Livin’ the Dream

Hi everyone.  Brief update, sorry about the lack of pics but those”ll have to wait until we reach Israel and get a good internet connection.  Ko Chang was quite a change from the more isolated atmosphere of the Gilis.  Our volunteer program Travel 2 Teach ended up being a total bust and greatly soured our experience of this once backpackers dream.  We taught english twice for a total of four hours to staff from two 4star hotels on the island.  Not exactly what we signed up for so we ended up leaving early to explore Ankor Wat in Cambodia.

Even though, T2T stunk, we still managed to keep our spirits high by exploring the island on local transporation favorites, motorbike and elephant and by relaxing and partying at the many beaches Ko Chang has to offer.

Our accomodations on the island were a dismal dorm with 7 people and a nasty shared bathroom.  The only redeeming qualities were that we were next to a bunch of locals and had the accompaniment of a friendly and lovable ridgeback named “eighteen”.  Unlike our T2T coordinator, Eighteen would always walk us from the main road to and from our dorm to make sure we got home safely.  The rest of our dorm experience can be sumed up by our sleeping situation, mesquito nets covering painfully uncomfortable upper bunks with no fans.

Elephant trekking was spectacular – perhaps our best activity on the trip to date!  Imagine jumping on a rescued logging elephant in the middle of a jungle river and scrubbing it with a brush while it shoots water at you through it’s trunk.  Then riding it up to its home and fitting a seat on it for a 1.5 hour trip though the local jungle.  Finally, after the stroll, happily feeding it bananas.  It was incrediably amazing!

Many trips to the beach yields sore feet from avoiding coral in the shallow waters.  Nights were centered around Sabay Bar and firedancers where the action always upbruptly ended at 1:00am.  Yet getting home still took several hours.  (Think late night munchies, inconsiderate dorm-mates and non-existent taxies).

Local food was fantastic and the T2T highlight was learning to cook local Green Curry.  Be prepared for some authentic Thai cooking when we get back.

Southeast Asia can be summed up in a single word: Scam!

Unfortunately it has been one giant scam since we got here and our patience is running a little thin.

Our most recent adventure in Scam World was the unofficially called “the Scam Bus” the only way to get from Koh Chang to Sieam Reap in Cambodia. Here is how it works: We purchased our tickets from a tour guide in Koh Chang one that the coordinator of our volunteer program (aka the big scam) was kind enough to purchase for us from a friend for a local price almost $20 us. The tour operator then picks you up at your designated pickup spot and crams you with your luggage and 12 other people into a miny bus. They then drive you for 5 hours to the border on the Thai side where they deliver you to corpote bandits who charge you $33 us for a Cambodian Visa even though the visa clearly costs only $20 but as you are in the middle of nowhere you have no choice but to pay. Great so now you are out $53 US. Now the real fun begins.

Next they shepard you across a border which makes Tiajuana seem calm and the pinnacle of German efficiency. But it is ok you get a little pink sticker to indicate that you are gullible in case your white skin didn’t tip everyone off already.

Side note: The border itself was a really interesting experience there were so many people walking across as no motorized veichles could pass through. People were carrying everything across – the most interesting thing I saw was a man carrying a live eel in a plastic bag. It definitely felt like the wild west.

So continuing with our story… So our tour guide then drops us off at the bus station and takes off. Great! Immediately we find out that things are very very wrong. It is already 5pm and we were supposed to be in Sieam Reap by 6pm. Next we meet a group of harried tourists who have already been waiting for 3hrs for their bus to arrive. Apparently the bus is “broken” right. So we are about  to split a cab with fellow
tourists when they roll the bus around. Please note that at this point we had already been traveling for 11 hrs. OK fine we take the bus to save the extra $10 for the taxi. We didn’t realize that it was the bus not the taxi that was the scam. So we take of in the ghetto mobile. Which proceeds to take us across a dirt road for 7hrs! At times the bumps were so big that I literally flew 3ft into the air. At this point it is really dark and the only thing that you can see is lightening in the distance. Go figure – the bus doesn’t get into Siam Reap until 1am after every hotel including our own has closed except conveniently the one that is paying the bus driver a commission to deliver all of us to this one guest house. The worst part was that they didn’t want us to leave the premises in fact when I insisted that we had a place booked he didn’t want to let us leave and it lead to a full blown confrontation just to get away from the guy. I flipped and yelled at the guy and amazingly Steve was just as angry this time. And let me tell you it takes a lot to make Steve angry enough to yell at
someone.

I wish I could say that the story ended there but it doesn’t. We managed to get someone to take us to our actual hotel but when we got there the hotel had closed for the night not surprising considering it was now almost 2am. Somehow we got lucky a nice Cambodian woman (maybe the girlfriend of the manager) walked up to the hotel when we arrived, we explained the situation to her and she called someone and spent the  next 30mins convincing them to bring us a key. We finally get a key and there is someone in the room we rented. Shit. OK she gets them to bring us another key and at some god awful hour we finally manage to sink into a very nice hotel room and promise to check in in the morning.

In the morning our next problem arises… so we had managed to  set up a guide to show us Angkor Wat in the morning but when we woke up we never managed to reach him because we had the wrong number. We were totally exhausted so we went back to sleep when we woke up we realized that Steve had copied down the number wrong. We finally managed to get in touch with the guide, Sam, he was super nice but pointed out that it wasn’t worth trying to see the temples anymore because it was too late in the day and he was so sorry but he was booked out for the rest of the week. Darn.

The sinker to the story is that we bought a knock off lonely planet from a little kid and in it they describe the scam I mentioned to you word for word. We feel like idiots and we missed out on an awesome guide.

All this said, we still get to see one of the seven wonder of the world tomorrow, Ankor and those who’ve been scammed just as us say undoubtably, its still very worth it.  Looking forward to continuing the true Cambodian adventure…sort of.

Wish everyone the best.  FYI our new Thai number doesnt work in Cambodia so try calling us between May 11 and May 13 cuz we’d love a call.

Tags: Scams, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 6th, 2006 at 10:41 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.