$30 Flight from Japan to Oregon

Our flight home, from Japan to Oregon, cost us $30. Nope, there are no zeroes missing from that number.

How were we able to do that? Answer: our AAdvantage mileage program.

When our trip was in the barest beginnings of planning, I stumbled upon this website, called Help Me  Travel Cheap.com. The author, Craig Ford, flies hundreds of miles each year with his family while paying only taxes as costs. Pennies, compared to the cost of full flights.

I read through his basic tutorial, subscribed to the email list, and downloaded the free ebook, "How to Travel Anywhere in the World for Next to Nothing." The basic premise is this: choose a mileage program, choose a credit card that awards miles for signup + $x spending in the first x months, sign up, spend the money and pay off the credit card in full each month, and watch the miles roll in.

We chose AAdvantage, the American Airlines program. Its airline partners include Japan Airlines, British Airways (who we flew with on the way to Europe), Hawaiian Air, Alaskan Air, and more. AAdvantage has a clear and easy rewards chart outlining peak and off-peak travel times, there are many flights available and the selection is easy, and best of all, you can do one-way flights. We planned on flying in to Italy, but we didn't know where we would fly home from, so one-way flights were crucial.

We both signed up for two Citi cards. Each card gave 45,000 miles for signup plus spending $750 in the first five months. At first, we thought it might be difficult to spend the required amount to get the miles. But, life happened: Devlin had car repairs for his van, we paid with the cards for all our grocery bills, electric and garbage bills. And so, we got the miles by paying for otherwise normal expenditures.

Our one-way flight from Eugene, Oregon to Munich, Germany cost us $330 each. It was more expensive because we flew with AAdvantage's partner airline British Airways, which routes all of its flights through London. Their taxes were a bit higher. However, our return flight from Fukuoka, Japan to Redmond, Oregon, cost only $30 each in taxes! A major pay-off in our trip savings.

We can't recommend this method of travel highly enough. Tickets to Europe or Japan, full-price, are usually at least $1,000 per person. If you plan your approach to using this system and pay off the credit cards in full each month to avoid paying interest, this system works brilliantly for cutting the cost of travel.

So go forth and make those dream travel plans a reality!

AAdvantage's airline partners

aaand... We're Back!

You may have heard the rumors, and now I'll confirm them - we are back in the States! We flew in very late on March 22 into Redmond, and we spent a nice couple of days with my mom in Bend. Then, we dug through our storage boxes (hurray for clothing options!) and put together Devlin's big gray diesel van as our new camper van.

We're in Eugene now, but we float with the wind. Drop us a line if you'd like to see us!

Hoi An, Vietnam

After our experiences on the singing night bus, we decided to take the train up to Hoi An, Vietnam. It was another overnight trip - we caught the train at 8:30pm and settled into the bunks in our small cabin. A much more pleasant journey than the bus! It was still pretty basic - thin mattresses, a window that didn't quite close (until Devlin messed with it), and a pretty sketchy toilet down the hall... but it was still a step up from the bus. No cockroaches and less noise, just the click-clack rattle of the train passing over the tracks.

Hoi An does not have a train station. To get there, we arrived at the train station in Danang and barged past the taxi drivers, who wanted $25+ for a ride. We found a mini bus driver, Mr. Dong, who would take $15; we learned from him that the taxis were forced to charge a higher rate because of their company rules. Mr. Dong dropped us off in Hoi An, and after an hour of walking around and asking for room prices, we found a $20 room at the Hop Yen Hotel on Ba Trieu road.

We spent a lovely week in the town. Hoi An stretches along the Thu Bon river, and it is also only a 3 km bike ride to the beach. It's a UNESCO town, with many historically-preserved buildings and streets, and it had a sweet laid-back character that was a breath of fresh air after the bustle of Nha Trang and our days of hectic travel.

Hoi An is known for being a city of tailors and lantern-makers, and it does not disappoint. The town went from under 100 tailors a couple decades ago, to a bustling 600+. Tailors line every street, with occasional souvenir shops squished in between them, and above them hang myriad strings of lanterns.

Inside the Hoi An cloth market - a warehouse filled
with bolts of cloth and tailors competing for
tourist business

The first couple of nights we were there was the end of the Chinese New Year holiday week, and the town was full of people celebrating. We saw a game of Vietnamese bingo - Ba Choi - being played with exuberance on the parts of both players and performers, and a game of "hit the pot". Gorgeous light sculptures lined one side of the river, all reflecting the theme of the new Year of the Snake, and the outgoing year of the Dragon.

We spent the rest of our time in Hoi An relaxing and enjoying the place. We biked a couple times to the beach, Devlin ate beef papaya salad every day, and we bartered hard for good prices on our souvenirs. And we ate some truly delicious Indian food at Ganesh, the only Indian place in town.

At the end of our time there, it was also time to part ways with our travel friend, Lynnea, who was heading back home to Oregon. We called up Mr. Dong for our ride to the airport in Danang, and up we flew to Hanoi, the capitol of Vietnam. We camped out in the airport to wait for our evening flight to Bangkok, Thailand, and said our goodbyes to Lynnea, who was spending a day in the capitol. And then, off we flew to Thailand and our final destination, Chiang Mai!

Diving Nha Trang

We spent two days in Nha Trang. The place was pretty packed with the Chinese New Year holiday, and lodging rates were hugely inflated. But, we managed to have one fabulous day of scuba diving. Nha Trang is one of the main hotspots in Vietnam for diving – the protected marine reserve of Hon Mun is a 45 minute boat ride away, and its waters are filled with micro life: tiny nutabranchs, numerous fish, and brilliantly-colored coral.

The cable car to the big island,
Hon Tre, closest to Nha Trang

If you throw a rock in Nha Trang, chances are you will hit a dive shop. There are hundreds of them in the city, and it was at first confusing to choose one. We first found Rainbow Divers, an outfit with very good marketing: the outside of their building says they are “National Geographic recommended,” and they seemed to be a well-organized outfit. But their prices were a bit hard to swallow: they wanted $75 per person for two boat dives. Other places we saw in town were charging $40.

After some internet research, I learned about a place called Sailing Club Divers. We’d passed their place, but I hadn’t considered it – being called a “club” made them sound exclusive and expensive. But, we learned it would only be about $45 for two dives, including a bus to the harbor, the boat trip out, and lunch. And all equipment included. Their instructors are top-notch and all of them spoke very good English and new the dive sites pretty well.

The floating lobster village

Our bus left a little later than other outfits we’d talked to – the owner of Sailing Club Divers said he leaves late, so that when the boat arrives at a site, they can choose the emptiest place, and not be surrounded by other dive outfits. The boat ride out was scenic and beautiful – we passed a couple other islands, as well as a whole floating lobster village. 

On the boat, we were introduced to our personal dive attendant and shown our gear. There were about 15 guests total: a French guy who was getting his Advanced certification, a Dutch girl new to diving (she’d gotten certified in Thailand), another German diver, and us. The rest were scuba diving: a Cambodian family with three cute young sons, a group of 20-something girls, and the Dutch girl’s friend.

The dive crew and equipment in the back of the boat

It was very different to be waited on throughout the trip. In Oregon, we’re used to setting up our own gear, checking everything, and then hoisting it on our backs to either clamber over big slick rocks, or down 20’ tall cliffs to get to our dive sites. On the boat, everything was taken care of for us – we were helped on with our gear, and helped off with it – all we had to do was get it on, step off the boat into the water, and then enjoy the dive.

And enjoy we did. The visibility wasn’t as clear as usual – we only got 10’ – they usually get 15-20’, but it was still fantastic for us, since Oregon rarely gets better than 5’. There was a ton of life to see, and there was no little current, so we could drift along and enjoy ourselves. 

All in all, even though the life was small-sized, our dive in Nha Trang was a real treat, and our first time diving in tropical warm waters. We’ll be looking forward to planning some dive trips to Thailand, or other tropical places, in the next few years to enjoy more warm-water diving!

More Border Shenanigans & A Singing Night Bus

The gigantic Snake sculpture

To hasten our crossing into Vietnam, we spent one night in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.  It was the beginning of Chinese New Year, and that evening, we saw the Cambodians out celebrating. A big hilltop shrine was packed with people and offerings, and a gigantic bamboo Snake guarded the entrance, heralding the Year of the Snake. At the top of the shrine, the incense smoke was so thick that I could hardly breathe through its perfume. 

Inside the central shrine, towering stacks of lotus flowers surrounded the large Buddha. Outside, people lined up to offer food at smaller shrines. Behind the heads of the smaller Buddhas were electric circles of light, flashing neon blue, green, and red. The remains of offered food and flowers were pushed into large piles nearby, around corners. It had the feeling of Christmas – everyone dressed up and filled with a festive cheer.

Offerings at the smaller Buddha shrines

The next morning, we caught our bus to Vietnam. It was fairly uneventful, except for some border shenanigans: a week before, my passport had been soaked when my camelback reservoir failed, and so my paper departure card from Cambodia had also been soaked and fallen apart. This caused some fun stuff at the border – I was told on the bus that I’d be charged $5 – but instead, the border guard just questioned me, scowling, and then scolded me solidly, before shooing me into line to be digitally fingerprinted (a normal process at Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam borders). However, what was more fun was that the bus almost left without me – Devlin and Lynnea had to get them to stop and come get me, as with my interview delay, it took me three times as long to get done as everyone else.

First bowl of Pho!

Finally, around 3pm, we got to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). We had our first celebratory bowl of Pho and made plans. Our goal was to head north – we were mainly interested in getting to Hoi An, a beautiful historical town smack-dab in the center of the Vietnamese coastline. From HCMC, it would take 22 hours on the bus. To make that a more manageable and sane chunk to swallow, we decided to catch a night bus to Nha Trang, a coastal city 10 hours away. 

But, Chinese New Year rather got in the way. In Cambodia, the holiday is celebrated for a weekend or so at most, and then everything goes back to normal. But in Vietnam, the holiday lasts a solid week, and everyone is on holiday. As a result, all the prices are inflated – doubled or tripled – and night buses go from $12 to an astronomical $22-30 per person.  Everywhere we saw tourists fighting the holiday. A group of poor souls was trying to get to Cambodia, and they got insane quotes of $75 per person, in a taxi, because everything else was booked. Later we met a couple who’d paid $100 to get from Hanoi, the big city in the north, to Hoi An – normally $24 for two. 

Really? These were the top bunks

We showed up a little early, at 8pm, to get on our $22 night bus. We got in and took off our shoes besides the driver’s wheel, and stepped into a strange little world. Three rows of bunk beds were squished into the bus, with narrow aisles between them. The “beds” were thin mattresses at an inclined angle – they could recline to a point, but beyond that you would squish the feet of the person behind you.

We were initially assigned bunks on the top – a precarious situation, as there were barely any bars to keep you from tipping out, and absolutely no seat belts. Devlin was squished between two beds, with not nearly enough space for his legs. As bottom bunks were free, we quickly convinced the attendant to let us move down. We later learned that the bus people assign foreigners to the top bunks first, reserving the bottom for locals. A kind of “tourist tax”, you might say.

Down on the bottom bunks

As the bus filled up, we tried to get comfortable. Our small backpacks were tucked between our feet. Lynnea saw a cockroach, a small half-inch long one, and squashed it with a fierce blow from her iPhone. That would not be the first cockroach we saw that night. And then the bus began to move, and the singing began. The bus’ shocks were on the verge of going out, and so we were serenaded throughout the night with a symphony of squeaks. The bus really had quite an impressive range, from little tiny moving squeaks, to long-sustained sighs, to a deep bass bellow as we hit a larger pothole. And the “music” pierced straight through earplugs.

There were several stops : one at midnight, for a last-chance potty break (there was no toilet on the bus), and again at 2am, at the coastal city of Mui Ne, where we disgorged a few sleepy souls onto the dark streets, before on we rolled/squeaked down the road. 

Nha Trang on the beach

Amazingly, despite the music of the bus, the passing lights, and the occasional phantom feeling of a cockroach crawling on me, I was able to sleep. I tucked the provided blanket around my feet, mummy-like, and put on my sweater as armor to the tickle of cockroaches. We managed fitful sleep until our bus rolled into Nha Trang, at 6:15 am. Then out we tumbled, stiff and blinking, into the clear blue sky of our first morning in Vietnam.

Sihanoukville and Otres Beach

After visiting Siem Reap, we bused south to the beach town of Sihanoukville. It took us all day on the bus, with a transfer at Phnom Penh. Sihanoukville is a city with a very different feeling to it - it is built more for motorbikes and vehicle traffic, with wide paved streets. It was a strange thing to be in such an open city, as Siem Reap has much narrower streets and lower buildings. And no dust! Everywhere in Siem Reap are patches of the red soil, so my memories of the town are washed in a rusty color.

We arrived around 8pm and caught a tuk-tuk, for a reasonable hard-negotiated price, down to Otres Beach. Otres is at the southernmost end of Sihanoukville, and the quietest, most relaxed, beach in town (currently). The most famous beach is Serendipity - but it is a wild scene at night from what we heard - lots of drunken tourists and trash.

Otres was everything we wanted. There are two sections to the beach - Otres 1 and Otres 2, and between them a long empty stretch of public beach. We learned on our first night, when we stayed on Otres 2, that it is dangerous to walk at night between the two inhabited sections. There are problems with drugs, and muggings at night are not uncommon.

But, that aside, Otres was incredibly lovely and laid-back. We moved our second night to Otres 1, which is closer to town and has a little bit more going on. Our place was at the Otres Orchid Guesthouse - a sweet place with bungalows, hammocks, and a momma chicken with babies (who Devlin quickly adopted and tried to train to eat from his hand).

A random cow who wandered down the street

We quickly found our local hangouts. The food options are limited on the beach, and a tuk-tuk ride to town was a spendy $9 one-way ($3 per person), so we pretty much kept to Otres 1 for the week we were there. Our favorite places to eat were:

• Bamboo Shack: great cheap breakfasts and fried rice
• Chez Paou: a great restaurant run by French ex-pat William and his Cambodian family, and the best place in town for pool. There are often nightly tournaments for a $2 entry fee - but watch out, William and Cham (one of the bartenders) are extremely good! Try the beef lok-lak, or the tom yam soup - they are par excellence. 
• The Indian place: both great for its all-you-can-eat sets, and also because it sells happy stuff (ahem - "happy" pizzas, joints, and wild mushroom shakes
• The red place: I don't know the name, but all their decor is red - they have great little round concrete platforms on the beach which have hammocks (although the cocktails are pretty pricey)
• Mushroom Point: a cool funky place with a fantastic central domed bar, and neat lights (but again, a bit pricey)

We spent our days lounging on beach chairs watching the waves, going for swims, and then watching the sunset with a cold beer. Our  nights were most often spent at Chez Paou playing pool. I spent one fabulous morning watching fish at the most northern point of Otres, where it meets with a rocky cliff edge, separating it from the adjacent beach. Although I got a sunburn for my trouble, I had a fantastic time watching little schools of fish float past me. 

To town we ventured just a couple times - once for money and little things like flip-flops and bugspray, and the next to get our tourist visas for Vietnam. They are a hefty $60 (it just increased from $45 to $60 in December 2012). 

The roof going up at the new restaurant

All in all, it was a fabulous and relaxing time, filled with beautiful sunsets, tons of stars at night, fruit smoothies spiked with cheap coconut rum from the corner store, sand, and aqua ocean. Otres is a place in a state of rapid flux - in the week we were there, a new bar/restaurant went from a rough concrete pad and a shell of a structure, to fully-finished. In the next five years, I imagine, the place will be completely different. We were lucky to catch it before the impending trendiness, and overbuilding, occurs at this lovely place.

It was the longest time I'd ever spent on a tropical beach, and the time seemed to expand  and lengthen with each passing day. But, such times don't last forever, and we left for Phnom Penh, and then Vietnam on February 10th and 11th - the first days of the Chinese New Year celebrations.

We're coming home!

It's decided, and booked! We are currently in Chiang Mai, Thailand for one week - and on March 5th we will fly to Fukuoka, Japan to spend two weeks on the southern big island of Kyushu. And, on March 21st, we will fly home! We're heading first to Bend to see my mom and get our stuff in ship-shape, and then we will be back in Eugene (living out of Devlin's big diesel camper van until we figure other stuff out.) So, mark your calendars! We will be looking forward to seeing all our dear friends very soon. :)

Angkor & its Children

People selling items outside the temple of Ta Prohm

The temples of Angkor Archaeological Park are not an easy place to write about. And it's not for the reasons you might think of. True, the place is one of the Wonders of the World, steeped in mystery and ancient history - the Khmer empire rose and fell here, and the jungle looms like a gigantic frozen green wave, ready to engulf the ruins once more. But the reason I found it hard to write about this place was not because of its past, or its setting, but because of its present – the people, and the children, who live on the fringes of the temple sites.

A little girl selling bracelets

Contrary to just about any other tourist site in the world, the Angkor Park is inhabited by local people, who are the direct descendants of the Khmer empire. The villages were there long before the archaeological park was formed, and the ruins are their cultural heritage. Unbeknownst to us at the time of our visit, I've now learned that these people have many restrictions on how they can live in the park - how they hang their laundry, build their houses, keep their chickens, etc. As a result, one of the only ways they can make a living is by selling things to the tourists who visit.


When you leave the most-beaten trails, and temples, this is when you notice the people, and the children, the most. You can never enter or leave a temple unattended. Cries of "Buy something, lady?" followed us everywhere, especially in the quietest hours. And it is heartrending to say no, over and over again.

The children are the hardest. Many start selling things for their families' small shops as soon as they can talk - we were approached by tiny kids, repetitively repeating their one question, while holding out little baskets that hung around their necks, filled with postcards, bracelets, and other trinkets.

Children playing at the edge of Sra Srang, at sunrise

We spent one very early morning at the un-touristed temple of Sra Srang, to see the sunrise. In the predawn light, children and teenagers appeared from the gloom to solicit us, giving free bracelets with the promise of "You see my shop later?" After four bracelets, we realized we were being branded... and my heart felt heavy and alarmed with the weight of all those promises. We saw the peoples' campfires in the dark, heard the roosters crowing, and listened to a young girl singing a pop song to herself as she walked at the edge of the ancient ruin.

As the sky lightened, the children talked to us, and I fed them dried mango, until after sunrise most left for a nearby school. We took a roundabout way back to our tuk-tuk, avoiding the promises and the stores. Our bodies and wallets escaped unscathed, but not our souls.

Bayon temple at sunset

The temples were still amazing and beautiful, intense in their majesty, and echoing with the power of a past empire. We looked in awe and wonder, and heard the jungle birds singing in the gigantic trees.

A traveler to Cambodia cannot forget that it is a country and a people still recovering from genocide. Visiting the Angkor Park, is not like visiting the Eiffel Tower. As a tourist, you can enter and leave Europe with your self-identity intact - but not in Cambodia and Angkor Park.

Siem Reap, Gateway to Angkor Wat

Siem Reap, in Pub Street on a busy night

In all of Cambodia, Siem Reap is truly the "it" place. Only three kilometers north of it lies the UNESCO site of Angkor Archaeological Park, an enormous complex 400 square kilometers wide (154 sq. miles!). Inside are the remnants of the ancient Khmer empire - Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, and Angkor Thom, the ancient capital of the empire.

Siem Reap, as the only nearby place to sleep, has become the tourist base and gateway for the whole complex. People come from all over the globe - on a busy night in Pub Street, you can alternate between Aussie accents, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and a number of un-identifiables. Often, in the tourist areas, you see more white/Asian foreigners than you do local folk.

A typical house by the road, in Cambodia

For Devlin and I, who had just left first-world Europe and modern Istanbul, the transition was profound. The city, and the lives of the people, were just as fascinating as the ancient ruins. Even the journey to the city in the taxi was enlightening. Cows wandered freely in fields next to the road, unhindered by fences. Occasionally we saw water buffalo, their snouts loosely run through with a thin string - used for leading them. There were frequent small roadside shacks, pieced together with corrugated metal and wood, which sold everything from water, fruit, and coconuts, to motorbike fuel in recycled glass coke bottles.

A tire repair? and refilling station by the roadside

Children splashed next to a cement water tank, or more often, down by small ponds near the road. The houses were elevated on poles or columns, leaving the bottom area free for chores during the day, or sleeping animals at night. Chickens roamed everywhere, and ducks. Palm trees abounded.

And that was just the countryside. Inside Siem Reap, we gaped at the tangles of electrical wires on every telephone pole, and the dizzying zig-zag of travel - motorbikes zipping between tuk-tuks, while narrowly being missed by bigger buses and crazily loaded trucks. Just about anything qualifies as a vehicle - even a tractor, jerry-rigged to pull long loads.

Hectic traffic and tangled wires

We quickly mastered how to say "no thank you" in Khmer - "te o kun" (tay oh coon) - to the innumerable tuk-tuk drivers hankering for our patronage on every corner. Just as important was the art of bartering - except for restaurants and stores, everything is negotiable. Everything from a ride in a tuk-tuk, to a dress in the market, and even our hotel price, could be bartered down. Devlin spent a blissful afternoon at the covered market, finding the best deals on dried taro chips, sugared ginger and coconut (my favorites!), and dried mango.

After three days, we began to feel at home in Siem Reap. We had earmarked our initial favorite eateries - in particular, a small Khmer restaurant on the edge of the daymarket, which had the best mango shakes and coffee shakes. They also had a dizzying variety of traditional food, all illustrated with photos in a menu 5" thick. We quickly learned the cheapest, and often best, restaurants always had a tome of a menu - we avoided the thin menu places.

Our familiar street, walking home - always lined with
tuk-tuks ready to take us somewhere. "Tuk tuk, lady?"

We spent three days adjusting to jetlag and to the town. And then, on to the temples!

Cambodia & Borders

Our minibus to the border - with happy butterfly
decorations and smiling flowers!

Walking out of the Bangkok airport was a transition like no other - we went from clear, dry, 50F Istanbul, into the 88F, muggy, smoggy air and steel-sky of Bangkok. We met up with Lynnea at the hotel, a cool backpackers' hostel called Suk 11. We decided to leave the city the next day and head for Cambodia, as Lynnea only had a few days more on her visa in Thailand, and we had no desire to hang around in the big city.

We caught a mini bus from Bangkok to the border town of Aranyaprathet (Aran for short), where we stayed the night, intending to cross the border the next day. This particular border crossing is apparently the worst for scams, so we wanted to cross early, as it gets sketchier at night. We checked in to a pretty comfy hotel, for a whopping $5/person per night, and then went to check out the local street food.

Street food!

Eating street food in Cambodia and Thailand is quite safe, so long as you follow a few simple rules: 1) Check the kitchen - if it's pretty clean, and if the ingredients stay covered, and no sign of meat sitting around. 2) The food must be served piping hot, so you can be sure any initial bacteria was wiped out by the heat. 3) Food buffets are fine, just go early so you can ensure the food is fresh.

We stopped at a small roadside stand, a truly mobile kitchen, that made a glass-noodle soup. It was some of the most fantastic food I've ever had - and so spicy! We started bulking up on our capsaicin content in our bloodstream as another way to combat the mosquitoes. So far, so good! We have had very few bites.

Our stylish tuk-tuk

The next day, we hopped a ride on a tuk-tuk to the border. A tuk-tuk, pronounced "took-took", is a small open-air "taxi". At its very basic, it consists of a motorcycle pulling a golf-cart-esque structure behind it. They often cost a bit more than car-sized taxis because they can navigate smaller streets and thicker traffic.

Our lady tuk-tuk driver (it was unusual to see a woman driving a tuk-tuk, Lynnea told us) took us the 5km (3 miles) down the main highway towards the border checkpoint, while we bumped along, hanging onto the handles and hoping our bags wouldn't fall out into the road. The traffic increased until we could see streams of cars and loaded vehicles, and the speed slowed to a trickle. Our driver took a right at a sleek looking building, taking us around the back to a deserted gravel parking lot. A man, in a western-like long-sleeved shirt (despite the heat), immediately came out of the back of. the building.

The entrance gate to Cambodia!

"You need visa?" he inquired.

We exchanged glances. There weren't any other people around, and this guy seemed rather too eager.

"Yes, but we're going to go take a look around, we'll be back," we said, hoisting our bags. We paid the driver - 80 baht/person, or roughly $2.70 - although we felt nervous we weren't where we were supposed to be, and off we walked. A local sitting by the road helped by pointing us towards the checkpoint, and we soon began to join up with other tourist backpackers trudging in the same direction.

The traffic at the border

After that, everything ran smoothly: we were processed quickly through the Thailand exit, and then we walked across the no-man's land inbetween into the Cambodia visa office. After a little paperwork, we were herded into a low-ceilinged building next to the road, behind 50-odd other tourists, all of us shuffling very slowly towards four checkpoint windows. As we waited, we could see a myriad of strange and interesting vehicles passing in the street: trucks precariously loaded with huge plastic bags (filled with who-knows-what), a huge tall van filled with snorting pigs, many bicycles and loaded motorbikes... We were definitely not in Italy anymore.

Finally, our paperwork was done, and we caught a bus to the taxi depot. We shared a taxi with a guy from Denmark, and we drove into the Cambodian countryside, towards Siem Reap three hours away. Our destination - mystical Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple complex, and the largest religious monument in the world.

Does Tourist=Sucker?

The more and more I travel, the more and more I see the same things again.  So... Does being a tourist mean you have to be a sucker (pay more than others for the same goods/services)?  I've seen plenty of people who can travel the world and not break the bank, but I'm constantly reminded of all the others.

I know that people come from different "normal" budgets for how much stuff costs.  Let me give you an example, in the Eugene it takes anywhere from $7-13 dollars to buy a Thai dish at a restaurant.

Food:
Plate of food for a local 50c. (~estimate)
Plate of food for a tourist that is looking around and finding decent prices $1.50   (3 times the "real" price)
Plate of food for a tourist that doesn't care $7 (14 times the "real" price)

So,  why do people traveling let themselves spend more money than they have to for the same things?  Well there are some reasons.  Some people don't care that they are paying to much, they have plenty of money and don't need to worry about it.  For others, bargaining or finding the best prices is allot of work, and sometimes to much energy.
People who are traveling from countries that cost less than the country they came from are used to spending a certain price for things. so if they have habits for buying food for $8-15 a meal, then when they travel is still seems normal for them to spend that kind of money.
People from some other countries don't know how to negotiate to find out what the bottom price really is.
People in other places expect to negotiate for prices, and as such most things don't have price tag on them.

All these reasons combined go to sometimes propagate that a tourist can pay more than is excepted.

If you want to save some money, here are some ways to do so.  Do a little research, do a little asking, a little negotiating   A little hard work goes a long way. Perhaps one day,  tourists won't automatically have a "You a sucker?" stamped on their back.

Close Call

Have you ever missed a flight? Especially a huge, international, 11 hour-long one? I never have - I didn't even think it was possible. I am a planner, and usually before travel I am paranoid enough to check my flight details a couple times. But, on Monday, it almost happend to us - we almost missed our flight to Thailand. Somehow, we both thought our flight was on Tuesday, the 22nd - we had completely forgotten that it was a two-day flight. Our flight would leave by 3pm Monday, the 21st, and arrive in Bangkok on the 22nd, at 7am.

A gorgeous park on the edge of Bangkok -
a wonderful green relief from the city

On Monday we lazily woke up, intending to let Devlin's sore throat heal, to do laundry, and to prepare for our flight the next day. Luckily for us, Devlin got a facebook text from the friend we would be meeting in Bangkok, Lynnea, with info about the hotel she was booking. She'd accidentally booked it for Monday, she said, forgetting that we wouldn't arrive until Tuesday.

Monday? We were leaving Monday?!? Devlin told me this at about 11am on Monday - we had four hours to completely pack, pull out the laundry (that was still going in the washer), and get from the suburbs of Istanbul across town to the airport (at least a 1.5 hour trip), before our check-in counter closed (by 2pm)!

Orchids growing on a tree in the park!

It was a scramble, but we managed to do it. The wet laundry went into a bag, we hurriedly ate some of the excellent leftovers our host had made the previous night, we scribbled down instructions to the airport, and we were off. One and a half hours later, after many bus/metro bus/subway transfers, and quite a few conversations with ever-helpful and kind Turkish people as to where we needed to get off, we arrived at the airport. After that, our flight was uneventful and smooth, and we arrived in Bangkok on schedule.

As I write this, we are in Cambodia... but our journey here is another story.

The Universal Market

Our host, Yigit, at the market

In our time in Italy, and now in Istanbul, one of our favorite things has been to visit outdoor markets. It is quintessential part of the culture, and purely for the locals - you don't see tourists at an obscure neighborhood market, far away from the touristic sights, and thus you get an experience that is truly "through the back door."

Today, we visited the weekly market near our couchsurfing host, Yigit, in the suburb of Ümraniye, in Istanbul. The market only happens on Thursday, and the vendors mainly drive in with their vans, unload from them, and then reload them to go to the next market. Italy had fabulous markets, but this one today took the cake for having stupendous arrays of fresh produce and fruit, in a dazzling array, as well as spices, pickles, cheeese, sweatpants, pretzels, chestnuts...the list goes on.

A beautiful fruit display - and he's very proud of it! :)

As tourists, we stood out like sore thumbs. But, a wonderful part of couchsurfing is having an instance "in" to the culture, as well as someone who understands all the local customs, language, and business practices. We strolled up the market, maybe almost 1/4 mile long, comparing prices, while I snapped away with my picture.

A jovial cheese and olive vendor - delicious olives!!

At first I took pictures surreptitiously, not sure how the vendors would react to a foreign girl taking pictures of their daily life. However as we became more used to the market, I realized that the vendors were very open to having their picture taken - even beckoning me to take a picture while they posed and smiled. By the end of the market, I was showing the pictures I'd taken to the vendors, and they'd smile and nod proudly. For them, it was a proud experience to have their livelihood captured by my camera.

And their displays were truly fantastic, and they clearly cared a great deal about their presentation. Careful stacks of oranges, with interspersed leaves, or a pomegranate cut open to show the perfect ruby seeds, to intricate layers of shawls.

Picture-friendly leek vendors

We spent at least two hours at the market, and the time flew by. The Turkish lira is about half as much as the dollar, so we could spend .50 Turkish cents (.28 US cents) for two kilos - over two pounds - of carrots!

A young pretzel vendor

A common Turkish snack is the pretzel - there were at least three guys wheeling stacks of them up and down the market. 3 pretzels cost 1 lira (.50 cents) - covered in sesame seeds, and often still warm, they are fantastic and filling. We bought 3 lira worth, to have extras for later.

A grape leaf seller, for making dolmus

All in all, it's almost as good as going to some of the big tourist attractions - this is true Turkey, at its heart, in the daily lives of its people.

Yesterday, we visited the Grand Bazaar in the old European part of Istanbul. It is an immense warren of shops, all indoors, and it has kilometers of streets. There are entire sections devoted to leather, ceramics, etc. But today, a good portion of it is only for tourists, and the vendors there are hungry for your attention (and money). As Devlin and I weren't interested in buying anything, but just in absorbing the place, we strolled right past their loud entreaties of, "Hello, carpet?" or "Hello, please bags?"... one inventive guy even said, "Hello, bodyguard!" to Devlin, followed by, "Present for your girlfriend?" For me, I would be nervous to go in that bazaar by myself - it would be like feeding yourself to the sharks.

A shawl vendor

A pickle vendor: dolmus, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage,
and many other types I couldn't identify!

In contrast, the small local street market was a much more welcoming version. The bazaar was fun in a crazy, chaotic, in-your-face kind of way, but for me, I much preferred the quieter, low-key, non-pushy friendliness of the little market. The locals bantered back and forth with Yigit, in completely incomprehensible Turkish. Over the past 3 months in Italy, Devlin and I had become pretty competent in comprehending and speaking Italian - but after arriving in Istanbul, we are back to being true tourists - completely ignorant, and using a combination of sign language and blank/lost expressions to get by. I managed to have a couple minutes of conversation with one vendor before I had to turn to Yigit for translation help.

We will be looking forward to our next encounters with the people and culture of Turkey, and to the local markets we will enjoy when we fly to Thailand and Cambodia next Tuesday! It is hard to believe that we will be switching cultures in just a few short days' time... I am greatly enjoying Turkey, and I can say for sure that we will return again, in a warmer season, to this rich and fascinating country.