Cambodia Part Two, Ko Samui

After our first day exploring the temples of Angkor, our group of five went to downtown Siem Reap for a very memorable night which included:

-Drinking Pastis in honor of the 4th of July with Jean Philippe, and toasting to Lafayette
-Lots of shots of Cambodian Whiskey, thanks to Knut
-Arm wrestling at the bar with the Cambodians. It turns out the Jean Philippe is very, very good at arm wrestling
-Knut disappearing at 3am

After sleeping in, Nisha and I headed back to the temples on the 5th to see Angkor Thom, a huge walled city full of temples. It used to also have regular buildings in it, but stone and brick were thought to only be appropriate for the gods, so all other buildings were made of wood and rotted away long ago. The highlight for me was a large complex known as "Tomb Raider" (presumably because the movie was shot there). There were huge tropical trees growing all around the stones of the temple, giving it a very unique look and making for some good photo opportunities.

After spending yesterday in transit all day, we made it to Ko Samui last night. This island is on the opposite side of the penninsula from where we were before. It is a much larger island than Ko Phi Phi Don, and also quite expensive. This afternoon, we will be taking a ferry to Ko Phangan, a nearby island that hosts the world-famous Full Moon Party later this week, which some of the people in our group will be at (I'll be in Beijing by then). The plan is to go snorkeling and diving and spend more time at the beach. No complaints here.

Cambodia Part One

I tried to post this yesterday, but it wouldn't go through, so it's going up now. I'll update later on what we did today.

Yesterday morning, Nisha, Ivo, Jean Phillipe, Knut, and I began our trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. Partly to save money (flights between Siem Reap Airport and Bangkok are expensive), and partly for the experience, we decided to take the trip there via land. This meant a 4.5 hour bus ride to near the border, a tuk tuk ride to an outsourcing place where we bought our visas, walking through Thai and Cambodian security, a government bus to the taxi terminal, and a 3 hour taxi to Siem Reap, all of which cost me about 20 bucks.

On that note, one of the strange things I've noticed about Cambodia is that they rely primarily on U.S. currency, though they have their own (4000 Cambodian Riel per 1 US Dollar), and they also widely accept Thai Baht. My guess is that their own currency became unstable sometime in their brutal and unstable history, so they just decided to screw it and use ours.

Driving through the countryside, the rampant poverty here is obvious. We saw lots of cows that are used to manually till rice fields, and people seem to live in shacks made of rotten wood and sheet metal. There is still a big problem here with unexploded land mines, and we've seen quite a few amputees here. But aside from that, our time here has been comfortable. We are staying in a very nice hostel run by Westerners that has its own restaurant and bar, and everything is dirt cheap.

This morning, we caught a tuk tuk at 5am to take us to Angkor Wat (about 15 mins north of here), where we celebrated Independence Day by watching the sunrise. Angkor Wat is the largest and most spectacular, but far from the only temple in the area. There are many, many temples constructed of stone over a 300+ year period around 1000 years ago. Angkor at its peak was a city of 1 million people and the capital of the Khmer Empire, which stretched from Vietnam to Myanmar. Each king, it seems, would try to outdo his predecessor by having a larger and more fantastic temple built. They are dedicated to a combination of Hindu gods, Buddha, and the kings themselves. After seeing Angkor Wat, our group split up, and Nisha and I explore some of the more far-flung temples. Tomorrow we'll go back to see more of the central main attractions that we skipped today.

I have cheap Internet access here, but it is very slow, so pictures will need to wait until I have a better opportunity to upload them.

Ko Phi Phi Day Three, Bangkok Part Two

The day after our island hopping trip in the Phi Phi islands, our group split up for a bit. Dimitar went back to the mainland to visit a wat in a forest that only he seemed to be excited about (the rest of us are getting pretty watted out), Ivo and Jean Philippe went diving for a second time and then went back to Krabi, and the girls and I spent a lazy day on the beach in Ko Phi Phi. Doing that meant that we were forgoing elephant trekking the next morning, but we're already going to be doing that in India, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some more time at the beach and save some money.

After a relaxing but uneventful day, and a Wednesday spent almost entirely in transit back to Bangkok, we got to do a little bit more exploring of the city today. There are only 4 of us now, as Dimitar left this morning to start his teaching program in Beijing and Sanjana is staying with a family friend elsewhere in the city where she is close to medical care, but I think Ivo's friend Knut will be joining us for the next week or so as well. We took a ferry down the very polluted river that runs through Bangkok, then explored Wat Pho, which had an absolutely enormous reclining Buddha statue plated in gold, and then went to the famous Wat Pho Massage School to get massages. I thought that it was actually a fairly painful experience--they really dig in to your muscles--but I felt great afterwards, and I guess that's what counts. Tonight we all went to Muay Thai boxing, which is essentially lightweight boxing plus kicking and kneeing, and then headed back to the hostel. We have a very long, very early journey to Cambodia by bus and taxi tomorrow, so we wanted to get some sleep.