Goodbye, Southeast Asia

11/12/2006-11/13/2006


Today, which I lived twice due to the time change, was an epic journey back to the US. After breakfast and saying goodbye to Scott, we took a van to the airport and waited a few hours for hour first flight from Bangkok to Taipei, which took about 3 hours. Then we had a short wait until our next flight to Los Angeles. This flight was about 11 hours, which somehow was a couple hours shorter than our flight from LA to Taipei 2 months before. Must be the jet stream or something. The flights were uneventful, and I got to see the sun rise twice on November 12. Sleeping on the plane was tough due to some turbulence, but at least the food was great. The return to American culture in LA was indicated by all the officials yelling at people to move along through customs. It's such a contrast from the laid back atmosphere of Southeast Asia.

The flight to LA got in at 2 pm, so I had quite a bit of time to kill before my flight back to Orlando. Emma and Brendan had flights to catch, so the rest of us said goodbye to them. Lindy, who unfortunately had to leave the trip a few weeks ago, actually leaves close to LA and came to greet us at the airport. It was nice to see her again, and she took Laura, Rebecca, and me out to dinner at a sports bar nearby. Ah, football. After that I was dropped off back at the airport and said my final goodbyes. My last red eye flight home went without any problems, and finally I arrived in Orlando around 7 am on the 13th and was met by my parents at the security checkpoint. It was a great trip, but it's good to be home.

Well, my travels have come to a close, at least for the next 2 months before I go on another adventure to New Zealand and Australia in mid January. Now I have to figure out something to do for those 2 months. If you have any ideas or want to give me a job, let me know. Thanks for reading my blog. Hopefully it was somewhat interesting. Feel free to contact me at nathan.m.obrien@gmail.com. I'll leave you with a picture of this crazy tuk-tuk driver I saw on my last night in Bangkok. Enjoy!

Back to Bangkok

11/10/2006-11/11/2006

This morning most of the group left Railay Beach and caught a flight back to Bangkok for the last two days of the drip. However, before we left we had to say goodbye to Richard, Jocelyn, Carolyn, Dani, and Michal since they were staying in southern Thailand for a few extra days during their independent extensions of the trip. I think some tears were shed at this point, but I had said goodbye earlier in the morning since I was on a mission to obtain the DVD of the day of scuba diving, which actually was successful but just barely.

We arrived in Bangkok around 2 pm and said goodbye to Travis and Ellie, who were going to a national park in Thailand. Now the trip really felt like it was over since our group had basically been cut in half, but we still had a day and a half in Bangkok. I didn't do much in the evening. I basically just updated my blog (takes a while), wandered the streets near the guest house, and ate some street Thai food.

My last day in Bangkok was a bit more interesting. In the morning most of the remaining group went to the Chatuchak weekend market, which happens to be the largest market not only in Thailand but the entire world. I looked up some information on it, and apparently it contains over 15,000 shops and stalls and has between 200,000 and 300,000 visitors each day. It was a really cool market and much better organized than I expected. You could buy pretty much anything you could imagine. They even had live animals for sale, but I decided to limit my purchases to some chopstick sets and nice little lamps. Here are a few pictures (also see the pic above).





The last picture is a shop selling these pillows shaped like triangular prisms, which we were fortunate to have at some of our guest houses. They are incredibly comfortable, especially to use while reading. I would have loved to get one or a few, but I didn't since it would be such a hassle to pack or take on the plane. I'm sure I can find some back in the US.

After the weekend market (also known as the JJ market), we took the sky train over to Siam where all the huge, ultra-modern shopping centers are located. We were going to see a movie but had a few hours to kill. I checked out some of the shopping centers. Since most of the people and places we've visited on this trip have not been very wealthy, it was interesting to observe the more well off local people in the shopping places. At least with the younger people that I saw, it seems like the emphasis on clothing and image is just like it is in the US. Anyways, we saw the movie The Prestige at a theater at the top floor of one of the shopping centers (see below). The movie was pretty good with a really cool ending, but one of the more interesting things about seeing a movie in Bangkok is what they show before the movie. There were even more previews than there are in movies in the US. There were about 30 minutes of Thai commercials, American movie previews, and Thai movie previews (those movies looked bizarre). Then everybody stood up for the 3 minute or so tribute to the king of Thailand, which was pretty strange.

After a long (time, not distance) taxi ride back to the guest house, we all went to a local restaurant for one last dinner together (at least what was left of the group). Then we just hung out for the rest of the night at various places. I got packed up for the huge travel day tomorrow back home and got a little sleep.

Railay Beach

11/5/2006-11/9/2006

We made it to Railay Beach around 10 am or so. We checked into our two fabulous houses that we rented for the 5 days. Railay is a beautiful beach as you will be able to see in the following pictures.

While it would have been nice to lounge around in the sun all day, I actually had to get some work done. Early in the trip Scott told us that we would have a thing called a "Secret Buddha," which works just like a Secret Santa. We drew names earlier in the trip, and we were supposed to make a creative gift for the person rather than just buying something. I hadn't really done much work on it at the time because I was going to use oil pastels to make a drawing and I knew that my big drawing pad was likely to be destroyed on all of our travel days. Thus, I waited to the end of the trip to get it done. I spent most of the first 2 days on it, so I can't really speak of much else that I did during that time. I did play ultimate frisbee on both days with some others in the group, and on the second day we had a big potluck dinner that was really tasty and fun. Here's a picture after we had eaten.

On the third day of the beach trip, we split up into 2 groups to go rock climbing. While I've done some rock climbing indoors back home, this was climbing with real rocks. I got to do 3 climbs, which were a lot of fun but not terribly difficulty for me. Nevertheless, it was cool to have to figure out my own hand and foot holds rather than just following the colors in an indoor rock climbing gym. Here are a couple action shots of my backside while I was on the rock.

After the rock climbing, we went to a cave and climbed up to a point from which we rappelled about 15 meters. There were some spectacular views, and the rappelling was really fun although a bit awkward at first.

On the 4th day we went scuba diving. Because only 3 of us had actually been certified (not me), we basically did a resort course that consisted of some basic training and 2 dives under close supervision of a dive instructor. It was awesome to breathe underwater, and I felt pretty comfortable during both dives. Somebody on the boat made a DVD of the whole day's adventure. We watched it at the end of the day, and apparently there are some incredibly beautiful fish down there. I didn't see quite as much as I would have like to because I was focusing on my technique and looking at my instructor a lot of the time, but in reality I did see a ton of beautiful stuff under the sea. Here are some above water pictures that I took while on the boat.

Although I've seen water like that many times in movies and magazines, today was the first time that I've actually seen it for real. Quite beautiful. This next picture is of a place called chicken head island. We didn't actually go there, however.

As you can see in that picture, it started to get a bit cloudy. There was a pretty big storm, but came after we were done diving thus not interfering with the day's activities. Here is a picture of the storm (from the inside part of the boat, of course).

The 5th day of the beach trip was the last full day that our entire group would be together. About half the group was heading back to Bangkok the next day before flying back to the US in a couple days, and the other half was extending their stays in various places throughout Asia. In the morning we all got together to take some final group pictures at the beach. Here are the pictures of all the girls in the group and then all the guys in the group.

Since I had finished my Secret Buddha project last night and also my gift for the group leader Scott in the morning, I was able to enjoy myself the rest of the day. Richard, Carolyn, and I went on a little hike to a lagoon in Railay. We thought it would just be some walking with maybe some steep parts, but it turned out that we actually had to climb up and down some really steep rocks sometimes with the aid of ropes and rope ladders to get there. It was probably a bit dangerous, but we made it there and back intact. It was a really awesome adventure, and the lagoon itself was cool as well. Here is a picture of the lagoon.

I got to play some more ultimate frisbee in the afternoon, and then it was time for dinner, which would be our last dinner together. Scott ordered all the food from a restaurant. While I helped pick up the food, I caught these great sunset shots with my camera.

The feast of Thai food was awesome, and after dinner we presented our Secret Buddhas. Everyone did a great job, and many of the gifts were really creative and impressive. After the Secret Buddha stuff, Scott split us into 4 groups and gave us a quiz over stuff we may or may not have picked up on the trip. My team won. Yes. We didn't get anything, however. Just satisfaction. After the quiz we just sat around for a while reminiscing about the trip. We all knew it would be difficult to split up the following morning.

Bustling Bangkok

11/2/2006-11/4/2006

We left Siem Reap on the morning of the 2nd at 6:30 am on a journey leaving Cambodia and returning us to Bangkok, which had been our initial stop in Southeast Asia. It was important to get an early start because the roads in Cambodia are pretty awful. Our group leader Scott told us that in 2002 his group left at a similar time and ended up getting to the Cambodia-Thailand border at 4:50 pm, just 10 minutes before the border closed. The border town would not be a very fun place to stay the night, so we wanted to do everything possible to prevent that from happening. Fortunately, our trip went perfectly and only required just over 3 hours to get to the border. It was quite a relief, even though are butts may have not felt too relieved after traveling via Toyota Camry on some of the potholed, flooded, and dirty dirt roads I've ever seen. You'd think a developing country like Cambodia would have a better road system, but they might try to inhibit that system in order to force people to use air travel so that they can make more money. Regardless, it was pretty impressive how our Toyota Camrys could handle such rugged terrain. We passed through the border without any problems in an hour or so, and then we had a 4 hour drive to Bangkok on wonderful, flat roads. We arrived in the afternoon, and had ample time to explore some of the city that evening.

Bangkok is an incredibly huge city with a population of over 6 million people. The first evening we were there I just wandered around the area near our guest house, which only covers a small area of the city. We were staying near Khao San road, which I guess is the backpacker mecca of the city. That road has tons of shops and food stands. I had some wonderful pad Thai for about 50 cents. However, the rest of the street was full of touristy shops of which I have seen more than enough. It was amazing how many westerners are here. It definitely did not feel like I was in Asia.

The next day most of the group went on an excursion throughout the city. We became acquainted with 2 modes of public transportation in Bangkok, the riverboat and the sky train. A large river runs in the north-south direction of the city, and we used it to get from our guest house area to a place where we could pick of the sky train. Here is a picture of a bridge on the river.

We then took the sky train to a part of Bangkok called Siam, which has various shopping centers that make most American shopping malls look outdated. Here are a few pictures of one shopping center.

They even have Outback Steakhouse here (see above). Where am I again? Another picture that I thought was funny is the following one of a building I saw while walking around the downtown area.

The last thing we did on our excursion was go to the Golden Mount, which is a temple on the top of a hill. There were some great views of the Bangkok skyline. Here is one of those views.

Since we would be on a van all night on November 4th (Rebecca's birthday), we wanted to celebrate the night before on the 3rd. That evening we went to a place called the Vertigo Bar on the 61st floor of this incredible hotel. I saw a sign describing it as "the tallest open-roof hotel restaurant in the world." Although the taxi ride took over an hour causing us to miss the sun actually setting, we still had some awesome views and a great time. Here are some pictures.

The last day in Bangkok was fairly uneventful. In the morning I decided to try out the public transportation by myself and go to Chinatown, which I had read was an interesting place. I made it there without any problems, but it was hard to find the main Chinatown street for me because there weren't really any road signs. I found what I though might have been the main street, but even that wasn't too interesting. Maybe it was because it was a Saturday morning. After lunch I went with some other members of our group to the supermarket to buy some food for our 5 day stay at a beach in southern Thailand. I picked up some breakfast and lunch stuff, and the supermarket traffic jams got pretty crazy while we were there. After packing up my stuff in the evening, I headed out with the group to the bus station for our all night bus ride down to Railay Beach in southern Thailand. I had some pad Thai for dinner, but I'm convinced a better option would have been the KFC a block away from the station.

Siem Reap and Angkor

10/29/2006-11/1/2006

We left Phnom Penh on the 29th for a 4 to 5 hour van ride to a town called Siem Reap, which is essentially a place for tourists to stay in and eat while they are visiting Angkor (located about 6 km north of Siem Reap). The town itself is not terribly exciting, but it has a lot of good restaurants. I found a funny picture in the bathroom of one of them (see below).

In order to get to Angkor from Siem Reap and to get around the temples of Angkor (they're pretty spread out), we hired a group of tuk-tuk drivers for the next 4 days. Each of us partnered up and found a driver. Here is a picture of our group of tuk-tuks.

After getting photo ID passes to visit Angkor, we went to Angkor Wat for the sunset. Angkor Wat is the most spectacular of the temples and also one of the most well maintained (considering it was built in the 12th century) as you can see in the pictures that follow. This picture is of the outer gate of Angkor Wat, which is surrounded by a huge moat.

After passing through the entrance, you can see the incredible structure in this picture.

This is a picture of the sunset from the second or third level of Angkor Wat. You may have to adjust the brightness of your monitor to be able to see it well.


The next day we visited Angkor Wat at sunrise and explored it much more thoroughly. The following picture is of the temple and its reflection in one of the surrounding pools.


The outer walls of the lower level of Angkor Wat consist almost entirely of bas-reliefs, which are massive, detailed engravings of religious stories (it was originally a Hindu temple). Here is a close-up of one of them, but these detailed engravings spanned the entire length of the walls.


Here is a shot of one of the towers.

It was a pretty steep climb up, and the following sign was at the bottom. In America you probably wouldn't even be able to climb these stairs. There would be a new set of stairs, an escalator, or maybe even an elevator built.

I even saw a few monkeys climbing on some of the roofs of Angkor Wat (see below). In addition, while I was leaving the temple, there was a monkey on the long walkway. A man had a banana in his hands, and the monkey walked up and stared at him. The man wisely through the banana, and the monkey went over and ate it immediately. It was pretty funny.


During the next 3 days, we just went around to the various temples exploring. We basically spent the morning before breakfast (from about 5 am to 9 am) and the afternoon (from about 2:30 pm to sunset around 6:00 pm) tuk-tuking to and from Angkor and checking out the temples. Some of the temples were more impressive than others, and I got a bit bored at times. However, once I thought about the fact that these temples were built as many as 1000 years ago, I remembered to be amazed.

While Angkor Wat was incredible well preserved, some of the temples were falling apart and even being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. This can be seen by the trees growing attached to the stones of the temples. This was particularly apparent in the temple Ta Prohm, which is what most of the following pictures are taken from. Here you can see some of the destruction of the temples.


The following pictures show the trees growing out of the buildings. This was definitely my favorite part of Angkor.




Here are a couple of pictures of another temple at sunset.



We visited various other temples, but I was an idiot and tried to clean my lens with lens cleaner, which you're not supposed to do with my camera. It resulted in all my pictures being hazy, which can be seen in the following pictures of a neat little temple that was kind of a miniature temple with small, 5 foot high doors.



I thought that I had permanently screwed up my camera and that I would have to get it fixed when I returned to the US, but fortunately after about 5 days I tried it again and it seemed to be working well. Thus, don't despair. There are more pictures to come when my blog goes to Bangkok.