The South of Thailand

My apologies for not updating in awhile! I've been too busy relaxing beach and pool side everyday :P

After having an incredible time in northern Thailand, we took and overnight train and ventured to the south. Our first stop was Koh Phi Phi Island. This was mine and Mark's second time going there. We only stayed two nights as everything is super overpriced and it is mainly only a party island. The boys had the opportunity to fight Thai style at a bar to win a free bucket of booze. And fight they did! How fun it was watching your brother and boyfriend go at it with boxing gloves in the ring infront of a crowd of people!! Unfortunately the next day, Mark came down with a terrible flu and was bed ridden for days. After Phi Phi, we headed to another island called Koh Lanta. Our accomodation was set up by a lady prior to our arrival. She told us this was the best place to stay. When we got there, we realized it was pretty much in the middle of no where. We shouldn't have been complaining considering our beach bungalow was mere steps from the sand, but we felt a little far from civilization. There were a few other resorts on our beach, so thankfully there were other restaurants since ours was terrible. We really did next to nothing for a few days. Mark spent most of his time in bed or sleeping and we all read, swam, tanned and ate for 3 too many nights. We were pumped to get out of there! I know many people love the secluded beach life, but I definitely love being around civilization and conveniences such as 7-11!

After Koh Lanta, we went to Ao Nang, another beach town on the mainland. This was much livelier! We spent 3 nights in Ao Nang, where we relaxed, took day trips to other beaches, and watched tv! TV becomes a luxury after awhile, and when you're not out having drinks in the evening, it's lovely to be able to just chill out and watch some tube.

Next stop was Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We had planned to bus there, but after doing some research, we concluded that the 20+ hours of travel was not worth it. Instead we opted for the $105 one hour flight, much better! We only stayed in KL for a night, but we made the most of our 24 hours there. The city itself is very accessible to tour around. Using their LRT (subway) system, we were able to get around to all the sites we wanted to see.
KL was a super cool city. Very modern and clean.

Next stop: Bali. Dustin opted to make the bus journey to Singapore where he stayed one night. You'll have to ask him to fill you in on his 24 hours of hilarity. Mark and I were killing ourselves laughing at his interesting journey. Mark and I instead flew to Bali and have been here ever since! I will do a different post on Bali in the near future. Lets just say, it's the most relaxing vacation of my life thus far, and I'm no where near sick of it or bored! Loving every minute of sleeping in, tanning beachside/poolside, reading, TV watching, motor biking around to different beaches, swimming in the ocean, eating great food and sipping cheap cocktails! What's not to love?

Bangkok and Chiang Mai

We've had an amazing time so far in Thailand. Prices aren't comparable to the uber cheap Cambodia, but you can still get a good meal for $2-3. We started our journey through Thailand in the Capitol city of Bangkok. We got to meet up with a friend named Lindsay who works as an English teacher in Bangkok. Unfortunately, we got here for the Election Day and no alcohol was served for our stay here. We managed to have a few though anyway. The backpacker street is full of bars, restaurants, tons of shopping and soo many people trying to sell you stupid trinkets. Who buys a lazer pointer these days? Whatever odd trinket you can think if, you're within a minute of someone coming up to you to sell it.

We left Bangkok and took a train to the north of Thailand to a city called Chiang Mai. Our train departed at 8:30am and was scheduled to arrive at 8:30pm. Not too horrible right? Since it was during the day, we were in seats, not beds and next to no sleep was had. We kept having to stop for an hour at a time to wait for trains to pass coming from the opposite direction. This happened several times. After going borderline coocoo from boredom, we arrived in Chiang Mai at 2:00am, 17.5 hours later. Only 5.5 hours delayed. By far thee worst travel day to date. Luckily Chiang Mai was worth the gruelling travel day.

We had an activity packed two days in Chiang Mai. Day one: we went to the Tiger Kingdom where we got to lay, pet and take pictures with different aged tigers. This was such an amazing experience! Laying beside an adult tiger is obviously slightly terrifying but it was such an amazing time. The tigers were raised to be tame, are well fed and dominated by the trainers. The trainers are in the cages with you and play around with the tigers like they are dogs (or big cats haha). The slightest movement of the tiger was enough to make my heart skip a beat! Dustin, Mark and I truly had a once in a lifetime experience that we will never forget!

After the tigers, we went to a monkey centre where we could take pictures, shake hands and feed monkeys. That was also so cool. Our buddy Sam the monkey was a dude. He even gave us each a smooch! Too cute!

Later that afternoon, we did a Thai cooking class. I must mention that I am OBSESSED with Thai food. It is by far my favourite Asian cuisine. Being in this country for two weeks is not enough time to fill my green curry cravings, so we all did a cooking class and learned how to make a few famous dishes! We got to keep a recipe book, so I'll be whippin' up curries, pad Thai and Tom yum soup back home in no time!

Our second day in Chiang Mai we did a jungle trek. Firstly, we rode elephants, then did a hike to a waterfall, and then finished the day off with some bamboo rafting. Think of tubing down a river, just with a bamboo raft. It was awesome!

What a great two days we had! We are now back in Bangkok, heading to the train station soon to board another train (sigh) to get to the south of Thailand. It's an overnight train, so at least we'll have a bunk bed and be able to sleep some of the time away. We are going to Koh Phi Phi island when we arrive. Mark and I went there last year for a week, but we wanted to go back to show Dustin a good time. It's super expensive there, so we are just staying two nights then heading to another beach. We're starting to get pastey, so we gotta hit the beach to get our tan back! :D

The Kingdom of Cambodia

A country known for corruption, genocide and drugs; Cambodia turned out to be a beautiful little gem on our Southeast Asia journey. We started out in the capital city of Phnom Penh (pronounced Puh-nom pen). We were instantly in love. We were met by a wonderful lad named Sam who took us by tuk tuk to the main backpacker street. He helped us sort out our cheap room at an amazing guesthouse with excellent, helpful staff who served phenomenal food! Oh and we had a pool table and 50 cent beer anytime of day. We didn't stray too far from eating at our guesthouse as they literally had everything on their menu (even poutine!) and it was all soo soooo good for $2-$5! Our tuk tuk driver Sam told us he'd take us to the killing fields and gun range the following day.

We went to the shooting range first. Shooting a gun has been on my bucket list for awhile now, and I thought it would be awesome to cross that one off by shooting AK 47s and a Russian handgun in Cambodia. I knew a gun would be powerful but I was pretty blown away with that first shot. And then when they put it to automatic mode it's pretty insane. Mark shot a video of me and I'm screaming half the time haha. The handgun was better but I was still a bit nervous as it was also more powerful than it looks. We each took turns on both of these guns, running up a tally of $150 between us 3. Which, if you consider what it cost at home, was a decent deal. And the setting couldn't of been more ideal. Shooting off guns in a country that has seen some crazy stuff in the past 40 years made it more awesome.

Next up was the killing fields. Let me try to explain as best as I can without having to google. We visited "the killing fields" but this was one of MANY. What many don't know or aren't hugely educated on (nor were we) is that there was a mass civil genocide in Cambodia from 1975-1979. In short, the Pol Pot regime took over and recruited young peasant people, promising them a good life in return for their work. This sounded good to young people who had nothing. Soon the regime gained more power and began to take over the city dwellers, ie: the people who had money, the doctors, lawyers, etc. They bombed hospitals, schools and monuments. What I got out of it was, they basically wanted to get rid of the middle upper class and build a new society of their own. In doing so they successfully killed 1-2 million of their own people. That's one out of every 4 citizens. Imagine Canada doing that? No, you can't. They killed men, women, children and babies. The killing field we were at was a place where they would bring people by the truck load, and drop them off to by executed. This site has deep trench like areas where mass burials have now been dug up. Walking around the grounds, you can't imagine what took place there. There was a big tree at one spot and it read that this was the tree they would use to take a baby by its legs and hit its head against the tree and toss it into the mass grave, probably infront of their mother. At another tree it said that this was where they would hang a big music player so they could blare a song to cover up the screams and moans of those being killed. Overall, a very awakening afternoon. Very educational but very sad. Later on that day, our tuk tuk driver Sam was having a beer with us and I asked him if he was affected at all by the genocide and he said that he had lost his brother and parents. A very sad historical few years for that country. Sam says the government in Cambodia is still very bad and very corrupt, but it's slowly, slowly getting better. Hopefully that continues.

After 4 glorious nights in Phnom Penh, we headed to Siem Reap, the access point to the Angkor Wat temples. Unfortunately, the day we arrived, the city's power had been cut. Someone had crashed into a pole somewhere and cut the power off in the city. Not good news when its +40 degrees and humid. Apparently they get their power from Thailand so it was going to take a long time to get it fixed. Fortunately, power in the city was being rotated. But, our first night there we had nothing but a ceiling fan that went on and off throughout the night. Lets just say I slept for max 2 hours, then layed there in my own sweat the rest of the time. I can now say I've gotten up in the middle of the night to have a cold shower.

We headed to Angkor Wat in the morning. We had around 4 hours there and had a driver take us around the the major temples. These architectural wonders were built from 1113-1150 AD. 37 years of man power. Elephants hauling huge stones from 60km away, and men manually creating these masterpieces.. For 37 years straight. Now, Angkor Wat is the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia, drawing 3 million people or more a year. Touring around these temples made me realize what a human faucet looks like, because all 3 of us were literally pouring sweat for hours. The heat is innnnsaaane. And it didn't help that when we got to our hotel they had no power. So we suffered through another few hours of hell before leaving for a different hotel. Had a much better sleep that night!!!

We are now in the city of Bangkok! Hello Thailand! More to follow...