Angkor Wat. The largest temple complex on earth. UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built over 30 years in the 12th century by Khmer King Suryavarman II as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. It is considered an archaeological and artistic masterpiece. There are causeways, elevated towers, five main towers, covered colonnades, chambers, courtyards, and walkways on different levels linked by staircases. Oh, the stairs! It felt like we walked thousands of steps, but it was probably only a few hundred. The tropical heat made it quite uncomfortable. Everywhere you looked on this vast complex, you saw etchings and artwork and repeating scrolls and statues and deities. Not a single piece of stone was left undecorated. That is saying something on a site that covers over 400 acres!

In the first three photos you can see the long approach to the main temple. After that are some photos of the moat surrounding the site….get this: the moat is 650 feet wide and circles a distance of 3.5 miles! It is humanmade, not natural, and is just huge, today filled with fish and turtles. Do you see the bridge across the moat? That shot almost looks like somewhere in Florida, but it is a huge linked-together pontoon bridge! Yep, it bobs up and down with your footsteps as you walk and is kind of spongy, but a great idea for getting across the moat.

The rest of the photos are just various scenes from around Angkor Wat. You will notice a few decapitated statues…many of them were! There were many depictions of goddesses, and a gorgeous bas relief history and mythology of Cambodia that extended on the walls forever along several galleries. There were monkeys there, of course, playing with each other. The original stone staircases up to the top of the temple had deteriorated, so you can see the new staircase…with handrails! Even so, it was quite steep both to ascend and descend. And, even though there were many people there, the complex is so large that you only encountered other people in the most popular places…the rest of the site almost seemed deserted, yet very calm and quiet. Having visited so many museums, castles, and heritage sites, it is incredible to us that once you enter the grounds (the day pass for the area’s temples is $37), you can literally go anywhere, walk anywhere, climb on anything, do what you wish. There are no guards watching or scolding. Amazing!

Beginning with the large stone-faced entrance monument, these seven photos are from nearby Ta Prohm Temple. Because it was not built with the same, stronger stone that built Angkor Wat, many of the walls have fallen into heaps of jumbled stone. As you can also see, trees have grown through the temple over the century. There is even a brace holding up the elevated tree roots!

Our impression of Cambodia is how very, very poor it seems…each store and home is tiny, and most of what you see riding around is agricultural fields and forests, which is typical of most of the country, as 80 percent of the population farms for a living. We were told by a local that it is a very corrupt country. We told him our story upon arrival in the airport yesterday: there were the inevitable long lines for passport control, which we reluctantly joined, but knew we had no choice. The line had barely moved after 10 minutes, but we kept seeing signs about visas. Up until now, in every country we visited, no visa was required for Americans for stays under a month, except Australia, which we had procured online. So, Mike went to ask a uniformed employee if we needed a visa. Sure enough, the man told us to get out of line and “follow him.” We did, walking through the passport area that said, “Diplomats Only.” He told us the visas were $30 per person (oddly, everything is priced in US dollars, even though there is a Cambodian rial), and asked for the money and our passports, instructing to wait right where we were…just behind the customs and passport control desk, saying that we were “VIPs.” Mike gave him a $100 bill. The line we had been in still looked like it hadn’t moved at all. In about 10 minutes, he came back with our passports sporting newly-stamped visas. He was holding up a $20 bill in each hand (our $40 change), and he asked, “Something for ME?” He had saved us about an hour in line, so Mike snatched one of the $20 bills and let him keep the other, and we said thank you and were on our way. As we walked past the passport/visa line to find our tuk tuk (see the last photo) that we had ordered from the Uber-like site, Grab, we noticed that the line still hadn’t appeared to have moved. We thought of the advantages of “gentle corruption.” In a less corrupt country, like the US, Germany, or Singapore, we still would have been in that line and would have ridden to the hotel during the worst of the approaching storm.

When we got out of the building and started looking for our tuk tuk, the driver texted us that he wasn’t allowed to pick up on the airport property and we would have to meet him on the public street. No doubt the taxi union has the government do them the favor of banning rideshare companies from the airports….an altogether different type of corruption, and one that is still present in seemingly “less corrupt” countries.

The Siem Reap Airport is small, so the walk to the street didn’t take long. Our driver met us right at the entrance and were soon on our way, driving through the as-yet light rain, before the torrential downpour. All in all, we would consider the two forms of corruption at the airport a net advantage, $20 and all.

Street Food Tour 2019, via the year 1919! Everything available 100 years ago, and cooked as it was 100 years ago, was on the menu last night as we toured around and in Chinatown. But the first stop was, as with everything in Bangkok, a Buddhist Temple….the Golden Buddha Temple Syelendra. Inside is housed a 6-ton golden Buddha, which was concealed with plaster for 200 years to hide its true value.

After that is a photo down the main drag in Chinatown, with the already-not-very-wide streets cordoned off to set up….food stands. We passed hundreds of them, most involving rice in some form, and lines in front of many of them. Our tour guide, Alex, knew the tastiest and most popular dishes, and deftly guided us through the mobs to attain our Foodie Nirvana. First, though, photos of some of the narrow alleyways of Chinatown, empty markets that bustle in early morning but look forlorn at night, and just before the food photos, an abandoned, moldy-surface hotel where it is said people died from drug overdoses and other…things. Alex said it might be haunted, as women have been seen staring out the windows, and he has been thinking about adding a haunted sites tour to his itinerary. Most of these places sure were creepy, but they are in Alex’s hometown and stomping grounds, so we felt (mostly) safe.

On to the food! In order, you can see excellent satay with peanut sauce; then, a dessert soup, flavorful ginger broth with sesame balls…when bitten into, the balls tasted like exploding peanut butter in your mouth! After that is a surprise!…Michelin-rated Thai donuts with a coconut dipping sauce that was just heavenly – word was out, though, as the line waiting for this delicious treat was extremely long. The photo of what looks like tacos were amazing to taste, as they are called, for lack of a better translation, Thai pancakes. What looks like grated cheese is sweetened pumpkin, and what looks like sour cream is a coconut marshmallow-y cream. The “taco shells” are very very thin and crisp crepe-like pancakes, and it all works together very well. The last of the foods we ate is extremely popular here…sticky rice and mango. The sticky rice has sweetened coconut milk in it, and with the fresh mango, it is simple and so, so good.

Okay, on to the most interesting part of the evening! You can see salted fish being grilled, and then what looks like an attack of alien lobsters! And, oh yes, the stand with insects of all kinds….roasted worms, larvae, grasshoppers, and scorpions on a stick. We watched a couple order a scorpion and proceed to give it to their little girl like they were presenting her with a lollipop. As you can see in the photo, she put it up to and around her mouth while everyone took photos. Then, the vendor asked for it back, ripped off the stinger, and gave it back to her. The girl wasn’t particularly horrified by the scorpion itself…just sort of indifferent. The couple also ordered a bowl of grasshoppers, of which you can see a close-up. I said to the woman, do you like eating them? She made a face and said, they are terrible…they are for my husband! Our guide Alex asked if any of the four of us on the tour wanted to try a grasshopper, and we all declined, grimacing. But then brave Lauren, an ER doctor in New York City, said she was game! She held the roasted grasshopper-on-a-stick, peered at it, gulped a little, and asked if she should bite some off. Alex said, just go for it….ALL of it! She said, so you just want me to eat the whole thing all at once!??? Yes! So you can see the six photos of the evolution of her getting it into her mouth, chewing, and swallowing. In the fourth photo in the sequence, you can see a little bit of grasshopper leg sticking out. What a sport! She said it mostly tasted like soy sauce, was quite crunchy, and wasn’t so bad. We reminded her that she was eating lungs, heart, brains, its digestive tract, etc., and she said….ugh, don’t tell me that before I’ve even swallowed!

It was a fun, and interesting, night. Except for the bugs, everything was “normal” food…chicken, pork, donuts, soup, fruit, lots of rice and coconut, salad. All dishes could be made more or less spicy, depending on taste. We all tried the Thai hot chilies, and they left some burn in your mouth, but weren’t too bad overall. And again, they were present on all the tables so that you could add them as you wished. This was our 25th food tour in cities around the world, and like all of them, the guides really work hard at diversity and local, unique dishes that taste good. A great way to see, and eat your way through, a city.

There are no words. Mind-boggling is too understated. Fantastic, magnificent, stupendous, outstanding…are all too weak. We commented that the Grand Palace in Bangkok makes Liberace look modest, and plain. Everywhere you looked inside the compound, there was (genuine, 24-karat) gold and gold leaf, statues (many repeated a hundred times around the base of a building), glass tiles, roofs with ornamentation, little shrines, small showcases, spires, temples, intricate detail, frescoes, protector gods, mosaics, carved entrance doors, painted porcelain, Chinese cherry tree tiles, color color and more color, and oh, yes, people….thousands of them. What a day! It was a privilege to walk the grounds and gape at everything this site has to offer. Even the trash cans were decorative! There was a graduation class mugging for the many cameras trained on them, thousands of photos, thousands of selfies, life…life…life! It was exhilarating. Just look at the images! Beautiful! Photography was not allowed inside the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, but it contained all gold ornamentation and fixtures, and enshrined a Buddha carved from a single piece of jade that dates back to the 14th century. After all the temples and shrines, we came to the actual palace and government buildings. That’s when we started seeing more and more guards.

The palace dates to 1782, and was home to Siamese kings for 150 years. Many of the buildings were not accessible, but the war ministry, department of state, and even the mint was inside the walls of the complex. The site is the spiritual heart of the Thai people and is used today for ceremonial and religious purposes. Several spots were for “Thai people only.”

We actually tried to see the palace yesterday, but found that we were improperly dressed. Shorts, tank tops, tight jeans, and flip flops are not allowed, nor sandals without socks. They send you into a building where you can “rent” proper attire for a few dollars. Instead, we opted to return today, dressed appropriately. Entrance is steep, for Thailand: about $16 per person. This is entirely within the bounds of entrance fees for the world’s major museums and sites, of course, but everything else in Thailand is exceedingly inexpensive.

Yesterday we wound up at Wat Mahathat, wat being the local term for temple. After the photos of the Royal Residence, the first photo from yesterday is the Naga Buddha, where Buddha is being protected by a seven-headed snake (with a cool red mouth!) called Mucilanda. As you can see, we were delighted by the many, many gold Buddhas and the light fixtures…a light is not just a light, it is a work of art! The inside was very quiet, and you can see a monk praying in front of the large Buddha.

We have been experimenting with different forms of transportation. We tried a river taxi yesterday for 50 cents per ride, but it did not announce each stop, was jammed with people, and we never knew what was going on. We tried Asia’s version of Uber, called Grab, and it worked fine the first two times at a good price, but then failed yesterday when they said none were available and this morning, when we had to walk quite a few blocks to where the driver parked. When we tried taxis they didn’t want to turn on their meters, just negotiate a price, but they were on the high side. So, we have ended up with traditional tuk tuks a couple of times, although each time we had to negotiate to not be taken to other attractions and not be taken to a jewelry shop, where, according to the driver, “all you do is look around for 5 minutes and I get free coupons for gas!” In other words, the drivers get kickbacks for bringing in unsuspecting tourists to buy junk. It is said that tuk tuks are the most fun you can have on three wheels! No trip to Bangkok would be complete without trying one. The first time they were quite insistent on the shopping trip….until we walked away. Then they quit pushing the shopping and just negotiated over the direct ride to the hotel. We thought it might be too hot to ride without air conditioning, but the open-air vehicles provided a nice breeze. So today, we walked up to a tuk tuk and said, here is our offer: no shopping stops, just return to our hotel for the same price as we paid for one last night. The driver capitulated immediately. He is shown in the last photo. Of course, the forerunner to the tuk tuks was a rickshaw, then there were rickshaws attached to bicycles, and the motorized tuk tuk was introduced in the 1960s. The best thing is that they can move through heavy traffic much better than a car, as ours occasionally drove on the other side of the road to get around congestion. It didn’t work quite as well as a simple motorcycle, but it was close. If we had gotten into a head-on collision, what a way to go!….having a ball on three wheels!

We thought we would spend our first day in Bangkok just walking around the area of our hotel, getting the lay of the land, and taking it easy, as there is a 2-hour time difference from Seoul, and we are still a little “off.” We walked into the mall next door, ICONSIAM, and were just shocked and delighted by how they had redefined the mall concept. Walk with us through our photos, as we start at a gorgeous teak wood-designed market section, with a low ceiling, fruit stands, lanterns, and an artificial stream with small kiosks that look like floating boats. Street food booths were set up along the walkway with some very, very inexpensive foods. We are talking, food prices from 1950! There were small chicken kabobs for 16 cents each. Most of the meals in restaurants along here were $4-6. Out on the street, they were selling corn dogs on a stick for 15 cents, while styrofoam takeout boxes jammed with rice, chicken, and salad went for 32 cents.

After that portion of the mall, it opened up a bit, starting with the elephants, and here come the upscale retailers: Gucci, Apple, Bally, and local companies. Every floor had something different to gawk at. We both said that this was the sort of retail space we thought we might see in Tokyo, but we didn’t encounter anything this lovely and interesting there. One floor housed a cineplex, and most of the movies were American in their original English, but with Thai subtitles. A lot of people who travel don’t think about seeing movies, just seeing the local sights. But over the years, we have found that you just can’t go all day, every day, You need some rest time. That is where movies are great, as you can sit in the dark for a few hours and rest your feet. The one time we don’t mind paying to see commercials is when they are in a culture foreign to us. The ads are in the local language, of course, and are sometimes hilarious…very simple and innocent, somehow. And they are a great insight into the culture. It is often a mental exercise trying to figure out what they are advertising as you watch it, and sometimes it ends and you still have no idea what they were selling. Blue jeans? Skin cream? Cell phone service? Cars? We have probably seen about a dozen movies in Asia this year, and the price is typically around $6. Popcorn and soda are about $3 each. A bargain!

Following the mall photos are a few views of the Chao Phraya River, taken from a terrace cafe on one of the upper floors. The river runs through the center of Bangkok and certainly is a part of the city’s vivacity. Do you see the skyscraper that looks like it is falling apart? That is the King Power MahaNakhon residential towers, the tallest building in Thailand, at 1,031 feet. Opened in 2016, it was designed with a spiral “helix” cut into the sides, creating many more units with balconies for views of the city. The Ritz Carlton owns 200 units in the building that sell for between US $1.1 and 17 million. The next to last last photo is some very happy ice cream that we encountered! And the last photo is fun…at the airport in Seoul yesterday was this happy robot walking around with gate and flight info on its belly. If you scanned your boarding pass, s/he gave you gate info and the status of your flight. It was neat.

As we walked around, we discovered a Thai massage shop across the street. We had seen a question posed on the Internet, “where can I find cheap Thai massage in Bangkok?” One answer was, “asking THAT is like asking, where can I find some rice in China?” Anyway, massages there are $8 per hour. We joked that we would just go in for 8 hours some day, and let them send in different masseuses as shifts changed and people went to lunch. If you have never had a Thai massage, it is heaven. You don a light shirt and short pants and lay on a mattress on the floor. No oil is involved. Rather, the whole experience is lovely pressure, pressing, stretching, walking on your back (yes, they are very petite and light), elbows being nuzzled into your back and legs, all followed by a scalp massage. A tour guide once described Thai massage as being like yoga, but they do all the work for you. They stretch you in ways you never knew you could be stretched. It is the most relaxing hour of your life. So, yes, we indulged…and made another appointment for tomorrow! We may have one every day, in fact. $8!!!!

Pomp and circumstance! Fabulous costumes! Colorful flags with dragons and tigers! Weapons! A marching band! And, all at a palace….Gyeongbokgung, in northern Seoul. There traditionally were five palaces in Seoul, with Gyeongbokgung being the most northerly and the largest. First built in 1395, it served as home to the kings of the Joseon Empire. The premises were destroyed by fire in the Imjin War of 1592-1598, and the palace was abandoned for two centuries. In the 19th century, some 500 buildings were restored as well as all of the palace’s 7,700 rooms. But, under the Imperial Japanese occupation in the 20th century, almost all of the palace was systematically destroyed. It has only been since 1990 that a 40-year restoration plan has been in place, with all of our photos of the gates and the main palace being of the re-creations.

We were there for the changing of the guard ceremony, which takes place with full pomp and regalia twice a day. There is a photo of the giant drum that announces the commencement of the ceremony, then a marching band and the guards with flags, scimitars, colorful costumes, and bows and arrows. At the end of those photos is a short video of a small part of the ritual.

Many, many people were dressed in traditional Korean period costumes called hanbok. The palace is surrounded by many shops where they can be rented for a few hours fairly cheaply: $5 per hour, with a minimum of 4 hours. You can see people in hanboks in many of our photos. An added bonus: if dressed in one, entrance to the palace is free (although normal admission is only $3).

After all the excitement and color at the palace, we went looking for some traditional Korean chicken. We found it in the alley that you can see…they all seem to have a tangle of overhead wires and cables, although this one had lanterns strung the entire length as well. All of the restaurants and stores were tiny, but look at the decorations and hangings. The one that says PVC on top has miles of PVC elbows and joints, as you can see! We loved the photo of the noodle bowl….the chopsticks filled with noodles move up and down! Oh, and speaking of chopsticks, we want to note that while tables are set with forks and knives, in most places, chopsticks are also available, and everything is eaten with them, including noodle soup, and yesterday at breakfast…a chocolate croissant, sandwiched inside two chopsticks, eaten in many small bites! Every morning at breakfast, there is a station where you can have omelettes and eggs made to order. Can you believe….the chefs make omelettes with chopsticks? They put your requested fillings in the pan with chopsticks, then add the eggs. They then scramble it all very fast with chopsticks, and rather than flipping the omelette, as would be done in the West, they quickly roll it to one side of the omelette pan, so that it is shaped like an omelette due to the rounded edge of the pan. They cook it a while, flip it in the air, cook it some more, and slide it onto your plate….a perfectly shaped omelette, made with chopsticks! So interesting.

The last photo is a little poignant for us…we are 9,645 km (5,993 miles) away from our former home in California. But, we get to be in a new home every few weeks! Of course, now that we know our way around Seoul a bit and found a favorite Mexican restaurant and a favorite BBQ restaurant, it is time to depart, in less than 48 hours. Look for our next post from Thailand!

We present….the unusual, different, sometimes gross, but always interesting sights of Bujeon Market. But it could be almost any market in Asia, where living, once-living, and agricultural products are laid out and sold. It seemed that 80 percent of this market was seafood and more seafood, so the first photos start with once-alive (most likely recently alive) fish, squid, octopus, clams, mussels, crab, shrimp, and sardines. Then we graduate to the still-alive, with living octopi in a basin aerated with a soda bottle’s help and some eels that looked like sea snakes. After that, yummy pig’s feet and a pig’s head, unfortunately caught with a woman’s head, but she was very much alive. My grandfather was a butcher, and a favorite dish back in the day was pig’s feet jelly, eaten with boiled potatoes and vinegar. I was afraid of the pointed hooves as a child, but my grandfather would pick off small pieces of the hooves’ tender pork for me, and it was delicious.

Next….very much alive, wriggling, squirming silkworms! Apparently, they are delicious deep fried with lemon and pepper, taste like roasted almonds, and they help hurting shoulders and necks…so, if you ache….. After that, here comes the garlic! Just look at all the bunches ($10 a bunch) and how they wrap around the corner. What in the world does one do with this much garlic? One bunch would last us the rest of our lives. Ay!

Then we passed a local Dunkin’ Donuts, and were amazed by the local flavors of donuts….Tornado Potato Donut, Ugly Potato Ring, and Black Sugar Chewing Donut. Local branding is so colorful and so much fun to look at! Following the donuts are two overview photos of the market, followed by the subway station closest to us that took us to the downtown area. As you can see, there wasn’t another human being in the entire station. We were alone. It looked like they were ready to film a movie there, having gotten rid of everybody!

We end with our amusing photo of the day…the seat for the pregnant woman. Sounds like there is only one in the entire city, huh? We first sat there until we noticed the sign, then moved. There were two pregnant seats in our subway car for the one pregnant woman, and guess who ended up sitting in them? Of course…an old, old man and an old, old woman!