Last night, Craig calculated that we had been in our new apartment for more than 28 nights, meaning it was the longest we had stayed in one place and slept in the same bed in 18 months. “Does it feel weird to you that we’re here?” he asked, hands on hips, looking around at our living room space.
“Yes,” I responded. “Very.”
It’s also the end of our second week of going back to work, and I have been feeling a little discombobulated about how “same same different different” everything is. We’ve moved into an apartment several blocks north of where we have lived before, and that brings with it an even stronger déjà vu feeling, evoking a time over ten years in the past when we lived in this same three-block radius, but in separate apartments and before our first “sabbatical” to South America.
Since we’ve returned to the US, life has seemed to flow in starts in stops. Find an apartment, then wait for the move in date. Get a start date for our jobs, then wait for the day to arrive. But as the date of our first day of work neared, I knew that the flow would change drastically. Those days of nothing to do but find a couple of meals were over.
Craig and I have talked ad nauseum about not working and the way it can change one’s mindset. Now we are in a position to see how the reverse will affect us. I think there has been a slight desperation in the way we’ve viewed the time we have left, as it slips through our fingers like drops of water. There is now the sense of cramming in all the things we want to do in the drastically reduced hours in which we have to do them.
Along with the struggle to give time to our hobbies is the very real fact that with “real life,” the amount of tasks exponentially increases. Grocery shopping, household chores, preparing lunches for work, cooking dinner, buying things for the apartment… these are all things that take up so much of our time now and they’re all things we either never or rarely had to do during our time off. Of course we had to do other things while traveling, like booking lodging and transportation, etc., but the repetitive and constant nature of the tasks in our “real life” is much more striking.
It is also amazing how so many of our tasks are directly related to being settled in a place and attached to all of the things in it. The more we have, the more we have to do to maintain it all. It’s funny to think about needing a second spatula when for over a year all we had was what fit into our backpacks–a spatula was definitely never a part of our packing lists.
So many of the terms related to working have rodents in them: the “hamster wheel,” the “rat race.” As we’ve been transitioning, I’ve noticed how easy it is to mindlessly fill free time with activities. There’s always someone to hang out with or something to do, especially in a city with established friends. Craig and I have been trying not to fill our time up with too much since something we have honed to perfection is just quietly sitting around and doing quiet things like reading and crafting. Still, even with this conscious effort, we have realized why some of our friends have responded to our requests to hang out with availability 3-4 weeks out. Sometimes even two months out! Or they respond days or weeks later.
“What is everyone doing that makes them so busy?” we wondered when we first got back, staying with our very generous friends and twiddling our thumbs, waiting for our apartment lease to start. But as we immersed ourselves more and more in our new life, moving in, starting our jobs, meeting up with people, it has become more and more apparent why everyone is so busy. Work, for one, takes up an inordinate amount of time. I really do sometimes feel like a lab mouse, going through a maze just so I can get the cheese, a.k.a. the paycheck.
But there is also this pressure to maximize time off. We are trying to resist it, as it seems like an impulse manufactured by our consumerist society in order to feel as if we’re making the most of our time. What does it even mean to “waste time”? Is hanging around our apartment reading manga a waste of time if I’m enjoying myself? It was easy to let go of the guilt involved in “doing nothing” when there literally wasn’t much to do but venture out into 90-degree heat and find a vermicelli bowl. Now, I can feel the urge welling up inside me to do something, anything “productive” because the precious hours are dwindling.
So the reentry has been an exercise in restraint. In not throwing ourselves immediately back into the squirrel cage, to not find ourselves suddenly with no time to think about the complexities of the human experience. It took a long time and a lot of hard work for me to figure some things out about myself, like how to communicate better, how to be less anxious about interpersonal interactions, and how to give myself grace. I don’t want to suddenly find myself with insomnia again, worrying at nights about some conversation with a friend or colleague that day, wondering if I did or said the “right” thing.
I want to do fun things like everyone else–going out, hanging with friends, doing activities, crafting, etc., but I don’t want to do it at the expense of this hard-earned self-knowledge. Neither of us wanted to keep traveling after the 18 months we’ve had. We were weary of being on the road. Real life is something we desired; the routine, the apartment, the possessions. Maybe even the jobs to some extent, although we both wish we could work fewer hours per week. But the transition has been a little scary.
During our time off, we had a repeated sentiment–“I don’t want to go back and feel as if we never left.” That’s the struggle at the moment. Trying not to reenter our new lives too quickly and forget what it was like to be okay with just sitting around, doing nothing.
We’re back. But then, we’re not really back back. Not yet. Because we don’t have an apartment and we haven’t started going to our jobs. We haven’t rejoined the stream, so to speak. Of course, this is by design. Because we just got back. We need a cushion, to sort things out. Like, what furniture did we give away anticipating finally making an upgrade? And, how are we supposed to commute to our jobs? And then, on a slightly different level, how are we supposed to get used to having less free time? I’m talking radically less free time, which, during this sabbatical, has been our biggest asset, the one thing we have had in abundance at nearly all times. It has meant that we don’t think twice about taking the slowest way to get somewhere (the other day, when looking at bus routes, Sheena said, “wow Route 106 goes all the way to Renton. That would be interesting to take.”). And we gamely cook elaborate meals, on a weekday. I worry about the transition.
So we’re in limbo. No longer traveling, but not back yet. It’s not the most comfortable position to occupy, but it’s not uninteresting. For one thing, I am confronted with the way that our lives have become increasingly scheduled. Our free time, increasingly scheduled. Question: is it free time if it all has to be scheduled? Is it free time if you have to make dinner plans more than a month out, like a dentist appointment? I get it, everyone is busy. We all want to make sure that we can accomplish as much as possible in the times that we aren’t dedicating ourselves to something we have to do. But from my perspective it seems to have reached overwhelming levels. Is there any time when we (collectively) aren’t doing something anymore? Like, no television, no movies, no podcasts. Just sitting, thinking, maybe allowing a little music. I did feel this way before we left, always weary of scheduling too many social calls during a week, always wondering how I could increase the presence of silence in my life. But when you have been away for so long the contrast upon returning is stark.
I recently read a book called “Hanging Out” by Sheila Liming. Taking two minutes to read reviews of the book and you will probably determine that it isn’t worth your time. I’m not sure it was worth mine. I didn’t like it very much. But there is a peculiar thing about reading: you don’t actually have to like something (or agree with something) to get something out of it. In fact, if you are constantly thinking about why a book is wrong, or how a book is unfocused, or what points a book misses, then you are also being forced to think about the subject and you might make some progress in understanding it. And that’s about the sum of how reading “Hanging Out” went for me. The concept of a “third place,” which, having worked in urban design-adjacent fields for a little while now, is not a foreign term to me, was discussed, and I found myself thinking about how this may have contributed to our time in the wonderland that is called Sevilla.
Since leaving that city, I have periodically thought back to it with great fondness. Not because I particularly liked the physical city (although it was nice), or the food (also nice), or the weather (once again, pretty nice), but because of the social scene that we somehow found ourselves inserted into, thanks to our friends. We were graciously invited to every social gathering that was occurring amongst their group, which included watching soccer matches, going to regular bar hangouts, eating random meals, having random beers, and traveling to nearby cities on the weekend. This felt gracious because we don’t speak Spanish perfectly and there was always something a little halting and disjointed about our communication when we hung out. But I don’t think we were a burden to them. And with the rare exception of one trip to Jerez, I’m not sure they planned anything specifically to entertain us. We were just included in what was already happening. And this was what was marvelous, because it turns out that Sevilla is basically one giant third place. As they said at the time, “we live in the streets.” And you can do this, in Sevilla, because it has an abundance of cafes with huge amounts of informal seating in public spaces, because the food and drink is quite cheap, and because the weather is (with the exception of summer) mild and warm. The knock-on effect, it seemed, was that it was easy to gather people together in a much more relaxed, much more informal way, such that the addition of extra people, whether they were foreigners or not, was nothing out of the ordinary and didn’t change the formula.
It would be interesting to see Jaime and Pilar’s Google calendars, to see if they have any social events noted on them. Why would you need to if you know that on Fridays at 2pm you meet at a certain bar, a bar that has been there for 50 years, on a plaza that has been there for 400 years, a steady and reliable place that will not change anytime soon, which affords cheap beverages and ample seating and, most importantly, shade. And why would you need to note that for every Sevilla FC match you will be hosting people on your azotea, where light tapas will be provided and where litros of Cruzcampo will be brought for sharing. And why would you need to note that you will be going to a certain bar on the plaza next to Las Setas, on a certain night, when you could easily just respond to your friend’s text message that you receive when you are already there, letting them know where you are, and than they will just pop over for a quick drink later, because basically everyone you know lives within walking distance of the city center.
Perhaps I’m thinking that the shape of this city, and most US cities, is to blame for our predicament. While being relatively easy to get around, Seattle is still far larger than it needs to be, and far less dense than it could be. We keep finding our friends moving to outlying neighborhoods, which necessitates planning hangouts because we would otherwise never find ourselves there by happenstance. And for all the parks and waterfront that we have here, it still seems like there isn’t enough places to go where one can cheaply meet up and shoot the shit, especially in bad weather. Our cafe culture is abysmal, our restaurants are expensive, and our public seating (and bathroom) situation non-existent. Amazingly, I think back to all those popular indoor malls with obscene amounts of cheap food, which were so popular in Asian and Australian cities, and think that that would be an improvement. I have said to Sheena that I would like to find a way to keep unstructured, unscheduled time in our lives. Again and again we have found that there are rewards for doing this, mostly in the area of self-reflection. But we can’t avoid the scheduled nature of social hangouts in this city (we already have something booked for a weekend in June!). I like the idea of being a regular somewhere, of having a certain night where we always go to a certain place. And I like the idea of trying to become better friends with the people who live closest to me. We are moving back to the same neighborhood that we have always lived in, so it seems that these are goals that are within reach.
In the meantime, I continue to live in this state of limbo, a state that Julien Gracq says affords “imaginative communication with reality,” and I continue to try and profit by it.
We profit, in part, by trying to find the good Vietnamese food in Seattle
When I was in second grade, I won a cup in a school-wide reading challenge. It was inexplicably shaped like a beer stein, and was of a clear plastic and had my school’s logo on it (our mascots were dragons–so cool, right?). This became MY cup and I exclusively used it for everything. I think it got pretty disgusting and became more and more opaque as the years went by, but I didn’t care.
Also while growing up, I latched onto a certain spoon. It was the only spoon from my parents’ first silverware set in the US that survived for more than a few years, and it had a red plastic handle, which is how I could differentiate it from other spoons. Similar to my cup, I used it for all spoon-related consumption, and if it was dirty, I would sigh and use some other inferior spoon with great reluctance.
One day, I came home from school and could not find my cup. I searched and searched, and finally, when my parents came home from work, I asked them if they had seen it. “Oh, we threw it out,” they said. “It was too dirty.” The same thing happened with my beloved red spoon on another sad day, but this time they told me it broke.
Ah, the lack of sentimentality in immigrant parents–they knew that these pieces of admittedly cheap kitchenware were sacred to me, but still, into the trash they went without even allowing me to bid them goodbye while shedding a few heartfelt tears. They were just gone, poof, never to be seen again, and I was expected to carry on as if dear friends had not just been dumped without any respect.
Childhood tragedy aside, the point I’m trying to make is that I get a little attached to material things. However, when you’re traveling with a small backpack, you just don’t get to have a lot of things. There becomes this push-pull of cherishing all of your belongings and not wanting to let them go, and also getting really sick of them. Must I wear this ragged t-shirt again? But if I lost it, what a pain to try and find another one without knowing where the good shops are, to have to pay for something unnecessary, to not know where I will be for it to be delivered.
Thus the lack of souvenirs from our trip. We bought very few things as we traveled and if we did, it was mostly to replace something that we had to throw out. The backpack space cost of my bespoke shirt from Hoi An was a shirt that I hadn’t worn much on our travels and was also eight years’ old; this was left in Da Lat. I had brought a $20 puffy jacket from Costco to Asia specifically so I could leave it guilt-free once I was sure I wouldn’t need it anymore; our Airbnb host in Saigon was puzzled but not unhappy about the unexpected “gift.”
This restriction on consumption is something that Craig and I have talked about in regard to a travel sabbatical versus a stay-at-home sabbatical. In terms of accommodation, we spent much less for a year and a half than we would have if we had stayed in Seattle; even if we added in transportation costs of all of our flights and trains, this amount would only be half of what our condo costs us in 18 months of mortgage, interest, HOA, taxes, and insurance. So globe-trotting was quite inexpensive in comparison to just renting or owning a place in Seattle. Of course if all of our time had been spent in Europe or if we hadn’t benefited from the generosity of free lodging from parents and friends, this would be a different story…
I have so far established that just staying in Seattle and not going anywhere would have cost more than traveling abroad the way we did. Food was, on average, a lot cheaper in the places we traveled to; even in Europe I wouldn’t say it was more expensive than Seattle. So I think we can safely say that the cost of feeding ourselves was also significantly lower than if we had stayed in Seattle.
On top of all of that, we had either a cargo limit on our eWellie (Honda Element) or a space restriction in our backpacks that prevented us from buying stuff. We still bought quite a lot of stuff that was specific to our travels, like a nice pair of shorts for Asia, that Costco puffy jacket I mentioned, etc., but I would say overall that our consumerism plummeted during the sabbatical. Not having a space of our own meant we didn’t have anywhere to put the things we purchased; the end result being that we didn’t really purchase much.
Now that we’re back in Seattle and consuming at normal pace once again, it has struck us that if we had taken time off from work but hadn’t had any restrictions on obtaining more and more goods, our 18 months would have been two or three times more expensive than what we actually did. So much of our everyday life is taken up with material goods; coveting them, earning money to buy them, using them, and then discarding them. Not being able to do any of this made me sad at times (I am just as materialistic as the next person!), but I think it allowed us to turn our thoughts to intangibles.
What is life without all of these things and a place to put them in? Sometimes it was difficult. There were innumerous shiny and cute things that I could have bought at various points in our travels, but considering that I hardly remember any of these things, the pang of regret in passing them by was short-lived. On the whole, out of all of the inconveniences of travel, this lack of goods and the purchase of them was the least arduous to endure. I think I also learned how to really enjoy window-shopping; appreciating items and then letting them go.
Since childhood, my nature has been to hold onto favorite objects because they can bring joy and comfort. After living with just what can fit in a 40-liter backpack, I think I’ve learned that I don’t have to own things in order to feel this joy and comfort. Perhaps it’s part of the move towards the tenets of mindfulness and Buddhism that I’ve started to make; recognizing the impermanence of objects and the feelings that they produce.
Still, I’m not a Buddhist monk, and there are lots of things that I will continue to buy, especially in this period of settling in, back here in Seattle. Like with all of the tiny self-improvements and growth that I think I’ve achieved during our time off, I am hoping that this will also stay with me. It’s a little bit scary, wading back into the land of rampant capitalism and online shopping; it’s so easy to just buy, buy, buy. Without so many things during the past year and a half, I’ve found a lot of freedom and peace in a life without constant consumption, and I’m worried of losing that. In the same way I clung to that spoon and cup, we shall see if I can cling onto the mindset of needing and wanting very little despite being back on the hamster wheel of a working American’s life.
When I think of all the malls and shops and markets we came away from empty-handed… It was really a feat of human strength and will!
Back in July, 2023, at the end of our time in Europe, I wrote about what I would now call our “travel rhythm,” which is something that has been a borderline obsession for me during this trip. I am constantly thinking of tweaks that could have been made to avoid various ills that are common during long-term travel, comparing and contrasting to other times that have been more, or less, successful, and pondering what I would do differently next time. In this vein, I have recently been thinking about the ~4 months we spent abroad in Asia and Australia, and I have found it useful and interesting to compare it with the ~4 months we spent in Europe last year.
The chart above shows a comparison between the rate at which we traveled during the Europe and Asia/Australia portions of the trip. What is immediately obvious is that we traveled to more places in Asia/Australia (38 versus only 26 in Europe) and, partly as a consequence, had fewer long stays. The reasons for this difference are not mysterious: in Europe we were very deliberate about selecting two cities for month-long stays, booking the apartments far in advance and planning the rest of the time around them. In contrast, Asia/Australia had only one pre-planned long-stay, which was reserved for Australia. This was something of a remnant from past planning ideas; originally, we thought we would go to Asia in the fall of 2022 as the first leg of the sabbatical, and Australia would represent a mid-trip respite, giving us something familiar and stable (and English-speaking). Maybe we would have traveled for 2 months, then spent one month in Sydney, and then turned around and spent another 2 months in Asia. That was the idea at least. But since COVID-related impacts still existed in the fall of 2022, we flipped Baja to the front, and reserved Asia for last; the idea of Australia was always attached to Asia, and so we kept it there.
Sunset at Wallabi Point
Could we, or should we, have gone to Sydney earlier, placing it in the middle of the 4 months we were in Asia? Yes, I suppose we could have. Our friends generously agreed to host us in Sydney, which may have inadvertently made that sojourn feel less “locked-in” compared to our European apartments. Since we planned only ~1 month ahead of time while we were in Asia, and since we didn’t even book our flight to Sydney until we were already in Vietnam (mostly because we didn’t know where we would be flying from), our time in Australia was always a bit too fluid. The original idea was a full month, but over time that was shortened to three weeks, and even that was broken up into shorter chunks with side trips that were both planned and unplanned.
This all has major shades of South America circa 2014, and we probably should have known better. We did have the presence of mind to book a two-week stay in Hanoi when we were in Taiwan, already sensing that we were moving too fast and that we would surely need a break. We also stayed for a solid week in Ho Chi Minh City, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. But both of those were cities that were unfamiliar, where we didn’t speak the language, which I’m sure contributed to our reluctance to select one ahead of time and “lock it in” for a full month. Having now traveled through a portion of China and SE Asia, it is clear to me that Hong Kong or Bangkok would have been ideal places to spend a long-stay (and perhaps they will serve in that role in some future trip), but they were just as opaque to me while planning.
On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City
I also wonder about the impact of what we were doing before each of these trips. In advance of Europe, Sheena and I spent some time apart, and during that time each of us did a fair bit of relaxing (or, in my case, not moving or talking, ha!). It’s possible that this, combined with the more structured rhythm, contributed to a more satisfying 4 months abroad. In contrast, before we left for Asia we had our Pacific Northwest summer, which in all likelihood was longer than it needed to be (October isn’t really summer, is it?), and we were not deliberate about spending a prolonged period of time apart. I think it’s possible that the former led us to decide to travel more intensely, without as much structure, because we had sat a little too idle for too long; perhaps the latter made all of that harder on us than it needed to be.
So, at the end of all this, what have we learned? There is no denying the success of our month-long stays in Europe, and I think we need to have a goal of incorporating pre-planned stays of that style in the future; the obvious road block is when we need to select a city that we haven’t previously visited, in which case it’s likely best for us to select the largest and most urban one (definitely not one the size of Cafayate, say). We have learned that some time apart is well spent and that I have a bit more capacity and desire for intensive (and uncomfortable) travel than Sheena does. This makes us wonder if next time it would make sense for Sheena to stay longer in a familiar city while I go travel for a period of weeks in a place where less comfort would be expected. Lastly, some amount of time spent at home, with family, in a known environment, was very appreciated during our travels and I think it’s worth incorporating again in the future. All of this is pretty academic though, because at the moment I’m so travel fatigued that I yearn for a boring and routine life at home.
We arrived quite late on Wednesday night in Sydney, but Craig’s middle school friend, who went to university in Sydney and then stayed because he fell in love with an Indonesian-Australian, gamely picked us up at the airport at 10:00pm. Jon and Mel have a 2-year-old son, Liam, so this was an extra topping of nice, considering what life is like for them. They live out in a suburb of Sydney called Hornsby, about an hour by train from the city center, but with a spare bedroom that they generously offered to us for the three weeks that we would be staying in Australia.
On the ride north from the airport, we stopped for a drink at Opera Bar, so-named because of its view of the Sydney Opera House.
Jon told us how the architect never saw the completed Opera House, but not because he died. Drama!
“So do you have any ideas about what you’re going to do while you’re here?” Jon asked over beers and a (surprisingly good) hard seltzer.
“Well…” we said, shrugging. “Not really.”
After 17 months of not having our own home and traveling all over the globe, Craig and I are officially tired. Road weary. Travel fatigued. We’re over it!
In fact, our time in Australia was meant to be a sort of respite from traveling because it would be in an English-speaking country, staying with friends. As we pack our bags for our flight back to the US the day after next, I have been pondering our time down under. It has been quite a lot busier than we had anticipated, which has been surprising. Aside from the obvious socializing with Jon and Mel, we were lucky enough to have four other meet-ups with other friends, old and new.
Our first was during a four-night stay in Melbourne. Besides the four-hour flight delay to get there due to thunder and lightning storms and the switch from train to coach bus for the first four hours of our train home, Melbourne was actually a really fun city. We both loved the tram network, which is the largest urban tram network in the world (oh, if only they had kept Seattle’s… what would it have been like?!), and the city itself was really diverse and fun. On our second night, we took the tram up to Richmond neighborhood and had dinner with Cecilia, one-half of an Australian brother and sister duo that we met randomly in a bahn mi restaurant in Hoi An (it was one of the rare times that I tried to be sociable).
Ceci and Louis were the children of Hong Kong immigrants to Australia, and although they were a bit younger than us, they were really funny and nice and when we finished our enormous bahn mis, we exchanged contact information so that we could try and see each other again when we made it to Australia. Funnily enough, we decided to eat Vietnamese food with Ceci, in honor of our first meeting, and we had a great time talking about the Asian-immigrant family experience in Australia vs. United States as well as being introduced to the “Most Generous Interpretation,” a concept originating from Brené Brown that has been coopted as mindfulness and parenting aids.
St. Kilda and the famous Luna Park at sunset.
After such a delightful time with Ceci and then exploring Melbourne and recognizing so many streets and neighborhoods from my many readings of the excellent Phryne Fisher novels, we returned to Sydney. But the very next day, we had a lunch date with two Asian-Australian families that we met in Da Nang, the friends of Peter who helped us obtain our Australian ETAs and with whom we shared dinner twice (once in Da Nang, and another time in Nha Trang). We assembled with Ann and Mark, Ness and Leon, and their kids in Chatswood, a heavily-Asian neighborhood, and had delicious Malaysian food. We learned a little bit more about Sydney and how it’s been diversifying more in the last few decades, but that before that, minorities often stuck to themselves in enclave-like neighborhoods. Cabramatta was primarily Vietnamese, Merrylands Persian, etc. etc. I’ve noticed, however, that Sydney in general (Melbourne, too) are heavy on the Asians. It’s noticeable not just in the local people, but also in the restaurants (yummy yummy Asian food, how I wish you were easier to obtain in Seattle).
The whole gang with Peter in Da Nang. Delicious hot pot (lau)!In Sydney! Minus a couple of kids.
Our weekend was packed, because after stuffing our faces, we got up the next morning to take the train to Chatswood again, where we were picked up by Louis (brother of Ceci) and taken to the coast to do a walk from Manly Beach to Spit Bridge. Despite an age gap of 12 years between Louis and I, we all had a great time chatting about work, relationships, family, and life in general. He also thought being Asian in Australia wasn’t as big of a deal to identity and intersectionality as it was in the U.S. We wondered about this and Craig posited that because White Australia ended in the 70s, most immigrants just haven’t had to fight racism over multiple generations as they have in the U.S. It also made me wonder about the experience of Asian-Americans who grew up in enclave-like cities like my cousins in Alhambra, California versus my own experience out in conservative, majority-White Riverside, California.
“Wow, you guys really have some interesting questions,” Louis said at one point.
“Well, we’ve had almost a year and a half to just think about these things!” replied Craig. (Not working is really conducive to deep thoughts.)
The coast with Louis! I’m sad we forgot to take a photo with Ceci.
Experiencing the coast of Sydney seems to be something Australians are all very insistent on. During our lunch with Ann and co., as the ten of us valiantly made our way through the seemingly impenetrable feast, she mentioned that we were welcome to use a holiday beach house that they had in Wallabi Point, about 3 hours north. Were we interested?
“Oh, umm! I’m not sure,” I hedged, thinking that we had already trespassed on their generosity too much by having them come all the way out to Chatswood to meet (this was before I learned that they paid for our lunch!).
Undeterred, Ann gave me the address and told us to think about it. “There’s nobody there! It’s just sitting empty, so you’re welcome to go up and stay.”
After giving it some thought and verifying that getting a rental car for two days wouldn’t break the bank, we were all set for a road trip. Wallabi Point was really just a few streets with about 100 houses and one cafe (the nearby town of Old Bar to the north had a grocery store, liquor store, and a couple of restaurants). It was peaceful and windy and beachy and although Craig and I didn’t actually go in the water, we at least went paddle-boarding at a nearby lagoon and had a couple of atmospheric beach walks. I’m not sure I’d ever want to live on a tropical-ish beach, what with the salty air and all the bugs, but it was really fun to visit. It was hard to believe that our little road trip vacation happened because Peter saw on our Instagram that we were in Vietnam, messaged us to meet up in Da Nang, and Ann and her family were in Da Nang at the same time and Peter brought us all together. What do people call this? Kismet?
Paddleboarding in Saltwater Lagoon, just next to Wallabi Point.
We returned from Wallabi Point and were cooking dinner once again for Jon and Mel when they returned home from work on Friday. “You guys can stay as long as you like!” they joked. By this time, we had gotten an idea of how difficult it was to raise a 2-year-old while working full time. Poor Liam has suffered through hand, foot, and mouth disease, as well as another cold while we’ve been in Sydney, so the trials and tribulations of a young family were very apparent.
“Wow, you’ve really made us rethink our decision to not have kids!” we said in jest one night when the two had collapsed on the couch after finally getting Liam to bed successfully.
“You’re welcome to take Liam back to the States with you!” they replied in kind. The exhaustion in their eyes was very real… and very scary! If anything, Liam, as cute as he is, has only helped cement our decision to remain childless. Thanks Liam!
So it was kind of funny to meet up with another family with young kids a couple of days later. This time, it was Vik and Linda and their two daughters. We first met Vik and Linda in Colombia in 2014; they were part of a really fun group of backpackers in Medellin at one of our favorite hostels of the trip. Vik is of Indian descent and Linda is of Vietnamese, and they’re both the children of immigrants as well. Craig and I thought it was very interesting that everybody we met up with from Australia were the children of Asian immigrants–how did that happen?
Anyway, we journeyed out to Cabramatta, the Vietnamese and Chinese enclave neighborhood two trains away. Linda actually grew up in Cabramatta (which is also where Ann and her family live!), and she was able to point out all the things that had changed and led us to a delicious crispy chicken noodle lunch. Even after all this time, we clicked well and Craig and I remembered why we had liked them so much when we first met them. Their daughters were five and seven, so they weren’t quite as exhausted as Jon and Mel (there’s light at the end of the tunnel, guys!). Jasmine, the eldest, even voluntarily held my hand as we crossed a street, which surprised me and somewhat touched my heart (although I also had the immediate thought that I had to use hand-sanitizer as soon as possible). After eating lots of yummy food and having a wander, we hugged goodbye and Craig and I went to nom on some delicious che (Vietnamese dessert).
Partying hard with Vik, Linda, and Elizabeth in Medellín in 2014.Responsible adults (well, two of us anyway) now in Cabramatta.
All of these interactions have been so fun but also improbable. Our Aussie swing has turned into a “Meet up with lots of people” swing, and it’s been wonderful. Craig had already been to Australia once before, but this has been my first time, and I have to say that it’s been a really great experience. I would love to transport all of the restaurants in Cabramatta to Seattle and I would also love to see as much unproblematic diversity in the States. In some ways, Australia has seemed like a much more vibrant, young country than the U.S., probably because of all the immigrants (30% of the population!).
Someday, we’ll come back and skip over to Tasmania and New Zealand. But for now, it has been a treat to see old and new faces and bask in all of the Aussie generosity and hospitality. Next stop: Home!
This is the first of what I expect to be several “post-trip” entries as the number of remaining sabbatical days dwindle. Since traveling by train was an organizing principal at various points during our travels, I thought it would be interesting to look at some statistics. Not including commuter or metro-type, inner-city travel, we ended up taking 33 different trains during the last year; our first was the Paris to Marseilles journey on March 7th, 2023, and our last was the Albury to Sydney journey on February 23rd, 2024. Here are some quick numbers:
Most expensive: London to Paris Eurostar, $0.35 per km
“Almost free”: Aranyapratheth to Bangkok, $0.27 per hour
Aranyaprateth to Bangkok train
The above numbers describe the extremes of the trips we took, but the bulk of our journeys (22 of them) were taken in Bulgaria, Romania, Taiwan, and Vietnam. All but two of these trips were taken on state-owned railroads that set the cost per kilometer of travel between 7 cents and 4 cents*. The express trains in Taiwan averaged about $6.30 per hour of travel, while the local Taiwanese and all of the Balkan trains were similarly about $2.60 per hour of travel. Vietnamese trains were the slowest, which meant that they averaged about $1.60 per hour of travel.
A graphical analysis of train costsBoarding the Istanbul to Sofia Express
Other considerations which easily set these various systems apart are: the availability of food, the condition of on-board bathrooms, and the comfort of the seats. Many trains had no food available for purchase, so it’s relatively easy to say that the Vietnamese trains had the best food available; surprisingly, the train from Albury to Sydney had pretty good meals and snacks, which places it safely in second. Regarding bathrooms, we all know that Bulgaria was the worst, with the Aranyaprateth to Bangkok train coming in second; Taiwanese, French, and Spanish trains likely had the best bathrooms, although I appreciated the separate sink areas on the Vietnamese trains, which were always clean and had a bar of soap next to the tap. As for seat comfort, the Taiwanese trains likely win because the seats always faced forward (they rotate), and because the length of journey was never butt-numbingly long; the French and Spanish trains also had pretty comfortable seats, and I am a little partial to the first class cabins on the Bulgarian trains as well.
*boarder crossing trains between Bulgaria and Romania were a little more expensive, 10 cents per km
Bangkok has felt more comfortable and easier to navigate than many of the cities we have visited in SE Asia. I remember sitting in the alley outside a coffee shop owned by an expat in Ho Chi Minh City (pop. ~9 million) and talking with the owner about Bangkok (pop. ~11 million). He couldn’t believe we would be staying for 5 whole nights. “It’s so big, it’s a nightmare to get around, better to stay here,” he said. After a few days navigating the city exclusively by bus and skytrain, and walking almost the entire time on sidewalks free of scooters, I’m at a loss as to what he could have meant. Compared to HCMC, this is bliss.
Sidewalk free of scooters!
Bangkok is the third largest city (by population) that we have visited during this sabbatical, and it is definitely one that I could see myself staying in for some time. Food is everywhere, scooters are seen in relatively paltry numbers, and, best of all, it has functioning mass transit; as a consequence, there seem to be many fewer pedicabs and Grab bikes, fewer food delivery vehicles, and a lot less honking. The bonus is that our apartment is quite comfortable, and at night I imagine I’m in that scene in Isle of Dogs where Megasaki City is shown with an elevated train passing through the lit-up skyline. Each day we have picked some excursions and meals to give us structure, and it has been rewarding to navigate around. The main challenge is the heat, which hasn’t been nearly as crushing as it was in Cambodia, but which nevertheless leaves us a sweaty mess in practically no time at all. Here are notes on our sightseeing:
Wat Pho
On our first full day we did a lot. A bus with AC took us from our neighborhood in the north (Ari) to the area near the main temples in about 45 minutes. This was easy and fine, despite the bus sitting in traffic for half that time. A short walk with stops for lunch (radna) and dessert (mango sticky rice), and then we arrived at Wat Pho, one of the most popular temples. Here we paid our entry fee and I donned my long pants, while Sheena borrowed a long skirt, and we walked toward the building that housed the giant reclining Buddha, passing many smaller shrines that were elaborately tiled and super shiny. The Buddha was very impressive, and thank goodness, because our slow walk around the thing resulted in us still being under cover when the sky opened up. Of course we hadn’t thought to bring our umbrella or rain coats. We dallied in a nook for about 10 minutes, but then the temple workers closed all the windows to keep the rain from coming in, which resulted in stifling conditions amongst an increasingly large group of sweaty tourists. We made for the door and waited out the final 10 minutes of rain under the exterior roof, crammed like sardines, but at least with access to fresh air.
Sampheng Market
A preplanned stop at a juice bar with AC followed the temple, restoring our energy, and then we walked to Chinatown. The road I selected turned into the Sampheng Market, a covered pedestrian alley absolutely jammed with shops. This was fun for a little while, especially when we completed another side quest by purchasing some Totoro reusable grocery bags, but we soon exited the tight space and moved a block over to Yaowarat Street, where we could find more food. It turned out that Yaowarat was the center of the Chinese New Year celebrations in Bangkok, which we were soon in the midst of. The street was lined with food vendors and the few cars remaining were being squeezed out by hordes of people. A band was warming up on a stage and barricade was starting to be placed along the street for some parade that would surely start a few hours later. We made stops at two food establishments that I had marked on Google Maps, ordering one dish at each to split, as we waded through the crowds, slowly making our way toward Hua Lamphong train station where we could find a bus back home. We had eaten enough to not be hungry, but it was still a little early and we knew if we didn’t pick up something for dinner it would mean another trip out. With this in mind, we grabbed a few more things for take away and gratefully exited the festival zone laden with piping hot food in plastic bags.
Yaowarat Street
At the train station we found the bus stop and waited with the other passengers. Google told us that we could expect our bus, the 34 (which is also known in the recently changed numbering as the 1-3), every 20 minutes. It seemed that we had just missed it, or maybe it only felt like forever because we were quite fatigued from the 5 km of walking, mostly in crowds, that we had done over the last 5 hours. Finally we spotted two buses approaching, the 34E followed by the 34. We got on the first one, and before we could communicate our destination, it took off. While the AC felt excellent, it was with some sadness that we learned that this version of the 34 wouldn’t take us all the way home. After a lot of gestures, we understood that we should transfer to the regular 34, which was behind us (though no longer visible), at the next stop. It took us some 10 minutes to get to the next stop due to traffic and route turns; we disembarked and waited for that beautiful, blue (indicating AC) bus to appear. Instead a red (indicating no AC) 34 pulled around the corner. WTF?! We decided to board it, and then with utter disbelief we watched the blue 34 pass us one block later. There is a difference in cost between the red and blue buses, but we were still surprised at how popular the red one turned out to be, as indicated by the number of times we pulled over the curb. The sweaty journey on the wooden-floored bus did eventually come to an end and we staggered back to the apartment 7 hours after leaving, now hungry for the food we had in tow.
The regular 34
On our second day we did less. One good thing about staying as far north as we are is the proximity to the giant Chatuchak Weekend Market. A five minute bus ride and we were exiting onto the sidewalk outside the sprawling complex. It was lunch time, so there was a quick stop for one plate of food, and then several more stops around the stalls when we found things that interested us, like coconut ice cream, sausages on a stick, and Thai-style che. There was also much wandering through the endless corridors, which reminded us a lot of the Marche aux puces in Paris. On this day the sun was out and the heat beat down on us with a little more intensity, meaning that I felt worse coming back after only a few hours out than I had the day before. Later that night, after returning from dinner, we found our apartment overrun with some sort of insect. They were everywhere, crawling out of the baseboards, and it was bizarre that they had just manifested out of seemingly nowhere. After killing maybe 50 each, we finally messaged the host, which was only mildly helpful. We learned that they were probably some type of termite, either recently hatched or mating because of a possible “change in the weather,” and that they might be attracted to light and/or go away after a few hours. Killing them didn’t seem to reduce their numbers, so we just waited around with the lights out, hoping they would eventually stop. And they did, pretty much all dying sometime in the night. That’s life in the tropics, we thought.
Big city vibes
On the third day we went down south again. This time we took the skytrain and exited at the large Siam station, which is connected to several giant malls. These were still closed at the early-ish hour, so we descended to street-level and walked a few blocks toward the Jim Thompson House. I had some mild interest in seeing this museum (dedicated to the man and his legacy of popularizing silk fabrics worldwide), but the line of 25 people waiting to buy tickets and the promise of a longer wait for the mandatory tour quickly deterred me. A museum or attraction must be relatively cheap and have almost no barrier to entry for me to be willing to go through the ordeal. Instead we immediately jumped on one of the canal ferries and were whisked downstream, back toward the temples. This time we headed for the Golden Mount, which is a gold-colored shrine on top of a small hill, affording good views of the city. The shrine was under renovation and the highest floor was closed (typical), but the views were still good. After a pad thai lunch, we took the orange colored 509 bus (with AC) back to our neighborhood. The main objective for the afternoon was to do laundry, which was by coin-operated machines on the ground floor of our apartment building. There is always some amount of optimism required when starting up the machine, but since our clothes are full of holes at this point in the trip, we haven’t much left to lose by selecting the wrong cycle. When we pulled the clothes out, they were covered in bits of tissue paper. “I must have left a napkin in my pants,” Sheena said. The sheer amount of tissue stuck to every item of clothing quickly changed the situation from annoying to absurd, and I could only shake my head and laugh as I put things on the balcony drying rack.
Going by canal
On our last full day we spent a few hours apart. Truthfully, we should have done this earlier since we have both been getting on each other’s nerves lately, but with so much to see and so much overlap in the things we wanted to see, we didn’t manage it. We boarded a crowded skytrain back toward the Siam station where I left Sheena to do some shopping in those giant malls. I continued on to the Nana station, where I exited and started walking toward the Benjakitti Park. My goal was to see the “Green Mile,” which is a bike/pedestrian connection between Benjakitti and Lumphini Park to the west. The area immediately surrounding the Nana station seemed to have more western tourists than I had seen outside of the temple zone, leaving me to wonder if this wasn’t a hot spot for hotels; not for the first time I was thankful we were staying somewhat further away. Benjakitti Park turned out to be quite nice, with repurposed hanger-type buildings being used for sports courts, a restored wetland, and high quality bike lanes. The elevated walkway was also very enjoyable, although it had almost no shade and I resorted to using my umbrella for fear of getting overheated. The tiny alleys that were visible on either side of the structure, combined with the slender power line towers and the chrome fence finishing elements did give the path something of a “Japanese vibe,” which was how it was described by some online. Lumphini Park was much less interesting, and I continued walking on some big roads until I got to the shopping malls where Sheena was wrapping up. We walked back to the skytrain station, taking it up to Ari, and then headed a few blocks to the khao moo dang restaurant that had been selected for lunch. With a little help from a neighbor who spoke perfect English, we made sure we ordered the pork and rice plates that would be smothered in red sauce. It was delicious and as we walked back to the apartment we contemplated which building it would be best to buy our future home in.
Before I lived with Craig, I had always been the most nitpicky of all the roommates I ever had (they number over a dozen). I’m still more particular about hygiene (especially of the bathroom variety), but Craig surpasses me in all other areas of tidiness, organization, and planning.
During this trip, if we didn’t have at least a few weeks planned ahead, he would start to get very antsy. Part of this is because he knows and loves me and gets worried about my mental wellbeing if we end up in a not-so-great lodging situation, but in these instances he is usually not a happy camper, either. So for us, it’s better to book ahead with the hope that we can avoid having to settle for disappointing Airbnbs or crappy hotels.
Still, while in Siem Reap, a mere five days before our projected border crossing into Thailand, we went against type and completely changed all of our plans.
The moat around Angkor Wat on a hot scooter ride.
It all started with the bus to Siem Reap, when I was still feeling the effects of the viral illness I contracted while in Battambang. When we boarded, one of the attendants warned us that because there were only four passengers on a bus designed for five times that many, the A/C wouldn’t be turned on all the way. Craig insists he didn’t feel like the ride was that hot, but I was a sweaty, overheated mess by the time we arrived in Siem Reap. The dusty remorque (like a tuktuk but different) ride through the blazing midday sun to our Airbnb didn’t help and I felt a little bit like death warmed over (or death heated up?) by the time I collapsed in an exhausted heap in our Airbnb, in our mosquito-filled home for the next five days.
Since I hadn’t fared much better on the non-air-conditioned train ride from Phnom Penh to Battambang a few days previous, Craig was understandably worried about the projected travel plans to Bangkok, about 245 miles away. We both prefer train travel to bus travel, and after doing some research, Craig had decided to take a train from Aranyaprathet, just across the border into Thailand, to Bangkok. We would have to take a bus from Siem Reap to the border first, though, which was about a three-hour ride. Then, after the border crossing, which could take a good amount of time, the non-air-conditioned train would be another five hours. So Craig anxiously suggested that perhaps I should fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok instead.
Remorque ride.
“Hmm, but I don’t like to be separated from you for too long, and the flights are expensive,” I said. (For reference, the train from Aranyaprathet to Bangkok would cost only $1.50 USD per person and a one-way flight was $125 USD.)
“We’d have to take an early bus to get to the border, and then we need to give ourselves enough time for the crossing, and then the train doesn’t leave until 2:00pm, so we wouldn’t get into Bangkok until after 7:00pm,” Craig fretted. All of this in over 90F heat and tropical humidity.
“Oof.” It was hard for me to even think about such a journey, having finally started to feel somewhat better physically. We both began looking at flights and contemplating ways and means, like taking a bus all the way to Bangkok (which is how most people make the journey).
“Hmm, hang on,” Craig said after a little bit. “There’s also a train at 7:00am. What if we took the bus to the border and then stayed in Aranyaprathet overnight and took the train the next morning? It would be much cooler at 7:00am than at 2:00pm.”
Since we were able to cancel our last night in Siem Reap without any consequences, Craig found a highly-rated hotel in Aranyaprathet to stay in for our border crossing. After so many land crossings in trains and buses, we are both familiar with the utter shittiness of border towns and their lodgings, but hopefully Booking.com wouldn’t steer us wrong this time.
Accordingly, on our day of departure, we arrived to the bus company office in Siem Reap thirty minutes before departure. The sun was already blazing and I had a dangerously-close-to-sweaty walk to the 7-Eleven three blocks away for a cold drink. The office slowly began to fill up with westerners (and one Korean guy!–I looked over his shoulder while he was on his phone to see what language it was in), all headed the full distance to Bangkok. When it was time to depart, we walked across the roundabout intersection to where the minibus waited and climbed in.
It was a fairly uneventful but at least air-conditioned ride to the border. The guy we think was Argentine sat to my left (he had a tattoo of a maté gourd on his thigh) and Craig sat to my right. I knit for a bit while I listened to my audiobook and Craig stared out the window. We were the oldest passengers aside from a guy in his 60s who seemed to speak both Italian and Russian and who got scolded loudly by an English girl for watching soccer videos on speaker (why people don’t wear headphones in public spaces is truly beyond me). The strangest thing was that the driver sat on the right side of the minibus, which made his frequent attempts at passing slower vehicles in front somewhat dangerous since he had to veer quite far into oncoming traffic in order to see.
Other than that, we made it to the border in good time which is where we also discovered why the driver sat on the right side of the car; everyone drives on the left here in Thailand! “This will be good practice for Australia,” I remarked.
Craig and I disembarked to the possible wonderment of the other passengers, who we met again going through passport control. They seemed to look at us and think, “What the heck are they doing stopping here in this shitty border town?” Little did they know it was all part of our master plan to not have yet another life-crushing travel day.
By the time we were processed through immigration in both countries, we had sweated through our clothes.
“Ugh, it’s hot!” I said, pointing out the very obvious.
“Imagine waiting for an hour and then getting on the train!” Craig said cheerfully. We tried to exchange money at a bank, but found they would only exchange USD. It was blissfully cool inside, however; the air-conditioning felt as if it was cleaning my soul.
“Do you want to wait in here while I go exchange money and maybe get a SIM card?” Craig asked me.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I replied as I thought to myself, “Never let this man go.”
Once these tasks had been accomplished, we found ourselves a tuktuk and Craig showed him the hotel on Google Maps, a 9-minute drive away.
“Ooh, 150, that’s kind of expensive,” Craig said before pausing significantly. “How about 100?”
“100?” The driver laughed and said immediately, “Yeah, sure!”
Sometimes, bargaining in Asia is really easy. Most of the time, it’s fun and good-natured. This time, it was both!
We checked into the Velo Hotel, which had a BMX pumptrack in front of it with some bigger ramps off to the side. In the searing heat, it seemed ridiculous that anybody would ever want to use it, but Craig was confident we would see bikers there later at night (he was right). The hotel was, besides the strange cycling decor, very nice indeed (thanks for not screwing us over, Booking.com!) and we quickly killed the two mosquitoes in the room upon entering. We are mosquito-killing masters at this point.
Velo Hotel pumptrack.
While Craig again went out to do some reconnaissance on the train station and get a couple of things from the 7-Eleven (I love Asian convenience stores), I lounged around and recouped my strength. Actually, the travel hadn’t felt too bad! And the hotel room was really comfortable! We decided to take it easy and just eat dinner at the hotel restaurant downstairs. At this point in our travel, we were opting for “easiest” instead of trying to find the “tastiest.”
After staring at the menu, which listed items in Thai with helpful English descriptions like “Stirfry noodles with chicken/pork/seafood” or “Noodles in gravy with chicken/pork/seafood,” I pointed to the former and asked, “How do you say this in Thai?”
“Pad see ew,” the waitress answered. Aha! Why the English description doesn’t actually have the romanization/pronunciation of how to say the dishes in Thai, and why Google Translate doesn’t give the romanization when you use the photo function, is really just too bad since we actually know quite a lot of names of dishes in Thai.
We finished ordering and I sprayed some Deet on while we waited for the food to arrive (mosquitoes are inescapable). When Craig’s chicken with basil was set down before him, heaped high with peppers, he said, “Oh shit, I forgot to ask for no spicy.” Somehow, we got through dinner by trading a good portion of our meals (you see, I love Craig in return and will give up my coveted pad see ew so that he won’t die an ignominious death by chili pepper).
The next morning, we picked up our cute bento breakfast boxes from the front desk and walked in the already hot dawn to the train station. It slowly began to fill with passengers, all locals. When the train arrived, I tried to rush on but was stymied by a plant and exiting passengers, so the best booth we could find was right next to the on-board bathroom. This wasn’t too bad at first, but by 10:00am, the stale urine smell whenever the train stopped was growing stronger and the heat was beginning to affect me (the toilets on the Battambang train and the Bangkok train were like those in Bulgaria–you could see the tracks passing below through the hole in the bowl). At this point, I had started to feel sweat sliding between my boobs and down my back and everything was just so overwhelmingly hot and sticky. The train was also getting more crowded the closer we got to Bangkok and we no longer had our small booth to ourselves. Finally, five hours after our departure, we finally arrived in the center of Bangkok and I staggered out onto the platform, a dried husk of a human, somehow both withered and dripping at the same time.
Disembarking the train in Bangkok.
We climbed up to the BTS, Bangkok’s skytrain system, and boarded less than a minute later. When the doors whooshed open and I stepped inside, I nearly wept. Heavenly, heavenly air-conditioning. What did people do before air-conditioning? How did anybody survive?
The ride was short; too short for my sweaty shirt and pants to dry, and then we were back out into the hot sun, making our way on foot to our Airbnb, 0.4 miles away. The walk went fast, probably because the city streets were filled with things and people to look at; dozens of carts selling all kinds of goodies were catering to the lunch rush and the hustle and bustle was somehow comforting. Surprisingly, miraculously, we were able to check in to our Airbnb right away even though we were 2.5 hours early. We must have done something good in our past lives. There were only two mosquitoes that needed to be vanquished when we entered our comfortable apartment, and after cranking up the A/C and taking lukewarm showers, we both felt practically human again.
It was another easy decision to go across the street for lunch and I had success yet again when I tried to order by just saying the name of a dish (this time woon sen). The lychee frappe was cool and delicious and Craig’s chicken was not spicy, so we were both rejuvenated by the time we finished eating.
“It was a tough train ride, but there’s something about being in a big city that gives me more energy than when we arrived in Battambang or Siem Reap,” I told Craig. Those are the third and second-largest cities in Cambodia, by the way. “I think I just really like big cities.” I remembered feeling a similar way when our train blew into Saigon. Big cities (actually big, not just big for Cambodia) are really interesting to me and I think they feel safe, perhaps because I know they have everything I need? I can’t say for sure if splitting up the travel into two days made it easier or not, but since we arrived with relatively few problems, I definitely don’t regret the change in plans.
View of the big city from our Airbnb balcony.
The trip to the grocery store after lunch kind of took it out of me, but the stop at the 7-Eleven on the way back was funny. Craig tried to buy two cans of beer, but apparently, alcohol is only sold between 11:00am-2:00pm and 5:00pm to midnight. Ah well, another excuse to go to the 7-Eleven again later.
It’s a little bit funny to think that in five days, we’ll be headed out of Asia (to Sydney and Melbourne for a few weeks before going back to the US). It’s been getting progressively hotter the further west we’ve traveled, which I’ve come to realize is really taxing on me, even though genetically, I should be able to handle it better, my ancestors being from southern China and all.
Getting food in this big city seems extremely easy and everything looks a lot more appetizing than it did in Cambodia for some reason. We’re excited to get out and about and enjoy our last days in Asia. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, but despite the heat and discomfort that we’ve experienced at times here, it’s been an enjoyable and delicious sojourn.
On the train, before I sweated my life essence away.
I read somewhere, perhaps in a guide book, that it takes about two weeks to get used to the heat. I wonder, where did this information come from? Is it some kind of physiological fact that the body needs this much time to adjust? Or is it just some anecdotal statement.. After being in continuously hot climates for almost three weeks now, I call BS. We are not more used to the weather, in fact, it seems to be effecting us more. We think, perhaps it is the first two weeks that are the best because the body hasn’t fatigued yet!
Dusty streets of Battambang
When we arrived in Battambang the heat was cranked up a notch, with daytime temperatures reaching nearly 100, and nighttime lows hovering around 75. The town, the third largest in Cambodia, seemed cute, with a neat grid of streets extending from the river, full of interesting architecture, but the heat meant that we cowered in our hotel for most of the day, not willing to risk our sanity on the dusty streets. We would shake our heads in wonder at the tourists taking a remorque out to the bamboo railroad or the killing fields in the mid-day sun. Unfortunately, Sheena came down with a cold, and therefore suffered the unholy trinity of travel, heat, and body fatigue during our visit, leaving me to wander the unpaved streets alone in the relatively cooler mornings after breakfast.
Making Cambodian food
On our second day I used this time to participate in a cooking class at a nearby restaurant. Since the city was recently awarded recognition from UNESCO for food culture, and since we continued to have a difficult time finding food that we wanted to eat, this seemed like a good opportunity. Of course, the 50,000 riel ($12.50 USD) price tag for the class also went a long ways to convincing me. I joined a young American couple and a French mother and daughter on the market tour, where we bought a few ingredients that we would need, like freshly pressed coconut milk and rice paper wrappers. Back at the restaurant the chef led us through the creation of fried spring rolls, a fish curry called amok, and a beef stir fry called lok lak; he humorously repeated the instructions over and over, in English and French, berating us for not using the entire piece of vegetable or for not cutting fast enough. We chatted amiably until the cooking started, and then we noticed the sweat dripping down our butts and wished we could escape to air-conditioning. Each dish turned out to be delicious, and the simple dessert (a banana, tapioca, and coconut milk pudding) put it over the top. I brought spring rolls home to Sheena, asking her if she felt like eating, or if she had killed any more mosquitos in our room.
Battambang central market
We had met a Cambodian gal at a bar overlooking the Russian Market in Phnom Penh and she was enthusiastic about us visiting Battambang; “the real Cambodia,” she gushed. I had had this thought as well, reasoning that the forces of capitalism and tourism had probably warped the other two places we would visit (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, respectively), and that something different might be found in Battambang. But we never really adjusted to be able to enjoy or analyze those differences. It was certainly a more quaint, slower-paced place, giving me a feeling similar to when we visited Concepcion, Bolivia, and perhaps without so much heat I would have found reasons to like it. But is Battambang without heat still Battambang?
Watering the bus
With Sheena still feeling low we made our way to Siem Reap on a mini bus. When we stopped for a bathroom break the bus driver watered down the vehicle to keep it from getting too hot, and Sheena watered down her face and bought a cold drink. We encountered a group of motorcyclists, not unlike the ones we had seen in Baja, with their metal attachment cases covered in stickers from different routes completed; I marveled at their bikes, not quite believing that they were traveling long distances in this heat. One of the group noticed me looking and told me that they were Malaysian, that they had come from Malaysia overland, and that it had taken them 5 days to get here. “Not too bad,” he said.
Dusk in Siem Reap
Our stay in Siem Reap has not been too different from Battambang. Our accommodation was filled with mosquitos when we arrived, and it has been an endless battle to reduce the number to something reasonable (“It’s mosquito season,” we’re told); we have found that saying something about the mosquitos to the host is the best policy, as this usually results in weapons being provided for the fight. This time we received an electric zapper in the shape of a tennis racquet, a tool that we became familiar with in Santa Marta, Colombia years ago, and something that makes the job a little bit easier. Sheena has slowly been recovering and her interest has started to return, although she has been more than happy to let me spend mornings wandering around the ruins of the Angkor Archeological Park without her as she gathers her strength.
Our trusty Pople scooter
Many people suggested that renting a bicycle would be a great way to explore the Park, since it is quite large, but also very flat. Before arriving in Cambodia this sounded appealing, but with the heat and the distances that must be traveled, not to mention the lack of bicycle lanes, I opted for an electric scooter instead, available for the low price of $10 per day. One of my joys has been to head out in the early morning on the powerful and quiet scooter, letting the breeze cool me as I head for uncrowded sites around the periphery of the complex. In the evenings the scooter allows us to quickly get into the center of town to find food among the hordes of tourists, and then zip back to our apartment to escape the heat.
Ta Prohm Temple
On our last full day in town Sheena joined me to visit the Park. I had a couple of days to scope things out and I had what I believed to be the perfect plan: we started at Ta Prohm (aka the Tomb Raider temple) when it opened at 7:30am to be among the first few people there. The monkeys, bird calls, and tree roots wrapping around the blocks of stone like alien fingers make this temple extremely atmospheric, and in the early hour it is almost, but not quite, cool enough to enjoy without thinking about the heat. Next we entered Angkor Thom and made a quick detour down a dirt road to visit the East Gate, aka the Gate of the Dead. Besides almost spilling on some sandy terrain en route to the gate, there wasn’t anything particularly spooky about the place and we enjoyed the absence of other people; continuing, bumping along the tree-lined road, we arrived at the Bayon Temple in the middle of the complex. The “million smiling faces” temple is what we have been calling it, and while it was interesting enough, there is something not quite as captivating about it; I had visited on all three days I was in the Park and never found the magic I had hoped was there. Perhaps it was to be found on the third level that was closed for restoration.
Smiling faces
Finally we headed for Angkor Wat. The streams of tuk tuks and remorques going in the opposite direction was a good sign that many tourists had moved on from the most popular site. We arrived via the back entrance to reduce the amount of walking, and quickly made our way up the approach, entering the first level and then climbing to the second level, where we thankfully found the line to the third level–the Bakan Temple–to be short. Removing our hats, we climbed the steep staircase slowly, sweating in the sun as we our pace was moderated by the slower moving, older Europeans ahead of us. On the third level the vastness of the site was visible, and looking out on the perfectly grided site, with its almost too well restored features, we couldn’t help but compare it with our visit to Versailles. Thankfully (for us), the site has yet to recover its pre-pandemic numbers, so the volume of visitors wasn’t anywhere near what we dealt with in France last year.
Looking West from the Bakan Temple
It was only 10am, but somehow we were destroyed, so we mounted the trusty scooter and zipped back home, making stops to pick up food and fully charged batteries along the way, the heat remorselessly baking us whenever we weren’t moving. Our time in Cambodia is just about up, but we don’t expect to find much relief when we cross the border into Thailand, so the struggle will continue a little longer until this Asia leg of the trip comes to a close.
My alarm goes off and it’s still dark. This is extra unpleasant because we haven’t had to get up this early for quite some time now. I make sure Sheena is awake and then I go eat some breakfast even though I’m not hungry yet. Then we finish packing everything, lock up the room, place the keys back in the lockbox, and book a tuktuk on Grab. It arrives moments after I push the “book” button and soon we are heading down the still dark arterial toward the train station. It is 73-degrees outside and it feels wonderfully cool.
Outside the station
We arrive at the station almost exactly 30 minutes early, as we were directed by the ticketing agent, and we find ourselves among only a handful of other tourists. We briefly sit down on a bench, but then we see a railway worker head down the platform on his scooter, sign under his arm, and we gather our things and start walking toward the furthest train. Sure enough, the man has placed the sign for Battambang in front of the two-car train at the end of the line, just in front of the Sihanouk-bound one, which will leave 20 minutes after us. We climb aboard a train that looks quite similar to one that was on the platform a few days earlier when we bought the tickets, and select a seat on the left side of the cabin, figuring that once the sun rises this will be the shadier side.
The train to Battambang
Sheena pokes her head out the open windows and notes that there are quite a few other passengers heading down the platform, but then it seems that they are all boarding the other train because hardly anyone gets on ours. In fact, when the train pulls out exactly on-time, there are perhaps only 15 people on the train, and only one other couple seem to be tourists. “Weird, I thought people wanted to go to the UNESCO food city?” Sheena says, and I muse about the nature of that designation, whether it’s usually given out based on a widely acknowledged status, or whether it’s more frequently meant to stimulate tourism.. The train seats are hard and the back rests do not recline, and the bathrooms have Bulgarian toilets, but it’s still pleasant because there is a lot of room to kick our feet up and it’s not crowded. As we start on our way out of Phnom Penh, both of us put in our new earplugs because the conductor uses his horn like a Vietnamese bus driver; frequent honks proceed every street crossing and at any other point that he feels someone is too close to the tracks. Since the tracks are lined with vendors, parked vehicles, and back porches of houses, it is quite a racket.
The sun comes up and shortly we find ourselves outside of the city. We briefly pause at the track switch for the Sihanouk line, where an assistant hops out the door and makes sure we continue heading in the correct direction. At this point Sheena asks me to take the window seat and I realize why she has been wearing glasses. The cool air blasts my face and makes my hair fly around; I fish out my own sunglasses and a hair tie, and then a little while later, my fleece. I’m in very high spirits. When we aren’t smelling the crop burning, the morning air is fresh and fragrant, and the scenery is interesting, full of rice fields and cows and water buffalo, howling dogs and waving children, lotus flowers floating on ponds and brightly painted temples and altars. The car sways back and forth, sometimes more than I would like, and the tracks make a classic clickity-clack sound as we roll by.
Sights along the way
We don’t make very many stops, and when we do, they are quite brief. Several people disembark at Sameakki Mean Chey and then some people climb aboard at Kdol and Bamnak. Every time we enter a town the frequency of the horn blasts goes up and this happens again about 20 minutes outside of Pursat. But this time the intensity seems different, and as the conductor lays on the horn and we start to brake with increasing urgency, Sheena and I become more alert to the situation. We look out the window and see a roadway crossing ahead, and at that crossing there is some sort of large cart, coasting, but not stopping as it passes the railroad warning sign, with several men jumping off of it, trying to push it backwards to slow it’s progress. We get closer to it, taking in the detail, noticing the heavy bulk of wooden furniture piled high in the vehicle, and we sense that our train will not stop in time and that the cart will also not stop in time. Shortly after we crash into the front of the vehicle with the sound of wood cracking, and we continue, pushing the cart, for another 2 or 3 meters.
Everything stops and we can’t quite believe what has happened. I stick my head out the window to see the wreck, and then I look behind me and see that Sheena’s head is out the next window. The doors slide open and the train workers jump out to assess what has happened. The passenger sitting across from us also jumps out and coolly walks up the road to take a pee. In a matter of minutes there is quite a crowd on the road. Some of them are waiting to cross the tracks, no doubt, but I get the sense that others just came from nearby when they heard the noise. It’s hard to fathom, because there doesn’t seem to be anything nearby for miles. Eventually the engine of the vehicle is started and a bunch of men help push the vehicle backward, off the tracks and up onto the roadway. We get our first good look at it, which is a strange thing indeed: a long, single-axel trailer that is hitched to another single-axel which has a motor on top of it; steering arms extend some 6 feet from the motor so that a person sitting on the trailer may control the contraption. Perhaps the person steering had no access to breaks.
The crash
Once the vehicle is clear the conductor stops taking photos and starts to berate the driver. His tone is angry and he walks over to the railroad crossing warning sign, pointing repeatedly to the STOP sign and the text sign underneath, which I imagine must say something like “train will not stop” or “look both ways before crossing.” The driver wears an awkward smile and doesn’t say anything. We start up again, appearently no worse for the wear, and pass the vehicle which looks like it sustained damage to one of the front wheels. Before we know it we have arrived in Pursat, where we stop for 20 minutes for food.
Perhaps not learning my lesson from the bus journey to Phnom Penh, I decided that we should plan to get lunch at this stop. Luckily, when we hop down from the train there is a grouping of women with their wears ready for purchase. The first of these has bamboo sticky rice, called kralan, and I look at it and then at the man who is standing next to the vendor, the same man who jumped off the train at the crash to go pee, and I ask, “is it good?” I’m not sure he understands my question, or at least, the only thing that I understand him saying is the word kralan, and then repeating the prices that the woman was telling us (4,000 riel). I look at Sheena and we decide to buy one, and then we move on to the BBQ and fried meats and fish that is piled on several more tables. We pick out a chicken leg and receive rice and vegetables with it (7,000 riel). This feels like a success, especially when we start eating and find both of these dishes to be tasty.
As we work on our food, the man approaches us to chat. He asks the usual starting question, “where are you from?” and from there we learn a bit about him. He’s Cambodian, from a town 20km up the line, a teacher, he used to speak French, and he thinks his English isn’t so good. We beg to differ, and we tell him so. He asks what we are doing here and we use the simple answer, “vacation.” This is interesting because he goes on to tell us that he can’t take vacation, that Cambodia is not a rich country, that he has been saving money for 20 years but that it’s very little; I don’t think he’s trying to make us feel bad, just being matter-of-fact, which is natural when speaking a foreign language. We ponder the appropriate response, thinking that perhaps there isn’t one, until Sheena offers, “we’re lucky.” Which is true. This man also wants to know what we think of Cambodia, specifically if we think it’s expensive or cheap. We start to answer by comparing to Vietnam, which we were surprised to find out was cheaper than Cambodia, and this results in a sour expression on his face. I recall that Cambodia and Vietnam do not have the best relationship politically/historically, and indeed, this man goes on to mention something about the island Phu Quoc, which is called Koh Tral in Khmer, and how it perhaps rightly belongs to Cambodia (quick Google searching makes me think “it’s complicated”). Luckily, our conversation is cut off by the sound of the train engine restarting and we climb aboard. Twenty minutes later we make a brief stop in Beong Khna to let him off and we wave goodbye.
The rest of the ride is more of the same, except hotter. The breeze is no longer fresh and cool, but it is still appreciated because the air temperature is up in the 90’s now. We switch sides of the cabin to avoid the changing sun position and I become a bit more restless, getting up and sitting on my knees on the seat behind Sheena, or stretching out my legs without shoes on. We seem to only honk at cows on the tracks now, passing through fewer towns. But we are making good time and it’s not long before we are getting close to Battambang. I begin to pull down the bags and start to repack things when there is another sudden breaking and a sound of railroad ballast scraping against the side of the train. We come to a stop outside of the station and then we hear a wail, a very pitiful one. I look out the window and see that there is someone under the train, their fishing pole sitting on the pile of ballast next to them. Once again, the employees are thrown into action and the passengers into confusion. We all hang out the windows, listening to this mystery person wail plaintively, legs and arm akimbo. Some additional people are called over from the adjacent buildings and soon a man has been able to help this woman out from under the train. She is older, but how old is probably impossible to tell. I had noticed quite a few people living under tarps by the tracks as we had been approaching and I wonder if she is one of theirs. How did she end up under the train? Did she slip on the ballast as it pulled along side her? Her head and arm are bloodied and we notice them as the train slowly advances the last 100 meters to the train station, at which point we are bombarded by tuktuk drivers.
We grab out bags and walk through the crowd, emerging in the mid-day heat and full sun on the dusty road outside the station. It’s only 2 blocks to our hotel, so we decide to walk and we can’t quite believe what just happened. A bad day for that conductor, we think. Our hotel is fine, acceptable, with functioning air-conditioning, which is a relief.
The Wongenbergs 