Alex in Bali: April 2009

Dear Y'all,

Don't you just love it when you are checking your e-mail and a pair of elephants trundle by?

I rolled into Bangkok, one of my favorite cities in the world, Monday at 5am. I hadn't been here for 6 years but I found my way through empty streets I remembered well, as though caught in a dream where the people had been removed but everything was just the way I had left it. I found the same guesthouse. I was put in the room next to the room I had stayed in. It was all a bit eerie.

Within a few hours, the streets were packed with people celebrating the New Year. It should be noted that this is a water holiday and across Laos and Thailand and possibly other countries as well, people arm themselves with water guns and buckets and spend the next three days soaking anyone who comes within range. Also, they distribute clay packets and it is considered good luck to have a few dozen total strangers spread slop across your face and clothing. (Come to think of it, I wonder how clean that water is?)

It is fantastic fun provided you give up any notion of staying even remotely dry. You just follow the press of people and try to give as good as you get. Too cheap to spring for the super-soaker, I rigged a series of large water bottles into a makeshift water-cannon by strategically punching the caps with the bamboo spit from a hastily devoured chicken kabob. Nobody suspects the innocent looking tourist carrying a water bottle of having a concealed arsenal of ice-cold heavy artillery.

So that's the fun part. Across town, anti-government riots are reaching a fever pitch. Protestors have been killed and hundreds wounded. Buses have been set on fire and the police are switching from rubber bullets to live rounds. While we play around with plastic pistols and mud, distant automatic gunfire is being drowned out by the dance music from all the outdoor speakers.

I could be getting a little too old for this, or it could be undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, but three days of non-stop booze-fueled, water-soaked, muddy partying is a bit too much for me. Well, now that I think about it, three days straight doing nearly anything is usually too much for me. I explored the first day, basically hid the second, and tonight I'm planning to throw on a bathing suit and get rowdy. Still, with the specter of violence in the background I thought it would be wiser not to overstay my welcome so I'm leaving earlier for New Zealand.

Hugs,
Alex

Dear Connoisseurs of This and That,

One of the first things I learned in Bali, thanks to the generosity of my hosts, is that if you are seeking the perfect drink to go along with Southeast Asian cuisine, nothing (and I mean nothing) beats a nice bottle of Dom Perignon '93.

The problem is that once you have tried this vintage, by comparison all others will come up short and perhaps even taste offensive.

There are, I'm sure, spheres of appreciation that evade this metaphor but it applies itself very well to temples.

(I'm generally not easily impressed with the things mankind has built. The Taj Mahal is a dream. I have a personal weakness for great Gothic cathedrals. I'm sure there are others I haven't seen yet that would be on the list.)

A few days ago I went to see just a few of the many temples at Angkor. Now, well...Holy Cow. They set the bar and I don't think it will be touched for a long, long time. The only way they could be better is if I was wandering through the jungles with a machete and happened to come across them and they were filled with mysterious objects like fist sized rubies and holy grails. This will never happen since I'm a little phobic about booby traps, vipers and giant jungle spiders (which they fry and eat here). So, like the hordes of other people, I payed a lot for admission and got a tuk-tuk to drive me on the 20 km circuit.

The biggest is Angkor Wat. It is bloody massive. That is the third thing you notice. The first is that it's gorgeous and the second is that it is highly symmetrical. The third thing is that it goes on and on and on. When you finally make to to the other side, it is rather hard to believe you made it. The outer walls are longer than a football field. They ring three nested courtyard, each one 20-30 ft higher than the one before. There are endless bas reliefs, endless corridors, epic spires. The good stuff. It really defies description so make sure you check the blog for pictures.

The second temple we saw was the famous Bayon temple. It has great big faces hewn into its spires, facing all directions. The temple is so heavily carved, crenelated and stacked upon itself that there is little room in the passageways for people. Many of the spires are so damaged that there are gaping holes in them letting through ghostly shafts of sunlight. This is the temple of my dreams.

Strangely, the main thing I thought about while clamoring up its near-vertical steps and through its narrow passages was that it would be an absolutely spectacular place to play hide and go seek. (Mental note- Bring future kids when they are old enough)

The third is Ta Phrom, better known as the temple from the "Tomb Raider" movie. It is in the worst shape of all, due in part to the merging of jungle and stone. It has incredible trees growing, around and through it. Everyone's favorite is known to Cambodians as the "Spung" tree. Its roots look like enormous pythons dripping like wax over the stones.

These are the Dom Perignon of temples. There may be nothing else on the planet that can touch them. That severely cuts down on my list of "things still to see." In that moment I became a bit sad, but I was comforted when I realized that I was actually far more interested in the trees than I was in the temples. They are almost as old, and while the temples, particularly the last one, are falling to bits, they are looking strong and still growing. They didn't have to try hard to do this, they just sprang up and the temple never had a chance.

I think we might be glorifying the wrong things. I remember back to my last trip around the world. While in Singapore I was told to check out the highest man-made waterfall in the world. Sounded good but when I arrived there was a little trickle of water falling down a high rock wall. I just went to see the "famous" caves upriver from Luang Prabang, Laos. Famous because people built concrete steps up the rock wall and left thousands of little Buddha sculptures there over time. That was about as exciting as an average burp. Why do I keep going to these places? I must be hoping for some more Dom Perignon.

It is time to face facts. There are no more man-made sights I need to see in this neck of the world. Period. It is time to raise my game a bit and head to where the real party is. I'm referring of course to the South Island of New Zealand, which is my next stop after a quick shopping spree in Bangkok. There, the water is pure, the mountains are remarkable, some of the trees are rumored to date back to the birth of Christ, and nobody gives a damn who builds the biggest shed for their sheep.

Later,

Alex

Angkor Wat at Sunrise