Well I finally met up with my old roomate Nick in Siem Riep, and immediately we started having a great time. We spent a full day touring Angkor Wat (<-the 7th wonder of the world), Angkor Thom, and Ta Throm and hired a tour guide & tuk-tuk to drive us around all day. It was awesome, but its like 105 degrees and by the end we were so sick of ruins and just wanted to go to a pool or something.. Also, our tour guide, Chun, told us he would take us to the floating villages and then take us to his own house in a village and introduce us to his family and get drunk, etc. the next day if we wanted. Soooo we said what the hell and decided to do it...and man was it epic.
Started off by hopping on the back of him and his friends motorcycles, and we rode for about an hour through a ton of villages, and ended up at the edge of a lake. Hopped on a boat and saw floating houses, which was really cool and ill have to upload pictures, but then the real fun began when we went back to Chun's house. Met his family, then went to his friends house where we sat in hammocks and watched the family cook us lunch. They had chickens and pigs just running around the backyard, and they just grabbed a chicken, slit its neck open, drained the blood, plucked its feathers, and then chopped up EVERY part of the bird and put it in a bowl and cooked it... When we were eating the chicken we found the balls, the brain, the beak, the feet, etc. etc. and our guide Chun would just crunch right through every part.. We were trying to be culturally respectful and all that but as soon as Chun started eating & crunching through the beak Nick and I lost it and could not stop laughing.. Also they were serving us "Black Panther" beer which is 8.4% alcohol volume per can (American beer is what like 3-4% ?) so we just got absolutely tanked. And then they brought out rice wine which tasted like straight vodka and they were all getting sloshed with us...We learned how to count in Cambodian and they gave us Cambodian names and then shit started getting weird. They lifted up my shirt and told me they loved my chest hair and then grabbed my nose and told me they wanted it, and pointed to our white skin and told us they wanted to skin us, etc. etc. It was all in good fun and we were all having a drunken good time, but at the same time we were wondering how we would get back into town (our tour guide & friend were falling over drunk) and made sure we had our wallets close by. We ended up just trusting them, as they told us they drink 8am to 8pm and are always drunk and great drunk drivers... We really had no other option so we hopped on and although it was really stupid and dangerous, riding on the back of a motorcycle drunk through the villages of Cambodia with no helmet and feeling all the wind and smelling the countryside was absolutely amazing. My face hurt after as I smiled and laughed for a straight hour on the way back into town. I couldn't have been happier. We have a ton of funny pictures but you have to go to the villages and have the true experience to really appreciate it.
After another fun night out at "pub street" in siem riep, cambodia, we woke up and took a 7 hr bus to Bangkok, which is where we are now. At the border, we saw families hopping from Cambodia into Thailand, but they do it right where the border crossing is! At least in the California-Mexico border the mexicans go far away into the desert. It was sad actually to see the crying babies and kids crawling through this hole in a fence in the dirt. Anyways, Bangkok is a big, modern city, and we are staying on Khao San Road which is a backpacker ghetto. The street is packed all day and all night with people and theres cheap shops and bars and its such a good time! Bangkok is everything I expected..loud, dirty, fun, HOT (like we get sick from the heat every day) and a good time but ready to get out. However we hate the damn tuk-tuk drivers... They all have tricked out tuk-tuks (3 wheeled motorcycles) with loud mufflers and they speed and drive like maniacs.. I get carsick and we are scared for our lives every single time we take one. Its the weirdest thing though, they will drive you around all day showing us the famous temples and stuff for a really cheap price (like $1), but we have to get off in suit shops (like a place to buy a man's suit) and pretend to be interested in buying a suit or tie like once every hour.. At first we just went with the flow, but by the time we had walked into the sixth suit shop we were just laughing and so confused. We told the driver a million times we weren't gonna buy a suit, but he insisted we went inside and humored the employees. We finally found out from a brazilian chick that the suit shops will give the tuk-tuk driver money for gas if he brings westerners there...even if they dont buy anything. We must have gone into 8 shops within a 4 hr period... I never want to see a suit again.. Ahhh Bangkok, its such a interesting place.
Oh and another thing, we went to the actual Thai government agency for travel and tourism to book a 3 day trip up north in the Thai jungle and to get there we will be taking an overnight train. However, the lady told us the train was fully booked, so she had to call the Mafia! She told us the Mafia buys every single seat on the train, then resells it for a higher price! We could not believe it, the government relies on and works with the mafia to get things done and its no big deal at all.. She was like "yep, everyone here is corrupt.. Kind of like Mexico". Man that was a big reality check. So we did get our ticket, and we paid the mafia price. So tmrw night we take an overnight train up north to Chiang Mai where we will then leave on a tour group for a 3 day, 2 night trip through the jungle. We are going white water rafting, riding elephants, visiting more villages, sleeping in bungalows, and hiking to waterfalls. We're pretty excited, but pissed off we got overcharged (due to mafia train prices and legit government trips as opposed to these dodgy street guys selling trips with their jenky companies.) Anyways, Thailand has been great so far (although much more expensive than Vietnam & Cambodia..) and we are looking forward to our jungle adventure..then from there its all beaches then Australia!
Photos of Cambodia & Thailand so far:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2150739&id=10808601&l=8029e1804b
Photos from Vietnam:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2150325&id=10808601&l=78dce1b109
Cheers!
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