hola compadres... a word of warning: this is going to be a long entry. as bill belichick would say, "it is what it is..." this entry is going to encompass two major events on our journey thus far: the agonizing bus ride from bangkok to the cambodian border and the assorted shenanigans associated with that, culminating in our ultimate victorious arrival in siem reap; the second part of this entry is going to cover the magnificent temples of angkor wat, the ruin to which these iconic buildings fell during the khmer rouge regime, and their gradual rebirth into bastions of capitalism and domestic pride. i hope that made sense.
so every backpacker who rolls through southeast asia goes to cambodia for one thing and one thing only: to see angkor wat. for those of you who havent heard of angkor wat, do a quick google search and you will inevitably see some stunning photographs of these ancient buddhist temples. they were constructed between the 9th and 11th centuries by the powerful, yet peaceful angkor people of that region. the angkors created a society so sophisticated and forward-thinking that it rivals the great ancient civilizations that we learn about in school, like the aztecs, incans, mayans, sumerians, egyptians, phonecians, rome, etc.
(side note: the reason why we dont learn about ancient angkor in school is the same reason why the international community ignored a heinous genocide that took place in cambodia in the late 70's: the people have dark skin and the land has no profitable natural resources. the reason why we learn about the aztecs, incans, mayans, and other south american civilizations is because of their proximity to us; we learn about the ancient european and african civs because their roles in history (our version of history, that is) are secured in our history books.)
the ankgors are widely recognized as amazing architects and scholars; the walls of the temple are adorned with intricate fresco-like carvings, all unique, all depicting events in history, all praising buddha. it's really a site to see. (go ahead, search google images for "angkor wat".... i know you want to.)
anyway, that's the lead in to the first part of this entry: the journey by bus from the modernities and excess of bangkok to the poverty and starvation that is cambodia.
originally, we were going to fly or maybe take a train from bangkok to siem reap. on the map, the journey appears simple. the two cities are perhaps only 225 km from each other. we figured that by bus, it could only possibly take maybe 8 hours, including the time it took to cross the border and get our visas, et cetera. skye and his dad went to the travel agency to book a flight. the travel agent quoted a price of $300. papa skee thought that the price was for 3 people; it turned out to only be for one person. with the flight out of the question, skeelow and his dad somehow negotiated a $30 a person bus ride. the travel agent told us that we had to be ready outside of our hotel at 8 the next morning and that the journey would take upwards of 12 hours.
unfazed by this, they booked the bus and we waited the next morning until about 830 for the bus to come and get us. the first part of the trip went very well. we were in a small shuttle with about 10 other people and the AC worked extremely well.
skye and i took turns (between the rest stops) sitting next to this german guy named jurgen. what a character! so jurgen is a depraved homosexual (we think) who is on a 30-day visitation visa for thailand. in order to preserve his perverted lifestyle (complete with ladyboys, we think), jurgen had to make this special trip, just to cross the border to cambodia, get a stamp, and to come back to thailand -- presumably to carry on with whatever the hell he does there for another 30 days. the funny thing is, it took him a very long time to articulate this to us.
another thing about jurgen, besides the fact that he wasnt actually going to siem reap, was that he listened to the most outrageous europop music, turned up all the way in his headphones. so everyone had no problem hearing avril levene (i have no fucking clue how to spell that bitch's name, and i dont care enough to look it up...suffice it to say that i know that the spelling is off here) belt out 'complicated' or some german dj screaming out "gangster" over and over and over. jurgen would rock back and forth, eyes closed, mouthing the words, basically rocking out in the middle of this shuttle full of assorted tourists. it made me a bit uncomfortable, to say the least.
the other people on the bus were equally interesting. there were two guys from canada who had super-strong canadian accents -- like we're talking cartoon style. they were also such fucking stereotypical canadians, it wasnt even funny. actually, it was pretty funny. they would carry on conversations like:
gilbert: you guys are from california, eh? thats a beautiful place, eh? i took my daughter to go visit disneyland. in canada, we dont have big amusement parks like you do in the states.
his fat friend: ive got a daughter as well. 14 years old, eh? you guys are goin' against to flow; in canada, we work together....maybe thats just a canadian thing.... if i get stuck at the border because of you, im goin' to be pissed off, eh? in canada, we don't fuckin ---
gilbert: hey! don't you say the f-word!
his fat friend: i will say it! im all turned inside out, eh?!
gilbert: don't you get mouthy! im sorry, i apologize for my lippy friend. lets have a beer, eh?
his fat friend: i'll say what i want, eh? these guys dont understand how it is in canada! they're all a bunch of selfish babies!
gilbert: hey! do you have blood in your mouth, eh?
his fat friend: i will not bite my tongue! im tellin' you, if these guys hold me up, im goin to be majorly pissed off, eh?!
me: WE'RE NOT IN FUCKING CANADA ANYMORE, DOROTHY! SHUT YOUR FUCKING TRAP, YOU FUCKING HOSER!!
(actually, i didnt say that; he was a really big and sweaty guy of about 50 who could have undoubtedly ripped both of my arms off. i would have liked to have seen papa skee take this guy on in some sort of deathmatch though.... i think papa skee would have housed him.)
that previous conversation is about 75% accurate; the reason why the fat guy was so pissed off at us is where all of the madness begins.
so what we didnt know about the bus ride and the border crossing is that it is all a big scam for the thai guides and bus people to make a ton of money. just before we got to the cambodian border, we stopped to have lunch at this really sweet spot that had lots of mosquitoes and really heavy wooden chairs. after eating some chicken pad thai and drinking some beer chang, we were summarily asked to fill out our visa forms, give them two separate passport photos, and to also pay them 40 bucks. this is when the shit hit the fan.
skye read in his lonely planet book that the visa was 20 bucks. we tried to get visas online, but didnt. the price online was 25 bucks. now these people are asking us for 40 bucks so they can stamp our shit and walk us right through? sounds like a bunch of crock to me.... so basically, we sat through about 20 minutes of straight up lying by the guys, trying to extort money from us. in the end, everyone paid the 40 bucks except for me, skye, papa skee, and this chinese-australian guy with perhaps the best name ive ever heard: chengus -- pronounced just like it looks "chong-gus". one word. classic. he also had the perfect sydney accent and basically didnt ever say a word unless he had to. talking to that guy was like pulling teeth from an musk ox.
we get to the border after the fat canadian basically threatened our lives and it turns out that we were 100% correct. the visa forms they gave us were bogus. the visas themselves cost 20-25 bucks (we had to pay the extra westerners tax) and everyone who had paid the dudes had to wait in line, just like everyone else. the only difference was that we were doing it the legit way by actually going to the visa office at the border, paying them, and getting our visas. it turns out that we only needed one passport photo and had to fill out an entirely new form. what do you think those guys from the bus do with all of that information on the bogus forms? they have your passport number, your picture, and other relevant information. they must be peddling fake passports. it just has to be.
long story short: we get into this massive line to cross the border that was inching up bit by bit. and who do we see just a few people in front of us? our bus group, who we had left to go get our legit visas. no one seemed very happy. we nestled in behind the last guy and waited for our turns in line. the guys from the bus must have paid someone there to hold us up, because the officer looked at my passport about 100 times for about 10 minutes after the last person from our group went through. after getting outside, we realized that we had been left. it was just chengus sitting there, motionless, expressionless, devoid of any sort of human emotion. i asked him what had happened. he shrugged.
we had to take a bus from the border in poipet to the bus depot to take buses to siem reap. this is another scam. first this dude gets on the bus and tries to upsell you to a taxi. for $15 a person, you can take a taxi, which is faster and less disgusting. (we had been promised air conditioning and a bathroom on our bus by the thai travel agents, but we were holding no illusions at this point that our bus would even run.) then the dude tells us that there is a legit money changing place right next to the bus depot that we could go to to change our money into cambodian 'riel'.
the exchange rate was criminal; our buddy changed $300 and only got around $105 in riel. what a rip! they know that you dont know what the exchange rate is, so they gouge you big time. the bus depot was just this big room with all these dudes in it trying to get you to take a taxi. eventually, we were able to talk to someone in the know. she called some people on her cell phone (a big deal item here) and they begrudgingly agreed to let us on the next bus because we still had a receipt for our bus tickets. we were made to put on bright colored stickers for reasons i still do not know and we waited for about 2 hours in the depot until a bus arrived. by that time, there were loads of fellow travelers out there also getting ripped off. after a lot of deliberation and negotiation and basically screaming our heads off, we were allowed on this bus. after some more shenanigans, we were off.
the road from poipet to siem reap is perhaps the most traveled road in all of cambodia, with everyone doing to bangkok to siem reap to phnom penh to fly somewhere else circuit. knowing this, im sure it would surprise you to learn that the road is absolutely unpaved. the bus could only go about 15 mph, tops. all around, there are major detours and holes and people -- anything you can imagine -- in the way.
(side note: there is a pretty well-documented rumor that accuses a major thai airline of bribing the cambodian government so that the road is never finished. they have a monopoly on the bangkok to siem reap route -- hence the outrageous $300 flight we were quoted. thats just one example of the rampant corruption that exists here in southeast asia. in cambodia, you can kill someone and get away scot free for a $25 bribe. im serious.)
the bus ride was the most harrowing experience of my life. because the road is unpaved, all traffic kicks up this fine dust that blankets everything. the was no AC and no bathroom on the bus, obviously, so we had to ride with the windows open. no fun. every 10 seconds or so, the bus driver would slam on the horn so people would get out of the way. there were pickup trucks full of over 20 people cruising down this road. women, children, workers, everyone just rode in this dustbowl. along the way, the poverty slams you in the face like a 2-ton wrecking ball. people are so poor, they sleep in piles of trash. there is absolutely no infrastructure anywhere to be seen. its just this open expanse of desert, kind of like a wasteland. as far as the eye can see, there are just big dust clouds and some very modest rice patties. it's really shocking; you have to see it to believe it. out of respect, we didnt take many photos.
we eventually got to siem reap after about 8 hours on this bus. by this point, we had had it with all of the bullshit corruption going on so we refused to stay at the guesthouse the bus brought us to. we decided to go to this other guesthouse and ended up staying next door to the one we requested. the place was called 'good kind guesthouse'. the people were lovely. skeelow and i bought some shitty cambodian weed from some kid at the guesthouse, rolled some joints, and set off walking. not long after, we ran into some american girls who accepted our joint when we passed it to them. they were from DC. they were also pretty much the last americans we have seen in cambodia. nothing much happened; we talked about where they had been and got some more ideas for our journey. after this, we turned in. it was pretty late. the next morning, we would take our pilgrimage to angkor wat.
thats enough for right now. i will write the second half of this entry the next time i sit down. hold out hope: skeelow may very well make an appearance here in the blog shortly. right now, he has a bad case of 'sianouk's revenge', the ugly stepchild of 'montezuma's revenge'; it's not pretty at all.
adios until next time.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Bangkok
Bangkok is quite possibly the most disgusting, depraved, yet uniquely interesting and exciting city that i've ever been to...i know that doesnt make much sense, but you really have to go there to understand it.
the first thing you must know about bangkok is that the women there come in three flavors: regular thai chicks that have jobs and stuff, hookers (and this class includes all kinds: high class whores, street corner girls, strippers you can buy....literally anything you want), and ladyboys.
what is a ladyboy, you ask? well let's see...let's put it this way: when you walk into a club in bangkok, you can never be sure that the hottest chick there is a chick. i mean, if you were into post-op trannies, this is the place for you. often, the ladyboys are hotter than the chicks, who are really fucking hot, by the way. it kinda makes you paranoid.
there are also like thousands upon thousands of gross, old, white expats that either have a hot young chick or hot young ladyboy in tow. you see them everywhere. most of these guys are like superdorks in their own countries. they come out to thailand, and immediately, they're motherfucking charles bronson. these guys have these huge, "i cant believe that i get to do this here," shiteating grins plastered on their faces at all times. and why wouldn't they be stoked out of their minds?
in thailand, you can pay to "keep" a chick or dude or whatever for weeks and weeks. it's a win-win situation for both parties: these fucking dorks get to come out here and spend their ample american or european money and get lots of bang for their buck, so to speak. these young girls are poorer than shit and all they have to do is dress up nice, and wait for a dirty old man to snatch them up and take them to his fancy hotel. the old man (and dude, some of these guys are pushing 80) gets to bang an 18-year-old dime and the girl gets to live in luxury.
another thing you must know about bangkok (and southeast asia in general) is that it's fucking cheap. i mean, you can eat a decent meal for 50 cents on the street or for a buck or two in a restaurant. the taxis are dirt cheap also, but the traffic is heinous.
the air quality in bangkok has got to be some of the worst shit in the world. you cant see the sun anytime during the day. it's just this little hazy disc in the sky. most of the people ride around on motorcycles and cover their faces with dust masks. i swear, whats the point in regulating fuel economy and emissions in rich countries when poor countries couldnt give a damn about it? they cant afford to; they just want to make enough to get by there.
most of the people make like $5 a day or less, so americans injecting 20 dollar bills into the economy really gets us the "star treatment". we are like walking gold mines to these people. there are always people haggling you for sex or money or both. the cop presence is largely non-existant and one gets the feeling that you could do just about anything, and then bribe the cop for a couple of bucks and get away with it.
this place caters to white tourists. they even have a word for them: farang. you can get a full body massage for less than 10 bucks an hour. (the "happy ending" part costs more, as we found out.....that must be where they make their money.) there are markets all over that sell all these generic southeast asia/thailand goods. you can get a really good knockoff rolex here for like 30 bucks. the funny thing is: the prices vary by so much. if you are in a thai area, the shit is so cheap. if you are in a farang-heavy area, they fucking rip you off....and all of us tourists are more than happy to get ripped off because it's still incredibly cheap to us.
(side note: i'm actually writing this entry from cambodia, several days after leaving thailand, so this information isnt all that "fresh" in my mind, but if you want to get some of that generic thailand souvenier stuff, come to cambodia. im serious. this is like the fucking best place ever to travel. unfortunately, i dont want to give away too much from the next entry and i'm too fucking lazy to write 2 entries today. so suffice it to say that cambodia is everything that you thought thailand would be, and better...)
im going to leave off here. there is more to tell, but a lot of it isnt appropriate for this blog. also, i gotta go get some drinks in me. the night is young there is so much potential here. my mind, my heart, and my soul is in cambodia so bangkok seems like a distant memory. maybe i will write more on it later....maybe skeelow will make his first appearance. you never know; keep checking back. peace.
the first thing you must know about bangkok is that the women there come in three flavors: regular thai chicks that have jobs and stuff, hookers (and this class includes all kinds: high class whores, street corner girls, strippers you can buy....literally anything you want), and ladyboys.
what is a ladyboy, you ask? well let's see...let's put it this way: when you walk into a club in bangkok, you can never be sure that the hottest chick there is a chick. i mean, if you were into post-op trannies, this is the place for you. often, the ladyboys are hotter than the chicks, who are really fucking hot, by the way. it kinda makes you paranoid.
there are also like thousands upon thousands of gross, old, white expats that either have a hot young chick or hot young ladyboy in tow. you see them everywhere. most of these guys are like superdorks in their own countries. they come out to thailand, and immediately, they're motherfucking charles bronson. these guys have these huge, "i cant believe that i get to do this here," shiteating grins plastered on their faces at all times. and why wouldn't they be stoked out of their minds?
in thailand, you can pay to "keep" a chick or dude or whatever for weeks and weeks. it's a win-win situation for both parties: these fucking dorks get to come out here and spend their ample american or european money and get lots of bang for their buck, so to speak. these young girls are poorer than shit and all they have to do is dress up nice, and wait for a dirty old man to snatch them up and take them to his fancy hotel. the old man (and dude, some of these guys are pushing 80) gets to bang an 18-year-old dime and the girl gets to live in luxury.
another thing you must know about bangkok (and southeast asia in general) is that it's fucking cheap. i mean, you can eat a decent meal for 50 cents on the street or for a buck or two in a restaurant. the taxis are dirt cheap also, but the traffic is heinous.
the air quality in bangkok has got to be some of the worst shit in the world. you cant see the sun anytime during the day. it's just this little hazy disc in the sky. most of the people ride around on motorcycles and cover their faces with dust masks. i swear, whats the point in regulating fuel economy and emissions in rich countries when poor countries couldnt give a damn about it? they cant afford to; they just want to make enough to get by there.
most of the people make like $5 a day or less, so americans injecting 20 dollar bills into the economy really gets us the "star treatment". we are like walking gold mines to these people. there are always people haggling you for sex or money or both. the cop presence is largely non-existant and one gets the feeling that you could do just about anything, and then bribe the cop for a couple of bucks and get away with it.
this place caters to white tourists. they even have a word for them: farang. you can get a full body massage for less than 10 bucks an hour. (the "happy ending" part costs more, as we found out.....that must be where they make their money.) there are markets all over that sell all these generic southeast asia/thailand goods. you can get a really good knockoff rolex here for like 30 bucks. the funny thing is: the prices vary by so much. if you are in a thai area, the shit is so cheap. if you are in a farang-heavy area, they fucking rip you off....and all of us tourists are more than happy to get ripped off because it's still incredibly cheap to us.
(side note: i'm actually writing this entry from cambodia, several days after leaving thailand, so this information isnt all that "fresh" in my mind, but if you want to get some of that generic thailand souvenier stuff, come to cambodia. im serious. this is like the fucking best place ever to travel. unfortunately, i dont want to give away too much from the next entry and i'm too fucking lazy to write 2 entries today. so suffice it to say that cambodia is everything that you thought thailand would be, and better...)
im going to leave off here. there is more to tell, but a lot of it isnt appropriate for this blog. also, i gotta go get some drinks in me. the night is young there is so much potential here. my mind, my heart, and my soul is in cambodia so bangkok seems like a distant memory. maybe i will write more on it later....maybe skeelow will make his first appearance. you never know; keep checking back. peace.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Flight
since this is the first post to this blog, i'm going to have to set a few ground rules before i really get going. the first thing you must know about this blog is that the blogger format does not allow for autocorrections -- like adding capitalizations and apostrophes where they are missing, for instance -- so if you cant handle reading txt msg-like text, this may not be the place for you. the other thing is that i like to basically do a stream of consciousness sort of dump on these sort of things -- kinda like im writing an email to each and every one of you -- so please do not get bent out of shape if there are spelling/grammar/factual errors in the text. as you all know, im an idiot, so please forgive any shortcomings that may come about in the writing of this blog. the last thing you guys should know is that blogspot DOES have a handy, in-text-field spellchecker that seems to really handle it's business -- although "spellchecker" appears underlined in red right now -- so you can all rest assured that there will be precious few, if any, spelling mistakes in this blog...although typos will still reign supreme.
and now: the first installment of this epic travel blog....
The Flight from LA to Bangkok ... nitty-gritty details about a very banal subject
so theres not much to write about this part of the journey. the trip consisted of a 14 hour flight from LAX to Seoul, Korea, a short, one hour layover, and a leisurely 6 hour jaunt from Seoul to Bangkok. in all, the total travel time was over 24 hours ... and to tell you the truth, all of it, save for about 4 hours total, sucked balls.
the first flight was the worst: i had to go to the airport at around 8:30 to make an 11 o clock flight. skeelow and papa skee picked me up from kwon's house in beverly hills, 90212. the night before, i had gone out with rani, liza, erica, liza's brother jesse, some guy named steve or something, and emily the fox. we hit up a sweet restaurant in the valley called "genghis cohen" -- i know you're dying to know what the cuisine was like, so lets just say that it was sort of like higher-end, americanized, jewish-new-york-style chinese food....don't ask. it was delicious.
i ordered some moo goo gai pan, drank some brew, and gorged my face. after some discussion of breasts and big arms, we headed over to some other bar that had an outdoor terrace/patio thing with heat lamps. it was crowded. the crowd sort of had a hollywood-hangers-on vibe to it. needless to say, after bogarting a "reserved" table -- we found out later that "reserved" was actually short for "reserved for people who are down to order drinks through the waitress instead of going to the bar, which was fine by us -- and drinking several glasses of johnny black on the rocks, chased with cold draught beer, i was pretty much shithoused.
we said our goodbyes post-2am and i was driven over to kwon's so i could get some sleep before being picked up. kwon wanted to kick it so i got about 2 hours of sleep that night. i was awakened by a call from skeelow; he was 2 minutes away. i jumped out of bed, put on the same clothes that i had been wearing the night before, and ran outside with my shit.
i guess all of this information is to set up exactly how shitty the flights were. by the end of it, when we finally checked into our hotel in bangkok, i hadnt showered or changed clothes in almost 48 hours. attractive.
im getting tired, so basically, this is how the first flight was:
i was seated in the middle seat of a 3 person section. to my right, in the window seat, was a nice korean dude. we communicated in broken english and hand gestures. he seemed pretty cool. the chick to the left of me, in the aisle seat, was totally weird. from the moment we sat down in LA, she put her head down on her tray table and passed out. she subsequently refused all food, water, face towels, peanuts, eye masks, et cetera for the duration of the 14 hour flight. for the first 10-12 hours of the flight, she didnt budge from her seat, except to allow me to jump over her to go the the restroom.
that was basically it: i was hot as balls, uncomfortable, and gassy -- a real bad combination; let's leave it at that. it was a lot of squirming, stretching, farting, watching movies, farting, playing tetris, listening to podcasts, farting, and reading the newspaper. at one point, i tried to hit on one of the korean airlines stewardesses who was crouched on the floor folding newspapers, but she wouldnt give me the time of day. also, there was a really awkward language barrier because apparently, i look very korean, so whenever the stewardesses approached me to ask me a question, it was always in korean -- and i had no fucking clue what was going on. this went on repeatedly; i was lucky that the korean dude was very perceptive and friendly, or i would not have been able to fend for myself.
this is not to speak badly of the korean air stewardesses at all. unlike in america, where unions and worker's rights rule the day, korean airlines still apparently hires it's stewardesses based on appearance. in fact, every single one of those girls looked the same. i was having difficulty telling them apart from one another -- and im asian! also, every single one of them spoke korean, semi-fluent english, and japanese. i mean, with that much talent, one would think that the world would be their oysters, but who knows? maybe korean air offers a good benefits package.
the layover in seoul was uneventful. the airport was extremely new and modern. it was basically like being in any other new airport in the world -- very unremarkable, with that cedary, sort of ski lodge feel to it. it had a walking mall between the terminals and gates. by this point, i was just trying to sleep, so there's really not much more to say here.
the second flight was much better than the first. although i didnt have an individual screen and remote, like i had had on the previous flight. this time, i had a window seat and the guy sitting next to me was a middle-aged guy in the phil margera/rob reiner mold who was headed to thailand for some major dental work, followed by a 2 month vacation.
(side note: how pathetic is it of our medical system in the states that it would be significantly cheaper to fly halfway around the world, seek treatment, and travel for 2 months than it would be to just cash in your insurance benefits and get a couple of crowns? from personal experience, i can tell you that even with a very robust insurance plan, a crown costs well over $1000. that's more than a flight to thailand and a week of frugal living.
now picture this: you are this phil margera/rob reiner guy. you live in seattle and you work, i think. you havent visited the dentist for over 15 years and you are pretty damn sure that you will require significant dental work. what sounds better: 3 visits the the dentist, about 6 hours of chairtime, and a $2500 dent in your wallet or an $800 flight to thailand, cheap as dirt -- yet surprisingly competent -- dental treatment, and two months in the islands banging 18 year old thai hookers while spending 5 dollars a day on your expenses? i mean, there's no decision there, right?)
i slept for most of the flight and phil/rob woke me up whenever the food or drink service arrived, which was early and often. the food on both flights was stellar. ive honestly never had better food than on korean airlines. the one meal the stood out was a beef with cashews and broccoli dish with rice, some strange sesame soy product, and red carpet cheesecake ice cream -- it was about 80% as good as it sounds, by the way.
when i arrived in bangkok, i found out that skeelow's flight had been delayed so i was the first one there. after clearing customs, i proceeded to hit on as many of the hot thai airport workers as i could find. it turned out that skeelow and papa skee arrived at basically the same time. so after about a 2 hour wait, we finally emerged from the air conditioned airport into the hot, humid night.
more from bangkok after we leave.
and now: the first installment of this epic travel blog....
The Flight from LA to Bangkok ... nitty-gritty details about a very banal subject
so theres not much to write about this part of the journey. the trip consisted of a 14 hour flight from LAX to Seoul, Korea, a short, one hour layover, and a leisurely 6 hour jaunt from Seoul to Bangkok. in all, the total travel time was over 24 hours ... and to tell you the truth, all of it, save for about 4 hours total, sucked balls.
the first flight was the worst: i had to go to the airport at around 8:30 to make an 11 o clock flight. skeelow and papa skee picked me up from kwon's house in beverly hills, 90212. the night before, i had gone out with rani, liza, erica, liza's brother jesse, some guy named steve or something, and emily the fox. we hit up a sweet restaurant in the valley called "genghis cohen" -- i know you're dying to know what the cuisine was like, so lets just say that it was sort of like higher-end, americanized, jewish-new-york-style chinese food....don't ask. it was delicious.
i ordered some moo goo gai pan, drank some brew, and gorged my face. after some discussion of breasts and big arms, we headed over to some other bar that had an outdoor terrace/patio thing with heat lamps. it was crowded. the crowd sort of had a hollywood-hangers-on vibe to it. needless to say, after bogarting a "reserved" table -- we found out later that "reserved" was actually short for "reserved for people who are down to order drinks through the waitress instead of going to the bar, which was fine by us -- and drinking several glasses of johnny black on the rocks, chased with cold draught beer, i was pretty much shithoused.
we said our goodbyes post-2am and i was driven over to kwon's so i could get some sleep before being picked up. kwon wanted to kick it so i got about 2 hours of sleep that night. i was awakened by a call from skeelow; he was 2 minutes away. i jumped out of bed, put on the same clothes that i had been wearing the night before, and ran outside with my shit.
i guess all of this information is to set up exactly how shitty the flights were. by the end of it, when we finally checked into our hotel in bangkok, i hadnt showered or changed clothes in almost 48 hours. attractive.
im getting tired, so basically, this is how the first flight was:
i was seated in the middle seat of a 3 person section. to my right, in the window seat, was a nice korean dude. we communicated in broken english and hand gestures. he seemed pretty cool. the chick to the left of me, in the aisle seat, was totally weird. from the moment we sat down in LA, she put her head down on her tray table and passed out. she subsequently refused all food, water, face towels, peanuts, eye masks, et cetera for the duration of the 14 hour flight. for the first 10-12 hours of the flight, she didnt budge from her seat, except to allow me to jump over her to go the the restroom.
that was basically it: i was hot as balls, uncomfortable, and gassy -- a real bad combination; let's leave it at that. it was a lot of squirming, stretching, farting, watching movies, farting, playing tetris, listening to podcasts, farting, and reading the newspaper. at one point, i tried to hit on one of the korean airlines stewardesses who was crouched on the floor folding newspapers, but she wouldnt give me the time of day. also, there was a really awkward language barrier because apparently, i look very korean, so whenever the stewardesses approached me to ask me a question, it was always in korean -- and i had no fucking clue what was going on. this went on repeatedly; i was lucky that the korean dude was very perceptive and friendly, or i would not have been able to fend for myself.
this is not to speak badly of the korean air stewardesses at all. unlike in america, where unions and worker's rights rule the day, korean airlines still apparently hires it's stewardesses based on appearance. in fact, every single one of those girls looked the same. i was having difficulty telling them apart from one another -- and im asian! also, every single one of them spoke korean, semi-fluent english, and japanese. i mean, with that much talent, one would think that the world would be their oysters, but who knows? maybe korean air offers a good benefits package.
the layover in seoul was uneventful. the airport was extremely new and modern. it was basically like being in any other new airport in the world -- very unremarkable, with that cedary, sort of ski lodge feel to it. it had a walking mall between the terminals and gates. by this point, i was just trying to sleep, so there's really not much more to say here.
the second flight was much better than the first. although i didnt have an individual screen and remote, like i had had on the previous flight. this time, i had a window seat and the guy sitting next to me was a middle-aged guy in the phil margera/rob reiner mold who was headed to thailand for some major dental work, followed by a 2 month vacation.
(side note: how pathetic is it of our medical system in the states that it would be significantly cheaper to fly halfway around the world, seek treatment, and travel for 2 months than it would be to just cash in your insurance benefits and get a couple of crowns? from personal experience, i can tell you that even with a very robust insurance plan, a crown costs well over $1000. that's more than a flight to thailand and a week of frugal living.
now picture this: you are this phil margera/rob reiner guy. you live in seattle and you work, i think. you havent visited the dentist for over 15 years and you are pretty damn sure that you will require significant dental work. what sounds better: 3 visits the the dentist, about 6 hours of chairtime, and a $2500 dent in your wallet or an $800 flight to thailand, cheap as dirt -- yet surprisingly competent -- dental treatment, and two months in the islands banging 18 year old thai hookers while spending 5 dollars a day on your expenses? i mean, there's no decision there, right?)
i slept for most of the flight and phil/rob woke me up whenever the food or drink service arrived, which was early and often. the food on both flights was stellar. ive honestly never had better food than on korean airlines. the one meal the stood out was a beef with cashews and broccoli dish with rice, some strange sesame soy product, and red carpet cheesecake ice cream -- it was about 80% as good as it sounds, by the way.
when i arrived in bangkok, i found out that skeelow's flight had been delayed so i was the first one there. after clearing customs, i proceeded to hit on as many of the hot thai airport workers as i could find. it turned out that skeelow and papa skee arrived at basically the same time. so after about a 2 hour wait, we finally emerged from the air conditioned airport into the hot, humid night.
more from bangkok after we leave.
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