Back To Cambodia

February 13th saw me head once again to the Kingdom of Cambodia, my main purpose was of course to head to my favourite island, Koh Rong. My journey started with a plane straight into Phnom Penh, there was a cheap enough flight for about 2000 baht and I worked out that it wouldn't he that much more for saving a huge amount of time and effort and more so that I could cut out the Poipet land crossing and quickly get my visa on arrival at the airport. There was no real scam here other than how I watched him short change many people, a lot came back complaining and were instantly reimbursed as he knew what he was doing. In any case after he tried it with me I abruptly asked for my $5 and I was off in a tuk tuk to the guesthouse I had once stayed in the city.

I had just one night in Phnom Penh before heading to Sihanoukville, at the guest house I met up with Dave and Chelsey who had arrived there from Siem Reap where they had visited Angkor Wat, something I had already done. We decided to head to the riverside for something to eat and drink and it turned out to be a good night. After eating we went for a walk along the main riverfront to have some beers sold by the vendors there, it was here we came across a local man clearly off of his head on meth, he was running around screaming and chasing people and to be honest it was a little worrying, some people around completely ignored him and they were fine but we kept our distance until he finally disappeared not before he tore a huge branch off a tree though, I mean guy was seriously high. Following that ordeal we stayed put at the river front and spent all night talking to the vendor selling us beer, he was a very friendly guy who told us he was from a local provenance and any money he made was all sent back to his family, at one point he ran out of beers having only soft drinks left so he trusted us to watch over his cooler while he popped back to his apartment to grab some more. What a guy.

The following morning we took a minivan to Sihanoukville Cambodia's seaside destination where we spent three nights. My opinion on Sihanoukville this time round was that it is, in a nut shell, pretty dire. The first time I visited perhaps I was a little naive about the kid vendors selling bracelets but they are nothing but rude and obnoxious so and so's, just minutes after sitting down we were inundated by them and when we declined their offer for a bracelet they then told us to 'f off' and one kid of about 10 then asked Dave if he wanted a fight. We had a fairly good time in some of the places at night but it was pretty dead everywhere, I guess this was due to it being the low season. We had an incident on one night at our guesthouse with a couple of Russians staying two doors down, one of them had knocked on the door of the room in between where a couple were staying, the girl had opened the door while her boyfriend was in the bathroom, he then tried pushing his way in to touch up his girlfriend, the boyfriend came out and pushed him out the door and locked it, afterwards he alerted security to what had happened, we know this because when we arrived back the guy gave us a heads up on what had happened, he was not happy! We also had a problem with the same Russian in that he owed a tuk tuk driver some money and pretended to be Daves friend (as Dave is 6ft 8in) we explicitly told the driver we had no idea who he was and he was lying to which the driver believed us, I hate to say it but I hope he got a beating. I have encountered a number of Russians whilst travelling and they are the worst of the worst, I know I cant judge all based on the few I have seen but you ask any other traveller their opinion and it is always the same. They are not 'Putin' in any effort to give their country a better name. (sorry I had to use that Pun, I actually partially stole it from Dave)

Loi Kratong, Chiang Mai

After the incident at the train station with Geng, I had a couple more days to kill before before Fai and I headed up on the sleeper train to meet up with Dave and Chelsea in Chiang Mai, our purpose here this time was to celebrate Halloween and more importantly the Loi Kratong/Festival of Lights. Unfortunately we left buying the tickets a little too late and could only get an upper berth fan carriage, it was steaming hot all the way as nobody on the lower berth (where the windows were) had them open. In any case I took a sleeping tablet which helped a bit and around 14 hours later we were there.

We arrived on the 30th and stayed until the 8th, in this time we did many a thing indeed. Our first big night out was Halloween where we headed to our favourite 'Yellow Bar' this I think is one of the best nights out in Chiang Mai as it is open fairly late and is in an area with many other surrounding bars that all kind of connect to each other. It was fairly early when we arrived so we played some pool in another nearby bar before heading to 7/11 for a couple more pre drinks on the street, we were quite lucky to be handed a bottle of fake blood by a random farang outside giving us instant costumes (before we had nothing but flashing devil horns) the night was very crazy and it is certain that I drank one too many buckets (sorry Fai)

I cant remember the order of things here exactly but between Halloween and the Loi Kratong festival we had a few days to go and explore, most of which were done on, you guessed it, motorbikes (its the only way for me) our first excursion was to a place I had not been before, we stopped by the tiger kingdom so Chelsea could see some tigers then headed off again, our destination was 'Mon Jam' a place at the top of a mountain where locals were growing huge organic strawberry farms, the view at the top was great although it was drizzling rain this did stop and it was an awesome trip. The following day we took to our bikes again, our first stop was the 'X-Center' so I could do their 50M bungee jump. I had done a bungee once before when I was 13/14 off the Auckland Harbour Bridge in New Zealand but this one here was slightly higher and an insane rush! it cost 1900 baht so wasn't bad I don't think. We got some GoPro footage of me doing it and man did I scream. Following the jump we set off for a much longer ride round the Samoeng Loop, I had done this same route before and it is a spectacular ride, if you ever come to Chiang Mai it is a must! That evening we went to a Muay Thai night although I wasn't so impressed with this as I once was before, there wasn't much of a good fight and we know for sure it is rigged as they basically told us. It is still a good laugh though as its not that expensive if you barter a discount on the tickets.

The Loi Kratong festival was upon us now, it was sods law though that the sweet whether we'd been having had suddenly decided to stop and it rained (what I would call British rain) for 3 days, in Thailand it normally buckets down for an hour or two then stops but this just drizzled for days, it really did suck as one of the main attractions of Loi Kratong in Chiang Mai is the Yi Peng (sky lanterns) which of course dont mix well with rain. On the first night of the festival we saw a carnival parade with some very beautiful costumes and floats, we were armed with ponchos so the rain didn't bother us too much. The following day was the actual Loi Kratong day, we bought some Kratongs from our guesthouse and headed to the river to float them away. I was also armed with some pretty big fireworks which we let off too. The final day of the celebration the rain had stopped by the evening and there were thousands of people out on the streets, it was the busiest day of the three, we bought another Kratong, one for the four of us, and another sky lantern which we set off together upon making a wish, I had also been to to fireworks market again and had a selection of small bangers, we went to the night bazaar where we had some fun letting them off with some of the kids. On our last day before getting the train we drove up Doi Suthep to see the most famous temple in Chiang Mai

Now as some of you may know I will be doing a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) course in Chiang Mai in March and part of my other reasoning for coming up here was to pay for my course and go and visit the school I would be studying in, I was very impressed with the set up, I also looked at the hotel I would be staying in for that month and I am more than happy with that too. My third time in Chiang Mai had now come to and end, I had now set the wheels in motion for securing a life in Thailand.