Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We arrived in Phnom Penh circa 3:00 and headed straight to the Vietnamese embassy to score some visas. It was here that we met Jennet and Meredith. Throughout the next few posts you will come to know and love them, or feel indifferent towards them, either way. Sticking with our goal of branching out to new cultures, these two hail all the way from eastern Toronto. The land where what we know as "Bloor St." becomes "The Danforth". We decided to booze as a collective that night. I invited out my good pal Brendan MacDonald who happened to be in the neighbourhood. He brought his acquaintance Mike Boynton. They also brought their personal hire tuk-tuk driver Joe (likely not his birthname, he's vietnamese). Boozing was fun.
To introduce the characters, from left to right: Mere, Boynton, mr.cole, Jenny, Brendo.
Our guesthouse was on the edge of a lake/marsh.
View from the guesthouse restaurant.
The next day we went to check out a couple of sites related to the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a communist army that took over Cambodia by force in 1975. They forced all people living in cities to move to the country. The idea was to establish an economy based on an absurd amount of rice exports. Many men, women and children, accused of objecting to the movement were tortured and killed. The people carrying out the killings were often doing so out of fear for their own safety from the ruling party. Roughly 1/3 of the country's population (or 1.5 million) were murdered under the Khmer Rouge rule. In 1979 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power. The people of Cambodia are recovering and trying to move on. We visited 2 sites: Tuol Sleng and the killing fields. Tuol Sleng was a detention and torture center and has now become a museum detailing various aspects of the Khmer Rouge rule.

Taken when the army moved into Phnom Penh.

Taken when the army was expelling city dwellers to the country.
They have erected a monument in memory of those murdered at the killing fields.
Inside are stacks upon stacks of just some of the hundreds of skulls of bodies dug up from the surrounding fields.
One of many mass grave sites. This one held 450 victims.

M

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

After Bangkok we hopped on a bus and head for a city in Cambodia called Siem Reap. Just outside of this city the Angkor ruins can be found. The ruins initially constructed in the early 12Th century by King Suryavarman II and were definitely one of the highlights for Cambodia. One of the really nice things about visiting the ruins here is that you able to climb around and walk through the various sites more so than allot of other ruins visited.

Not really sure how trees are able to grow at top ruins like this but they seemed to be everywhere which we all thought was pretty cool.


This ruin known as Bayon is probably one of the most famous within Angkor. Apparently the faces are of the King Jayavarman VII represented as Bodhisattva (translated as Wisdom-Being).

We didn't manage to take a picture of it but i think we ran into a couple doing the Amazing Race here. We'll have to check out the next season but the couple was being followed by a camera man and they had to find a specific face in the ruins. I did my best to make a cameo between this and Bollywood I am really getting my face out there.

Bangkok, Thailand

T and I flew and Paul bused into Bangkok. Having splurged an extra $40 on the flight, T and I decided to save $2 going with a cheaper hostel that night. It all balances out. Our place was on KhoaSan Rd, seen below.
With a day sans Paul, T and I decided to cruise around the Bangkok black markets. The first market turned out to be 3 blocks worth of women's clothes and fabrics. Not looking to join the Lady-boy movement, we pushed on. We headed east towards MBK, the knock-off clothing mall, hoping to hit a restaurant on the way. 4 hours later, we'd seen a massive golden buddha statue, and had yet to cross a restaurant when we hit MBK. Apparently the restaurants were congregated here. We bought some T-shirts and polos. I checked out the watches.. still haven't found the one. Boozed a bit that night. Met some lovely young local ladies, with surprisingly deep voices and firm hand-shakes. They insisted we join them in their hotel room, for some fun partying, but we were exhausted so we hit the sac.

Paul rejoined the crew the next morning. We hit the malls again the next day for some more clothes and to pick up an external hard drive to replace our previous, faltering picture storage unit (a.k.a. "Steve"). We were able to load our Ipods with flicks from one DVD stand. With that, the expected number of books I'll read fell by 80%. We hoped on a bus the next morn to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat.
M

Rai Lay, Thailand

A ferry and a longtail boat ride got us to Railay. No land access, not unlike our cottages, that's just how we roll. We got off the longtail onto the beach and decided to chill with the sunset before finding lodging.
little disc in the fading light.
It just so happened there was a 3-day festival/competition for fire-dancing and rock climbing. extreme combo. Lots of RedBull fans. The night time fire-dancing shows were inclusive with live music and food on the beach.
chillin.
The show.



Post booze shenanigans.
The next day we rented some 2 man kayaks, it was team building exercise. Unfortunately there were 5 of us. T got cut from the team.
Our kayaking venture took us to a beach with some caves. Some bigger caves, some smaller. Some filled with penis statues and some not.

That night the festival was back on. This time on the adjacent beach, separated by a treacherous scramble across rocks both slippery and jagged.. another extreme combo. we like to keep it extreme. well not really, but we try.

Following morn we put our discs to use with some Frolf along the beach. This event was made possible by Mary Young and Marieke Scholz. Marieke Scholz - picking up Mark's slack since 2006.

There's a lot of canadians in south east asia. Good representation from lawrence park too. That night we ran into about 7 from the LP area who we partied with. Just trying to branch out.

M

Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

After a day of recouping from the all night festivities, we made our way to Koh Phi Phi, on the west side of mainland. We got there in the blistering heat of afternoon. This gives those hotel owners offering A/C an edge on bargaining. They said 150, we said 100, they said 150, we took 150.

It was on Phi Phi that we got our first intro to the legendary Lady-boys. There was a group of them on one corner trying to draw customers to a Lady-boy Show. Now I'm told some of them pull it off quite well, and that I'd never know. I'm sure this was often the case, but there's definitely the flipside, born with Robin Williams hands and a voice reminiscent of Sean Connery. Not much you can do about that. Unfortunate for them.

Next morning we headed for some cheaper accomodation and met up with Paul's bud Ty Pridham, who was travelling with his girlfriend Ali. I decided to do my PADI Openwater cert while on Phi Phi, so I headed out to get it going. The rest of the crew went to chill on one of the nicer beaches of the island.
That's Ali's friend Teagan. Coincidentally it was Ty's birthday, so they got sloppy that night. Apparently booze doens't mix well with diving; that's me sucking water in the background.
A few drinking games kicked off the festivities. By the end of the night it was clear who won.

Day 2 was spent predominantly in recoup for the rest of crew, watching flicks at the guesthouse. My PADI cert continued. By 5 o'clock everyone was back in shape, good enough reason to do it all over again. Day 3 I finished by cert by 1. We hired a long-tail boat to take us around to some beaches and snorkelling.
Inclusive on this tour was the infamous Maya beach from "The Beach".Before heading off to RaiLay on the last day, we hit the local beach on Phi Phi.
Then we ventured up a decent hike to a lookout point. Paul's sunscreen didn't quite set before the hike.
View from the lookout point.

Koh Phangan, Thailand

After 5 weeks and relatively little bowel disruptions, T and I thought we got out clean. We celebrated with some seafood bought on the side of the street. Then in the airport on the way out, the so-called "Dehli Belly" hit both of us. Thankfully only a 24 hour ailment, with the help of some antibiotics.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur on the 17th. We went to check out the Petronas Towers. Saw "Street Kings" on the big screen. It sucks, don't see it.

Next morning we were off to Krabi. Met a solid Swede by the name of Gustav. Cabbed to Surat Thani and hoped a ferry to Koh Phangan arriving a couple days before the full moon party.
Cozy Bungalows.

In Thailand the cheap route for intoxication is "buckets". I don't know why I used quotation marks, they're actually buckets, with a healthy mix of red bull, coke and vodka.

Paul likey...
T, not so much.
T trying to maximize inflow.

taste test, I like blue.
the infamous partay.
Gustav on the right.
party on and on 'til the early morn..