Thailand and Cambodia (Oct. 18 – Nov. 3)

In the middle of October Roanne and were married back in Toronto, and we had planned a honeymoon to Thailand with a possible detour to Cambodia. It was a bit disconcerting to hear news of the military coup in Thailand in the weeks leading up to our trip, but it seemed peaceful enough, so we went ahead with our trip. On Tuesday, Oct. 17 we flew back from Toronto to Seattle, where our bags were packed and waiting for us. We picked them up, and headed for the Seattle airport, Thailand bound!

Wednesday, Oct. 18 – At 1:55am we left Seattle, bound for Taipei, Taiwan. The plane wasn’t too full so we were able to sleep pretty well, and after crossing the international date line we arrived in Taipei the next day.

Thursday, Oct. 19 – At 5:40am we arrived in Taipei, and walked around the airport waiting for our flight to Bangkok to depart. The Taipei airport has free internet, which was nice. At 8:30am our flight left for Bangkok, and we arrived in Bangkok at 11:05am. We had some time to kill before our flight for Krabi departed that afternoon, so we booked one night accommodation in Railey Beach through a travel agent, and then sat in a restaurant and ate cake. The Bangkok airport is brand new (just opened in 2006), and it is really big and really nice. This was good, because we would be spending a fair bit of time there in the coming weeks. At 5:00pm we departed the Bangkok airport bound for Southern Thailand, and arrived in Krabi at about 6:30pm. We had arranged for transportation from the airport to our hotel, so a driver picked us up at the airport (that was the first time that I have had someone waiting at the airport with a sign with our names on it), and drove us to the small coastal town of Ao Nam Mao. You have to take a long boat to reach the Railey Peninsula where we were headed, and since it was stormy and the ocean was rough, we had to approach the peninsula from the sheltered east side rather than the west side (via Ao Nang) as is normally done. The longboat ride was pretty fun, they are super loud and it was raining with lightning flashing on the horizon. Partway through the ride we saw a bunch of super bright lights out in the ocean that looked like lights at a baseball stadium. We had no idea what they were, but we would see them throughout our stay on Railey Beach, and we eventually found out that they were from squid fishing boats, maybe to attract the squid to the surface or something. We landed at East Railey Beach, and walked across the peninsula (only about 10 minutes) to West Railey Beach where our accommodations were (the Sand ‘n Sea Resort). We checked in and immediately went to bed at about 8:30, as we were super tired.

Friday, Oct. 20 – We got up at 7:40am, feeling much better for the good nights sleep. We ate at the buffet breakfast which was good, except one weird thing was that Thai people put honey on pancakes instead of syrup, which wasn’t nearly as good. Our current place was fully booked for the next night, so we had to try and find a new place to stay. We walked around and inquired at some places, and ended up getting a bungalow at the Railey Beach Club (our house is shown here: http://raileibeachclub.com/houses/house20.htm). It was nice to be there in low season, as it meant that rates were half of what they are in the high season. I was a bit worried about coming at the tail end of their rainy season since we wanted to climb, but it ended up working out really well. The climbing areas were not very crowded, and we were able to climb every day we wanted to. It always dawned bright and sunny, and about ¾ of the days it rained for an hour or so in the later afternoon, but it dried really fast and there are plenty of spots where you could climb in a full downpour if you wanted to. After finding our new accommodations, we walked around the peninsula to get a feel for the layout. We first walked north to Tonsai beach (about 10 minutes), then over the peninsula back across to Railey East (about 30 minutes), and back across to Railey West (about 10 minutes). One nice thing is that everything is pretty close there. At 1:00pm we decided that we had messed around enough, and it was time to go climbing! We first headed to the 1,2,3 wall, and climbed a 5.10c called Make a Way. It was really fun, super polished since it is at an area where many of the climbing schools guide, but still super fun. This area was pretty congested, so we moved along the beach and up into the jungle to explore some of the other areas. We eventually came to The Keep, where I climbed 2 classic 5.11b’s (Medusa’s Lover and Nutcracker) which were both super fun, long sustained climbs on nice orange rock. From now on I won’t bother specifying which climbs were classics, since we only did classic climbs. Being there in the low season allowed us to stick solely to the 5 star mega classics. We turned our noses up at anything less and wouldn’t even think about roping up for something with only 4 stars in the guide. I then got on a 5.12a called Tongue Thaid, which was super fun, but much to my disappointment after climbing to the last bolt I found that the crux section was really wet. I ended up lowering off a pair of glue in bolts, one of which was probably good. The bolts here are pretty crazy, the sea spray leads to rapid corrosion, so many of the climbs have been rebolted 2 or 3 times, and many times they don’t chop the old bolts, so often you will have your choice of 3 different bolts to clip. One is obviously super corroded (the original steel expansion bolt), then the second is the steel glue in (which sometimes doesn’t look that bad), and the third is a titanium glue in. Sometimes it can be tough to choose between the steel and titanium glue in, I wish they would chop the old ones. A few time I went to clip what I thought was the right glue in, only to have it spin like a top as soon as I touched it, not too comforting. Here is a photo of me climbing at The Keep:

Here is a photo of my lovely belayer (who decided she had climbed enough after the first 5.10c, and by this point was wondering when the heck we were going to go sit on the beach):

On the way out from the Keep we looked at another wall more in the jungle (the keep looked out over the water and had a nice breezy feel to it). Check out the crazy rock formations and all the hanging vines:

Especially notable are the huge stalactites, and then the large stalactite growing up from the ground, which would be quite a hazard if you fell onto it. In Ontario we regularly lob off limestone climbs and land on cedar trees which grow close to the cliff, but I would imagine that a limestone stalactite would be a little less forgiving. It was low tide at this point, so we decided to walk along the shore to Low Tide Wall, which can only be access at, you guess it, low tide. All along the way, there are tons of cliffs, most of them probably undeveloped:

As you would imagine, I was pretty awed by all of the incredible limestone!

To get to the low tide wall we had to scramble along rocky sections, here is Roanne navigating the shell encrusted limestone:

It was worth it, as we arrived at Low Tide Wall to find that we were the only ones there that day, as evidenced by the untracked beach, which Roanne had the pleasure of walking on first:

The Low Tide Wall looked awesome: clean, overhanging cliffs shooting straight up from the beach. There was a rad looking 5.12b there that I would have liked to have tried, but it was getting late and we were pretty tired, so I abstained. Here is a shot of the beach with the cliff:

Later, when actually climbing straight off of the beach we would discover that this romantic sounding endeavor actually sucks, as you can’t avoid getting your rope and shoes covered in sand. On the walk back we saw some nice light on the long boats at Railey East:

We finally made it back to Railey West, just in time to witness the sun setting on our first day in a climbing paradise:

After having pad thai for dinner at the Flame Tree Restaurant, we happily climbed into bed around 9:30pm.

Saturday, Oct. 21 – We got up pretty early, after a good night sleep in our new accommodations. Here is a photo of our bedroom, it was pretty fun, just one room separate from the rest of the house by a deck, with a bug net and big fan.

There was no air conditioning, the facility ran off a generator, so there was no power to the bungalows during the day. The house had a few different deck areas, and it backed onto the jungle, which backed up onto some limestone cliffs. Here is the view from our back deck:

When you wake up every morning and that is the first thing you see, it is pretty hard not be psyched up to go climbing for the day! We went and had a banana pancake for breakfast:

I guess the Thai take on banana pancakes is that the banana should be on the pancake rather than in it, and honey should be used instead of syrup. I can’t say that I am in full agreement with them, but it tasted pretty good nonetheless. We then had to do stuff related to selling our house in Seattle (it was on the market while we were on our honeymoon) for the morning, but after lunch we looked down towards the south of the beach:

And decided to go climb on the Thaiwand wall, which is the large cliff in the photo above. It takes about 10 minutes to walk there from the beach in front of our house, and we got there and I climbed a 5.11a called Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera. After I lowered off we saw some dark clouds moving in, and in about 5 minutes it was raining super hard. We thought about waiting it out, but then decided to walk down the slippery red clay trail to the beach. We each took a few wipeouts on the way down, and by the time we reached the beach it had stopped raining. Here is Roanne, with her legs covered in red clay:

I looked similar until I took a swim in the ocean, and then set a new land speed record running back in to the shore:

We then headed back to our bungalow, and spend the rest of the afternoon drinking tea, playing backgammon, and watching monkeys jump around in the trees behind our bungalow. We identified the monkeys as dusky langurs, they were black with white rings around their eyes and mouths. As darkness fell we noticed a big weird looking bat hanging in one of the trees, here is a photo:

It had a weird snout like a pig, we identified it in a book on local wildlife but I can’t remember the name. There were also a bunch of small lizards that lived in the house and you would see from time to time, here is a photo of one:

We then went and ate dinner (I had a spicy beef salad), and then hit the sack.

Sunday, Oct. 22 – This morning we decided to get up and go climbing first thing in the morning, since the pattern that seemed to be emerging was that it would rain hard for an hour or so in the later afternoon. After a breakfast buffet where I ate a few too many pancakes, we headed back up to the Thaiwand Wall to do some of the climbs that we had meant to do the day before. We started on a 5.10b called Fit to be Thai’d, which was super fun with lots of exposure. Roane is shown climbing it below:

I then got on a 5.11d to the left of it called The King and I. It was super rad, it started out on big jugs at the bottom, then the angle kicked back and there were a couple of crux sections, and it finished with a super exposed move where you had to mantle out onto the top of a big stalactite. I was mega pumped by the end, and was tempted to take after seeing the committing nature of the final moves, but for some reason I just kept climbing and I was stoked to get the onsight. We then climbed a 5.10d to the left of that called The Sluggard Prince. It was fun and not too hard, but a little scary since it was all on threads, which means that instead of clipping bolts you clip old pieces of rope that have been threaded through pockets and natural bridges in the limestone. Given the nature of some of the bolts maybe this is actually safer, but from the state of some of the ropes it is actually a bit scary. We then climbed a good 5.10c called Mala Mujer. Next we moved along the wall a bit, and I tried a 5.12c called Orange Juice. It was so awesome, probably the best climb I tried there. It took me a number of hangs to work the moves out and get up it, but I would love to go back some time and try to send it. It was super clean rock with a big orange streak down it, and a perfect line of bog pockets and heucos, with big gymnastic moves between them including some hand foot match trickery, which is super fun for me. I didn’t try it again since I thought it would be more fun to try other awesome climbs instead of working just one, but it has definitely been added to my lifetime must do list. We finished on the 5.10b first pitch of Lord of the Thai’s. That route looks incredible, the full version is 5.12b and 5 pitches. We didn’t have the two ropes required for it otherwise I might have tried coercing Roanne into going up it.

We then returned to our bungalow for lunch. The place we were staying at has a service where you can put in a grocery order and then they will go get it from the local market in Krabi, and we had done that the day before. The big lesson I learned was not to have someone else do your grocery shopping for you unless you love surprises. We had asked for some jam, and instead of getting us a jar of jam (which one might expect), they got us a box containing 100 individual restaurant style packets of jam. Roanne asked for crackers and cheese, and she got some cheese slices and these weird rice things that are officially known as crackers, but ar intended for deep frying. There were a few other surprises, but they got some of it right so we enjoyed a nice lunch in the comfort of our bungalow.

After lunch we headed out to walk to another beach on the peninsula known as Phra Nang beach. All of the property beyond this beach is owned by a super fancy expensive resort called the Rayavadee, but anyone can access the beach from a path from Railey Beach East. Walking along the path was fun, there are a bunch of weird limestone cliffs and caves all along one side. Here is me posing in part of the cave on an elevated platform held up by the pillars attached to the roof:

Here is Roanne a little further along, with some big stalactites in the background:

A little further along we encountered a macaque monkey sitting in the tree:

This type of monkey is not afraid of people and you can get really close to them, unlike the dusky langurs that we watched from the back deck of our bungalow. Emerging on the beach was pretty spectacular there is a large cave known as the Princess Cave (according to some local myth), and lots of huge stalactites as shown below (if you haven’t noticed, I find the stalactites really amazing):

While we were on the beach there was some bad weather moving in, and a storm could be seen with some weird light out at sea:

We decided to explore around the rocky waters near the beach, and found a lot of cool stuff in the tide pools, since it was low tide. Tons of little crabs, and some neat triangular rock formations shown in the photo below. I actually climbed up on top of on of them, and noticed that they had bolted routes on the slab side. I would not like to test those bolts out.

Here is the view looking back, the large rock formation to the right of the boat is the other side of the Thaiwand Wall, at the bottom you can see the mouth of a huge cave, this actually goes right through the formation and emerges on the other side, a couple of days later we would walk through it. The formation to the left of the boat is called Happy Island, and apparently had a bunch of good routes on it although we didn’t get to try any of them.

Here is a shot of Roanne wandering through the rocky tidal pools:

And here is one of me doing the same, note the big cave in the cliff above and to the right of me. There were huge pieces of drift wood lodged in the mouth of the cave, so at some point the water must have been high enough for a storm to deposit those in the cave. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that!

After exploring the tide pools we walked over to Happy Island (possible only at low tide), and Roanne stepped on some sea creature that stung her foot. We then walked back and went for dinner at one of the beach side restaurants. I ordered a super hot green papaya salad called “Som Tam”. While I was sweating in extreme discomfort trying to finish my salad, Roanne put her head down on the table and fell asleep. My new wife was proving to be quite the interesting dinner companion.

Monday, Oct. 23 – We woke up and decided that we would try to take a boat to Ko Phi Phi (where the movie “The Beach” was filmed). We were told the boat left at 9:30, so we went and bought tickets and then waited for the boat. 9:30 came and went with no boat, as did 10:00, and 10:30. We went and inquired, and found out that since it was Ramadan, the boat would not come until 11:30 that day. Since the ride to the island is about an hour and the boat returns to come back at 3:30, we thought that didn’t leave us enough time to spend on the island, so we refunded our tickets and hatched a new plan. We decided to rent snorkeling equipment and kayak to an island that was about 5 km away, called Koh Poda, that was supposed to have interesting snorkeling. It took us a little under an hour to get there, but it was not too rough and a nice trip. The sand was really white and fine (see photo below), and we sat on the beach for a bit and then I went snorkeling while Roanne read a book.

I had never snorkeled in a tropical place like that, and it was pretty awesome to see all the colourful and different fish. We then decided to go and kayak around the limestone karst that is shown in the photo above, and maybe do some more snorkeling if it looked interesting. Unfortunately, as we were preparing our kayak and heading over, the skies began looking like this:

This was right on time with the standard late afternoon thunderstorm, except now we were a 5 km open sea kayak away from “home”, so it was a bit more worrisome. As soon as we reached the karst it started raining super hard, and we took shelter under the overhanging cliffs. It was pretty neat, we tied our boat to a pocket in the limestone roof above, and then just sat there bobbing in the waves, nice and dry, while it rained like cats and dogs about 20 feet away at the edge of the overhang. After about 30 minutes the rain subsided, and we decided to make a dash for it back to Railey beach. We paddled hard, and after about 45 minutes had just made it into the bay when the next wave of torrential rain moved in, and we got totally soaked. Luckily our camera and all of our belongings were packed in dry bags, so no harm done. We then went back to our bungalow and dried off, and then went for dinner at the Flametree Restaurant, where we had discovered that they had boardgames you could play while you ate. So we had a nice dinner playing backgammon and then went to bed.

Tuesday, Oct. 24 – The morning dawned bright and sunny as it always did, and we decided to go climbing. We wanted to climb at Tonsai beach since it is pretty popular and we had not been there yet. The path to get there takes about 10 minutes, but it is steep and bushy, so we decided to try skirting along the coast by wading. It turned out that the tide was a bit too high, and after getting thoroughly soaked, we gave up and took the path which is what we should have done in the first place. We headed to the Tyrolean Wall (just up the beach from Tonsai), and since the 5.10d that we wanted to get on was busy (the only time that happened to us on the entire trip), we got on a 5.10c called Longes Feschtl instead. It turned out to be a bit hard and awkward, not a very good warmup. We then moved on to Dum’s Kitchen (a section of the wall), where we did a fun 5.10a called Pahn Taa Lod. Next I tried a 5.12a called Mai Mee Fahn. This climbed an awesome looking tufa, and from looking at it, I thought the crux would be at the bottom, so maybe if could fire that then I could onsight it. It turned out the crux was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and it took me a number of tries to figure out. I then tried it again and sent without any problems. We then bought some sticky rice in a section of bamboo from a man walking along the beach selling them, and it was probably one of my favourite things that we ate on the entire trip. It was so stinkin’ good, I don’t know how they made them, but if you happen to be on the beach in Thailand and see a man selling what appears to be bamboo firewood, buy one, because they are filled with rice and taste so stinkin’ good. We then decided to go explore the cave that runs through the Thaiwand formation. After lunch at the bungalow, we hiked up to the Thaiwand wall, climbed a 5.8 called the Cave Route (Roanne led it, her first lead of the trip!), and then entered the cave. Apparantly it is a pretty common thing to do, as there were fixed ladders to get down the steep parts, here is Roanne descending one of the ladders:

It was pretty neat, super dry and lots of weird limestone formations, as well as tons and tons of bats. Here is a shot of some of the bats on the roof:

Here is shot of some of the limestone formations:

After spending some more time exploring, we emerged from the other side to find that while we had been in the cave the daily afternoon thunderstorm had moved in, and it was now pouring rain:

Inside the mouth of the cave on this side was a climbing area called Escher World, so we climbed a 5.10b called Goodbye Salvador (which Roanne led), and there was a totally amazing looking 5.11b called Best Route in Minnesota which I really wanted to do, but decided not to since we didn’t have enough draws (not having anticipated doing any climbing beyond the initial 5.8) and it was starting to get dark. By this time it had stopped raining, so we hiked down to the beach, went for a swim, and then walked back to East Railey beach and then West Railey beach. We ate dinner at the Flametree and this time used their scrabble game, which was interesting. I got the Q on my first draw, and it turned out that only one of the U tiles was present, and Roanne had picked it up and didn’t decide to use it until her last turn. Afterwards we counted the tiles, and it turned out that only 69 of the intended 100 tiles were present, which made for a shorter and less predictable game.

Wednesday, Oct. 25 – This morning we had to switch to a different bungalow, as someone else had reserved our current one. We moved to one that was even nicer, it was closer to the cliff and was a little bigger with a nicer layout. For some photos of it, go to http://raileibeachclub.com/houses/house28.htm Here is a view of it from the front, note the awesome limestone cliffs in the background:

And here is a shot of the inside sitting area, also very nice:

After breakfast we decided to head back to the Tonsai area for some more climbing, on what was our last full day here. We started on the awesome looking 5.10d called Missing Snow that we had meant to do the day before when there had been people on it. This climb had some of the most amazing hold features that I had ever encountered on a climb. Here is a shot of Roanne getting ready for her toprope onsight (left), and then a close-up of some crazy limestone handles that had formed midway up the climb in a giant pocket (right):

After this we checked out some of the other climbs on Tonsai Beach, there was one 5.12a that I was going to get on, and even got sprayed down with beta by another passing climbing so that I could get the flash, but then we realized that the belayer was already almost in the water and the tide was coming in, so if we didn’t want a wet rope it would be best to try something else. We bought a bamboo sticky rice contraption from the man selling them on the beach, and headed up to Fire Wall. There we climbed a super crazy 5.10a called Groove Tube. It went up this big groove that you could stem up with lots of big holds, I meant to take a photo but I guess I forgot, anyways it was a really neat climb. By this point Roanne was getting a bit frustrated that the beach component of our honeymoon was drawing to a close, and we had spent a negligible amount of time actually sitting on the beach relaxing, so we decided that I was allowed to do one more climb and then we would go lounge on the beach. I flipped through the book, and on seeng the description for the Melting Wall, I read “… home to one of the world’s best single pitches of climbing: Cross Eyed.” Say no more, I was signed up and we headed over to the Melting Wall. On the way we saw a fairly large snake that had been lying on the path (about a meter long), Roanne was not too impressed with that, but I was happy to have finally seen a wild snake in the jungle (we had seen a small one earlier near a fence by the beach). We got to the wall and saw our target, Cross Eyed was a 5.12b that went up a steep wall, and looked to be a pumpfest on big pockets. I roped up and headed up it, and my initial assessment turned out to be accurate. I made it about ¾ of the way up before my engine started sputtering and I ran out of gas. I finished it off with a couple more takes, what an awesome climb. Totally sustained endurance climbing with big moves between big holds, super fun. I think Orange Juice was probably a cooler climb, just because I like lines that are a little more blank with moves you have to figure out, but this was definitely an incredible line. Anyways, with a tear in my eye since our climbing had come to an end, we headed back down to the beach. We had lunch at our bungalow, and then spent some time watching the monkey show from our back deck, which involved about 5 dusky langurs making kamikaze leaps from tree to tree. Here is a close up of one sitting in the tree eating leaves, note the interesting face markings, very different from the macaque that was pictured earlier:

And here is another shot of one climbing up a tree, you can see the grey limestone cliff in the background:

We also saw a big lizard (a couple of feet long) that we identified as a Water Monitor:

After our wild kingdom show was over, we finally headed down to the beach for our relaxation. Here is a shot looking north along the beach, the red fence on the right is the entrance to the compound that housed our bungalow:

And here is my lovely wife getting ready for her long awaited relaxing time on the beach:

It turned out that relaxing on the beach is not all that it is cracked up to be, the sun is super hot, the sand isn’t that comfortable, you get sand everywhere, ants crawl on you, etc. So after about 10 minutes we retreated back to some chairs in the shade to read. After the sun started dropping it became nicer without the scorching rays, so we got some wine and went and sat on the beach to watch the sun set. Here is a photo with the sun doing an interesting thing with some clouds:

After the sun set we went and ate dinner and played backgammon at the Flametree Restaurant, and then returned to our bungalow. We were lucky enough to see a big lizard hanging out on one of our walls, to this point we had only seen really small ones in our house:

We then went to bed, sad that we had to leave our beach paradise the next day, but excited about the adventures that we still had ahead of us.

Thursday, Oct. 26 – We woke up and had breakfast, here is me sitting in the bungalow feeling depressed that we had to leave.

We then took a long boat to Ao Nang, here is a shot of Roanne and our long board driver (at least his lower body):

Here is a shot of Ao Nang tower, a pretty cool looking formation that has some multipitch routes on it:

From Ao Nang we caught a taxi to the Krabi airport and then flew on to Bangkok. In the Bangkok airport we had to wait around for a bit since our flight to Siem Reap (in Cambodia) didn’t leave until 6:00 pm. In the airport I ate some durien with sticky rice, which was super good. Durien is a really pungent fruit which also tastes really good. It doesn’t smell very good though, and the smell is so intense that most hotels in Thailand have signs outside telling you that you cannot bring durien into the hotel. At 6:00 pm we flow to Siem Reap on a prop plane, and upon arriving in the Siem Reap we paid $25 for our visitor visas. Upon leaving the airport we found out it was either $5 to take a taxi into town, or $1 each for a ride on the back of a moto (a 100cc scooter). We opted for the moto, so we each got a driver who balanced our large backpack on his lap and then we each got on a moto behind him. The drive into Siem Reap was an interesting experience, it was my first time in a third world country, and it was weird to be driving a long this dirt road in the middle of the town with lots of dust and people standing around. I guess it is hard to describe, but it was interesting. We didn’t have a hotel booked ahead of time, and the moto drivers kept trying to take us to a particular hotel (they were probably getting a commission). After resisting their attempts to do that, we checked at a few places in the lonely planet book that were all full, and finally our moto drivers took us to a hotel that they assured us was really nice. By this point we had been driving around for a while and we were pretty tired, so after looking at the room at this place we just decided to book it even though it wasn’t that nice. So we went and sat in our room, and after about 5 minutes decided that we could do much better than that. So we decided to forfeit the $15 we had paid for the room for the night, and we walked around and finally found a really nice hotel for $30 that was super nice, called Auberge Le Mont Royal. The desk clerk was super nice and we talked to him for a bit. He has one of the desirable jobs in Cambodia, and he makes $70 per month. It is pretty crazy to see first hand the differences between the way we live in North America and the way they live. In North America you will see one overweight house wife driving a huge, empty SUV to the mall, whereas in Cambodia we would routinely see families of 4 all riding together on one 100cc scooter. It is definitely a reality check to see what is really a “need” and what is just a “want”.

Friday, Oct. 27 – We had come to Cambodia to see the temples of Angkor Wat, so early the next morning our two moto drivers picked us up at our hotel and we headed to the temples. We had planned on renting bicycles to get around, as the temples are only 6 km from Siem Reap, but the guys who drove us from the airport had convinced us to hire them for the day to drive us around, which was actually pretty fun. They spoke good English and liked to laugh a lot, we made a lot of jokes. It cost $20 to get into the temples (only 10% of the entry fee actually goes to maintaining the temples!), and after entering we headed to the walled city of Angkor Thom, which contains a lot of temples (each which would be a spectacular attraction in its own right were there not so many of them all together), saving the main event (Angkor Wat) for last. We headed first to one of the famous temples, called the Bayon. It was pretty cool, it had all these huge stone faces looking out into the jungle. Here are some pictures of it, starting with the inner temple, the big things sticking up are the heads:

All of the exterior walls are covered with elaborate murals carved into the sandstone, it is amazing the detail that has been incorporated into these. The murals are all different, and portray different parts of the Khmer history. Here is a shot of one of the murals:

Here is a shot of my charming wife:

Here is a shot of the chaos that occurs when a Japanese tour group swarms the temple. They all crowd together and yell at each other and take huge group photos. It is pretty abrasive, we tried to stick to quieter areas of the temple, maybe missing a couple of the main attractions but enjoying the peace and quiet. One weird thing is that in Japan it is a status symbol for the women to be very pale, so they all either carry umbrellas or wear skin coloured wraps over their arms and hands (they look like tensor bandages).

Here is a closer shot of some of the heads, taken from the upper level.

Here is a shot of me standing by a pillar:

Here is a neat shot that Roanne took. We had to wait about five minutes for a time when noone was standing in the frame of the picture.

After the Bayon we walked on to the Baphuon, which was undergoing heavy restoration, so we couldn’t go in it. It had a long narrow walkway to access it that was originally in a moat, here is a shot of that:

Here is a shot of some of the blocks of the temple waiting for reassembly. They all have white numbers on them that tell where they are supposed to go, but during the civil war the Khmer Rouge destroyed much of the records for restorations that had been going on previously, so many of the white numbers are now meaningless and the archeologists have been left with a giant jigsaw puzzle.

After the Baphuon we saw a few lesser temples, here is Roanne flipping through the guide to figure out where to go next:

Here is a shot of a small but photogenic temple called Preah Palily, if you look closely you can see me sitting in the window on the right edge of the temple.

We then headed on to some other temples, and ended up at the Terrace of Elephants which was pretty awesome, as shown below there were all these elephant statues, the poles are their trunks, they originally had tusks, but they had all broken off.

We then headed on to some other temple that was pretty big, but I can’t remember the name. Here are some shots of us:

This temple had a giant tree that had overwhelmed part of it, here is Roanne standing under it. For me this was the coolest part of Angkor Wat, the way the jungle had partially reclaimed and integrated itself with the spectacular temples. Some of the trees were pretty huge, and it is a testament to how long the temples had been forgotten for, that these trees had time to grow. In some cases they are so integrated with the temples that if you removed the tree the temple would probably collapse.

Here is another cool tree/temple shot:

Here are some shots of us with our moto drivers. They were pretty funny, my driver told me that he traded 10 cows for his motorbike. I asked him what he ate for dinner, and he said rice, then I asked him what he ate for lunch, and he said rice, then I asked him what he ate for breakfast, and he said rice and started laughing super hard. They told us their names, but I was never able to say them, so I have no chance at all of being able to write them and I won’t even try.

We then headed on to another of the more famous temples, Ta Prohm. One thing about the temples is that there are a lot of locals trying to sell you stuff, and they are really persistent. Here is a little girl following me and trying to sell me some bracelets.

Here are some more tree temple shots:

Here is me sitting on an interesting tree formation:

Here is a tree that apparently appeared in one of the tomb raider movies, although I haven’t seen any of them:

And a shot of some carvings:

Finally we moved on to the main event, Angkor Wat. Apparently this is the largest religious building in the world. From the walk in we realized that we wouldn’t be finding much solitude:

Here is a shot looking up at one of the “turrets” (I don’t know what the proper name for them is):

It turned out that all of the tour groups stayed on one side of the temple, so by going to the other side we had some time to ourselves:

We walked around the temple grounds a bit, which were green and deserted, pretty nice in the light of the setting sun:

Here is a nice shot of the temple after the sun had just set:

And here is my lovely wife with the temple in the background.

We had planned on spending two days at Angkor Wat, but since we saw so many temples in one day we decided to do other stuff for our second full day in Cambodia. I tend to overdose on sightseeing, one full day of temples is enough to last me for a while, even if they are super impressive. All in all I was pretty impressed with Angkor Wat. A lot of people had told me it was the best thing they had ever seen, so my expectations were maybe set too high. I didn’t think seeing it was the single greatest experience of my life, but it was pretty impressive. After our moto drivers dropped us off we went for dinner at an interesting restaurant where you sat on the floor and they had pits of live crocodiles on the way to the bathrooms. The food was good, but the best food that I had the entire time in Cambodia was the “amok” that I had for lunch at one of the temple food vendors (like a primitive food court).

Saturday, Oct. 28 – Our moto drivers picked us up at 8:00 and we headed off to see a floating village and a fishing village that we had read about. We chartered a boat, and the floating village was right near our starting point, but it wasn’t too interesting. We then drove about an hour in the boat, on Tonle Sap Lake, which is a very large and very shallow freshwater lake. It has a large number of fish in it, and the surface area changes dramatically throughout the year depending on whether it is the dry or wet season. We finally reached the fishing village that we had been headed for, and it was really cool, all of the buildings were up on stilts in the water because it was the end of the rainy season, by the end of the dry season they would all be over dry land. It was pretty neat to see this, because it is further out of the way so it felt more “authentic”, as opposed to much of the other stuff, which was sort of cheesy and obviously built for tourists. Here are some photos of the village:

All of the people were super nice, and all the little kids would get all excited and wave and go jumping into the water off of their front porches. We came across one super cute little girl who was paddling around in a wash basin:

We then got some of the locals to paddle us around in a dugout canoe. It felt sort of weird paying someone to paddle you around, I would way rather paddle myself, but it was fun. We went through this flooded forest which was really neat, very atmospheric. Here is a photo from inside the forest:

Here is one of Roanne and I with our paddlers in the background. If you look closely you can see that the little boy is wearing Roanne’s sun glasses.

Here is the family that paddled us around waving goodbye (at this point we had boarded our original boat again). There are really happy because they charged us $2 for the boat ride and we gave them a 400% tip ($10) because we didn’t have any change.

We then headed back to Siem Reap and spent some time walking around the market, which was interesting. It was sad to see all the amputees begging, people who had lost limbs to landmines. There are also a bunch of young kids carrying babies that beg you to buy milk for them, which is pretty sad. Here is a shot of the main road in Siem Reap, note all the dirt and mud, pretty different from a North American city. Traffic there is total chaos, there was only 1 traffic light in Siem Reap (which probably has a few hundred thousand people living in it), and all of the intersections were crazy, with scooters zipping between trucks and a general disregard for which side of the road you are supposed to drive on.

In the late afternoon we went back to our hotel, and had massages in the on-site spa, which was pretty fun. I had never had a massage before, and it was pretty good. It would have been better if I had just been climbing all day or done a 5 hour leg crushing bike ride, but it was still nice.

Sunday, Oct. 29 – At 8:15 our moto drivers picked us up, and we headed to the Siem Reap airport to catch our flights. At the airport we found out that we had to pay $25 each just to leave the airport, which was in addition to the $20 visas that we had already bought to enter the country. From things we read it seemed like the Cambodian government is pretty corrupt, which is sad because there is a lot of money flowing into the country from tourism, but it seems like not much of it makes it to the people. We flew on to Bangkok, which was uneventful except I started to feel a bit sick. We waited in the Bangkok airport for an hour or two, and then flew on to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. In the Chiang Mai airport we talked to some lady about booking hotels, but she was a con artist like all of the other people working in those airport tourism places, so we finally took a taxi to a nice guesthouse called the River View Lodge. The rooms were a bit ugly and the free breakfast was weak, but other than that it was great and super cheap compared to the places that the lady in the airport was trying to trick us into staying at. Roanne wanted to just stay at one of the places the lady was suggesting, but luckily even in my weakened, malaria sickened state I had the strength to call some other places independently, and it worked out well. We ate dinner at the Good View Restaurant which wasn’t very good (aside from the view), and then walked around the night bazaar which Chiang Mai is famous for. It was pretty fun, lots of crafts and also lots of copyright violations. It was fun bartering with the people, they would start out super high, then you suggest something low, then they say no way and suggest something in between, then you say no thanks and walk away, and they come running after you and tell you that you can buy it for the low price. We also went into a tailor store and got fitted for some suits, which was fun. It was two Indian guys running the shop, they were pretty funny. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and I threw up since I was feeling pretty sick.

Monday, Oct. 30 – We woke up and had a relaxing morning, spending time thinking about what we would do for the day, and I was reading the diseases section in the lonely planet book to try and figure out what rare tropical disease I had caught (I was still feeling sick). We finally settled on going to a small town near Chiang Mai that was famous for its wood carving. I was hungry, so we went and found a place to get something to eat, and I ordered a noodle dish to go, but upon receiving it I found out it was soup based, and came in a bag, which made it impossible to eat. So we went and found a tuk-tuk driver, and hired him for a few hours to take us to this village and drive us between the different wood carving places. This was our first ride in a tuk-tuk, and in my weak and sick state I didn’t enjoy it very much, since they are really loud, and you sit so high up that you can’t see anything as you drive. But it was made better by the fact that our driver was the nicest guy in the world, he didn’t really speak any English, but we managed to communicate, and he always had a huge smile on his face. At the end of the day we went to pay him, and give him some extra money (we had agreed on a price beforehand) since he was so nice, and at first he wouldn’t take the extra money. This was a striking contrast to all of our other experiences with drivers, who all try as hard as they can to rip you off. Here is a photo of our driver:

In Thailand there are tons of scooters, and at stop lights they all swarm around the cars to the front of the intersection, pretty cool! I would definitely get a scooter if I was there. I wish North America were like that.

At the wood carving place I bought a wooden bowl to eat my noodles, which were pretty good. We saw a lot of really cool wood stuff, and it was amazing how cheap it was. A full sized solid teak dining table cost about $100. We considered buying something and having it shipped home, but decided that it was too much trouble and didn’t want to risk the furniture cracking once we got it back to the US due to the different humidity levels. There was a lot of really cool and unique furniture, but most of the places didn’t allow you to take photos, so I don’t have any. After getting back from our wood carving adventure we spent some time relaxing by the pool and reading our books, and then took a tuk tuk to an Italian restaurant (for Roanne), but it ended up being closed. So we walked to another Italien restaurant, and ate there. We then visited our tailors and tried on our suits, which fit pretty well but needed a few adjustments so we arranged to come back the next night. We finished the evening walking around the night bazaar, which is huge, we had not even covered ¼ of it the night before.

Tuesday, Oct. 31 – We had signed up for a Thai cooking class at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery school, so we were picked up in the morning at 9:15 and we headed off to the school for a day of cooking. We cooked about 5 different dishes, which were all really good. We started doing some vegetable carving which was pretty fun, and then each of the 5 dishes started with a classroom session where an instructor would demonstrate the cooking techniques, and then we would go to our cooking stations and try them ourselves. Here is a photo of one of the classroom sessions:

Here is a shot of my lovely wife cooking up a storm:

One of the best things we made were spring rolls, here is a shot of mine with my vegetable carvings:

Another thing we made were pieces of chicken wrapped in banana leaves to look like chickens and then deep fried. Here are my two chickens kissing each other:

The last thing we made was a sticky rice with mango dessert, which was really good. One funny thing was that during the class room session for this dish, the instructor mentioned that we were lucky to be in Thailand during mango season so we can enjoy this special dish. I wondered about this, because I thought I had read in a book that mango season was at another time. Another student must have wondered too, because he asked which parts of the year you can get mangos, and the instructor replied that they get them all year long. Har har har, wow, are we ever lucky to be in Thailand on one of the 365 days of the year that mangos are available! Later I checked the book, and it turns out that mango season is from March to June, so we were as far from mango season as you can get. After the cooking class we walked around the city for a bit, and in the evening we went again to try on our suits, which needed one more round of adjustments, so we arranged to come back the next night. One crazy thing is that the guy in the tailor shop looked super tired, so I asked him how much he worked, and he works every day from 9 in the morning until 11:00 at night. He never gets any holidays, and works every day of the week! Crazy! I got the impression that people in Asia work a lot harder than people in North America.

Wednesday, Nov. 1 – One of the reasons we had come to Chiang Mai was because Roanne was really excited to ride an elephant. We had signed up for a day long trek through one of the tour operators, and we were picked up from our hotel at 9:00 in the morning and we headed off for the countryside. It turned out that two french Canadian girls who were staying in our hotel had also signed up, and it was just the four of us. We got along well with them, so it made for a fun day. We drove for about an hour into the mountainous countryside, where the “hill tribes” live and make their living by clearing trees and framing on the hill sides, as shown in the photo below:

We arrived at the elephant camp, and walked through some dried rice fields to get there, here is Roanne on her way, very excited about the upcoming elephant ride:

The elephants had wooden “saddles” on them, and we boarded them from a wooden platform. We then went for about an hour walk through some trails. It was pretty fun, but as might be expected, elephants are a bit slow. For most of the ride our guide sat on the elephants head, and they get it to obey them by a metal hook that they yank at their ears with. It seemed a bit mean, I’m glad I’m not an elephant. Partway through the ride our saddle started slipping off, and we had to stop and sit on the elephants head while our guide fixed the saddle, that was sort of neat. Here are some photos from various vantage points:

After the ride we were given the opportunity to feed the elephants, which was really fun, they grab stuff with their trunks and then shove it into their mouths. Their trunks looked pretty powerful, I would hate for one to suddenly decide to give a big trunk hug, it looked like it could to some real damage.

After the elephant ride we ate some lunch, and then headed out for the “waterfall hike” component of our “trek”. We drove a ways and then parked the van and walked down to this waterfall, which was pretty nice. Our guide was really paranoid and I had to work for a while to convince her that I could manage to get across the slippery rocks to the base of the waterfall without seriously injuring myself. Here are some photos of Roanne and myself posing in front of the waterfall:

We then hiked back up to the car, and moved on to the shopping component of our trek. Here is a shot of me on the hike:

The shopping part was officially called “visit the hill tribes”, but it was really just driving to a place where these people lived, and they would show you stuff that they had made, and you felt obligated to buy some of it. It was really awkward and sort of funny. These hill tribe people would cover up their cars with blankets to try and make it a more authentic experience for trekkers like us. It was really lame, and I wish it had been omitted from the “trek”.

After the shopping, we headed for the rafting component of our trip, which involved white water rafting followed by bamboo rafting. I had never been white water rafting before, so I thought that part was super fun, I got to sit in the front with Roanne and I really liked going over the big standing waves and almost dumping the boat. We then did bamboo rafting, which was super boring. The river was flat and slow and only about 3 feet deep. It was funny, because I remember the lady at the hotel recommending the bamboo rafting, because you can only do it in Thailand. Well, there is a very good reason for that, if it was actually semi-interesting other places might feel compelled to offer it, but as it stands it is about as exciting as watching paint dry. After this the trek was finished, and we headed back to Chiang Mai. That evening we ate dinner at an outdoor food court that was really good (better than most of the Chiang Mai restaurants we had been to), went and picked up our suits, and then walked around the market one last time where we found thank you cards to use for our wedding, and a giant pillow that Roanne was really excited about.

Thursday, Nov. 2 – We got up, ate breakfast, and headed to the airport for our flight back to Bangkok. The day before we had arranged accommodations in a hotel in Bangkok, and since it was the last night of our honeymoon we decided to pull out all the stops and go for over the top luxury. We made reservations at the Conrad, which was the fanciest hotel I had ever been at. We arrived in a taxi, and immediately people took our bags and started doing everything for us. We got to our room around 2:30 or so, and spent some time investigating everything. The entrance was really nice, all wood and mirrors, very classy:

There was some fruit there, so I ate it in a way that was appropriate for our level of accommodations:

At 3:00 we then headed down for “afternoon high tea”, which for me ended up being “afternoon high dessert” since they had lots of good food. After that we went and looked at the pool, where the staff had these funny unicycle things that they rode around the deck to deliver drinks to lounging clients, and we were able to try riding them. We then made our way back up to our room. We had meant to go explore the royal palace (the main tourist attraction in Bangkok) that afternoon, but the hotel had been so fun and interesting that we had missed the boat on that, so we decided to walk to a local market and look around before finding a restaurant. The market didn’t end up being too interesting (the one in Chiang Mai was better), but they had a ferris wheel there that we rode, which was pretty fun. It was from France, and was apparently the largest movable ferris wheel in the world. Here is Roanne during our ride:

We then walked around looking for a place to have dinner, the place we had planned on going to had moved to another location, so we checked out a few other restaurants before settling on a nice looking Italian restaurant. It was pretty busy, which was a good sign, and the food ended up being awesome. We then headed back to our hotel and did a bit of packing in preparation for our looming departure.

Friday, Nov. 3 – We woke up on our last day in Thailand and had a fancy breakfast at our hotel. We then headed out to see the royal palace. We took the sky train part way there, and then took a tuk-tuk the rest of the way. Everyone in Bangkok seems intent on scamming tourists, all the tuk-tuk drivers want to take you to see the lucky Buddha, which apparently is some sort of scam. So after convincing our tuk-tuk driver that we didn’t want to see the lucky Buddha, and in fact did want to see the royal palace, even in the light of his assurances that it was closed, we got our ride to the royal palace. We had been warned about the crazy driving of Bangkok tuk-tuk drivers, and the warnings were well-founded, I was pretty scared at times during our ride. We arrived at the royal palace, and after trying to enter we found that Roanne’s skirt was too short, even though it went almost to her ankles, so she had to rent more appropriate garb from the people at the gate. We then entered the grounds, and were thrust into a maelstrom of tourism similar to what we experienced at Angkor Wat:

All the crowds aside, it was pretty impressive, the temples were very ornate. Here are couple more photos, one of the big weird statue, and one of Roanne in her new sun hat:

There were a lot of different buildings on the grounds, all of which were different and interesting, here are shots of a few more:

We then entered the temple which housed the famous “emerald Buddha”, which was pretty neat. You couldn’t take photos in the temple, but the building is shown below:

One of the weirder things in the grounds was a miniature replica of Angkor Wat:

Apparantly there is some dispute among the Thais and the Cambodians as to who owns Angkor Wat. I think it is generally recognized that it belongs to the Cambodians, but sometimes the Thais claim that it rightfully belongs to them, which makes Cambodians pretty mad. We also saw the building where the King stays when at the royal palace (he doesn’t live there normally), and on the way out we saw the Thai military practicing up for their next coup:

We then moved on to visit a few of the other prominent Bangkok temples, which are all within walking distance. On the way we passed this sign, try to pronounce that name!

The next temple on the list housed the largest reclining Buddha in the world, which was really huge. It was housed inside a giant room, and took up the entire room. A bit weird, but neat to see. Here is a photo:

We then moved on, and took a ferry across the river to the last temple on our list, which was decorated with bits of broken porcelain plates, which apparently ships used to use for ballast or something like that. This temple was the least crowded of the ones we saw, which was nice, and I had the time to make a new friend, here is me posing with him:

It was now time to head back to our hotel to pick up our bags and catch our flight home, but we couldn’t find any tuk-tuk drivers willing to brave the traffic and drive all the way across the city, so we chartered a long boat (shown in the photo below), and took that down the river to a sky train terminal which took us back to our hotel.

At our hotel we got a taxi to the airport, and the taxi driver was totally insane, driving over 160 km/hr, riding up on people who didn’t want to pass, and weaving in and out of traffic. To make things worse there were no seatbelts. Roanne was pretty nervous and kept looking at me, but I was pretty calm, having already resigned myself to dying in a crash and just waiting for it to happen. Much to our surprise we ended up at the airport in one piece, and boarded the long flight home. We arrived back in Seattle to rain, and were sad to be at the end of our trip, but happy to have had so much fun.