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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 12: Palaces, Monks and a Festival
The next day we rose early and breakfasted on the hotel’s riverside terrace. We could hear music from the temple across the water, and Dr. Kelly spied on birds in the trees shading our table. I watched the boats on the river. The Chao Phraya carries a lot of traffic, and it’s interesting to see…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 11: Dances in Bangkok and Cooking in Ayutthaya
January 7 was a “free” day for us, in the sense that there weren’t any scheduled tours. So, naturally, we spent that time by . . . going to museums. Specifically, to the National Museum, next door to the Grand Palace in the center of Bangkok. We went by subway, which was easy, although it…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 10: Boating Around Bangkok
January 6 was another lovely day, though not quite as busy. We rode aboard the Party Van to the west bank of the Chao Phraya river for a visit to the Wat Arun temple complex in the Thonburi district. Wat Arun can be translated as “Temple of Dawn” and sits just across the river from…
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Interlude: My Boskone Schedule
Instead of talking about a trip I took in the past, today I want to look at a trip in the future: my journey to the familiar Boston Westin Waterfront hotel for this year’s Boskone science fiction convention. This is the 63rd Boskone, which is kind of amazing. Among other things, that means Boskone was…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 9: Around Bangkok Four Ways
On January 5 our guide Sita really put us through our paces. We met her at 8:00 a.m. for a brisk walk to the Lumphini metro station, where we learned how to navigate Bangkok’s subway. It’s a pretty impressive system, especially considering it’s dug deep under a swampy river delta. I can only assume that…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 8: The End of the Beginning
Our flight out of Siem Reap did not take us eastward across the Pacific toward North America. Quite the reverse: we headed west for the second half of our trip. Siem Reap has a brand-new airport, out in the middle of nowhere forty-six kilometers east of the city. It was built and is apparently run…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 7: Angkor Again and Again!
After such a busy day on January 1, you might expect us to sleep late the next morning. That was not to be. We arose on the 2nd at 4:30 a.m. and took a chilly tuk-tuk ride through the darkness to the western bank of the moat around the Angkor Wat temple complex, in order…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 6: Angkor at Last!
On New Year’s Day 2026 we tuktukked to the visitor center at Angkor Archaeological Part, got our three-day passes, admired the Christmas decorations, and then headed into the park for our first look at the ruins. The first day focused on Angkor Thom, the remains of the former capital city of the Khmer Empire. (Angkor…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 5: In and Around Siem Reap
December 30 was our first full day in Siem Reap. We kicked off the day with a visit to the Wat Bo temple (I’m being redundant here: “Wat” means “Temple,” but it does make the whole thing more clear), not far from the Rambutan hotel. Wat Bo is an active Buddhist monastery, and indeed we…
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The Great Indochina Expedition, Episode 4: Road Trip!
The original Lost Plate tour schedule included a day in Battambang, a city southwest of Tonle Sap lake. But because of the Recent Unpleasantness with Thailand, they dropped that from the schedule and routed us around the northeast shore of the lake instead. For the first time we did not travel by tuk-tuk: we had…
The Cambias Digression
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