ok, officially Officially, there are no traffic rules in Cambodia...it is truly a free for all. We arrived in Pnomh Penh today, and wandering around near the central market is pretty much an extreme sport. There's nothing you can do aside from wait until there isn't any immediate traffic coming one direction, don't even look the other way, hold your breath, say a prayer, and move quickly, mmm...nimbly :) And as for death-defying forms of transportation, I used a rickshaw type taxi guy today...its different from a regular rickshaw in that you sit in front while the guy rides a bicycle behind you...leaving you feeling very vulnerable driving head on into insane traffic.


While we're on the topic of "death-defying" ... yesterday James and I visited the temples of Angkor. They were unbelievable, so beautiful and majestic, i can't describe the immensity of these ruins, and i'm sure the (loads of) pictures i took won't do them justice. We managed to climb the temple on the mountain for sunset the night before, and then again for sunrise yesterday. As for why a day of looking at temple ruins was death-defying?....whoever designed these things decided they would have STEEP and NARROW staircases, in the extreme. We clamboured around all day without too many problems, and left the biggest temple (Angkor Wat) until the end...going up to the highest point is a bit scary, but it isn't until you're up there, and realise that you have to figure out how to get down...that your knees start to give out a bit :) James and I joined in line with Japanese tourists and monks at the only stairway with anything resembling a railing...felt more like a thread in my sweaty palms, and manouevered our way down bit by bit. A wonderfully exhausting day. So great to be there and try to imagine what the whole kingdom of Angkor(size of New York city, with about 2 millon people i believe) must have been like in its original glorious state.

Ok, that's all for now...time to find food and get to bed for an early morning of visiting Genocide museums and Killing Fields (the fun part of the trip, i know ;) ). I'm actually really looking forward to it, and want to compare it with what I remember from being at the Holocaust Death Camps in Europe when i was little.
It'll be a big day.


Much love to everyone
sun

Ever seen a pig ride a motorcycle?
Cambodia is nuts...there are no traffic rules, less than a third of the vehicles seem to have any license plate of sorts :) And like most places we've been so far, anything and anyone, from tiny little kids in their pyjamas, to baskets full of pigs can go on the back of a small motorbike :) Nuts, and wonderful :)

I will never ever again complain about the roads and potholes in Quebec. Yesterday we endured a 7 hour ride from the border town of Poi Pet to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We were literally flying out of our seats (remember being on a see-saw when you were little and trying to bump the other person off their seat by hitting the ground really hard?)...just imagine that for 7 hours straight...i caught some good air :)

this is just a short entry as i'm trying to keep up to date...we're going to Angkor Wat for sunset, and then again for sunrise and most of the day tomorrow. I'm pretty sure i had more i was planning to write about here...but in the midst of the market where i am now, i'm having trouble concentrating :)

more soon
sun

:)
another quick entry here before we're off wandering again...heading to Cambodia tomorrow if all goes well.

i just got back from a traditional Thai massage..it was a full 2 hours for about $10...i went from nearly falling asleep while my legs were being stretched and rubbed, to balancing in the air with the womans' knees in the small of my back. it's pretty crazy...just when you get all relaxed it turns into a full workout with the masseuse pressing all of their weight into your back with their knees :)

i spent this weekend wandering around Bangkok, and watching Ultimate frisbee. It turned out to be a lot of fun...the costume party saturday night (rock-themed) with James going as David Bowie, Kristi as Jem (the cartoon) and me as their stylist....can't remember if i wrote about this in my last entry...sorry if i'm repeating myself :)

last night we had dinner at Cabbages and Condoms...a great restaurant, with random condom sculptures that supports AIDS education, and helping people living with AIDS and their families start businesses in conjunction with non-positive people. It's a pretty cool place...inspirational. And i figured i better explain just in case some of you receive "interesting" postcards in the mail :) hehe

anyway...time to get going here...we've got a lot of last minute running around to do before leaving tomorrow :)

always
sun

ok...i lied. Kanchanaburi is not a national park just outside Bangkok. I really have to start paying closer attention to what i read, and what other people tell me. I never would have known where to get off the bus i was so busy looking for a park ;)

anyway, turns out Kanchanaburi is a little TOWN not far from Bangkok on the river Kwae....this is the very same river, which has the very same bridge from the movie "Bridge Over the River Kwai". This town was the location of POW camps during WWII, where the Japanese used captured Allied soldiers to help build the Death Railway (so named for all the deaths of POWs and locals during it's construction) and the infamous bridge. It turned out to be a pretty cool place with an interesting museum run by monks, with old pictures and articles about the bridge and railway, a war cemetary, and, of course the bridge. We walked the full length and had only just gotten to the other side when a train came along, forcing all the gawking tourists to gather onto little platforms along the span while it roared past :) (pretty funny to see everyone runnin) Apparently despite bombings, and rebuilding, some parts of the bridge are still original.

The other highlight of Kanchanaburi was that we stayed on a floating guesthouse on the river. Kind of like a hostel on rafts...there are a few different platforms connected together, the same walls, ceilings, bathrooms you'd expect...but its all floating :) and, because we had the front corner room, all you could see out the windows was water :) Unfortunately, all you could hear at night (and ridiculously early in the morning) was karaoke from the boat discos that float by blasting karaoke....so so so bad :) But odd, and funny nonetheless :)


I forgot to mention before that when we first returned to Bangkok from Laos...we arrived in time for an out-of-season rainstorm...it made me very very glad we are not here during wet season. Khao San Road where we had returned to pick up some bags, was literally flooded, there doesn't appear to be any real drainage system...whoulda guessed?! ;)
The downpour left us with no choice but to wade through shin-high black water, with who knows what kind of gunk floating in it...and whenever we reached higher ground, it was impossible not to notice the giant cockroaches scuttling to safety. Yeah, um...fun :) However!...despite all the trudging and trekking through dust, mud, and who knows what all...i have to say...i have never had better looking feet ;) thanks to the $4 pedicures available at every corner. so bizarre.

so, today's the first day of the Ultimate frisbee tournament that Kristi and James are playing in. I'm off to help set up for the big party tonight (in exchange for my own admission, food and drink...since i'm not one of the registered players at the tourny)...should be fun, we'll see....there's a theme, people are supposed to wear costumes...i dunno...i volunteered to do Kris and James make-up (Jem - from the cartoon, and David Bowie) and will probably leave it at that :)

thats it for now :)

sun

just a quick update while i have easy access to a computer....i managed to get a couple pics up, so enjoy, i'll have to try and put some more up later :) i can add kayaks and motorbike-taxi to the list of random transportation we've been getting around on over here. a group of us decided to kayak from ViangVieng to Vientienne, the capital of Laos, instead of just bussing it. It was a great day on the water, with a couple rapids, a bbq, some cliff jumping (not me :), but james dared to try a couple times) From Vientienne we booked an overnight bus (suprisingly comfortable) back to Bangkok and have been staying with a friend of Kristis for the last couple nights. The only way to get down the small soi (alley) where her apartment is, to the main street, is via motorbike taxi - where for less than a quarter you hop on the back of the bike and get zipped down the road to the main street :) it's pretty fun, but a tiny bit frightening when you have to sit "lady-like" with both legs on one side of the bike :)
the highlight of last night was a muay thai boxing tournament that James and I stumbled upon at the night bazarre....it was a pretty dank and dirty arena, but so much fun - something we'd hoped to see while here, but not sure how to track down tickets. supposedly things have changed since the '20's when it was originally banned for too many deaths...they now wear boxing gloves, and i think the rules are a little more restrictive. although, the second match had one of the fighters taken out by stretcher as he was seriously winded and knocked out, he hadn't been prepared for his opponents kick to the stomach. very exciting....and they have traditional dance/stretch/prayer things they do before each match which are pretty cool to watch.

anyway...today we're heading out of the city for a couple nights to Kanchanaburi, a national park not too far outside the city :)
thinking of you all!
love
sun

apparently when you sign up to start a blog, you're also signing up for "blog-guilt". i've been slacking on my entries and now theres so much to enter i won't be able to get it all in. oh well, i guess i should have read the signing agreement more closely ;)
i also have some pictures to post, but seem to be having trouble accessing them on this computer...hopefully i'll get that figured out soon :)
i picked up a few more modes of transportation over the past week - so onto the list goes...elephant (yes, elephant...so so cool), bamboo raft, also very cool and slow boat...cool at first, but by the end of the second day i was getting a little weary of it :)

the elephant and bamboo rafting were both a part of a three day trek we took out of Chiang Mai. It was a great experience leading us into the hills, where we stayed in remote villages and then hiked, elephanted, and rafted from one place to another. the scenery is unbelievable, and the people even more so. our first night in one of the villages we were approached by some of the kids to go play soccer in the rice fields. it was a pretty amazing experience, laughing and yelling our way through a dusty sweaty game of soccer, with the backdrop of terraced fallow fields, mountains, stream, and buffalo cows making their way home for the night.

we made it back to chaing mai, welcomed whole-heartedly by the people that run our guesthouse - we'd made friends with them over the past week, and thanked them with a little homemade picture card when we left.

leaving chiang mai we began a three day journey to get to Luang Prabang, Laos. the first leg of the trip was via mini-van - hair-raising to say the least. we then stayed overnight near the border and took advantage of the main eating area and abundance of thai whiskey to make fast friends with a couple irish guys, a boxer from scotland and an israeli (whose jokes none of us could understand :) )
day 2 began with a small ferry ride (don't even try to imagine any ferry you've ever experienced...think more along the lines of pictures of little rickety boats you've seen of vietnamese floating markets) we landed at the border to laos, and after a confusing mix at "customs" (luckily we had our visa stuff all done ahead of time and zipped right through) we waited around and boarded the slow boat. the slow boat is a long open boat, with benches or random chairs that appears to hold about 80 people...we soon learned that it can actually hold anywhere from 80-150 people, (with one "bathroom" ie. toilet)and loads of local produce.
We took advantage of the next 8 hours on board to make more friends, share BeerLao, play cards and overall have a great time.
That night we stopped in another little one-horse (or buffalo-cow) town. Upon arrival you're approached by people (children)and offered opium, speed, hash, weed - pretty much any drug you can imagine....we politely declined :)
next day was another 8 hour shift on the boat, pretty much the same as the day before with a couple new faces and a couple new card games.

we finally arrived in Luang Prabang....a great little town with interesting temples, and training centers for monks, lots of restaurants (we now saw the french influence as baguettes and cheese became available everywhere), a beautiful night market, and even a good bar (which incidentally reminded us of montreal, and we later found out is actually owned by a montreal couple :) )

we spent the next few days exploring down, and visiting the waterfall - which is about an hour out of town - you get there pretty much drowned in dust after a bumpy ride in the larger pick-up truck version of tuk tuks. it's completely worth it. we spent two days there, one where we climbed to the very top and manouevered into a pool (very cold) that cascades down into all the others. it was a little frightening, but there isn't enough water this time of year to make it overly dangerous.

being a small town, we spent most of the next couple nights with people we'd met and run into from the boat, having a fire on the beach, and even experiencing the first rainy evening we saw in south east asia. it was after that night that we had determined to get up for the super-bowl, showing at 7:30 am in the only sports bar in town. we enthuiastically agreed to the plan, but only a few managed to stay up/get up for the game, and even fewer stayed awake through the whole thing. :)

yesterday, was another full day of travel, in another one of these mini-bus van things from Luang Prabang to Viang Vieng. feeling a little under the weather i endured a fairly miserable ride through the mountains on dirt roads, around extreme curves. a group of 8 of us had booked the trip together and at least that made the whole thing bearable. they explored the town after we arrived while i decided to take it easy and enjoy the quiet in our fairly nice (maybe the nicest yet) guesthouse.

Viang Vieng is a sort of odd town - with one main street and a bunch of bunalows and restaurants on the river, it offers backpackers a little rest spot. the big thing to do is inner-tubing down the river, being pulled in at various turns for drinks and food, or lounging in the may main street restaurants where you plant yourself among pillows, eat, and watch old "friends" dvds. bizarre...but fun :)

i opted out of the group tubing today - time to get caught up on emails and BLOGGING :)
but will hopefully have the chance to go tomorrow and will report back


so
i think that's about it for now :)
thankyou all for comments...i'm glad you're getting a chance to check in on my little adventures :)
thinking of everyone
much love
sun