Ari's Planet

I came to Siem Reap on Tuesday. This is the base of pilgrimage for those tourists who wish to see one of the wonders of the man-made world--the temples of Angkor. I spent 3 days riding a bicycle through the past glories of a faded empire. Cicadas and narrow trees and termite mounds filled my senses as I clambered around the rubble of giant strange stones carved with visages of people long since dead. One day it was hot and long, and I remember my dirty hands troubling to focus my camera. I learned to say goodbye, which is to wish good luck. I killed an unborn ant, whiter than my teeth with which I took away its chance to move in the tall trees. A tree spread out over voices that called out mango, pineapple, and a horse blew bubbles in a pool. A monk gave me a rice ice cream sandwich and bananas that turned black in the hours I contemplated their existence, and yet never did I perceive their color changing. Rocks shifted as I walked past walls that must fall and roots stretched out from great trees, tentacles within the cells in my brain whose changes I did not notice as branching, wandering, shifting cells, but which I thought were men holding a snake, who were stones that had lost their carved heads.

The bus pulls in to Siem Reap at 14:30 after a six hour uneventful ride from Phnom Penh. There is the usual assault by tuktuk and moto drivers that I forcefully tell to back off. They say town is 5 km away. I go outside and they start out at $1 and soon cut this to $.50 for the ride. They want to know to which guesthouse I'm going. Even I don't know yet. Knowing this is a low rate and they are expecting commission, I say I'm not going anywhere with commission and no tour of the temples tomorrow, etc. and the tout says he won't take me. Fine. I walk out a bit and find another rickshaw who wants $0.50, so I say ok and we go for a ride. He pulls into a gas station. A liter costs $1.25. He tries to convince me to go to a particular (commission-paying) guesthouse. I ask and he says he gets 10 km/L, it takes 1 L for a return trip from the station to town. Knowing he won't get commission, I say if he takes me where I want to go I'll pay $1 (I wasn't feeling cut-throat). He gets me to the area I asked for, but then tries again to get me to either go on a tour tomorrow or go to a GH with commission. I say I don't like commission and pay for each service as it is rendered. He's not happy but that's that.

My plan is to check out Smiley GH. Finding the place involves a bit of walking. It's midday and hot. I follow the map and my little compass but miss the turn as the roads are unsigned. I keep on asking locals, but the concept of named roads seems a bit foreign to them and they point me alternately forward and back. Eventually I use a landmark and get to the right place. I pass Mommy's GH on the way and stop in for a look. I'm greeted by a kind old man with not much English; one of his eyes is damaged and I have a hard time figuring out which eye to look at. The place is clean, quiet, bars on window, a puppy to guard it, cute little kids, and a heavy gate in front. A room with bathroom is $4. I continue to check out Smiley's. The place is big and quite nice. They have Internet and lounge areas and rooms for $5, but there's construction going on all around and I don't want a noisy place, so I head back to Mommy's. I try for a discount for staying there 5 nights but he won't budge. Both Smiley's and Mommy's say they don't pay commission to tuktuks. No matter. It's about 4 now and time to get a shower and find some food.

I go for a random walk, my typical approach to a new area, by which I acquaint myself with the place and locate the two necessities following the search for shelter: water and food. I find a market street, next to the closed Central Market, and try for the usual 600 Riel ($0.15) "Cambodian" water in cheap plastic bottles. Several vendors refuse me. I find a stall with watermelon and clementines and negotiate a price for them. I now have fluids and had a fun time with the vendor as I tried without much success to learn how to say the amounts in Khmer. A bit later on I find my cheap water. I come to the river, which is just a channel with roads on each side and turn right past some furniture stores. The furniture is made of solid hardwoods, beautiful deep yellow and red colors and solid work, things that would cost an arm and a leg in the US. I hope they are managing the tropical hardwoods they must be using. A man is selling books. I had read in a brochure from the organization Stay Another Day of a group that trains landmine victims to work by selling books, playing music, and through other vocational training. The book sellers are given a special cart and display a sign saying that they work and do not beg. He has a few of the typical books everyone and their little sister is selling: books about the terrors of the Pol Pot regime, Cambodia, and one about Buddhism. After meeting a few novice monks I developed a late interest in Buddhism and picked this last book, which I negotiated to $4 from $5 (I did not press a hard bargain, which would have started around $2; I have no idea the real selling price). He showed me his story on a card, how he was injured by a landmine, lost both lower legs, and now works to support his family. A couple of kids were hanging around the cart, I assumed they were his children.

I'm still searching for food. I turn right again and come to the central tourist area. It's not a terrible ghetto, at least. I come to Socheata II restaurant, their prices are acceptable. They have pork on baguette, Khmer style, which I order. Yum, nice warm pork. Definitely not kosher. A bit onward and lo, a sight in the desert: the Blue Pumpkin bakery! They have all sorts of yummies. I pick a delicious raisin roll and a loaf of multigrain bread. The bread is the first whole-grain food I've had since India. Later I will discover their mango danish, an even yummier snack. The best deal is to stop by after 19:00 when everything is half-price. You can go upstairs and feel all hip in their white AC lounge, but a raisin roll or mango danish is plenty for me. My last stop for now will be the usual Internet surfing. I have plane tickets to research and emails to catch up on. Besides, it's late afternoon and no time for any temple visits. That can wait for tomorrow. At night, my search for dinner finds the overpriced tourist restaurants unacceptable, but there's a row of food stalls with friendly staff and plenty to eat for normal prices. Surprisingly, this is the first place in Cambodia I see tourists other than myself eating at these local places.

I rent a bicycle from the GH for $1.50 a day and head out to find Angkor. The bike I end up with has 3 gears, a rear reflector, and a front headlamp--truly amazing. It takes about 1/2 hour of steady biking to get to the moat surrounding Angkor. I was directed on the shortest route, which passes the Children's Hospital and through a pleasant, though poorly paved, wooded section. The shortest route, however, misses the ticket checkpoint. I ask a tuktuk driver how directs me back to the checkpoint, another 3 km or so back--such fun. They take a digital picture, I hand over $60 for a 3 day pass, and viola, I'm legal. There is no need any longer to bring a physical passport photo. (You may want to visit the landmine museum near the checkpoint, though I didn't get there.) There are guards in front of each of the temples and they politely check the pass, so the only way to avoid paying would be to sneak pass by wallowing through the jungle--not a pleasant thought, and there are hefty fines too. There are also police at a few places throughout the area looking eminently bored as they listen to their radios.

By now it's about 0800 and it's starting to get warm. The sun is too high in the sky for photography with low-angled light. There are lots of tourists swarming around Angkor. I decide to push on and do the "big" loop, which my LP has as a 27 km ride past most of the temples in the main area. My plan is to see a bunch the first day, the 2nd day finish the big loop and do the parts I missed on the little loop, and hit Angkor at the end of the 2nd day or on the 3rd day. The first few temples are rather simple. The very first temple has a cow visiting it, which I find the most interesting part. A lovely carving, old stone, sun. The temples sort of merge together in my memory. I found Preah Khan impressive in its ancient decay. Stone men grasp giant stone snakes on he symmetrical approaches which head out in the four cardinal directions. Stones lay strewn about. Ancient sculptures. Buddha and Shiva coexist: Shiva lingams, yonis, and buddha statues are mixed about in various areas of the temples. Incense and golden wraps are placed by Buddha and by some of the lingams. Trees wrap their roots around the stones. Long hallways lead off, others are blocked by collapsed stones. Moss grows on the stones, some are discolored. There are carvings in the stone or in bricks. There are two main types of rocks used, one is a corral-like red stone. The ruins sprawl on and on.

NASA satelite image of Angkor temples (left) and map of same by Manfred Werner (right), from Wikimedia.org.

At Ta Som a tree has wrapped itself around a gate. As I get closer, I see common red tree ants busying about next to a bees nest which contains small black bees moving around in a hollowed out tube-like root that is semi-transparent. I have not yet learned that the ant's grubs are succulent food. Some ants are tangled up in the silky strands of the wind-catchers of seeds that have lodged along a root of the tree. The bees come and go, and my thoughts are captured with the ants and the mesmerizing bees by the wind-catchers of the seeds and the knotted strands of the trees and the lost memory of the dead people who cut the stone and the dancers who told its stories and the tired children selling postcards who seated on a broken stone play as children in all places.

By the road I see some people excavating a wall covered in earth. There are slender trees growing all over the place in this jungle. A termite mound rises above one wall, a moto driver rests. There are two men with walkie-talkies, a bunch of young women sitting a picking at dirt, and several older women in blue work clothes with hats and scarves covering their faces. The girls pick at the dirt, fill a basket, one of the work-women carries off the dirt. The men explain that they are excavating a water conduit that brought water into one of the temples.

At one temple my eyes ripped the carvings from the wall. The soft stones in which they were carved crumbled, and I looked, and a row of the carvings were removed, and there was now just stone, as there had always been, even when there was a carving that I remember was a beautiful dancer who moved gracefully in the temple lights, a large moving shape in the eyes of a distant gecko, lost in the giant black eyes of elephants. The dancers were gone. Parrots erupted from branches, their green wings gave flight to tethered leaves that shook from their violent beats and all wished to close up their ears lest they be deafened: the whole forest knew that it was called back, it would return to the cities it lost, cities built in flesh and wood and dust. The dancers were taken, the invading army stole them off, and also dead treasures of solid kinds, when the kings no longer loved a snake. The looters, and my eyes, and ants struggling across chasms of red rock no longer saw the lithe dancers, we saw the stone stretching into and merging with termite mounds. A guide said the carvings were removed for protection, but we visitors had looted them with our gaze.

All day I have been drinking non-stop. I have a water-bladder I sip from constantly and carry an additional reserve 2 liters in the bike's front basket. Each time I fill up the bladder I find another vendor, negotiate the 600 R price (I'll go to a max of 700 R), and buy two more bottles. This way I always have enough water and can negotiate knowing I have at least 2 hours in which to find a vendor willing to charge a fair price. By the end of my tour that day, from when I left the GH at 7 am until around 5 pm, I drink 9 liters, which works out to nearly 1 liter an hour, and I am still mildly dehydrated. Later I check the weather and it said it was 35 C. Midday I have a bunch of bananas and have munched on a loaf of bread I got at the bakery the day before. Along the way, one of the vendors says "good luck" as I'm leaving; I ask how to say this in Khmer, "som nang la-ah", a traditional goodbye. By 15:30 I am tired. Thunder is rumbling and the sky darkens. I sit down in a courtyard and rest and rub my calves. The jungle is dense. The heat saps my strength, from my fingers limbs grow into the rocks, they split the rocks, my feet, I crumble into the mud, ants crawl across the empty orbits of my eyes. A friendly tourist stops by to see if I'm OK, but there are only bees and geckos in the jungle. The sky is dark and the ruins sprawl around me. I have come through ancient stone corridors. Roofs have threatened to collapse at each turn, surely these structures cannot remain standing. Men of stone held snakes so that I might pass. Dancers froze in the walls as I walked through, and my breath too was held.

I get back just after dark and stop in a Chevron gas station market to get some yogurt drink. Tuktuk drivers don't give up, even on a bike they want my business. I get back and am tired, but there is still much to do. I wash my clothes for the next day, shower, and head into town for dinner. Tonight I again go to the local food stalls. I ask permission and snap a few pictures of one of the women who work there but while changing lenses she gets embarrassed and moves; I apologize, but wish I had been able to get a few more pictures. More internet, a mango danish (yum!) and a six-pack of waters for 3000 R (500 each), and I head back to my room. The next day I resolve to leave before sunrise. A silly idea, instead I have breakfast and make it out by 07:30.

Again I pass by Angkor Wat and head toward Ta Prohm as part of the "little" circuit. Along the way I ride through the entrance to Angkor Thom. There are five gates leading to the city. Each gate is a massive stone structure atop which is the four-faced stone statue of the king. Some researchers believe that the face is a composite image of the Compassionate Buddha and the king who had the gate built. Stone elephants covered in moss stand guard and smaller statues adorn the gate. A massive wall surrounds Angkor Thom. A raised causeway leads across a massive moat. Stone men hold a massive serpent on each side of the causeway. It is estimated that Angkor Thom contained 1 million residents.

For my first stop I clamber around the incredible Bayon temple which sits in the center of Angkor Thom. Bayon is covered with massive four-sided faces, same as the entrance to the city. The god-king who built this place was really into his face. There are a few active shrines on the temple. A small monastery is nearby, along with several food stalls. There are carvings of war scenes along the bottom level. I spend an hour there and resolve to come back in the evening for more photography. I come down and head to the food stalls for breakfast. A magnificent Asiatic elephant, with sleek black skin, carrying a few tourists, rides by. The vendors run up to me, waving menus. I tell one of them I want breakfast but will only pay normal prices and she agrees. She seems friendly and I order fried rice with chicken and vegetables for $2--a bit higher than the $1.50 it ideally should run, but still better than the $3 price most had posted.

Whenever one passes one of the many food stalls scattered around the Angkor Wat area one is greeted by children running up waving menus or toting water bottles. The vendors will shout "mango", "pineapple", etc. It's quite something. You just sort of smile and ignore it or wave or, in my case, say I want cheap Cambodian water. I passed on the mango/pineapple since I wanted the wonderful deep-yellow mango I had in Phnom Penh and these didn't look up to par. This may be half the reason to visit, though one can enjoy this without paying $60.

I pass the Terrace of Elephants, which I will revisit on the way back. Several stone towers stand opposite the terrace, more mysteries of Angkor. I come to Ta Keo, a massive, but unfinished, temple rising up several levels. I clamber, no, sweat, past a sign warning "climb at own risk" up steep stone stairs. By the time I'm at the top I wonder how I'll get down. It is too hot to properly enjoy the view of the jungle, whose trees with slender clear trunks rise yet higher. I ride up to Ta Phrohm. So that visitors could enjoy the feeling of the abandoned monuments as they once appeared, Ta Prohm was left by archaeologists in a partial state of decay. They left as much of the jungle vegetation as practical and only restore sections that are in imminent danger of collapse. There is a wooden walkway through the temple and a few famous giant trees that everyone photographs. This temple was made famous in movies such as Tomb Raider (starring the darling of Cambodians, Angelina Jolie). I preferred Preah Khan, which I found more solitary, enigmatic, distant--dreamlike--but one can hardly scoff at any of the temples.

I explore the Terrace of Elephants and of the Leper King. There are marvelous stone carvings here in walls arranged in two (one in front, another just behind it). I skip through some muddy puddles. Behind the terraces I walk to Phimeanakas Temple, made from laterilite (a fascinating stone, almost like coral). Every night the king had to climb to the top and sleep with the female manifestation of the seven-trunked snake (or nine trunked?) that ruled the land. If he couldn't do his part, that was the end of his days as king. Talk about pressure, but I hear the snake was pretty hot. She had to be as she had some stiff competition, to judge by the topless dancers they were enamored of and with which they covered their temples. I climbed the tower, but didn't find any evidence of a snake, so I guess she moved on.

I go back towards Bayon temple. On the way, I come to the central area of Angkor Thom. I see some horses grazing near the odd towers I saw before. The horses are used to draw carts of tourists. I get nearer to take some pictures of horses and ancient towers. Behind and somewhat hidden is a pool. The drivers bring their horses there to bathe them and let them drink. One man has a bag. The bag is hopping. It has a couple of frogs. The light is angled, the sky is clear. A tall tree with white bark, a clear slender trunk, and a crown of green towers above the man-made towers. One horse looks sickly and thin with ribs showing and protruding hips and it's not munching on the grass, but most are healthy. The men splash their horses with water. One man urges his horse all the way into the water. The horse hangs out there, bubbling with his mouth, like a child. These are stallions, not geldings. The horse comes out of the water and hangs out with another horse, they place their heads on eachothers' backs. Then they decide to both get in the water, ignoring the men for a moment. Back in the day, if two guys were in a dispute they locked them together for a few days in one of the towers standing around us and one man would come out with some sickness while the other would remain healthy--the healthy one was considered in the right.

I get to Bayon. It is a clear day and the sun will give good angled light. A couple of other photographers have the same idea. I usually don't copy shots, but there's this good photo of two faces and I figure I might as well try for it, but of course who ever came up with that framing first deserves the proper credit. At any rate, it is fun to walk around and look for other interesting angles. By the time I leave it is again just after dark and I am tired. I repeat the previous days' evening activities and dining etc., though this time I have a mango danish for desert. Yum.

My last day at Angkor--I had better get there for sunrise! I manage to wake at 0500, leave by 0520, and am at the temple by 0550. It is just getting light. There are already many tourists. A row of ticket checkers do their part, along with the stone men grasping the snake. We enter from the west entrance and cross the large moat surrounding the temple. Angkor Wat is said to be the largest religious building in the world and is supposed to be a representation of the universe. I skip the "sun-behind-Angkor-Wat" photo and go for a shot of the sun hitting Angkor from the east. Well, it isn't that dramatic. A stupa sits on the east side, with the only flowering bush in the temple growing next to it. It is a dreary, gray place. Is the universe really a monochromatic expanse of stone? The central tower is off limits. Inside, nearly all the sculptures have had their heads removed. Do the headless Buddhas live? I find a large Buddha that is worshiped. The light strikes the many incense sticks burnt in offering. Smoke curls from the sticks and disperses in the chamber. Light strikes the smoke and it glows against shadowed walls. I have found a perfect picture, though the end result falls short of the perfection I imagined. I wander around and find incredible carvings, of great battles and of the myth of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, in which demons and gods churn the sea to extract the elixir of life.

I am tired. I go for breakfast at the same food stall. I watch tourists come by and pay $1 for a can of coke. An Italian family pays $1 for 1/2 liter of water. They just don't realize if you smile and say you'll pay a reasonable price that you can usually negotiate something. At $1 for 1/2 liter they're paying about 14 times more than me: I'd be spending a fortune if I were paying that. It's also amazing to me that the Cambodians will sell water at this price with a straight face. Then I sit next to the large Buddha statue in the little monastery. I hope to chat with a monk, or at least to observe them a bit. After 20 minutes or so I figure I'll move on, when a friendly monk comes over and chats with me. We sit and chat for bit. His name's Som and he has been a monk at this monastery for 12 years. I ask him why he became a monk, he says because he liked it. His ability to answer a few of my questions is limited by his English. Another monk comes by and we chat. He's learning and teaching Japanese and gives a few example sentences. Som brings out some bamboo cards that are stacked together. He is writing out in Sanskrit with a sharp pencil. People come to the temple for a blessing. They put the cards over their head and drop a marker between the cards. A monk then reads them the blessing they marked. The monk doing the readings is old; his chest is covered with various tattoos. I ask Som what they are, are they Buddhist? His tuktuk driver friend says they're Cambodian protection against enemies so that their weapons miss him. I have just been reading a simple introduction to Buddhism, Buddhism Explained by Laurence-Khantipalo Mills, which says that Buddhists do not worship the Buddha but come to his image to affirm their commitment to the Dhamma; frankly, it all looks just like worship to me. Som says people come and ask Buddha for protection. So much for book knowledge. Trying to clear this up, I ask where is Buddha; probably the least useful question, and Som smiles and says his English isn't up to the task of explaining this. Som brings me rice ice cream in a baguette and a bunch of some 15 small bananas. He is generous. I give most of the bananas away along the way, the rest turn black and soft in the heat. I go back to Preah Khan and then to Ta Prohm. At Preah Khan I enjoy the ancient dream, where butterflies are not needed to connect worlds, yet they move through the crumbling towers with a chaotic fluidity I admire, like free water in a deep well. At Ta Prohm a kid wants to lead me to the "Tomb Raider" north gate; I decline.

I read in a newspaper clipping (after writing the above) that the Chinese have a saying that river water and well water do not mix, in a reference to global criticism of their human rights record in Tibet. Water in a river, water in a well: and yet, in my mind the water is free, in the well. There is no connection.

According to a video documentary I watch at the guest house the Angkor kingdom were finally done in when the Thais were pushed south by the Mongols. I bet it was more than that (culture/economics/environment too). Our only written record is from the journal of a Chinese traveler who spent a year visiting the kingdom. They had very skilled carvers and builders and lots of topless dancers. It's pretty clear the kings figured they were gods, they're referred to as god-kings. They built a giant reservoir with no outlet--for no apparent reason. They built giant, I mean giant, walls all around their big temples and a city the video said had 1 million people. It's astonishing the labor they could command. Only the kings were allowed to live in stone structures but the peasants lived in houses that sound like what they live in today, according to the Chinese journal, on stilts to handle the massive flooding. The documentary says that the Khmer Rouge prevented the people from continuing their traditional dance, but that now the dance is being passed on to the next generation.

Many things are left out of the official guides. The delight of the bathing horses, who are so happy to be in the water, or the bamboo traps for frogs who are less satisfied when they discover the mystery of plastic bags. Insects of red and black that crowd on trees, like tourists with yellow VIP cards. Red ants carrying moths across an endless expanse of displaced stones and bees that live in hollow roots. People in stalls and those who call out, mango, pineapple, beneath a giant spreading tree, the children who chase you, who cannot be patient with them? They play in the ruins, with faces powdered white, they pester with cards, paper cranes. Butterflies move in the ruins and cicadas are loud in the trees. I stop at a gate and find women collecting red ants. There are disturbed ants all over the ground. They tap nests from their place in trees into a basket on a long pole, frequently tapping the pole with a long knife to dislodge ants rapidly charging up the pole. We stomp our feet. They dump the ants into a bucket with water. One of them shows me how they eat the grubs, I ask for one, it pops juicily and nearly tastelessly in my mouth. I think of these ruins of Angkor, like many others, as in the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley's. Everything man has built decays. The kings of Angkor commanded great resources and flaunted their wealth, but to what ends? A spear is passed through the throat of a victim, the sea is churned. Dubai is building great buildings in the desert. Let someone visit in 10 or 15 centuries and see what remains. Will the sea have risen, will the sands have blasted the steel and glass?

One of my last memories of Angkor is of biking back from the temples, hurrying before the sun sets, back toward the main Angkor Wat temple. Two men on motorcycles were stopped by the road. Three pink pigs were strapped to the back of one motorcycle. One man was tightening the ropes holding the pigs down. The other man, the driver of the motorcycle with the pigs, was standing by and chatting with someone down the road. Both men were laughing about whatever it was they were chatting about. At first it seemed comical as I snapped a few pictures, the pigs upside down, strapped in, their black eyes bulging out. As the ropes were tightened one of the pigs was squealing. It seemed terrified. As the rope tightened it looked like it may have been hurting it, as it jabbed into its side and compressed its ribs.

My last day is spent organizing 20 days worth of photographs. I would like to burn DVDs but they charge too much. Their normal price is $4! I negotiated $1 to burn on my own disk, but they still wanted $2 per blank generic DVD, something worth about $0.10. I tried to find my own DVDs, but the only shop I could find wanted $2 per TDK 16x DVD, an item worth maybe $0.25, for which I offered $0.50. Burning DVDs is so random. The guy at the Internet shop is chattie. Last night he told me about how food prices have increased a lot, chicken is $4/kg and even rice has doubled in price. He says restaurants pay $1 commission for each customer a tuktuk driver brings in. I ask him what a diagram, which is covered with writings and images similar to those on the monk, above the shop door is and he says it's a kind of Cambodian "witch" craft written in ancient Angkor script. For my last meal I splurge: $2! I have spicy beef in soursop, though the beef is not very spicy it is still tasty, and tough as all beef I've had in Cambodia. Then I have the last mango danish. Yum. I can't imagine what I would have done had they been sold out of mango danish! Walking back, I ask the price of a tuktuk to the airport: $5, no $4. Whatever. I only ask if they bug me, which tuktuk drivers here invariable do. They'll even clap their hands to get your attention. In the morning one of them did this, I got annoyed, but decided to joke with him; I high-five him. I ask how many km per liter they get, I am given different answers: I have been told 10 km/L, 20 km/L, or 50 km/L. A driver says it depends on the type of moto. I think it is important to know for negotiating a fair tuktuk price for a temple tour (I tried to get a ride out to Banteay Srei, said to have great carvings, but the driver wanted too much).

I walk back toward my GH. A tuktuk driver drives up, asks if I want a tuktuk, I say not now, he says do I want lady-friend, I say not that kind, he chuckles, says he knows good lady friend, drives on. I find a tuktuk driver next to my GH and tell him to pick me up at 0530 the next morning. He asks only $2 for a ride to the airport. His English is poor so I have him come to the GH with me and ask the man there to explain what I need. I am a bit worried that the driver may be unreliable or won't know the way. He shows up exactly at 0530, takes me straight to the airport in 15 minutes! He's the best tuktuk driver I'd had. I check-in, pay my $25 exit tax, ignore the overpriced food, and wait in the one-terminal airport of Siem Reap. Jetstar crams 180 of us into reasonably comfortable seats--no business or first-class sections. We leave the gate on schedule at 0750, take off at 0800, I decline the exorbitantly rip-off priced drinks and foods offered in flight (unlike at a food stall, bargaining probably wouldn't work here), we arrive 15 minutes early in Singapore at 1055, are at the gate at 1100, I clear immigration at 1115, spend ten minutes figuring out how to get out of the airport, change a few baht, buy an MRT (train) pass for SGD$15, and get to the Inn Crowd hostel around 1245. I have come to the right place: a cat is lounging on the counter. I change a few dollars and bhat at a money changer (wow, the dollar sucks!), eat an overpriced Thali in the "little India" section where I'm staying, and write this blog entry to avoid the mid-day heat. And now I'm typing this sentence. Oh, stop that!

Som nang la-ah (good luck to you).