Thailand and Cambodia

The difficulty when waiting a long time between posts is figuring out where the the time has gone since the last post. I flew from Calcutta to Bangkok a few weeks ago. It was strange to be in a city with lanes on the roads and shopping malls. Although I didn't see the insides of any shopping malls. I stayed in Bangkok on Khao San road, it is the backpacker place to go. It wasn't my scene, the street was packed with people, big party atmosphere. I just spent two days here, enough time to do some laundry and sort out my visa for Vietnam. It would have made way more sense to go north and then gradually make my way south through the other countries, but the southern beaches were calling my name. I headed to a small island in the south called Kho Phangnan, it was about 80km off the Thai mainland. I found a little place there called Bottle Beach. It was very isolated, no roads going there, so I had to take a long boat (fishing boat). It had no stores and only a few places to stay. I stayed at Smiles Bungalow. It was a wonderful four days. My bungalow had a great view of the beach and the people that were staying there and working there were amazing. Many interesting people. I was sad when I had to leave and head back to Bangkok. From Bangkok I went east to Seim Reep, Cambodia. Seim Reep is famous for Angkor Wat, its like the biggest church in the world. It's a collection of temples that are spread out over about 40km, some of which are absolutely immense and dating back over a 1000 years. I do tend to suffer from a bit of temple fatigue though after a full day of wandering through them. Today, I'm heading out for my second day of temple gazing. My visit in Cambodia will be short, hoping to head to Vietnam tomorrow. I will try to post pictures soon, I've put some on Facebook, if you are interested.