DAYS 137-140
Between two of our Vietnamese stops we visited three other places.
DAY 137 Wednesday, May 31.
Ko Samui, Thailand
Curious about the town and not interested in another beach day we turned out in the morning, while it was less hot, and went walkabout. The town is certainly used to hosting tourists, as it provided its own large and comfortable boats to tender us from our anchorage.
It’s a quintessential beach town: easy to walk around, lots of bars and tourist shops. That morning it was very quiet. I expect that the nighttime scene is much different, but our ship was scheduled to weigh anchor at 7:00 pm.
We happened across a barber and a shirtmaker. I got a nice haircut for 200 Baht (about $5), and Mary bought me three beautifully crafted hand-made “batik” shirts.
DAYS 138-139 Thursday and Friday, June 1 and 2.
Bangkok, Thailand
We spent two days in Bangkok. I had wanted to make a reservation for a meal at the now famous Michelin starred restaurant (cafe? sidewalk eatery?) of the lady who makes those fiery crab omelettes. I got talked out of that: It would eat up practically a whole day, as even with a reservation you would have to stand on line for an hour; and I was told it was overrated. So we opted for an evening “chef’s food tour,” but I think this was what was overrated. The chef whoever he was, “phoned in” an itinerary for naive tourists, relying on the reputation of Thai food.
A young, eager and very helpful woman—one of a number of guides employed by the firm—led the eight of us through the streets and a couple of back alleys to a number of sidewalk food vendors. There is a huge variety of food offered on the streets of Bangkok. At one sidewalk stand I sampled a mealworm. At a new, trendy ice cream shop we sampled soy-sauce ice cream.
There were three eateries we visited which were awarded Michelin stars, and the first was very good. Another, a back-alley shop specialized in shrimp-filled dumplings was mediocre. The third made what were essentially beignets that were flavored with a pandan-flavored sauce—OK, but Michelin star quality? Not in my reckoning. For the last stop we were ushered into an upper floor in a rickety building for some second-rate seafood.
Getting back to the ship was an adventure. We had copied the directions onto our phones to show a cab driver, but he found them unclear and confusing, as they led him to essentially a dead end in a back alley. We managed to get him to drop us off within sight of the port’s gate and got the guard there to call a truck that could take a bunch of us tourists to the ship for an additional 13 Baht.
On the second day we revisited Wat Po, the site of their reclining Buddha. We had visited Wat Po on my first trip to Bangkok, and I painted a picture of a couple of the small statues that surround the temple and have become fascinated with them. We returned to take more photos of these unique characters.
To get there we took the ship’s shuttle bus to the city’s grandest shopping mall. There was a gay pride celebration going on, and traffic was even more crazy than usual, but the decorations were wonderful. From there we took a cab to Wat Po. On the way back we hired a tuk-tuk to take us back to the mall—which was itself fun—but by then the traffic was so bad it had to stop; we had to walk another ten minutes to get there.
Day 140 Saturday, June 3.
Sihanoukville, Cambodia
Our mission in Cambodia was simple: buy some Kampot pepper, which comes from farms not far from Sihanoukville. The ship’s tour of the city included a visit to the central market where we found not only the black kind, which we use at home, but the red, which is even stronger in flavor.
The tour of two Buddhist temples were interesting, one in particular. This was a monastery, built on a hill, and it had the usual familiar symbols in its decorations and sculptures: the old man with the stick carrying a tea pot, the boy with the flute and an ox, and so on. But it also had some strong echoes of Angkor that I suppose shouldn’t have surprised me. For example: echoes of the four-faced towers of Bayan and a statue of the ancient emperor Jayavarman VII in his characteristic “Javanese” pose.
The tour promised a visit to a seaside resort, so we packed our bathing suits ready for a beach. We were mistaken. We were dropped off in a crowded, shabby collection of pavilions and were offered a selection of drinks, a Coke, an orange Fanta, or a coconut. Local women were walking around offering foot massages. We enjoyed our coconuts and wandered around a nearby store that offered nice food and a variety of other goods at astonishingly high prices, then returned to the tour bus.
Driving through Sihanoukville, we saw a city that was struggling in the wake of COVID-19. There were a lot of half-finished new buildings, one with small trees growing on the girders. There were some new buildings surrounded by squalor. Most of the existing buildings were in tough shape, and some of the open ground had squatters’ camps. While there was a busy central market, where we bought our pepper, a lot of retail was conducted on the streets, from carts and trailers.
I think Cambodia is still struggling in the aftermath of Pol Pot as well, though I sense an optimism there (I hope it’s not just something I’m projecting.) and my wish for the country is for it to emerge healthy and vibrant, like this lotus, from the mud in the bottom of a forgotten corner of construction debris.
