Battambang

The first town that I visited in Cambodia was Battambang, which is the second largest city in Cambodia but still quite small. However the only reason I came here was so that I could take the boat to Siem Reap (the town where Angkor Wat is located) instead of having to take a bus over some supposedly terrible roads.

I arrived in Battambang in the early afternoon and decided to spend the rest of the day touring around small villages surrounding the city. However since it was late afternoon when I was touring around, most of the activities that we were supposed to see where finished for the day such as making rice paper and bamboo sticky rice. We did get to stop and try a local snack of fried snake and palm wine (the palm wine was made from sap from palm trees), and we also got to visit a place where they were making fish paste. However other than those couple of sights the rest of the tour was just spent driving around the country side which was still quite nice.

The next morning I awoke and went to catch the boat to Siem Reap. The boat trip was very good, at least for the first few hours, as from the top of it you could see lots the locals out along the riverbank going about their daily activities. The boat went through a narrow river channel for most of the trip (passing other oncoming boat traffic was very interesting as the channel was so small) and eventually came out on Tonle Sap, the large lake in the centre of Cambodia. Although the boat trip was fairly enjoyable it became quite boring by the end as it was 7 hours of sitting on a boat seeing the same thing over and over. However I was told that it was much better than the bumpy road that was the alternative so it was a worthwhile trip.

The next stop was Siem Reap and visiting the world heritage site of Angkor Wat for the next few days, update to follow shortly.









Some kids at a road side stall where we got to sample the fried snake (in the bowl on the right) and palm wine.














A shot of the road that we were driving down with Rene (one of the guys I was traveling with) in front.












A shot from the boat to Siem Reap of some farmers plowing their fields using an engine pulling them while they stand on a board that plows the field.








A kid that was poling his small boat along side ours, this was just before we entered the huge lake so no more narrow channel as you can see.

Sukhothai, Korat and Getting to Cambodia

I've managed to finally get an update up (I know I'm a little behind) but there's also 2 more updates of pictures from earlier below this one too.

After leaving Mae Sot and Um Phang I had to make my way across Thailand to enter Cambodia. So I decided to break this trip up into smaller sections and spend a day in a couple of cities along the way. The fist city I stopped in was Sukhothai, the first capital of Thailand and home to some nice ruins.

Sukhothai is divided into old and new Sukhothai with old Sukhothai containing the ruins of the ancient city. For the day that I had in Sukhothai I spent the entire time cycling around the ruins and exploring the old city. Some of the ruins were quite impressive although this was only the ruins within the old city walls, all of the ruins in the surrounding area were very much ruined and didn't provide much to see except the more scenic location. Other than the ruins at old Sukhothai though there wasn't much to see or do here so I moved on.

After Sukhothai I took the bus to Korat and didn't expect to spend much time here really enjoy the time that I did spend here as it isn't a very touristy town. It was just necessary to go to to catch another bus to the border of Cambodia. However, when I arrived here I discovered that they were hosting their 4th annual grilled foods festival (something like the Thai equivalent of the Calgary Stampede). The grilled foods festival was actually very enjoyable as it had tons of delicious grilled food and even a free show that was like the grandstand show. Not to mention it was quite funny seeing all of the Thai people dressed up as cowboys.

After Korat I took a bus to Aranya Prathet (a town on the Cambodian border) and once across the border I made my way to Battambang in a shared taxi. The taxi ride itself was quite interesting as there were 3 tourists that had rented the backseat and 4 locals (including the driver) all squished up front. More updates from Cambodia to follow soon.








Ruins at old Sukhothai.

Pictures of Um Phang

Standing near the main waterfall.















Our guide walking across a bamboo bridge to get to a small set of waterfalls for some swimming.















Our guide holding a gibbon that one of the local villagers owned. We all got a chance to hold and touch it too.













A work elephant pulling a large log behind it in the village where we spent our second night.










Our porters making bamboo cups for us along the trail.











The enormous elephant that I got to ride through the jungle on.

Pictures of Pai

Some kids from one of the villages where we stopped on our trek for some lunch.








Dinner during our trek.











The acommadation during our trek, we stayed in the right half while the people who owned the house stayed in the left half.







Placing my floating banana leave candle (it may be called a kratong but I'm not sure) in the river and making a wish.









Some of the colourful dancers in the parade for Loi Kratong.











One of the beauty contestants in the parade on the second night of Loi Kratong. There were several floats similar to this one with beauty contestants on them and each float had a very large speaker system blaring out Thai music.












Relaxing in the hot springs during a break on the rafting trip.











A typical view of the river without any rapids. The second raft is floating down the river in the background.
















Our rafting guides cooking dinner at the overnight camp.













Lunch break while on the rafting trip.

Pictures of Chiang Mai

The partially destroyed chedi of wat chedi luang.














The golden chedi at wat phrathat doi suthep, unforunatly it was being repaired or repainted while I was there so scaffolding was erected all around it.









Here is the view of Chiang Mai from the top of wat phrathat doi suthep, the wat located on a mountian just outside the city.





Also if you want to see pictures of me from the cooking course I took just follow this link: http://www.cookinthai.com/photo/browse.php?folder=20081106

Um Phang

OK first of all pictures are coming soon I promise.

After my multi day journey to get to Mae Sot I quickly left there heading for the small town of Um Phang. Um Phang is a beautiful town located in the hills close to the Burmese border and as a result there are lots of Burmese people that try to smuggle themselves into Thailand here. The trip to Um Phang was done on what is best described as a pickup truck bus, the bed of the truck has 2 benches placed in it and a nice shelter placed over top to protect us from wind and rain. Needless to say it's really uncomfortable. My trip started off pretty interesting as I'm fairly sure that we were smuggling somebody in our truck as one woman kept paying the police officers that stopped us to inspect our ID cards. After all of the bribes the trip got significantly worse: the road to Um Phang is through the mountains and so it's very twisty turny and steep. And as I soon found out the local people there can't handle these things at any speeds as of the 10 locals riding the "bus" with me at least 5 of them were vomiting for most of the trip. So that 5 hour bus ride was one of the least enjoyable I've ever taken.

Once in Um Phang I quickly signed up for a 3 day trek that included rafting, seeing the largest waterfall in Thailand and elephant riding. I thought it would be great fun. The rafting was in beautiful scenery but very similar to what I saw white water rafting so nothing too new and the short trek to the campsite after the rafting wasn't anything special either. To top it off there were at least a few hundred Thai tourists who did the same rafting trip and camped at the base of the waterfalls as us so there wasn't any chance to really see nature. The waterfalls themselves were very nice and probably some of the tallest ones that I've ever seen, but again there were at least a few hundred Thais there to enjoy them too. The last day was spent taking an elephant ride for 2 hours back to the road where we were to be picked up. Well I was pretty excited to get to ride an elephant but I very quickly lost all of excitement. Once on the elephant the basket that you sit in was very uncomfortable and you always had to hold on so that you wouldn't fall off. Then to top it all off my elephant was at least 1 meter taller than all of the other ones so when walking through the jungle while other people could easily fit under the leaves and branches of trees I had to fight them off.

After the trek I was able to get a ride back to Mae Sot in a private bus with the other people on my trek so the return journey was much more comfortable and faster. In Mae Sot I only stayed for one night before heading out to Sukothai and eventually Cambodia.