Elad’s blog

The summary of my Cambodian visit is as follows: a beautiful 3rd world country, with 1st world prices. I met nice people, saw incredible sights, and had a wonderful time. The bus thingy was a wise decision, it added much to my Cambodian stop-over. I could stay at Angkor for another day, but I had to reschedule my flights, which couldn’t be done from Siem-Riep. Any way, I saw the main attractions Angkor has to offer.
Cambodia is much poorer than Thailand. Everybody is trying to sell things in u.s.dollars rather than Rials, because that way they screw the tourist with exchange rates. Another major difference is that in Thailand the Tuk-Tuk driver seat is located under the safety arch, so the driver is both protected and has shadow; in Cambodia they still didn’t think about it, so the Tuk-Tuk drivers remain unprotected and in the sun, as if they were driving a normal motocycle.
Apart from this, the culture is very similar, only that Thailand is half western and much cheaper.
Because I had to find an open travel agency in Bangkok, I had to fly back to Bangkok, rather than taking a boat to the Thai border and than a bus, as I considered. The plane was half empty, and half loaded with Japanese. As it was landing, the usual anouncement that asks us to remain seated until the plane full stops was heard. As a result, all the Japanese remained seated in their place, even after the plane doors opened and until the waitress (waitress? what’s the correct word for DAYELET?) shouted at them to leave the plane. It was very amusing - so different from all the other flights I’ve seen!
I arrived at Bangkok at noon, went straight to Cathay Pacific office and arranged my tickets. Now I have another day in Thailand, so I’m going to see the ceremonies tomorrow. I hope it will worth it!
I also walked around a bit: Siam center, the Israeli area (HABAD house etc.), and a few less known temples. Of course all active temples are filled with gold Budhas and stuff, but the interesting thing was the wall paintings and carpets.

In medieval Europe, many people did not know to read. This was one of the main reasons to covering the churches with statues: people learned biblical stories through statues describing biblical scenes. Looking at active budhistic Watts today, I couldn’t avoid the similarity: the walls of all the temples are covered with paintings or carpets (surprisingly, no statues) describing Budha’s life and heritage in various ways: Budha teaching at the forest, Budha on the river, Budha doing this and Budha doing that. All the carpets are very beautiful (as expected from religeous works), and cover the inside of all the temple walls, just by the galleries (for those readers who haven’t been in a budhistic temple for a while: all the temples are built like two concentric rectangles, the inner one is the main pray area and always have on one wall a large Budha to which everyone prays, and in the corridors that are formed between the inner rectangle and the outer one there are many Budha sculptures, most of them made from gold, to which the believers can bring goods and donations). The galleries themselves are full, of course, of Budha sculptures at various positions.

Tomorrow I’m going to do an essential temple-tour, probably again at the king’s palace and in some temples I missed on my previous visit to Bangkok. I may pay a visit to their national museum, to see if they have something other than temples (anybody knows if it’s worth a visit?); or maybe just walk around the streets, like I’m going to do now - I’m on my way to China-Town!

Two last things: a) Dad, thanks for the advices regarding Cambodia. They proved useful.
b) Does anybody know where is the backpacker area in Hong-Kong? Maybe even the name of a good guesthouse? Right now I have no idea to where to go from HongKong airport - this adds more taste to the adventure!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 at 14:54 and is filed under Travels, Cambodia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.