We could have flown from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh. The flight is less than an hour, but by the time you get to the airport, check in, wait, fly, land, collect your luggage, go through immigrations, customs, it’s much more than an hour. And we’d already flown 27 times. Besides the flight would have cost our family $758, while the bus ride was just $76 total for the four of us. We hadn’t done any long bus trips yet, so there was some masochistic part of us that wanted to subject ourselves to the discomfort of sitting on a crowded bus for half a day — to know what that feels like. The very best part, of course, is that you actually get to see the countries — the chaos of Saigon transitioning to rice fields, walking across boarders instead of flying over them, and the lush, very wet, tropical terrain of rural Cambodia. Take two and a half minutes and join us on our six hour bus ride.Franny says “A window on a bus is the best philosophy class in the world.” And she’s right. It gives you time to just stare out at the world and contemplate everything about your life. But she emphasizes “You must have the seat next to the window.”
SAY YES
Every now and then, the simplest lessons about life and travel and happiness and adventure can be boiled down to just a couple tiny words. For example:
ROAD MATH: TEST YOUR TRAVEL I.Q.
Behold the price of gas in Thailand. Here’s today’s assignment: Tell us the cost for a gallon of gas in Thailand in US dollars. Keep in mind, the prices you are looking at are for a liter. Use your currency convertor to find out how many Thai Baht you get for a US dollar. Then use the well-worn formula for converting liters to gallons. This is just one of the many ways we use our math skills (and our calculator apps) on a constant basis on the road. Is gas in Thailand more or less than where you live?
Note: We usually fill up with 91 octane at home, but when we’re on the road and driving a rental car we tend to put in the cheaper gas — which is 32.78 per liter. (Is that somehow wrong?) Be careful you don’t fill up with the top one — that’s the price of diesel.
THE RISKY MARKET
In a village in Thailand, about fifty kilometers from Bangkok, there is a daily outdoor market the locals have dubbed “The Risky Market.” Come along with us and check out how this place got its well-deserved moniker.The music is Harry Belafonte singing about Jamaica, but the images are pure Thailand. It’s interesting to see how reflections on the two cultures weave together.
REFLECTIONS FROM THE ROAD: OVERCOMING FEAR
One of the goals of our journey has been to overcome our fears. We’re not referring to any specific fears necessarily, but heading blindly across the planet is an experiment in confronting our fear of the unknown (and the unknown is the source of almost all fear it turns out.) Our family has grown much stronger in these first 118 days on the road and we look forward to getting tougher yet. We tell the kids we want them to get so tough that “They eat cockroaches for breakfast, crap them out, then eat the crap for lunch, then, if they finish that, they can have ice cream.” We’re still working on the breakfast part.
Part of our basic training in overcoming fear is embodied in simply walking across a busy intersection in Hanoi. There are no lights at these intersections, no pauses in the traffic, you must simply walk out into traffic, trusting that they don’t want to hit you anymore than you want to get hit. Our first attempt, as documented in the iPhone POV video below, had us walking across in a single tight line so no stragglers would get nailed by swerving motorbikes. Listen carefully to the raw, unedited soundtrack. This is what overcoming (or at least confronting) fear looks and sounds like.
A THANKSGIVING MESSAGE FROM FRANNY: ANGKOR HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN
We have spent the last seven days in Cambodia, which is a remarkable country with an amazing and also horrifying history. In my parents’ lifetime, two million people were exterminated by the Khmer Rouge. Many of the people we met had family members who were killed. The people we met were all kind and generous and welcoming, but there is also incredible poverty there. Two days ago, we went to visit The Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia and this is what we saw.
Walking through the doors, I knew that the Angkor Hospital for Children was an amazing place. As you step into the main building you see pictures of many patients, some cases are worse than others but all of them make your heart ache. While walking around, you see children who can’t open one of their eyes, or a child who is missing an arm. Two year olds have to deal with worse pain than we will probably ever experience in our whole life. Many of the families there spend all night traveling to the hospital from their village, and they have to get to the hospital before its too late. Many do not have enough money to buy food. When the families arrive at the hospital they are encouraged to give a small donation, of about 25 cents. But some families cannot even afford that. Can you imagine not having 25 cents to give? Can you imagine dying when you’re three because your family can’t afford food? The misfortune these people deal with is more than I could ever imagine.
Every dollar helps. If you can be consider give a donation of any size to the children who are in so much need, it would be so greatly appreciated. All the money goes directly to helping these poor children get medical care. Just a few dollars can literally save a life. At this time of Thanksgiving, please make a donation. Click HERE to learn more about the incredible work that is being done at the hospital. Click HERE to make a donation. It’s really easy to do and it really would make a huge difference.
Thank you so so much and Happy Thanksgiving,
Franny Flackett-Levin
THE SIMPLE BEAUTY OF WAT ARUN
Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, rises over Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River, theoretically catching the first morning light that hits the city (before all the skyscrapers were built). It is still the most eye catching site on any water taxi ride up the river. Wat Arun is one of over 31,000 Buddhist temples spread across Thailand. To us, one of the most striking features was the mosaics that cover almost every surface of the temple. This reminded us strongly of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles and one couldn’t help but wonder if pictures of Wat Arun were somewhere in mind of Simon Rodia as he constructed the Watts Towers in his backyard using his own version of mosaics. We used 587 individual snapshots to create our 67 second love letter to the temple.
TWO MINUTES OF THAI BOXING (IS MORE THAN ENOUGH)
From the moment we arrived in Bangkok, the guy behind the desk where we were staying asked “Are you going to see the Thai Boxing?” Frankly, we hadn’t even considered it. But on a balmy night, Mark headed off alone in a cab carrying a bag filled with way too much camera equipment to capture this unique sporting event. The fighters are barefoot, some of them can’t be older than twelve, the fans are drunk, sweaty and rowdy, the lights are bright, and the music on the soundtrack is vintage Beatles.
OUR SOUVENIR FROM THE FRENCH CONCESSION
When one thinks of Shanghai, the image that is presented to the world is the glistening Pudong skyline — a monument to the 21st “Chinese Century.” But we stayed across the river in the more historic part of town, an area more akin to Greenwich Village or the Latin Quarter of Paris. This is the French Concession and — perhaps more than anyplace we’ve yet visited on our journey — we felt at home. This is the souvenir we took from our neighborhood in Shanghai that we didn’t want to leave. (“Souvenir” is a beautiful word. In French, it means “to remember.”)
MARRIAGE CORNER
In People’s Square, thousands of aging Shanghainese parents gather every Sunday to try and fix up their unwed sons and daughters. When we heard about this, we knew it was something we had to witness — and we also knew it might be wise to bring along a bonafide Chinese bachelor to introduce us to this fascinating “corner” of Shanghai.