Cindy and John’s Adventures

So today we rented bicycles.  We were so happy to be on bicycles.  They were a bit shady bicycles but they had brakes.  And 2 gears.  (Natalie didn’t test the bicycle she had and her brakes didn’t work very well – luckily it’s pretty flat).

We decided since we hadn’t been on bikes for a while to have an easy day.  That plan didn’t work out too well.

We started at Prasat Kravan.  We decided not to hit Angkor Wat yet since we wanted to be able to appreciate the other ones before we saw the “Temple to end all Temples”.  This was another Vishnu temple with 5 brick towers.

Next we went to a small, off the main road one called Bat Chum.  Which looked almost exactly like Prasat Kravan except for it was in a bit more disrepair.  But it had 2 cute little girls there that were trying to sell the obligatory “10 postcards – 1 dollar”.  They also were selling bracelets.  They had 3 of them.  I liked one of them and so John asked how much.  I’m not sure if they were every asked that so we gave them a dollar and they seemed to be pretty happy with that.

All of the temples have these little kids/adults selling stuff.  Most of the kids sell scarves, bracelets, postcards, wooden flutes (which they all play for you when they’re trying to sell them) while the adults are trying to sell bigger items like t-shirts and guidebooks.  Kind of annoying but a fact of life when you’re in a poor country at a tourist destination.  Oh, and all of them have overpriced food stalls and pineapple hawkers (“lady, pineapple?”).

Next was Banteay Kdei.  There are these huge heads on the top of each entrance (4 entrances N,S,E,W).  Across from it was Sras Srang – this reservoir that was kind of pretty.

Next was Pre Rup.  And East Mebon.  These are pyramid looking ones that were pretty darn cool looking.

Here’s where things start to get, well, probably not very smart for John and Cindy.  We decided to see 3 more temples.  Unfortunately they were 5 km (over 2 miles) between East Mebon and the next one, Banteay Samre and then 5 km to Phnom Bok and then 5 km to Chau Srei Vibol.  Plus we had to come back.  I’m sure you can do the math taking into account these were kind of shady bikes.

But, we went anyway.  Banteay Samre was a huge one that had these really coolly restored elephants on the corners of the temple.  The ones we had seen so far didn’t have trunks but these were not trunc-ated (haha).

On the way to Banteay Samre we stopped off to buy some bananas.  The woman didn’t speak English and we were trying to buy 3 bananas.  We couldn’t get our point across so we just gave up and asked how much for the whole bunch (like 10-12 bananas).  She ran off to get her bag to show us how much…1000 riel.  25 cents.  We’re like – how can you argue with that.  We ended up eating a couple and giving the rest away to some of the kids.

Then we went to Phnom Bok.  This one we had to climb up at fairly large hill to get to.  Over 500 steps.  Not very well restored but apparently used as some kind of military development because it had these huge cannons hanging out on the hill.  The view was MAGNIFICENT!  You could see for miles (since it’s so flat).  This was one of our favorite spots.  Plus, bonus, no neon-hatted tour groups.  I don’t really mind tour groups (John would disagree with me on this one) but they’re just so loud.  Especially the big Asian ones where it seems like they need to shout at one another constantly.  I did see this one thing my dad would like – a tour group that had earphones on and their tour guide was speaking into a microphone.  That way the guide didn’t have to shout that loud for all his guidees to hear.  I’ve been on some of these tours and unless you’re standing next to the guy all you hear is that Charlie Brown “buwabuwabumablweess”.

Next was Chau Srei Vibol.  Which we should have skipped.  It was totally lame.  And 10 km round-trip.  Along a pretty bad road.  We got stopped by a nice man on a motorbike that was wondering where the heck we were going (since it was quite apparent we were kind of off the main tourist track).  He tried to convince us to rent his services for the next day to go 3 hours on motorbike to this other temple.  I would have rather have died.  I didn’t like 2 hours on a tuk-tuk let alone 3 hours on a motorbike.  But there were tons of kids along the road who yell “hello, what’s your name?”- which is usually the extent of their English – John loves to mess with the kids.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re just a big kid yourself.
This was also kind of funny.  We stopped for 2 small waters.  We gave her 1,000 Riels.  25 cents.  It didn’t seem like enough but she wouldn’t take any more.  Later on we stopped for 2 more small waters (when you’re going 50 km in a day you’re drinking a ton of water).  1 dollar.  So we figured it all rounded out.

The trip back SUCKED.  We were tired, feeling dumb for taking on that long of a bike ride on the first day and our butts were on FIRE!  We had to stop a bunch of times just to let our butts cool down.  Thank goodness we had splurged for hot water (our Phnom Penh one had only cold water) – it never felt so good.

So, since we had the 7-day pass we decided to use it.  Armed with our trusty can-opener teethed tuk-tuk driver, we went 2 hours outside Siem Reap to a temple called Beng Mealea.

Picture this…you’re walking through the jungle with a funny wide-brimmed hat and tall boots and suddenly, you see a rock that has carvings on it.  You start wandering around to find, yes, it’s a huge complex and you’ve stumbled upon a lost civilization.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly like that.  But it was kind of cool.  So a lot of Angkor is being restored.  This one hasn’t really been touched.  So you go through these crumbling doorways, haunted passageways, scrambling across large boulders that are really part of the original structure (which are off-limits in some of the other temples), trees that have overtaken parts of the temple…plus…here’s the key…there was nobody there but us.  Well, for the first hour anyway since we’d gotten picked up at 6 am.  And really, when we left a couple of hours later there were only a handful of us Westerners wandering around.

And some kids.  I mean, how cool would it be to live in a place where this huge decomposed temple is your playground.  And we met these 4 boys with slingshots that were playing around with a bat they found.  Boys will be boys…

Anyway, we could have stayed all day but metal-mouth told us we needed to go if we wanted to see the other 2 temples that day…

After another 1 1/2 hours we reached Banteay Srey.  Which was about the antithesis of Beng Melea.  There were tons of tour groups there since it’s only about 45 minutes away from Siem Reap.  And I guess if you come to the temples on a tour group it’s mandatory you all wear silly hats.  There were matching hats of neon yellow, pink and green (which I guess makes it really easy for your tour guide to find you), straw hats…it would have been interesting to get an aerial shot…and amazingly, women in high heeled sandals.  I actually saw a woman in a suit.  Granted, it was linen, but it was a jacket and skirt and heels.  Amazing – I would have taken a header right into one of the rocks if I was wearing heels…

Oh yeah, the temple.  It was one of the most intricately carved temples we saw.  Most of the temples were done during a 40 year period by Jayavarman VII but this cleary wasn’t one of them.  Beautiful flowers, delicate women…and it was a different color (not concrete colored)…kind of like the color of Arizona…that beautiful terra-cotta color.  I mean, most of the temples are pretty blocky and, well, looked like they were made by an engineer.  This one looked like it was done by an interior designer.  I thought it was gorgeous.  John was not very impressed.  What does he know.

Anyway, we stayed for a short while but then after a brief toilet stop (it’s kind of amazing how clean the toilets are here – I was picturing it being kind of nightmarish since there are so many people that go through them) we went on our way to our final stop of the day…

Kbal Spean.  “River of a Thousand Lingas”.  After a short walk you get to this river and it’s amazing.  Carvings of Vishnu, Shiva and others are carved along the riverbed (Hindu gods).  And we’re not talking crude carvings.  We’re talking full-on detailed carvings.  And, well, I guess 1,000 Lingas.  Although I didn’t count them.  Lingas are a phallic symbol that associated with Vishnu.  Although the Lingas in the river looked more like circles.  I guess when you lose a lot of 3-dimensional aspects you got to go with circles.  Apparently it is believed that when water passes over lingas it becomes sacred or magical.  All I can say is that it was amazing.  I mean, what a total pain in the butt to carve them.

That was our Day 2.  We were tired of riding in a tuk-tuk after 2 days of it.  We were ready to get some exercise…

So we arranged with a tuk-tuk driver the night before for a 6 am pick-up at our guesthouse.  Well, our tuk-tuk driver came; along with his father.  Who was also a tuk-tuk driver.  So, you guessed it, the father became our tuk-tuk driver.  Which was fine…he spoke enough English to get us where we needed to go and he could probably open a tin-can with his teeth.  He had the most amazing pointed metal rods as teeth.  They looked painful.

So anyway, we were off to the place where we got our passes – it took about 10 minutes and $60/pp later we had passes for 1 week.  Which apparently was unusual since the lady that was selling them automatically asked “1 day”or “3 day” – and we replied “7 day”, which they gladly sold us.

After we picked up Natalie we headed SE of Siem Reap to the Roluos Group – which were some of the oldest of what is included in the Angkor pass.  What I didn’t get before we came here (mostly because I didn’t want to be disappointed – so I limited my research!) was that there are quite a number of these temples scattered around the area and it’s kind of up to you how extensively you want to view them.  We went for the 1 week pass so we had the potential to see them all.  And we didn’t want to get “Wat-ted out” which both Roniq and Natalie said they had suffered from.  Meaning everything starts looking the same and you’re like “Wat-ever”.  Boy, I have to leave this internet cafe soon…

We visited Lolei, Preah Ko and Bakong that first day – Bakong being the biggest and most impressive.  But I thought the coolest thing was the guy that was doing miniatures of some of the temples.  He had done Angkor Wat and a couple of other ones and it was like getting a cheap-bastard helicopter view of the temples.  And he was a nice man and it was his birthday so, really…

Next…floating village/flooded forest.  We went by tuk-tuk to a certain point and then by motorbike the rest of the way to where we got on a “big boat” to the floating village.  It’s this kind of strange village that is on stilts kind of in the marshlands of this gigantic lake.  But to me it’s like, why would you build a village in the middle of a lake?  But it was very cool.  We went from the “big boat” to a dug-out canoe and were paddled around by a woman that was 8-months pregnant and her daughter who was around 10ish (mostly by the mother – the daughter kind of helped) and went through the floating forest.  It’s essentially what you would expect to see – a bunch of cool looking trees half under water that you can canoe through.  The mom took some leaves off of a tree and proceeded to eat one and then handed us some — um, yeah, they tasted like leaves.  But apparently edible leaves since I’m writing this blog today…

It kind of looked like we were in a semi-untouristed area until we were heading back to see all the tourists coming in.  I guess we timed our whole trip pretty well.  We had the first 2 temples we went to practically to ourselves and the village/forest to ourselves…this, we decided was the key to viewing the temples…avoiding the large tour groups with their matching hats…

That night we went to the butterfly garden for dinner (yummmm) although we didn’t see any butterflies because, well, it was night, and said goodbye to Natalie who was on her way to Laos the next day.  It was definitely a good start to our viewing of the Angkor temples.

We were here! Siem Reap! Closest city to Angkor Wat!

We stayed at this guesthouse pretty close to where all the bars/restaurants were called Baca Villa. The first thing we noticed as we stepped in here was, uh oh, mosquito country. Time to bring out the Deet. And we had changed to Doxycycline. Since Larium, the malaria pills we had taken up to this point, didn’t work that well in this area. Something about mosquito-resistance. Some of the problems with Doxy is that you have to take it daily instead of weekly and it can cause sun problems. But those are the breaks…

And we met back up with Natalie that night and had drinks and dinner. Good and cheap margaritas here.

We all decided to do the Roluos Group and the Floating Village/Forest the next day.

In Phnom Penh – we didn’t do much; hit the internet cafe; hit a couple more Wats; went to the Central Market (which was huge) – it’s kind of funny here but you can get a brand-spanking new Lonely Planet here which retails for 22 USD for the rock-bottom price of 5 USD.  Probably cheaper, but that’s what we got quoted.  John wanted to get one but I was like, we’re only going to be here 2 weeks and 1 week plus will be at Angkor Wat so I didn’t see any sense – I would rather get one that just focuses on Angkor Wat if anything…but yeah, it was hard to beat 5 USD.  We also bought a few DVD series…since TV hasn’t been, well, hello, we’re in other countries!

We also went to this mall-type area.  John had read about this a couple of years ago where this was the first escalator in the country.  And people were riding it like, well, a ride.  Disneyland comes to a Cambodian mall.  The only reason we even remembered this story was that there were still people (although, I’m sure, not to the same extent) riding the escalator like it was a foreign thing.  It’s kind of amazing the stuff we take for granted.  Amazing what a 1 hour plane ride will take you.

Anyway, we also booked our bus to Siem Reap.  To see something on my top-10 list.  And to see where Tomb Raider was filmed.  Okay, slight exaggeration, but it did make Angkor look pretty darn cool.  This was something I was looking forward to this entire trip…

Our guesthouse had the most comfortable bed. I mean, maybe our standards have gone down the toilet but we’ve never slept so well. On the subject of toilets though, it sounds like our toilet has indigestion. It gurgles like it’s got an upset tummy on occasion, even if we’re nowhere near it. Aughh…Cambodia…

Anyway, we asked our guesthouse if there was a bakery nearby since this French guy we had met at the beach said next to France they were the best bakeries – well, coming from someone that should know – we had to try something. But we never found the bakery. The tuk-tuk driver from the previous day that had waited for us at the embassy so patiently rolled by and took us to this restaurant where we had a really good restaurant that we actually paid for the meal in Riels. Yummy.

After breakfast we headed to Toul Sieng Genocide Museum. I think we’re the only tourists that actually walk around here because the tuk-tuks are pretty cheap, but these feet were made for walking, not hanging out of a tuk-tuk. And it’s hot here, but not super-hot. Anyway, the museum. It was one of the most graphically disturbing museums I’ve ever been to. The Khmer Rouge in the 70’s converted a high school into a prison and “processed” over 17,000 prisoners through with only about a dozen surviving. And they kept incredibly detailed records. So they had pictures of the prisoners (which included little kids/infants). Then after they were tortured/killed they were transferred to the killing fields for mass burial. And they also used the kind of barbed wire where it doesn’t have the sticky things where you could commit suicide against. Nope, they wanted the prisoners alive so they could be tortured. Lovely.

After that we went to the Russian Market where you can buy anything your heart desires. We saw a guy carrying a motorbike in pieces (well, he had friends – it looked kind of heavy). Self-assembly required. Also, I saw Old Navy, Aeropostale clothes. Pretty funny.

After perusing the market we headed to Independence Monument (not much to it). Enroute, we met Natalie, a German, who was attempting to get a taxi to the National Museum but the drivers couldn’t understand where she wanted to go (which I don’t really get considering there are like 5 tourist attractions in the city) so she ended up walking with us since the monument was on the way to the National Museum. And after seeing the monument, stopping to get a croissant which was really good, we ended up tagging along to the National Museum. As far as museums go, it was pretty good. Cool building, cool statues, cool courtyard in the middle, it smelled really good because of the flowers that were being put in front of the statues of the buddha…kind of amazing what you can do with big rocks.

After that we grabbed some nachos and a beer (Natalie introduced us to beer and sprite – pretty yummy – apparently commonly done in Germany) and made plans to meet for dinner.

We decided we wanted to try street food. Which ended up being almost as expensive as restaurant food which doesn’t really make sense since all the other countries we’d been to had significantly cheaper street food. But we had this really good squid. Yum. After we headed to riverside for a drink, then back to Friends for margaritas and dessert – John was in heaven with Margarita lime meringue pie. After that we grabbed a tuk-tuk back to Natalie’s guesthouse with promises to meet up in Siem Reap in a few days and walked the 2 blocks to our guesthouse.

Okay, I really hate that term 3rd world, but if the shoe fits…

We kind of started things out with typical fashion. We slept in the airport. By choice. We had a 7 am flight to Cambodia and we just decided it was easier to sleep in the airport than get up at 4 am, having to find a taxi and all that. Plus, we were just being cheap – if we went the night before we wouldn’t have to pay for accomodations that night and we could take cheap public transport instead of I’m sure a lovely taxi that would jack up the price since it’s 4 am. It really wasn’t so bad. We had stayed at the airport previously but we were inside the departure area. This time we couldn’t check in until the following morning so we were outside – there were tons of restaurants open late and some really uncomfortable chairs but it was only for a few hours anyway…

Anyway, we took a flight on Air Asia after hearing the horror stories of going overland from Bangkok to Cambodia – I’m sure they aren’t as bad as they sound but the plane ticket was pretty cheap so we went this route. Our guesthouse, Sunday, came and picked us up in the slowest tuk-tuk. I mean the Thailand ones go way faster. When you’re being passed by bikes you know you aen’t going very fast…I’m sure it has nothing to do with there being 5 of us stuffed into it!

So, being without a guidebook, we picked up a cartoon map at the airport and found this tourist throwaway which actually had a pretty good map in it – these would be our guides for the time we’re in Phnom Penh…

But first things first – we had to get a visa for Thailand. Because we kind of didn’t plan very well. And we were going to stay 35 days. For Americans we automatically get this visa-exempt 30 day thing but we’d be staying 35 days. And we didn’t really want to have to do a visa run since we’d be in the north (I guess they’re pretty common but it just seemed like it would cost more to do the visa run then just go get a 60 day visa). If we’d be in the south we’d go just visa run to Malaysia but it seemed a bit shadier going over the border to Myanmar. Little did we know what a pain in the butt it would be. We go to the Embassy armed with our passports, our plane tickets out of Thailand, our receipt for accomodations in Thailand…and after an hour of waiting and watching all these Cambodians cut in line…the lady looked at our e-ticket and said it didn’t look like an e-ticket – so we pull out our connecting flights to Argentina…and she still looked at us like we were criminals and told us to come back at 3 pm to see if the e-tickets would work as our exit out of Thailand. We went back at 3 pm where she said like 2 words to us besides “give me $70 for the visas.” We are hopeful we have a lovely sticker in our passports at 3 pm 6 December. Which would have been 5 December (3 day turnaround) except for the Thai king’s b-day which of course they have off. Wonderful.

So after all that running back and forth between the embassy and our guest house we found a place in the tourist throw-away called Friends that said they had good margaritas. Okay, we’re sold. It actually ended up being a restaurant that trained street kids. Very cool. And very Ro (which I thought was funny after I reread her e-mails about her trip to Cambodia and she mentioned this restaurant). And very good margaritas. We had a couple of drinks and tapas and then headed to an Indian restaurant that had been mentioned in the throwaway and I had seen in the lonely planet (yes, I had written stuff down in a bookstore – so sue me). It was run by Indian people (always a plus!) and was very good. After that we went and crashed since we hadn’t slept in a while.

The weirdest thing so far about this country is that things are paid for in both US dollars and Cambodian Riels. You go to the cash machine and it gives you US dollars. Which is semi-convenient considering the Riel is 4,000 to 1 and so you’d be carrying around a huge stack of bills. But it still is really strange. But they don’t use the US change. So you’ll get something at the grocery store and it will be $1.25. So you’d give them $1 USD and 1,000 Riels. On street food you use the Riel and in local restaurants; but otherwise you use the US dollar.

It’s quite a jolt back to reality since you actually know how much you’re spending. I mean, when you have to convert it from whatever currency it makes it seem kind of unreal – I mean, we track our spending at the end of the day but it isn’t as real as when you say something like that pirated DVD is 2 USD. Even though in Thailand they’re like 100 Baht (3 USD) it seems cheaper since it’s quoted in Baht. Yes, it’s totally psychological but hey, this whole journey we’re going through is pretty much psychological…

which goes to both Koh Jam and Koh Lanta – mid-trip the ferry stopped and we were transferred to long-tailed boats.

Koh Jam is definitely a bit rustic – not a ton to do and there is electricity from 6 pm to 12 am. I think most people just sleep here. This one girl that got off the boat with us must have slept like 15 hours a day. So we stayed a couple of days and all we really did was sleep, drink, walk the beach, take a couple of dips in the water and chat with the other people there. We would have stayed longer but the beach was really rocky. Like, we were going into the water with our Tevas on. And that’s not very fun. I mean, we’re picturing the Thailand beaches like in the pictures. So off to Koh Lanta we go…

So we got back on the long-tail boat and caught the Koh Lanta ferry the rest of the way and found our way to the Red Snapper – a restaurant that has rooms for rent in the back that was recommended to us by a couple we had met in Krabi. It was run by a Dutch couple that was really nice – nice rooms and fairly close walk to the beach. And the sand here was much better. So we did what you do in beach towns – lie around a lot. And caught up on some movies – like Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – kind of confusing in my personal opinion…

We headed back to Krabi after several days and went to Ao Nang one day, which is the closest beachy town and then on a snorkelling trip with like 50 of our closest friends. We went on this 4-island deal which turned out to be pretty lame, but what do you expect for 450 Baht. It’s so funny how different people are. I mean, most of the “Westerners” strip-down to your bathing suit, grab some snorkelling equipment, jump in the water and start snorkelling. While the Thai people went in with t-shirts and shorts, life-jackets and stayed in a clump pretty close to the boat. The next island was a bit-better since we were in deep water so you pretty much had to snorkel but the next one you could get to the beach so the majority of the people headed to walk on the beach while we were left to look at the beautiful fishes in fairly shallow water. Let me just say that John, well, he doesn’t really like the deep water. The next island had the most gorgeous sand where we had lunch and the last one was your typical island.

We think next time we’re going to hire out a long-tailed boat and just tell him where we want to go. But we didn’t know – that just means we have to come back!

Anyway, we headed back to Bangkok the next day and stayed at the Asha Guesthouse which was on the Skytrain line so we were able to take a local bus to the Skytrain and then headed to the guesthouse from there. It was pretty cool – we made reservations to stay there again when we come back from Cambodia…

So after our trip to Taiwan and it being kind of cold, we decided after a few days to hit the beach!  And since it was the beginning of high season we figured in order to miss some of the crowds we better head south first…then go to Cambodia…then go to the north…plus, it was kind of chilly in Taiwan and we were ready for the beach.

So off the plane we headed to Khao San Road.  We had a very amusing conversation on the airport shuttle bus with a woman from Kuwait that was originally from India – she was looking forward to the alcohol in Thailand since it’s a no-no in Kuwait except for at the embassies – the things we take for granted!  Khao San Road is CRAZY.  I mean, it was like we weren’t in Thailand – there were so many foreigners walking along this road and staying at the cheap guesthouses…I think it would be kind of fun if you were in the frame of mood where you wanted to spend all your time drinking and shopping – and I wouldn’t have a problem finding clothes here since they’re geared towards the wide-hipped instead of the no-hipped…

Anyway, we decided to head south.  We had picked up a semi-outdated Lonely Planet (not the newest edition that had just come out) and tried to find the southern bus terminal to buy tickets to the south.  Unfortunately, not only was the bus terminal not really in walking distance (damn Lonely Planet maps), but it had moved.  So we gave up and went back to Khao San Road and booked with a local travel agent.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) we decided to look on the internet and found that people get robbed all the time on these buses and how the buses sometimes end up being run-down and not the a/c buses promised –we’re like this is ridiculous –  let’s find out how much flights are – they were reasonable so we decided to fly.  Luckily, the travel agent who we went with applied the amount we had already paid for the bus to the plane ticket and we ended up leaving that afternoon!

We decided to go to Krabi because it was cheaper than flying to Phuket.  And it sounded like a good idea.  Not so hectic.  It ended up being a pretty good idea.  We stayed at Good Dreams in Krabi.  A nice, American-run place with an hour of free internet/pp and free wireless.  A clean room with a fan cost 7 USD.  I mean, really, what more can you ask for?

The day after we arrived we rented a motorbike and went to this beautiful lagoon.  It was almost like a natural swimming pool.  Kind of pricey but it seems like that’s how things go in Thailand – they charge cheap accomodations and then ding you on the attractions.  Which is opposite of Taiwan where they charge more for accomodations but almost all the attractions are free.  I think, for us, it kind of works out the same price-wise…anyway, since we had the motorbike for 24 hours we also got up really early and went to the Tiger Temple which we’re really glad we went in the morning because it’s over 1200 steps (and we’re not talking normal steps, we’re talking practically vertical steps – like you have to hold on to the railing to get onto the next step kind of steps) and I was sweating like a hound dog and it was 6 am v I think I would have passed out if it had been like mid-day or something like that…

So since our guest house was booked up after 2 nights of staying there we took it as a sign that we should move on.  Bryan, the American manager guy, suggested we go to Koh Jam which is still not too over-touristed.   So we booked a ferry with him and got a pickup to the passenger terminal…

Put off writing this blog. And really shouldn’t sell the Taiwan book in exchange for the Thailand book before you have gotten all the places we’ve been out of the Taiwan book. Because, now, I have no clue where the heck we’d been. Plus, John has told me I missed a bunch of places but I don’t see him picking up a keyboard and typing (which would actually be kind of funny since his grammar skills leave A LOT to be desired).

Anyway, I can only remember bits and pieces of the rest of our trip – like Kevin took us all out to Dim-Sum…gotta love a 24-hour Dim-Sum restaurant. I was kind of surprised it didn’t really taste that different from American Dim-Sum (well, you know what I mean). Could it be that something is actually semi-authentic tasting? Nah, that doesn’t make sense.

We also decided to take the train up north to a town that of course escapes my memory (edit: Keelung) but had this really kickin’ Buddhist temple built into a cave. And to get to part of the temple you had to stoop to go through. Mom and Dad decided to pass on that one. And then there was this other one that had this huge Buddhist footprint on the ceiling. Okay, it might not actually have been his but, really, who knows?

So, I’ve decided to just post this entry so it will stay in chronological order so I can post about Cambodia and come back and edit this one later…