Cambodia and Thailand Trip

I didn't take a camera this time so all of these pictures are from my BlackBerry. When we arrived in Cambodia on Sunday evening the captain came over the loud speaker of the flight to announce the outside temperature was 40 C. Think of that as more than 100 F and you get the idea; I started sweating almost immediately. That night I went to dinner with a coworker at a river side pub. But as the band came on a bunch of Russians came in. They were drunk already, of course, and proceeded to harass waitresses and the singers while being all-around jackasses. My coworker, who was travelling with me, and I decided to head for the exit as both the pub owner and bouncers took the Russians aside.

The next day was a full day of meeting and running around the scorching sun of Phnom Penh in a tuk tuk. Then Tuesday we spent the day again running around the city until 2pm when we went to check out of the hotel and head to the airport for Thailand. I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined a country with no McDonalds, like Cambodia, would have a Dairy Queen in the airport.

Then we landed in Bangkok. Everyone had told us the Red Shirt protests were dying down and there was a good chance of a negotiated solution in the coming days (we arrived on Wednesday). That said, there was still some danger in the city. But the danger was contained in a few areas of the city and the rest was safe. Thankfully I had been to the city about 10 times so I knew how to get around and avoid trouble.

The next morning I woke up for a full day of meetings. Then we were off for a meeting close to the protest zone. Again, we were lucky as at that time things hadn't really kicked off. Below is the area near the protest zone from about 38 floors up.

At night we headed to the night market for dinner and shopping.

Along the way I found a stall selling some bugs, including some huge cockroaches.

Then we settled in for a nice meal outside. Thankfully they had cold beers and fans since it was about 38 C and humid. I have no idea how people lived there before the advent of AC.

It was all good until the next day. I woke up at 4:30am feeling terrible and knowing I needed to visit my most important customer for a big meeting at 10:00am. Lucky for me I had a cocktail of Imodium, water, and powerful antibiotics. It seemed to do the trick and I was able to hold it together. That night we began to hear news about the protests.

We were still in a safe area. So safe in fact you could not tell there was anything amiss in Bangkok. But after a nice dinner we did notice lighter traffic. Throughout dinner we were getting reports from the protest zone (via our customers at the table) and given the expectation that things might go south (it actually took about 3 more days for that to happen) we decided to leave early in the morning for the airport. The next day I was up at 5am and was able to catch some early flights back to Taiwan.

As for being sick, I am still not 100% better but the worst is past.