think I’m doing pretty good. Today has been a series of fitful, uncomfortable naps, followed by food, and repeat. I got about 2 hours on the flight PER > SIN, followed by not the best airline breakfast. The staff were looking after me, though, as the inflight entertainment wasn’t working for my seat, so they kept checking to see if they could do anything else for me. It meant I got breakfast along with the dietary groups that normally get fed first, so I probably missed an extra 30 minutes sleep there.…
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Holiday in Cambodia: Day 0
It’s that time again, for the second year in a row I find myself with some accrued work time I have to take and I’ve managed to scrape together the bucks for a cheap jaunt in South East Asia. Last year was Kuala Lumpur: cooking classes, rollercoasters, rooftop helipad bars. This time it’s the Heart of Darkness, the place where, as Jello Biafra noted in the late 1970s, “they get things done”. It’s a holiday in Cambodia. I don’t know much about Cambodia. I’ve read the news, followed the history, read the wikipedias. So all I know is that, when it comes to Cambodia, is that I know fuck all.…
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Mambo de la luna: Day 1+, the longest day
I’m a little bit north of the Aleutian Islands, a little south of the Bering Strait, the International Date Line is possibly somewhere below me, and am just over halfway through the longest flight of my life. And not just my life, many lives, as I’m on what is currently the longest non-stop commercial flight in the world, heading from Singapore to Newark, approximately 16,700 km. It’s been a while between trips, and without going into it, between KL and now I have just been working far too hard. This is just to put things in perspective: I’m way out of practice at putting my thoughts into words, so apologies…
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Day last: KUL to PER
Woke up far too early after far too little sleep. It takes a special person to get a good night’s sleep when they have an early morning flight, and I ain’t that person. Checked out of the hotel, and again my grab code to sentral station didn’t work so I didn’t need to go with that option, and it was only 8MYR or so anyway. The awesome thing with flying Malaysia Airlines is that I could check in to my flight at Sentral station, dropping my suitcase, getting my boarding pass, and being able to skip all that once the KLIA express took me to the airport. Then it was…
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Day 7: KL, in a day
Today was the catchup, touristy day, where I tried to cram in just about as many of the KL landmarks that I could. While I’ve been enjoying my time in KL, I’ve generally missed most of the postcard places, and with only one day left it was time to fill in some gaps. First stop of the day (after breakfast, a dosa with condiments at a random streetside eatery) was the Batu caves just north of KL, and by just north I mean these are about 20 minutes’ drive in early morning traffic. The Batu caves are a big Hindi thing, there’s the postcard huge statue of the god of…
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Day 6: KL, sticking to it
Today was a fairly solid reversal of fortune compared to yesterday. I decided not to overextend myself and to check out a few more places local, and on the whole it paid off. I kicked off with doing my laundry, by which I mean going to where I got my last clothes washed, finding them closed, and walking across the road to a different, less swanky place. These folks charged me 10MYR, and told me to come back in a couple of hours. Having been quite haphazard in my eating patterns, I decided to make a concerted effort today to eat 3 meals, and to be approximately regular in doing…
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Day 5: Of markets and malls
Today was a day of shopping fails. Today, I have to say, I hate the shopping in KL. Remember yesterday’s coffeeshop power outage? Turns out this got me twice, as the laundry I dropped off yesterday wasn’t ready due to the same power issues. And while we’re talking about power issues, I discovered my room’s mini-fridge didn’t work, forcing me to sadly throw out the cooking class leftovers as they were at the wrong temperature for who knows how long. I headed out this morning for the Amcorp mall flea market, a place where all manner of weird and wonderful trinkets and knick knacks and second hand things and gifts…
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Day 4: KL, All about the food
I know every day, heck, the biggest reason I’m here in KL is the food, but today was all about food. If you ignore the minutes I spent organising my laundry (15MYR/kg, the most expensive I’ve encountered in SE Asia, but I just went with the nearest without shopping around) literally everything I did today was about the food. In planning this trip, I was looking at doing a cooking class, but was a little put off at some of the prices, upwards of 300MYR, which in perspective is two nights in my hotel, or all the streetfood I could ever possibly eat here. So I baulked, until L prodded…
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Day 3: Little India and a lot of walking
Sometimes I really suck at this travelling thing. Those who’ve travelled with me will know that I can be prone to indecision when it comes to picking a place to eat, so that a small hunger pang can often be a tired and hangry by the time I do find somewhere that’s just right. And I’m only marginally picky: I usually want somewhere that isn’t a chain or franchise, is serving a local cuisine, and looks like it won’t give me some sort of internal upset. This morning I ended up walking way too far, got way too hangry, and missed breakfast entirely. I did discover a bunch of interesting…
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Day 2: KL, Chinatown and other markets
Dear diary, today I walked and ate. And walked and ate. And walked. And ate. Though, in comparison to what I’ve previously been guilty of putting in my mouth, I took it fairly easy today. After my customary first night away from home that takes forever to get to sleep (I’ve been trained to wait for the cat to get comfortable, so when there’s no cat, I just wait…) as well as the room being a little less effective at keeping the outside light and sound out, I woke up a little meh. Probably also from sleeping in aircon, in a different bed, wth different pillows, you know, all the…
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Day 1: Kuala Lumpur, Bukit Bintang and surrounds
Some travelling days end too soon. Other days find me frequently repeating the Henry Rollins’ mantra, “Smile, you’re travelling”. Today was a fair whack of the latter, and a hint of the former. The plane got in early, and I spent the flight with a row to myself but even with that space I didn’t sleep comfortably. I tried lulling myself into a state of rest listening to Natalie Imbruglia’s Male, which has some really good cover versions (but I’m still not sold on the c&w “Friday I’m In Love”, I think she either needed to go much bigger or back the hell away) but even with this I don’t…
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Day 0: PER to KUL
The tired and grumpy baby edition. And that’s not referring to the grumpy and tired baby waiting to board behind me, heck I sympathise entirely. It’s way past everyone’s bedtime, and who at Malaysia Airlines decided that 2.10am was a reasonable time to fly? I’m talking about the muppet waiting next to me, who has his mobile volume turned up and all the sounds trned on. I’m getting every beep, whorp, woowoo, and ding, and in my rather tired state not enjoying the soundtrack at all. I may not have documented this previously, but consider this a new pet peeve: just turn that shit off. I’m killing time, waiting to…
