Full Moon and Moving On

Well, I survived the famous full moon party. Quite well too after all things were considered and several bottles of water were drunk the next day.

The full moon party is located on Hat Rin Nok (Sunrise Beach) at the southeaster corner of Koh Pha Ngan. Hat Rin Nok is a 1.5 km stretch of sand that has a bar, club, or restaurant along every inch of it. Each bar and club had REALLY loud techno musing booming out onto the sand. There are stretches where there are chairs and tables to sit, ususally adjacent to several guys twirling flaming sticks (very cool). There are also large sections where you can simply dance in the sand with hundreds of other revelers. There are numerous booths where you can have glow in the dark paint put on you so that you will glow under all of the black lights that are scatttered across the beach. Unfortunately I did not think that it was safe to take my digital camera so I do not have any pictures.

There are countless food stalls serving pizza that has a light fluffy crust about 2 inches thick. All of this bread proved perfect for soaking up al of the alcohol that was consumed. Speaking of which, the beverage of choice at the party was the Songsam bucket... This is a small plastic bucket that is filled with ice and then a can of coke, a redbull and a 0.375 of Songsam (super cheap Thai wiskey) is added. Add about 10 straws and you are good to go. They cost about $4.

I spent about 12 hours there total and danced for more than 8 hours total. I met up with a lot of people I had seen previously on my trip and had a great time.

All told, the event is quite safe. There is a heavy police presence and as long as you are smart you would not get into any trouble. And yes, there were at least 20,000 people there. If you are ever in Thailand it is definitely an event that must be experienced at least once. Unfortunately, due to the public nature of the web and the fact that small children are reading the blog, detailed stories will have to be related in person... Rest assured, they are just as off the hook as my stories always are when I go traveling.

Today I am moving on again... to another tropical island. Pulau Perhentian Kecil. It located in the gulf of Thailand just south of the Thai-Malaysia border. And, surprise surprise, it is also famous for its scuba diving. I promise, this time I will take pictures and get them up on the blog...

A New Beach

Sorry the pictures have taken so long to get up. Sometimes it is hard to find a fast connection.

I have found my way to the Fanta Bungalows just to the east of the small northshore fishing viliage of Ban Chalok Lam. Chalok Lam has fortunately not been as effected by tourism as many of the other beaches on Koh Phangan and so you can still see the daily local business of haggling over the fish that were caught the previous night down at the base of the pier.

The crowd at the bungalows is a little older, more mature, and more sedate than the crowd on Koh Tao, for which I am quite grafeful. I need a couple days of quite respite. Especially since tomorrow night I am headed to the full moon party.

My bungalow.

This party has been featured on several travel channel shows and is reknowned as one of the best parties on the planet. It originally started about a decade ago as a small celebration, and of course has totally ballooned to enormous proportions. For one night a kilometer and a half stretch of beach plays host to, during peak season (now), up to 30,000 twenty-somethings partying the night away. Half the people I have talked to about said it was one of the worst things they did on their trip. The other half say it was the best thing about their trip.

I am meeting up with several people that I have met in other places on this trip and I will be certain to let you know how it all turns out...

Koh Phangan

I relaized that it has been alomost a week since my last post. I am still alive and well and have moved on to Koh Phangan as of this morning. I have a beachside bungalow for $7 a night overlooking Ao Chalok Lam Bay on the north side of the island. Koh Phangan is about 45 km south of Koh Tao and is famous for its full moon party.

Koh Tao was wonderful. I spent 8 days there and did 17 dives. They were all great in one way or another and I got to see some amazing animals like turltes, sharks, an albino moray eel, a sea snake, and a grouper that was so big it could have swallowed my leg.

I will post some more pictures of my new location tomorrow.

More Beach Time

Hehe... I thought I would post a few more pictures of the beach I am staying on, Chalok Baan Kao. It is on the southern end of the island.

The weather took a turn for the worse today and we got caught out diving in some serious conditions. There were 8 foot swells rolling by the boat and causing the boat to surge up and down. There were about 25 divers strung out on the safety line behind the boat in the driving rain trying to get back onto the boat. It took more than 45 minutes, but we all eventually made it in one piece. It was definitely a new diving experience for me. Still the dive was totally worth it! We saw a school of about 100 4 foot long baraccuda, and a huge school of jacks.

Due to a generous sponsor - my father - I will be renting a digital camera to take pictures on a dive. I am trying to see as many sites as possible before deciding where to take the camera. I will be sure to post pics as soon as I have them!

For all you divers out there, you MUST come to Thailand!

My bungalow (It has a king size bed).

Chalok Baan Kao Beach

Ko Tao

I arrived on Ko Tao the morning of the 9th and I have found heaven. I was picked up at the pier by the Buddha View truck and brought across the island to their resort. The place is idyllic to say the least. The dive center is a huge building that houses the office and all the gear and their is a restaurant right next door. Beach-front bungalows, bars, and restaurants line a small bay of shallow crystal blue water. There is also a place to get Thai massages, another place to relax on giant cushions and watch a movie. There are also a variety of bars from upbeat and loud to super chill and relaxed.

I am staying at one end of the beach in a small bungalow that is slightly up a hillside. I have an incredible view to say the least. I took the photograph to the right from by balcony at sunset last night. There are large windows that swing open so that the air can blow through the place. There are also screens on the windows to keep the mosquitos out. The balcony has a couple nice chairs and wooden bench for just relaxing.

There is a great vibe to the bay, as it is completely full of tan, attractive 20-somethings in bikinis and board shorts. The guys who run the dive center joking call the place temptation island. Everyone is here to dive and so that is the most common topic of conversation. How many dives do you have? Where have you been diving before? You live in Hawaii! That must be great. Are you going diving tomorrow morning or afternoon?

My typical day involves getting up around 6:30 in the morning and shuffling my way down to the dive center's restaurant for a mango shake and banana pancake for breakfast. I then head out for a two tank boat dive around 7:45 and get back to the beach around 12:30. Fill out dive logs over lunch, and then usually take a nice long nap in a hammock under some trees near my bungalow. Once the suns rays are not so intense I head down to the beach for a swim or to play a little frisbee with other people who are hanging out. Finish with the beach, take a shower, and head down for the evening. There is a large bar-b-que buffet each night where you can get a mountain of great food for about $3. You get your plate and head to the bar where you eat and enjoy your first beer of the day. You then hangout with cool people and drink for a few hours before turning in around midnight.

In sum, this place is so nice I might never be coming home.

I have also met up with Julie Meierding, Emily's little sister, fresh off of her serious adventures in the Philippines. She joined me here on Ko Tao yesterday and we went diving together today.


This was before she ate a giant bowl of super spicy green curry. I promised to be nice and not show the after photo...

On The Move

Over the course of the 5 days I spent in Siem Reap I met around 20 travelers who arrived at the guesthouse I was staying in with horror stories of the road from the Thai border to Siem Reap. Stories included massive rain, giant mud filled pot holes that trucks fell into and got stuck up to their axles, traffic jams lasting three days, and even having to hike in the rain with their bags for 2 hours to get past the traffic jams. With all of this in mind I dropped a bunch of money to fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok. That is just a little more of an adventure than I am looking for on this trip.

So now I am sitting in an internet cafe on Khao San Road. I am only going to be in Bangkok for six hours because I made travel arrangements to get from Bangkok to Ko Tao with a scuba diving resort. I leave tonight at 7:15 on the express train to Chumphon where I will catch a boat out to the island. All told, in about 24 hours I am going to have made it from Siem Reap to Ko Tao.

Cambodia was nice, not as nice as Vietnam mind you, but I still enjoyed it. Especially Angkor. Speaking of which, here are more pictures for you.

Angkor Wat at sunset.

Bayon face early morning.

Ta Som gateway.

East Mebon

Monkey!

Just for fun... The current movie showing in Siem Reap.

And on a more serious note... Hopefully this is evidence of Cambodia moving in a more peaceful direction...

More Angkor Pics!

By popular demand... Here you are.

Asparas, or celestial dancers, at Angkor Wat.

One of the faces on the Bayon.

A hallway at the top of the Phimeanakas pyramid.

Thommanon

Ta Phrom

Ta Phrom

Terrace of the Leper King

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat, the most famous of the temples in the area, was built by Suryavarman II out of laterite and sandstone. The temple was consecrated around 1150 AD to the Hindu god Vishnu. The guidebook says that scholars think that it took more than 30 years to complete.

The impressiveness of Angkor Wat is undeniable as soon as you climb off of the motorbike and

the start of the first causeway. The 5 massive corn-cob shaped towers at the center are more than 2 km away and you are fist faced by a 400 meter long, 45 m wide causeway across a moat. At the far end of the causeway is a massive gopura, or entry gate. This gate is part of the 4th enclosing wall which is 1500 m on each side. (Enclosing walls are numbered from the center out.) Passing through the gate the ceiling soars above you to a height of more than 15 meters. Archaeology geeks notice that the Khmer people had not figured out the arch yet, so the width of the entry way is wide enough for your average sized car, but not much more. It is scary to think about how big of things they would have built if they had known about arches.

Darkness gives way to light as you exit the gatehouse and you are again faced with another raised causeway stretching from the fourth to the third enclosing wall. A large library and a reflecting pool are on each side of the causeway as you continue your trek.

The main towers of Angkor continue to grow taller with each step that you take down the causeway. The heavily worn stones are made of sandstone and measure approximately 1.2 m by 0.7 m. Along the edge of each causeway a seven headed naga forms the railing. Tourists, unfortunately, are everywhere. At the eastern end of the causeway you climb up 2 meters worth of stairs and cross the Terrace of Honor and reach the third enclosing wall.

The third enclosing wall is one of the most decorated parts of the entire Angkor complex. Along each side of the 3rd wall there are two massive panels, each depicting various scenes from Hindu Mythology. Each panel is about 2 meters tall and stretches for around 100 m. All of the carving is done with bas relief technique and clearly required and incredible time and energy expenditure. The detail is incredible to say the least.

After circling the outside of the third wall you continue inward and up through more, less decorated galleries, until you reach the courtyard between the second and the 1st enclosing walls. From here you are faced with a set of steps that rise about 15 meters and a 70 degree angle from horizontal. Each step has been worn VERY smooth and is no more than 6-8 inches wide. Going up isn't too bad, but coming down is really nerve racking because there is usually an older japanese tourists a little ways above you and you just know that if they slip and fall you are going to get really hurt, probably break something, and the rest of your vacation will be shot.

The view from the top is wonderful and it is sort of incredible to realize how far you walked and how high up you have climbed.

I am sorry that I have not posted more yet, but the place in Siem Reap with the fastest internet connection does not have computers with CD drives and the internet cafe's that do have CD drives have the slowest connections... Joseph Heller would love it.

Angkor Part I

WOW!!! The place is AMAZING! I spen the whole day looking at temples and I am in heaven. My motorbike driver is in hell. I tried to explain to him that I was an archaeologist and that I was going to want to stop at everything and that I was going to spend a ton of time at everything, but I don't think he really understood. Whatever though. I am the one paying and if he does not complain over the course of the whole thing I am going to give him a fat tip at the end.

The Angkor complex is built between about 800 and 1250 AD by a series of kings who each built a state temple as well a numerous adjoining buildings. Needless to say over the source of 400 years a lot of stuff was built. There are temples spread over about 300 square km.

Today I went and saw: Angkor Wat, Phnom Bakheng, Ankor Tom, the Bayon, Baphuon, Phimeanaka, Terrace of Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King, Chau Say Thevoda, Thammanom, Ta Keo, and Ta Prohm. I was out in the complex from about 8:00 am till 6:30 pm.


I am including a couple of photos here to tease you all a little, but I promise I will put a ton of them in a couple of days.

Angkor Wat (The most famous one.)

Bayon (The one with over 200 faces.)

Ta Phrohm (They filmed parts of Tomb Raider here.)

It is a really good thing that I bought the one week pass because I think that I am going to be here a while. I took over 250 photos today!

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia has had a long and tumultuous history since the decline of the Khmer Empire around 1400 AD. The difficulties culminated in the late 1970s with the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. With their rise to power with the US evacuation of SE Asia the Khmer Rouge inflicted atrocities that only compare to Nazi Germany during WWII and the Rawandan Massacre from the mid 1990s. The Khmer Rouge COMPLETELY emptied the city of Phnom Pehn, marched everyone into the country side and forced them into reeducation and labor camps. Anyone who could speak another language, had an education, or even, in some cases, glasses were killed. Monks, previous government officials, and eventually as the paranoia increased, their own ranks were also executed. The torture lasted for 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days.

These atrocities are documented in two places in Phnom Penh. One is the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21), where it is thought more than 20,000 people passed through on their way to their deaths. Even children were tortured and killed. Originally a school, as a present day museum, Toul Sleng shows the horrors of what life was like for the prisoners as well as approximately 2500 portrait photographs of people who died there. On the top floor there is a new exhibit which shows pictures of an individual as well as a short biography.



After people were interrogated and processed they were transported to Choeung Ek, located about 15km outside the city. Here, 86 mass burial pits have been excavated and 8985 bodies recovered. 43 more mass graves remain untouched. It is estimated that 17,000 people may have been buried there in total. Bones are still visible on the surface of the ground as you make your way between the excavated pits.

A massive memorial has been built at the site. There are shelves inside it that extend from the floor to about 15 m in height. Each shelf is full of skulls that have been organized by sex and age.


This is just for this one portion of the country. There are museums and mass graves spread across all of Cambodia.

The only thing more incredible than the atrocities that occurred in this country is the ability of the people to move on, forgive, and rebound in a proactive manner. There is very little public support for any sort of war crimes trials so as to not reopen old wounds. In the 25+ years since Cambodia was relieved by the neighboring Vietnamese there has a been a resurgence of growth and relative prosperity.

The capitol is now completely inhabbited - although not all the streets are paved - and many of the cities once glorious buildings have been restored such as the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, and National Museum. Miraculously, the national museum still houses some of the finest statues from Angkor Wat and the other temple complexes north of Siem Reap.




Yesterday, I also had the treat of encountering a bunch of tuk-tuk drivers. Now, for those of you who have been to SE Asia and know that running into tuk-tuk drivers is usually a bad thing, this was a totally different experience. They completely ignored me as they played a game on sidewalk that used the natural grid system. They had a chunk of brick and a chunk of quartz rock and were playing what I determined to be connect 5. Get five squares in a row in any direction with your color and you win. Having figured it out I challenged one of the Tuk-tuk drivers to a game. Which I lost. I proceeded to lose the next. And the next. But I beat him the fourth time around after I figured out the strategy. I played with three different guys for a total of about 45 minutes. And yes, when I left they did ask if I wanted a tuk-tuk.

Knowing that it was only about three blocks to my hotel I offered to play the guy for it. If he won I would pay him for a ride back to my hotel. If I won, he had to give me a ride for free. I ended up getting - grudgingly - a free ride back to the hotel!

Into Cambodia

I spent a total of 24 days in Vietnam and I wish that I had another two weeks. I guess that I am just going to have to come back! ; )

I crossed overland into Cambodia yesterday. Crossing overland is always an interesting experience. Last time I did it was from Peru into Bolivia and there were wanted posters for assassins on the windows of the Bolivian immigration station. The crossing also tends to be especially interesting when you are going between two countries that have had, shall we say, an antagonistic relationship. Vietnam and Cambodia's relationship goes back centuries. Fortunately, my worries proved to be completely unfounded.

I left Vietnam through a massive stone faced building. Because all of the tour bus companies arrive at the border crossing at the same time there is this massive rush of people at the immigration station. This of course results in waiting in line forever because the place is understaffed. After exiting the Vietnam side I walked about 150 meters which brought me to the actual border. I knew that I was at the border because of the change in the quality of the road - Cambodia's being worse - and the change in the lamp posts.

(Vietnam's is on the right.)

Another 150 meters brought me to the Cambodia entry building. Well, at least to the one that is still under construction. The actual immigration station, a couple of small buildings, were off to the side of the construction site in a large dirt area. There were lots of officials milling around. I counted 5 Ak-47s and 6 handguns (I never saw a machine gun in Vietnam and only a handfull of handguns). Because I already had my visa I was moved right along and in about 5 minutes time I found myself having legally entered into Cambodia. I boarded another bus and headed off to the capitol, phonon Penh.

The roads were in much poorer condition when compared to Vietnam and the houses along the side of the road reflected a MUCH poorer rural population. It is still a beautiful country that I can't wait to explore.

Blackout

I awoke this morning to an extremely stuffy and hot room. The large ceiling fan above the bed was not turning. I could have sworn that it was on when I had went to bed. Uh oh, power outage... This as not the first one that I had encountered in Vietnam. In fact there has been about one per week as I have made my way across the country. The unique thing about this one is that I got to see the guys who were trying to fix it.

Now in the US, when the power goes out the electric company dispatches a big truck with a cherry picker on it to fix whatever might be broken. Here in Vietnam, they send out the... bicycle. Yes, the bicycle. Complete with the bamboo ladders.


Please note that aside from the hard hat and waist safety harness there is no other safety gear worn by the workmen. None of the rubber insulation that electrical workers wear in the US.



And just for laughs...


No McDonalds, yet...

Shopping?

I left Nha Trang alone last night. Joanne, my traveling companion for the last week or so is headed to Dalat. I will miss her company, but she might catch up with me at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

I arrived in Saigon at 6:30 am this morning and after finding a hotel and getting about 5 hours of sleep I set out into a cloudy overcast city that refused to be deterred by the possibility of rain. Business was bustling along as usual with women selling books to tourists, touts asking you to come in for a drink at every cafe you walk by, and of course, the ubiquitous motorbike drivers waving their hand at you and calling "Hey! You need moto?" Determined to see the central part of the city on foot I ignored them all and kept on my way. Until it suddenly started raining. Hard. I sprinted across the street and ducked into the first opening I could find which turned out to be the main entrance to Ben Thanh Market.

Ben Thanh Market is a cavernous building approximately the size of four football fields where you can buy ANYTHING. Imagine a mall, mixed with a grocery store, a butcher, a fish monger, and two dozen restaurants. Now that you have that in your head you need to take away almost all of the empty space that you normally associate with each of those places. Instead of the broad promenades of your average mall you get...

For a tall broad shouldered American with a backpack on, there is no room to pass someone without knocking something off of a rack. Much to the irritation of the shopkeeper. The only limit to the use of space is the height of the Vietnamese. If they were taller, I am certain that the stalls would extend farther towards the ceiling.

What follows is a brief snapshot of some of the things that can be found within Ben Thanh.

Cologne and perfume.

A million and one hair clippy thingies.

Candies. They were about $0.03 each. I bought about 30 different ones. I instantly spit out about 75% of them. The Vietnamese ladies in the market were greatly amused.

Shoes, shoes, and more shoes.

The food court. Effectively just street food indoors. Lunch was $0.65.

Fruit.

White snapper. Alive.

Flowers.

I hope that you found the sheer number of pictures I included in this post a little overwhelming. That way you can begin to understand what it is like to walk through Ben Thanh Market.