After my eventful “imprisonment” in Bangkok, I was very glad to be in Perth. I’m not trying to equate being in Bangkok as being imprisoned, as many inmates would clearly love to be there, but I feel it was almost exactly the same thing… Alright, maybe it wasn’t that extreme but that was the liberation I felt upon arriving in Perth. I’ve heard some people complain that Perth is kind of boring, but I have to fight that notion completely. For what and where it is (the most isolated state capi [View Full Entry]

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My second time in Bangkok was a fateful one, where I was stuck in a city on the brink of civil war. Unlike my first sojourn in the city about a month prior, the second time was filled with frustrating anticipation of my hopeful departure. Every morning, I would flip through three or four local papers to glean some sort of information about the going’s on at the airports and then surf the BBC/ CNN web sites for further information. To say the least, I was glad when I left Bangkok. I arrived on the morning of the 28th via an [View Full Entry]

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I left Chiang Mai with a smile and proceeded to a little town in Northern Thailand called Pai. The town may be little but was not little known. In fact, it was becoming so well known and so replete with tourists, foreign and Thai alike, that many of the long-time inhabitants I spoke to are contemplating a change to new scenery. The thing that drew the original farang (foreigners) and new tourists to Pai was its scenery and the proximity to traditional Thai villages. The town is situated in between huge hills that surround and isolate it from Chiang Mai, and [View Full Entry]

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If there could be a place more different than the southern beaches but still embody Thailand, Chiang Mai is it. The difference is more than location; the aesthetic and hedonistic pleasures of the south are replaced by a pious, serene mindset in Chiang Mai, indeed the cultural capital of Thailand. It seemed like there were more wats and temples in Chiang Main than anywhere else in Thailand, and accordingly, most Thai males in Chiang Mai attended for at least sometime, a Buddhist monk school. This rearing translated into some of the most sincere and kind people I met throughout my time [View Full Entry]

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After our surreal experience at Angkor Wat, Drew and I decided to take a slow ferry from Siem Reap to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pehn. We left the girls to their own mode of transportation and opted to take the ferry. The arguments (which the girls used) against taking the ferry were compelling: the bus was shorter and substantially cheaper, the departure time for the ferry was unbearably earlier, and the kicker, we had experienced pretty gruesome ferry rides in the last week that should have made us think otherwise. However, the draw of riding a ferry down the Mekong [View Full Entry]

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There have been few times in my life that I’ve seen something of the magnitude, both physically and historically significant, as the famous temple complex at Angkor. In my life, they’d probably be the Forbidden City and Great Wall of China, and on this trip so far, the Pyramids of Giza, the Citadel of Cairo, the old city of Jerusalem, and the Taj Mahal of Agra. Into that mix, probably at the top of the order, I now include Angkor in Siem Reap. The physical beauty, enormity, and sprawling nature of grounds were simply awe-inspiring. A trip to Cambodia would be [View Full Entry]

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My Canadian friends and I made our way to Koh Pang Nang to witness (or experience) the infamous Full Moon Party. As odd as it may sound, when I was planning my trip, the Full Moon party was the only concrete date so far into the future that I had, so in a way, I planned my entire trip around the party. I’m not even that big of a “partier” in the rave sense, but by targeting the November party, I gave my baby trip form and was in turn morally obligating myself to attend. Well, maybe morally is not the [View Full Entry]

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After some time in Phuket, we traveled to the isolated and beautiful beaches of Railey. Railey isn’t an island like Phuket or Koh Samui, but is much further removed from the Thai mainland than either of those islands. Phuket and Koh Samui may be a bit further from the mainland than Railay, but they are relatively easy to access as they both have airports and are connected onto the power grid. Compared to the longboat required to get to Railay, they seem like they’re almost on the Thai mainland… After getting into Krabi via the bus, the four of us took [View Full Entry]

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Dear Blog, Having missed my original flight due to my knack for running late to flights (the second on this trip, for those counting), I had to purchase another ticket to Bangkok via another airline but luckily had an interesting flight. The two-hour flight from HK to BK is so popular that Thai Airlines used a massive Boeing 747 to fly to the Thai capital. I couldn’t believe that my first flight on a 747 was for a short two-hour flight. On the flight, I was seated in the middle of this huge group traveling with these famous teenie Thai singers [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Hong Kong about 24 hours after I had entered the Mumbai airport. My flight had been cancelled for two months though no one with Air India felt it was important to tell me in advance - funny enough, the monitors still showed the flight as scheduled which caused some great confusion for the Indians working at the airport. After the exhausting overnight travel, I was overwhelmed with a reverse culture shock going from Mumbai, India to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong airport was clean, orderly, electric, convenient and efficient while my experience in Mumbai was everything but that. [View Full Entry]

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