Never Running in Cambodia Ever Again. Ever

So I was gonna write about how miserable the minibus ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was - I felt like Shaq on an airplane - and then about the city of PP but instead I've got 12 minutes to write about my ridiculous run today in the little beach town of Sihanoukville.

Let me start by repeating that it's a beach town.  And it's barely stopped raining since we got here and is monsooning as I write this.  There's nothing to do here except go to the beach.  So I decided to run.  Bad idea.

I figured it was cool enough for a 45minute run.  I brought my iPod thinking there wasn't much to see anyway and it would help me run well.  The first 3 miles were great.  I ran along the pretty white sand beaches for a bit all the way up to the secluded Independence Beach that was occupied only by a few pale middle-aged men in Speedos.  Then I ran up some steps to a beautiful, ocean view hotel.  I decided that was far enough out and I would try to head back but via an inland route.  I had brought a map and 5000 riel in case I needed anything.

On the way down the hill from the hotel I noticed some people in the street taking pictures of the jungle.  I stopped, pretty confused because I didn't see anything noteworthy in the trees.  I soon realized there was a family of monkeys along the fencetop playing and eating bananas.  They were really cute.  I watched them for a while.  Then I continued on.  A half mile later, I came across a herd of cattle waltzing down the middle of the street - with no apparent supervision.  I navigated my way between the cows and the residue they left behind on the pavement, trying to decide if that would seem strange to a Cambodian or not.

Then I found near the beach I had been running on previously, so I turned left to go more inland.  After 10 steps up this road, a struffy looking black dog took interest in me, trotting up swiftly to me and barking.  As I increased my pace away from him 2 more smaller dogs filled in the formation behind the bigger one.  I picked up my pace to 3 quarters speed as the adrenaline was really pumping and I wondered if this was all really happening.  Luckily, as I clenched my fists and turned around I saw the dogs were falling behind and losing interest.  I slowed down a bit but kept checking behind me for the next 5 minutes.

From there I ran down the street that was in the middle of nowhere and the only person I saw was a man waist deep in his rice paddie.  Then the road starting going uphill.  At this point I realized I had definitely made a wrong turn but I wasn't going back towards the dogs so I ran up the hill.  It stretched out for a painful 3/4 mile.  When I finally got to the top of the hill, lungs and legs burning, I turned right onto the main street and was pissed to see that the road went straight back downhill into the city center.  About here is when my run went bad.

I was struggling to breathe at this point - my lungs and back hurt when I took deep breathes so I slowed down my pace.  In the city center I thought I had about a mile left and would just run it slowly.  I saw a sign that said Sokha Beach turn right and that was the beach right near our hostel.  So I turned right.  After going down a bunch of sidestreets, in what I thought was the direction of the beach, I was pretty lost.  Looking at the map I thought I knew where I was.  Then I saw a sign for a hospital and there was only one hospital on the map so I figured I must be near that one which was a block in the wrong direction but very close to the hostel.  Turns out the "hospital" was nothing more than a one room doctor's office and the street it is on is a dead end, but isn't a dead end on the map...interesting.  I went back to where I thought I could turn onto the main road that our hostel was on, but there's no main road.  After walking around for about half an hour (I stopped running because I was tired) I popped back out on the main road in city center a block before I had turned right off the road!

From here I walked down the main street a few blocks further, until I saw a sign for Sokha Beach again.  But this time the sign said to go straight!  A block later there was a sign for the Golden Lions which is the statue 100 meters from our hostel.  I've never been so happy to see a street sign that I recognized!  I ran the last mile or so at a good pace as my lungs were recovered at this point.  As I ran down the last hill, I had to move to the sidewalk for a parade of monks carrying flags and playing instruments as they marched up the hill.  I don't know what it was all about but it was definitely a sight to see.

I got back and Tarik asked if I had been kidnapped.  "Yup.  Thanks for your concern."

Abbot and Costello go to Cambodia

Are we going to see a temple now?
A wat.
A what?
A wat.
What what?
Angkor Wat.
Angkor what?
Yea, it's a big buddhist temple.
What is?
Exactly.
Exactly what?
No, Angkor Wat.
What's the name of the temple.
Angkor Wat's the name of the temple.
That what I asked you.  And why are you calling me Angkor.
I'm not calling you Angkor.  I'm calling Wat Angkor.
You're calling who Angkor?
No.  Wat.
What?
Exactly.

I was going to blog about going to Angkor Wat and watching the sunrise over the temple and seeing its reflection in the pool, but I forgot my notebook so here's the quick synopsis:

We woke up at 4 to be at the temples before sunrise.  Angkor Wat is the biggest (just the moat around it is 200m wide!) and best preserved of the dozens of temples in the complex.  It was built in the 1100's and is still in great shape.  We watched the sunrise over it and then went to 7 other temples that morning.

Angkor Thom: the old city housing many of the temples.  At one point 1 million people lives within the wall.  Now the walls are pretty crumpled but the gates are still in tact and have monkeys climbing around on them.

Bayon:  Really cool temple that you could climb all over.  The king who built it ordered the face of one of their gods to be etched into the four sides of all of the 54 spires in the temple, but apparently those faces look more like the king than the god.

Temple of 1000 elephants:  I don't know if there were 1000 but there were a lot carved into what was left standing of the front wall of this temple.

Ta Prohm:  Where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed!  Awesome temple that has been overtaken by the jungle.  The trees have their roots all entangled in the walls and our over 100 ft tall.  I got lost and way off the path that I was supposed to be on which made this temple way cooler than it might have been otherwise.

Other highlight:  A girl selling drinks and painting struck up conversation with me and when I told her I was from the states she began listing all of the states and their capitals!  This was impressive.  Then she started grilling me about state capitals and their largest cities!  Luckily I'm pretty good at geography.  I was so impressed I bought a cocunut from her for 2000 riel = $.50.

I also went for a run in Siem Reap but barely last 2.5 miles as it was hot at 10AM and the exhaust from motorbikes made my lungs burn.  I ran along the river running through the city, which is incredibly dirty: brown, stagnant and filled with trash.  I also (accidentally) ran through a markey along the river selling everything from clothes to fish to TVs.  The market took plpace in front of the people's homes so they had a storefront and behind that was their 1 room home.  This looked very impoverished until I realized many of the houses had TVs and computers in them.  Strange.

In Phnom Penh now.  It's big and dirty and smelly, but has some cool neighborhoods and a semi-clean river that's pretty.  Will detail more later.  Headed to the beach tomorrow for the weekend!

Run Numero Dos

Went for another run yesterday.  Got smarter this time and ran early in the morning while it was still mostly cloudy and not nearly as hot as in the afternoon, though it was still really warm.  I had planned out a good loop around the Chiang Mai University, but when I got to the road I wanted to run down, it turned out to be a large 4 lane road with no sidewalk so I had to improvise aka run down a bunch of dead ends on my way to the university.  The area near the university is much different than the old city.  The buildings are newer and taller (3-4 stories instead of 1-2) and nicer and there are more flashy lights and signs.  The hostel we stayed in was in a gated community (strange?) filled with lots of nice houses with yards and garages: things I haven't really seen since getting to Thailand.

Running down the main streets to the university was difficult as te sidewalks are narrow and the awnings are low.  Everywhere we go I have to duck a lot - guess westerners are taller than asians.  While running down one of the alleys, I realized that often in Thailand the shift from nice neighborhoods to not nice ones is abrupt.  There was a large new apartment building on one side of the street and a rundown shack surrounded by a rusty fence and an unused field on the other side.

After longer than I had hoped and more dead ends than expected I finally found the main gate to the university.  The gate had multiple security guard booths but no security guards.  Interesting.  Anyway, as I ran into the campus I saw a few soccer fields with a mixture of weeds and dirt where the grass should be and a large hedge trimmed in the shape of an elephant.  Jumbos are everywhere here!  I love it.  The only thing more prevalent than elephants are pictures of the king.  He's on overpasses, in rotary circles, on billboards, wall murals, everywhere.

Past the elephant hedge was a temple, which I hadn't planned on approaching for fear that I would offend somebody by my sweat and clothing but then I realized there was a bank tent for people to take out money to donate to the temple.  So I did a lap around the temple and then found the center of campus.  It appears that the campus is it's own little community complete with banks, shops, food vendors and parking lots.  There was less English on the signs than in the rest of the city which I thought was interesting.  The students were wearing uniforms: males in shirts and loosely tied ties; females in collared shirts and skirts.  The campus buildings were mostly nice 2 story buildings and I only noticed one dorm-looking building so I'm assuming most students commute (although that building did have a sign with a 6 on it so maybe there were more...).  Then I returned to the hostel via mainroads because I didn't feel like getting lost, though inhaling the exhaust the whole way was unpleasant.  With my watch dead (the light button got stuck and drained the battery) I have no idea how long I ran for, but I'd guess about 4.5 miles.

I'm about to run out of computer time but a final highlight from Chiang Mai was piling 6 people plus the driver in 1 tuk-tuk on the way back from the bar last night.  That was impressive.  In Bangkok now, had an amazing dinner that will have to wait for the next post.  Headed to Ko Tao island for scuba diving tomorrow night via overnight bus and catamaran.  So long farmer's tan!

First Run!

I finally was able to get out running yesterday.  It was scorching hot.  Running in the afternoon is a terrible idea.  Way too hot.

We are in Chiang Mai now, in northern Thailand.  It is much more manageable than Bangkok.  We took a flight up here yesterday afternoon got in around 2.  Flying in I could see green mountains in the distance and it was sunny, not smoggy and hazy like Bangkok was.  Driving to the hostel was an easy trip only about a 10 minute ride.  We're staying in the southeast corner of old city which is surrounded by a "wall" (it used to be a wall but now it's mostly torn down, but there is a canal around this part of town).

I decided to go running around 5 which was too early as the day was still very hot and the sun was still strong.  But I figured a short run would do.  I set out (carrying a city map and 100 baht just in case) along the southern wall.  I ran along the outside of the canal, on a skinny sidewalk where I was constant ducking and juking trees.  The canal water is green in color and there are hundreds of small fish constantly jumping around.  The sun was strong and reflecting off of the water which made it difficult to see.

I thought I would get a lot of funny looks as a foreigner running in the heat, but only one child in the back of a tuk-tuk seemed to pay any attention to me.  I even saw an Aussie man running, which made me feel less out of place.  I followed the canal to the southwestern corner where there was a park that I ran around the perimeter walkway twice.  The park was very green and full of families picnicking by the pond, girls doing crunches on the benchs, schoolboys playing some game, men playing hacky sack but with a collapsible bamboo ball and a handful of runners.  I'm pretty sure running counterclockwise was the wrong way to go because I didn't see anyone else running or walking that way.  Oops!

The park in general was very peaceful and a bit secluded from the busy road I had run down.  I ran back along the other side of the canal, and was constantly fighting the heat, heavy air and exhaust fumes.  I finally was able to make some sense of the traffic pattern as I weaved in and out of cars and motorbikes while crossing the street a few times.  I think all together I ran about 3 miles, judging by time.  All in all it was a good first run, though my knee hurts today and it took me an hour to stop sweating.  Hopefully for my next runs I'll be able to find more interesting places to write about.

Last night we went to a night bazaar.  It was very much like JJ market but not as big and more open aired: it was all just under one huge tent.  The vendors had anything from handmade wooden items, to clothing, to jewelry.  There was a lot going on but it wasn't nearly as overwhelming as the market in Bangkok.  It looked pretty as the lights were large strings of bulbs almost like Christmas lights.

On the walk back we saw an alley of bars that looked interesting and decided to walk down.  I'm not really sure what that place was but it was crazy.  Each bar was about 15 ft wide and completely indistinguishable from the next.  There was nobody in any of them except for the girls (hookers????) cat calling at us as we walked by.  The whole place was dimly lit and there were some old guys surrounded by girls in the corner of the last bar.  At the end of the alley was a Thai boxing ring.  It was a very strange and uncomfortable place.  We walked back down a different street.

That's all for now.  Going to attempt to stay up to watch the soccer game tonight, though it doesn't start until 1:30 AM here so we'll see what happens.  Going on an overnight trek tomorrow.