Well, here I am in Thailand again! Thailand and Cambodia, December 2011 and January 2012.
Here's a Google map of my
route. The lighter colored legs were routes I considered and researched, but did not go on.
It has been a very tiring week, and I've been slow in getting started with this trip log, so I'll just make a recap of the entire week. I don't seem to have a lot of strength for anything, probably from the time change, don't think I caught anything. I do have a persistent cough but I think it's from the dirty air. The weather has been exactly what I hoped for, not too hot but plenty warm.
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Boat ride to Wat Arun. I tried to go to the Grand Palace one
day and did not realize that you must arrive there by 3:30 PM.
Once you're in, you can stay until about 5:00 PM I think. So
I went to Wat Arun instead and then to a Mexican Restaurant. |
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| Wat Arun |
I have taken about 100 pics, but have had trouble dealing with them. I did not bring a laptop, and finding photo software has been a problem at the hotels I've stayed at, and most of the internet cafes also. Amazing, I would have thought everyone has
something to resize, crop, etc. It's possible I'm not making myself understood but I doubt that. Everyone simply says "No, we don't have that". I finally found one internet cafe with a knowledgeable, English speaking attendent, but by that time my flash drive had a sweet little virus it caught from sticking it into about five strange computers, and which made accessing the photos and everything else on there impossible. I got pretty mad about that and I'm relieved I did not blame that attendant. There's no telling where I got the virus. I only hope I didn't spread it.
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| The most spectacular part of the Grand Palace, to the left at entrance |
Anyway, after a night's sleep I remembered I moved the photos from my camera (last time I move and delete from camera!) to a temporary folder on the desktop of this hotel computer and they were still there. So I lost a lot other files, but at least I have the pics. But what do I do with them now? I decided the best work-around at this time was simply uploading to Picasa. Maybe I can crop and resize there and post to the blog. It has all been very tedious and I don't know an easy way to do it. I have been at this over two hours here in the hotel lobby with this slow internet connection this afternoon, and I'll have to deal with this some other time. I'm afraid when I go to Cambodia the problem will be even worse. The price of leaving your laptop at home...
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| It's kind of crazy how many of these huge temples are situated in this area. |
Today is my last day in Bangkok. I stayed here 7 nights at two different hotels, first four nights at the very nice
Sascha's Uno and then three nights at the slightly less nice
Boss Suites. My plan was to leave for Cambodia tommorrow, but I still have not decided exactly how I'm going to do this. I have several ways I could go. There is a spectacularly expensive flight directly to Siem Reab, I think I will avoid that. I could take a bus to Poipet at the Thai/Cambodian border, which I would have to leave very early for. Getting up early has been difficult. Or I could hop on a much more reasonably-priced flight directly to Phnom Penh and then bus up to Siem Reab. I am leaning towards that. But the fourth option is to take the 7 or 8 hour train ride to Surin, spend some time there, and take a taxi and make the border crossing southeast of there about 50 miles. It's by far the most adventurous route, as there have been reports of skirmishes in the area due to a
border dispute.
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| Many of these scary little guys holding it up all the way round. |
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| I got tired of being the guy asking other people to "please take my pic".
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