A continuation of the busiest holiday ever... October hol Part 2

For the rest of our October holiday, we had decided to do a bit of a tour of Thailand with visiting family. It seems that every opportunity we have we are leaving the country to go visit some other countries point of interest instead of enjoying what we have right here. According to many people who have traveled around Thailand, all the best stuff and friendliest people are 'up north', yet in 5 years I've not made it up there. So with Nick's mum and step-dad, and my mum visiting it was a good excuse to go see the best bits we've not been to.
As well as visiting Chiang Mai, we planned to go to the beach, visit the bridge and Museums in Kanchanaburi, and do all the normal tourist stuff in Bangkok, all in about 10 days.

All three of our guests had been here before, so they kind of new what to expect. Nick's mum Val, stayed with us last year so already has the hang of Bangkok and the other two had visited the islands. Sadly my mum's previous experience of Thailand was not so great and left her jaded and 15lbs lighter. She didn't like the food, got seasick for the first time in her life, got chased by trigger-fish on every dive and was subjected to my idea of stylish accommodation (a thatch hut....with it's own toilet). As well as that, the night before we flew back to Bangkok for her connection to London, our room got over-run by cockroaches in a rain storm so we walked out and caught a taxi in the rain to the airport (a taxi which stopped in the middle of nowhere and demanded lots of money off us to take us any further). The airport was closed so my mum spent her last night in Thailand sheltering in on open-sided motorcycle taxi stand outside the airport gates, sleeping across two wooden chairs. Very glamorous indeed.

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With so little time, this holiday was always going to be a little hectic and we had pretty much cram-packed every day as full as possible. That is apart from the first day, which was a good job as my mum put her bags down and promptly fell asleep for the day. That evening we went out on one of the old rice barges for a dinner cruise. Starting at the Marriot Riverside it has sufficient parent 'wow factor' and then heads up river past all the glitzy hotels and the Grand Palace. The nice thing about the river by night is that you can't see how dirty it is and only see the lights shining on the surface instead of any unidentified odd stuff floating by (the occasional dog or cow has been seen in the past). Also the constant supply of slightly spicy 'fragrant' Thai food helps to mask the odd river smells.

The next day we were back on the river in all it's brown, murky, and daytime, smelly splendor, heading up to the Grand Palace and Wat Po. With guests in tow it's always best to avoid the roads at all costs, there's nothing quite like the horror of Bangkok traffic to put a person off the city. The Grand Palace is a truly beautiful place and is a 'must visit' site for anybody coming to Bangkok. However, for those visiting us in the future, you are on your own for this trip. Twice, or in Nick's case three times, is more than enough to get over the 'wow' of the place and replace it instead with great annoyance at the heat and all the people walking into the perfect picture.

After the Grand Palace and a very brief look at the reclining Buddha in Wat Po, we hired a long tail boat to take us on a tour of the canals and through old style Bangkok. This is the only time you get to understand why people call Thailand the Venice of the east, and it's a really great way to see how life used to be. Shops that you pull up to in a boat, kids jumping and playing in the water, and little old ladies with boats full of junk that try and sell you everything you don't want or need.

After a few days of exploring Bangkok, we flew up to Chiang Mai for the 'cultured' part of the holiday. We stayed in De Naga Hotel, a really nice new boutique hotel. Staff are really helpful, rooms are amazing, and the food is really good (even though nobody seemed to eat there in the evenings).

http://www.denagahotel.com/

Our days in Chiang Mai were mainly spent eating, drinking, shopping, playing with animals, and trying to get 5 felangs and a driver in a tuk tuk. The first day we went out to one of the elephant camps outside the city. Here tourists get to feed the elephants and watch them perform all manner of tricks. I'm not usually a fan of anything like this, but in Thailand, although the elephant is a national symbol, many elephants are badly treated. People breed elephants in the hope of getting a rare white elephant (all white elephants belong to the king), which the king will purchase and then make sure the family have money for many years. This means that there are a large number of gray elephants are bred by default and usually end up being brought into the city so their owners can take money of tourists foolish enough to pay to pat and feed them. The mahout camps in Chiang Mai are a safe way for locals to make money while ensuring the elephants are really well cared for. Each elephant has it's own mahout who looks after it and helps train it to do various things like kick a football into a goal, play basket ball and even paint pictures. The odd thing about all this is the elephants actually look like they're enjoying themselves.

After the elephant camp, we enjoyed a leisurely float down a river on a bamboo raft before being taken to a hill tribe village.

Perhaps the best thing about Chiang Mai for me was the 'Tiger Kingdom'. At 5 months old, this a reasonably new addition to the well trodden tourist loop of attractions. It is a centre that allows people to interact with tigers. Again, this isn't something I would normally agree with but I am sorry to say that the draw of baby tigers is too great for me to make my moral excuses. Also that and the fact that Asiatic tigers are very nearly extinct in the wild, so if they can help breed them in a reasonably nice captive environment, hopefully one day they can start a breed and release program.
The centre is a collection of large compounds where tigers of different ages are kept. You can choose to go in with the babies, the 4 month olds or the 1 year olds. The tigers aren't doped and you have to sign liability waivers before you get anywhere near them, but at the moment as it still new, the centre is being really professionally run and you go in with the carers of the tigers.

The baby tigers we went in with were only 4 weeks old and have to be some of the cutest animals I've ever handled. They were squawking for milk when we got in there, and quickly fell asleep after they got fed. Mum, Nick and I liked the little ones so much we decided to go in with the 'big ones' while Bill and Val watched from the safety of the coffee shop. It's quite easy to forget, when playing with 4 week old tigers, just how big and powerful they get. We had been quite blasé about going in with them, but when you get to the entrance and you see them tearing around after each other and play fighting, all teeth and huge great paws, it is a test of your nerve. I have seen doped animals many times before, and these were definitely wide awake. It was an incredible experience to walk around and sit with such beautiful and powerful animals.

On the last night in Chiang Mai I got to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time. After dinner at a restaurant on a hill overlooking the lights of the city, we had arranged a surprise for the others with our taxi driver of three days, and had him take us to a place where we could let off paper lanterns. He took us to a deserted car-park, not my choice of venue, but when I saw how awkward it was to get them off the ground without bursting into flames, especially in the wind, I realized a wide open car park was not a bad idea. It was a bit of luck and a lot of running and jumping from our driver that got all 5 lanterns away successfully. Our folks liked it so much we had to go shopping for some before we left the next day. Ten lanterns taken back to the UK with the aim of being released on New Years eve. Not sure how easy that's going to be with all the alcohol that's generally involved!

Pulau Weh... October hol Part 1

For this long October break we arranged for a family visit and a small tour of Thailand. and to get our diving fix by visiting another one of those much talked about dive locations, 'Pulau Weh'. Located off the coast of Banda Aceh in North Sumatra, the name Pulau Weh has been mentioned in many 'best diving' conversations that I've listened to. Although Sumatra's northern coastline, and Banda Aceh in particular, was amongst the worst hit in the 2004 Tsunami, according to the dive shop spiel the damage underwater was surprisingly minimal.

I wasn't sure what to expect upon arriving into the town of Banda Aceh, but there seemed little evidence of the absolute devastation that occurred. There has obviously been a lot of redevelopment, new roads and new areas of houses. Poverty wise, it seems similar to many other places we've been, and a lot better off than certain areas in Laos and Cambodia. There was a startling reminder of the destruction when we arrived at the Hotel Medan. Outside the lift is a collection of photos taken as the tsunami hit, and the aftermath of it. There was a 35 ft wooden fishing boat that was carried by the wave from the coastline about 10 kilometres away and umped on top of cars in the hotel car park. There are pictures of people running from a wall of water and debris, and then lots of pictures of the destruction caused. Sadly, upon looking closely at these pictures, you start to realize that it's not just piles of debris, but hundreds of bodies amongst it. You think you get to see it all on the news, but to see these photographs makes you realize you don't see half of it. There was such incredible devastation and loss across such a large area, I am sure the people who experienced the disaster will never fully recover.

There is a very impressive monument in Banda Aceh that did avoid damage, and that it the Baiturrahman mosque. This is one of the first domed mosques in South East Asia and is absolutely stunning. However, as females have to have hair and ankles covered to enter, I had to look from outside while Nick went in and took pictures.

After one night in Banda Aceh we took the fast ferry over the Pulau Weh. Lumba Lumba, the dive shop where we were staying was an hours bumpy but beautiful drive to the north of the island. Pulau Weh, like the rest of Banda Aceh, is a Muslim area, and it was difficult to find a single woman who did not have a headscarf covering her hair. This is definitely not a place to go if you're hoping to work on your tan. Nearly all foreign tourists who visit the island go there with one thing in mind, diving.

The diving in Pulau Weh is not for the faint hearted, located at point '0' in Indonesia, it is the start of the famous currents that whip in and around all the islands. However, Weh on a good day is supposed to have a little bit of all that's on offer; big stuff, small stuff, walls, drop offs, boulders and coral gardens, great visibility, and even one of the worlds few, diveble, hot underwater jacuzzis. We arrived when tides were slack, so the vis wasn't so great, but as both Nick and I have limited current experience, we were willing to compromise on vis to avoid the legendary ripping up and down currents.

The diving was good, but still not that 'wow' experience we had been hoping for. Maybe if we'd been when the tides were at their fullest, we might have seen all that was promised, but the 'big stuff' dives were slightly lacking in...big stuff. However, we did do a few dives later in the week when the current had picked up, and there may well have been some bigger stuff for us to see. But, due to the fact that our guide decided to circumnavigate the whole of the large site, twice, it meant we were so busy keeping our heads down and swimming as fast as we could to keep up, that we wouldn't have seen an elephant if it happened to be swimming above us. What was really cool though, was the shore dive to the pier. There was lots of nice small stuff to practice taking pics of, including a sea snake I nearly put my foot down on. You could have heard me swear from 10 metres away.

Another interesting dive was to the underwater hot springs. We stopped off at the springs after first doing a dive on a small wreck in the local harbour. We dropped into the water 100 metres away from a huge crane hammering pilings into the ground. Sound is louder, clearer and comes from all sides underwater. It felt like your chest and ears were being impacted by some kind of pneumatic drill as we swam around the wreck. It was a very strange experience, so different from the normal quiet of diving. After the wreck we moved on to the springs. These are lots of sulphuric hot air vents at in about 6-7 metres of water. The result is that you get to swim through millions of bubbles of hot, smelly gas. We absolutely stank when we surfaced.

Apart from the diving, there wasn't much to do where we were staying. There were a few 'restaurants', not that they can really be called that, but the normal 'drinking' culture that is linked to dive shops is never going to take off in Weh, for obvious reasons. We did have one rather alcoholic night in the dive shop when two of the divemasters had their snorkel tests. For those unfamiliar with the dive industry and the 'responsible' professionals involved in it, the snorkel test is a 'coming of age' activity. Inflicted on those who have paid to be bossed around and be general dogsbody for a month or two, and is inflicted by those who get to do the bossing. The divemaster trainee is made to wear a mask and snorkel and then drink a large amount of usually strong and disgusting alcohol, and perhaps a raw egg and some tobasco for seasoning. It is very entertaining for all but the trainee, for whom it usually just very unpleasant. At Lumba Lumba they have perfected this art and it is now a controlled science of unpleasantness. DMT's must finish all the liquid, cannot touch their masks to give themselves 'air breaks', and worst of all, anything they throw up is caught in their alcohol jug and quickly poured back down the snorkel. I feel I got off rather lightly with mine now!!

Typical Thailand

It seems like Thailand has been in increasing political upheaval for quite some time, what with a coup a few months ago, and now with the airports closed and thousands of peoples' travel plans in chaos, more and more attention is being focused on the who and the why of the Thai government and it's selection.

Thailand is often trying to depict itself as a modern and forward thinking country and on the odd occasion it is possible to forget that you're in a 'third world' country. But more often than not that thought will be quickly pushed aside in the face of something almost unbelievably comical. Recently Nick found the following article discussing the new candidates for city major. Now this is obviously slightly different from what is happening with the national government, but if this is how it's all done then it's no wonder people have a complaint or two.

"The residents of Bangkok are being offered a distraction from the political turmoil that has disrupted the capital over the past two months.

It comes in the form of an election for the city's mayor.

Bangkok is one of only two cities in Thailand that is allowed to elect its own mayor.

Although the position carries limited power, the contest has attracted a colourful array of candidates - 16 people have come forward.

It is a job you would think no-one would want.

Bangkok is plagued by chronic traffic, air pollution, seasonal floods and uncontrolled development.

And the post of governor carries very few powers - most of its funds are controlled by the central government.

Yet 16 candidates have come forward to contest the election.

Incumbent Apirak Kosayodhin is the front-runner - a calm, telegenic candidate for the opposition Democrat party.

His achievements over the past four years do not amount to much, but he does enjoy a reputation as a reasonably clean and competent administrator.

His opposite in temperament is Chuwit Kamolvisit, a former massage parlour tycoon, running for the second time.

He projects an image as a tough guy, a straight-talker, ready to clean up politics, which he reckons is even dirtier than his old business - an image he lived up to when he punched out a television interviewer for asking what he deemed impolite questions.

There is an idealistic professor, calling himself Dr Dan, promising 300 new policies, including the Sisyphean task of ridding the city of its rats and cockroaches.

Then there is Leena Jang, a gaudily made-up businesswoman whose prospects wilted a bit after her campaign manager drowned in a Bangkok canal while trying to demonstrate its unsuitability for swimming.

Campaigning has involved sending out trucks blaring Thai pop songs from loudspeakers, and erecting huge placards along the pavements.

These have made walking in Bangkok quite hazardous - several pedestrians and motorbike riders have been injured by falling posters."

I rest my case....

Arun Residence

...for those who are visiting Bangkok on a slightly larger budget, and aren't too bothered about having a pool, we have been introduced to the most amazing little boutique hotel. The Arun Residence is sat right on the river directly opposite the 'Temple of Dawn' or Wat Arun. This place has an amazing night view of the Wat and has a really good restuarant that doesn't break the bank. Definitely a must if you're ever passing through. The hotel part would normally be way out of our price range...not that we usually choose to go stay in hotels in our home town just for fun, but as a result of a visit from some rather generous guest, we got to treat ourselves with a stay here.

This is what you call a room with a view... even from the toilet. Check out the pics and the website.















http://www.arunresidence.com/accommodation.htm

Bangkok in a "State of Emergency"

As has been well advertised on the news, Thailand has been experiencing rather a lot of political unrest recently. It's not actually that long since the last time this happened, with the government being overthrown in September 2006.

Now I'm probably the worst person in the world for keeping up to date with local affairs, but apperently what was being shown on CNN and BBC was pretty dramatic. People brandashing poles, bottles, slingshots and even machettes and swords, protesters being battered down to the ground 6 to 1 by police. Many of the protesters were old women and while the aim was to remain peaceful one person was eventually killed by the government supporters. Strangly enough, whenever there was violence it was blamed on everyone put the police, not what it looked like in the pictures.

It seemed quite strange to us to hear about all this from the news and worried friends and family, but where we are, although it's quite central, we were not affected by it at all. However, when a state of emergency was finally declared early Tuesday morning, the school was instantly full of worried parents pulling their kids out of classes. By 1pm the school directors had decided to close the school. Suppose that happens when the place is full of rich kids, probably many with relations working in the government.

Civil unrest anywhere should be no cause for celebration, but when you are only just managing to keep your head straight at the end of the school semester and you find out you have an impromptu 5 day weekend, you find it kind of hard to contain your excitement. Never ones to miss a holiday opportunity, and regardless of the fact that we had only been back from the beach a day, we decided to head of to our local island, Samed.

Koh Samed is popular with most expats in Bangkok as it is only about 2 hours drive in a car and then a short boat ride. With white sand beaches and turquoise water it is unlike the rest of the coastal area that is close to Bangkok, which tends to have dirty brown beaches and slightly muddy waters. The island is always nice (apart from bank holiday weekends where it's overrun with loads of vain Thais who do nothing other than have pictures taken of themselves in all sorts of daft poses), but it's quite amazing how much more you can enjoy the beach when you're getting paid for it. We kept stopping during our busy schedule of sunbathing and reading saying 'we should be shouting at kids right now'.

By the time we returned to Bangkok life had pretty much returned to normal. The protesters had been appeased by the Prime Minister stepping down (to do a cooking show apparently...just one more of those things it's best not to try and understand). Peace should last until next month when it's been said that it is being 'arranged' for him to be re-elected. Here's hoping they can hold off until mid November and we have returned from school holidays in case we get another bonus break.

No doubt I could get in trouble for it, but the pictures from Bangkok are off the net.

Cha-am

For a treat to ourselves as we neared the end of the long first semester, we thought we would splash out a little more than usual on a weekend away. Since we've been back in Thailand our budget for accommodation seems to have gone up and up. It's so easy to find ways to justify to yourself why it's worth spending 200, 400, or even 1000 baht more (£3-£15). on a good night's sleep. Long gone are the days of staying in the grotty dorms or leaky roofed huts of Valerie's or Rock Garden.

For our trip away we never actually intended on going to Cha-am, I had been taken there by some students a few years ago and found the resorts all super sized with a bad beach and hundreds of screaming kids. We had planned on going to Koh Samed where you're always guaranteed a beautiful beach if not relative peace. Finding that the nicer affordable accommodation on Samed was full, Nick looked around and found a special offer on a new resort in Cha-am. Usually way out of our price range, it was on a special offer, tempting us to stay somewhere we would never normally go.

Sadly, it is very rare that we go to a place and have not got at least one thought on how it could have been better. I'm sure that anyone who travels a lot is the same way. When you pay bottom dollar you never expect that much, so you can't grumble or be disappointed, but when you start paying a little bit more for slightly nicer places, you start to come to expect the basics to be there...a fan that doesn't sound like a jet propeller, a shower that water actually comes out of and if you've really spent your money, a light you can turn off from the bed (bedside lamps are an absolute novelty out here).

The Alila in Cha-am, was possibly the first place I've ever stayed where I couldn't really criticise anything. The room was amazing, ultra modern and stark but with every gizmo you could want to make your stay special, from an Apple TV and music system to a rain-shower in the middle of the bathroom. The resort had 3 samll restaurants, 2 pools, and seperate private villas. There were private cabanas on the beach and poolside seating areas in there own hedged alcoves. You just have to pick where you want to be and some one will come and spread towels on the beds, give you fresh fruit, iced water and a chilled water body spray. With so much space and privacy, you always felt like you had the place to yourself, and not a child in sight. In the mornings there were free yoga sessions by the pool and they even provided yoga mats in every room. Not that we were that energetic.















The only time we actually attempted to leave the resort and see some of Cha-am (more through guilt of laziness rather than a desire to explore), we found that the tide had come in and the beach had completely disappeared. Perfect excuse for an even earlier than usual evening cocktail!


What with great food, service and setting, the only negative experience of the whole weekend was being stopped by the police in the taxi on the way there. Having been pulled over at a random checkpoint, the policeman there in typical Thai police style, saw it was a pair of white 'falangs' and demanded we pay him 100 baht. After refusing to give any kind of explanation he took the 100 baht note and put it straight in his back pocket. They train police well in this country.

Khao Yai National Park

Now that the first semester is about to finish, I'm finding that I have lost all interest in lesson plans and making worksheets, and have just decided to let all the paperwork do what it does best (pile up) and catch up with my blog. Have been really lazy at keeping it up to date, even though we've managed to fit some cool stuff in on the weekends.

Thailand's largest national park, Khao Yai, is a place we've been talking about visiting for years. But when it's a toss up between turquoise waters, white sand and a good book or hiking through leach infested jungle, strangely the jungle always lost out. This time though, when we were invited to join our friends in their chauffeur driven car (admittedly a rather large selling point), for an overnight trip up to Khao Yai, we thought we should make the effort.

We arrived around lunch time and had lunch at our guesthouse. I had kind of hoped that it would be slightly cooler where we were staying, but it was hotter than ever and when we ate our lunch sitting outside under a tin roof, it was like sitting in a tan cabin without the perks of getting brown. It took us all about half an hour before we crashed out on our beds (or wooden board might be a better name for it) trying to escape the heat.

Our first tour that evening was out to the bat caves. We went down into the caves where around 2000 insect eating bats were sleeping. Thankfully and surprisingly there was no smell, but there were creepy crawlies everywhere. Our tour turned into something out of fear factor as the guide tried to initiate us all into the wonderful world of underground bugs. Now I'm reasonably good with wildlife, but not when it comes to anything with over 4 legs. I have absolutely no desire in the world to have things crawl on me, for picture purposes or otherwise, call me a wimp, but many legged things just freak me out.

From the first cave we went on to watch the daily swarm of bats flying out from another cave. This cave had around 2 million bats inside and it takes around an hour for them all to fly out. Once outdoors and away from the bugs (or so I thought), it was cool to watch the endless stream of bats undulating across the sky on their way to find food. It wasn't long though, before our guide found something else freaky to harass, and everybody ended up taking turns wearing a rather large millipede (alright, I'll admit it, I wasn't game for this one either). We ended the evening tour with a dip in the dark in some cool, crystal clear, fresh water pools on the way back to the guesthouse.

Bright and early the next day, after a rather back breaking sleep, we piled in the back of a pick-up truck and headed out to the park. Pretty much as soon as you enter the park gates, you start climbing up the winding road into the hills. It's amazing how a little bit of height can make all the difference when it comes to air temperature. There are few places I visit in Thailand that I can call refreshing, but Khao Yai is one of them. That is at least until you decide to hike through the dense undergrowth of the jungle floor, then it's just wet.

Within about five minutes of getting into the park we spotted wild gibbons. These daredevil creatures were playing about 60 feet up in the tree tops, launching themselves from one thin bendy branch to another. Over the course of the day we were to see various feats of athleticism (or stupidity, depending on how you look at it), including tree hopping with babies and accidental base jumping out of trees. The most memorable thing about the gibbons though, was the constant noise from there howls and cries. Typical perhaps for the nation they reside in, they seem to sit next to each other and all shout at the same time without actually listening to what anybody has to say.

I'm sorry to say that while the gibbons were possibly the most impressive things we saw, they didn't hold my attention quite so much as something smaller and a lot less unique. Apparently the muddy forest floor of Khoa Yai is home to thousands of leaches. I'm not sure exactly how many I saw, but the moment we stopped and everybody else looked up into the trees to catch sight of the baby gibbon or some rare bird, I started looking down at the floor at the instant attraction my feet hold for leaches. It is quite shocking how fast they can move and find peoples feet to climb on to. I can now officially add leaches to the list creepies I don't like.

We ended up hiking through the jungle for about 3 hours (that's our group whose guide didn't get us lost). It was kind of cool as we were more off the beaten track than I expected us to be (hence some people got lost). We didn't see a huge amount; frogs, lizards, some cool birds, but it was still good to do something different. We had lunch at a tall viewing hut overlooking the salt lick where the wild elephants come and stand (sadly minus the elephants), before heading over to the waterfall and seeing some rather cheeky (and rude) macaques on route.

When we had entered the park that morning, about 4 ambulances shot past us with sirens blazing. Our guide told us there had been an accident at the waterfall the night before. It was while we were making jokes about the fact that it had taken them over 12 hours to respond with ambulances, that he told us a foreign man who was working as a teacher in Bangkok. The man had gone for a swim and got swept under by the force of the waterfall, then resurfaced before disappearing again. They were still looking for him 24 hours later when we arrived. Obviously we weren't given the option to swim (not that I think any of us fancied it). In fact the closest we could get to the waterfall was the viewpoint above. There were boats and divers still on site, and you could see the excessive amount of water coming down the falls due to the rain.

After the waterfall, when we were heading back towards the guesthouse, our eagle-eyed guide spotted a scorpion crossing the road and grabbed it before jumping in the back of the truck with up. He then proceeded to drop it on the floor of the truck. Thankfully he got it again quickly and it seemed to put up with the picture taking quite patiently. Needless to say that was one creepy crawly we were all rather happy to see removed from the truck.

Return to Angkor

I have a few rather lasting memories of my first trip to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor in 2002. Firstly I don’t think I’ll ever forget the 10 hour bone shaking ride in the back of a pick up truck shared with around 15 other foolish and ripped off backpackers (this was however much better than Nicole’s ride which I think took her nearly 20 hours in the rainy season). I also remember the 2 days of showers it took to remove the dust that managed to get into just about every orifice. I remember the fact that Olivia and I were rather foolhardy in thinking that us 2 unfit ladies would cope with a 27 kilometre bike ride around the temples in 36 degree heat (not to mention the hiking round of 4 temples on route). However, I think the things I remember most are how amazingly cheap all the shopping was and the vast selection of great restaurants and bars this small town has. Oh yeah, and the fact that you can buy freshly baked, warm crusty baguettes on the street and red wine is dirt cheap (I often wish the French made it here!).

Returning to Cambodia was no disappointment. It is still just as good a place to chill out, eat and relax, and with all the stuff to look at you can’t help but feel cultured while you’re at it. While Seam Reap is quite developed though, it’s a real culture shock to go into the Capital city of Phnom Peng. It still shocks me just how different Cambodia is from neighboring Thailand. As you drive through the country you see that the majority of people are still living in straw huts or even just stringing hammocks under a tin roof.

Siem Reap had changed quite a lot, but only in good ways as far as I could see. There are so many small restaurants that have opened, with the most popular being the local style ones. Even the street food stalls were really busy with tourists so it seems like the wealth is at least being spread around a bit. The market was as bustling as ever, and haggling is slightly tougher, a sure sign that people are becoming less desperate.

This time we were a little bit more sensible when arranging our tour of the temples. We had a really good driver take us out in his tuk tuk the first day to the local temples. The next day he took in an air-con car to the waterfalls and the distant temple of Bantey Sri. This was definitely a good move, as much as I liked the tuk tuk, I was really grateful we splashed out extra on the car, we arrived quite cool and fresh from our journey and watched people climb out of tuk tuks after there 40k ride completely covered in dust. The road got so bad at times it was like driving through a sandstorm with only 10 metre visibility. You really felt for the kids who have to walk or ride bikes along it every day to get to school.

I'd like to say the temples were just as spectacular second time around, but when you first see Angkor and the Bayon the wow factor is all in the grandeur and the scale of it. Having seen it before, it didn't quite hit me as much. And, sadly, a few of the better areas to see are now out of bounds. What was really nice though, was the fact that it wasn't absolutely swarming with tourists. It was nice to have the chance to explore in relative peace. The Bayon is still one of the coolest temples I've ever been to. The king who designed that must have been slightly vain, it has over 200 images of his face carved into the towers all around.

As always with our weekends away, we were a lot lazier than we should have been. As it was the rainy season and the clouds role in around lunchtime, we had the perfect excuse to call it quits by lunchtime. I know we should have been taking the time to learn all about the history of the place, but in all honesty, it's all about the photos! We did make one attempt at seeing sunset, made it back out to the temple just in time for the rain to start, so quickly gave up on that idea. The other reason we were so lazy was the fact that we managed to find a really nice little guest house with a pool. Place had only been open a month so for around $10 each we got a nice big room, breakfast and to chill in the beautiful garden by the pool.

Apart from being stinking hot, Cambodia is always an amzing place to visit. The people are so nice even though the country is still struggling to right itself. Hopefully, if I can get my butt in gear, we will be going back to Siem Reap in December for the half marathon. Maybe the thought of more French bread, cheese and wine will be enough to drive me to getting fitter....