Changing Plans

My initial thoughts about the beaches of Thailand were that we should try to see one on the gulf coast, and one on the Andaman coast. The girls all felt the same. But as the airport siege in Bangkok lengthened, and we started really thinking about how and where we were going to travel, we decided to spend our ten days at one spot rather than split it up between the two coasts. It was a good thing, because we had plenty to do on Koh Chang for those ten days. Likewise, our plane ticket from Thailand to New Zealand, where we connect to fly on to the Cook Islands, was also up in the air. (hahaha...no that's some good punning.)

The cheapest ticket that I found to fly from Bangkok to Auckland was on Royal Brunei Airlines, but I didn't buy it when I bought the onward tickets from Auckland to the Cook Islands...for some reason. It seemed to turn out well once the protesters shut down the Bangkok airports, and we began looking for an alternative flight path. Just when we thought we had the best possible mix of flights and long layovers put together, the airport reopened. But in the meantime, we had decided to make our way into the country of Cambodia, and visit the largest religious structure in the world-Angkor Wat. We spent a few more nights staring bleary-eyed into the computer screen, and we finally found the right flight to take us from Bangkok to Auckland, while we would make the trip into Cambodia entirely by land transport.

So we left Koh Chang on the same day as Randi and Jen did, only they were headed back to Bangkok, and we were headed for the Thailand border town of Aranyaprathet, where we would cross over into Cambodia and make our way onward to the fast-growing city Siem Reap. It took a full day by minivan and beat up old bus. Although the major roads in Thailand are in decent shape, the rumor is that this particular road, though heavily used for tourism, is kept in bad shape by the government because of a "fee" that is paid by one of the major Thai airlines, which benefits from the bumpy road ride. But the thai roads were nothing compared with the dirt roads of Cambodia...

More on that later. Our trip into Cambodia is our first travels entirely on our own. Cambodia is a country that I personally know almost nothing about, other than the name Pol Pot and the movie the Killing Fields, neither of which I actually have studied. But as I sat in Angela & Justin's living room back in October, and loked at pictures of massive trees growing out of temple walls, I felt a pull to visit this mystical place. Once I showed Ashley the pictures, she was convinced as well, and so we set out with lots of information from fellow travelers, and our guide book. So far, every scam we were warned about has been tried on us, the children begging has been just as promised, the persistent tuk-tuk drivers constantly hassle us...but today we saw our first ruin...a tiny little bit of a temple, a remnant, maybe of nothing more than a shrine-and tomorrow, we will venture into the jungle, and visit ruins of Hindu and Buddhist temples from over a century ago.

Go to flickr and search for angkor wat, or siem reap...some of the pictures are amazing. Hopefully, we'll have some amazing ones to add soon enough. We are safe and sound, and Ashley is waiting for me to come to bed, here in the Prince Mekong Villa guesthouse...Love to all of you.