Hey folks
Well, arrived in South East Asia nearly 3 weeks ago and as per usual things have certainly been intriguing. I certainly can't remember the last time anyone pulled a 5-foot python down from my ceiling anyway... and am trusting that it won't happen again for at least a wee while - but you never can tell round these parts.
I arrived in Bangkok but left within 36 hours - having seen some of that big smelly city before i didn't feel the need to hang around. I went straight down to an island called Ko Chang with my mate Ange from London and her boyfriend Sam. I checked into a bungalow near the beach, but after one night another bungalow even closer to the beach became available so i moved there instead - while one of the thai girls that works there was cleaning my previous room for a future guest, she noticed a decent sized python wrapped around the ceiling rafters in the bathroom. Fortunately it wasn't of the poisonous type (instead it just crushes rib cages and so on), so 4 thai's were immediately sent to capture it. I wonder if it was in there when I was sleeping. The australian couple in the bungalow next to it hadn't realised that i'd just shifted that morning, and didn't see me for a day so they feared the worst, but were relieved to find me not swallowed by snake and sun-bathing on the beach the following day.
I hung out in Ko chang for a few days, and I turned from white, to pink, to brown, then a crusty-flaky colour, then back to white again. Well, that was my first burn of the trip so hopefully the next one stays brown. Ange and Sam went back to Bangkok cos sam had to fly home to go back to work and so i sunned myself for a few days before to returning to Bangkok briefly, met Ange, got a visa for Cambodia and we headed across the border.
The trip to cambodia was pretty mad. The moment you leave thailand and enter cambodia, you leave behind tar-sealed roads and instead start driving on red dusty dirt roads that have massive pot holes. At one point the bus would drive off the road completely and drive right down next to the fields cos it was easier on the kidneys to drive down there rather than on the actual roads themselves...!! So much dust billows up off the roads that the driver has almost zero-visibility, and when the sun goes down it is only because the traffic turn their lights on that the drivers can see anything coming when its like less than 40 feet way... that is until... BAM!!!... we hit a big pot-hole and all the lights on our bus goes out. So we pull over to the side of the road for some emergency repairs, but none of the cambodians have a torch so they have to borrow one that my 4-year old niece gave me for christmas to get the lights back on - they only get them up to half strength and we manage to crawl our way into the cambodia town of Siam Reap...
Siam Reap itself is not too exciting a town in itself - it is however immediately next to Angkor - an ancient Khmer (the main ethnic group in cambodia) city that 1000 years ago probably had a population of 750,000 at a time when london's population was only 100,000. It used to be the capital on the ancient Khmer kingdom but then they decided to shift the capital, the city got abandoned and the jungle grew threw it, till some french people travelling through the jungle in the 19th century stumbled across it again. Loads of big stone temples everywere, spread out over a massive area. Hard to think that it was abandoned and unknown for several hundred years given that it is so spectacularly cool...
If you've seen the movie Lara Croft's Tombraider, then you've seen Angkor, but if not you can look at a small sample of it here:
http://www.circleofasia.com/photos/showphoto.asp?MId=1100&Id=1106
We bought a 3-day pass for the whole temple complex, but pretty much covered most of it in the first 2 days. So on the third day we went to Happy Herbs Pizzeria, got a pizza with (unsurpringly) some happy herbs and went and stone-zoned among the temples for a while - twas fun, a lot of the big faces carved on the sides of the temples look way more serene when ur stoned.
After that we took a long boat-ride down to the very cambodian city of Battambang. I say very Cambodian because its the largest town in Cambodia that is OFF the main tourist trail. Twas fun to see normal cambodia life transpiring as we people-watched along the streets - like a khmer family of five off to the market - on a 50cc scooter!!! Dad on the front with one little kiddy on his knee, and mum on the back holding on to two more little kiddies! Also got to see a Cambodia farmer taking 8 HUGE live pigs off to the market also - all strapped upside down on the roof-rack of his ute!! Ah, Battambang was great, and its kind of a pity we didn't have more time there.
We are currently in Sihanoukville (the beach capital of Cambodia) for a few days, before Ange runs out of money and goes back to London. Then I'll go the capital, Phnom Penh, for a few days before crossing the border into Vietnam and slowly making my way from the very south to the very north of the country over 30 days. Then it will be time for to go to Laos. Then it will be time to go back to Bangkok and fly back to London. That won't be till early April, which is quite a long time away. Good.
Gotta go now, will write more another time
LOVE STEVEO
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