AND WE'RE IN CAMBODIA, BABY!!!
sarah, maddy, and i got into trat yesterday in the late afternoon. we'd planned on staying in the sa hotel there, but the lost driver pulled over at pop's guesthouse to ask for directions. sunny, the owner at pop's, was of course like "ohhhh, why you go there? here, it's very nice! very quiet! let me show you! i give you a discount!" sunny ended up being a really sweet woman and she hooked it up with a bitchin room on the river, so we stayed there instead. she had these awesome toenails and we were like "wow, your toenails are really awesome" and she was like "oooh!! you can get them done too for only 100 baht!" so later she sent us over to her nail place and we got the MOST BEAUTIFULLY ASIAN PEDICURES EVER.
anyway, i bet you wish i'd get to the part about cambodia, huh? we told sunny we were on our way to sihanoukville and she said she could sell us tickets. we were wary. we've been told not to buy international package deals--who's to say that bus the thai woman promises is waiting at the cambodian border will be there? but sunny seemed like a trustworthy woman, and she said we could leave at 9 am, while lonely planet had us leaving at 6 am (and she told us even earlier, if we wanted to catch this specific bus at the border). so we decided to trust sunny and buy her ticket.
lo and behold, here we are now, sitting in sihanoukville, not paying one riel more for any travel. amazing.
we got in this van in trat and at first we thought it was just gonna be the three of us, which would have been awesome. but then these six thai/cambodian (?) guys got in and they were disgusting...hacking up spit the whole time, talking real loud, bringing on their gross dried fish food. ew. we finally ditched them and got to the border. we walked up to this booth on the thai side, where the woman checked out and stamped our passports. confused, i leaned in and asked where we go to now."
"walk down to cambodia,"she said, and pointed down the road. well, ok then, it's time to walk to cambodia.
so the three of us white girls walked 100 yards down the road and to the cambodian border crossing area, where we immediately became the spectacle of the hour. we gave a guy our passports and e-visas for cambodia, signed some stuff, got our heads zapped for our temperatures, and sat down for a while--joined by about six cambodian men just fascinated by our white skin. they were making fun of each other, joking about a fat one being pregnant and wanting to switch skin with us (a guy and i made a deal to cut off our arms and sew them to one another's bodies). sarah and i started crying from laughing. cambodia: instant thumbs up.
the cambodian guy who spke the best english escorted us into his camry then down to koh kong, where we were supposed to catch a bus with this magic ticket. he chatted with us about cambodia, flirted with a tollbooth girl, and spit some slang at us like i've never heard in asia. he dropped us at a bus and off he went, leaving us with these two guys who tried SO HARD to get sar and i to say some word like "giel" but with some insane accent thingy and you had to make your throat do something crazy...i dunno. when we went to the bathroom, three girls ran up to us to ask for money, then just sort of hung around, smiling and giggling.
we got on the bus and took off at noon for a crappy, real bumpy bus ride through gorgeous cambodian countryside. i'll have to show you pictures. we stopped at this random podunk market-ish place, where we switched to a van with the driver, the three of us, this one thai guy who would not stop talking to me despite us not speaking the same language, and a cute family of four with the most adorable children i've ever seen. the little boy and i started playing but then that talky guy just kept trying to talk to me. after FOREVER (slash maybe an hour) he finally got off.
around 4 pm, we hit sihanoukville. the driver tried to ask us for more money, but we just kind of said no and walked away awkwardly. we checked into our beachside bungalow at tranquility inn, and now i'm friggin starving cuz we haven't eaten real food in hours. dinnertime.
27.4.10
25.4.10
trying to remember everything
i'm never gonna be able to do it. but i'll try writing some stuff down here in a feeble* attempt anyway.
koh chang is indeed as beautiful as everyone says. for months, people have been telling us about the spectaularness of koh chang. "you have to go to koh chang. it's amazing. you have to go."
and here we are and i'm telling you, nobody's been lying. it's a HUGE island (it takes probably at least 45 minutes to drive from one end to another) and the middle is this lush, jungly, mountainous national park, which tapers off to a gorgeous shore, lined with white sand, palm trees, and huge boulders. we hiked to a waterfall two days ago and even though it's dry season and "water trickle" is a more appropriate name, it was awesome. maddy and i jumped in to the first natural cold water we've seen in six months.
by the way, april 20th marked six months in thailand (!!!) which means i'm closer to coming home now that i was to leaving home. time continues to baffle me.
anyway, we started off in lonely beach, which lonely planet and travelfish (my travel bibles) said were "backpacker heaven." i expected tons of cheap bungalows, lots of places to eat, and more young travelers than i could count. instead, we found a handful of places to stay (cheap-ish), about three restaurants (one of which had TERRIBLE AWFUL service--they looked at us with disgust, like actually ordering food at your restaurant was a crime), and i think i counted all of 27 other people in the area. we stayed at nature resort for two nights, which was nice and cute but again, it was on this beach where there was nothing to do. not even a 7-11 or any place to get snacks/use an atm. backpacker heaven my butt...unless backpacker heaven means a couple bars that play really loud bob marley/dance beats all night. but if that's what backpacker heaven is, i don't think i'm a backpacker.
we moved up the west coast to white sand beach last night to one of the cutest places i've ever stayed in. it's this janky little bungalow-on-the-beach situation, all wooden and thatch, and some really nice people work here (customer service goes a long way...cough cough people on lonely beach cough). it's a second story place with steps that literally lead to the sand and a porch that overlooks the ocean. sarah, maddy, and i are sharing a double bed, but it's no big deal cuz we've got a/c (ahhhhh!!). we thought we had three nights here on white sand beach but when we looked at a calendar, we realized we only had two. then we all got really sad.
we've gotten a couple massages, done some awesome shopping, gone elephant trekking (where i got asked out by a thai elephant trainer), hiked a couple times (note: do not go to than mayom in the dry season. it is dry), had some of the most delicious shakes i've ever had in thailand, and spent a lot of quality times with our books. koh chang, you've been pretty damn good to us.
tomorrow we're leaving for trat, where we'll be for just a night before we skip off to the cambodian border and head down in to sihanoukville. after a few days there, we'll head into phnom penh. in an ironic twist, i actually feel safer traveling to phnom penh than i do to bangkok right now. thank goodness we won't be back in the bkk for at least three weeks.
for now, i'm gonna go catch up on some fbook and some ny times and some digg, cuz even though i'm on a phenomenal island, i still love my internet :-)
*this is a silly word.
koh chang is indeed as beautiful as everyone says. for months, people have been telling us about the spectaularness of koh chang. "you have to go to koh chang. it's amazing. you have to go."
and here we are and i'm telling you, nobody's been lying. it's a HUGE island (it takes probably at least 45 minutes to drive from one end to another) and the middle is this lush, jungly, mountainous national park, which tapers off to a gorgeous shore, lined with white sand, palm trees, and huge boulders. we hiked to a waterfall two days ago and even though it's dry season and "water trickle" is a more appropriate name, it was awesome. maddy and i jumped in to the first natural cold water we've seen in six months.
by the way, april 20th marked six months in thailand (!!!) which means i'm closer to coming home now that i was to leaving home. time continues to baffle me.
anyway, we started off in lonely beach, which lonely planet and travelfish (my travel bibles) said were "backpacker heaven." i expected tons of cheap bungalows, lots of places to eat, and more young travelers than i could count. instead, we found a handful of places to stay (cheap-ish), about three restaurants (one of which had TERRIBLE AWFUL service--they looked at us with disgust, like actually ordering food at your restaurant was a crime), and i think i counted all of 27 other people in the area. we stayed at nature resort for two nights, which was nice and cute but again, it was on this beach where there was nothing to do. not even a 7-11 or any place to get snacks/use an atm. backpacker heaven my butt...unless backpacker heaven means a couple bars that play really loud bob marley/dance beats all night. but if that's what backpacker heaven is, i don't think i'm a backpacker.
we moved up the west coast to white sand beach last night to one of the cutest places i've ever stayed in. it's this janky little bungalow-on-the-beach situation, all wooden and thatch, and some really nice people work here (customer service goes a long way...cough cough people on lonely beach cough). it's a second story place with steps that literally lead to the sand and a porch that overlooks the ocean. sarah, maddy, and i are sharing a double bed, but it's no big deal cuz we've got a/c (ahhhhh!!). we thought we had three nights here on white sand beach but when we looked at a calendar, we realized we only had two. then we all got really sad.
we've gotten a couple massages, done some awesome shopping, gone elephant trekking (where i got asked out by a thai elephant trainer), hiked a couple times (note: do not go to than mayom in the dry season. it is dry), had some of the most delicious shakes i've ever had in thailand, and spent a lot of quality times with our books. koh chang, you've been pretty damn good to us.
tomorrow we're leaving for trat, where we'll be for just a night before we skip off to the cambodian border and head down in to sihanoukville. after a few days there, we'll head into phnom penh. in an ironic twist, i actually feel safer traveling to phnom penh than i do to bangkok right now. thank goodness we won't be back in the bkk for at least three weeks.
for now, i'm gonna go catch up on some fbook and some ny times and some digg, cuz even though i'm on a phenomenal island, i still love my internet :-)
*this is a silly word.
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