On the "Road" Again

Well, it seems to have been a while since my last post. In fact it's been so long that I'm two countries past Cambodia. I guess, to be fair, heading back to Thailand was just for transit, but still!

Honestly, the last few days before finally arriving in Manila, the Philippines were mainly just travel travel travel. We left the morning of the 6th (methinks) from Phnom Penh at like 7:30AM on a bus back to Siem Reap. We were like the only farang on the bus, and when we got there the tuk-tuk drivers were hounding us like I've never been hounded before. They were knocking on the windows of the bus while we were still on even--like they could even talk to us through the window! *Rolls eyes* After stepping of the bus, there were like 20 tuk-tuk drivers addressing themselves mainly to me, none of which I wanted (we needed a taxi to the border). At one point I literally had to hide behind Chesa's Vietnamese-style conical hat until the number whittled down to like only five talking tukers. Then the negotiations started for a taxi to the border at $100 for the full taxi (it had taken us like $25 to get there). After we laughed, a tuk-tuk driver offered to take us there for 100 Thai baht (roughly US$2.50) which is perhaps my favorite offer I've gotten on our entire trip, I think it would have taken us like seven days by tuk-tuk, and we would have been simply covered in dust (not to mention saddle sore, it's hardly a road). Wouldn't that have been fun?! We did eventually get a taxi at a reasonable price.

The driver we got though had some, ahem, interesting character traits. When we first got in we were convinced that he had consumption and were sure he was going to keel over midway as he was coughing horribly. Actually, it was a sniff/cough combination that resulted in him lowering his window several times to properly hauk his luggies (sps?! it's not often that one spells such words!). He also seemed overly nervous at first and was travelling ridiculously slowly, not to mention the fact that he was quite "honkative." Every time he was about to pass anything he honked for several seconds. Being from China, I was kinda used to that, but this guy was OVER THE TOP, so I decided to do a scientific survey, and will soon be producing The Honk Report for your viewing pleasure. Quick preview from memory, I'll check my numbers later: average honk time- about 1.62 sec, average honks/minute-around 1.9, rough calculation of total honks- 344, total honk duration- around 9 minutes.

Although I enjoyed Cambodia, I was quite frankly relieved to get back to Thailand where good food is abundant and the beggars and tuk-tuk drivers are nowhere near as pushy! We were only there for about 1.5 days to get back to the BKK airport from where we flew to the Philippines. I had suggested that when we were there, we should check to see if we really had seats for our BKK-Kungming connection upon return since the travel agent seemed somewhat unclear about it. Good thing we did, for when we finally found the China Eastern Airlines office, they told us that the flight had been cancelled. They said that they'd put us up for a night in BKK though with meals and send us out the next day--and since we just found out that the hot water is out in our apartment building back in Kunming and will be out until "March 1"(read end of March at the earliest) it didn't sound like a bad deal.

But now I'm in the Philippines and staying at Chesa's grandmother's house. It's a wonderful house full of priceless antiques and lots of good stories. It's a pleasant change of pace for us weary travellers. There's like actual hot water for one! But also there're maids, and cooks, and drivers, oh my! We took a wonderful tour of Manila's (reconstructed since the US destroyed it all during WWII) Old Town known as intramuros (inside the walls). The tour guide was great at weaving Philippino history together in such a way that each of its very different periods have started to make sense to me. After the Spanish, American, Japanese, and American occupations not to mention the Chinese traders that infultrated the upper classes I can see why modern Philippinos/as are having an identity crisis!

But now I am out of time for I HAVE TO :o) go to a party held by someone in the American Embassy here. I'm looking forward to it.