The sweet smell of sewers
Bangkok, Thailand.
We had a great day at Angkor Wat and around. We ended up only buying the one day pass ($20 each) and it was enough for us. We just get so bored with architecture and old stuff after a while. But I had fun taking photos the whole day. There were so many wonderful little details carved into the stone temples. It was great. Lots of little surprises if you looked hard enough. This was our first ancient ruin experience (and we’ve had lots of them over the past 8 months) that felt really adventurous. We could literally climb all over the fallen stones and ancient carvings. Other than all of the other tourists, it felt like we were discovering these amazing places. I took a lot of photos which I’ll try to upload soon (I’m so behind on uploading pictures. It’s daunting).
We stayed in Siem Reap longer than we originally planned both because I got a little sick (I’m fine now) and because we really needed to plan out our next moves before going to Thailand. Since they changed the rules and you can only have 15 days within the country upon arrival over land (30 days by airplane or more if you pay for a visa before entering) we needed to figure out what we were going to do after S.E. Asia so that we wouldn’t squander our 15 days sitting in computer labs stressing out. So after a lot of work and soul searching we decided to accept an offer to WWOOF in Croatia for two months at a horse farm/resort called Linden Tree Retreat (http://www.lindenretreat.com/). We originally were going to try to WWOOF for one month and then cut our travel time down by a month. But since we didn’t volunteer in SE Asia we wouldn’t be saving as much money by cutting our trip short and not volunteering for a total of two more months. So it made sense to stay that long and that’s what they require, anyway. We ruled out Greece because we just feel like we want something really different. And the place in Croatia just sounds really cool. So we’re going to fly to Milan, Italy on January 29th, take a bus to Florence for 5 euros (they’re running a special. This price totally beats the almost 100 euros it costs for the 2 hour train! Crazy!), stay a few days and eat pizza, steak, gelato, and drink yummy wine, and then bus and ferry across the Adriatic Sea to Croatia and our 2 months of servitude. Hopefully we’ll come out of this experience being awesome horse riders, knowing how to cook some Croatian food (I have no idea what Croatian food is like. Here’s hoping it’s tasty), and having lots of great memories of our time WWOOF-ing.
Right now we’re about to embark on another long bus ride (11 hours) down the tail of Thailand and then a speed boat ride to the island of Koh Tao. Yesterday we took what will hopefully be the first of our last three giant bus rides in this corner of the world, from Siem Reap to Bangkok. We were really not looking forward to it (I think we’re burnt out on long bus rides, too). But it ended up not being so bad. The road from Siem Reap to the Thai border is notoriously bad, supposedly because an airline pays off the government to keep it that way and thus encourage tourists to fly to and from Thailand. It was dusty, bumpy, and slow. But it wasn’t so bad. It took a couple of hours to get through the border crossing since it’s such a busy place. We saw three dudes jump over a fence on the Thai side and run across the border to Cambodia. That was interesting.
Once on the Thai side we loaded into a luxurious minivan for the remainder of our journey to Bangkok. It was such a luxurious ride in our fancy automobile going down real paved highways. We were really excited about it for maybe the first hour or so of the four hour ride. Weirdly, they also drive on the left side of the road here. That freaked me out for a while, too. I kept trying to pretend that I was driving and I would make decisions for our car. We would’ve died. I don’t think I can handle this switch of directions thing. It’s also hazardous for walking. I never know where the cars are going to come from! (Plus they don’t really follow traffic rules–but it’s better than the very lawless Chinese.)
It’s more like the US in Bangkok than anywhere else we’ve visited. There are giant gas stations complete with 7-11s along the super highways. You wouldn’t even know you were in Thailand when you go in them except for the seaweed flavored potato chips and durian (a spiky fruit that smells like dead things and sort of tastes like sweaty onions) candies (plus the squattie potties in the very clean bathrooms). We spent one night in a crappy little hotel room that smelled like the sewer. It seems to be the odor-theme of this area of town (the very touristy Khau San Road area). But we decided to just go ahead and leave tonight for island bliss, so it was only one night of nasal torture. We spent today going to the center of town to do some shopping in the giant shopping malls. We ended up getting running shoes for Stephen since he’s been needing some way to get exercise and looking at wedding rings. What a pain that was. We have completely different tastes and Steve has freakishly big knuckles. The only rings that really fit are very difficult to get off again. But I guess he shouldn’t be taking it off, so it won’t be that big of a problem. And our tastes aren’t that different. He just wants something wide and thick and I want something thin and narrow. And the wedding sets they had at the mall were just the same rings but one was a smaller size. So we’ll keep looking and I’m sure we’ll find something before May. I was just hoping to get something here since, in theory, it’d be cheaper. But we might just have to look in Europe. Maybe have something made.
As long as we survive the long journey tonight, we should be relaxing on Koh Tao in the morning drinking something fruity and lying on a sandy beach. I can’t wait!
Tags: Bangkok Thailand, Siem Reap, Thailand
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