sa pa

before i came to vietnam, i was told that one of the things i HAD to do was a trek in sa pa. as soon as i arrived, i figured out why.

after an overnight sleeper train, i arrived in lao cai, the town closest to sa pa. from there it was a long and winding bus trip to the top of the mountains where we would be meeting up with our final group and tour guide. our group was small, only 6 people: me, two sisters from lichtenstein (yeah apparently they exist!), a guy from serbia who had lived in the states for a few years, and two guys from belguim. quite a mix.

unfortunately, the group didnt get as close as on my last trek (but that was obviously a tough group to beat!) and that was a disappointment, but the trek was good and the scenery was amazing. how could i not be with rice fields and farms set amongst grassy mountains?

our group did a homestay with another group at a big house and the best part of the night was dinner. they cooked for us and it was pretty good food, but after that they shared with us "magic water" which was basically rice liquor. they made us all do shot after shot until all the bottles they had were gone. needless to say, by the time the rain started pouring on us at 11, we were all more than ready to head to bed.

got room for 20?

the second day was a lot more work, uphill most of the way, and because of the rain the night before it was kinda slippery. but once we got to the top, it was so worth it.

please ignore my face.

o, and every village we went through had many puppies. i got excited every time. my group started making fun of me, but just look at the face!!

puppah!

a history lesson in phnom penh.

sorry, no inspirational music on this post. actually, its depressing to the max. cambodia is a country that has been plagued with hardship after hardship. speaking with the people on a daily basis, it is easy to forget this as they are absolutely one of the friendliest people around, but our one full day spent in phnom penh brought the facts of their history back to us, very clearly.

our first stop was choeung ek, one of the most famous of the killing fields in the entire country. basically, these places are sites of mass executions and consequently, many many mass graves of people who were killed by the khmer rouge, a group with a communist mindset run by pol pot, who were charged with killing millions of cambodians who threatened their power and their most brutal time period being between 1975 and 1978.

upon entering the site, it first comes off as quiet and rather peaceful. however, that impression soon vanishes when you come upon the tall, white, stupa which was built to commemorate the victims who were killed at the camp. shelves upon shelves of human skulls are the dominating feature here, and its surreal to see all of these together in one place. it really drives home the facts of how many people were not just killed, but tortured and brutally murdered, by the regime.

a walk around the fields showed us some of the mass graves that had been discovered and exhumed in 1980. a look through the museum gave a concise but decent explanation about who the khmer rouge was and what they wanted. many of the leaders have been, or are in the process, of being tried for their crimes.

from choeung ek, we headed to s21, the most famous of the security prisons that the khmer rouge ran and where prisoners were kept and interrogated before being sent to a killing field. the museum was once a high school, which was taken over an transformed by the khmer rouge and housed over 20,000 victims from 1975-1979. there was an eerie feeling throughout the entire place, which included 4 buildings which had been used as cells and torture rooms and a small graveyard for the last 14 victims killed here and discovered by the liberating forces. the buildings now house testimonies of the few survivors and former khmer rouge members, pictures of the victims, and some of the instruments used for torture.

its so grim, that meghan had to leave before the 3:00 showing of the video, and so i finished the day out on my own.

by the time i got back to the hostel, i was quite depressed. the most haunting thing is how recently in the past this had happened. its crazy to think that it was capable then, and then you start thinking about how similar things are still happening around the world in different areas today.

to get me out of the sad state, i played with these guys for a bit, because, as everyone knows, puppies never EVER fail to make me happy.

quite a LONG weekend

this past sunday was a buddhist holiday, and so we had monday off. the long weekend gave us a chance to go on a trip a little further away than we would normally prefer to do in just a two day weekend, and so we opted for the beaches of koh chang. from what we had been told, it was suppose to be so amazing there that once we had been, we wouldnt want to go anywhere else.

to get to the port town of trat takes about 5 hours from bangkok, so we bussed down to trat and spent the night at a cute little hostel there, then woke up in the morning, had breakfast, and headed over to the ferry. we thought the whole thing might take about an hour and half and then we would be on the beach! but no, of course not, because THIS IS THAILAND.

so it took a good half hour at least to get to the port, or what we thought was the port, and so we booked our tickets for the ferry to koh chang, back and our bus back to bkk since it was a good deal. then we climbed into another songthaew and went on another ride to the port. as we were about to enter, the guy stopped us because apparently the four of us who got the package deal did not receive our tickets TO koh chang. great. so we spent about 10 minutes arguing with him, as he was being very not nice, before he finally got smart enough to call the desk, and things were eventually settled. but we had missed the ferry and had to wait for the next one.

so we ferry over to koh chang and are loaded onto another songthaew, this time packed fuller than it should legally allowed to be, and we start on our journey to lonely beach where we had booked our stay. after driving for a half hour, we still hadnt made it, and to make it worse, we were pulled over so that some of the other passengers could go to a bank. we were stopped there in the heat for about 15 minutes before they got BACK on the songthaew and continued on with us, ugh. finally, we saw a sign for lonely beach, and thought we would be getting off. but not yet. our place wasnt that close, and after a little longer, we got dropped off on the top of a hill with a sign pointing down to where we could find our bungalows. at this point, i was not happy, but our place was nice enough and that cheered me up some, until i discovered we had to trek BACK about 15-20 minutes to get to a beach. needless to say, my first moment in the water was long anticipated and well deserved.

the water was crystal clear and definitely the warmest i have yet to encounter here in thailand. the group we went down with was me steph tasha beth jake and eric and then when we got there we met up with david megan and nicole who did ati in chiang mai at the same time we did and are friends with beth from school. we stayed

on the beach all day and had a nice time. i had decided that i wanted a jumping picture at sunset, and so i made everyone stay out until we got a semi good one...after 22 attempts. its much harder to do than it looks.

thats the only one that is semi-good. i need more coordinated friends :P

so after that we got showered and ready and had dinner, then we heard that there was a full moon party on the island somewhere but found out it was way too far for us to go to. some people the others knew from their group joined us and we went to happy hour where drinks 20 baht, then we went back to a bar closer to the beach and danced and drank and swam until we were tired then made the trek back to our bungalows. the next day was more relaxing and basically all we did was stay on the beach and eat. we got to see the start of a gorgeous sunset before some clouds moved in and blocked it, then i ended up reading in a hammock until dinner, which was a nice barbaque. jake and steph and i took a long walk and explored the area some more and then we called it an early night.

i wouldnt say i preferred koh chang more than koh samet, but it turned out better than i expected it to at the start and i ended up having a great long weekend.

o yeah, i also made a new friend:

and steph and i almost puppysnatched yet again. the two of us are dangerous when it comes to baby dogs and the longer we are here the more likely it seems as if we will have a pet pretty soon...

biking through history

there is so much to see in thailand outside of the city. this past sunday stephanie and i went to see the ruins in ayutthaya. it is a city just a little over an hour north of bangkok and was the capital of the country before bangkok was, and before it got the name thailand, from the mid 1300s to the mid 1700s when it was burnt down the burmese. the religion of that time was still buddhism though, and so there are many temples and wats, or at least piece of them, still left to be seen.

we took a mini bus from pinklao and left around 10. it was pretty easy and we got there around 1130. we decided we were hungry and tried to find a place and beth and neil recommended from when they visited the week before, but apparently, soi 1 is extremely hard to come by. we settled for a nice little restaurant on the side of the street and got some thai food while we planned out our day.

the city itself isnt too big, but there is a lot to see. so we decided to take the popular option of renting bicycles for the day. this is what i was most excited about. i dont remember the last time i rode a bike, and considering how hot of a day it was (nevermind that this is suppose to be the 'cool' season, its all relative), riding was the only time we had to cool down because we actually got a breeze.

after we found some bikes, and a map which we could decipher, we went right down the street to our first stop, wat mahathat. its one of the most popular because it is home to one of the most famous images in thailand:

its a buddhas head amongst the roots of the tree. before getting there, we had seen this image on postcards and in pictures, and so seeing it was awesome. the best part of that way, and probably the day, was the puppies. when we went to walk up on part of the ruins, we were hesitant because no one else was and we thought it wasnt allowed. once we got up though, we noticed why no one was venturing up there. by the other set of stairs was a mother dog, quite literally guarding her litter of pups (there were 8!) and growling at anyone who came in her view and too close to her babies. steph and i were watching from above, and so eventually she stopped growling at us, and we named some of the puppies based on their personality and looks, like chubby (see picture), beached-whale, and fighter. we wanted to take them home.

reluctantly, we left the cuties and went to our next stop, just across the street, wat ratchaburana. this one was cool because we were actually able to climb in and around the remains, up through steps and stuff. it is the one that has been most restored, but the site is amazing.

from there, we had heard about the temple with three pillars, or wat phra si san phet. its built on the grounds of what was the grand palace back when ayutthaya was the capital, and the three pillars, or chedi as they are referred to in the buddhist culture, contain the ashes of three different kinds from that kingdom. it was at this point that i noticed that there was really something wrong with my camera, as every picture was overexposed, even on automatic setting, and whenever i tried to change a setting an error message would occur. in fact, i got really annoyed with it and most of these picture are awful, but im including them so that everyone can see what im talking about here.

past some elephants while biking

the last place we knew we wanted to see was the big lounging buddha, known as wat lokaya sutharam. however, our map was misleading, or rather, we were pretty bad at reading it, and wound up cycling through almost the entirety of the old city before we came upon it. needless to say, by the time we got there we were hot, sweaty, and feeling pretty gross.

we snapped some pictures because we were there, but neither of us were feeling up to it. besides, even though its impressive and there are not pillars blocking it, i had just seen wat pho, which was bigger and gold. so since we were tired and had seen the main things we had come to see, we decided to head back and return the bikes. we had plans to do a sunday roast back in bangkok, so we wanted to leave before too late. even though that didnt end up happening, leaving when we did was good....if only we had puppysnatched before doing so.....