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Post date: Feb 28, 2011 11:03:18 AM
I should update this before the month ends! Today's the 28th, but who knows what day this blog will think it is. Time zones are screwy.
Okay, so, January was spent in Chiang Mai, the haunted city, where I really crashed in depression and the black and tarry soul-funk lingered for weeks afterward. Rebecca had to endure me at my crappiest and I feel terrible about that. We wended our way out of Thailand, hitting progressively smaller cities until finally squeezing out into Huay Xai, Laos. We took a two-day slowboat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, a truly lavish little city, which I liked better than Vientiane, where we went a couple weeks later, and we also hit a lot of small cities in between.
One nine-hour busride later we found ourselves in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and we abused our souls with visits to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. While in Siem Reap we toured so many ancient temples over two days, including Angkor Wat for finishers, and... look. With all due respect, I'm done with temples. I saw a crapload in Thailand, I saw more in Laos, and I've seen the best in Cambodia. I'm full.
Now we're chilling out in Battambang, Cambodia. We toured with an impoverished man who hosted us for lunch and took us out to see, yes, another temple as well as features of village life. And the weight of the three of us blew out his rear tire, which we felt horrible about, but what was he doing taking three of us on his bike? And we saw the bamboo train, which was fun without waiver, and last night we saw an amazing circus performance put on by local teenagers.
Next... we don't know. We thought about finding yet another location in Cambodia to kill yet another week, maybe drifting down to Malaysia and seeing what's there, or even calling it quits and returning to the States and start constructing our post-apocalyptic bunker and garden. Instead, I think we're going to Bangkok tomorrow with aims to bus down to Trang and see if there are actually any teaching positions there. And that may take us to Malaysia or maybe it really is time to pack it in because I just have had no time to sit down, veg out, and process everything I've seen overseas, all the majesty and horror. I miss my friends as well as anything familiar, though arguably all of SE Asia is familiar due to predominating Western influence--all the chain stores/restaurants that force themselves into other nations, and all the music/clothing that other nations try to adopt in order to feel more Western and, therefore, prosperous and attractive.
Majesty and horror, like I said.