Exporing Angkor, Cambodia (8/12-8/15)
I actually didn't even know about this place until I got here when more than a few people asked me if I had any plans to visit it. After a bit of research I found out that it was it was an area in Cambodia that had a collection of temples about 900 years old that were rediscoverred slightly over 100 years ago by a Frenchman. I started doing a bit more research on where exactly in Cambodia it is, how to get there, and what we needed to cross the border and still be able to come back to Thailand. When I first asked everyone if they would want to go there was about 6 of us, but by the time we actually left we had a group of 9.
We ended up meeting at 4:30am near one of the parks to catch a private bus that locals took to go to the tax-free casinos between the borders with the help of our friend Kanitta, who is a local. It took a little bit longer than expected to cross the border because not everyone had gotten their Cambodian visas or their re-entry visa for Thailand yet. Anyhow, after we did we had some cars and a guide waiting for us to drive us around with the pre-planning of Kanitta, once again, who also booked our guide for the ruins on Friday and Saturday. After about an hour on an paved road we stopped for lunch and continued on a dirt road for another couple hours. From what I have heard, there are only has 2 paved highways in the entire country. Well, the dirt road wasn't that bad because I had only slept 4 hours the night before and 2 more hours on the bus so I was ready for some more nap time. My nap was interrupted when we had to make a pit stop because we got a flat tire, but besides that I slept quite soundly all the way to Siem Reap (the nearest town to the Angkor area).
The first day we just checked out a couple places before finding a place to stay and then went to a temple on a hill to watch the sunset as a suggestion from our guide. Apparantly, it definately was not an original idea because there was well over 100 people there doing the same thing. Unfortunately, since it was monsoon season it was too cloudy and there wasn't much of a sunset anyhow. I still managed to sneak in a couple cool pictures that didn't have any people so I wasn't to disappointed.
The next day we saw some of the ruins and we learned that the French only discoverred Angkor Thom (the city of Angkor) while Angkor Wat was always being used as a Buddhist temple (converted from a Hindu temple somewhere around 1300 AD). We also learned that all the Cambodian kings until the last one were all Hindu, but the last one who was Buddhist built slightly more temples than all his predecessors so there are slightly more Buddhist temples than Hindu ones. Still, I noticed that most of the ones we went to were Hindu. Throughout the day we were barraged with kids aged 5 to 10 at all our stops when we were getting on or off our van trying to sell us photocopied books or postcards for a very cheap price. Most of the books (about angkor wat, cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, or lonely planet books) went for about $2 to $3, but the book I wanted had some nice pictures and the photocopies really didn't do it justice so I think i will hold off until I get home and buy it from Amazon.
In the evening we went to a dinner show that had Apsara dancers and a buffet, but it was a tourist trap as usualy with a pretty mediocre show and mostly cold food (some of it was actually fresh though). After the show we went to a club that was recommended to us but it looked really sleazy and it was completely empty when we went so we went to a place called FCC Angkor which was a cool restaurant/bar with nice outdoor seating and cool 1970's styled hollywood architecture. We hung out there for a bit before walking home to go to bed early since we were planning on watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat in the morning and we had to ready to go by 5am.
Surprisingly, we managed to make it out to the sunset (once again, not at all an original idea because it was coverred in hordes of tourists), but the morning clouds once again hid the sun so there wasn't much of a sunrise. We spent the rest of the morning trying to get some energy for the day with a good breakfast and coffee and then set out to see some more temples and ruins. The main ruin we saw today was the famous one featured on the movie Tomb Raider, but there was another smaller one that had virtually no visitors that I really liked. The cool thing about the Ta Phroem (the one from Tomb Raider) was that it is the only temple that was left unalterred and coverred in vegetation. The rest of them were coverred in vegetation, but in an effort to restore it to its original state, all the vegetation had to be removed. This one was left in the original state when re-discoverred over a hundred years ago after about 500 years of isolation in the middle of the jungle.
After lunch we went to a park in the city relax for a bit because we all were quite tired from waking up early and walking around all day. The park looked really nice, but it was quite a strange park because the trees were coverred with hundreds and hundreds of bats. The grass was coverred with some sort of insect that looked like a spider but it only had six legs so I had no idea what it was. And from all the bats in the trees, we discoverred that we were sitting in grass that was coverred with all the droppings. Some of the local kids shot down one of the bats with a sling shot and all of the bats went flying around the park making all sorts of noise. It felt so out of place to see so many bats and funky insects in a normal park with green grass and nice trees that I felt like I was in the twilight zone or something. Anyhow, after that I decided I would rather go for a walk in the city than hang out in the freaky park. After the park we went to see the floating village by boat. It was interesting to see, but extremely sad as well because they all live in extremely empoverished conditions. They are mostly illegal immigrants from vietnam who are unable to own land so they live on boats. Its hard to imagine what their life in Vietnam was like if living where they were living now is better for them. It wasn't so much seeing people living impoverished that made me feel strange because I had seen poverty like that before and I know it exists in many places... It was the fact that we paid to see them like they are a tourist attaction or animals in a zoo while we take our pictures of them. After going there we were all quiet most of the way back because none of us really knew what to say.
Anyhow, we all went back and got ready to see a classical musical performance by some Swiss doctors at the free hospital that they organized for Cambodian children, but it was cancelled for personal reasons so we just had dinner and went to a bar called the laundry bar. It was a pretty cool bar that we all hung out and danced in until about 3:30. Well, some left earlier but we left at 3:30. Antione, the biggest surprise to me, stayed there until 4:30 or so. He is always a surprise to me because he looks so innocent but parties harder than any of us. Anyhow, the next day was a little rough because we were all tired from the dancing and with the bumpy road and sunlight sleeping really wasn't quite possible in the 4 hour van ride back to the border on the dirt road. Nobody else really talked either because we all were exhausted from dancing the night before. Oh well, had to party at least one night in cambodia, right?
Ko Samet Weekend (8/8 - 8/9)
So I was actually planning on working this saturday since I am supposed to work the first 2 saturdays of every month, but when I mentioned that I was going to go Ko Samet (the closest island near bangkok) after work on Saturday, my boss inisted that I take saturday off and meet my friends in the morning instead of going on my own in the evening. I was originally not even planning on going and actually doing some sightseeing in bangkok, but I had gone over six weeks without seeing a beach and I was suffering from withdrawl symtoms. So the plan was to go out on friday night with some friends and convince some more of them to come with us and then go home at night at a reasonable time so we could meet at 9am at the bus station to head towards the island. For friday evening we were planning on going to see some sort of weird dinner-dancing show in the artsy theater district and I was supposed to meet them at 7pm at the peir to cross the river where the theater district is. As usual though, nothing ever goes as planned...
First of all, after leaving the office it started to rain... and then pour... eventually it slowed down a bit enough that I could continue my walk to the bus stop. Then I had to wait about 30 minutes to actually catch my bus as I watched 4 of every other bus that I didn't need to take pass by while I was already late. Once I got on the bus as I was getting my change, I realized that I didn't have my keys on me. But there wasn't much I could really do at this point because I had no idea where I had left it. Hopefully, I had left it in the office. Regardless, even if it was in the office I was already moving on the bus further away from office and it was already locked so I couldn't get inside to my keys, if they were actually there, even if I was in front of the door right now. And there was no point in call my boss (who I live with) because he was out of town on a business trip and wouldn't return until saturday evening. Unless I called a locksmith or broke in, there was no way i was getting inside my place that night. I figured the best course of action at this point would be to just continue my plans for the night and then find a place to stay last minute and just see what ends up happening.
Of course the rain had made the road slick so now traffic was at a crawling pace which of course made me again... more late..
Luckily they all said they were running late as well, but they still had to wait about 45 minutes longer for me because of where I was coming from. We ended up going for the funky-artsy-dancing show which was actually really funny, but it ended just after we got there so we unfortunately only saw it for 5-10 minutes. We had about 4 people when we got there. The rest of the people that were coming to meet us there had said they would be much later and they trickled in during dinner. After dinner we went to some club called Bombay Bar after sitting in traffic forever at about 11:30. We were eventually got our bottle of whiskey at 11:15, but they said they ran out of coke and ice (the bottle usually includes mixers of your choice). After raising hell for a bit they said okay and found some ice and coke. I think they sent someone to the 7-11 to get some for us... Anyhow, they ended at 1am which was expected but we were still hanging out there with some other thais that we met there. One of the thai girls actually grew up in switzerland which was kinda cool. They had got a bottle of tequila for the table so I had a shot with them. It was nice to have something besides whiskey and beer after 2 months...
Anyhow, we finally left the club around 2 or so and went to Kanitta's to hang out and share a bucket. The girls decided to join us for Ko Samet around around 3 or 4 so they left to go back to their place (about 40 km away), pack, get a taxi back to the city, and catch the bus to the island. I couldn't do that because all I had with me were the clothes I am wearing and I would rather bring more than that for a weekend trip. I figured I would get up around 8 and then go to the office to get my keys, then go home to pack and change, then meet martin at the bus station at 11. Needless to say, going to bed at 5am did not really make any of this possible so I was off to a late start at 12. But with all the traffic and such I didn't make it to the bus station until 2:20. The next bus left at 3 (not too bad), but it took 3.5 hours to get there (which actually means 4 hours) and the last ferry was supposed to leave at 6 so our chances of actually making it to the island depended on taking a privately charted [expensive] speed boat. But since we were in the bus station we decided we should at least go somewhere. We put so much effort forth to wake up and get ourselves ready to go as soon as possible that it would be a waste if we just went home and stayed in Bangkok. There was a pretty picture of a waterfall in front of one of the ticket booths for some city that we had never heard of. It wasn't in our book but we almost just went to so we could at least go somewhere. It probably would have been an interesting weekend in some random city we know nothing about, but then we decided we would just go to the pier and hopefuly we would find someway to make it to the island.
Good thing we did, because it turns out they still run the boats past 6pm, but they charge you depending on how many people are on the boat. The boat ride was a little intense. You could see the storm clouds out in the distance and we were on a relatively small ferry tossing and turning in the waves going to a small island for the weekend in the dark. The boat was generally tilted about 10 degrees to one side without any waves, and then with the added effects of the waves our bags were sliding across the deck (along with chairs) more than a couple times while we clung onto something that wouldn't move. We eventually made it to the island in one piece. We were extremely surprised.
The rest of the night was not too bad, we just went to a nearby bar and shared buckets for $2.50 each, watched a free fire-dancing show in the sand, and danced on the dance floor in our sandles and beach clothes covered in sand. A true beach-bar... Definately good times and crazy buckets...
The next day we managed to get ourselves together and head out to the beach for lunch and hopes some relaxing on white sand under the shade of a palm tree with clear blue skies above and was able to get most of that for a few hours (there were a a few clouds leftover from the night before.. in more ways than one). I didn't really have a chance to wash up before leaving the island since we checked out at noon so I arrived in Bangkok in flip-flops, board shorts, and t-shirt, still with some sand stuck to my skin.
Definately a fun beachy weekend!
The Chiang Mai Adventure (7/29 - 8/2)
First, the "bus" ride up...
Since it was a long weekend for all the Thais, all the busses and even most privately hired busses were full so we hired someone that one of my friend's coworker knew of to drive a van for us all the way to Chiang Mai. We were told that it could seat 15 people and they are usually pretty nice with leather seats, nice sound system, a vcd player, etc. and it was only about 500 baht per person for a 9 hour journey so it was overall a pretty sweet deal. The problem was, of course, that they meant 15 thais, not 15 farangs (foreigners), because there was actually only 10 seats for us. Luckily, one of the guys had to cancel at the last minute so we only had to squeeze 14 people into 10 seats as opposed to 15 into 10 seats. We were all quite uncomfortable but we made the best of it and made it a 'party bus' with us singing along to whatever music we could get our hands on. I am sure we annoyed the crap out of the driver, but then again he claimed he could take 15 of us so i guess its partly his fault anyhow... At one point we all got a little quiet and some of us were starting to fall asleep when Nicola chirped up: "Hey, we can't all be falling asleep yet! We're supposed to be partying still!" And we all woke up and started singing/yelling/dancing again. With so many people we had to take a few bathroom breaks, but we eventually took our last stop around 2:30am . When we were getting back on someone offered to give up the front seat since the person in the front always got bothered to change the songs. I quickly took the offer realizing everybody was about to finally crash and I would have the benefit of the front seat without everyone bugging me every 5 minutes. So i slept well for the next 4 hours until we got to chiang mai at 6:30 in the morning.
Friday:
We all crashed for a bit before regrouping at 10:30am to eat/plan our day. After taking care of obtaining our return trip monday night (monday was a holiday) we wandered around the city a bit and looked into the different tourist excursions that were available for us such as hiking, rafting, cooking, etc. At night after getting some food and having some beers we checked out the famous night market for a bit (which ended up being just way too touristy) and head back to the bar for a bit. After the bar we went to an actual club called Bubbles. It was the first time we had been to a club in a while so it was good to go once. The name sounded a bit on the other side, and ended up being slighty on the other side, but it didnt really matter with a group of 14 people we kinda just made our own area of the club for ourselves and had our own party anyhow.
Saturday:
Our whitewater rafting was awesome! We had to take a van on a dirt road in the jungle for almost an hour and then we started rafting on a river in the middle of the jungle. The rapids started out at about a level 2 or 3 and then after skipping the part of the river that had become a level 6 by going back in our vans we started again and went through a few level 4 or 4+ rapids. Now I want to go down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and hit some level 5's!
After all the exercise of day a few of us decided to go for an authentic thai massage to get everything back in order. It once again felt quite a bit like passive yoga and hurt a bit during the massage, but afterwards when the pain went away we felt much better. Or maybe just better than the pain we endured during the massage... oh well, whatever... We went to a couple bars after dinner but then we noticed that most of the places we wanted to go to were closed because of the buddhist holiday that weekend. Instead we bought some drinks from a minimart and decided to make our own party downstairs of our hostal. About 6 of us lasted all night until 6am to wish Johanne, one of the guys that was leaving Thailand to go back home to Iceland that day, a proper farewell. We all had a lot of fun hanging out all night before going upstairs to sleep as the sun was rising.
As a side note, I do think that the best time to see a sunset is before you go to sleep, not as you are getting up. Then you know you had a fun time partying all night and now you get to sleep instead of waking up and seeing the sunrise when you know you have all day to have to stay awake still.
Sunday:
Anyhow, needless to say we didnt get up until about 1:30 or so, but felt reasonably rested when we did. We were ready to go within a few hours of waking up so by 3:30 rolled around we were ready for the cooking class I organized for everyone that was interested. We had a pretty large group (about 10 people) so we were able to just have a special afternoon/evening class just for us with our own menu. We made tom yum khoong (hot and sour shrimp soup), somtum (spicy papaya salad), fried fish with basil & chili sauce, pad thai, panaeng with pork, and for dessert we made something with waterchestnuts in a sweet syrup with coconut cream. We watched the teacher do a demonstration first before starting to cook everything ourselves at our own stations. Luckily they prepared everything and cleaned up everything for us which saved us a lot of time. We still had to do most all the chopping and dicing ourselves, but it came to us already pealed/skinned. And then while we ate the dish we just made they cleaned everything up and brought us the next plate of ingredients for the next dish. Sunday night we didnt end up doing much because we figured all the bars and places would still be close because its a religious holiday weekend so we just bought some drinks from a minimart again and hung out at the hostel again. This night ended a bit early.. We went to bed at 4am instead of 6:30am...
Monday:
Once again, we got to a bit of a late start, but not as late as the day before... I was downstairs ready to go by 11am which isn't too bad. But by the time we actually left the bus station it was 12:45 and then after the bus pulled out it decided to stop at some other bus stop for another 30 minutes or so until it finally filled up with people. But this wasn't the nice a/c'ed direct busses. This was the normal public bus that stoped to pick up anyone off the street that held that hand out. So after stop and go for nearly 2 hours a while we finally got to our destination which was actually less than 60km (35 miles) away. Of course then we had to actually figure out how to get the park, after arguing with the different "thai-taxi" drivers (the song-thauws), we eventually got ourselves a
round-trip driver for 260B, although it should have been closer to 100 or 150... We really tried to get them down but we were short on time so we settled with what we got. We ended up spending about 2 hours near the first waterfall hiking. There were 2 other waterfalls and a peak, but it isn't to spread yourself too thin. Anyhow, there were plenty of points where we took a side trail that leaded to a dead-end that said "Danger - Slippery rocks & fast current" with a nice viewpoint behind it. Needless to say we ignored the sign and stood on the slippery rocks next to the fast current. I find it quite odd that they would make a trail that leads to a sign that says to not cross the sign. Its like giving someone a map & key for buried treasure and then putting a sign "Do Not Open" on the treasure chest.
Anyhow, it was quite picturesque and I am looking forward to the pictures from that from my Nikon N-65, the digital pics are already online though. We managed to grab a songthaew (pickup truck with two benches long-ways in the back) for a price even cheaper than the public bus and managed to make back with barely enough time to get something quick to eat, change, and get going to get the bus ride home.
We were supposed to make it back to bangkok at 6am, but we didnt actually get there until after 7am and then by the time we got home after sitting in traffic and the such it was nearly 8:30. Luckily, my boss starts a bit later than the others in the office so we left his place around 9 which gave me enough time to wash up real quicki and was quite a weekend!
The Offspring: Live in Bangkok!
Monday night I went to the offspring concert with about 10 people from my program. It was cool cuz we got tickets for the very front section where everyone was getting really into it. It was funny because it almost seemed like a collection of all the foreigners living in Thailand right now. As usual, the pit got a little crazy but nothing like the couple of rock concerts I have been to in the US. It was great cuz they played a good selection of their older songs from when I first started listening to them, but I was really hoping to hear some of their stuff from their CD "Ignition", which came out before "Smash" came out. I guess their style has changed quite a bit since then though. I feel kinda old cuz it was almost exactly 10 years ago when I started listening to them. No worries, I have plenty of older cousins that make me feel young when I hang out with them! Thanks guys!
Anyhow, the night went pretty well but we did lose 2 phones in the pit which was unfortunate. I came pretty close to spraining my ankle and losing my glasses while in the pit but luckily I made it home in one peice with nothing missing.
Singapore
Last weekend I went to the island of Singapore which, from my point of view, is a mix of California and Europe somehow mixed into a Southeast Asian island. Everything there is about as clean as it is in the suburban parts of San Diego and Orange County. Then you toss in the colonial architecture in the colonial section of the city with the parliament building, city hall, opera house, and the cafes/bars along the river to give it the European feel. The british high tea time and prevalance of different types of non-asian pastries also add to the British feel of the city. But if you walk into India-town or China-town it is also very intersting because you have all the traditional shops and foods from the respective country but it still has the cleanliness and evenly paved streets of Singapore that just seems quite out of place.
Orchard street was interesting... It was a collection of extremely expensive malls with stores like gucci, armani, cartier, and vertu (with their 17,000 UK-pound cell phone). I think they had some affordable places too but I wasn't there to do any shopping so we didn't check them out.
The architecture of the city was interesting too. There are 5 buildings Orchard that are supposed to form a hand if seen from the sky. They have a theater hall near a river that looks like a local fruit called Durian from one side and from the other it matches the shape of the trees in the park. Also you see things like a chinese-styled roof sticking out of the side of a mall that has palm trees on top.
For public transport you use something called an EZ Link card that works like a debit card for the subway, bus, and even places like McDonald's and Starbucks (apparantly... i would never actually go to those places...). Its an RF card that you can actually just keep in your wallet and just press your wallet against the sensor when you want to use it so you never even have to take it out to use it.
I was meeting up with Vandna, a friend of mine that I met in Spain, so we thought it was appropriate to go out to a spanish place for some spanish wine and tapas for dinner. It was pretty cool and there was an interesting collection of different bars around there as well.
On sunday evening we hiked up this hill and got a great view of city skyline. From there we took a cable car ride to an island called Sentosa and on the way we got a cool view of the docks for all the cargo ships that come through the area.
But the craziest thing was probably the airport... I have heard of some cool airports before with movies and stuff to do, but I have never been to one of them. Singapore was the first entertainment filled airport I have been to. They had an internet cafe, music videos (that you request of course), about 5 to 10 TV's with international channels playing constantly, a sleeping lounge area that is quiet and dark, a movie lounge, a garden, and a pool... all free of course. They also have a 24-hr food court with a couple video games too. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have to spend a night in the airport there. It is definately more comfortable than many of the other hostels and guesthouses I have stayed at in my life.
Karaoke!
Okay, so I was never really a fan of karaoke because I don't have the
voice to sing that well and I don't want others to suffer that much
listening to me try to sing. I have heard too many people think they can
sing that really can't...
But here in Thailand, they love karaoke. Even the smallest roadside
restaurant here will have a stand-alone coin operated karaoke system. And
a lot of them are actually pretty good singers too so its not that bad to
listen to them.
Anyhow, since they love karaoke here so much you can go to a karaoke bar
and rent out a room for you and your friends. Its kinda nice because then
you and your friends can just scream along and have a good time.
It was good that they did have a fairly long list of english songs, but
unfortunately they were all slow sappy love songs which isn't that fun
with a group of 25 people. They didn't have much of a good rock or rap
selection. They did have "No Women, No Cry", "Its My Life", and "With or
Without You" which was pretty cool, and I was quite happy to sing along to
"Hotel California" as well which they all dedicated to me. But the rest of
their selection was pretty bad. Oh well, we had fun anyhow. That place
closed at 1 so we went to the backpacker street with all the other farangs
(foreigners) to a bar that is open 24 hours (quite convenient!) called
Silk Bar.
Anyhow, that was much more fun than I expected. I almost decided to just
go home and not go out last night, but I am quite glad I did not.
I will post the pictures by the end of this upcoming weeked so check them
out for a good laugh. I did take a couple videos but I won't be putting
them online... and you really don't want to hear us...
Sam Roi Yot National Park
Friday:
In the morning I still had no definate plans for the weekend, but as the day progressed and everybody sent emails to our yahoo group we decided to go to Sam Roi Yot National Park in the south. We wanted to get an early start so we decided to meet at the southern bus terminal (which is actually in the northeast of bangkok) at 8am. I decided I didnt really want to get sick so I was just going to go home and have dinner so I could go to sleep early and actually rest. On the way home I stopped by for dinner at this really good seafood place near the mall that I had been to before with my boss. I managed to clean out the cup of fish sauce with chili's of all the chili's so they had to bring me a new bowl of chili peppers. I think they were surprised to see a foreigner eat that many chilis.
Saturday morning:
I got up around 4:45am and got ready and made it to the bus stop by about 6, but I was supposed to get a "micro-bus" but I had no idea how to catch one of those or what they looked like so I ended up waiting at the stop for about 30 minutes trying to figure it out. Most of the locals weren't too much help either. I told one of them I needed "microbus bpaat" (which means microbus eight) and held up eight fingers, and she proceeded to hold up 5 fingers and say "five". Then I counted for her in thai from 1 to 8, and she said "five". I understand that my pronunciation was probably wrong, but you would think that she could count the number of fingers I had up or would understand if I counted for her from one to five in thai... And there was no 5 bus that came to this stop, nor was there a 5 bus that went to my destination so I have no clue where the 5 was coming from. Some other guy told me i needed to be on the other side of the road which was obviously wrong because that would take me in out of town when I had to go through town. I eventually just gave up and took a normal bus to the skytrain station (skytrains are subways that are above the ground, looks kinda like the disneyland monorail) to get at least closer to my destination. I was planning on just taking a cab from there, but I randomly ran into the people I was going to meet in the middle of plaza and they knew which bus to take so I just joined them.
satuday:
We made it to the park by riding in the back of a 'taxi' (more on the
taxi's later) and had to hike for about 30 minutes up an down a quite
steep hill to get to the beach where they had the bungalows and restaurant. And having all our bags with us and being about noon we all were pretty much drenched in sweat by the time we got our bungalow, but it was nice to be at a beach that didn't have the sound of any cars or other tourists besides ourselves. Anyhow, our bungalow was surprisingly clean and cheap ($25 total for the entire place with 11 people), but it didnt have much of a shower. It was just a plastic tube connected to a faucet in the bathroom and the toilet didnt have have a seat, it was just a bowl. But for less than $2.50 a night you really can't complain that much and it was just a place to crash at night anyhow.
We got lunch a little beachside restaurant next to our bungalow and I got a really interesting local dish called som-thum, which was an super spicy papaya salad with an unripened papaya, lime juice, garlic, peanuts, and chili peppers. It was really really good (and actually healthy!).
We then got on the back of another 'taxi' which took us to this place
where took a little boat ride for about an hour. It was pretty relaxing and interesting. There was some nice views of the mountains in the park as the sun was going down so I had fun taking pictures. I also so the weirdest animal I had ever seen in my life. It was fish that would actually swim up onto the banks of the river into the mud and actually wiggle around with little legs and breath air. It was really cool to see it because I had actually seen a special on national geographic on the same animal, but I had never expected to ever see it in its natural habitat. We also so some monkeys and some cool birds, but the fish with legs definately won the prize for the monst intersting sight!
We knew that once we went back to our bungalow there wouldnt be much to do but drink beer and hang out so we wanted to cram as much stuff in as we could. Our next adventure was conquering khao daeng (one of the known viewpoints). The task wouldn't have been that difficult had we started earlier and had more light. Going up was difficult enough with the sun setting and a very badly marked trail. There were some arrows that were set against a rock, but you could just take it and turn it the other direction so you really had no idea if it was pointing the right direction or not. Eventually after getting off the trail and back on repeatedly we made it to the top with enough time to take some pictures and run down before it got too dark (we were quite late on that one!). So we were stumbling around in the twilight on a very badly marked trail in a mostly deserted thai national park. But with all the odds against us we made it down without twisting any ankles, scraping our legs, or grabbing a cactus instead of a rock for support.
Then we had dinner and a few much needed beers before at the 'village' before we hiked over the hill in near pitch darkness back to the beach. After surviving the 30 minute pitch-dark trek over the hill we bought some more beers (before the only shop closed on that side of the hill) and hung out on the beach for a while listening to music and the waves crashing. About half us ended up sleeping until the sunrose on the beach, while the other half spent the entire night in the bungalow.
Sunday:
I woke up around 5:30 as the sun was rising and stayed out until the sun was out before coming back into the bungalow to sleep a few more hours. After breakfast we all hiked up to a really huge cave (although it wasn't a cave anymore because it had caved in making it look more like a really big hole. Regardless, they had built a temple in the middle of the cave as they like to put cool temples just about everywhere here. It was pretty serene exploring around and climbing a bit there.
Then we caught a 'taxi' to another cave that wasn't too far away. This one had not caved in so it was pitch dark inside, but they hadn't installed lights, handrails, and guides like how they do in other countries. It was just a big cave with the ever-confusing wooden board with arrows pointed on them that you could turn to whatever direction you want. Actually, I was surprised because they did have an shed where you could rent flashlights from and some metal stairs in them as well. The cave was really fun to explore because we could just hike around in it as we pleased. We didnt have to worry about any tourguides or restrictions on where we could go as long as we could get ourselves out eventually. We had some fun seeing some bats and some huge rooms and some crazy deep drops before hiking our way out back into the blazing heat and then down the side of the mountain on a 'trail' that we kinda just made up.
By this point I had a huge headache mostly due to the fact that I hadn't been drinking enough water. I guess the 2 liters of water I drank definately wasn't enough because I had yet dispose of it in any way but sweating. In addition, my legs were starting to ache excessively so I am sure I was entering dehydration so after we had lunch and took the boat (instead of the hike) around the hill to the beach I opted to just grab a chair and take a nap on the beach instead of checking out some other cave or going for a walk along the ocean which what the others were doing. The quiet alone-time was definately a much needed break after being in a group of 11 people for such a long time.
After taking a 'shower' and packing up we hiked over the hill and caught another 'taxi' to take us to town to try and catch the last bus out. But things had been going too well over the weekend and something had to go wrong eventually so on the way to town we got a flat tire and had to wait another 30 minutes before we got another ride to the city to try and go to bangkok. The best part was that the locals no idea how to change the tire or use a jack to lift the car. We had to help them figure that part out. When we left they were still trying to figure out how to take off the spare so I hope they eventually figured it out.
When the driver dropped us off right next to the bus ready to go, once again it just felt way to easy and we knew something had to go wrong. We of course found out that the bus was sold out and the next bus that was not sold out was at 6:30 in the morning which would mean all of us would be quite late and groggy to work in the morning. We ended up hiring a van to take us which only costed a dollar more and was quite comfortable and quick. It had leather seats and a nice stereo (10-disc changer, new reciever, and an EQ) so we played some u2 and some other chillout music so the ride back was actually quite enjoyable. Luckily on the trip I found out that another german guy lived nearby me so we were able to share the taxi ride back and save some baht.
Thai Taxi's:
Okay, so in Bangkok they have normal taxi's that you would expect in just about most cities in the world. They have meters and seats and life is good. But in the rest of thailand most taxi's just a sort of modified (or unmodified) pickup truck. Some of them have two boards along the longer sides for you to sit on, some have a cover in case it rains, and some just have a bunch of coconuts in the back that you have to sit around and deal with. In addition, none of them have any sort of a meter so you have to ask them how much it would cost first and bargain with them for a bit before agreeing to go with them. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery for a bitter idea of what I am talking about...
Last Weekend
On friday I went to a job site and by the time we got back it was pretty late (about 7). After getting back to the office I had dinner and a few beers with some co-workers. I was supposed to go downtown to a bar with some of the other students in my program, but it was already 10 and I wanted to actually get some sightseeing done in Bangkok so I was planning to get up the next morning at 7am to get an early start. I figured it would be a smarter idea if I just went home and got some rest. In addition, it was pouring like crazy and it didnt really encourage me to go downtown and then walk around looking for the bar that they all were in.
On saturday I went by myself downtown with the intention of going to the museum, grand palace, and a wat (temple) or two. But I got quite lost on the bus and it took me over 2 hours two get tow here I needed to get to the museum and then I ended up spending most of my time there. It was a really good museum that really explained thai history from the 7 AD to present day. And then I met this dutch guy who was a 45+ year old software engineer for philips who still liked to travel the backpacker way. It was really cool talking to him because he was pretty familiar with the area and he had some interesting bits of information to share.
After that I went to one of the big malls (a total of 8 stories) in a part of town called Siam Square to meet up with some friends for dinner and a movie. Dinner was alright (it was mall food) but the for the movie we watched Spiderman 2, which was really cool. It wasn't a deep or thought-provoking movie at all, but it was quite entertaining.
Afterwards, we all went to one of the girl's apt to hang out for a bit. She is a local here and just likes hanging out with all of us farangs (pronounced: fuh-lawngs; it means westerner) where we all ended up just spending the night. It was a pretty cool just chilling out on the balcony with a view of bangkok at night hanging out with all of them.
The next day we went to the weekend market where they sell just about everything from pets, meat, clothes, fruits, tea, and crafts. Its mostly clothes and crafts though. I tried to bargain a bit with the shirts that I bought, but when I was with my german friends they would not budge. I got them to go down a lil bit when I was alone. I think the next time I go to buy some bigger things I will go alone so I can really bargain with them and get a better deal (because the shirt I bought for 200baht or $5 was overpriced).
After the market we went back to the girls apt and orderred dinner and hung out. We counted that we had about 8 countries and 4 continents represented in a room with a bit over 10 people in it. For not being really planned at all we were all quite impressed. I did learn how to make a brazillian drink that night was fun. Its a mojito without the soda and mint and with vodka instead of rum. Its a definately a step up from the milder mojito (cuban), but with all the lime in it you can't taste the alcohol at all.
So then sunday night I finally went back home.
