Bangkok and Angkor, Cambodia

Bangkok and Angkor Pictures

Hello All! We all just back from a four day journey in the Angkor Province, Cambodia. We had a great time touring the once hidden temples of the region. The most famous and most largest being Angkor Wat. My favourite was Bayon, a temple that featured hundred of carved faces. I spend a little too much time uploading photographs and have exhausted my time on this government computer. So for now I will let the pictures do all the talking. They begin in Bangkok where we took a tour of the Grand Royal Palace. The compound was the home of the past nine kings of Thailand. The current king built a new palace outside of Bangkok because of security concerns. We took a ride on a longtail boat and toured the vast waterways of the city.

After two days in the capital, we took a ride across the eastern border toward Cambodia. Once across the border we averted one of the notorious scam busses, a bus that promises a quick and cheap ride but provides nothing of the sort, after we were verbally accosted by a 17 year old Cambodian 'tour agent.' We left the tour agency at pace, hopped into a couple of Toyota Camry taxis, and arrived in Siem Riep after a wild three hour ride on a dirt road. The ride consisted of a rugged dirt road with no lanes. The cabbie seemed to just follow the path of least resistance while swerving thru motorcycles, tuk-tuks, bikers, cars, semis, and people. Good times. We spent two days touring the temples of the Angkor region. There are close to twenty temples, or Wats, in the region. Built by Khmer kings around 1000AD, they were consumed by the jungle after the Khmer kingdom fell. Locals still new they existed and monks still lived in the temples. Around 1860 the French 'discovered' these temples again. They cleared the jungles and restored the temples to their origional state. One of the temples was left untouched to show visitors how the temples appeared when the French explorers found them.

Enjoy the pictures and I hope to be able to update more shortly

-dc

Bangkok and Angkor Pictures

Thailand so far...

Sawasdee! Greetings from Thailand and sorry taking so long to update the ol' blog. We have spent the last week soaking in the culture and sun while enjoying a plethora of delicious cuisine. We landed in Bangkok on the 25th of February where Mom and a friend picked us up. We drove about an hour east of the capital to the province of Chaocheongsao where my Grandma lives.

I was pretty excited to see my Grandma and to be back to Thailand after so many years. The last time I was in Thailand was about 11 years ago and the last time I saw my Grandma was when she came to the states to visit about... 7 or 8 years ago. Oh, my whole life I have known Grandma as Kuhnyai, the Thai word for grandma, so this will also be reflected in the blog starting ...now. Anyways, I'm glad I have been brushing up on my Thai language skills since we were able to speak together in Thai and laugh about a bunch of things. I realised that I have both Kuhnya's laugh and her sense of humor. We all had dinner at a family friend's restauraunt located on the river. That night we went to Pattaya, a touristy town located on the gulf, to experience the sights and sounds of Thailand's nightlife. Throughout the night we we all collectively went about 12-14 against the locals at their bar games which surprisingly include connect four and jenga. No joke. In the end, Mark had one too many Singha beers and ended up challenging a local muay Thai kickboxer, bareknuckle and with his glasses on.
The next day we hung out at Kunyai's for most of the day and just relaxed. That night we drove to Bangkok where we caught a red-eye bus down south to Krabi. We were headed to Krabi mainly to get scuba certifications and also to be by the beaches. A family friend is a business partner of the scuba school we were going to so we all got a great deal on NAUI certification. We arrived in Krabi at about 9am and got picked up by a friend and scuba instructor from the dive school we were attending. Below is a sunset from Ao Nang, the beach town we stayed at while getting scuba certication
The theme for the week: Underwater Sea Adventure. Scuba classes over here seem to be a little more lax than other places. The day we arrived in Ao Nang we watched a 3 hour scuba instruction video and were told the next day we would be in open water. Sure enough, the next day we took a longfin boat to an island and began our open water lessons. We went over all the equipment, signals, etc on the boat and underwater we worked on dealing with equipment while submerged. Our instructors were pretty cool guys. They were both about our age. Sam was a Californian who grew up in Thailand so he spoke both Thai and English fluently. Mon was a local Thai who knew a little English, he had the personality of Michalangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle so we all enjoyed their company.
We did 6 dives total over three days. The third day was by far the best. We took a big boat about two hours to Koh Phi Phi (I believe the movie The Beach was filmed there). Visibility was great and we saw a lot of soft coral, needlefish, puffer, clowns, seaturtle, and the elusive ghost pipefish. Max depth we hit was around 16 meters, we are certified upto 18 meter. By the end of our dives my buoyancy control was spot on. On the boat ride back we had our take home certification tests graded and we all passed with flying colors. We all had great experiences under the sea and are planning to do a couple of dives while in Phuket, our next destination. I didn't take many pictures since we were wet the whole time, so I found one that summed up our week in a nutshell.

Next we are headed up the coast to Phuket where my brother, Jonathan, will meet us. It's pronounced poo-ket and not how it sounds phonetically. We will be there for about 5 days or so. Thanks all for tuning in. Until next time

Cheers!

-David