singapore

we are only in singapore for 3 days and 2 nights, which is plenty of time to be here. it is very clean and pretty, but it is also uber-modern with a mall every 100 feet. it just feels like a city. i could be in la, sydney, nyc and not know the difference. annette hates it here. i wouldn't say that i hate it, but i am pretty nonplussed. we are staying in chinatown, which is a pretty cool area, although there is not much to do if you don't want to shop. yesterday i walked to east coast park and got to bike for a few hours near the water, which was simply lovely. i also got to race some kids on their bikes. there is something quite gratifying about beating 3 year-olds on their tricycles. my ego was definitely stroked. i have been drinking a lot of coffee (there are coffee bean and tea leaf coffee shops everywhere!) and doing lots of crossword puzzles. this is a very expensive city and so there is not too much that i want to spend my money on. this is the first place since australia where we have had to stay in dorms. being in places like india, thailand, cambodia we could get our own rooms (granted they were not the fanciest or cleanest) for 3-5 dollars. here we are paying 15 dollars to share a room with 8 other people. but tonight we leave for bali. and go figure, the airline that we were on canceled the segment from singapore to denpasar, so we have to fly through tokyo from singapore to get to bali. what normally should be a 2 hour flight, is going to take us 24 hours (with a 10 hour layover in tokyo). oh, the joys of airline travel. at least i get to catch up on my tv. :)

thailand

thailand...what can i say? it is basically everything you expect it to be when you think thailand. annette's brother and her friend came to to meet us for 2 weeks, so we were more on vacation instead of traveling. and there is a difference. we did more resorty things and spent way more money than we have been as travelers. it was like we were on spring break, instead of backpacking. it took a while to get used to, but looking back on it, i can say that it was fun. a nice change of pace. the boys were amazing because they helped curb some of our costs, which was very nice.

we did the things tourists do. saw the islands (and of course did the boat tour to where the movie, the beach, was filmed. and yes, it is that beautiful). we went to an infamous show in bangkok and saw things that i am still having nightmares about. we went to a drag show and saw some of the most beautiful women ever (it really does not matter that biologically they are men). we also went scuba diving. and laid on the beach. all the thailand good stuff. i was able to dive 6 times so i am feeling a lot less panicked when i get in the water, which is comforting. i am glad i visited, but when it was time to leave, i was relieved to leave that tourist life and get back to it! and cambodia was a good way to acclimate back to backpacking culture. :)



the wonderful and beautiful lady boys at the drag show. they were amazing!




annette, her brother (kevin), me, and her friend, david out for a night of fun



this was so cute! at one of the restaurants that we ate at, this is how they brought out the rice. sadly, the waiter did not take my order and i did not get to eat lunch there that day. but this cuteness made watching all the others eat their food a lot more tolerable.



one of the many temples that pepper the landscape of thailand.



annette and me at the lying down buddha in bangkok. it was a ginormous statue. we got to put a piece of the gold paper on the body, so good luck will come to us. or something like that.

angkor wat (cambodia)

We spent two days visiting the gloriously incredible temples of Angkor Wat in Siam Reap, which is in northern Cambodia. Some of the temples are being restored (a Japanese company has taken over this project and now controls the finances of the temples in Cambodia). But other temples are just collapsing and deteriorating back into the jungle. My favorite temples were the ones that were still intact, but had tress growing out of them and overtaking them. There were some temples that had herculean trees seemingly constricting the life of the temple walls and slowly crumbling some of the structures as they grew around them. We spent our first day seeing the temples by tuk-tuk, which was a good way to get our bearings. We started the morning at 5 am to see the sunrise (which was no all that) and then walked around some of the major temples and got a sense of the grandeur of the structures. Annette was sick (and also she had been chugging cough syrup, thinking that it was non-drowsy) and was kind of a downer the first part of the morning, but once the cough syrup wore off, she bounced right back to life. So while i climbed up some of the steps of the temples, she acted as group photographer (thanks annette!).


The second day, we rented bikes and biked around the temples. The day before we had done the little loop so we opted for the grand tour. It was awesome because this tour was more off the beaten path. Since so many tourists want to see the famous temples on the little loop (including the one where Tomb Raider was filmed), we didn't have to deal with as much traffic or as many people. This coupled with the fact that there were a few rainstorms, we got to see a very peaceful part of Angkor Wat. Also, I think the temples on the grand tour were so much more beautiful than the ones we saw on the little loop. Mostly because these were the ones that were overtaken by the gargantuan trees and had a mysterious nature to them. I loved being there. Annette was also happier this day (she stopped chugging drowsy cough syrup) and the biking was flat so she did not complain at all. This was a far cry from her about to keel over and die at the claws of hawks when we were in Easter Island. We biked about 35km, and did get to see a lot. I was happy to be on a bike (a privilege that has been denied to me most of this trip) and be out in a such a beautiful space and experience such an important part of Cambodian history.



despite the fact that some of these temples are close to 1000 years old, there is beautiful art carved into them, which still looks pretty detailed. i am flummoxed by the craftsmanship that so many ancient civilizations had that was built to last for so long. what a contrast to present day societies, where everything is meant to be disposable or upgradable.




me in front of one of my favorite temples, called bayon. there were heads carved out of each side of the temples so that it looked like you were always being watched. it was eery and flattering both at the same time. kind of like having a stalker.


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more beautiful temples




here are a couple of pictures of the temples where the trees are overtaking them. isn't it beautiful?



scaling the steps of one of the temples. i felt like a bad-ass.




another beautiful picture of one of the temples of bayon