frank's homepage

I'm in Thailand now, doing the tourist thing and relaxing at the beach. First two nights I stayed in Kata which is about 20km south of Patong on the Phuket peninsula. Patong is a big party town and Kata is supposed to be a little more quiet. Turns out in the low season Kata is really dead, so I didn't stay for very long. The beaches are beautiful there and were almost empty. I played volleyball with some locals the first night, because there barely were any other tourists around. Second night I met some Aussies and we went to Patong to check out the nightlife. It was really busy and loud (even during low season) and I'm glad I didn't stay there.

Now I'm on Ko Phi Phi island. It is a really nice place with just the right amount of people. I'm probably going to stay here for a few more nights. The island is beautiful with crystal clear water, pretty much exactly like I've seen it on pictures before.

Today is out last day in Cambodia and it couldn't have been a better end to the week. Tomorrow Elise is on a bus to Laos, Marc flies to Hong Kong and then home, and I'm flying to Phuket in Thailand.

This morning I got up earlier and went to the local crocodile farm and bought myself a sweet crocodile belt. Oh yeah! Sorry Tuckey, I wasn't sure if you wanted one but if I come by another crocodile farm I'll pick one up for you. :-)

Next I woke up Marc and Elise and we went on a sweet helicopter ride. That's correct, you can book helicopter rides to fly over the temples. I'd never been in a helicopter before so I persuaded the others to do it too. It was really awesome. We paid $75 for 8 minutes, but since the visibility today was really good the pilot decided to fly us around for twice as long. Still 16 minutes doesn't sound like much, but you get to see a lot and it feels like a long time. I would definitely do it again. And yes, Cambodia with a Russian military surplus helicopter is definitely the place to try out helicopter flying for the first time. I mean, what could be safer?

(Just kidding, it was a modern helicopter and run by a respectable company.)

After that we went to "Seeing Hands Massages". It is a massage parlor run by blind people to earn a living. I got completely tenderized by a little lady. :-)

So overall today was really awesome. The helicopter ride did it for me.

I've attached a few pictures from the past week to this post. Yesterday we trekked further away from town to Beng Malea. It is a temple totally overgrown by jungle and not restored. It was really cool to be all the way out there, very quiet and no other tourists.

When we first arrived in Cambodia we took a bus from the Mekong where the boat dropped us off to Phenom Phen. During the bus ride I noticed two things about Cambodia. The first was the number of pharmacies/clinics/dental centers that we passed on the way to Phenom Phen and in the city itself. In Vietnam the pharmacies were few and far between. In fact I only saw two pharmacies during our entire stay there and both were in Hanoi. Here in Cambodia there seems to be a pharmacy on every block. For example here in Siem Reap, if I step out of the hotel there is a pharmacy two houses to the left and another about 5 houses to the right at the street corner. There also seem to be about four different hospitals in Siem Reap. The children's hospital, the Angkor International hospital and two other ones. In Phnom Phen I also saw tons of dental clinics. The dental clinics in particular seemed very modern and up to Western standards. I have no idea why there are so many healthcare related institutions in Cambodia. Maybe the government sponsors it? Maybe it is foreign aid? Maybe people from other Asian countries come to Cambodia for cheap healthcare? Either way, it is very odd. I have no idea how all those pharmacies stay in business.

The other thing I noticed on the bus ride were a lot of billboards advertising "Golden Muscle Liqour" and "Special Muscle Wine". Golden Muscle Liqour billboards would show a Cambodian man holding his Golden Muscle Liqour glass and 5 attractive Cambodian women crowded around him. The Special Muscle Wine would show an attractive Cambodian women holding a wine glass. Anyway, it turns out I see these billboards all over the place. Last night I set out to find a place that serves this delicious golden liqour. They didn't have it at the touristy restaurant we were at, so I got our waiter to show me a local joint where they serve it. At the time it seemed like a good idea since today is our free day. It turns out that this is in fact the local drink of choice and is somewhat like wine although with 20% alcohol. The taste is really artificial, but a bottle was only $3 at the bar, probably less if you buy it in a store. The bottle is hilarious and it shows a really ripped bodybuilder with golden skin and a flat top haircut and a mustache. Classic. I might have to bring home a bottle. Anyway, so yaddy yaddy yadda we drank some last night and it was good times.

We just had dinner and I feel the urge to blog about my sweet dining experience, especially considering the restaurant has free Internet.

Anyway, tonight I managed to cross three things off my TODO list: crocodile, snake and kangaroo. I had a sweet Khmer BBQ platter with each of those meats and also chicken. They bring a little BBQ to your table and then you cook the meat yourself. There also were three different Khmer dipping sauces: chili, pepper and soy bean sauce.

Most excellent. I've always wanted to try these meats. The whole thing only cost $6 which is really steep by Cambodian standards, but I felt like splurging in my last week. :-)

Overall I liked crodocile the best, it's a little chewy but overall very tasty. It tastes maybe a little bit like chicken, but not really. Snake was good too, the texture reminded me of squid, but it was more chewy. I didn't really like the kangaroo, it was too chewy/leathery and it tasted a little bland.

Last week we visited a crocodile farm in Vietnam. They had around 4000 crocodiles at the farm. They were raised for the meat and the leather. Our guide kept telling us that BBQed crocodile is one of his favorite dishes. Now that I had it I can see where he is coming from. :-)

Well, we are in Cambodia now. The first half of the trip is almost over, Marc leaves on Friday morning. I was going to blog lots about Cambodia and our time in Phenom Phen, but .... I'm pretty tired so I wont.

In short, the boat ride to Phenom Phen from Vietnam took almost the whole day because we didn't get on the fast boat. So we slowly tucked up along the Mekong in a little boat and then another 3 hours by bus. Pretty relaxing, but boring in the end. Roads in Cambodia are really bad in some parts and the bus ride was over dirt roads and very bumpy.

PP was cool. We stayed in the first real backpacker area of the trip. We all had some western food the first night. Who would have thought the pizza in Cambodia is so good. ;-)

Next day looked at the genocide museum and the killing fields. Pretty crazy stuff.

Got caught in a heavy rainstorm in the evening. Generally it rains here every evening for around 2 hours since it's rainy season. But now that we know it's easy to work around it. In PP we got totally soaked. Took cover under a pagoda with some locals and it got hit by lighting. First time I was that close to a lightning strike! But it was all good, just a really loud bang. Getting back to the hostel we had to navigate some flooded streets, but the locals didn't even get phased. I guess it just happens on a regular basis during the rainy season and all the houses have raised doorways so they don't flood.

Now we are in Siem Reap to look at the amazing temples here (Angkor Wat being the biggest temple). Some are rebuilt and others are still out in the jungle as they found them. Tomb Raider and a few other movies were filmed here because of the temples. It's pretty cool and I'll have to post some pictures later.