Asian Calmination - Thailand

Thailand
I was pretty zonked out boarding the bus at Siem Reap at 6am, and almost got lost in the border crossing no man's land, but 10 hours later recognizable sights and sounds of downtown Bangkok refreshed me. This was the first "not new" stop on my trip. I was far from familiar with Bangkok, having spent most of my time there in various Sukhomvit Sois (side streets), usually inebriated. Sukhomvit is a huge road and a life artery for the wilder expat scene, but the enormous city has far more to offer. I alighted near the railway station, where backpackers and motorcyclists flooded my path. I elbowed my way into a 7-Eleven to purchase a phone card. A pay-as-you-go phone plan was cheap in Vietnam and Cambodia, but for whatever reason I hadn't felt like getting one - a foreign trip just feels different when connected to the interwebs. However I was planning on being in Thailand for quite some time, and staying with a friend, so a phone seemed necessary. Service in the Land of Smiles is usually pleasant, but the 7-Eleven outside Bangkok Railway Station broke such stereotypes. The clerk went to activate my phone card, left me hanging for 15 minutes, then came back to simply say, "No." The language barrier surely inhibited a more detailed explanation, but this guy's lack of effort was infuriating. In one of the few shoplifting efforts of my life, I pocketed the card (and later succeeded in activating it), and snuck out the store.

"Cal!" Imagine my pounding heart - someone had caught me.  Did I give the store clerk my name? I looked up to see one of the many backpackers on the sidewalk staring directly at me, a white guy with impressive facial hair. "Do you remember me? It's Mark Waterman!" I quickly pieced together my memories from another life of a college ultimate teammate, and had one of those "it's a small world" conversations. In fact I was in town for an ultimate hat tournament, but in a twist of small world irony, Waterman was not in town for that tournament.

I stayed at fellow ultimate player Asha's apartment in Silom. Dinner that night consisted of delicious street food with other visiting players from Islamabad, Pakistan of all places. The Bangkok Hat is one of my favorite tournaments because of the players it attracts. Its central location regularly allows as internationally diverse a participation group, from the UAE to Japan, as any hat tournament in the world. I captained a team with a large Singaporean core, supplemented by local Thai players and expats living in China. I think we finished 2nd to last, but no one remembers that. 

Getting to explore the rest of Bangkok was a wonderful boon. You can get around the city pretty painlessly - outside of rush hour. The BTS is actually quite convenient when not jam-packed, and if you have the luxury to live near it. At Arup, I had worked on a luxury mall in the city called Icon Siam that was under construction, and savored the chance to check out an overseas project for the first time.  On the western bank of Bangkok's main river Chao Praya, I approached from the east bank where the Shangri-La and the Mandarin Oriental landmarked an upscale neighborhood. Water transport used to be Bangkok's main mode of transport, and though times have changed, a raft ferry across the river cost just a few cents. The neighborhood around the western pier was drastically different, populated with dense apartments and tiny convenient stores navigated via narrow dirt roads. The construction site itself was closed off with larger banners blocking a sneak peak, and so I made my way down an adjacent narrow road. To my surprise, the path took me to what could be described as a shanty town - a bunch of tin shacks and some abandoned wooden houses on stilts. People were living underneath the stilts, proved by the operating clotheslines and hammocks. Unbeknownst to me, the multibillion-dollar luxury mall where I had done advanced daylighting simulations was next to this squatter settlement the entire time. Did my project replace the lives of many poor Thai residents? What sort of massive gentrification had I partaken in? Would the Icon Siam eventually help the lives of the people on the wrong side of the Chao Praya?

From the train ride over, I glimpsed a crazy looking building - Google eventually told me the story of the eerie abandoned Sathorn Unique Tower, 68 haunting floors of bankruptcy. Apparently bribing the security guards and taking the stairs to the top is a thing - alas minor shoplifting was enough lawbreaking for me. I also managed to visit the equally unique Jim Thompson House, a combine of traditional Thai houses lifted from remote villages by Jim Thompson, the American architect turned WWII spy who revitalized the Thai silk industry before mysteriously disappearing in Malaysia.

I hadn't made solid plans post-Bangkok, and realized too late that I may have been overstaying my welcome. To the south of Thailand were some of the loveliest beaches in the world, but I'm not much of a beach guy and I'd missed out on a bachelor party in Chiang Mai, so I looked northwards. Unbeknownst to me, that very weekend was a long weekend on account of the Buddha's birthday, and buses and trains to Chiang Mai were packed. I cover this ordeal in a separate post, where I explain how I eventually ended up in Phitsanulok, the city of 84,000 halfway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai and almost died on the back of a motorcycle on a highway. I left out another harrowing experience on that trip. Once I returned from the Sukhothai ruins back to Phitsanulok, I still wasn't home. First, I explored a sprawling night market that swallowed up two Wats, which was awesome - so many delicious options. 

Then I found the Thai address of my hotel, which was really a motel 20 minutes outside the city, and showed it to a motorcyclist who was very eager to give me a ride. He looked at my address, then started driving - all the way to the first stoplight, when he asked me where to go. I was like I don't know! Here's the address again! He huffed and took a right, then in the middle of the street flagged down a driver and asked her to look at the address. I couldn't believe it. The woman read my address several times, then had a far lengthier conversation with my driver than I felt comfortable with - a simple "it's that weird Days Inn ripoff right off the highway" should have sufficed - and finally the driver seemed to know where to go. I relaxed and leaned back,  or as far as I could on a motorbike. After a few intersections, I took my phone out again and checked our progress, and was stunned to find that we were going the opposite direction! I shouted stop to my driver and jumped off. As I was showing him the address again, furious and confused, I finally realized that perhaps he couldn't read. This had been such a rarity everywhere I'd been - China has a 90% literacy rate now - but I'm guessing the illiteracy rate for motorbike drivers in Phitsanulok is not insignificant. I spent another 20 minutes in the area unable to find a taxi or motorbike before finally flagging down a tiny clown car with my battery at 10% life. The car zoomed along at 25 mph and by the time I got home I was exhausted. But hey, at least I made it to those ruins.

The next morning, my bus to Chiang Mai broke down. Really not a great transportation week for me. We were waylaid for a bit over an hour and then crammed onto another bus for the rest of the journey - luckily only another hour. Behind Bangkok and on par with Koh Samui, Chiang Mai is among the Thai places best known to westerners. For tourists, it's an old city with a major airport and access to many activities. There are elephant sanctuaries, zipline course, hikes, night markets, ancient temples and massages galore. Though a city with less than a million inhabitants, Chiang Mai is also a place of abode for a unusually many foreigners, many working unusual jobs. The city teemed with cafes and bars run and frequented by white people. I struggle to find a similar city in Asia - Bali is the best I can come up with.

As a city, I found Chiang Mai...ok. The centre is constrained by a moat and well-preserved city wall, and there aren't a lot of those in the world. Many of the cafes and bars are objectively charming. I guess I found Chiang Mai to be too much of a tweener place. It was too busy and industrial to be quaint, but not nearly built up enough to be productive or have a skyline. It was too touristy to be culturally interesting, but not centralized in its activities, resulting in my walking around constantly feeling like the cool kids were partying elsewhere. Perhaps I was doing it wrong - the most appealing aspects of a Chiang Mai vacation involve getting outside the city. As such, the city itself can feel lazy and boring. 

Among the outdoor  activities I partook in was hanging with elephants.  I had only recently learned how cruel training elephants to be ridden was, and now activities like what I did, bathing and walking with rescued elephants, were in vogue. The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary tour I signed up was located 90 minutes outside Chiang Mai deep in mountainous jungle, and had four elephants. I think all four had been rescued from other, presumably less moral, elephant tours. Seeing the elephants walking through the jungle was pretty surreal, thinking about how heavy they were but how quietly they were stepping.

My other Chiang Mai activities included going to a bizarre outdoor music festival in a hot air balloon field, with a handful of imported American freestyle rappers, and playing pickup with the (relatively) large ultimate community. There I met Jazi, the mysterious Israeli-born handler with a huge beard. When Jazi heard I was a math major, he actively tried to recruit me. He never got too detailed with the type of work I'd do, but it was basically data analysis for his online gambling site. I didn't find that particularly interesting, but I found him fascinating. Jazi was part of the sizable digital nomad crowd that had settled in Chiang Mai, and had made enough money from the site that he didn't need to work a ton. He spoke with a thick accent but with a learned vocabulary, for he had learned English in his adulthood for the express purposes of understanding an academic computer science paper (which I still can't understand). His English was aided by having been raised bilingually in Hebrew and Yiddish, a Germanic language. He didn't seem to have had a formal university education, but instead got intense programming training in the military.

After 3 days I boarded a bus to the legendary backpacker town of Pai. Unlike Chiang Mai which I think is trying to be many things, Pai knows what it is. It's only got 6,000 or so residents, but another 600 or so tourists, and about 60 ways to make a pun on its name. With streets full of souvenir shops,  signs in English and four 7-Elevens, no one will mistake it for an authentic Thai village. However it's geographic remoteness helps preserve a chill atmosphere and keep it from getting overrun with tourists. Some of the bar owners I spoke to were Bangkok transplants seeking a quieter place to ply their trade.

I stayed at an inn complex with an upside down house in front of it. It proved to be a popular photo spot for tourists who were consistently mainland Chinese. Most of the Chinese tourists traveled in groups to a variety of sites, including a strawberry field outside of town that wasn't even on my English map. The tourists explained to me that there was this love movie popular in China set in Pai, which started a buzz for this spot. Funny how one movie can tap into a market of a billion people.

Asian Calmination - Cambodia

Cambodia

I was excited to cross the border. Besides Hong Kong to Shenzhen, real land crossings have been missing from my life. The process didn't meet expectations though, with lots of waiting time in no man's land and no interesting bits, save the exchange of crisp US dollars. In Cambodia, the ride was very rural until suddenly crossing the Mekong River, urban Phnom Penh arose with little warning. My hostel, 19 Happy House Backpacker, was a couple blocks away from our dropoff point, at #59 Street 13. A wrong turn and a dozen blocks later, I was lost with the early afternoon sun really weighing down on me and my red backpack. When I finally reached the hostel, the staff could not find my booking. Minutes of awkward confusion later, I realized I was at Happy Backpacker, a separate establishment. I circled around even more confused, as Street 13 was somehow between Street 15 and Street 5. I came across #60 Street 13, which was some Malaysians' home. Malays speak English which is great, but they had never heard of Happy House Backpacker despite my protests that it must be next door. Some venting later, I kept walking down the street and finally saw the sign for 19 Happy House several blocks away. I learned the hard way that street numbers have absolutely no meaning in Cambodia.

Spark - eccentric establishment

My first night in Phnom Penh included pickup ultimate with the young athletic Swa players on a barebones mini turf pitch, followed by many beers at a concert hall/beer hall/replica Italian plaza/microbrewery/cafeteria called Spark (complete with sinks specifically designed for pukers in the bathroom) with Asian Ultimate legend Jared Cahners. I learned that the fellow Newton native has been living in and out of Asia since the 1990s, coming to Cambodia for his PhD but quitting shortly before we met, and had various histories of fluency in Mandarin, Vietnamese and Khmer. In between, I met a Japanese/Chinese/Thai Wellesley College graduate Clinton Global Health employee looking for someone to analyze malaria data, a Peace Corps volunteer and some of the pioneers in Cambodian ultimate. I always enjoy entering a new city and observing the makeup of the economy, and the makeup of the foreign population.  Throughout Asia, English teachers abound, but in Cambodia I met many aid workers/NGO veterans. This influx gives Phnom Penh a distinctly non-traditionally Asian feel. The downtown is awash in bars and pizza/Chinese food joints with stories traded in English and French.

I didn't have the best time in Cambodia. Everywhere I felt like locals were constantly trying to fleece the last buck out of me, and it really wore me down. Sure, this vibe was prevalent in all the former communist countries I visited (Vietnam and Laos) but most evident in Cambodia.  Ironically, while I attribute communism for the uninspiring aspects of Cambodia, a better understanding of the rise of communism is my best takeaway from the country. While Phnom Penh dates back to the 15th century, and was called the Pearl of Asia in the 1920s, it doesn't feel like an old city. The French and the Communists had left a grid of dusty and sweaty streets, old architecture too rundown to exude any colonial charm and a skyline dotted by a handful of uninspired modern high rises. There are some golden Wats scattered throughout the city and a major boulevard with a pretty monument in the center, but it struggles to compare to the temples of neighboring Thailand. And though I did not find Khmer cuisine bad per se, my palate was so well primed before and after in Vietnam and Thailand.

The ugly legacies of communist rule, and specifically the bloody genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, are thus still very tangible. The government was brutally anti-intellectual, killing most anyone with glasses, education or foreign language knowledge. The country's genocide caused the deaths of around a quarter of the population, an astounding culling of 8 million down to 6 million. When you lose an entire generation of cooks, architects, bureaucrats and writers, cultural devastation is inevitable.

I never really understood communism in history classes. We studied so much about its deleterious effects that it never made sense how such extreme practices took hold in the first place. I read Lenin in high school and Marx in college and still had no idea. But my second day in Phnom Penh involved visiting the Killing Fields outside the city, where hundreds of skulls are prominently shown, and the S21 school-turned-prison-turned-museum, which documents accounts of the atrocities that occurred there. Walking through history, I learned that Pol Pot as a frustrated failed man, who despite an education in France, rode a populist ideology that villainized the educated elite, foreign influences and minorities. The Khmer Rouge promoted rural ethnic Khmers as the backbone of Cambodian society, preaching self-reliant isolationism. If any of that sounds familiar and scary, reread what the regime did after they got into power and be even more scared.

I had planned to be in Cambodia for a brief two stops, before reaching Bangkok for an ultimate tournament. However I mistook the tournament to be a week earlier than it was, giving me another week to explore Cambodia. I'm not much of a beach person, but I figured a southeast Asian trip was incomplete without one, and so I ventured south to the resort town Sihanoukville. There awaited miles of pristine beach facing the Gulf of Thailand, and a bizarre mixture of expensive restaurants and hotels, dirt-cheap bungalows and hammocks, and a bunch of nothing in between.  Young Europeans who were lazing around the hostels for weeks on end seemed to outnumber any other demographic. They were apparently not my group, for in a backpacking rarity, I actively tried to  go out hard and have a good time and came out with no memorable stories whatsoever. Maybe it didn't help that I spent the day reading research papers in my air-conditioned bungalow and was looking for people with whom to discuss global income equality. Sorry I'm just not a beach person.

I quickly moved on to Kampot, a river town that was much more my kind of place. Just two hours away, the demographics could not be more different, with a local economy grounded on its famous pepper rather than tourism. The city's key attraction was an enormous durian sculpted into the middle of a major traffic circle. A conversation the previous day with friend John Johnson alerted me to an abandoned town between Kampot and Sihanoukville, but it was tough to verify on Google. Exploring a charming collection of expat-friendly riverside bars on the east side of the river, I found some seasoned expats engaged in academic research. I asked them about this abandoned town, and the expats enlightened me about Bokor Hill Station. One of them showed me the Google streetview, and pointed at himself standing next to a church. "I was there when the Google Earth guy was walking around with all the cameras!" I resolved to go the next day. 

Curious about the opposite riverbank, I explored a bridge closed to traffic and found a hole in the barrier, evidently used by pedestrians. I snuck over to the west side and found a decidedly more local scene. At an outdoor club blaring Khmer music, I ordered iced beer and cow entrails. On the way home, I passed by the durian, took one sniff of its imaginary scent, and threw up the entrails.

The next morning I was back on a motorbike for the first time since my Sapa fall. From a purvey of Googlemaps, the trip seemed like a 40 minutes straightshot on one major road. However at the 40 minute mark I reached the ticketed entrance to the mountain road, and I realized that the Hill Station was of course, up on a hill, and that Google hadn't quite charted that winding Cambodian mountain road. I drove up into the unknown, made a sharp turn around a bend and nearly fell off my bike. The mountain sloped into the Gulf of Thailand to the south, and the ocean winds crashed down unimpeded. The winds affected me mostly on the hairpin turns, when I slowed down dramatically. More daring motorcyclists zoomed past me on those turns, but I wasn't shamed out of braking - my nerve had left with my palm skin in the mountain gravel of North Vietnam. Finally I reached the top of the mountain, past the construction of a monstrous modern casino, a budding tourism park, some sanitation pump stations. Hiking up a grassy clearing, I found a solitary stone church. A bench that could have been lifted right out of Paris sat undisturbed in front. The church's stonework was definitely weathered, but otherwise everything was in remarkably good shape.  The doorway arch was doorless and I walked into an eerie interior. The multi-scripted graffiti covering the walls and the flower pots in front of religious statues reflected a dichotomy between disdain and worship. A small Jesus on the crucifix still hung overlooking it all, silently witnessing decades of good deeds and sins.

There were no explanatory plaques, but the area had been settled by the French in the 1920s, providing a cool getaway from the stuffy Phnom Penh. It was abandoned by the French twice, ultimately to the Khmer Rouge, and was even used by their remaining forces after a Vietnamese invasion overthrew the regime into the 90's. Now Cambodia has been stable enough that the area is being developed, and the ghost town may itself ghost away. The lack of historical preservation is understandably not a focus (any cultural preservationist would be busy further north), but it still saddens me that so many stories there go untold. With no public information, I had very nearly missed this site.

I had already spent way longer on this hill escapade, and hurried back, driving past the large abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel that was apparently even cooler. The ride down the steep mountain slopes was interminable and I couldn't wait to never drive a motorcycle again. Returning to Kampot in the late afternoon, I was stunned to learn that there were no more bus options returning to Phnom Penh. Turns out the start of the Chinese New Year affects commerce in Cambodia as well, and buses simply stopped operating. The Super Bowl was the next day and definitely watchable in Phnom Penh. Wikitravel did list one alternate form of transportation - car pool. And so I found a bunch of drivers and agreed to pay $20 USD to join an unknown number of people for the 4 hour ride to the capital. I waited in the park for 2 hours, and finally there were 3 other Cambodians joining. The sedan driver and I made 5, and as we hit the main road, I thought to myself this wasn't so bad - Wikitravel had warned that these carpools often crammed 7 into the same car. As soon as I counted myself lucky, our car slowed down and I had to scoot in for another passenger. And then we stopped again, and two woman were sharing the shotgun seat. As the 7 of us drove down the road, imagine my surprise when we slowed again. I shuddered to think of 5 of us fitting in the back, but instead the driver got out and then essentially sat on the new passenger's left lap. And the 8 of us in this clown car of a sedan made our way up to Phnom Penh for the start of the year of the monkey.

Watching the Super Bowl in a Texas-themed bar in Phnom Penh was an experience, but the game sucked and I moved on to take a minibus to Siem Reap. Here again I was a victim of Cambodian capitalism. The minibus was run by a minor agency and not easy to find, and my desperation at potentially missing the ride was showing when I asked a tuktuk driver for help. He ended up taking me for a $1 ride, and literally drove around the block back to where we started and pointed out the agency. Upon landing in Siam Reap, I luckily had saved my hostel location on Googlemaps and realized it was a 3 block walk. I was harassed by tuktuk drivers anyway, and I gave one the address as a test. A $1 ride would have been generous, but this guy brazenly asked for $5. I was more than willing to contribute to the local economy, but such shameless disrespect honestly infuriated me. I told him to fuck off and walked.

No place on my path was as touristy as Siam Reap. In contrast to the well ordered geometry of the nearby ancient sites, the modern city felt like a disorganized cantina of businesses clumped every which way to mine that tourism gold. Hotels and restaurants catering to tourists of all types face each other with services advertised in English, French, German, Chinese and Korean.

Hostel owners advised me it was possible to rent a bicycle at 5am. Indeed it was, but I had to jump over the locked gate of the hostel first. Though I'm not much of a morning person, I biked the 8 miles out of town and reached Angkor Wat an hour before sunrise. The classic view of Angkor Wat at dawn is usually taken in front of a lake, but a tenth of humanity was camped out on that spot. I thought I could take an equally impressive shot from a different angle, and jostled with a separate large group of people for position. I failed to capture any decent photos from the front, except perhaps this one of the crowds. I raced through the temple and tried to process everything. The palace was immense yes, but each column was still intricately carved, the stonework carefully laid. Statues and murals were so commonplace that negative space was a rarity.

Angkor Wat from the back

Nowhere was I more negatively affected by hype than here. I had heard so much of these ruins and even the previous night, a hostel mate had talked about the spiritual experience of witnessing the sun rise in Angkor Wat. In front of the building, surrounded by thousands of people, I did enjoy the bright hues of the morning sun...but I was not spiritually moved. Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was reaching the back of the complex, the sky still in the later stages of dawn, and looking out into the relative peace of the jungle. Whether I like it or not, preconceptions heavily influence my enjoyment, and it is no surprise that some of my favorite experiences on this journey were ones that I had no expectations of at all.

The whole set of ancient temple complexes is often collectively referred to as Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat is only the biggest of the temples in the Angkor ruins (Angkor means capital city, Wat means temple). Angkor is undoubtedly the largest and most famous of the many temple ruins attractions in Southeast Asia (of which this trip included 2 others), all with a Buddhism-appropriating-Hinduism shared history. Dating primarily from the 12th century, the city is believed to have been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, spanning 390 square miles, before essentially being abandoned and lost to the jungle for centuries. Angkor Wat is so impressive, reaching the height of a 20 story building, and so revered, being the only building in the world to be featured on a national flag.

I biked over 40 miles that under that brutal Cambodian sun, stopping for coconut water whenever possible. I saw a temple in a marsh, a temple with a giant tree growing through it, and the temple that Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie had run through. By the early afternoon, I was unable to appreciate the ancient wonders around me - I had had my temple run.

There were plenty of temples I didn't get to on my one day of biking, but I didn't go back out the second day. Sure I felt bad, drinking beer in a cafe in the vicinity of some of the worlds' greatest treasures, but I was so tired it was a no-brainer of a decision. Even worse I was cognizant that my lack of appreciation of the temples was a product of my western education. I've learned enough about gothic arches and flying buttresses to admire European cathedrals, but I don't know the first thing to look at when staring at the Hindu/Buddhist temples. I don't know the difference between a temple dedicated to Vishnu or Rama, and the murals tell stories that make no sense to me. Clearly the course of action is to study this history, but I prefer to blast the parochial scope of my education. I explored the rest of Siem Reap that day, and was surprised to find a functioning town with some non-tourist economy, and a very touristy street creatively called Pub Street. Wandering through town, I got hassled nearly every block by a tuktuk driver offering to take me to the temples. Unable to find a respite, I walked straight to the bus station and bought a ticket to Bangkok the next day.

Asian Calmination - Vietnam

The giant red backpack is completely deflated. At its peak it bundled 30 odd pounds and imprinted its shoulderstraps onto my body.  Long hauls in bus hulls and nights on dirty hostel floors has bruised the polyester casing. Somehow it held up and protected my laptop, my clothes and my sanity over the many miles.

The longest trip I've ever taken feels very epic to me and my little world. By plane, train, boat, bus, motorbike or carpool, I made my way through the unfamiliar. I had my resolve tested deep in the jungle, survived hairy motorbike experiences, crossed five land borders, crashed an aviation annual gala, squished into a clown car, bathed an elephant, soared over the rainforest, drunkenly floated down a river, climbed a waterfall, prayed in an abandoned church and refreshed my trove of good stories. I ran into a college teammate in Bangkok, explored the best coffee shops in Luang Prabang and was offered jobs in Phnom Penh and Chiang Mai. I ate street food everywhere but miraculously never got food poisoning, or even had a calamitous toilet encounter.

I had been thinking about a trip like this for a while. I'd enjoyed traveling before I moved to Hong Kong, but 4 years in a great jumping off point fed a growing travel appetite. The more of the world I saw, the more of the world I realized remained to be seen.  Many cities were accessible by short flights, but plenty of fantastic less urbanized areas were beyond the reach of the weekend warrior. If I were to leave Asia, I had always planned on allowing for a lengthier trip to visit some off-the-path areas. And at the beginning of 2016, I made the decision to leave my job and make this trip happen. I targeted places I hadn't yet been able to visit, mainly Vietnam, but I didn't set a real itinerary. I had some vague routes that made geographic sense, but honestly had no end date set. Along the way I hoped to see cool sights, get off the b have fun, learn more about the world and global income inequality, visit friends, and also take "travel breaks" to learn the professional skills to transition to becoming a data scientist. I hadn't intended on this being a soul searching odyssey, but that happened regardless.

The trip weaved in and out of different phases. I departed Hong Kong for Hanoi on January 15, a week after my last day at work. I backpacked through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, while I was more of a digital nomad in Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore. The portion in Xinjiang felt like a separate trip altogether, after which I embarked upon familiar lands for a friends seeing tour. I returned to Hong Kong on March 28 but continued living out of my luggage for another two weeks there before arriving in Boston (via San Francisco) April 12, making for 35 stops in 96 days. These three months were some of the best days of my life and I tried to never forget how lucky I was to have this whole opportunity.

I get some flabbergasted responses when I recount the whole expedition, as if the whole idea was nuts. I get some nonchalant nods as well - while this may have been my most epic trip, there are plenty of ultramarathon voyagers who sneer upon my measly wanderings.  Some of these expert travelers were great sources of knowledge and inspiration to me. These include Tim O'Rourke, long time Hong Kong expat who tried to bike from Darjeeling to Ireland through Pakistan and Iran in the early 90s, Dave Learn, the long time Shenzhen expat who traveled around the world for over two years, John Johnson, whose Instagram photos have a cult following, and Sam Axelrod, who needs no descriptive appositive.

Vietnam

The instant I landed in Vietnam, I became a millionaire, with more Dong than I knew what to do. I immediately caught an overnight train north to Sapa, a mountain village I had only heard about a few weeks before.  I was in a nervous daze the entire ride, arriving in the chilly darkness into a remote train station an hour away from the town. It wasn't until a local bus took me a main-squarish place that the discomfort eased off and discovery took over.

And I discovered that I'd picked a hell of a start. A simple walk out of town led into gorgeous green valleys with rice terraces carving up steep slopes. The clear weather provided an incredible backdrop to what was probably the most beautiful place on my entire itinerary.  I took a chill hike down the valley to neighboring villages, and on the way back up to the town, I stopped by a cliffside coffeeshop / bar. Sipping egg coffee and beers, I watched as the fog rolled in and out of the valley outside my window, evolving from one sensational view to another. It was as pleasant a beginning as I could ask for.

Sapa was part of a rural mountainous area settled by at least 6 distinct ethnic groups. While it was difficult for foreigners to reach during a long weekend, Sapa was well frequented by backpackers. I quickly began to learn the demographics that made up the southeast Asia, or Banana Pancake Trail, backpacking crowd. There were few professionals based in Asia like me, and far more students in a gap year or about to start work, mostly from Western Europe and Australia. Likely due to greater student loans and a less prevalent traveling culture, Americans were few and far between.

On my second day, I summoned the nerve to rent my first ever motorbike to visit some waterfalls an hour outside town. I immediately braked too hard and fell. I came out of that fall alright and quickly got a grip, and was soon exuberantly cruising along mountain roads. Then the road turned to gravel and I came to a patch mysteriously being hosed by a man. I braked before reaching the puddle and suddenly found my bike skidding and my hands hitting the gravel hard. Emergency thoughts rushed through my head. "Is this how it happens? Is this how people die in accidents?" Half a minute elapsed before I could feel sure that nothing was broken. The man with the hose helped me up and an old man raced down from the hill. He led me to his hut and placed my skinned palms into a bowl of water and watch the gravel sift out. My palms, the right one especially, had little remaining skin. I was wearing long pants, but they had torn apart and left my left knee pretty scraped. I had to get my bloody palms back on the handlebars and finish my ride to a waterfalls. Luckily when I returned to my guesthouse to patch up my wounds, a German couple there revealed themselves as nurses and helped dress my wounds. The damage on my right palm, while superficial,  hindered my ability to carry bags for another month.  The good start to my trip had turned bad quickly.

On my bus from Sapa to Hanoi, I had the luxury of choosing assistance from the Dutch nurse or the Australian medical student to redress my wounds. Hanoi was a hectic city, with its unordered motorcycle madness crazy even when compared to Chinese cities. In terms of crossing the street difficulty, Hanoi is to Beijing as Beijing is to New York City as New York city is to Random Little Town. Within that chaos however, I was able to find lots of chill time within the city's many interesting cafes. The coffee was so good, oh so good, and the food maybe even better.

I stayed in the city's Old Quarter, not far from the west lake with its giant tortoise. Unbeknownst to me, this tortoise died while I was in Hanoi, leaving only three of its species left (am I such bad luck?). The area breathed of the narrow alleyways and makeshift market places, organically winding streets free of the bird's-eye decrees of urban planners. There was plenty of griminess - Hanoi is still in a developing country, but it's a capital with an illustrious history. The Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, was despite its dark nature probably the most interesting place I visited in the city. Though the war is long over, the prison/museum is full of propaganda trying to convince viewers that the American prisoners loved it there. I had known enough about John McCain's imprisonment there during the Vietnam War to question these accounts. Though the museum walls now seemed harmless, they were just eerie enough for me to imagine the horrors of McCain's experience being dragged down the same corridors. It was more fun to imagine how Donald Trump might have fared had he not dodged the draft. 

The storied Halong Bay was next. I visited in January, way out of season, and the bright green water and clear blue skies that so many photos had hyped up were nowhere to be found. Both sky and water were generic shades of grey. I joined a two day one night cruise with an interesting cast of characters. People often ask me, "who is the craziest person you met on your trip?" I think it's difficult to uncover the depths of another's depravity until you really get to know them, which doesn't happen too much while backpacking. However on that cruise, there was an old white haired, white bearded American who probably last shaved during the Reagan administration. Upon boarding, he immediately inquired about weed, which endeared him to the younger backpackers. He soon got weird. He was in his 60's and had not been in the US in over 30 years because it was too sinful. He was a Bible Literalist, believing every single word to be divinely inspired, and actually withstood scrutiny of hypocrisy. Another American girl Brook talked about her last name Long and how cool it was that Long means Dragon in Vietnam, and that Halong itself means Descending Dragon. Bible Beard then spoke about how dragons were the flesh incarnate of the devil and how terrible it was for the Vietnamese to worship them. Talk about buzz kill. Luckily the tranquil seas and green islands of Halong Bay were fun enough overall to drown out Buzzkill Bible Beard and the grey skies.

Next up was Da Nang and Hue, and the memorable bus trip and aviation party which I've documented already. Hue was cool and palatial (Hue Forbidden City) and I could have spent more time there exploring, but instead I chose to escape the rain and drink. Da Nang might seem like a boring modern city, but I enjoyed the chance to see a functioning industrious side of Vietnam. From Da Nang it was a short ride to Hoi An, a charming old port city which had eschewed the modern commercial duties to Da Nang and emerged instead as a touristy lantern-lit ode to a historical era. I loved Hoi An and how the tight Chinese-Japanese-Vietnamese urban architecture intermeshed with the gorgeous river scene. Though the town was small, I could have wandered around those pedestrian alleyways all day. The trip was greatly supplemented by a long bike ride to the beach with a French girl I had just asked to take my picture, and another ride out from town to the Terracotta Park, a random museum with clay models of world wonders, which I had learned from Mya at the aviation party. The liberated joys of backpacking - meeting fellow travelers and finding hidden gems - reached new highs in Hoi An. 

This high was soon to crash down. Sometime on my next voyage, a 16 hour bus ride to the mountain coffee town Buon Ma Thuot, I lost my phone. I spent about 24 hours mostly feeling sad, but I fit in 5 delicious cups of coffee, observant walks through a tourist-free city economy, and a great goat meat dinner with a retired Canadian couple.

Skipping the resort city Dalat, I headed straight to Ho Chi Minh City to a new phone. I was lucky to be offered housing from Sam & Quentin Axelrod, though they were both out of town. Their US consular housing provided a pitstop of luxury, with AC, TV, gym, wifi and an immense jewelled tiger (that Sam loves and Quentin hates). I also was able to connect with some ultimate friends and a Georgetown classmate who based his startup there. I learned that Saigon, or HCMC, is a surprisingly great city for startups. For a city of its level of development and quality of life, the cost of living is bizarrely low (sidenote: its abundance of skybars are also an urban outlier). A steady local graduate corps of programmers are readily and affordably available, and several co-working spaces have sprung up to make HCMC a go-to spot for location independent workers.

I planned my days to involve at least 2 coffee outings, interspersed amongst tourist site visits. My 5 days in HCMC were chill, with sobering trips to the Cu Chi Tunnels, the War Museum, and Saigon's Chinatown. I went into the tunnels confused about how a rag tag underground (literally) bunch could beat the US army machine, but left with an idea of the terror any American soldier must have felt entering those narrow dark trap-filled death corridors. I went into the war museum prepared to deflect the Vietnamese propaganda, but left aghast and abashed. Even if the Agent Orange exhibit inside was incredibly exaggerated, the US atrocities during the war were unfathomable. I felt deep shame for my country and my ignorance of this event. The Chinatown experience was less sobering, but still war-related. I walked around District 5 and found my way into a housing estate where I heard Cantonese. In the courtyard, a pair of adjacent stalls sold dumplings and tea respectively. I sat down and awkwardly started a conversation with a 50 year old enjoying his lunch. His vernacular was odd, with an unfamiliar word to be found in every sentence. He used a formal term for a soldier's march in lieu of the verb for walking. He went on to describe how the whole area used to be in Chinese, and how 4 in 5 residents left during or after the war. I asked him why he stayed, and his calm demeanor belied the sadness of his answer. "Most of them died leaving. The Chinese people have forgotten us. Few Hong Kongers like you want to visit us. But it's ok, life is pretty good here."

The rest of my Saigon experience consisted of expensive drinks at skybars, to the extent where I nicknamed the city Skygon. My first country and main impetus for the trip surpassed my expectations. The pho, banh mi and coffee defied the laws of economics in their quality and price. The foods that hadn't been popularized worldwide, My Quang and Bun Bo Hue and Banh Xeo, rocked my world. I had tasted enough of the food and learned enough of the language that when I entered a Vietnamese restaurant in Bangkok weeks later, I felt surprisingly at home. There was never a dull moment outside either. Cars didn't own the roads and pedestrians didn't own the sidewalks. Everywhere the motorbike was king. The system seemed to be in a state of dynamic flux, never at any equilibrium but somehow never breaking down.

Minority Report

Visiting the Long Neck Karen village was a complete afterthought. I had left Pai at the crack of dawn and arrived in Chiang Rai that afternoon. I had only two objectives in Chiang Rai, the Black House and the White Temple, both eclectic modern takes on ageless spiritual concepts. However the two attractions were not merely opposite thematically but also geographically opposite from Chiang Rai center. With our late ETA, I had resigned myself to requiring two nights in an otherwise ho hum city to see both sights. But our bus had made an unexpected stop at the White Temple en route, enough to gaze at its spiky glory in a half dozen angles, and shortly after arrival at my Airbnb I caught a cab to the Black House. 

Through the chance sharing of both a bus ride and Airbnb booking, I had acquired a travel buddy, a Chinese girl named Qiao Li from Chengdu. We strolled around the Black House leisurely for an hour and I was feeling very content having knocked out the two birds with one stone, but Qiao Li wanted to keep hunting for a third bird. She pointed out that the "长颈村" was not far, and I had no idea what she meant. Long neck village? This wasn't highlighted in Wikitravel. She pointed at her tourist brochure and there was a picture of a woman in pink embroidery with shiny brass rings covering her neck. It took me a minute to mentally remove the rings, upon which I realized her neck must've been extraordinary long. Part of me was interested in going - there were many ethnic minorities I had only read about in the Demographics sections of Wikipedia articles of places. Part of me was fascinated to learn more. But part of me was reluctant because of the feeling that I wasn't going to learn more, and this part was right.

I visited a Miao village in Hunan within the past year, as part of a group of a few dozen Chinese tourists. The visit was one of the fakest experiences of my life, complete with a large sign at the town's main gate that said Miao People City … in Chinese characters. The whole place was a charade for tourists - an interesting experience, but not one that shed any light on Miao culture. Most real Miao people were adapting to modern China, doing regular life activities and trying to move up in Chinese society. Maybe there was some existential dread on how to preserve their traditions, but preservation wasn’t accomplished in this village by weaving baskets in front of tourists. For their part, I couldn't discern any sense of disillusionment or outrage from the other Chinese tourists.

At the beginning of this southeast Asian voyage I was breakfasting in a cafe in Sapa, at the northern tip of Vietnam. The cafe staff expressed their curiosity in me, and we exchanged pleasantries. Their English was good, and one of the girls had been learning Mandarin for all of a week. I smiled at her efforts, and she told me that it was her 4th language, after English, Vietnamese and her native language of Hmong. My first reaction was surprise - I hadn't been able to tell that they weren't Vietnamese. My second reaction was a light bulb going off - Hmong is the real name used by the people whom the Chinese call Miao. I tell them about the other Hmong people way up to the northeast, in China where the Chinese call them the Miao. They tell me that the Vietnamese call them Meo, which sounds the same as the Vietnamese name for cat, and so they don't like the Vietnamese. I hesitate for a moment, then inform that Miao sounds the same as the Chinese name for cat. The girl scowls. "Now I don't like the Chinese."

If I rack my brain hard enough, there is a bit more in there about the Hmong. They have been a stateless people for a long time, scattered from southern China by Han Chinese invasions and living in pockets throughout Southeast Asia - China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. Many Hmong joined the US-led anti-communist efforts in the Vietnam war and its spillover into Laos and Cambodia, and when the war ended, they faced reprisals from 3 governments. The Hmong refugee crisis resulted in many Hmong being resettled in the US, seemingly chiefly in Minnesota of all places. One of my Georgetown classmates was born to Hmong refugees, and the movie Gran Turismo highlights this community. I'd figured their homeland was gone, inaccessible to someone like me, but here I was in a cafe speaking English to a Hmong college student.

All of this was in the back of my mind as I entered the Karen Long Neck village. I didn't know nearly so much about the Karen (despite having friends with that name). I had read something about them in Myanmar but had forgotten it all. We paid a 300 Baht entrance fee, which after free admission to the White Temple and Black House felt exorbitant. A long dirt path down the hill was calm and devoid of any extravagance and I held out hope that this could be a genuine village. Those hopes were dashed so fast.

It was towards the end of the day and several huts were empty. A single woman with the neck bracelets was there and smiled as she saw us, her hands mindlessly weaving on her wooden loom. As we walked past, other women materialized out from the huts and immediately went to work on their looms. Their bamboo huts were lined with scarves and trinkets for sale, because you know, who doesn't keep goods for sale on their front porch? Karen villages apparently are in a state of perpetual yard sale. 

The tour saw women and kids come out of the woodwork, all dressed in traditional dress and bangles. Everyone was very friendly, giving a Sawadee Ka and smiling for pictures. The women wore a full 8 inches of neck rings, with larger rings at the base. Some had on modern fleece jackets, but with more traditional-looking scarves, shawls and sarongs underneath. A little girl smiled and held some sort of game board, with a few inches of neck ring on her. I wanted to give everyone a hug and $100. Where are the men? Are they unfit for display because they don’t wear neck rings? Where are the "real" Karen people? Are they blended into Thai society, secretly waiting tables in Chiang Mai? Are they all still on the farms, tilling the land that the Thai people deigned to give them? How much more are they making in selling their culture to tourism?

This tourist site encompasses other villages, "inhabited" by other minorities, who aren't advertised as heavily because their necks are of normal length. I am introduced to the Akha, whom I had never heard of before. Their village is entirely inhabited by elders, and they're offering a set of wares that might have come from a factory. To my untrained eye I can't tell any difference in their appearance - they could all be Karen playing pretend for all I know. The women wear white headdresses and lots of bangles around their necks. Two of the elders who welcome us speak some basic English and even more Mandarin and throw many wares in our faces. As I ask them about their goods and history, I inadvertently get the elder man to call for a dance performance. Dozens of Akha elders with unenthusiastic expressions come out of their abodes and grab thick sticks, and drum the sticks straight down into the ground unleashing a deep earthen beat. I watch with 1 part awe and 9 parts embarrassment. After the minute long performance, Qiao Li walks away and I guiltily drop 100 baht into a jar in front of the dancers. I muster a thank you in their language, long gone from my memory, and feel pity that this community has to resort to performing like trained monkeys.

Walking back up the hill to the site entrance, I wonder what are the best options for impoverished village minorities here. In this region of Thailand, groups including the Karen, Akha, Lisu, Meo and Hmong are called “Hill Tribes,” mostly all relatively recent migrants from Yunnan province. They probably settled in the hills not because that’s the terrain best suited for their traditions - growing food in mountainous regions is rough work - but because the Thai wouldn’t let them settle in the better lowlands. They had to retreat to the more remote areas to not be bothered. And now they could try to continue their traditional lifestyles, subsisting on their crops and with limited access to modern infrastructure. I mean, how many scarves and brass rings does one need to trade for a car? Or do they try to assimilate into larger Thai society, starting from the dead bottom? Or do they engage in some sort of tourism contract like this, getting some revenue from curious people like me, and figuring things out from there?

How blessed am I to be from the world’s largest ethnicity, holding the passport of the world’s most powerful country? How would it feel to be a minority in every single country, speaking a language no one else deigns to learn, official absolute nowhere? 

I used to be idealistic regarding linguistic conservation and diversity, but I now believe that there is no way for people like the Akha to advance economically and simultaneously preserve their culture. When you read figures about how many languages are dying each year, they're languages like Akha and those of even smaller communities. Any stateless minority will eventually face the same challenges. There are some stateless people that we hear about in the western media, but most are not covered. Maybe my thoughts are too western-centric and bleeding hearty, and maybe most Akha people live happier lives than me. Nonetheless, my visit to this Long Neck Village reinforced a belief that the nationality and ethnicity you are born to matters far too much in this world.

The next day I boarded a boat to Laos, and drank beers with a bunch of western backpackers. We boozed lazily as the boat eased its way down the Mekong.

The Lonely Planless

Monday February 22 is Makha Bucha Day, a public holiday in Thailand. This is relevant to my post insomuch as the weekend beginning on Friday February 19 was the start of a long weekend in Thailand, the capital of which I was residing in on the previous Thursday, where this story shall begin. I was a month into my backpacking and so far I'd been surviving despite a consistent supply of plans. This has always been a dream of mine, living life flexibly and free spiritedly, letting present moments dictate future ones. How freeing it was to be able to spend an extra night in Hoi An after seeing how lovely it was, or to visit a Cambodian town I'd never heard of and discover a French ghost town nearby? A plethora of housing and transportation options had kept me satisfied, even if I sometimes had to take my second or third choice. The happy go lucky life had bit me just a couple times, notably when the start of Chinese New Year cancelled many buses and I found myself in a sedan fitting 8 people, on a shared "taxi ride" making the 3 hour journey from Kampot to Phnom Penh.

When in unfamiliar lands, local holidays can ambush you. The consequences of such are that the plethora of available transportation options are suddenly nowhere to be found. This reality manifested when I gave myself a day's notice to search for options from Bangkok to Chiangmai. Buses were sold out or leaving late in the evening during Bangok's dreaded rush hour and next day trains could only be booked in person at the station. 

And so I was informed at the train station counter that the next available seat to Chiang Mai was a 3rd class hard seater leaving 22:00 Friday night and getting in at 08:00 the next day. For a second I cursed my lack of planning and resigned myself to this fate of fitful sleeplessness, when I realized that if a disdain for firm plans had caused this precariousness, this disdain should equally resolve it. I told the ticket seller to hold off a moment.

I pull up "Central Thailand" on Wikitravel and inquire of the wise crowds what else is cool between here and Chiang Mai? There's Lopburi - known for its Khmer temples and crab-eating macaques. Eh, I'd seen a bunch of Khmer temples just last week. There's Nakhon Pathom - Thailand's oldest city and home of the world's largest stupa. That should provide a noteworthy backdrop. I'm convincing myself to head there when I realize it's barely outside Bangkok and kind of in the wrong direction. In fact apparently the Bangkok metropolitan sprawl devours a lion's share of Central Thailand. I peruse Wikitravel's article on Northern Thailand instantly see Phitsanulok - a good overnight stop between Bangkok and Chiang Mai and a gateway to the Sukhothai historical park. Sold. No sooner had I heard of this destination had I an 8:30am ticket purchased.

Friday, I roll into my Phitsanulok inn around 2:00pm and do my research on this Sukhothai Historical Park. There's the city of Sukhothai which is an hour from Phitsanulok, with the park is on its outskirts. Can I fit in a visit today? The timing looks challenging...but it wouldn't be so much easier tomorrow morning either if I wanted to get to Chiang Mai at a reasonable hour. All sorts of options flood my mind - should I get out super early tomorrow, should I skip these ancient temples altogether? Finally I hucked whatever caution I possess into the wind and que sera sera I head out, intent on taking a taxi straight to the park.

The driver wants 800 Baht to make the one way journey, and no discount for a round trip. He shows me the 10 baht per km rule and I fact check that it is indeed 80km to the ancient city. I resignedly ask the driver to take me to the bus station. The bus ticket to Sukhothai is under 60 baht, but stipulations require I wait until 3:20 for such a bus to depart. It's not until 4:40, well off the ETA, that we arrive in Sukhothai bus station. I see a few westerners on the bus and I ask them if they're going straight to the park - they reject me by stating they're heading to their hostel. Staying in Sukhothai - such a well-formulated idea had not occurred to me. At the bus counter, a suspicion is confirmed - the last bus back to Phitsanulok leaves at 6:00pm. Unfazed, I see a 50 baht shuttle to the park as well as a few motorcycles. The shuttle, really a jeepney or songthaew, is empty so I figure it would leave prompt at 5:00 and power straight to the park, allowing a solid half hour of ancient temple exploration. At 4:55 when it's still empty, I look up the Thai word for "now" and implore to the driver "taw nee? taw nee khrap?" However a flurry of passengers arrive after 5:00, and with the songthaew picking up and dropping off several passengers along the way, it's not until 5:30 that I arrive at the park, a nervous time watching wreck. 

Ok thanks for the photo, I should probably run now

The thought of staying on the songthaew and returning to the bus station flickered across the mind. Instead I boldly plunged into the park like cannon fodder into an onslaught of poor time management. Maybe I don't make that 6:00 bus and I hadn't seen any taxis in this town, but I figure with cunning, guile and 800 baht I could convince someone that they want to drive me to Phitsanulok.

I sprint into the first complex of Stupas. With the sun glowing red low on the horizon, the ancient bricks radiate a healthy orange hue and the scene dazzles.  The individual ruins were not imbued with the majestic grandeur Angkor Wat nor does the site as a whole provide a sense of the visible enormity of Bagan. The park actually feels like a park, your-run-of-the-mill grassy knolls and pleasant meandering paths, except that every so often there'd be a collection of 800 year old stupas, columns and statues. The park is also huge, with the ruins spanning 70 square kilometers, and the city wall center still a couple kilometers wide. You really need a bicycle to properly explore it.

At that first set of ruins, I snap some photographs that satisfy me. I stare out into the reaches of the park and consider the long walks to further ruins. At this point I notice it is still 5:45, and observing the physical and temporal formations present, I call an audible. Let's try to make the bus. I sprint back to the gate and ask a songthaew driver if he can take me back to the bus station in 10 minutes. He agrees for 200 baht. With absolutely zero bargaining power, I jump on and we speed down the Thai roads. I resist the urge to obsessively check the time and the map, and lie back and enjoy the brisk headwinds. We reach the station at 6:02 and I hurriedly hand the driver a 1000 Baht note and run to see if the bus is still there. It is. Thank goodness for Thai promptness. The driver yells that he does not have change. I run to and fro different bus station counters asking for change, but finding instead unhelpful employees about to end their shifts. It's not until the 5th counter that someone opens the cashier and hands me a bunch of notes. I sprint to deliver the 200 baht to the driver, then cut back to the bus.

Except there is no bus. I utter a brief scream: "Phitsanulok!" A motorbike driver gets up and points to the road, and I turn and see the bus pulling out onto the main street. The driver says, "motorbike?" I respond, "how much?" not sure exactly all that his question implies. Does he mean to drive me the 80km to town? "50 Baht!" he responds. Clearly not going to town for such a pittance. "OK!" I yell back, and run to his motorbike, still in the dark about this man's intentions.

He hits the accelerator immediately and we must be up over 30 km/h by the time he hits a speed bump still accelerating. The bump knocks my heartbeat into my throat and I grip the bottom of the seat for dear life. I wonder if it's not too late to give up on this stupid bus and take my chances with a private ride, but it is clearly too late. This bus will be my Moby Dick and it might just kill me. We're on a two lane speedway and my driver swerves in and out of slower cars for the next half mile, hitting the left shoulder to pass a double decker bus before cutting right and pointing at the white minibus. I give him confirmation and he chases after it, pulling up on its right on a red light. He yells into the bus window in Thai, and the bus driver apparently tells him to try the other bus. He points backward at the double decker we passed, which had also left the bus station at the same time, and tells me to go to it. I hand him a 50, suspended in a state of disbelief, and walk in the middle of a major two lane road to this double decker bus parked in traffic. I knock on the door and fortuitously it opens. "Phitsanulok?" "Ok ok, come in."

Final tally: one minibus, two songthaews, one frantic motorcycle ride, one double decker bus, about $350 baht spent on transportation, 15 minutes at UNESCO World Heritage site.

All for this photo

P.S. if we are to continue comparing ancient religious ruins in Southeast Asia, Sukhothai does not have the ancient mysterious vibes of the Myson Ruins in Vietnam, but is more aesthetically amazing.