Escape from Bangkok

Ok, so i've technically been home for a while now. But what can I say, these things take time. And i've been busy readjusting and working and getting ready for the holidays. But here it is!

As some of you may or may not know, about a month ago I went with my mother on a vacation to Thailand- land of smiles (I believe that's the slogan, I didn't make it up or anything). We spent two weeks being driven around the beautiful country, eating delicious food and praying at buddist temples (ok maybe we didn't actually pray, but we saw A LOT of temples). Our guides for most of the trip were my mom's friend Abe and his wife, Anong. Anong is thai, and therefore speaks the language and was able to help us out with everything from ordering at restaurants to bargaining at the markets. We enjoyed a wonderful two weeks....

However, upon our arrival in Bangkok, we were greeted with the beginning of the protests by the PAD (a people's democracy party) against the government- specifically the prime minister. See, a few years ago, Thailand was under the thumb of a wee dictator, Thaksin. He was exiled a few years ago, and the country is now run by his brother in law, who apparently, is not very popular. The PAD feel that the country was continuing to be run by Thaksin through this puppet leader, and staged a sit-in to protest and try and force the Prime Minister to resign. Unfortunately for any travelers in Thailand, they decided to 'sit-in' at the airport.... we flew into Bangkok threw the domestic airport, since we were already in the country. At this point the international airport had already been closed for a day. The day after we got there, the domestic airport closed down as well.

At first we decided to ignore it. Everyone kept telling us things would die down and the airports would reopen in no time, allowing us to leave on time- on Friday November 28th (the day after thanksgiving). We toured around the city, and outside the city, and had an overall great time (pictures to come....) However each day we heard the same thing "still closed...i'm sure it'll be cleared up by tomorrow". Yeah, we were only supposed to be in Bangkok for 3 days. On thanksgiving night I said a prayer that there would be a coup (which we were told there would be, a 'nonviolent' one though, don't worry) and for us to be able to pack up on time. We hoped and prayed and planned for things to go smoothly. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards. We woke up friday morning to a continued standoff and both airports still closed.

After being informed of this, still in my luxurious bed at our gorgeous hotel, i promptly threw a fit. An all out toddler sized tantrum, with flailing limbs and whining- to my gracious mother, who wanted nothing more than to be able to leave just like I did. We had been scheduled to fly that night on an 11:30pm flight to Tokyo, and catch our connection back to New York Saturday morning. I looked at my mother at some point that morning (over our stupidly large breakfast?) an said "we need to get to Tokyo", like, now. And that was it. My mom, my wonderful mother, got on the horn to her travel agent- Peggy. A goddess of a travel agent, really. They debated our options. There are 2 other airports in Thailand that fly internationally, one in the North/West and one in the South, 7 and 11 hours away, respectively. Neither of them had flights to Tokyo. Neither of them had available flights anywhere, as apparently we were way behind on the 'fleeing Bangkok' idea. Peggy could, however, get us a flight out of Cambodia that evening- in the right direction. Cambodia? How far away was that? Are we even allowed into Cambodia? this is kind of what it was like friday morning. My mom told me to start packing, just in case we found a solution. She then went off to talk to our tour guide, Tom (Abe and Anong didn't accompany us to Bangkok) in the lobby of the hotel. It turns out, the border of Cambodia is three hours from Bangkok, and you need a visa to get in. Luckily, visas were supposedly easy to get. Our guide and driver agreed to drive us to the border and help us get across and to the airport (another 3 hour drive). We packed up our things and hightailed it out of there. We were off on an adventure!

Of course, my mother thought we were going to die in a ditch somewhere in Cambodia, but I had faith in our plan.

So, we left our hotel at 11:15am. Our flight out of Cambodia (Siem Reap) was at 9:15pm. we had exactly 10 hours to get there. We got to the border in 3 hours, as promised. We then looked for a place to buy a visa. It turns out, right near the border there's a big market- and inside is a travel agency which happens to sell visas and helps people cross into Cambodia. How convenient. We bought some visas, which I thought might be like pieces of paper we were supposed to hand to someone cause it looked sketchy like that- but no they were real visas that got placed into our passports and everything. At this point we had to leave Tom our tour guide, as he wasn't allowed to cross the border with us. Relations between Thailand and Cambodia aren't hostile, per se, but they're not exactly buddy-buddy. So Tom helped us hire one of the agents to walk with us across the border and get us to a van on the other side, which we paid to take us to the airport. Of course we only paid half before hand, to help ensure they wouldn't dick us over and kill us in Cambodia (for mom's sanity). The guy, who never actually told us his name, was nice. He walked with us to the border, as our luggage was loaded into an ox cart and hauled across by another nameless guy (i'm not kidding- see photo for proof!)So, we stood on line in the immigration building to leave Thailand. They stamped our passport, as we officially exited the country, to meet our agent on the other side (he had some kind of pass so he could pass over the border multiple times a day without trouble). Then we entered 'No Man's Land". Most borders have this- the small plot of land technically in between two countries. Yeah, this one was depressing. I put my camera away because honestly, I was trying to fit in and avoid being mugged or anything else that may happen in a No Man's Land. The only building there was a large casino- and it looked like if you went in you'd have to fight (or win) your way back out. Uh Uh. Not me. I stood outside.

Now, the line to get into Cambodia, for those of you who may one day go on this route, is three hours long. There's only one guy working in the immigration kiosk. We did not have time for that, as it was already after 3, and mom was starting to stress again about getting to the airport on time (flight in T-minus 6 hours). The travel agent suggested we bribe a Cambodian policeman to stamp our passports in five minutes and enable us to bypass the immigration line. We, of course, readily agreed. Mom handed over 1000 Baht (about $30) and the agent took our passports into this hut and handed them to the police officer. I saw him from outside. The unsettling part was when he came back out without our passports. "umm where's my passport" I asked him. "oh the policeman has it" he responded. "yeah, so where's the policeman? I'd like my passport back". "he's going to meet us on the other side of this courtyard in five minutes". SAY WHAT. Now we're two American's hanging out in no man's land outside a casino in between two not so very friendly countries. Days after the Mumbai attacks (for those of you who missed that- British and American tourists were targeted. As were some jews. We're 2 for 2 on that one). I was not about to be relaxed about missing my passport. So i walked, alongside the luggage oxcart, basically shitting myself having images of working my life away in the sad casino, until the guy came running back over with our passports in hand. Never in my life was I so grateful to have a passport.

After that we just kind of strolled over the border. One guy almost asked to see my passport, but when he saw I was walking w/ the travel agent, didn't even bother asking. It was weird. I felt a little guilty walking past the long line of people waiting to get their passports stamped, but honestly- not that guilty. they could bribe a policeman too if they had thought of it.

So the agent tells us to get on a bus. At which point mom freaks out again cause we've hired a private van. But he assures us we have to take the bus to the van. And we'll only be on it for 10 minutes. Ok. Fine. I can handle that. It's an old rickety bus, holding at least 30 people and all their luggage INSIDE the bus, not on the bottom or on the roof. So it was crowded. And they wouldn't let us open the windows. So, minimal torture basically. And we had to wait for them to fill the bus up, so this bus driver could make some money on the trip. Apparenty most of the people were taking this bus (with no air or bathroom) to the airport we were going to, but it would take them almost twice as long (supposedly). We didn't ask a lot of questions, except for where the hell our van was.
But the ride was only 10 or 15 minutes, as promised. Down a bumpy dirt road to an abandoned building- which was the 'bus station'. We got off, made sure all the correct luggage was with us, and waited for our van. It was here we met a Canadian born doctor who was living in Phom Phen working at a clinic with 10,000 orphans. He was nice, and talked to us about Cambodian culture.

Then our van arrived, with the nicest couple ever. The driver spoke almost perfect english, much better than we heard in Thailand, and though his wife didn't speak any english, she brought a cooler with water for us. Neither of us really ate or drank all day though, cause we knew there was gonna be no stopping for the bathroom (and cause mom was too stressed to eat). So it's now 4pm. The driver says its a 3 hour ride to the airport, Siem Reap. Mom of course is cautious, but I have a feeling we're not going to die in a ditches today. And three hours is plenty of time to make our flight. So we settled into the van, and off we went. Straight shot down "National Highway #5"- aka- the biggest and bumpiest dirt road you've ever seen.

In Cambodia, everyone drives in the middle of the road. When someone is coming the other way, you honk and get to your own side, then return to the middle. When you want to pass someone, you honk a lot, pass them, then return to the middle. It's kind of crazy, but it works.

I had my face pressed up against the glass for most of the trip, because I was so fascinated by what I saw all around me. Cambodia is very different from Thailand. As the Canadian doctor told us, "it was bombed back to the stone age- how do you expect it to look?". It's still very third world-ish. Dirt road, wherever there was an attempt to modernize there were detour signs cause the road wasn't finished. So ever five minutes we were dipping into the shoulder. People on all sides were fishing, with nets or rods or whatever they had. 85% of the people I saw were not wearing shoes. The cows seemed more domesticated, tied up in the front yards of the houses on the roads. and the houses were definitely run down and made of more primitive materials. There were large cement buildings, but they were mostly deserted. People lived along the road in huts, which didn't appear to have much electricity. As the sun went down, I noticed that there seemed to be one light to a house, and it was in a family area where the families were sitting to have dinner. No tvs, no lights on upstairs. This was also very different from Thailand, where no matter what kind of shack you lived in you had a sattelite dish parked outside. This was definitely something else.

At one point during this ride, when mom seemed to realize things were going ok- she looked at me and said "we should be in a movie". And i thought- 'you mean this isn't one? i thought we were getting punk'd'. But I was glad she was calming down. When Moo is stressed, everyone is stressed.

We pulled up to the airport around 7, and our sweet van driver stayed outside to make sure our flight was ok and we had checked in. I'm telling you- nicest guy ever. We got stuck in the check-in line behind a large group of italian tourists, but at that point it was like "well, we're in Cambodia, and we made our flight- so we can't ask for much else". When we got into the gate area- for your information there were only 2 gates in the whole place- mom went straight to the little massage parlor they had- and got a 30 minute foot massage. Which by this point, was just enough time before boarding the plane. I decided to peruse the magazine racks and buy a croissant from the cafe (after not eating since breakfast i wasn't being too picky).

We eventually got on the plane, which left reasonably on time, and landed in Hanoi, Vietnam around 10:40pm. That's right- we hightailed it to Hanoi! We had a 2 hour layover before our flight to Tokyo, which we spent on the internet in the buisness class lounge (once we could find it- Hanoi is not the most organized of places in the middle of the night) and then got on our flight to Tokyo. At this point I was so exhausted from driving all day that I slept for most of the 4 1/2 hour flight. Japan is also two hours ahead of Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam. So we arrived in Tokyo just before 7:30am saturday morning. I was still exhausted, but we had made it to Tokyo in time for our original flight home. Mom and I were the first people in the lounge, where I promptly passed out in my comfy pj-like clothes. Eye mask included. When I woke up a few hours later, I was surrounded by business men in suits and ladies dressed to impress. Oops. No one told me i'd have to look pretty after 24 hours of travel with one flight left to go. I went and bought lip gloss in the duty free shop.

And then we boarded our plane, JAL flight 6 to JFK New York. When the plane took off, I looked at my mother in some shock and awe and said "I can't believe we really made this plane. You got us to Tokyo". She just smiled. Cause that's what Evelyn does.

Eleven hours later we touched down at JFK. We basically sped through immigration, and when the guy said "welcome back" i said "you don't know the half of it". After 36 hours of traveling, we made it home, on time, with all our luggage. It was a thanksgiving miracle. Well, in any event I certainly did have something to be thankful for. And let's just say it'll be a while before I go on another long trip like that again....But you know, what's a trip to Asia without some political turmoil and border corruption?






*postscript- the airports in Bangkok were closed for a whole week, reopening the tuesday or wednesday after we got back to New York. However, due to the damage done while the demonstrators were there, it took longer for flights to begin leaving on schedule. We don't even know how long we would have been stuck there had we not left on our journey when we did.

**pps- even though my mom thought we were going to die in a ditch in Cambodia for most of the day, her orchestrating our escape and getting us to Tokyo in time for our original connecting flight- is one of the reasons she rocks. That's just how we roll in our family....