So the time has come for me to write my final travel blog post. I know I haven't really been posting for the last 3 weeks or so and that is because I've just been on the islands not really doing much. I guess I'll start there. I traveled from Cambodia back to Bangkok and then took an overnight train and then a boat to Koh Phangnan. I was supposed to arrive there for the 'Dark moon party' but it turns out the travel agency where I booked my accommodation through had the dates wrong and I showed up one day too late. I have to admit this wasn't such a big deal to me, I like big parties but I knew that there was a party to be had every night so I wasn't too worried about it. After a short nap I woke up and went to the bar where I met some great guys, 2 from Pakistan and 2 from Ireland, not to mention the proprietor of the guesthouse Nong, (I thought his name was actually Long, but turns out I was wrong). We had some fun and went down to the full moon beach for a beach party. Maybe because its low season and not the full moon party, but the party was just whatever. Vang Vieng in Laos was way more fun. The best part of the night was the ride home when I met some great people that were staying next door to my guesthouse in a place with a great pool. The next 4 days consisted of pretty much sitting in the pool all day and all night. It was truly one of the highlights of my trip so far.
After Koh Phangan was Koh Tao, a great little island with some amazing snorkeling and the start of the World Cup. Met some friends from Bangkok and Koh Phangan there so that was great and other than that really didn't do very much.
Next was Koh Samui, my least favorite of the islands I think. Mostly older people and less travelers, didn't really meet anyone worth writing about and didn't do anything worth writing about.
Then was Ao Nang, which is not an island but the coast of the Andaman Sea. Took my first long tail boat trip there in rough water, that was the first time I thought I was going to go over board. I also didn't do a whole lot there but ate some great wood fired pizza for 5 bucks a pie. The guesthouse I stayed was really nice and had some good people in it too.
Finally where I'm currently writing you from is Koh Phi Phi, everyone's favorite island. This place is great. No cars, everything is within walking distance and there are lots of good places to eat and drink and be merry. Beach parties aplenty, and general great times. I've been hanging out with an international group that is now breaking up as some head to the full moon party and others are heading back to Bangkok and I'm on my way to Hong Kong.
Some Final Thoughts
So now that I'm at the end of my trip it seems like a good time to reflect on the past 3 months. When I first arrived in Bangkok I was thinking to myself why am I here, I'm all alone and how am I going to meet anyone in this strange country. I was totally wrong. I've met so many great people and had so many unreal experiences that all my fears were quickly silenced. The days I spent alone ended up being my choice when I needed some time alone. These past few months have been some of the best of my life and I'm both sad and excited for it to be ending. I feel now that my trip is ending that I could keep traveling for more months like I was scheduled to but at the same time there are many things that I'm really looking forward to when I get home. I've met a fair number of people that have said that they couldn't travel alone and thought I was really brave for doing so. The fact of the matter is, you're never alone. There is always someone else to meet and somewhere else to go. That is really the beauty of traveling in a place like Southeast Asia. At home you wouldn't just go up to a table at a pub and sit down where here that is almost expected. When you go out at night there is no telling who you're going to meet and what will happen.
There are obviously too many stories to tell here so I hope that anyone that is reading this and interested in my stories will be able to hear them first hand starting next week. I want to thank everyone who has been reading the blog for without you this would have just been for my parents.
I would urge anyone who is thinking about traveling to do it. It has been one of those experiences in my life that I don't think I'll ever be able to forget. Thanks to all the friends I've met, hopefully we can meet again sometime.
Thats all for me,
Talk to you soon,
Dave
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Splendor of Angkor
So the last I spoke to you I told you about Phnom Penh. Now I'll tell you about Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world and ranks up there with the pyramids as one of the world's great architectural wonders. I got up for the sunrise over the temple so it was an early morning. The sunrise was totally worth it, it was great for pictures and the tour buses of Japanese and Chinese tourists hadn't arrived yet. Angkor Wat is just one temple in this area, and there are actually a huge number of them. They were all pretty amazing. This was definitely one of the most interesting places I've ever been. All the temple structures that I had seen prior to this pale in comparison.
The next day I went out to the Bantay Srei also known as the lady temple. This temple was farther out from the complex that most other temples are situated. The best part about it was that the carvings on it have been so well preserved that they are unbelievably beautiful, a must see if you're ever going to be in Siem Reap. On the way back from this temple I stopped at the Land Mine Museum. This was a really interesting little museum that is actually registered as a Canadian non-profit organization. The museum is basically the work of one former Khmer Rouge child soldier who used to plant mines, and then defected to the Vietnam. While fighting against the Khmer Rouge he started to be a mine defuser and continued even when the Vietnamese were no longer concerned with their removal. He started this museum as a way to raise awareness of the enormous number of land mines that are sitting on Cambodian soil. Great museum and really interesting.
Then it was off to Bangkok. Bangkok was much different compared to when I was there 2 months ago. After the riots it seems that people are really staying away from there. It felt like a ghost town compared to the insanity that was there before the Red Shirts rioted. It was actually pretty sad and a bit boring just because one of the best parts about Bangkok the first time was just people watching, so many people everywhere. This time not so much.
I just got to Koh Tao from Koh Phangan which was amazing. I actually did nothing for days and had a great time doing it. Great pool, great people all around. Its going to be hard to top that but I'm excited for what Koh Tao has to offer. Tomorrow I'm going snorkeling and taking a boat trip around the island so I'll let you know how it goes!
Talk to you soon.
The next day I went out to the Bantay Srei also known as the lady temple. This temple was farther out from the complex that most other temples are situated. The best part about it was that the carvings on it have been so well preserved that they are unbelievably beautiful, a must see if you're ever going to be in Siem Reap. On the way back from this temple I stopped at the Land Mine Museum. This was a really interesting little museum that is actually registered as a Canadian non-profit organization. The museum is basically the work of one former Khmer Rouge child soldier who used to plant mines, and then defected to the Vietnam. While fighting against the Khmer Rouge he started to be a mine defuser and continued even when the Vietnamese were no longer concerned with their removal. He started this museum as a way to raise awareness of the enormous number of land mines that are sitting on Cambodian soil. Great museum and really interesting.
Then it was off to Bangkok. Bangkok was much different compared to when I was there 2 months ago. After the riots it seems that people are really staying away from there. It felt like a ghost town compared to the insanity that was there before the Red Shirts rioted. It was actually pretty sad and a bit boring just because one of the best parts about Bangkok the first time was just people watching, so many people everywhere. This time not so much.
I just got to Koh Tao from Koh Phangan which was amazing. I actually did nothing for days and had a great time doing it. Great pool, great people all around. Its going to be hard to top that but I'm excited for what Koh Tao has to offer. Tomorrow I'm going snorkeling and taking a boat trip around the island so I'll let you know how it goes!
Talk to you soon.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Democratic Kampuchea
Currently I'm sitting in Bangkok after about 6 days in Cambodia. I was only in two cities, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap but it seems that this is the tour that most people do. I first arrived in Phnom Penh and realized I was in a much different city than Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi or Bangkok. First it was much dustier than the other cities and as I traveled around it I quickly realized that was because many streets there are not paved. So its a capital city with dirt roads everywhere. In the other bigger cities there are poor people but everyone seems to be within a similar social strata. In Phnom Penh the disparity between rich and poor seemed much more pronounced. There were expensive stores and nice villas but then there were also shacks and slums. You could tell that part of the city was just for the rich and the poor were left to toil in other areas.
My main reason for traveling to Phnom Penh was to see the Killing Fields and S-21 prison. These are the two most famous sights of the horrors that took place during the Khmer Rouge regime and the Cambodian Genocide. I first visited the Killing Fields which is the place where the prisoners that were housed in the S-21 prison were taken to be killed. This is a sight with mass graves and had a very eerie feel to it because you could tell that it was no ordinary place. There is also a traditional Cambodian stupa, which is a temple looking building, that has hundreds of skulls and bones that were unearthed from the mass graves. This was one of the hardest things to see on my day but worth it because it is important for everyone to see what happened there in order to prevent it from happening again. Perhaps one of the most jarring things that I learned that day was just how brutal the Khmer Rouge was. Because they didn't want to waste bullets on killing people they would use blunt objects like hammers in order to kill their perceived enemies. The prisoners would be blindfolded and kneeling so that way they had no idea when they would be bludgeoned and once they were killed they would fall into the grave that they had just dug. The Khemer Rouge also had a policy of killing entire families. That way when kids grew up they couldn't take revenge on the regime that killed their parents. There is one tree on the ground of the Killing Fields that was used to kill babies. They would take the babies by their feet and smash their heads against this one tree. Realizing what had gone one there was pretty horrifying. Once I had seen the small museum there I walked out to my waiting motorbike driver. He must have been younger than me, probably 23-24, and he explained to me that he had two brothers that were older than him that had been killed during the genocide. The Khmer Rouge wanted more Cambodians so his parents were put together in order to start making Khmer babies. He said that one of his brothers was killing by the soldiers because he cried too much.
Next I went to the S-21 torture prison. This was truly a weird place. A former school that had been transformed into one of the worst places on earth. There are still jungle gym bars on the grounds and one of them was next to a makeshift gallows that were used to execute prisoners. The complex was pretty large although nothing compared to the size of the concentration and death camps that I saw when I was in Poland. There are a series of four buildings each with three stories and every room in these buildings were used to house and torture prisoners. In some of the buildings you can still see the shackles and beds that prisoners were attached to and in others there were hundreds of pictures of the people that perished there. One of the most shocking parts was how many pictures of kids there were. All these kids were tortured and killed there at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. There was one building that was wrapped in barbed wire. This was in order to prevent prisoners from jumping off the balconies and committing suicide. This place was one of the saddest and most horrific places that I've ever seen. To think that the Khmer Rouge were hellbent on killing anyone with glasses and an education is crazy. They killed over two million of their own people just because they thought that they were too smart to agree to the harsh treatment of their countrymen and others for no reason. Famine was widespread during this time and that also contributed to the death of thousand. The regime's rule ended in January of 1979 when the Vietnamese was able to take control of Phnom Penh and show the world what had gone on there. Another disturbing aspect of the end of this regime was that the UN, and the Americans more importantly, continued to recognize Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge as the rightful leaders of Cambodia until 1990.
I saw some other things in the capital as well but nothing to really write about. I was off to Siam Reap to see the splendor that is the Angkor Wat complex. Unfortunately my internet is running out right now so I'll have to tell you about it next time I get to post.
I've been in Bangkok for the past couple days and tonight I head to the islands for about three week of sun and surf. So I'll talk to you from there!
My main reason for traveling to Phnom Penh was to see the Killing Fields and S-21 prison. These are the two most famous sights of the horrors that took place during the Khmer Rouge regime and the Cambodian Genocide. I first visited the Killing Fields which is the place where the prisoners that were housed in the S-21 prison were taken to be killed. This is a sight with mass graves and had a very eerie feel to it because you could tell that it was no ordinary place. There is also a traditional Cambodian stupa, which is a temple looking building, that has hundreds of skulls and bones that were unearthed from the mass graves. This was one of the hardest things to see on my day but worth it because it is important for everyone to see what happened there in order to prevent it from happening again. Perhaps one of the most jarring things that I learned that day was just how brutal the Khmer Rouge was. Because they didn't want to waste bullets on killing people they would use blunt objects like hammers in order to kill their perceived enemies. The prisoners would be blindfolded and kneeling so that way they had no idea when they would be bludgeoned and once they were killed they would fall into the grave that they had just dug. The Khemer Rouge also had a policy of killing entire families. That way when kids grew up they couldn't take revenge on the regime that killed their parents. There is one tree on the ground of the Killing Fields that was used to kill babies. They would take the babies by their feet and smash their heads against this one tree. Realizing what had gone one there was pretty horrifying. Once I had seen the small museum there I walked out to my waiting motorbike driver. He must have been younger than me, probably 23-24, and he explained to me that he had two brothers that were older than him that had been killed during the genocide. The Khmer Rouge wanted more Cambodians so his parents were put together in order to start making Khmer babies. He said that one of his brothers was killing by the soldiers because he cried too much.
Next I went to the S-21 torture prison. This was truly a weird place. A former school that had been transformed into one of the worst places on earth. There are still jungle gym bars on the grounds and one of them was next to a makeshift gallows that were used to execute prisoners. The complex was pretty large although nothing compared to the size of the concentration and death camps that I saw when I was in Poland. There are a series of four buildings each with three stories and every room in these buildings were used to house and torture prisoners. In some of the buildings you can still see the shackles and beds that prisoners were attached to and in others there were hundreds of pictures of the people that perished there. One of the most shocking parts was how many pictures of kids there were. All these kids were tortured and killed there at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. There was one building that was wrapped in barbed wire. This was in order to prevent prisoners from jumping off the balconies and committing suicide. This place was one of the saddest and most horrific places that I've ever seen. To think that the Khmer Rouge were hellbent on killing anyone with glasses and an education is crazy. They killed over two million of their own people just because they thought that they were too smart to agree to the harsh treatment of their countrymen and others for no reason. Famine was widespread during this time and that also contributed to the death of thousand. The regime's rule ended in January of 1979 when the Vietnamese was able to take control of Phnom Penh and show the world what had gone on there. Another disturbing aspect of the end of this regime was that the UN, and the Americans more importantly, continued to recognize Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge as the rightful leaders of Cambodia until 1990.
I saw some other things in the capital as well but nothing to really write about. I was off to Siam Reap to see the splendor that is the Angkor Wat complex. Unfortunately my internet is running out right now so I'll have to tell you about it next time I get to post.
I've been in Bangkok for the past couple days and tonight I head to the islands for about three week of sun and surf. So I'll talk to you from there!
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