Thailand - the land of smiles, and Cambodia - they know what's wat!

Well we could hardly spend all of our time lazing on Malaysian beaches. Not when Thailand has plenty of its own to offer.

We flew into Phuket. Lets get the childish giggles out of the way now - it's pronounced Poo-get not fu-kit. The h shows, pay attention now this is interesting, the h shows that the p is aspirated, i.e. you breath out while saying the poo (no laughing I said!). If the h was after a vowel it would mean it was a long vowel, not a short one. It's because Thai has it's own script consisting of some 44 consonants and about 30 vowels which has to be transcribed into the standard 26 letter roman alphabet. OK, lesson over, lets hit the beach.

We had a quick look round Phuket and just as quickly left for Ko Phi Phi...

(Quick lesson in Thai part 2 - Ao (pronounced Ow) means Bay, Ko means Island and Hat means Beach. OK?)



Unfortunately, it is pronounced Pee Pee, so laugh away if you feel the need. That's Ao Loh Dalum, across the island from Ao Ton Sai which is the main shopping/eating area. The island was devastated by the 2004 Tsunami but they've done a good job getting things up and running again. The island with accommodation is Ko Phi Phi Don (big Pee Pee), but the most famous area is on Ko Phi Phi Leh (little Pee Pee)...



That's Maya Bay, the beach they used in the film The Beach. It's almost completely enclosed by the limestone cliffs. We took one of the long-tail taxi boats for a tour of the islands - unfortunately they don't call this the monsoon season for nothing and things got a little hairy in the torrential rain and heavy seas later on in the day. It was still warm despite the rain, so when we stopped at an island everyone sat in the warm clear sea while we were fed freshly sliced pineapple by our guide.

We spent about a week enjoying the mostly sunny weather, mainly by the pool of a far more upmarket complex than our own. There were lots of fire shows and even a cabaret with genuine Thai lady-boys. Amusing and disturbing all at once.

After Ko Phi Phi we headed for the beaches around Krabi. Hat Rai Leh is especially well known for it's limestone karst cliffs. We took a taxi boat from Ao Nang, where we were staying, to Hat Rai Leh - very nice, but a little busy. We followed a couple on the taxi boat and ended up at Hat Phra Nang...


That'll ding dang do for us!!

Everyone we'd met up to this point was planning to go to the full moon party on Ko Pha-Ngan on the 9th. Rude not to I guess.

A bus and a ferry and a taxi boat later we found ourselves here...



For some of the time anyway. Jen found some time to join the meditation and yoga classes overlooking the bay, and the rest of the time was spent just over there...


on Hat Thian, just a 100 baht (1.50 english) boat ride from Hat Rin, where the big party is held.

You can actually walk between the two beaches to save the price of a boat ride, which we tried with the guys we arrived with (Chris and Martin who we first met on our boat tour round Ko Phi Phi and again on Hat Rin looking for a taxi boat, and Andy who had met the other two on the ferry over). The walk was an hour and a half through the forest covered hills and it nearly killed us. OK, a bit of an exaggeration, it nearly killed Jen - no seriously, she decided to have a hypo halfway across. Still, 100 baht is 100 baht.

As for the full moon party - the bars turn the music up load and people dance on the beach until the sun comes up. They also sell "buckets". For the dangerously cheap price of 180 baht (about 2.70) you get a half bottle of local whisky, a can of coke and a can of red bull in a small plastic bucket. Even I had a little dance after one of those.

So anyway, after 6 days on Ko Pha-Ngan we were starting to feel a little guilty and thought we'd better go and see some temples and stuff. Bangkok seemed like a good idea.

And it was (thanks Col, I'll take over for a while). The Queen was having a Birthday when we arrived, and what with it being the Kings 60th year on the throne - the whole country is Royal mad - no more so than in the Capital City of Bangkok. Pretty much everyone is wearing bright yellow shirts, there is classical thai dancing in the night markets and fireworks to celebrate. All good stuff. Bangkok was brimming with activity.

We shopped till we dropped in the frenzy they call Chatuchak weekend market (absolutely enormous, and 38 degrees in the shade). And then we took in some culture...



That's Wat Phra Kaew. It's wonderful, and practically the most shiny place in the world. And right next to it is the Grand Palace ...



Which is just as OTT, but with more topiary. You've got to admire that kind of extensive glitz, it takes some guts to put that many mini mirrors on to one wall.

Time now for a flurry of buddhas. Wat Traimit boasted the biggest golden buddha. Here he is, all 5 1/2 tonnes of him...



This buddha had been recently discovered to be made entirely of gold, having been encased in concrete for years posing as an ordinary stone buddha to escape the unwanted attention of invaders. Which is a nice surprise don't you think?

And Wat Pho claims Thailand's largest reclining Buddha...



He really was magnificently large. His toes were bigger than my head.

Now there were a lot more buddhas and shiny things but I reckon the 2 pictures are enough. Besides, Wat Pho is also famous for inventing Thai massage. It'd be rude not to try it. So we had a go. It was singularly the most painful thing I've experienced in a long while - I think the woman left her thumb in my shoulder, I can still feel it.

Anyway, now for a quick note about local transport. Do as the locals and try crowding onto the express ferry bus to get down the river. We were packed on like sardines and all the farangs (foreign giants like Col) stood out like sore thumbs because the ceilings were so low - anyone who wasn't normal height like me had to crouch - which was particularly funny. Also worth noting was the 2 foot of respectful space surrounding the saffron clad monks clinging to the back rail. Despite the swarm of people, they managed to maintain their dignity and orangeness.

Then theres the equally crowded local bus. The conductors are really friendly and helpfully tell you where to get off - but you've got to be quick - they don't always stop the bus entirely and jumping on or off a moving vehicle while wearing a heavy back pack is an acquired skill.

Alternatively you can try catching one of the many Tuk Tuks that buzz about the city. Not as crowded because there's just you and the driver. They resemble a cross between a motorbike and bumper car, and it's the closest thing to an extreme sport!

Anyway. It's time to leave Thailand for a while and pop over to Cambodia. I hear they've got a lot of Wats.

(Musical chairs again, Jen's had enough)

Indeed, and after reading all about the infamous Bangkok to Siem Reap bus scam we went straight to the nearest Travel Agent and booked ourselves a couple of tickets - 300 baht (that's 4 1/2 quid) to get to Cambodia, surely too good to be true!!

Too good indeed, after 4 hours on a decent air-con bus we got to the border and payed nicely over the odds for our visas - only a 20 baht fee my arse, we knew full well they were charging us 400 baht extra. After another 4 1/2 hours we eventually get on the bus at the Cambodian side, knowing there was a 6 hour bus ride awaiting on the worst road imaginable before we got to Siem Reap - 150+km of heavily pot-holed dirt track (apparently an airline is giving backhanders to make sure the road doesn't get improved). We'd cracked by this stage, and along with another from our bus hired a taxi - 7.50 each - and did the trip in a little over 3 hours. After ten minutes in the taxi we passed the bus load of tourists that had left about an hour before us. Their bus had broken down :-) It wasn't the only broken down bus we passed either, and given the unbelievable downpour that accompanied us for the final hour of what has to be the most unforgettable taxi ride I've ever had, we were increasingly happy with our decision to abandon our fellow travellers.

So, 3 days in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. No point roughing it, how about Le Meridien Angkor? Thanks to Jen's stash of hotel reward points we got three nights of luxury absolutely free. A welcome drink would be splendid thanks, just to give you time to arrange the fresh fruit and nibbles in the room. And an upgrade? OK, if you insist. Nice pool complex too, the waterfalls were especially easy on the eye.

Let's have a picture. How about Angkor Wat...



The single biggest religious building in the world!! It's huge! The whole complex is surrounded by a massive moat. If you climb up to those three pointy bits, the view looks something like this...



The whole place is in various stages of ruin, restoration and repair. There's far too much to tell you about here, but don't worry, the slideshow will be coming to a living room near you soon!

Now the thing I didn't realise is that Angkor Wat is just one of many temples in what was once the ancient city of Angkor.

The rest are spread around the area, up to 30 odd kilometres from the central city of Angkor Thom. That means that you can't easily just wander about the place on foot - what you need is a friendly Tuk-Tuk driver who will drive you about and wait for you while you do your thing, all for about 6 quid a day. So we spent 2 very sweaty days wandering around the various temples and terraces - we even had a guide, a local police officer, clearly not overly stressed with work, give us the ins and outs of the hindu carvings on one of the more intricate little wats. Two days was enough though, after a while one wat starts looking kinda like the rest, and they surely do have a whole load of wats here. We spent the third day by the pool.

Here's a couple more pictures of some wats before we get back to Thailand. Some of the temples have been left partially overgrown and you get a real Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider feeling. One of the best is Ta Prohm...





The only really annoying thing in Cambodia was the kids selling stuff around the temples. If you made the mistake of speaking to one, a whole army would decend on you demanding you buy their scarf, water, hat, book, postcards...

A typical conversation:

Kid: "Meester, you buy my book?"

Me: "No thanks"

Kid: "OK, you buy my book now?"

Me: "Thanks but I don't need one"

Kid: "OK. You buy my book now?"

Me: "No really, I've got that one"

Kid: "You buy another one from me?"

Me: "No, really, I don't need a book"

Kid: "OK...(pause) you buy my book now"

Me: "Really, no, I don't want another book"

Kid: "OK. You buy my book now?"

Kid 2: "Meester, you buy my postcard?

Me: "Thanks, but no, no book and no postcard"

Kid: "You buy my book now?"

Kid 2: "You want postcard from me?"

Enter kids 3 to 15: "You buy *insert tat* from me?"

Exit me, running...

Let's hop on a plane back to Thailand eh - can't quite face another nightmare bus journey just yet. From Bangkok we headed up to Chiang Mai, the big city in the northwest, and signed up for 3 days of jungle trekking with promises of elephant rides, hill-tribes and bamboo rafting with no other tourists around.

And that's exactly what we got. Firstly, we went for a ride an elephants...



They were even bigger than Jen!!!!!



We met some local hill-tribes. Jen had a go at bashing some rice - I would've help but it's womens work, and we don't want to offend them now do we...



We wandered through the jungle, abley guided by the cheeky Chai...



and spent the nights in some cosy bamboo huts. This is our happy gang, freshly washed after a swim in the river...



Left to right: Megan, Alex, Jen, Sophie, Tasha, Roz and Me - not sure where Chai got to, but we suspected the home grown tobacco cigars the locals were smoking had a little something extra in them. Opium is rather popular in these parts.

The last day was bamboo rafting time. The rapids weren't TOO big, but then the rafts weren't quite as sturdy as we were expecting. This is our raft...



Taken during the 5 minutes it was floating above the surface of the water :-). We had the raft without Chai, which meant we stayed mainly dry and nobody got pushed in...unlike the other raft. I almost forgot, the second night trekking was Sophie's 21st birthday, which led to a round of the "cooking pot" game. Kinda like Spot Harry with hand signs and a face full of soot.

The real festivities had to wait for the night we got back to Chiang Mai where we all got to see the effect of multiple buckets on Sophie and Alex. All very amusing - Sophie has an unfortunate habit of trying to stand on tables and chairs when drunk, not the cleverest thing when she could barely stand on her own feet!

And that is pretty much that. Jen's spent the last three days at a Thai cooking school, learning how to make me lovely curries, while I've been lazing around and learning all about China for the next leg of our adventure. We fly to Hong Kong on Wednesday and then on to China proper when our visas are sorted.

(You'd better add a bit more Jen, I seem to have skipped through that last bit)

Ok, I'll add a bit more, if you insist. It's been an amazing few weeks. For starters I got to sit on an elephants trunk - not something that happens to me every day...



We've crossed rivers while balanced on precariously placed bamboo poles, explored bat (and snake) filled caves, hiked past paddy fields, been bitten by leeches, and eaten with chopsticks that had moments earlier been a bamboo plant growing happily in the jungle. I also got to see lots of unusual mushrooms (come on, its been a few blogs since I mentioned them):



These are straw mushrooms for sale at the local market. We got a few and with the expert guidance of Perm my cooking teacher - I made a lovely spicy coconut soup, stuffed myself silly for three days and created intricate decorations from all sorts of ingredients. Here's one I made earlier:



So that brings us to the end of our travels through South East Asia and I must say it's been fantastic. If you can look past the cries of "You want Tuk Tuk?" "same same but different" "lovely jubbly" and "Massaaaaaaa" (would you like a massage) you will see a land filled with warm and smiley people, beautiful sights and delicious food. Join us again soon to hear of our adventures in the far east.

lovin' it

Jen and Col