Oct 2007

After partying it up with my mates Sam and Jesse on my last night in Bangkok, I packed up, jumped on a plane, and headed to Hong Kong to meet up with my mate Dan. I have to say, after years of being in places like Brazil, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, I fell in love with Hong Kong immediately. The waterfront of that city at night is quite possibly one of the most beautiful sights in Asia.

I met Dan at the hotel, we dropped off our gear and headed out on the town. Since he lives nearby in Guangzhou, he was able to show me around and we started off at a swank Japanese restaurant getting blasted on sake (I know, it's a bit lame to be going for Japanese in China, but whatever, it was good). After that, we jumped on the metro to Hong Kong island and went partying in the main party area. It was pretty cool, old cobblestone streets, lots of different themed bars and we ended up going to an "ice vodka bar" which is basically just a bar with a room that has the air-con on high and fake plastic ice blocks. After that, the night just got progressively drunker and crazier and ended up with us getting kicked out of a lot of places.

The next day, we went for a walk around Kowloon and took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island for a bit. Unfortunately, I had to fly out in the afternoon and Dan had to catch a train back to China, but Hong Kong is a place I would definitely go back to.

Since I only had 9 days and Sam only had 5, we really had to rush Cambodia, but I am so glad I went. When we arrived at the airport, it was pouring down rain and we decided to take a tuk tuk to a guesthouse we read about on wikitravel near the riverside, since we didn't want to stay in one of the guesthouses near the lake while it was raining - neither of us was rating cold showers and loads of mosquitos when the weather was crap already. Apparently, we picked the slowest tuk tuk in the whole of Cambodia as well, as it took us about an hour to get to the riverside and even then, he got lost a few times so the whole ride took us almost 2 hours (by contrast, the motorbike taxi from the riverside that took me to the airport when I left took 20 minutes). When we were looking for a hostel on my printouts, we found a hostel that said it had a bar and some pool tables, so we thought it would be cool. Well, it turned out to be in a "hostess bar"! Since both of us were tired and didn't fancy looking around, we decided to stay the night there. We ended up going out in Phnom Penh partying it up all night, and it was pretty crazy.

After only getting about 2 hours of sleep each, we woke up and took motorbikes to the bus station to jump on a bus to Siem Reap. We were pretty lucky, as the bus was empty so we both got to stretch out, but the loud, insane Cambodian karaoke music that was going on on the bus made it a bit difficult. I remember having a dream that everybody I was talking to was just saying "yep, yep, yep" and it got me so angry that I woke up - to hear a Cambodian song going "yep, yep, yep, yep".

After pulling up in Siem Reap, dazed and confused, we jumped in a tuk tuk and stayed at a place called Golden Village or something like that. Not bad value, and cheap as well. Since both of us were knackered, we just chilled out in the bamboo lounge upstairs drinking beer and then went for a walk around town. At night, we went to "Bar Street", which had a couple nice places, but nothing was groundbreaking.

The next day, we went to Angkor Wat, and wow, was it amazing! We picked the right time of the year to go, since it's the end of the rainy season and everything is green and lush. I really can't describe how amazing the temples were. We went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm (what they call the "Small Circuit") and spent all day looking at the temples. We even snuck into the restricted areas of Ta Prohm to take some cool pictures. We were lucky too as the weather was quite nice all day. After a day of temples, we decided that what better way would there be to celebrate than with a "Happy Pizza"! Well, the pizza was pretty happy and so was I for the rest of that night - except for the whole bouts of paranoia.

For the 4th day in a row, Sam and I woke up after only a few hours of sleep to jump on our bus back to Phnom Penh. When we arrived, I decided not to stay at the same guesthouse as before (although Sam was pretty keen) and stayed at another place near the riverside that was cheaper, just as nice and, oh yeah, wasn't full of hookers... We had a few drinks at our hotel, which included a drink called the "Roaring Temple" - involving vodka, red bull, fruit punch, and... VIAGRA! Man, that drink really messes up your head.

We ended up having one last crazy night in Phnom Penh before we decided to go to the firing ranges, the Killing Fields and S-21. I ended up firing the AK-47 - it was really cool at the time, but if I would have went to the other places first, I probably wouldn't have. Put simply, the Killing Fields and S-21 are too of the most horrible things I've ever seen. I can't even imagine the horrors that went on there, and I'm glad that i can't. All of the pictures of the people who knew they were about to die and were treated so savagely and horribly - S-21 is a place that I'm glad that I went to, but I would never go back to again. It was pretty disturbing.

After that, Sam headed back to Bangkok and I jumped on a bus to Sihanoukville, a beach town in the south of Cambodia. On the way down, I met a cool South African guy named Chris and we decided to go to a place called "Monkey Republic". It was a cool place, but it was full, so we stayed a few doors down at a place called "Nick & Craig's". Sihanoukville was amazing. I met some cool people there and we just hung out, lazed around and checked out the beaches, which were amazing as well. Otres Beach kind of reminds me of how Thailand was a long time ago. I stayed there for 4 days, then it was back to Phnom Penh, back to Bangkok, and off to Hong Kong

Sooo....ummm....yeah, I kinda forgot to keep updating my blog. I guess that's what happens when you end up spending all of your time working in the same place. That being said, Bangkok was awesome. The longer I stayed there, the more and more I was liking it and I don't really have any complaints. The weather was good, the food was good, my job was good, I met a few good friends and I met lots of nice girls

That being said, I didn't spend a lot of time in Bangkok the last month or so I was there, except when I was working. I took a few trips to Pattaya with some of my mates from both Bangkok and abroad, as well as a trip to Hua Hin with my Thai bird. To be honest, I'd heard a lot of bad press about Pattaya while travelling, and I'll have to say, it was nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be. Yes, it is a den of sleaze and filth, but if you can suspend your views on what is right or wrong, it can be a pretty big blast as it reminds me of a cheesy, sleazy version of Vegas and Miami mixed into one. The beaches aren't the greatest, but when you're chilling on a beach on a hot day with your friends and loads of cheap, cold beer, you really can't complain.

Hua Hin on the other hand, I wasn't a big fan of. The beaches were nice, but because the place is popular with upmarket Thais, it's expensive. The ladies on the beach were trying to charge about 50 baht for the same pineapple I could get in Bangkok for 10, the guesthouses were way too expensive and the town itself looks like any other small town in Thailand. Good thing I had company to pass the time

In the middle of September, it was my mate Dan's 30th birthday, so he brought 15 of his friends from Australia and we partied it up for one night in Bangkok, one night in Pattaya where we rented out the presidential suites and the front half of the hotel and had a crazy party - which unfortunately involved fines and the police. Something about lawn chairs being thrown off the balconies and too many other guest complaints, but it had nothing to do with me.... really. The next day we caught mini-buses to the airport and flew to Krabi to get to Ko Phi Phi. It's a good thing we chose Krabi instead of Phuket, as the flight to Phuket was the one that crashed - we were in the air at the same time, how freaky is that. After landing in Krabi, we took a speed boat to Ko Phi Phi, but since there was a massive storm we ended up jumping the boat over 3 metre swells the entire way - it was loads of fun, but man were my back and arse sore.

On Ko Phi Phi, we did loads of fun things - chilling on the beach, partying at night, drinking whiskey buckets the size of garbage cans, and we rented a speed boat for a whole day. We went cliff jumping, went to loads of different islands, played football on beaches, fed bananas to monkeys, and in the end, we ended up wakeboarding in the ocean while the sun was setting. It was good fun the whole trip.

From Phuket, we took boats to Phuket, but by then, everybody was pretty knackered from the trip, so we just ended up having a big seafood dinner and crashing out, the next day Dan and his girlfriend went to China, Dan's friends went back to Perth, and I went back to Bangkok for my last week of work.

My last week of work was nothing special - my body was pretty destroyed from the non-stop drinking of the 10 ten days before that, plus the fact that I had a lot of packing to do and errands to run. I went out on my last night with some friends, but ended up getting way too wasted and had to be sent home at about 1. The next day, my friend Sam and I flew to Phnom Penh.