Misadventures in Airports and Hospitals

I don't even know where to start. On Thursday night, I was sitting in my bungalow on Ko Chang and realized that the next 36 hours leading up to my flight to Korea were probably going to be a bit hectic. But in retrospect, hectic was a GIGANTIC understatement. At some point in the early morning hours of Friday, I was listening to some house music in a bar when a Thai woman stepped on my foot. I kind of pushed her away, and she responded quite angrily and pushed me back. I tried to apologize but she just sort of scowled at me. At the time, I didn't think much of it. A few minutes later, however, I guess in retaliation, a Thai guy came from where the girl was now standing and pushed me. As I gathered what had just happened, he proceeded to smash his beer bottle over the top of my head. I was shocked. There was no pain, but I touched my head and realized that there was blood pouring everywhere. All over my hands. My clothes. Everywhere. Luckily, a few lady-boys had seen the incident and came to my aid, because I might have just stood there bleeding for the rest of the night, thinking to myself, "what the fuck just happened?". One of them spoke pretty good English, gave me a towel for the open wound on my head, and asked if I wanted to see a doctor. Yes, please! Now let's remember that this is happening on a fairly undeveloped Thai island. Ko Chang has neither hospitals nor ambulances. I couldn't have picked a better place to get in my first bar fight. A bartender drove my friend Blake and I in the back of his pickup truck across the island to a local health clinic where there just so happened to be a doctor on shift who spoke good English. I explained what had happened. Doc promptly administered a healthy dose of anesthesia and got to work with his forceps. After picking a few shards of glass out of my head, he stitched five sutures into the back of my head. I am thankful to say I did not feel a thing. I returned to the bar in the same flatbed ambulance that had brought me with a shopping bag full of antibiotics, painkillers, gauze, etc. What a crazy night. They had to shave a patch of my Jew curls off and everything. In fact, I think that's what disappoints me the most.

When we all woke up in the morning, after about 2 hours of sleep, we realized that E had lost her wallet. And we were scheduled to leave the island on a ferry at 9:30 AM to come back to Bangkok. With no time to search, we gave up and just left hurriedly without the wallet. A supposed 5 hour bus ride took 8 hours, and we all arrived back on Khao San road a bit frazzled and confused. After lugging all of our shit through the throngs of backpackers in the streets, we managed to settle down at a wine bar. E checked her e-mail and discovered that her wallet had been found. We took that as a good omen, and after all, it was New Years Eve. We threw our stuff down in a guesthouse and headed out to ring in the New Year in Bangkok. But suddenly, at about 11 PM, E had a medical emergency of her own. With our flight leaving at 7:15 AM, she needed to see a doctor right away. I couldn't party anyway as I was (and continue to be) on all sorts of medications myself due to the aforementioned bottle-smashing incident (please note the masking tape on the side of my head in the photo...ouch), so I accompanied E and we rang in the New Year in style in the waiting room of the Bangkok hospital among nurses, doctors, and the other ill celebrants. But thankfully, there was nothing wrong, and we left the hospital, the second one of my abnormally long day, in one piece.

At around 5 AM, Blake, Danielle, E and I loaded our luggage into a taxi as our semi-drunken cabbie swerved through traffic to get us to the airport. No one had slept, we were all just kind of ready to get on the plane and crash, but of course, Air Asia thought it would be amusing to make me rearrange ALL of the things in my bags to meet their strict weight requirements. They literally had me climb up onto the conveyor belt where you weigh the luggage and reposition things, all the while trying to charge me like $100 in fees that I had already paid online. To say that I received shitty customer service would be giving them too much credit...let's just say I was close to ripping this lady's head off. But alas, we got everything sorted, I paid $40 even though I should have paid nothing, but we had to make the flight. After clearing Thai customs, which are quite slow in themselves, we made the final call for our flight to Kuala Lumpur with about 90 seconds to spare.

On the flight, we had to fill out our immigration forms to enter Malaysia...I came to the question of "occupation", and just wow. There are six options...one of which is Housewife, another of which is Other. Are there that many housewives in the world? This kills me. Anyway, I'm spending New Years day in Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea - right now I'm in the Kuala Lumpur airport, sipping an iced coffee, enjoying a nice reminder of Westernized life, and just kind of laughing about everything that just happened, everything that's about to happen, basically just everything. I have a gash in the back of my head, I'm headed to Incheon in an hour, I'll be teaching English in less than 48 hours. And it's 2011 now. Just trying to avoid hospitals (and let's not forget gluten) at all costs in the near future.
Life is crazy, but life is good.

Escape From Khao San To Ko Chang

I arrived back in Bangkok on Christmas Eve, met up with my friends Blake, E, Danielle, Jason, and Matt from the TESOL course in Phuket and spent 3 nights on Khao San Road along with about 3 million other backpackers. Or so it seemed anyway. Khao San is a place of chaos: endless offers of custom tailored Armani suits, cheap “massages”, bed-bug laden guesthouses, and relentless lady-boys and tuk-tuk drivers made for quite an interesting weekend. One amazing little bar tucked down an alleyway, Happy Bar, did offer a break from the insanity – good live reggae music will never fail to put me in a good mood. But after 60 hours of the madness that is Khao San Road we were all quite ready to get as far away from Bangkok as we could.

So four of us took a bus 5 hours south to Trat, where we boarded a ferry to Ko Chang, the second-largest island in Thailand. The island is still much less developed than Phuket and some of the other more touristy resorts, so the beaches are a bit less crowded and yet still just as beautiful. We stayed in some pretty basic bungalows right on Lonely Beach in Bailan Bay, fully equipped with mosquito nets. There were even water buffalos grazing around in front of our porches and under the guesthouses.

The beaches stretch around the entire perimeter of the island, but if you venture inland you quickly find yourself surrounded by deep jungle terrain and a lot of exotic wildlife. As we drove our motorbikes to the Nam Tok Khlong Plu waterfall, we had to stop to let some elephants cross the road, and later, as we were hiking to the fall, a somewhat menacing looking snake slithered by a few feet in front of us. The waterfall itself flows into a little rock and granite cove; you can swim right up to the base of the fall and tread there as water comes crashing down over your head. Just imagine using the highest pressured showerhead in the world…it was extremely refreshing. After swimming around the cove for a while we rock climbed up the side of the fall until we had reached a little ledge to stand on, then cliff jumped down back into the bay below.

I didn't get the chance to do any diving, but instead went sea kayaking for a few hours in the Gulf of Thailand and through some small nearby rivers. E’s friend Rich works at the Amari Resort here in Ko Chang and guided us around for the afternoon. Apparently, I am only the second person to ever capsize during one of his trip. Later, we were having a drink on the beach, and JUST as I was describing how I had capsized earlier, my chair tipped over in the sand and I collapsed to the ground on my back. So smooth of me…it might have been the most ironic moment of my life.

With the exception of one miserable morning, I did not cross paths with gluten in Ko Chang. I didn’t stray too far from my normal routine of fried eggs, green curry, steamed rice, and many, many M&Ms and Lays’ originals, but twice indulged in some delicious authentic beef tostadas at an amazing Mexican restaurant, Barrio Bonito. The place itself is really chill, with couches and cushions everywhere, crazy rock structures and plants, even a pool of water to relax in. And the owner actually knows what gluten is, and can point out which items are okay to eat. Now it's back in Bangkok for New Years Eve, where 2011 will start waaay before it does for all of you back home. My 2010 has been absolutely crazy, I have come so far from where I was a year ago health-wise. Tonight, Blake, Danielle, E and I are staying up all night, boarding a flight to Kuala Lumpur at 7:15 in the morning, and connecting to Incheon in the afternoon. It will be brutal to trade the 90 degree paradise that I've enjoyed the last two months for the sub-freezing temperatures in South Korea, but I start work as an English camp teacher on Monday and am excited for the next step. A very Happy New Years to all of my friends and family and random blog stalkers...make some great resolutions and then give them up in 2 weeks. I'll be spraying champagne out for all of you.

SIEM REcAP

After spending the last 12 days in Cambodia, I can say with confidence that it is very possible to eat gluten-free while still enjoying everything that the place has to offer. Siem Reap has plenty of options for Celiacs. I would start each day by eating a plate of fried eggs, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and steamed rice, and drinking a fresh coconut. The Phsar Chas (old market) Restaurant, owned by an uncle of Gabe’s friend Fila, is a great option, as you will spend $1.50 on your entire meal and leave both satisfied and unglutened. I ate dinner at Angkor Famous many of my nights here – an amazing little restaurant in the alley near Pub Street that offers endless plates of free popcorn, free steamed rice, free fruit salad, glutenous 50 cent draft beers, buy-one-get-one free cocktails for $2, and perhaps the greatest Amok in all of Siem Reap.

There’s even a street cart that sells pan-fried rice cakes with a delicious dipping sauce that is entirely gluten-free. Also, there are a few markets in town (Lucky Market is the best) where you will find some gluten-free items – they sell packages of dried jackfruit, and even offer large bags of wheat-free toasted muesli. If you are fortunate enough to have access to a kitchen, as I did in the Honeymoon Palace where my friends Gabe, Miles, Jordan and Scott are living, buy some ridiculously cheap vegetables in the old market to go along with some reasonably priced meat in the grocery stores, and indulge. We cooked a variety of meals: rice noodle soup with beef and bok choy; corn pasta in tomato sauce with pork, peppers, and onions; fried morning glory with garlic; pork with ginger, etc…all at laughable prices – you could easily prepare a gluten-free meal for yourself for under a dollar.

Once avoiding gluten was no longer a concern, I quickly realized that living in Siem Reap is mostly just about chilling. There seems to be a lot of time, and no real rush to accomplish anything too quickly. During the high season, there are thousands of new tourists coming into town everyday in order to see the nearby Angkor Temples, and are on their ways within a few days. But for those spending a bit more time here, as my friends are, life is slow and methodical, and because of this, my visit really featured a little bit of everything. I played pick-up basketball games with Cambodians, did volunteer work, got $1.50 shaves, went to Dr. Fish where a pool of fish feed off of the dead skin on your feet, and relaxed by rooftop pools sipping cocktails at some glorious hotels.

We spent a lot of time hanging out at the Warehouse, an ex-pat bar owned by Gabe’s friend Jed who also runs a summer camp in Vermont. Next door to the Warehouse is Laundry Bar, a music bar that lets you download full albums of mp3s from an overwhelming selection of any genre you could ever imagine…they literally have tens of thousands of albums in a catalogue. While listening to their great lounge music you can twist something up, play pool, and just soak in the atmosphere. It’s up there with Bob’s Bar on Kamala Beach in Phuket as my favorite place to chill in Southeast Asia, so far.

Cambodia is a fascinating place, and the Amok will be missed. A very merry Christmas to everyone back home - I won’t be going to the movies, doing my Jewish thing, but it's 90 degrees here...can't complain.

The Temples of Angkor

Today, I woke up early and enjoyed my standard gluten-free Cambodian breakfast of champions – fried eggs, steamed rice, and a coconut to wash it all down. Then I was off to explore the Temples of Angkor, a series of hundreds of temples and other ancient structures that were built by the Khmer empire between the 9^th and 14^th centuries AD.

The first temple that I set out to see was also the most spectacular. Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage site, lies just 6 kilometers outside of Siem Reap and is the largest religious building in the world. The central tower of the temple rises to a height of 55 meters above ground level, and the surrounding moat encloses the temple in a 2 square kilometer rectangle. The sheer size of the place is mind-blowing. Scenes from Tomb Raider were filmed here…unfortunately I didn’t see Angelina Jolie around anywhere. All along the outside wall of the central temple, there are incredibly vivid bas-reliefs depicting epic battles, heavenly gods and goddesses, even scenes of heaven and hell. I could write much, much more about Angkor Wat, one of the most stunning places that I’ve ever been to, but I saw a lot of temples today so let’s move on.

My tuk-tuk­ ­driver brought me to Angkor Thom, which at the height of the Khmer empire was a huge fortified capital city with a population of over a million people. In the center of the fortified walls lies the Bayon, which at first glance appears to be a collection of huge rock piles. Entering the Bayon, I found that these “rock piles” were actually 54 gothic-style towers, each of which is ornately decorated on all 4 sides with the face of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, a symbol of compassion in Mahayana Buddhism.

Next I saw Baphuon, another temple that consists of three tiers. This temple was once taken apart piece by piece in order to be properly restored, but during the years of the Khmer Rouge genocide, the records of the original design were destroyed. By the looks of things, they are still trying to figure out how to put the place back together even today, but it’s impressive nonetheless. After seeing a few more temples inside of Angkor Thom, for lunch I ate a bowl of fish Amok, my favorite Khmer dish made with coconut milk, some vegetables, no gluten, and a few spices.

After lunch, I went to Preah Khan, an extremely complex array of hallways and dead ends. Navigating the temple, I felt like a mouse trying to get to the cheese at the end of a maze. Once I was thoroughly disoriented, I decided I needed to get an aerial view to figure things out. There were barely any other tourists around, so I ignored a few warning signs and climbed up some walls until I was on the roof of the temple. Not only did I quickly find my way out, I was rewarded with some incredible photos.

Once I had successfully escaped the maze, I went to Preah Neak Poan, another Buddhist temple, but very much unlike the others that I saw. There is a small central island that holds a statue of two multi-headed serpents, surrounded by a large square pool and four smaller square pools. The serpents, called nagas, are said to control the rain, and therefore also the prosperity of the kingdom. It’s like I’ve always said, the most important news is always on the weather channel.

From here, I went to Ta Som, another Buddhist temple that didn’t have too much to offer that I hadn’t already seen at the other temples. But while I was relaxing and drinking my second coconut of the day, I overheard some familiar phrases and all of a sudden struck up a conversation in Mandarin with a family from the Sichuan province in China. I guess this is what happens when you spend enough time at Buddhist temples in Cambodia. The last two places that I visited, the Eastern Mebon and Pre Rup, are Hindu temples with similar structures, featuring a number of raised tiers leading to the center where there are five towers. Flanking the temple at Eastern Mebon at all four corners are perfectly carved stone elephants. Pre Rup is essentially a much larger version of Eastern Mebon, with an enormous stone staircase leading from the base of the temple all the way up to the top.

Seeing the Angkor Temples is a mesmerizing experience. I’m sitting on the top steps of the temple at Pre Rup as I write this, looking out over Angkor Wat on the horizon, and once again, it all just feels so surreal. To recap, my day consisted of 10 temples, 2 coconuts, 1 random Mandarin conversation, and 0 gluten.

Choeung Ek Killing Fields

I spent this weekend in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, about a six-hour bus ride south of Siem Reap. Although the poverty is still evident here to a certain extent, Phnom Penh is very much a modern metropolis and feels very far removed from the laid back scene in Siem Reap. About 15 km outside of downtown Phnom Penh you find the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. During the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970s, over 17000 civilians were tortured at the S-21 security prison and then taken to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek.

The victims were bludgeoned to death and buried in mass graves. Once the killings had finally ended, the remains of 8985 people were exhumed from over 80 mass graves, some of which contained upwards of 400 battered and beaten bodies.

This is the Memorial Stupa, a tower that holds over 8000 skulls that were exhumed. The skulls are arranged by age and gender and are literally piled from the base of the tower all the way to the top.

You can enter the Stupa and get a close look at all of this. It’s really eerie to stand inches away from a massive tower of human skulls. I’ve witnessed some unnerving images in the Holocaust museums in Jerusalem and Washington, DC, but seeing so many skulls, many of which were exhumed from the remains of young children, was still pretty chilling.

In & Around Siem Reap

After just a 10 minute walk from downtown Siem Reap, you find yourself on little clay roads, some not even wide enough for a car to drive down. In these residential neighborhoods, it is not unlikely for a party with loud music to begin at 4 AM and continue all dayto commemorate weddings, birthdays, etc. In fact, it's happened three times since I arrived on Sunday night...at least I don't need to sleep with an alarm.

I've spent some time volunteering with the Trailblazer Foundation, an NGO here in Siem Reap, to help build and distribute water filters to a number of families. On the first day, we sifted and washed gravel, mixed it with cement and water, and then poured and scraped the wet concrete to make the foundations for the water filters. Today, we took a pickup truck out about an hour outside of Siem Reap to delivery and install five filters. It was interesting to get a taste of the real Cambodia, where the vast majority of people live out in the countryside, and all of the kids that we met were really excited to see us and joke around with us.






At Trailblazer, if you stand on a crate and look over the wall, all of a sudden there are all these crocodiles right in your face. In town, you can eat crocodile in a restaurant, and then walk next door and buy a crocodile leather wallet.

Pub Street...home to a good amount of the Siem Reap nightlife. Most are little cafes and bars with good food (a bowl of gluten-free Amok...mmm) and cheap drinks that come in buckets with five straws.


There's a bunch of cool architecture all throughout Siem Reap, like this cathedral. Because of all the clay and dirt roads, everything has sort of an old world feel. Sometimes it feels like you are walking around in a Western. But what stands out most about this place is the people: everyone is SO happy and SO friendly. All of the time. It's really indescribable. I guess that's what happens when your country is plagued by genocide and murderous regimes for so much time...you get freedom, you get peace, and that's all you need.

Crossing Borders

Today, I made the overland trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap, which is notorious among backpackers for numerous scams and hassles. “Tourist bus” tickets sold by travel agents are all rip-offs: they claim that they will take 6 hours from Bangkok to Siem Reap, but in reality they take 12-16 hours, have no air-con, can cost up to 600 baht, and you end up arriving in front of an overpriced guesthouse in Siem Reap at midnight with no other option than to check-in for the night (with the travel agencies getting a kick-back from the guesthouse for EVERY poor soul they drop off there). Also, these services overcharge you for the Cambodian Visa, which you apply for at the border . The other option, flying from Bangkok to Siem Reap, is just as absurd – Bangkok Airways has a monopoly on the route and charges $350-$400 round trip for the 45 minute flight. To avoid getting ripped off, I decided to find my own way across the border.

So I left my hostel in Bangkok, took the BTS SkyTrain to Mo Chit , and a taxi to the Northeastern Bus Terminal at kon song mor chit . From there, I took a domestic Thai bus with air-con to Aranya Prathet, a border town about which my Lonely Planet guidebook has this to say: “Parts of this area are still heavily mined – don’t stray too far from marked roads and paths.” You gotta love knowing that you’re walking around a minefield. I know I did.

Fortunately I didn’t blow up. When we arrived I asked a tuk-tuk (a motorbike taxi) driver to bring me to Talat Rong Kluea so I could enter the Thai immigration office. He brought me to a not-so-official looking building where about five kind-of-but-also-not-really-official looking men were waiting on the street. One of the men spoke in perfect English to invite me inside to fill out an application for my visa.

The office consisted of a few desks, some posters of Angkor Wat, and a few poorly translated signs. They tried to talk me into paying 2000 baht for a taxi to Siem Reap, telling me I needed to prepay before crossing the border, but I just said I wanted the visa and things were sorted out pretty easily.

I walked across the border into Cambodia and then went through customs. I found myself at a taxi stand in Poipet, where a bunch of Cambodians in Toyota Camrys were waiting like hawks. Luckily, a guy from New York and an Austrian girl were also trying to get into Siem Reap so we shared a taxi together and paid $20 each. About 2 hours later, when we were 5 minutes outside of Siem Reap, our driver pulled over and motorbike taxis took us the rest of the way, even though the taxi driver had assured us we wouldn't need to change cars...apparently nothing on this overland trip is as simple as it could be.

But alas, I arrived at The Warehouse in Siem Reap and met up with Gabe and Miles. It took a bit longer than I expected (~9 hours), consisted of a sky train, two taxis, three motorbike taxis, and a bus trip, but all things considered, the trip from Bangkok overland into Siem Reap really wasn’t so bad, especially given some of the horror stories that I had been hearing, and the fact that I was traveling alone. It's good to be around some familiar faces, in a strictly unfamiliar place. I have a pretty good feeling about Cambodia.

Big Buddha and Elephants

For my last full day in Phuket, I went to see the Big Buddha, a giant statue on top of a mountain that’s visible from just about half of the island. There are a bunch of shrines and incense is burning everywhere and so many monks are just wandering around meditating and praying that the place has a pretty surreal ambiance.

Along the steep path that winds up the mountain to the Buddha, there are several little coffee shops, but more importantly there are heaps of elephants. You could pay to ride the elephants, but the trainers were sticking some sharp tool into the elephants to guide them and I didn’t really want to support that happening. But the elephants seemed pretty happy anyway. This one would not stop bobbing his head up and down…it was like he was on speed.

A nice lookout over the surrounding banana groves and Kata bay. I liked living on an island small enough that you could see either coast from the peaks of mountains, definitely going to miss the views.

It was sad to have to say goodbye to everyone from the TEFL class today. Spending an entire month together in that kind of environment really lets you make some strong connections, much more so than a month in the “real world”. I met some amazing people during the last month and I already miss everyone. If any of you are reading this I hope we meet again soon.

My flight from Phuket was delayed an hour, but my luggage was NOT lost this time around, so I can't really complain. Now I’m staying at a hostel in Bangkok for one night, and about (to attempt) to cook a gluten-free dinner of rice noodle soup with pork, potatoes and onions...with just an electric water boiler. Before leaving Phuket I cooked a lot of food, froze it, and took it along so that I can eat a few meals this weekend while I don't have access to a kitchen.

So I've been traveling for exactly one month now. Being 100% gluten-free in non-Westernized countries, where they don't even know what "gluten" is, is MUCH harder than I ever anticipated. But it's definitely worth it...I feel that if I can handle this, I can pretty much handle anything. And it's an amazing feeling. OK, enough introspection. Tomorrow I will take an overland bus across the border into Cambodia to chill with my college roommate Gabe and his buddy Miles in Siem Reap for a couple weeks. They have a blog of their own so check it out. The end.