I've been pretty subdued since I got to Bangkok, skipping the nightlife in favor of early morning Mysore. In my last yoga class here, there was an English dude who at the end of his practice jumped into a handstand and then did a backbend and stood back up again. Amazing to watch. I've spent an embarrassing amount of time patrolling Bangkok's glitzy malls, which are sprouting up everywhere in Siam Square and are increasingly posh and modern. I hate spending time in malls in the States, but I have found them strangely comforting while traveling. It's like Romero''s Dawn of the Dead, where the faceless zombie hordes stumble inexorably towards the mall with Goblin's thump-thump synthesizer riffs pounding on the soundtrack. "This was an important place in their lives," intones one of the main characters, and indeed there is something reassuring and safe about malls. And judging by what I've seen in India, Shanghai and Bangkok, the whole world is slowly transforming into a shopping mall. The movie theaters in Bangkok are very modern and extremely cheap, with tickets usually around 140 Baht. I decided to check out The Spiderwick Chronicles on the "ultra" screen, which I assumed meant IMAX. Instead, I found myself ushered to a luxorious chair by an ultra-attentive Thai hottie in high heels and a mini-skirt. I adjusted to the unexpected change of events with alarming rapidity. I have been extremely impressed by Thai women, who have great legs and do not hesitate to show them off with the aforementioned high heels/mini-skirt combo.
Anyway, I decided I needed to get out for my last night and took public trans to get to Lumpini stadium to watch Muay Thai boxing. I took the Skytrain and then had to switch to the underground rail, which went smoothly. Then I headed over to the nightmarket which is just around the corner from the stadium. It was too early and barely anything was happening, so I wandered around looking for the stadium. I thought it would be a no-brainer to find a stadium, but it wasn't on the subway map and I started to get concerned that the plans to move the stadium mentioned in Lonely Planet had come to fruition. So I kept walking and circling and eventually made my way back to a busy street, where I was immediately accosted by a woman asking me if I wanted to check out boxing. She led me to the stadium, which was considerably smaller than I'd anticipated, hence its elusiveness, and she successfully convinced me to shell out 2000 Baht (a lot over $100) for ringside seats. I lined up early as possible and found myself in the front row next to a drunken American baseball player who went to Harvard and was on a marathon trip to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong.
Muay Thai boxing is incredibly brutal stuff. The fighters are allowed to kick in addition to punching and do so with such lightning fast speed that I repeated failed to capture it on film. They also have this nasty habit of kneeing each other repeatedly in the guts, smacking the other dude in the head with a well-placed elbow, kicks to the neck, you name it. There was blood and battered bodies and the dull thumping sounds of feet crashing into bone and muscle. And plenty of excitement. It was the first sporting event I'd been to in about 8 or 9 years and it didn't disappoint. After that I went out with the American dude and got completely hammered, only to have to wake up at 6 a.m. to pack and get ready for my flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Thetemple complex Angkor Wat lies just outside Siem Reap. I generally don't give a shit about temples, but Angkor is completely the exception. It's ancient and crumbling and majestic. It transports you to another time. It's also huge, I took a look around in the late afternoon and watched the sun set over the temples, which was amazing even though some clouds spoiled the effect. I will spend the next 4 days investigating the temples in depth and then will jump on a bus to Phnom Penh on the 31st to check out S-21 and The Killing Fields. Then it's back to Bangkok for a couple of days and next is Vietnam. My plan for Vietnam is to fly to Ho Chi Minh City on April 5, then meet up with a tour on the 6th that will take us north up the coast to Hanoi, with stops in Da Nang, Hue and Hoi Ann. From Hanoi, we will go to Halong Bay, which is supposed to be beautiful. Then I will catch a flight back to Ho Chi Minh. From there, I also want to join a tour on the Mekong Delta. Then I fly to Singapore on April 27 and stay there for a few days before heading to Jakarta on the 30th. I've heard mixed to bad things about Jakarta, so I don't intend to spend much time there at all, and I have a flight to Sydney booked on May 2, I'll stay there for about 10 days before returning to Jakarta. From Jakarta, I want to fly to Jogayakarta to check out Prambanan and then it's on to Bali!
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