July 19 – Baddambang

By 8 am we were fed, watered, checked out of Indra Porak, and loaded onto a bus headed for the town of Baddambang. Siem Reap is a great place, buzzing with energy, so we were sad to leave, but excited at the prospect of exploring a new town. I think our only regret was that we didn’t find the Pot and Pan restaurant earlier.

We were braced for a five hour bus ride, but it less than four, and the trip was good. We saw a little of the Cambodian countryside, and a lot of small villages, which I am sure had their own particular charms, but all we could really see from the road were beaten up houses with plenty of garbage strewn about. What is beautiful, though, are all the Cambodian children, always smiling, waving and having fun. Ana saw two little boys, holding hands, wearing no pants, smiling and watching the bus pass by, and Angela noticed a group of schoolchildren, wearing impeccably clean school uniforms, walking along the highway, possibly on their way home for lunch.

We arrived in Baddambang to a throng of tuk-tuk drivers holding up “Tuk-tuk – 50 cents anywhere!” signs and they mobbed the passengers as we departed the bus. After collecting our bags, and thoughts, we settled on two of them (Mr. Blue and Mr. Sam) and were whisked off into this unknown city. It was a short ride to the King Fey Hotel, which was to be our home for two nights, and it looked to be a decades old, classy hotel, but perhaps a bit run down. We checked in and took the elevator up to our rooms, which we were pleased to discover had large balconies overlooking the river and downtown, great beds, and antique mahogany furniture that weighed a ton and would have fetched thousands for a single chair in an antique shop back home.

Our first order of business, as it always is in a new place, is to start wandering around, so we gathered our forces and set out walking. We almost immediately found a temple so went for a wander around the grounds. The various wats and pagodas were a little beaten up and didn’t look well maintained; similarly the grounds were quite messy. There were a number of monks wandering around who paid us no attention, so we assumed they were okay with our loitering.

We continued across the bridge into town and turned left, looking for a place to have lunch. This busy street let us into a gritty, commercial area with a never-ending string of businesses such as tire shops, mechanics, scooter dealers, metal fabricators, hardware stores, phone shops, welders, housewares, and so on. We were feeling like Baddambang was going to be a major disappointment, but after changing direction, things started to improve and we could feel like we were getting closer to the action. Our first hit was a street-side restaurant called “Madison” run by a French chap who coaxed us in with promises of the best crepes in Cambodia. We didn’t need much convincing as we were hot, sweaty, and in dire need of liquid refreshments.

We enjoyed a cold pitcher of beer and a decent lunch and got the lowdown on Baddambang from the charismatic owner, who used to be a local celebrity; he would dress up as a superhero called “Pancake Man” and walk around the streets making crepes for people on the portable grill strapped to his midsection, fueled by a propane cylinder slung across his back. He dug out a small stack of old, wrinkled, faded photographs of himself in costume entertaining children, and showed them to us proudly.

After lunch and fruit crepes for dessert, the kids decided they had seen enough and walked together back to the hotel to go for a swim. The four of us continued exploring and finally found the “cool” area with French style architecture, restaurants, and neat shops, although most of them were closed – probably since nobody with any sense wanders around in the blistering afternoon Cambodian sun. We passed a restaurant called Pomme and the English owner, Olly Smith, came right out, introduced himself and asked our names. He gave us a rundown of the area and said he would be open all night if we wanted to come back later for drinks or food. I had a strong feeling we would.

The ladies found a huge, covered market so we told them they could meet us at the first beer-serving establishment down the street. Now this strategy had worked for Tony and I at least a dozen times already, so imagine our surprised when we walked for a whole block and did not find such a place. Instead, we dipped into the scabby fringe of the market and found a vendor displaying a sign for Leo beer. It was an older lady who was extremely short, had a malfunctioning leg, and some sort of condition that had left her body covered in large warts. And, of course, she wore a huge smile on her face. She told us her name, and the name of her grandson and we returned with ours. She gave us two plastic chairs to sit on and we asked her for two beers. We didn’t see her speak or motion to anybody, and yet a couple of minutes later a young boy came running from across the street carrying a thin plastic bag containing two cans of Leo beer and two straws. He handed them to us as we handed her the requested price of one dollar. We cracked open our cans and sat down on our little plastic chairs to observe the world happening around us. Here is what it looked like.

The grandson of the owner was sitting on the table where she was also selling these miniature candy apple treats, and he slammed his whole hand into the syrup she dipped the apples in. Fortunately, he could not wipe the sticky hand on his pants, because he was wearing no pants, and he was whisked away by a young girl and taken to the nearest water source. Two other children were standing nearby and started laughing. The ceiling of the market was just over six feet high, creating a closed-in sensation, like being in a cave with our fellow cavemen and caveladies. Across from us and to the right was a jewelry vendor, and to the left was a food vendor but we couldn’t really tell what he was cooking. A steady stream of people poured into the market and were challenged by a current of people heading the opposite direction, creating a dance-like shuffle, but one in which everybody got to where they wanted to go. From deep within the guts of the market emerged a man driving a scooter, swerving around people, carrying a smallish, portable Buddhist temple, wrapped in plastic, strapped onto the back of his bike. A lady a few feet away from us had a charcoal fire burning and was cooking chicken skewers on it, as well as chopping vegetables on a board, while sitting on the dirt floor. An old man, a young lady, a teenager, and a young child, all sat around her on wooden blocks as she served them small plates of food containing the grilled chicken, sticky rice and fresh vegetables, and they all ate silently. The food looked and smelled delicious. A different man on a scooter came rolling in from the street and tucked the bike tight in behind the jewelry vendor and then disappeared into the bowels of the market. We kept hearing cat sounds, but couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. Soon, a little kitten came walking down the row in front of us, like he was patrolling the market. His little buddy wasn’t too far behind him, also patrolling. Both had cropped tails, but one had a slightly longer one than the other, making him feel superior. Looking around we saw concrete, dirt, steel, cloth fabric, wood, tarps and poles. We saw girls, boys, moms, dads, and grandparents - sometimes all on the same motorcycle. In fact, another scooter came ripping through with a mom driving, an older child in front of her, and her three year standing barefoot on the seat behind her, holding onto her mom’s shoulders, laughing wildly. We watched them disappear into the smear of traffic outside, and down a road that had a thousand signs hanging from all levels, written in Kymer, Chinese, Thai and English.

“That’s what I love about Asia,” I said to Tony, as we finished up the last sip of our beers, and noticed the girls approaching us from one of the market pathways. “All you have to do is sit down and watch the action unfold around you.”  We thanked our hostess, joined the girls and continued our wanderings.

As the mayor of any small to medium-sized city in Canada, my first action would be to send my entire staff of urban planners to Baddambang to see how they have designed their town centre (actually, it was the French who designed it - many decades before when Cambodia was a French protectorate). Baddambang is a river town, and the river slices it neatly into two. Adjacent to the river, on both sides, is a strip of a messy, natural growth area, full of plants and trees and river grass, left to grow wildly and no doubt serving as a natural buffer for the river, moderating the river’s droughts and floods. Next to this runs a pedestrian only boulevard that is likely more than ten metres wide. This boulevard contains a tiled pedestrian walkway, a long line of grassy parks and playgrounds, well maintained exercise equipment, and many, many large trees. In two spots we found reflexology walks, which are poured walkways with two or three concentric, circular paths containing small stones sticking up on end, providing a surface meant to be trod upon with bare feet, giving participants the benefits of a rigorous reflexology treatment. The outside ring contained the most painful rocks, but the paths got less painful the closer you got to the middle. We did a bare foot walk around the outside and I actually made it (but needed a few breaks). The exercise and playground equipment was all being used, as were the nice sitting benches installed liberally throughout and there were people everywhere, making use of everything. Beside the boulevard was a narrow, two lane roadway that was fairly congested with vehicle traffic – mostly scooters – and the traffic moved slowly but steadily, yet not fast enough to seriously injure anybody that may have the misfortune of being struck. Having so much activity around a street naturally and automatically reduces traffic speed because drivers instinctually know it is not safe to drive fast, so there is no need for speed limit signs. This lies in stark contrast to our downtown streets in Canada that are built so wide they look and feel like race tracks and unwittingly invite drivers to drive well beyond the posted limits, simply because it feels perfectly safe to do so. But God help the hapless pedestrian who stumbles out into the road and gets hit.

Beside the traffic street were blocks of flats with shops on the bottom and residences on top and in behind. There was a large sidewalk in front, and many spots had some sort of sidewalk feature like seating, tables, food carts or display boards. On the other side of the river – the less busy side – was a similar boulevard, but once we walked over there (passing several boys fishing from the bridge) we found a flurry of citizen activity. In one section there was a full band playing music and street performers putting on a show, for tips, for a huge number of bystanders. In another part there was a large crowd of people doing aerobics and, though we didn’t walk down far enough to see it, we were told that every afternoon dozens upon dozens of people do some sort of pattern dance called the Madison.
In short, the place was electric. And this was a Wednesday afternoon. What do most Canadian cities look like on a Wednesday afternoon at 5 pm? We have a few things to learn.

We worked our way back to the hotel, found the kids, and had a chill-out session for a couple of hours. But then we headed right back into town to see how it fared after dark. Turns out, it was comparatively slow. The downtown area was lit up and there were a lot of people around, and a smallish night market, but many of the shops were closed, and even many of the restaurants, and it was only about 9pm. We learned later that during the high season the level of nighttime activity increases substantially. So we returned to Pomme – the restaurant we passed earlier in the day –  to take advantage of our new friend Olly’s hospitality and hear more of his outstanding, customized, hand-cut playlist of fine music. He was indeed glad to see us, and even remembered all of our names. There we played some awesome board games, which was made better by a table setup whereby the legs were mostly cut off allowing you to sit on the floor. The restaurant and bar were having a rather slow night so Olly hung out with us all evening, giving us the ins and outs of running an international hosteling empire (he has one in Thailand and this one in Cambodia) and his plans for the expansion of Pomme. He also treated us to a poetry reading from his recently published book of poetry called “Pooems”. That is, poems all about poo. I’d only known the guy for a day and I felt like taking him home to join the Olson family. By the end of the night we had eaten some great food, drank a lot of Anchor beer, tried a new French drink called “Pastis”, listened to some kick-ass music, and Olly had promised to get Magnus the name of a shop in Bangkok that sold Magic the Gathering cards.

And that was our first day in Baddambang.

July 18 – Cocoons, Counterfits, and Lady Boom Boom

Magnus has always been a scavenger. When he walks he is constantly scanning the ground for interesting things and has found a lot of stuff over the years, including money. This morning as we were walking into town he found a US hundred-dollar bill. He ran over to us and was so excited that I could see the spending plans already beginning to take shape in his mind. He gave me the bill to look at and it appeared sort of real, but the paper just seemed a little flimsy and it was an older bill without all the security features. I told him it was probably a fake, but he wouldn’t throw in the towel until he had independent verification, so he ran into the first money changer he could find, showed them the bill, and was immediately shooed away. He wasn’t happy with their evaluation of the authenticity of the bill so found another currency exchange place and the clerk could see from ten feet away that the bill was a fake. He wasn’t too disappointed as I think he had his doubts too that he would be able to find a hundred bucks on the road that the thousands of poverty stricken locals had somehow missed. We found out later that these fake hundreds are used for fun at weddings and also to put as offerings at Buddhist temples. He says he is going to keep it as a souvenir instead, but I think he will try to spend it the next time we are in Buffalo.

Our immediate mission for the morning was to get myself a haircut and Tony a shave. He hadn’t shaved for a week so was starting to get the salt and pepper Sean Connery look, making him irresistible to women, so I guess Angela told him it was time to scrape off the sex appeal. We found a barber and the girls and kids continued on walking while I stepped up to the plate and Tony got on deck. I asked the barber, with hand motions, to trim it all up, especially the top. So he got to work on that while I sat back and relaxed. He buzzed the sides just fine but didn’t cut a lot off the top so I asked him to take off some more, but he seemed reluctant to do so, so I put my trust in his judgement. As he was finishing, I motioned for him to trim up the goatee as it was getting a little scruffy. Using my best hand motions I indicated for him to trim it up slightly, pointing to the electric clippers. He gave me a nod indicating he understood completely and then rocked my chair back, grabbed a straight razor, and before I knew it half of my chin fluff was lying on the floor. There was no stopping him now so I just relaxed and enjoyed the dance of the straight razor, and when I emerged I was clean and hairless.

Tony was up next and the barber went to work with the straight razor, using neither hot water nor shaving foam. I was expecting we’d both be covered in razor burn but that did not happen. We’re thinking that since we were already hot and sweating there wasn’t much need for anything else. Don’t try that in Canada on a cold February morning, or you will come out looking like a murder victim.

We continued walking along the road and caught up with the ladies who were immediately stunned by my new look. Ana said she felt like she just got her old boyfriend back so I was good with that. Stella wasn’t too happy as she seems to prefer me with facial hair, but I am sure she will get used to it. We continued walking with the girls and we must have gone at least 25 steps before they found another shop to go into so we waited outside while they went browsing. A tuk-tuk driver walked up to us and tried selling us a ride, or a day trip, or even to lay in his hammock strung across the machine, but despite his persistence we just wouldn’t buy anything from him.

“You like some Lady Boom Boom?” he asked.

“Lady Boom Boom?” I inquired. “Sounds good but I’ll have to check with my wife.” His English didn’t extend far enough to understand my joke.

“Lady Boom Boom, right now, no problem!”  he persisted. Tony and I just looked at each other and laughed. Then this pack of kids and wives came out and joined us and all humour on this guy’s face dropped, and was replaced with sheer embarrassment.

“Hey, this guy going to get us some Lady Boom Boom, you girls okay with that?” I asked Ana and Angela. They looked at the tuk-tuk driver and then back at us and started shaking their heads. The tuk-tuk driver could tell what going on, and all of a sudden he pointed at his buddy (who hadn’t said a word the entire time) and says, “It was his idea, not mine!” Buddy, mystified at how he had suddenly been dragged into this, shook his head vigorously and reassigned the blame. Cambodians are the greatest.

We stopped for fifty cent drafts and overpriced juice at one of the places on Pub Street while the shopping expedition continued. Our plan for the day was to visit Angkor Artisans, which is an organization that trains young Cambodians to become craftsmen, and runs a silk farm. After walking around downtown for a while, asking various people for directions, we soon found it and were allowed to browse through the various workshops watching the young carvers at work. They produce a lot of small tourist stuff, such as Buddha heads and Khmer images, but also do large projects such as reconstructing stone carvings at local and international archaeological sites.

Earlier in the day, we had booked ourselves on the free shuttle bus to the silk farm, and on the bus we met a lovely Danish family and talked with them non-stop the entire way. Their names were Alex and Signe and they had two beautiful young daughters. I really impressed the girls with my extensive knowledge of the Danish language (about 6 words), which they thought was pretty funny as I completely mangled the pronunciation.

We had visited this silk farm the last time we were here, but we loved coming for a second time as it was very hard to understand how the whole process works; even now I still have questions. But from what I gather, they grow acres of mulberry trees, trim the leaves, feed the leaves to the silk worms housed in baskets, the worms spin cocoons and then 80% of them are left out in the sun to kill the worms and the other 20% are allowed to metamorphosize into moths to be used for breeding and producing eggs. The cocoons are then put through processes to remove the raw silk and fine silk which are transformed into coloured thread and then weaved into all sorts of intricate patterns, resulting in rolls of silk fabric. The tour takes you through each step of the process, and by the end you are feeling that paying fifty bucks for a small scarf is a very good deal indeed considering the intensive manual labour that went into making it.

After the tour, we joined up with our new Danish friends for drinks and a meal at a restaurant we found called Pot and Pan, and we ate what most agreed was the best meal in Cambodia so far. We had a great chat with Alex and Signe and by the end of the meal felt as if we’d known them for years. They even invited us to stay with them in Denmark some time, and you just can’t beat staying with friends when traveling.

As we were eating we got hit with a torrential downpour that lasted longer and dumped more rain than most of the ones we had experienced in Thailand. Until now we hadn’t had much rain at all in Cambodia, but it seemed to be coming all at once. The Henriques decided to go back to the hotel so they got in a rain-proofed tuk-tuk and paddled away. We said goodbye to our new friends and waited for a break in the rain to run down the street to the cinema and made it just in time for the evening showing of “War for the Planet of the Apes”. During our trip three years ago, we also went to see the latest release of this series, so it was all feeling very familiar.

After the movie (which was fantastic) we tuk-tuk’d back to the hotel, did some final packing for tomorrow’s departure, and called it a night.

July 17 – Angkor Wat

Yesterday we hired our airport mini-bus driver Bross to take us to Angkor Wat today, as his rate was reasonable $40 for the entire day for all eight of us. We had an early breakfast, served up by the ever-smiling hotel staff, and were on our way to Angkor by 8 am.

The driver told us that there had been some sort of ownership change at the park, or organizational change, and as a result the ticket prices had gone up. The one day pass that was $20 three years ago was now $37, but kids under the age of 12 still got in for free. The better deal was the three day pass at $67 but we all agreed that one day would probably be sufficient.

As this was our second visit to the park, we knew what to expect and probably did not experience the overwhelming sense of wonder we did when seeing it for the first time. Nevertheless, it was still amazing seeing it for the second time. The scale of the temples is massive, and the intricate carvings on millions of individual sandstone rocks seem simply impossible, yet there it is in front of you. For our first visit here three years ago we hired a tuk-tuk to take us around from temple to temple, but I am sure glad we got a mini-van this time as having a periodic break in an air conditioned space was welcome. We got lucky with the weather as it was overcast the entire day so were spared being scorched by the full force sun.

We visited four temples in total, and by the time we finished with the magnum opus Angkor Wat temple, the group was pretty much satisfied, so we had Bross take us back to the hotel. Like last time I’m reluctant to write too much about Angkor as I think it is a place that everybody who has the means to visit, should visit, as there is no other place like it on earth.

During our hotel chill down, Stella spent much of it feeding and playing with the five pet bunnies that were kept in a cage at the hotel. She even gave them names: Snowball, Ice, Lilly, Luna and Loner, and she commanded us to feed them at least one leaf every time we passed by the cage on the way up to our room. Oh, and we were instructed to check that their water bottle was filled too.

Before we knew it, we were back on Pub Street, wandering the streets, watching people and being asked every twenty seconds if we needed a tuk-tuk. We had a backpacker dinner of soup and fruit back in the hotel, so weren’t looking for a big meal, but we did have some snacks at one place, along with those excellent value fifty cent drafts, that you just never tire of.

We spent some time walking through the giant night market, and at one point I got distracted by a book vendor and fell behind the rest of the group. I was haggling with the owner on a counterfeit Vietnam Lonely Planet book that she was willing to sell for five bucks, but I just didn’t think I needed another book to carry around, as I still haven’t finished that damn Moby Dick that I brought with me, so I told her I was going to ask my wife first. As I was walking to catch up with my group, I passed by a classy joint called “Master Hand Massage” and was practically tackled to the ground by two ladies, or perhaps lady-boys, anxious to enlist me as a customer, assuming I was a lonely bachelor. I believe Tony had the same experience, because as I managed to slip away from them I looked ahead to see Tony looking back, laughing at me. When I reached the group half a block later, I started telling Ana about the Lonely Planet book and lo and behold, the vendor was standing right beside me holding the book up, smiling. Man, these people know how to make a sale! Yes, I bought it. How could I not?

July 16 – Siem Reap, Cambodia

Now that we’re fully adjusted to the time, getting up at 3:30 am was a real pain in the ass. I think we may have misjudged how much time we would need, because when we arrived at 4:15 the Air Asia counter had just opened and we were the only ones in line, and the check in lady told us that security didn’t even open until 5. A few of the shops in the departure lounge were open, but nearly all of the employees had their heads down at their counters, sound asleep.

The Henriques arrived shortly after us and we lounged around until security opened and then we went through and got settled near our gate. I met a nice couple there – the wife was from France and the husband from Germany and we had a great chat about the current political situation in their respective countries and what the effects of the Syrian migration had had on each. Those damn Europeans always make us look bad – both of them spoke perfect French, German and English, and probably a couple more languages besides that.

The Air Asia flight departed on time and the hour and twenty minute flight felt like nothing, especially since filling out all of the required Cambodian arrival documents took up half of that time. We arrived in Siem Reap, paid US$30 each for our visas, hired a mini-bus, and were headed for our hotel – the Indra Porak. Getting to the hotel was a bit tricky, as it is very close to a busy local market, so the driver could only inch his way along the too-narrow road, which was also congested with motorbikes, tuk-tuks, vendors, pedestrians, dogs, chickens, and surely rodents, as there was an awful lot of discarded food laying around.

We did eventually get to the hotel, but he had to take a back way around that led us across a shaky wooden bridge which spanned a small creek, and may have doubled as a sewage canal. It’s funny how these small, quaint, serene, boutique hotels are located right in the middle of crazy, congested areas, but once you add in a brick wall and a lot of greenery, you are perfectly shielded from the chaos, but the chaos is only steps away if you feel inclined to participate.

The Cambodian staff members who greeted us were the kindest and gentlest people you could imagine. If you have ever read anything about the history of Cambodia in the 20th century, you would know that these people have been to hell and back, a couple of times, so the fact that they are so incredibly hospitable and friendly is a real testament to their spirit, their nature, and their ability to somehow move on from tragedy and despair. I read that the book, “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung is being released as a movie or documentary soon. I hope it does justice to the book, as it is one of the saddest and most powerful I have ever read.

The rooms were not yet ready for us, as we arrived well before the normal check-in time, so we took seats in the restaurant and ordered breakfast. The breakfast was okay, except for the croissants, which were reported as the best anybody in the group has ever eaten. I had to agree.

The staff announced that our rooms were ready and we hauled all our gear up the staircase to the second floor where they were located. They were large, roomy, had a massive bathroom and shower area, and the beds felt fantastic. While we were waiting the ladies were perusing the spa menu and were oh so pleased to discover that a 60 minute massage could be had for 8 dollars, so they booked the four parents in for an early afternoon rub-down. Actually, Ana went for the facial, which was an extravagant 14 dollars, but we’re big spenders here in the Holrique gang.

The spa girls arrived at our rooms and we sent the kiddies away to entertain themselves for an hour. One of them started lathering up Ana’s face with green stuff while the other jumped on top of me and started kneading, rubbing and stretching my body into all sorts of unrecognizable shapes and contortions. It was awesome. Somehow, during one of the less intensive phases of the therapy, I fell asleep and cranked out one big snore which caused the two Cambodian girls to break out in laughter, which woke me up and kept me awake for the remainder of the massage.

For our first day in Siem Reap we decided to chill out by the pool and relax until closer to dinner time, at which point we’d head into town. Our hotel was a two-dollar tuk-tuk ride from the centre so around 6 pm we grabbed two of them and were dropped off on Pub Street within ten minutes. The standard Cambodian tuk-tuk is a small motorcycle towing a buggy which holds four passengers. The buggy itself has a cover on top for the rain, but no sides so you can hang your arms and legs out as the driver whips you around corners, threads you through traffic, speeds you through intersections, drags you through puddles, winds you round round-a-bouts, and finally screeches you to a halt at your final destination, which is usually either a restaurant or a market.

Before leaving for downtown, Magnus and I took a stroll through the local market that was close to our hotel. The dirt roads had turned to muddy pits in the lower spots and the constant flow of motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and pedestrians spread the muddy mixture throughout. The majority of the vendors were selling food and household items. Fruit vendors had large bowls with dragon fruits, bananas, rambutans, pineapples, mangosteens, papayas and many others I couldn’t identify. One vendor had a table with the parts from a single butchered chicken, which she fanned constantly to thwart the flies attempting to land and snack. The air was heavy with so many smells; sometimes a strong whiff of gasoline exhaust, then a burst of turned meat, then a penetrating sniff of incense and, always, the ever present odour of durian, even though we couldn’t see a damn durian anywhere. Magnus found a vendor selling bundles of incense sticks and asked how much it was for a bundle of about 50. She gave us the price in Cambodian reals, and if I remembered the conversion correctly it was about 50 cents, so I gave her an American one-dollar bill and she gave me back 2000 reals. We then stopped at a fruit vendor, I pointed at the rambutans, held out a 1000 note bill and she gave me a bag of six of them. With the remaining 1000 bill I stopped at another vendor, pointed at the bananas, and was given a full bunch. This was enough fruit to snack on for two days and enough incense for a year. Not bad for a buck.

The tuk-tuks dropped us off on Pub Street, which is the heart of the action in Siem Reap. It was only about 5pm, so the place was hours away from its peak, yet already full of people walking around and exploring the many shops, restaurants, bars, massage parlours, and exotic bug snack vendors. I picked up a one dollar bag of fried crickets, which gave me about 50 or 60 of them. Did I get any takers? Magnus tried one, Stella tried one, and Tony and I popped them like peanuts. I couldn’t convince the others to, but I would continue to try unsuccessfully until the end of the evening. You simply cannot visit Cambodia without sampling insects. I think I was being easy on everybody with my choice of crickets, considering they were also selling tarantulas on a stick, fried frogs, roasted snakes, and steam cooked cockroaches – all of which had a higher brain and guts content then our easily snackable dried cricket treats.

Tony and I got seated in comfy chairs at the Temple bar while the rest of the group went to explore the market. The sign out front said “50 cent draft” and sure enough they served us tall glasses of Angkor lager for the low, low price of fifty cents, which paired perfectly with the crickets. We met an Aussie couple whom we chatted with for a long while, and before long Mackenzie turned up, bored by the shopping experience, but still not prepared to eat a cricket.

The girls arrived, proudly showing off their purchased treasures, which included scarves, dresses, purses, and a three-headed elephant figure that Magnus negotiated the vendor down from five bucks to a dollar-fifty. We all had a drink together and then set off in search of a feesh spa (yes, it should be spelled “fish spa” but I can’t help but to spell it the way they say it when they are asking you to buy one– feeeesh spa? The number of “e’s” depends on their level of enthusiasm while asking.). Siam Reap simply has the best feesh spas anywhere as they are located right on the street edge and they serve you beer while you sit there having your feet sucked and nibbled on by fish of all shapes, sizes and varieties. During our previous visit, the feesh spas usually had only small fish, but the one we found had much larger ones and immediately after submerging my feet, two largish, bottom feeding catfish-type creatures each took hold of a pinky toe and started sucking away. It felt strange, but wonderful, and soon a dozen other hungry fish had joined their companions in scouring the goodies off my feet, as well as the feet of my companions, except Stella who, although brave enough to sign up, just couldn’t handle the ticklish sensation, so she just sat beside us on the tank, hovering her feet over the water, cautiously dipping her feet in, then then yanking them out the moment a toe sucker got too close.

We settled on an Italian place for dinner and the servers set us up with a table for eight, right on the street, but we didn’t stay long out there for long as it started to pour rain so we moved inside to a large, comfortable booth. The food was decent, but Ana had been feeling progressively worse and worse and by the end of the meal she could barely keep her eyes open so we grabbed a pair of tuk-tuks and tucked it back to the hotel, putting the wraps on another big day.

July 15 – Last day in Phuket

I have a real great pair of shorts. They are perfect shorts for backpacking as they have deep pockets that snap shut, a button fly, and are extremely comfortable. During our last trip to Asia I wore them practically every day because they were the best and my other shorts just didn’t compare. When it came to packing for this trip, I obviously wanted to take them again. But my dear wife forbade me from taking them, citing reasons such as they are too old, too faded, too ugly, and so on. So I agreed to leave them behind and take a bunch of fancy new shorts.

On the morning of our last day in Canada, I found the shorts when Ana was in the shower and snuck them into my bag. I shoved them way down into the pack so that she wouldn’t see them, because I had a feeling she would sense my treachery. But she didn’t. So yesterday when we were going through that big storm and Tony was at the helm, I had to go to the front of the boat and lash down the kayak as it was getting whipped around by the wind. In doing so I got absolutely soaked so had to change my shorts. I decided it was time for the unveiling. I had previously told Tony and Angela about my trickery so they must have been anxious for the big reveal.

I went down into our cabin, changed into my awesome shorts, walked out to the back deck where everybody was sitting and stood there. Ana looked at me, and then looked at the shorts. Her eyes started to squint, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then she looked back at me and said sternly, “Where did you get those?”

“I found them in my bag!” I replied. “I don’t know how they got there.”

Angela and Tony burst out laughing. I was relieved when Ana didn’t force me to take them off and put them in the garbage bin. Maybe she realized that they are actually very nice shorts and had some life left in them yet. Or maybe dogged persistence pays off? In any case, I’m still wearing them and don’t plan on taking them off anytime soon.

We had to have the boat back by noon and were about 18 miles away from the marina so we pulled anchor after morning coffee and got on our way. I caught a touch of whatever made the others sick and had a pretty dodgy stomach, but it was bearable. There was a beautiful wind, so we cut the engine and went with sails only. Previous to this we had done mostly motor sailing, so it was a real pleasure to do some actual, quiet sailing without the drone of the engines. While we were underway the ladies used up the last of our cheese and bread by making oven baked cheese toast – delicious.

Stella was sitting with me in the cockpit and, usual, was counting the jellyfish that we passed by. Tony came by and said, “Okay Stella. I’m tired of hearing all this talk about jellyfish. From now on, say the words ‘plastic bag’ instead. That can be a code for jellyfish.”

“OK,” Stella said.

A while later we were still sitting together at the helm when Stella points into the water and says to me, “Look Dad, a plastic bag.”

“Oh, ha ha,” I said, with a wink.

“No Dad, it really was a plastic bag.”

We sailed up to the next island group and were planning on stopping for a swim, but the crew was anxious to get back so we decided to carry on. The wind was blowing steadily from the west making for a brisk sail, hitting over eight knots at times. The cat sailed like a dream and I did my best to take a permanent mental photograph of how life was right at that at time, because I couldn’t imagine it being much better. Such a perfect way to finish up this phase of our trip.

I docked the boat into our slip without any issues and we loaded up all of our gear into the dock buggies while Mellissa did the check-out procedure. She also gave Tony, Ana and I a tour of two other boats in their charter fleet – the Nautitech Open 40 and a Lagoon 46. The Lagoon was particularly nice, and that extra 6 feet made for a much larger boat with a seating area in front by the trampoline nets and a fly bridge with seating and sunbeds for eight people. Maybe next time.

We hired a min-bus taxi to take us to our hotel, the Canal Resort, for our last night in Phuket. While Ana walked over to the office to get us checked in, we unloaded all our bags and set them onto the ground. Angela noticed a pile of dog droppings just off the sidewalk and warned everybody to watch out. I put down a couple of shopping bags by the turds, and then unloaded a few more and when I came back to get the first bag the turds had vanished! Strange, I thought. We started carrying the bags down to our room, and I passed Tony who was scraping the mashed up turds from the bottom of his right flip flop.

“That’s putting the ‘poo’ in Phuket!” he said. I agreed wholeheartedly and then held my breath as I walked by him.

It was a very cute, small hotel with large, air conditioned rooms and a neat little freshwater pool. There was also a small “happy hour” table set up next to the pool with a few chairs, a thatched roof canopy, and this creepy plant that looked exactly like a human hand with sprouts shooting out at the end of the fingers. It just might show up in my next mini horror novel.

Angela and Stella found a dead lizard in the pool filter so I plucked it out and set it up on the grass so we could fool Magnus, but he saw through the rouse and knew right away that it was a stiff. We all had a swim in the nice cool pool and then Maddy got busy washing some of her clothes and put them out in the hot sun to dry. I wasn’t feeling so great so I laid down in the room for a while. The rest of the gang took a long walk out in search of a pizza place, along the way encountering a charging rat that scared the bejesus out of Ana. After a quick drink and some pizza, everybody retired for the night in preparation for our 7 am flight the next morning.

Thanks Phuket, it’s been a slice.

July 14 – Hermit Crab Racing

We awoke to a beautiful morning with all remnants of the storm having passed. We still had a lot of eggs to eat so we boiled a whole pile of them and added in toast, baked beans and cheese, plus cereal for a couple of the kids. There was no obvious toasting mechanism on the boat so we used the broil function on the oven, which didn’t stay lit unless the door was one quarter open, heating up the boat up nicely, but at least we could get that all-important morning toast.

It didn’t take long for the tourist boats to start ripping by. The Thai longboats have to be seen to be believed. The boats are piloted by one person at the back and they hold a giant tiller that is about fifteen feet long with a wildly spinning propeller at the end. This tiller bar sits on a big swivel on the transom so that they can easily dip the prop in and out of the water and from side to side to control steering. The best part is that the engine itself is mounted right on top of the tiller, and most of them look to be old car engines, yanked right out of a vehicle and bolted to the tiller without any cover at all, so all the belts and spinning wheels are exposed, right behind the pilot, which is why all Thai longboat pilots either have short hair, or are dead.

Our autopilot and other gauges still weren’t working so we fiddled around with the settings, the breakers, the battery switches and the connections but still could not get it to work. Fortunately, the chart plotter was still working fine, and we had all the paper charts we needed for depths, so it was not a big deal – the only real difference is that we’d need to manually steer the boat instead of relying on the lazyman autopilot.

Our target was a place called “Captain Ed’s Spot” – located 15 miles away at the south end of Ko Yao Noi island. We have been selecting our anchorages with the help of this indispensable book called the Southeast Asia Piloting Guide, which is a fantastic resource for anybody cruising in the waters of this region. The section on Thailand is particularly good and this anchorage is one that we used during our last trip, and was a lovely spot near a pristine, deserted beach.

Well our pristine, deserted beach now had a small resort on it and a row of beach umbrellas and loungers out front, but no people. I checked the chart again just to make sure we were in the right place. We were. So, as a word of warning to anybody reading this: GET OUT THERE NOW AND FIND YOUR PRISTINE DESERTED BEACH BEFORE SOMEBODY BUILDS A DAMN RESORT ON IT! There is no time to waste, people.

Fortunately, a bit further north we found a new deserted beach, which was even better than the original one. We gathered up some drinks, dingy’d in, and then began the hunt for hermit crabs, as the Olson family’s official sport is Hermit Crab Racing. Stella and I started scouring the sand, looking for little moving shells but I couldn’t find any. Suddenly Stella shouts, “I found one!” And then shortly after that, “I found another one! No, there’s two of them here!” Stella went on to find six in total and Magnus and I each found one so, she was the hands-down champion crab recruiter for the day. Hermit crab racing is simple. Each person chooses a hermit crab and memorizes the shell’s markings and then gives their crab a little pep talk and perhaps a squirt of mineral water. Now, draw a big circle in the sand. Next, draw a small circle in the center to serve as the starting gate. Finally, dump in the crabs and loudly cheer on your little racer. The winner is the first one who crosses the outer circle. If hermit crab racing is not yet a worldwide sport, it should be.

After the intense, wild and raucous crab races we went for a dip to cool the jets. With Ana and the kids beside me I grabbed them and said, “One day in February we are going to be sitting at home, suffering through a cold, miserable winter, and I’m going to say ‘Remember when we went for a swim after the crab racing during our trip. And I said we’re going to remember this exact moment? The warm ocean water, the hot sun, the deserted beach and the amazing catamaran floating just over there? That was a great moment.’” I am sure we will remember to do this.

We decided it was time to go and nearly swamped the dingy and occupants when trying to fight through the crashing surf. We did get it after a few attempts, and made it back with half a foot of water in the dingy. We pulled anchor and sailed south to the end of the island and then north-west to our anchorage for the night which was the Koh Rang Yai island group. The ladies prepared a remarkable pasta salad with the leftover eggs and that mystery vegetable we saved from breakfast the other day, along with the regular pasta salad ingredients, and it was awesome.

Captain Tony took the helm for a while to give me a break, and Maddy handled it for a while too. When I left the helm there was a steadily darkening sky to the west, and by the time I came back up we were in the midst of a full on storm, with the winds blowing right in our face. We had taken the sails down earlier so we were under motor power and she was slowed down to two knots at moments when the pontoons were getting buried in the huge waves. We held her steady and made agonizingly slow progress towards our destination. As we approached the island the waters and wind started to calm, blocked by the land mass. We went to the recommended anchoring destination but because we had lost our depth sounder and the storm had stirred up the ocean so much it was very hard to judge the depth, and we ended up touching bottom, so I hit the throttle and we got the hell out of there and went around to the other side of the island, which was better protected and deeper.

After we were anchored and settled it took two rounds of Chang beer to settle the nerves. Tony and I also discovered that when we clink our cans together it makes the sound “CHANG!” so that’s our new toasting word. It sounds way better than “Cheers”.

We cooked a delicious dinner of spicy grilled chicken, beans, corn and that pasta salad left over from lunch. As this was to be our last night we tried to drink as much of the white wine as possible. We also had a rousing discussion on whether the internet was generally good for the world or bad. Ana thinks it’s bad. I think it’s good. Tony and Angela didn’t take a definite position, as I think they sensed this was not the first time Ana and I had discussed this. In the end I won, Ana changed her view, and we all went to sleep happy.

July 13 – Phi Phi Island

Last night there was a terrific lightning strike that hit something very close to us. The resulting thunder rattled the boat and must have woken everybody up, at least for a few seconds. After first light, I went out onto the deck of the boat to see if the lightning had blasted the head off the rock chicken, but there it stood, craned neck and head fully intact.

We started breakfast early and Ana sliced into this delicious looking papaya only to find that it was the wrong colour inside and wasn’t actually a papaya. I tried a piece of the white flesh and found it to be quite tasteless, but with an excellent crunch, so we decided to save it and use it later in a pasta salad. I also cooked half of the bacon, or rather pork bellies, we bought but it didn’t come out with the bacon colour you would expect – instead it was rather greyish but still tasted pretty good, although I’m the only one who ate more than half a piece of it.

Because it was a longer sail to Ko Phi Phi island – our target for the day, we got on the water early, and it was damn hot outside. We sailed for a few hours and then stopped and anchored at the Bamboo Islands, just a few miles north of Phi Phi, for a cool down swim and to do some snorkeling. The water here was incredibly clear, incredibly blue and unbelievably warm. The only problem was that there were legions of little jellyfish floating around, so pretty much everybody got stung a little bit, which of course freaked out the kiddies. The only thing of interest I saw while snorkeling was a little stingray, flying around on the sandy bottom.

Toy Boy continued sailing south and worked our way all the way down the east coast of Phi Phi, passing several lovely beaches and dozens of tourist boats. We took the opportunity to crack out the mini cigars I had picked up at the Manila airport and Tony, Angela and I sat on the pontoon aft steps with feet dangling in the water and puffed away. Although I don’t often like flavoured cigars, these were slightly vanilla tinted and excellent.

We reached the south end of the island and turned to enter Ton Sai bay, a place for which we have unfond anchoring memories. This is an extremely busy bay, full of Thai longboats, dive boats, huge ferry boats, barges, snorkelers, dingys, paddleboarders, and every other sort of floatable water craft you could imagine. We had noticed our water supply running dangerously low so we needed to get water, and we knew there was a place to do that here, but weren’t sure where it was. We motored right into the chaos near the main terminal and yelled over at this salty old sailor dude sitting on the back of his sailboat, and asked him where to get water. He pointed to a flimsy, floating dock and yelled, “Pontoon!” I slowly maneuvered Toy Boy close to the floating dock but just couldn’t believe this was the place to get water, because the dock was not connected to the shoreline. I decided to try anyway so we pulled up slowly and Tony jumped off onto the black dock, which was scorching hot, and I think he left a couple footprints of skin where he landed. While he was doing his hotfoot dance I screamed for somebody to grab him some shoes, and Stella managed to find mine which we threw down to him, relieving him of the misery, but depriving us of the comedy of his funny foot pain dance. I hope somebody got a video of that. As we were tying up the boat, sure enough a little Thai man appeared with a water hose and a paddleboard and paddled out to the floating dock, where he handed me the hose and asked us to hand him 1500 baht, which is about sixty bucks for a water fill. Seemed a bit steep, but when you have no other options, supply side rules. We did have a water maker on the boat, but either it wasn’t working very well or perhaps the captain neglected to brief the crew on the importance of conserving water on a sailboat.

We pulled away and navigated though a mess of boats, looking for a decent spot to anchor. The entire area was filled with private mooring balls owned by the tourist boat companies so we had to go way out to find a place where a few other private vessels had anchored. Ana and I had a brief domestic dispute about where to anchor, which is normal as anchoring is the greatest test of a marriage. If you can successfully anchor a sailboat with your wife, without any violence, four letter words or murder threats, then your marriage is ROCK SOLID.

After getting the anchor set and boat secured I did two dingy runs to get everybody ashore. Both Magnus and Tony nearly dumped it while transferring from boat to dingy, but they somehow clung on and made it. We pulled the dingy up on the beach as far as we could and then locked it to a big thick rope that was protruding from the sand, which looked secure.

Our first stop was the first place with full AC which happened to be a Quick-E-Mart or however you spell it. Well that AC was pure nut-numbing, nipple-protruding joy and the whole crew browsed through that convenience store at half speed or less to prolong the chilly experience. We bought a few drinks and ice creams and were on our way, feeling very refreshed.

The next stop was for lunch, and we found a place that looked decent so we requested a table for eight and sat down and perused the menu. This was our first (and, as it happens, last) meal outside of the boat so it was quite the novelty. Tony and I ordered up large Chang beers to start and they came out in two giant bottles. We poured half the beer into our large, frozen mugs and had a sip. After the sip, we looked at each other in utter shock. We simultaneously agreed in an immediate, non-verbal way that this could indeed be the coldest and most delicious beer we’d ever consumed in our lives. That Chang beer was so cold, it seemed impossible that it was not frozen, and our faces were similarly frozen with delight.

We were not the only ones delighted with the restaurant. The server immediately offered up the wifi password, and shortly after that everybody’s head was down, eyes glued on phones, except for Tony, me and Magnus, who was wishing he had brought his phone.

The lunch was okay, but after the magical beers and free wifi, they could simply do no wrong. Our next move was to split up, Scooby-Doo style. Half went shopping while Stella, Tony, Angela and I went for manicures and foot massages and let me tell you, those shoppers made a bad choice. For 400 baht Stella got a full manicure and I got a foot and leg rub, and we both had genuine Thai ladyboys taking care of us, which made it extra special.

After the afternoon massage we walked back to the Quick-E-Mart and picked up ice and more water, met up with the others, and then launched the dingy and headed back to the boat. The water was calmer now and most of the tourist boats had gone out for the day, making for a much less perilous experience. We pulled anchor and motored a short way over to Monkey Beach and picked up a mooring ball. Since I had visited this place the last time we were here, I opted to stay on the boat in case the owner of the mooring returned and wanted it back. The rest of the gang piled into the dingy and the kayak and went in to see the monkeys. This particular beach has a troupe of monkeys that basically live off all the food that the tourists and tourist boat operators feed to them, but this has made them rather unpredictable and aggressive. I started cleaning up the boat and was thinking of doing some reading but in no time they were on their way back. Seems the monkey visit didn’t go particularly well. As they reached the beach the monkeys jumped on the kayak and dingy, expecting handouts, but finding none. Of course Magnus had shoved a banana in his pocket so they could probably smell that. From what they told me, the visit ended with Ana hitting one of the monkeys in the face with a paddle to get him off the boat, which seemed to work. Please tell me somebody got a video of that.

Satisfied with our short visit to Phi Phi, we motored back around to the east side of the island and got hit with a ripper of a storm that came out of nowhere. We did have time to close all the hatches and windows before getting hammered with rain, but I noticed that somewhere along the way our wind and depth gauges and autopilot had stopped working. We continued sailing slowly until we reached a beach with a place called Relax Beach Bar, which Mellissa the charter operator had told us about. The original plan was to dingy in for sundowner drinks, but the storm didn’t relent and instead we had a perfectly fine sundowner on the back of Toy Boy, complete with fresh, stove popped popcorn.

We made a big dinner of grilled pork tenderloin, Asian stir fry, rice, corn, and plenty of white wine. I’ve always found that food just tastes so good on boats. And everybody was now feeling good and able to enjoy the meal. The kids actually got into a great conversation about their elementary school, as Mackenzie and Maddy had gone to the same one as our kids. The kids really hadn’t yet connected much this trip, so we were very happy to see that. While they were laughing and telling stories on the back deck the adult folks sat inside and had our own enjoyable conversation, focusing in on germs and how germophobes probably wouldn’t enjoy this boat trip much, due to the pervasive sharing, communal everything, community masks and snorkels and, best of all, the electric flush toilets that eject the bowl contents directly into the ocean, strangely, right by the swim ladder. Fortunately, throughout this trip none of us were in the water when the “brown clouds” appeared, but I sure enjoyed the idea of inviting a germophobe boatmate to go for a little swim right before I was heading down for a deuce.