Category: Travel

If life is the accumulation of experiences, my tour guide this afternoon for Angkor Wat is way ahead of the game. From a young age he was brought up in the war, then fled from the fighting. He has tried on various roles since then, as a buddhist monk, history teacher, and now tour guide. Given his explanations during the tour, I give him at least some credit since he gave some great descriptions and background information.

We also spent some time discussing current politics, during which I found out he dislikes the Korean tourists (too rude), the Vietnamese (traditional enemies of Cambodia), and the French (colonialists). Apparently he also likes to help the pretty girls, as he said to one rather cute Chinese woman climbing down the steps of Angkor Wat.

If you spend any time in the developing world, you become amazed by how ubiquitous cell phones are. It seems those devices have made their way in to the most remote areas.

On my flight to Bangkok last night I was chatting for awhile with the guy sitting in the seat next to me. Turns out he’s from the Green Bay area and regularly flys to Thailand. In fact, so regularly he picked up a condo on the beach recently. On the 21st floor (out of 22). For about 1,000,000 baht, which sounds expensive until you realize it’s less than US$50,000. In fact, at the current exchange rate, it’s down to $31,000. I’m likely to spend more on a new car next year than I would for a condo in Thailand.

I arrived late last nigh at the new Bangkok International Airport, instantly thrust back in to the craziness and heat that defines Southeast Asia. After 30 hours of traveling without much sleep, it felt great to simply make it back to the hotel and fall asleep.

It’s pretty safe to say this room has more space than my whole apartment. In fact, it basically IS an apartment, complete with its own kitchenette. There’s a bar, “dining room”/conference room, a living room and sitting area, a huge bedroom, two bathrooms, one of which is equipped with TWO showers and a jacuzzi.

I ask you, who would ever want to leave this?

Alright, almost time for me to head off to bed. I’ll be waking up in a few hours to start the long, long travel to Thailand.

If you need a passport, get it now, before the new “insecure” passports become available.

Thankfully I’ve never been hassled like this guy, but I can definitely see it happening. Aggressive security guards can bugger off.

To pass my last afternoon in London, I decided to mix things up with a little something old and a little something new, especially since they were next door to each other.

First I headed to the reconstruction of the Globe theatre, which, if you’re ever in London, is definitely worth the pounds and time. Having a chance to see about as faithful a reproduction as you can get (given today’s building codes, for example) to the original, combined with some great insight and vision from the tour guide, lets ou almost feel like you were there. And if you go in the summer months, you actually have a chance to do just that. I almost want to come back in the summer, just to stand in the intimate space. Hard to believe they use to pack 3,000 attendees in a space slightly smaller than the one we were in.

For something new, I headed over to Tate Modern, London’s modern art museum. And, unsurprisingly, I had much the same reaction I always do to modern art. Most pieces leave me asking the eternal question, just “what is art?” After all, if I can create something that looks exactly like what’s on exhibit, is it art? If someone painstakingly invested time and a career in creating some of the items, only to leave me with the impression that I could do the same thing, should that be considered art? If it looks like a stunt designed to get a cheap emotional rise out of me, is that art?

In any event, Tate Modern had two things going for it that most modern art museums don’t. First off, it was free to enter the regular exhibits, which meant I at least didn’t feel as though I was being ripped off. And second, one of the exhibits was a series of slides, available for your use (free tickets required for the slides on levels 3, 4, and 5, no ticket required on level 2). And, I swear to you, these slides were awesome. I can’t judge distance well, but the highest slide had to be between 50 and 100 feet high. Now that’s some modern art I can really get behind.

I finished off the day at a Thai restaurant near the hotel, which wasn’t bad but left me wanting the Thai food back home. London certainly isn’t the culinary capital of the world (though the conversation I overheard at dinner was certainly amusing enough).

I giggle every time I see that name. Cockfosters. Who came up with that as the name for a Tube station? Would you like to give directions to your friends coming to visit you, saying “Take the train headed to Cockfosters”?

On a related note, I was touring about the Tower of London today when I overheard an amusing exchange between a daughter and her parents. I was taking a look at some suits of armor on the second floor of the White Tower, where it was quite clear from the armor that King Charles I (I believe… one of the kings anyway) was quite interested in protecting the Crown Jewels. As I was reading the text across the bottom I heard a young girl from behind me speak, referring to the a certain piece of the suite of armor.

“What is that for?” asked the daughter.
“Let’s read the text to see what it says,” replied the Mom.

I walked away at this point to suppress my laughter, but I thought I heard the dad say “You’ll find out one day.”

After reading the text, they continue.

“See, it’s to protect the King while he rides his horse,” the mom stated.
“I know what it’s for,” the daughter replied knowingly. “It’s to protect the parts that boys have.”

Trust me, when you see the picture, it’s pretty amusing.

Overall the trip this time around has been pretty good, now that I’ve had the chance to make it to the British Museum, the Towner of London, and Harrods. The weather, too, has been pretty mild, with daytime temps in the 50s and some sun shining through today.

I’m almost sad to leave, except that this trip is bankrupting me. Imagine for a minute that you went to a place where the actual numeric amounts were the same (i.e. something that cost 10.00 still cost 10.00), but your money was only worth have as much.

That place isn’t imaginary. It’s London.

Capitalism went balls to the wall today, as yesterday’s tryptophan-fueled orgy of caloric consumption gave way to that of the green kind. Naturally, CNN, MSNBC, Foxnews, and countless local outlets all piled on this consumer craze.

Not wanting to miss out, I drove past the queue to my local shopping center to head to the mecca of American capitalism, the Mall of America in Minnesota. It really doesn’t get any grander, when the center of the mall has two roller coasters, a ferris wheel, and a log flume ride, along with several others, an aquarium, fourteen screen movie theatre, and a few hundred stores. Sadly, either I arrived too late or experienced that Minnesota nice, because I missed the stampedes and fights on getting to that must-have bargain.

During my wanderings, I did take an informal survey of the local population to see what their biggest local political issue was. The unscientific results came back that Minneapolis’ recently enacted smoking ban was the hot button issue of the day. No doubt the zombies will be disappointed. After all, even the undead should have rights, no?

I checked my RSS feeds last night before I went to bed, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but an extremely discounted one-way Y-fare. For 284+taxes each way, on an upgradeable fare, good throughout the entire schedule, I figure what the hey. So now instead of the U.A.E. it looks like I”ll be in London after Thanksgiving, and again in July as I head up to Scotland.

This is the third deal in a month and a half I’ve been able to take advantage of, and now it looks like all four of my international trips between now and July will either benefit from or be initiated by pricing errors.

Crazy, man. Doesn’t anyone check this stuff first?