Spring Holiday Travels

Okay - get ready for a long blog.

For our holiday, Luke, Anna, Lili and I headed south to Thailand and Cambodia for 5 weeks of craziness. It ended up being a trip full of adventures and a lot of fun.

We started out by heading south on a 26 hour train ride to Shenzhen where we met up with our friend Andres from last year. He is living in Shenzhen and teaching there and we were able to crash at his apartment which was really nice while we waiting for our flight to Bangkok the next day. While we were there, we went to Hong Kong and were able to show Anna and Lili around. Luke and I went last year but didn't do Victoria Peak and were happy to see some new things in this amazing city.

We left China and arrived in Bangkok nice and early in the morning. Bangkok was amazing and so was the food. I am not a huge fan of Phad Thai, but I am now. We ate lots of yummy street food and were able to walk around the city. I loved going from cold cold China to super warm (well it was overcast) Thailand. We walked around the city and had a low key day before traveling south to Ko Phi Phi.

Ko Phi Phi was so awesome! As you know me, I love the beach and this was an amazing beach. We spent the first three nights on Long Beach which is known for swimming and relaxing - which is what I did for 4 days. After, we moved the city (which is more of a town) and went scuba diving. We actually were able to convince Lili and Anna to join us which was awesome. We saw all kinds of fish and even a Leopard Shark! No wonder people keep telling us that Thailand is the best diving ever - because it is! We also experienced our first 'buckets' which are literally, buckets filled with mixed drinks. It was amazing.

From Ko Phi Phi (pronounced P.P.) we headed over to Ko Phangan which is known as more of the party island. Sadly, on the ferry boat, Anna, Lili and Luke all had things stolen from their bags. Luke lost his awesome pocket knife, Lili lost her head lamp and Anna lost money. It was the first time we really had to deal with theft on our vacation/travels around Asia and we were pretty discouraged. Oh well - from then on, everyone was extremely careful.

Ko Phangan was awesome because we stayed at this place called the Seaflower Bungalows. We had a 'bungalow' that was pretty nice for really cheap. I spent most of the time on this beach as well, doing what I do best, reading and soaking up the sun. However, we went to this island mostly for the Full Moon Party. This party is huge and everyone flocks to this island to celebrate. We traveled south the beach and had a great time and met some new friends from Canada and Germany. We danced and watched the craziness. Anna also saved a man from the ocean (kind of) and there were lots of fun stories from the night that I will not go into. I think that there were close to 30,000 people on the beach for our Full Moon Party, but I am not sure.

After the island fun - we went back up to Bangkok to meet up with Lili's friend Barbara who came to visit her. We met up and quickly traveled over to Cambodia to check out Angkor Wat. This is where Vietnam 2.0 began for me. We first had to get our visas at the boarder, and anticipated them being about 20 USD (because that is what every guide book tells you), well - our travel company charged 35 USD and there wasn't too much we could do about it. It was just annoying because we could have gotten e-visas for only 25. Oh well. When we crossed the boarder - the guide told us to change all of our money and things because of the lack of a fee and stuff which Luke promptly jumped on. I didn't really care but was convinced that he was telling the truth. When we got into town - we learned that it was the complete opposite. Not only did we get the worst exchange rate - Cambodians prefer to use USD and even Baht versus their own currency. So, in the transaction - we lost around $150 which made me really upset. Oh well.

In Siem Reap - we went the the Angkor Temples which were fantastic. We hired Tuk Tuk drivers and went around to various different temples and then rode an elephant up a hill during 'sunset'. It was really fun and I enjoyed this part of the trip.

Cambodian food is terrible. Not much more to say there.

After Siem Reap - we headed south to the beach in Sikoh...ville (I still have no idea how to write this town's name) and learned to dislike Cambodia even more. We had reservations on a beach away from the city where we were going to share a bungalow and when we went to confirm, the b-wad gave away our bungalow! 'Sorry' she said - 'you never called and confirmed'. My ass I didn't! I made these reservations a month ago - but that doesn't mean anything. I understand giving it away on the day we were supposed to show up - but she gave it to some guy the DAY BEFORE! WTF!?!?!?! Safe to say - I will leave a mean review on Tripadvisor.com for them. Grumble.

The next day was spent trying to figure out what to do. I had finished all of my books and two others and the beach was not good - not good at all. Luke and I ventured to try to find scuba diving/snorkeling and found that even the dive masters said it was lame diving. So - we decided to wing the trip from there. I had looked at going to Khao Yai National Park in Thailand and decided that maybe we should push that up or look at getting to Laos. Laos was too expensive to get to - so Luke and I peaced out from the group and headed back to Thailand where I didn't want to kill all the people.

For our first day back on Thailand, we were so happy to have good food and nice locals to deal with. However, even after we left Cambodia - the country mocked us when we could not exchange all of our stupid Reil because it is a CLOSED CURRENCY! I was like - are you joking me?! So, the advice we got from everyone was to walk the backpacker road around 7 am and ask if people wanted to buy the money from us. And so - whore I did. I woke up bright and early with my prepared speech and went to various people asking 'hey - are you going to Cambodia? I know this is going to sound strange but...' and yadda yadda yadda. Luckily - backpackers are the coolest group of people in the world and I was able to trade our 250USD of Reil for about 190-200 USD. I decided that I didn't mind eating the 50 USD because we needed money. My debit card had expired and we were winding down our trip.

After walking the street - Luke and I took our newly acquired cash and went to an internet cafe to look up our Praxis I results. We both passed which made us happy and were able to talk to some people back in America. I also learned that my friend Hollie is coming to visit with my mom and brother which made me really excited! More people to send stuff home with! >.< And to see of course.

After contacting home, we traveled west to a town called Kanchanaburi and checked out the Tiger Temple where we spent the afternoon petting tigers. Really - you pet tigers and it was amazing. A lot of people don't know what to think about it, but I liked it. All of the animals were healthy (just chained) but they have them out during their sleepy time - so it isn't too bad. There were plenty of foreigners there volunteering which was funny - but cool as well. We met another couple there from Poland and had fun talking about all of our adventures. They were actually heading to America soon and so we gave them some good tips on where to go.

The next day - we traveled to the east to a place called Pak Chong and went to the National Park where we did a 1.5 day tour. We met another couple there Adam and Emily who we spent a lot of time with. They were English and French. For the night tour - we saw a Oriental Whip Snake (which was awesome!), spiders (not so awesome), a centipede and tons of bats. We went to this bat cave where over 2 MILLION bats fly out of at night. It is amazing to watch - hawks actually wait outside the cave when they come out and hunt. We loved watching it and had a great time.

We met up with Lili and Barbara that evening and they came with us on the full day tour. We had an amazing guide who was able to show us lots of birds and monkeys. We saw two types of Hornbills which included the GREAT HORNBILL. This bird is massive with a wing span of 2 meters! He got some great shots on Lili's camera with his lens and I will put them up sometime. We also saw black and white Gibbons and some other kind of monkeys. Lili and Barbara where in hog heaven because our guide was able to name all of these bird calls. We had fun just walking around in nature and checking things out. We didn't see any wild elephants but decided it was okay because we saw a troop of monkeys just walking around on the road. Pretty amazing.

We headed back to Bangkok with Emily and Adam because Lili and Barbara decided they wanted to stay for the night tour since they didn't get to see it with us. We spent Chinese New Year's eve with our two new friends and walked around Chinatown and ended up having Thai food because they were trying to charge way too much for Chinese food. Oh well. It was a great night and really fun.

Sadly - our vacation came to an end and we flew back to cold cold China. We are safe in Zhengzhou and eager to get our dogs back today. I am going to start getting back on track for running. I start with 4 miles today and we will see how it goes.

Miss you all and we will make our calls soon. I am going to post the photos on shutterfly and I will send you the link when they are up. We have to wait for Lili's camera.