as i was saying...

so - siam reap.

siam reap is an incredible city. one of my favorites so far, actually. who knew that cambodia and laos would end up being our favorite countries on this trip? i thought it would be vietnam, i said to everyone that i was so excited for vietnam - hands down my least favorite, and i probably wouldn't make the effort to return. laos and cambodia though - absolutely.

anyway - so we hired our tuk tuk driver from the night before, bunnak, to be our temple driver to angkor wat and the other temples. what an awesome guy - shea and i have a little crush, actually - we're both trying to think of friends we could hook him up with in canada so he can move there with us. the guys at the guesthouse called him something that sounds like ca-doo - and encouraged us to as well. apparently it means "short man", and it makes him blush. he's so cute. anyway, he took us out to angkor wat in the morning, sat and visited while we had breakfast and gave us some good tips, like how much to pay for a guidebook from the bazillion children selling crap (at least they're not begging) outside the walls.

ok if you haven't heard of angkor wat, please just open up a new window now, go to images.google.com and take a look see.

done?

it's even more incredible in person.

angkor wat is this amazingly preserved temple that's hundreds and hundreds of years old. the walls are all hand carved, intricate patterns and scenes, and there is just this sense of peace and tranquility about the place - especially at the time we were there, when it was quiet. you could hear the birds chirping, the cicadas chipping away and the odd monkey wandering about. it's crazy busy at sunrise and sunset, and quiet during the day - perfect. we wandered about for a few hours, then headed to a few other temples around angkor thom. you could never get enough out of one day, but we figured two would be plenty.

the one thing i really didn't like was the rows and rows of stalls and hordes of children selling you stuff outside the gates. they're pretty heavily controlled though - they have this rope they they're not allowed to cross, and there is security police there to make sure they don't, but the odd one sneaks through. i told shea they need shock collars, like those invisible fences for dogs, so when they cross (which they always sneakily try to do) they get a zap. she thinks i'm mean. i think it's brilliant.

but the second they see you - even if you're 200 m away, you hear them yelling "LADY! LADY! PINEAPPLE! MAAAAAAAAANGO! LADY! LADY! COLD WAAAAAAAAAAAATER!" but they can't come at you, because of this magic rope. it's kind of entertaining - you can hide and peek out and see how long it takes to here "HEY LAAAAAAAAAAAADY!"

the kids were the funniest, and the peskiest. the little bastards all came running up wanting "money for schooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool". i never gave money except to one kid who was totally hiding out in a temple, and gave me a little tour past these signs that said "no entry" ("it's ok! it's ok!" he said. why not.) and told me all about the construction. that was worth a dollar for sure.

that night we went out to the "angkor what?" bar for some drinks, and met up with these two awesome girls from california. they were both in their 30s and had just said screw it all, quit their jobs, sold their stuff and went travelling.

the next day our buddy ca-doo was again taking us to the temples, this time at noon (he kept pushing it back, we didn't know why. but we did soon...). we went to the temple where they filmed "tomb raider" (that's the big sell), which was really beautiful, with huge trees and vines growing over the ruins, a complete jungle. we then did sunset at this crazy temple with a kajillion other people - you had to climb up these stairs that honest to god were at a 70 degree angle - like a steep ladder but no rungs to hold onto. we bought two cold angkor beers for the sunset, and were glad we only had one, because navigating those stairs drunk would have been suicide for sure, though there were so many people we figured you could probably crowd surf your way down no problem. there were all these asian women who had not only hiked up the path but up those frigging stairs in high heels - how do they do it? high heels all the time. insane.

for dinner, bunnak had arranged for us to go to this khmer buffet with traditional khmer dancing, so off we went right after sunset. it was nice, pretty touristy but still worth the $12 we spent. that's one crazy thing about cambodia - you use US dollars for everything. even the ATMs give you US dollars. you never had riel except for the small "coins" - 50 cents was 2000 riel, etc. it's kind of weird, and kind of sad really, a commercialization tactic that loses a bit of cambodian culture.

so we fully planned on going straight to bed, since we had a 6:45 bus to bangkok the next day. we got back and our neighbors were outside - lawrence from england, kris from wales and fam from holland - and they were heading out. we figured "why not, we'll pack up and go out for a couple of hours". yeah right - famous last words.

pitchers were on special. the american girls showed up. at 5:45 am we crawled into bed for 45 minutes of sleep before the bus left. it was great times at the angkor what? bar. if you bought two pitchers, you got a free t-shirt. a pitcher was $6 and held about 8 drinks (gins and tonics baby), and shea wanted a t-shirt. being the nice big sister i am, i got my very own pitcher so she could get a t-shirt. aren't i nice? and we found why bunnak was always changing our schedules - he was two timing us with our neighbors - he had us on opposite schedules. sneaky little monkey. as if we would have cared. we actually ended paying him more than we bartered on because we loved him so much.

anyway, 6:30 rolls around and getting shea out of bed was like waking the dead. i actually thought she might be for a minute but a good ol' violent shake did the trick. she was still wasted, it was the funniest thing i've ever seen. we got her sorted and down to the tuk tuk, where good ol' bunnak was there to take us to our bus. she was taking forever and we finally realized she was still too drunk to put on her pack and was pulling her backpack down the stairs and down the hallway. we got to our bus, paid bunnak, gave him hugs and high 5's and waited for our bus. the steamed pork bun guy came around, and we thought "yes. those look SO GOOD."

no.

no they are not.

we both took a bite, hoping for that same satisfaction that comes from a sausage and egg mcmuffin after a big night out, and both of us looked in horror at each other.

"it tastes like a dirty chicken coop smells" shea said. that was it. bye bye buns.

we saw bunnak go by a few minutes later with our neighbors, who were also heading to bangkok - then our bus pulled up. this shit old bus with uncomfortable seats and no a/c. we were hopeful that it was just taking us out to the bus station where we could get a proper bus.

no again.

first of all, let me tell you about the road between siam reap and poipet (the border). you know how forest service roads are when they've been used heavily by logging trucks in monsoon rains? you know, with the big ruts and washboards and washouts? yeah - those are like freaking paved highways in comparison.

about 250 kms took us over 6 hours on the worst bus i have ever been on in my life. i was in the back, the window would not shut and dust from the road poured in non-stop. the window rattled on the washboards like it was going to fall right out, and i was right over the wheel well, which had a broken shock that not only clunked like a son of a bitch but knocked about right underneath my legs. apparently the airlines are giving the cambodian government a hefty sum to take their sweet ass time improving that road, because more people will chose to fly. my lovely friend sam told me that when he was in cambodia a few years ago, the roads were even worse and he did the trip in 17 hours in the back of a pick up truck. so i guess i should thank my lucky stars that i had a shit, dusty, noisy bus instead.

we passed a bus that had broken down, been replaced with another that broke down immediately after loading everyone up again, so yes, it could have been worse. that bus contained our neighbors.

poipet - what a complete shit hole. seriously - it even smells like one. it was disgusting - we couldn't get through the border fast enough and back into thailand. i was sad to leave cambodia - it's a truly beautiful country with beautiful people. shea and i both found about 50 cambodian kids we wanted to bring home, in fact i'm not convinced that shea doesn't have one or four in her backpack right now. she not only surprised me but surprised herself for her love for cambodia - she's been reading books about the khmer rouge take over and the killing fields, she's picking kids she wants to adopt, and thinking of ways to come back and help the cambodian people. it's like freaky friday around us - i'm staying out all night and shea's turning into angelina jolie. i think it's funny - she's rolled her eyes at my environmental lectures, and once threw a juice box (recyclable - there's a deposit!) in a firepit just to spite me when i lectured her. don't tell her, but i actually saw her pick up garbage at a temple. someone ELSE's garbage. and she tut-tutted about how could people do that. it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

anyway, we got to bangkok 13 hours later, met up with the neighbors and found the most crap guesthouse we've found so far. the green guesthouse. and it's expensive - bangkok is twice as busy as it was a month ago, and everything is twice as expensive. so, rather than go to bed in our gungy rooms, we decided to go down to kho san road.

and find us a ping pong show.

OOOOoooooooooooooooh yes. a ping pong show. we negotiated a price with a taxi and were whisked through a dark alley to a waiting taxi, driven to god knows where to this sketchy underground place and ushered into this strip joint. now this, this was thailand at its seediest, for sure. i won't go into the gory details, but let's just say i discovered new ways to smoke a cigarette, should i take up the habit, i can throw away my money belt because apparently women have plenty of storage space in places no one could pick pocket you, and discovered a new method to write my postcards out. the ping pongs were the least of the shocking things we saw. i think lawrence was damaged for life. we all felt a little violated (especially kris, who not only had a wayward ping pong come at him but a banana. oh - the horrors.) i'm glad we did it, but would never do it again. it really was kind of like prostitution, those women we certainly not doing these things because they enjoyed them, and it's completely tourist driven. but hey, when in thailand...

so another insanely late night later, yesterday we wandered about bangkok for a while waiting for our bus to ko phi phi. i lost shea for a while, and she left me this note:

"tasha,

i ran off to patpong to fulfill my dreams of being a ping pong girl, i was very inspried last night and think i've found my calling...i'm only becoming a ping pong girl so i can make money for schoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool".

sorry, mom and dad.

so, we got facials, got all beach ready, and an hour before we were to leave, i checked my email to see that eliza, who we were meeting, said ko phi phi was completely booked up, the crappiest rooms started at about $25/night, and she was going to ko lanta instead. i was super stressed out, and we were figuring out what to do, when the neighbors said "screw it, come to ko tao instead."

so, we changed our bus ticket and are instead going to ko tao tonight with kris and lawrence (fam left today - we said our goodbyes to her a few minutes ago). we have 4 days there then i fly out of surat thani and shea goes to phuket for her muay thai camp. i just want to go diving, and have some beach time - i cannot wait.