Without glasses in Cambodia and with smiles in Thailand

Hi everyone,

Things have gotten a lot smoother now since our complications in getting into Cambodia. When I left you the last time we had just gotten to Angkor, which is the most famous place in Cambodia and one of the most amazing places in southeast Asia.

Angkor is an area with plenty of rather well preserved ruins of temples from the 13th century and it absolutely incredible. You really get the idea of how the producers of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider got their ideas. Hidden in the middle of the Cambodian jungle (although nowadays surrounded by a commercialized tourist industry) there are humongous ruins nested in the forest. The most famous one is Angkor Wat which is the worlds largest religious building. Imagine being the first one to discover these ancient temples the first time… I could go on and on about this but instead I will go on about how we went on to Phnom pen.

PP is the capital of Cambodia and has among many things (like millions of motor bikes) some horrible evidence of the genocide that took place here between 1975 and 1979. Two million out of 7 million Cambodians were killed under the regime of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. I repeat 2 M I L L I O N. Put that in perspective into your country if a third of the population would be tortured and killed, just for reasons like wearing glasses (meaning you are an intellectual, meaning a threat to the communist regime). PP bears the memories of this genocide in museums like The Killing Fields and the former prison S-21. Frightenly interesting.

Less interesting but nicer was when went on to the up-and-coming beach resort Sinhaoukville. It was actually pretty boring and the beach was so-so so went back to Thailand pretty fast and to the small island of Koh Chang. That’s where we truly met paradise. With some rented motorbikes we drove to a beach and got a room by the sea. We spend a couple of days sipping pina coladas, biking around with our motorbikes, playing football on the beach. We went out the first night and…I just love Thailand…we were bloody rockstars!

Koh Chang is an island where a lot of Bangkok people go to during the weekends (as when we were there) and if it is crazy to go out in Bangkok it is pretty damn Robbie Williams-like to go out in Koh Chang… I am not naive, I know there are a lot of…well…professionals in Thailand and a lot of the really hot girls were not…well…born as girls…Still, if you handle it correctly (which we do of course), you use the attention of everyone just to plain have fun…and then talk to the more serious girls.

We got hooked up with two really cool Thai girls and a guy friend of theirs with whom we spent the rest of the days at Koh Chang. They guy was friendly enough to invite us for lunch and was even friendly enough to include some spicy-as-hell raw crab-meat that someone left in the sun for a few days…they day after we woke up to what they in South America call Montezumas revenge, i.e. diarrea, vomiting and just being completely exhausted.

Well, having that done. We got ready to go down to another paradise island. Koh Samui. It was probably a paradise island a couple of decades ago but now when pretty much all the people in the world have found it it was just plain…Ayia Napa. Sooo touristy even though the beach was nice. The only thing we could do was to go out partying again. I guess, the more tourist a place is, the more professional the girls get. As said before, we can handle it pretty well so we had a lot of fun that night (not THAT type of fun)!

Coming back to Bangkok we did something we had planned to do all the time. Go to a Muay Thai gym to fight. We took a 2 hours beginners course in Thai boxing and I have never sweated so much in my entire life. It was crazy and a lot of fun. Real Thai boxing in a real Thai gym. Rallarsving!

The cool thing about this trip is all the contrasts we experience. One night we stay at shitty guest house, literally with cockroaches on the walls (eating food stand food and deep fried grasshoppers for dinner) and the other night we stay at a 5* Sheraton hotel sipping single malt and cigars in the hotel bar. It makes you really appreciate things.

The conclusion so far is that I really love Thailand. They rip you off pretty much as much as in Cambodia but they at least do it with a smile. Partying can’t be better. Everything is cheap….Cambodia was nice but extremely poor, making you distrust everyone. Everyone wants your money everywhere but in Cambodia they seem more desperate to get it.

After Bangkok we went on to Bali which so far has been to a certain extent, a bit of a disaster. I will let you more next time about how I lost 5000 SEK (700 USD) and got hit by a truck…not at the same time though.

Cheers!

Christoffer