Cruise Planners - On the Road - The Killing Fields of Cambodia Philosophy

The Killing Fields

During the 3 years and 8 months the Khmer Rouge were in power (1975-79) life in Cambodia was changed — 20% of their population was killed, one of Asia’s most beautiful cities was depopulated, and all of the educated and accomplished people that didn’t escape, were sent to the rice fields.  

But truly, according to Sophia, one of our guides, her grandmother who had passed in 1998 had not known more than two consecutive years of peace in her 80+ years of life — perhaps because the Khmer Rouge war was more widely perceived in the west due to the movie “The Killing Fields" — we are much less aware of the continuous strife the Cambodian people suffered during our lifetime.

In the midst of this nearly continual suffering however, a remarkable and noteworthy attitude has emerged.  This attitude was explained by another of our guides, Lovey, who shared not only the story of how his family survived and eventually flourished, but how the Cambodian people survived as a people despite neighbor killing neighbor until 20% of the entire country was dead.

Forgive but not Forget - move on with our lives because to live our future for vengeance would make today’s life no better than yesterday’s… “Peace, the chance for prosperity and the happiness of our children, is more important than Revenge”.

Ultimately, only 5 people were convicted of Crimes Against Humanity for the Pol Pot - Khmer Rouge genocide.  Today’s Prime Minister and many other officials throughout the country were Khmer Rouge.  But as Lovey said, “...if all who were guilty were punished, the country could not go forward. If focused on righting wrongs of past, then focus on future would be lost…"

We learn and will learn many things in our lives, most of them fortunately, not bought and paid for by the blood of millions who perished in our life time - the life time of Baby Boomers - who represent the restart and reset of parents’ lives - who fought in Europe and Asia and who, with their former enemies in Germany and Japan, rebuilt the world we would live in with more peace, prosperity, equality, and vision than the one they were born in.

Spending 5 days in Cambodia, learning about the lessons they lived with the blood of their brothers, aunts, neighbors, and parents, has re-enforced for me a simple lesson.

At the end of the day, those who seek to redress past wrongs will never make a future worth living and will instead, be doomed to a life of unhappiness.

S21 Detention Center

S21 Camp Rules - Everyone Confessed

Confessions provided one way trip to the Killing Fields

Killing Fields

Cruise Planners on the Road - South East Asia - Bangkok - Day #1 Continued and Day #2 - Erawon Shrine Update

Afternoon of our first full day here in Bangkok was all about seeing some of the city's major shopping centers along Sukhumivit Road - the longest road in Thailand - runs all the way to the Cambodian Border - and ostensibly one of the longest roads in the world.

Our hotel is on Soi 1 - this is a way to designate cross streets along Sukhumvit - our goal the first afternoon was Siam Center - an upscale shopping and restaurant area.  We choose to walk - first because we wanted the exercise and two, because we thought taking a taxi might be expensive.  Turns out there is a third option (BTS - skytrain) as well.  The walk was easy enough if you don't freak out having cars turn into you on pedestrian green lights - they will miss you but you will never get across unless you take your right of way.

Update*** - It was on this walk along Sukhumvit Road that we came upon the Erawon Shrine.  A Buddhist celebration was on-going with locals burning incense, being blessed, and dancers dancing.  Little did we know that 4 days later, a bomb would destroy the beauty and peace we had found at this urban oasis.

Erawon Shrine

Busy Intersection next to Erawon Shrine

Watching worshippers at Erawon Shrine

Total distance was around 2 miles of walking each way - easy walk along decent sidewalks - but do watch your step since it can be a bit uneven at times.  Center World itself is quite an edifice - 7 stories of stores and restaurants beautifully turned out and full of goods.  We ended up eating in Nara - one of two in the city - food was very tasty - Valerie is already craving another meal of brown pineapple fried rice with chicken.

A world about prices...  Nara was very reasonable from a US perspective - 44 dollars for lunch with two glasses of nice red wine, two bottles of mineral water, a chicken satay appetizer, and a main each - green curry with shrimp for me, the brown pineapple fried rice for Val.  All nicely prepared and tasty.  As we are finding out though, this was a relatively expensive meal for a large urban mall in the Sukhumvit area - compared to Terminal 21 shopping center where we ate at Thai Thyme (Italian Thai) the next day - the food price at Nara was double for lunch.  Then if we go more local Thai, which we did for dinner on Day 1 -- Nara's cost was 5 times what our total dinner meal was with two beers, two waters, and two Thai seafood soups in a loud fish market/restaurant that looked like a open warehouse.  So the cost scale here seems a wee bit wider than what we are used to at home.

Speaking of differences...  Let's talk about taxis...  We thought we were being healthy and economical by walking rather than sitting in traffic in an air-conditioned taxi...  Wrong!  We heard first from our tour guide, and then from a Romanian born, Los Angelino ex-pat we met in Thai Thyme that taxis are all metered (no made up tourist fares) and approximately 1 dollar - 30 baht - for a 30 minute ride.  We haven't taken a cab yet but with prices like these, we wouldn't hesitate for a minute to do so -- they are according to our local sources, clean, safe, and efficient.

Our second day was reserved for a whirlwind 6 hour private tour with a guide and driver.  We hit the three main tourist sites - the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, The Canals, and Wat Po.  Our guide Darin (a lady) was very knowledgeable and spoke functional English if you were patient and willing to listen hard to decipher her accent.  For the 4000baht ($114 USD) we paid each, all of our entry fees to the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun, along with our canal rides and ferries for the 6 hour trip were included.  We learned a lot about Bangkok, Thai government and the country's history.  All of the places we visited were fairly busy with a mix of Thai and foreign visitors but were still easy to get around.  We drank a lot of water along the way since it was close to 100 around noon - humidity was not excessive by South Florida standards but heat is heat.  If you have never been to a Buddhist country, the temples (Wats) in Bangkok are exceptionally clean and well maintained and thus a great place to see architecture and religious history we are not generally familiar with.  The canal tour which connected our Grand Palace visit with our Wat Arun visit was really nice - we had a long boat all to ourselves and spending about an hour along the canals was a nice way to cool off after cooking at the Grand Palace.

After Darin and our driver dropped us off at Terminal 21 Shopping Center, we proceeded to the recommended food court inside on the 5th Floor.  Since we are not "buffet" people, we looked around at the regular restaurants and very happily settled on Thai Thyme - Italian fusion cuisine with two Singha drafts.  When we were done with our meal - mushroom risotto for Val and thai green curry risotto for me - we had a half mango, sticky rice desert with sweet coconut milk - sublime...  That's when we got to talking with "Dee" a former Los Angelino who originally emigrated to the USA from Romania.  Now retired, he has been spending major parts of each year living in Thailand for the past 11 years and was a font of knowledge about Thailand and what it is like to like here.  It is so interesting to get the perspective of someone who has been living here for a while who can put things in terms of what you would expect in the USA and what you will experience here.  Fascinating chat over a couple of glasses of wine and good to know we have someone we can write with questions for future visits.

So all in all, our second day in Bangkok was definitely tourist centered but it seems we are learning a lot in a short period of time.  We are still loving our Ariyasomvilla Hotel - beautiful property, great breakfasts, and staff - it may be at the end of a slightly seedy street, but you can overlook this in the short cab ride to and from the hotel's front door.

Saturday is moving day so after breakfast, we will get everything back into our bags and re-weighed (thanks to portable baggage scale Tanya provided) to ensure we make our 44lbs limit for our checked bag for today's Bangkok Airways flight ( a bit over an hour flying time) to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) where we will spend the next two nights.  Tomorrow's big adventure is an all day tour of the temples of Angkor Wat - can't wait to compare these temples with the ones we saw here in Bangkok.

Until tomorrow then...

Grand Palace #1

Grand Palace Guard

Beautiful temple

Beautiful Tourist at Grand Palace - appropriately covered

Preparing for changing of the guard at Grand Palace

Grand Palace #2

Grand Palace #3

Embark point for private canal boat trip

Temple along the canal

Water highway signs

Demon guarding Grand Palace entrance

Grand Palace #4

Grand Palace #5

Grand Palace #6

Wat Arun entrance

Wat Arun under renovation

Beautiful tourist getting some sun

Entering Wat Pho

Head of Reclining Buddha

People provide some scale of how large the Buddha is

Like Venice, Bangkok is sinking - top of Buddha's head is now touching ceiling

Some of the hundreds of smaller Buddha's at Wat Pho

Valerie contemplating Peace and Serenity

Wispy gold spires reaching the clouds

Golden Buddha at Wat Pho

Terminal 21 - multi-story shopping center and restaurant location off of Sukhumvit Road

Meeting with a Los Angeles Refugee in Terminal 21

Cruise Planners on the Road - South East Asia - Bangkok - Day #1

Safely arrived in Bangkok after a very long set of airplane rides...  3 hours from Ft Myers to Newark; two hour connection time - 14 hour flight from Newark to Narita, Japan - five hour connection time - and a final 6 hour flight to Bangkok - so 30 hours total en-route.

Our last leg was in coach on ANA and we learned an important seating lesson - the window seats in coach on their 777-200's are really scrunched with the leg space taken up by some kind of metal fixture - not good.  We will be changing our return seats from Bangkok to Narita to prevent a repeat of this experience...

Our overall flying experience on Star Alliance was great.  All of our flights were on time or early.  First and Business First on United were very good - perhaps not quite as "tony" as 20 years ago, but still a very comfortable way to spend a long flight.  On our long leg, it was fun to think about flying over our Canadian friends' heads on Lake Ontario's Georgian Bay -- just about over Rob and Maureen's place in the Blue Mountains.  

Long Great Circle Route from Newark to Narita

Our 6 hour coach flight on ANA was adequate -- helped along by being very tired and dozing for an hour or so of the time -- which took our mind off of screaming babies and seats that are too tight and close together.  Couldn't imagine flying the 14 hour Newark to Narita leg in a coach seat these days...

Business First Cabin on United 777-200

We had arranged a driver through our hotel here in Bangkok, the Ariyasomvilla, so once we breezed through Passport Control and got our bags (20 minutes after we got off our plane) we were in the taxi heading to our hotel.  Perhaps the quick transition through Passport Control and baggage was because it was 11pm local time -- we are sure that our 20 minute ride from the airport to the heart of the Sukhumvit District in downtown Bangkok was half the normal time because it was late on the evening of the Queen's Birthday celebration.  One thing will stand out about the ride -- we were entertained by what I will call the "Bangkok Midnight Express" - about 2 dozen super bike riders splitting 6 lanes of auto traffic at about 120mph - whizzing by our cab at twice our speed - fortunately, we weren't picking up body parts along the way.

View from our room on third floor

Our room at Ariyasomvilla (#310)

Arrival at the Ariyasomvilla was in accord with a place so highly rated on Trip Advisor.  When traveling abroad for pleasure, Valerie and I tend to prefer boutique hotels in convenient locations -- if they are a great value, so much the better.  Thus far, we are very impressed by what we have seen and experienced.  Our room is large, quiet, tastefully decorated with a very comfortable bed and sheets.  The staff has been perfect and our bathroom is memorable.  Included breakfast this morning was great - freshly brewed coffee, fresh fruits, and cooked to order breakfast - with both western and local choices available.

Our Room is 310 - excellent location overlooking the pool, the Sala (Open air Pavillion where we just finished our outstanding couples massage) and adjacent to a canal with boat traffic bustling along.  A beautiful jungle oasis in the midst of a super large urban city of more than 10 million.

Pretty view from our room

Couples Massage Sala (Pavilion)

Traditional Thai Massage - 1 hour - 800 Baht (about $27)

Hotel Restaurant

Eggs Benedict - Thai style

Traditional Thai Breakfast soup

This afternoon we are heading to Siam Center for some sight seeing and shopping.  More on that in our next entry...

Cruise Planners on the Road - South East Asia - Mekong River Cruise on AMA Waterways AMA Dara

Our departure day has finally arrived.  Both Happy and Sad. We were to meet our friends Mike and Karen in Japan and fly our last leg into Bangkok together. Alas - but so fortunately - Mike had an unexpected medical issue pop up that forced them to remain in San Diego during his recovery period. We will truly miss them - but we are already planning a make up trip. 

Pre-departure, and for the last several months leading up to today, we have used Trip-it Pro to build and keep track of our itinerary. It does a good job of getting your various flights, hotels, and cruises organized and then monitors changes that occur along the way.  Based on our usage to date I would definitely recommend it for your personal travel. Not sure yet how to fold it into our Cruise Planner client itineraries but it could be a real plus. 

Here is a photo of Trip-it Pro monitoring our progress. 

We are flying Coach tickets with 200,000 miles of upgrade credit attached. So our United legs are in First or Business First except for our ANA leg from Narita to Bangkok.  First leg was a smooth 737-800 ride from Ft Myers to Newark. Very nice to have access to the United Club here in Newark, NJ for free wi-fi and a quiet 90 minute wait for our next flight. Our next leg from Newark to Narita is a 14 hour non-stop flight on a 777-200ER. Long ride but will be a lot nicer in our Business First seats. I am looking forward to taking Valerie into the ANA lounge at Narita - my second favorite lounge in the world thus far - after Virgin's Club in London. Why is it a nice lounge?  Draft Japanese beer on tap, a Soba (noodle) chef and nice showers to refresh after the long flight. 

Time to sign off and walk down to the gate.