Author: Mike

When I was growing up, my family would go to our cottage all year around.  In the winter I loved the vast open space afforded by the frozen lake and remember one occasion when I wanted to see what would happen if I walked as long as I could, with my eyes closed.  I probably only made it a few minutes before getting bored, but I remember the sensation as I walked, that of travelling without overthinking. I didn’t need to follow a set path as one would along a road, I just moved, slowly, consistently, forward.  When I finally opened my eyes I turned around and was surprised to see that I had completely changed directions. It wasn’t a wandering line, but a single smooth arc, as though a slow consistent force had biased my travel and set me in a new direction.  While walking, the change was imperceptible, I truly believed I was moving in a straight line. It was only when I turned back to look that the change became clear.

It’s a goofy story about a silly experiment I did when I was a kid, but it stuck with me and I remember it today.  Change is not obvious in the moment, we need to look back where we came from to see and understand what happened. We then have a decision to make – keep going, or set a new course.  This is very much where we, as a family, are finding ourselves this week. The end of of journey is approaching and with the time to sit in one place while we await the possibility of returning home, we are all looking back at the path we took this year and are starting to see the change that occured – slowly, but consistently we have changed direction, changed our perspective and learned so much along the way.

I got on a roll for a little while with this blog, but then everything came to a halt.  I just didn’t make the time to sit and consolidate my thoughts because external changes were happening faster every day.  Over the past two months we, like everyone else, have become infatuated by reading the daily news – what’s going on? Will this impact us? Do we need to make changes? What changes do we need to make?  Where are we going? … Where are we going? There were so many fun stories I wanted to share but didn’t get to them before this transition to reflective end-of-journey posts. I still hope to take the time to consolidate the stories, but in some ways I hope to share them in person because that will mean we are home again and closer to something that feels normal.  Although, I’m not sure what normal looks like right now because change has happened – slow, but always there so our new normal will look different. We’re looking forward to coming home, seeing everyone again and learning about the changes you have seen over the past several months.

When we return to Canada, we will be spending a couple of weeks on our own, but then everyone else is sort of doing the same thing so maybe we all will have some time to look back and see what changes have happened while our eyes were closed.  Do we like the direction we’re headed right now? That would be wonderful. If we’re not sure it’s the right direction, maybe it’s time to open our eyes again and set a new course.

Dear Bangkok,

By the time you read this I will be gone.  I hope you can understand, it was never going to last.  We’re just too different. You with your traffic, pollution, happy ending massages and ping pong shows, me with my Canadian sense of open spaces, fresh air and… well I’m not sure what the opposite is for those last two, but trust me we’re not compatible there either.  So you see I must leave you now. It’s just not fair of me to hold on to you when you have so much to give to so many people (like your 8 million inhabitants and 16 million annual visitors).

To be certain, I enjoyed my time with you.  I will always remember the stunning colours and smells of your flower markets.  Walking along the stalls with their lush orange, yellow, purple, green and white flowers piled high.  I loved watching as diligent shopkeepers strung the flowers into the many wreaths and garlands that decorate your boats, tuk-tuks, buses and shrines.  Never have I seen a city that embraces the beauty of flowers as you do. But for all the beauty of the flowers, they cannot mask your pollution. At the end of each day I was with you, my eyes would sting just a little and I when I shower, the water running down the drain was stained by you.  Your air is so thick that quantitative measurements indicate it is a health hazard to all people – not just those of “sensitive groups”. The extent to which you embrace disposable goods far outpaces your neighbours in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. Is it really necessary to tie a plastic bag onto a plastic cup just so people’s hands don’t get cold?

I loved your public transportation – the metro, the sky train and the many boats along the Chao Phraya River.  I loved participating in the daily dance of boats, cars and trains that move so many goods and people. I loved the way you have made so many of your services so easy for tourists to use but also reward those willing to put forward more effort with a plethora of free shuttles to hopscotch their way around.  But for all I loved about your transportation systems, I cannot get used to the gridlock that caused me to spend 90 minutes to travel 6 km in a taxi while trying to get to the Vietnamese embassy in time to retrieve our passports before it closed for the weeklong holiday and I know this is a run-on sentence but that’s how life feels when I’m stuck in your traffic and sometimes I just have to deal with your traffic because your metro and sky train are different services so I have to buy two tickets just to get kind-of close to where I want to go! (pause, catch breath, compose myself)

I loved your food.  Everyone raves about your food.  It was everywhere I looked and the dishes I sampled were among the best examples of your cuisine I could have imagined.  Papaya salads, green curry chicken, mango sticky rice all of it served with enough spice to melt a Canadian winter. But your food taunted me since my children were too often tired and grumpy from wandering your streets and overwhelmed from your lights and sounds and smells.  Their weariness was such that I repeatedly had to pass on your wonderful aromas in an effort to get everyone home as the meltdowns occurred, hoping – desperately to get back before anyone went nuclear! You see yet again, it’s not you… it’s me.

I love your Buddhas adorned with gold and the way they are cherished by your society. I love the temples built as safe havens for these Buddhas, so colourfully decorated and so welcoming to people of all faiths to observe and learn from (so long as they leave their shoes outside – but you often have special places for those as well).  Um, okay this one breaks with the pattern of this letter because there’s no downside to this stuff, it’s amazing!

Alas Bangkok, may you continue to be the love of many.  I will remember you fondly but I just can’t love you the way you deserve and so I bid you farewell.

On arrival in Siem Reap, we settled into our 21st accommodation of the trip.  That’s a lot of different places to call our home-away-from-home! Along the way we’ve learned a few tricks that work well for us.  The most important strategy is reducing the number of decisions we have to make every day – not trivial when you consider the constant change we’ve invited into our lives.  Simple pleasures like deciding where and what to eat for every meal can become a tiresome exercise. When we can, we prefer to stay in small apartments with kitchens of our own, but the options are often limited or logistically it just doesn’t work out.

In Siem Reap, we were in a regular hotel (no kitchen) so we tried out a new strategy for meals that led to surprising benefits.  On our first night, we went to a restaurant next door to our hotel. It was highly rated on all the travel review sites so seemed like a good place to start.  The place had a huge menu with all dishes priced from $2.50 – $3.00 USD and cold draught beer was $0.50 (even Darla started to drink beer, it was cheaper than water!).  Our food that first night was delicious so we quickly decided this would be our adopted home kitchen for the remainder of the trip. With the exception of our one night at the bug cafe, we ate at this restaurant every night and even a few lunches.  This decision right at the beginning meant that for the rest of our time, we didn’t have to think about what we were doing for dinner – no more searching review sites, no more wandering around hungry in the evening, no long walks back to the hotel, just wait until we’re hungry & go.  We even had the chance to each find favorite menu items (I’m pretty sure Lauren ate the same meal every night). It was a super simple solution: next door, cheap and yummy.

The wonderful surprise that came from this early decision was that the owner and staff at the restaurant got to know us.  We had a regular table, regular drink orders, basically a routine. One night we forgot one of the kids colouring books and the next night they brought it out to us having  tucked it somewhere safe until we returned. So while we didn’t try all of the different restaurants Siem Reap has to offer, we did get to experience Cambodian hospitality in a way that made us feel a little more normal, all by making one little decision to simplify our life.

Meet Mr. Smak

In a similar path of reducing the decisions we need to make, we went along for the ride (literally) rather than over thinking things.  Our hotel had arranged for us to be picked up at the airport on our arrival. Our driver that first morning was Mr. Smak. We still don’t know very much about him other than that he drives a tuk tuk safely and reliably from A to B.  On our trip from the airport to the hotel, he took us to a shop to get a Cambodian SIM card and immediately helped us ensure the card worked by testing it to call his phone. From that point on, we had a direct line to a tuk-tuk driver anytime we needed one so there really was no point trying to find a new one each and every time.  No more haggling for prices, no more questioning if they understood where to go – just simple, straightforward, use the guy you already know, afterall he was hired by the hotel…for whatever that’s worth. Being a diligent self employed fellow, he dutifully called us every morning or evening to see if we needed a ride and to arrange pick up times.  The prices he gave us were consistent and reasonable – if anything a bit lower than expected from what we read. With the advent of e-hailing apps, private drivers can’t afford to quote outrageous prices expecting tourists to haggle down to a final price because they’ll just walk away and call a ride using an app that sets a fixed price. By giving us fair prices from the beginning, he figured out a way to secure customers for a whole week – this man has it figured out.

Actually, it turned out he had the customer in mind even more than we realized.  After our second ride booked directly with him, he asked if it was okay that he dropped us off a little further down the street from our hotel – no problem we said.  The next day, he agreed to pick us up in the same spot – better parking there, he said. When he wasn’t able to pick us up one day due to a family matter, he had the hotel arrange an alternate driver for us and this is when the pieces started to make sense.  The hotel arranged the driver and pricing for us, low and behold, the price had increased from what we paid Mr. Smack the day before. We negotiated and settled on a final price, but still higher than we thought in should be. The following day, Mr. Smack was back and agreed to meet us around the corner – not in front of the hotel, and we got our preferred pricing again!  With the parts all laid out, we’re almost positive that the hotel was taking a commission for arranging tuk-tuks. So long as he did pick ups and drop offs out of sight, he wouldn’t owe them anything. Effectively, he cut out the middle man without telling us and passed a 20% savings on to us. Having figured out what he did without telling us, I like this man even more.

When he dropped us off at the airport on our last day, he gave us his business card with contact info, so if you or anyone you know is headed to Siem Reap, I know a guy who can help you out.

Yes, Tuk-Tuk today!