i made it to pai yesterday...the road through the mountains was steep and winding. i could look out over the mountains and valleys and at night the sky was amazing, i've never seen so many stars in my life. there were bananas and mangos and papaya growing from trees just off the side of the road.

this town is great so far...i met some people on the bus over, two guys from germany, a girl from ireland and a girl from kenya and we're all staying in the same bungalow place near the river. last night we went and checked out the bebop cafe bar for drinks and some live music...

it's really laid back here, lots of stoners and musicians, people sitting around doing nothing. today, we'll rent some scooters and check out the surrounding areas...

glyn finally made contact with me and said as soon as he gets his passport to the myanmar(ian?) embassy, he'll get his ass up here...

things are looking good...and i might stay around ''pai'' for awhile...

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I just finished putting up a few more photos. I'm a little concerned that the captions maybe obscured by the photos...it's hard to do this kind of stuff properly when you're sitting in internet cafes all over the place....

please let me know if what I think is true...that you can't read all the captions...

Yangyang Salmon Festival
Mureung Valley
Beijing
Hong Kong

and Glyn, if you're reading this....you're DEAD!

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i had been planning on taking a government bus to chiang mai for a long time and then at the last minute i decided to take one of the private buses off of khao san road. it cost 450 baht which was reasonable nd the bus looked really nice in the picture. it was packed full by the time my group arrived and we were forced to the back seats...the only ones that couldn't recline for a 12 hour ride. i had brought a book, but of course the lights didn't work either, the seat was so high up my feet couldn't touch the floor, no movie...the tourist agent lady said there would be "dancers," but of course, no dancers either, i don't know what i was expecting. needless to say it was an excruciating trip and one i wouldn't like to repeat in the near future.

when we arrived in chiang mai, the bus parked behind a gas station where there were a few sangthaews waiting to take us into town. a loady got aboard the bus and told us that we our ticket price included a free ride into town and hot coffee or tea as well as information about the city. by the time we were all off the bus, most of the sangthaews were full of people going on this trek or to that guesthouse. i called the guest house where i had made reservations, and they're supposed to do a free pick up, but he said it was too early in the morning and he had no drivers. the lady who said we should all get a free ride into town was gone and i was left standing in the middle of who knows where by myself....tumbleweeds blowing across the road at 6am. i found a tuktuk and got a ride to the guesthouse, but they won't have a room available until 10am, so after a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, i'm at an internet cafe, waiting until i can crawl into bed and get some much needed sleep...i guess i've been awake for 24 hous now...and it's fricken cold here!

the internet cafe has a sign, taped to all the computers:
Dear Customer:
Please be aware of viruses that come with strange mail title such as David Beckham and so on. We would appreciate your awareness and Not open the mail.

the coffee shop had a sign outside the toilet:
Please mild your head.

and now I know not to open emails that say David Beckham and to mild my head.

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remember how my students in korea used to stick their fingers up my ass crack and find it really hilarious. it was like they couldn't resist...someone bending over, just waiting to be violated...
and i present to you the ultimate DDONG-CHIM...poop-needle...
(and yes it's just like this)



i found this as someone's avatar on Dave's ESL Cafe...

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so tired of bangkok and am stuck here another day because the stupid travel agency doesn't have my passport back yet and they said it would be ready today...it's already been 8 days...
grrr....must get out of this city...sucking the life out of me...

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aha i finally figured out why i couldn't upload all my pictures like i did in korea...the computers here must be a lot slower...i used to be able to upload 20, 2 meg files in about 3 minutes...here in Thailand, even at these places that advertise ADSL, it would take 40 minutes for the same files. I've had to use a Thumbnail Creator to shrink all the files and am uploading at a much smaller size. Hopefully, I'll have lot's of new albums for your perusal soon. Here's a few from my time in Cambodia and from the Full Moon Party, Dec 26th, 2004...
(the quality is really bad, I haven't figured out a good size to shrink them to yet and I guess I went to far with this batch, they'll be better when I post them in an album)


Some Canadian dudes we ran into on the boat over...



Someone borrowed my camera, took this picture and ran away...


The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh...



This is a doorway in the Tuol Sleng S-21 Prison, former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, and previously a high-school, where during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, thousands of Cambodians were kept prisoner, tortured and murdered here...Kate took almost this exact same photo when she was here and I liked hers so much, I took one myself...



The Khmer Rouge kept lengthy documents on each prisoner and meticulous numbered collections of "mug-shot" photos were also found, there are hundreds of these plastered on the walls of Tuol Sleng, some of the prisoners are as young as 5 or 6 months old, just babies in prison outfits with numbers around their necks...too young to even stand...


The Killing Fields of Choeng Ek are about 15 km from downtown Phnom Penh. This is where the Khmer Rouge took prisoners to be executed and buried in mass graves. Their skulls have now been placed in a giant memorial obelisk in the center of the fields, with bloody clothing and other bones just below...

If you want to know more about the atrocities commited by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, you can read up on it here: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/khmeryears/


Your typical unpaved, filthy street in downtown Phnom Penh...



Buddha in a secluded garden near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh...



The one, the only, Angkor wat, near Siem Reap...


The Bayon Temple at Angkor...

And there you have it, just a few of the 200 or so photos I took in Cambodia...it's gonna be awhile before I can post them properly...hopefully sooner rather than later...

Right now, I'm on the Khao San Road in Bangkok...I'll be here until the 25th of January because I've sent my passport off to the Indian Embassy for a VISA and have to wait...Glyn should be showing up around the 23rd, but we might not be able to meet up until Chiang Mai in the North in a couple of weeks...

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my sister just sent me an email with a website that has before and after satellite photos of some of the devastation in Banda Aceh, Indonesia...it's unbelievable...especially from Image 5 on...

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html

quick update...i'm finished in angkor and siem reap, i'll get some photos up asap, it's been an amazing journey through the temples here...i'm off to battambang tomorrow, a lazy town on the river decked out in crumbling french colonial architecture...apparently, there's some bar on the riverside where angelina jolie and billy bob thornton had a few...

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Cambodorea??

it's been exactly 47 days since i left korea, and well 47 days since i had my last korean meal...and i was starting to get a little ansi (sic?) for some good spicy gimchi, gochujang, hell even some good korean bap. siem reap was the answer to my woes, after running in to several korean tour groups at angkor today (and of course sneaking in the occasional "annyeong haseyo" to wow them with my super korean language skills) i decided to make it a point to eat korean food in cambodia...hence cabodorea...doesn't that have a nice ring about it. one the way back from angkor today i noticed a little korean restaurant and went there for dinner. i walked in and saw a little korean ajummah, who in addition to speaking korean, was speaking khmer fluently...i followed with my best impression of a korean, bowing, speaking only in korean, eating with chopsticks and you know it felt just like home (my second home)...yes, just like good'ol gangneung...the ajummah was nice and ran over when ever i yelled out "yogiyo!! mul juseyo!" for more water and brought me all kinds of nice little side dishes with my dolsot-bibimbap...there was the staple...gimchi, several kinds in fact, those tiny little fishes, bones and all that i never, ever eat, and some gim...dry gim and gim soup (gim-tang?) which i never eat either and always pass on to soutthida, who loves the stuff...but cambodian ajummah kept forcing it on me..."good, korean food...you eat...gim...mashisoyo!!" so i ate it...and it wasn't half bad, who would've thunk it that cambodian gim-tang was better than korean gim-tang...


and now the temples...

i visited angkor wat today and the temples of angkor thom, a enclosed palace with several temples including the great and mighty bayon temple...

i'm not going to say much yet, i've still got another two days of temples to see. it was an incredible experience...walking through halls thousands of years old. and riding on the back of the motorcycle as we entered the jungle, looking to my left and seeing the rooftops of angkor in the distance was something i'll never forget. of course, it was ruined a bit by the number of beggars hiding around corners, ready to pounce on me as soon as i discovered a cool room or view. a lot of them start off by giving you a big history lesson on the temple, walking you around and pointing out interesting things...in perfect english, though it sounds a bit rehearsed...then they expect you to pay them...after awhile i learned to just tell them that i have no money for you as soon as they poked their heads around the corner, and then i'd deke them out down some long dark corridor or off into the jungle behind a tree, it took a bit of practice, but they started leaving me alone, of course not after managing to weasel a few good dollars out of me...

angkor wat was amazing, of course, and we watched the sunset up phnom bakheng, a temple high up on a mountain...i used two rolls of film just today, so expect lots of pictures once i get them developed, which i won't do in cambodia, for fear of them botching them all...

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as promised are some photos from my time in hong kong and thailand. i'm still having problems with these pc-room computers everywhere i go and am not able to upload all my photos and create photo pages with them, like i did in korea. for now, i can post them to my blog:


The most beautiful beach I have ever seen, Koh Nangyuan, just off Koh Tao and where I and several others had our own little near-death experiences...


A busy street in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong



The mummified monk near Hat Lamai, Koh Samui, Thailand. This monk predicted correctly the day of his death and said that he would focus his meditation on not decomposing after death. This is believed by Buddhist's to truly be the ultimate state of mind-over-matter. After death, about 20 years ago, his body refused to decompose with no outside treatment and is now on display, sporting a pair of sunglasses...



The third largest reclining Buddha statue in the world in Hat Yai, Southern Thailand.





Katie, Ronald and Jaime wai-ing outside a McDonald's in Hat Lamai, Koh Samui. Every McDonald's in Thailand has a Ronald statue, just like this one, outside. Kind of creepy...



The bottom of one of the waterfalls I visited on Koh Samui...can't remember the name, maybe Na Muang?


Matt, Mike, Katie and Jaime on our drunkest night ever, with one of many Sangsom Buckets, in Hat Lamai...



A heavily decorated spirit-house on the side of the road between Hat Chaweng and Hat Bo Phut on Koh Samui...



Our friend "Sandy"on Hat Bang Rak (Big Buddha Beach) before she was destroyed by a pack of wild beach-dogs....



The big golden Buddha on Hat Bang Rak...




cambodia...it's very hot here and dirty...known for having some of the worst roads in the world...dirty and crumbling, potholed roads through downtown, piles of rotting garbage, much dirtier than even the hutongs of beijing, which were the dirtiest places i had ever seen in my life...some parts are probably in line with the dirtiest and poorest areas of india... i've decided to skip out on the 12-15 hour bus road over such roads from phnom penh to siem reap and will take a high-speen ferry up the tonle sap lake instead on the 10th...i'll stay in siem reap for about four days, using three of which to explore angkor's temples, then take another ferry to battambang for another few days and then on to the thai border overland at poipet and back to bangkok hopefully on the 17th or 18th... the city really is amazing though, and i am very excited to experience angkor...it's hard being out during the day...constantly being hounded by amputees (from the landmines) and small children selling books and flowers, everywhere, i go to a nice restaurant for lunch and they come right in...they'll grab stuff right off the table and run, so i have too keep everything hidden away while i'm eating...i went to the tuol sleng genocide museum in an old high school that was used by pol pot and the khmer rouge as a prison and torture chamber for thousands of cambodians, you can walk through the cells and their are huge photos on the wall of the horrific torture apparati and dead bodies as well as thousands of "mug-shot" like photos of the prisoners, some even as young as 5 or 6 months old, in baby prison outfits with numbers around their necks, too young to even stand, but in high chairs... i also visited the killing fields at choeung ek where the bodies were many thousands were executed (something 8900 people) and buried in mass graves, rather than being shot, many were just hacked to death with machetes to save money on "precious" bullets. their skulls are piled on shelves several stories high in a gigantic oblelisk mausoleum in the centre...their bloody clothing on the ground below... the royal palace was very nice too and a nice change from the korean architecture that i'm used to seeing at palaces...i also visited wat phnom, a buddhist temple and the central market in a giant ziggurat dome, said to be one of the largest in the world...

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arrived in phnom penh, cambodia last night. so far it's amazing, reminds me of thailand and the dirtier parts of beijing, with a little bit of france thrown in for flavor.

those thailand photos are still coming...

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we finally were able to get a boat off koh tao two days ago. we took the "fast" lomprayah catamaran which was too much for about 80% of the people aboard, myself EXCLUDED. i should've seen it coming when they started handing out plastic bags and sea sickness pills as the boat pulled off the dock. mid-way through people started puking...i was enjoying the ride, going from one side to the other, seeing ocean and then sky through the windows...but everyone around me was heaving...bags of puke everywhere. i went out on the deck and there were all these people, green in the face, with little plastic bags of puke. poor suckers, it was a 3 hour trip!

the catamaran landed just outside of chumpon, where we ate lunch and then took a four hour, hell-ride train to prachuap khiri khan, a coastal town. the seated tickets were sold out and we decided to get standing only, not realizing how crowded the train would be, there was little room to sit down, let alone move and i spent the whole time switching from one position to the other, cramped between people on my left and right and a big metal arm of a seat behind me.

prachuap khiri khan was a nice enough town, we walked up to "Mirror Tunnel Mountain" which was covered in hordes of monkeys...seriously, it was kind of scary, they were everywhere, packs of scray looking monkeys, eyeing us. on the top of the mountain is a wat, that was deserted at the time, except for a giant rottweiler that scared the crap out of me inside one of the buildings. apparently, there's a ladder somewhere that leads into a tunnel from which one can see an optical illusion reflection of the sky...everything was locked and we couldn't find the ladder...and the monkeys we're trying to roll us...

from prachuap khiri khan we took a bus to hua hin, where i am now. this is a big tourist town with a hilton and marriot on the beach. lots of fat old people and families, fixed price vendors, coffee shops, there's even a fricken starbucks...it'll be my last stop in thailand for a couple of weeks. i'm taking a bus to bangkok in a couple of hours and then flying on to cambodia. i don't have a guide as of yet and know next to nothing about the country.

here's what i do know:
1. it's called cambodia
2. there is a city called pnohm penh
3. there is a city called siem reap
4. there is a temple called angkor wat

as you can see, i'm totally unprepared for my travels there, but hopefully it'll be an adventure...maybe they'll have the internet, maybe they won't...if they do, expect some pictures from thailand, i just had 160 developed...

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we finally were able to get a boat off koh tao two days ago. we took the "fast" lomprayah catamaran which was too much for about 80% of the people aboard, myself EXCLUDED. i should've seen it coming when they started handing out plastic bags and sea sickness pills as the boat pulled off the dock. mid-way through people started puking...i was enjoying the ride, going from one side to the other, seeing ocean and then sky through the windows...but everyone around me was heaving...bags of puke everywhere. i went out on the deck and there were all these people, green in the face, with little plastic bags of puke. poor suckers, it was a 3 hour trip!

the catamaran landed just outside of chumpon, where we ate lunch and then took a four hour, hell-ride train to prachuap khiri khan, a coastal town. the seated tickets were sold out and we decided to get standing only, not realizing how crowded the train would be, there was little room to sit down, let alone move and i spent the whole time switching from one position to the other, cramped between people on my left and right and a big metal arm of a seat behind me.

prachuap khiri khan was a nice enough town, we walked up to "Mirror Tunnel Mountain" which was covered in hordes of monkeys...seriously, it was kind of scary, they were everywhere, packs of scray looking monkeys, eyeing us. on the top of the mountain is a wat, that was deserted at the time, except for a giant rottweiler that scared the crap out of me inside one of the buildings. apparently, there's a ladder somewhere that leads into a tunnel from which one can see an optical illusion reflection of the sky...everything was locked and we couldn't find the ladder...and the monkeys we're trying to roll us...

from prachuap khiri khan we took a bus to hua hin, where i am now. this is a big tourist town with a hilton and marriot on the beach. lots of fat old people and families, fixed price vendors, coffee shops, there's even a fricken starbucks...it'll be my last stop in thailand for a couple of weeks. i'm taking a bus to bangkok in a couple of hours and then flying on to cambodia. i don't have a guide as of yet and know next to nothing about the country.

here's what i do know:
1. it's called cambodia
2. there is a city called pnohm penh
3. there is a city called siem reap
4. there is a temple called angkor wat

as you can see, i'm totally unprepared for my travels there, but hopefully it'll be an adventure...maybe they'll have the internet, maybe they won't...if they do, expect some pictures from thailand, i just had 160 developed...

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Almost Drown...

i'm on koh tao now...we've been here for three days and have been staying in tiny shacks with no running water on rocks overlooking the ocean...they're cheap but the 200baht a night is still hefty for what we get. the girls, katie and jaime are gone as they had to get to bkk by the 4th and boats out of koh tao right now are really busy. they went to samui, then to surat thani and then will take a bus to bkk. matt, mike and i will head to chumpon this morning, then prachuap khiri khan and hua hin, i want to get to bkk on the 5th and fly right out to cambodia so i can avoid any late charges on my thai visa, it's an extra 200baht a day...and 1900baht to purchase 10 more days at once...i'll spend a couple of weeks in cambodia and then come back to thailand overland and get another free 30 day visa...

new years was good, we were on hat sairee here on koh tao just relaxing, drinking buckets and watching people send lanterns up into the air and fireworks...
yesterday, we went to koh nangyuan, a set of three islets connected by a sandbar just nwest of here. it was beautiful and we went snorkelling...the waves picked up and got kind of dangerous over one sandbar that had a deep drop off on one side. we were body surfing over the sandbar and decided to follow the waves right across into the next bay...i ended up being about 3 metres out from the sandbar but couldn't touch because of the drop off, every time i swam in, a huge wave just knocked me out again....this went on for about 10 minutes and i was getting exhausted....almost drown until i called to matt to grab my hand, i must've been about a foot from the sand but there was no way i could've made it...

anyways, after i was on land again, we headed back across the sand bar to the restaurant area and i started watching another guy who had swam out to where i was...he looked like he was struggling and suddenly i heard him yell help and he was going under...i was still trying to catch my breath from my ordeal and yelled to mike to jump in after this guy and hold him up....mike couldn't make it back to the sand either and i started running through the waves towards the restaurant for help, yelling the whole way...it was that whole "dissipation of responsibility" thing they teach you in psychology because here i am screaming for help, out of breath trying to get through these waves for help and people are just all looking at me, smoking, drinking, expecting the next person to help....i pushed through and got to the bar and a couple of employees saw me, as mike and this guy are going under the waves, they got a boat and made it out in time, a very strong woman swimmer had jumped in too, and took control of the situation out there. we all got off the sandbar safely, but i kept watching, swimmer after swimmer go to the other side and then struggle to get back. no employees were paying attention and minutes after we got back and sat down i noticed a young couple go under in the same spot, i ran back to the bar and they got a boat out again....ten minutes later, two girls went completely under for at least a minute, the restaurant employees then stayed out in a boat for awhile...and eventually i think everyone smartened up and came off the sandbar...
i couldn't believe that they didn't close it off though....six or seven people came damn close to drowning in maybe half an hour...dangerous...

She's Okay

i'm so glad to have heard that my friend Naomi, who was snorkelling in Koh Phi Phi as the Tsunami hit, made it out okay...she was holding on to a coconut tree as her resort washed away...i've gotta talk to you...

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