jmackey24

Well it's been a few days but Not much to report until today. Spent three very lazy but welcome days tanning, burning, beaching and relaxing on Koh Samui, one of the Thai islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Beautiful if a bit overdeveloped. I stayed away from Chaweng beach, the biggest and most resorty and went for the quieter, more family oriented Bophut. Cute fishermans village with quiet restaurants and bars and some shops along a lane by one end of the beach then resorts and hotels up the rest of the beach. It was perfect. First day I was careful and just spent an hour or two sunning then retreated to the shade or kept covered up and didn't feel like I got any sun. So day two I spent 2 hrs sunning then swam ... read more

Finally arrived at my beach resort on the Thai island of Koh Samui. Did absolutely nothing yesterday. Full day of sweaty tomb raiding on Saturday did me in so I spent the whole day relaxing, swimming, tanning and I guess preparing for 3 full days of beach bumming haha Got up early this morning for my ride to the airport and my flight to Samui through Bangkok. No problems although it was all one flight # on Bangkok airways and the first part was delayed a half hour. So I get to Bangkok and have to get off to go through immigration. I go off and do so and nearly miss the flight! Second last person on the bus to the remote stand and off we go again. Bangkok airways is great two one hour flights ... read more

Wow what a sweatfest trying to be a tomb raider. Spent the day at the temples of Angkor, the largest of its kind in the world. A bit over a thousand years ago the whole area was ruled by the Khmer empire. They built huge temples, cities, monuments, shrines, reservoirs, rice paddies and more on a grander than grand scale. The good times rolled for over 500 years until war, or perhaps religious changes or just a general decline in infrastructure led the population to scatter in the 15th century. The temples are spread over hundreds of square kilometres and are half eaten by the jungle today. Hired a tuk tuk driver for the day to take me around and wait while I visited each temple. Started with the biggest single temple, Angkor Wat (Wat=temple). Wow ... read more

Ok so probably it isn't Cambodia but I have been feeling under the weather the last few days. Fever the other night, headache, no appetite, sneezing, hacking cough. Geez wish I knew a doctor! Lol really though not super sick or anything but didn't have much get up and go. Hot and humid as usual with thunder showers every afternoon. Went to the national museum in Phnom Penh yesterday morning. Open air building beautifully decorated. Mostly sculpture and tombstones from the Angkor period. Not terribly interesting but not too bad. I wanted to go to the Choeung Ek killing fields outside town and the prison museum but just didn't have it in me. Spent most the afternoon in bed lazing enjoying the AC. My room didn't have a window just two small frosted windows letting in ... read more

Yea so I'm getting bad at keeping the blog going. Usually just get 20-30 mins of free wireless at restaurants or Starbucks and I use it to figure out what to do with myself. Finally some free wireless at the hotel the Quay Boutique here in Phnom Penh. Malaysia was ok but nothing too exciting. It actually felt really western withits huge newshipping malls, sleek public transit. But around every corner with sidewalks falling apart, motorcycle traffic jams reminders of where it really is are still there. Spent a couple days in Georgetown on Penang.. Another old colonial town that's a little too built up for my liking. Then another day in transit in Kuala Lumpur before my Malaysian Airlinrs flight to Zcambodia. It's chaotic here. Finalyy actually feels like southeast Asia. Tuktuk drivers hounding at ... read more

Only have a few mins. They like to limitfree wifi to 20 mins around here and I just wasted most of that booking hotels. Made the trip from KL to Melaka (malacca). About two hours by bus. KL has a huge new sparkling bus terminal which made things nice and paiNfree. Malacca is about 600years old. Founded by locals then taken by the Portuguese then he Dutch and finally the English before finally part of Malaysia after independence. The centre is a UNESCO site. Not a whole lot to do. Sme nice ruins at st Paul's church with 400 year old headstones. Chinatown with allies shops was pretty cool. Walked to the mall for an ACbreak andstopped by the 'beach' to have a look across the strait to Indonesia. The beach iscurrently under construction lol was ... read more

Well it's been a few days. Went back to the library in HK for some free Internet and couldn't get it working. Oh well. Spent my last full day in hk at disneyworld! Wasnt nearly as big as in Florida but still a fun day. Lots of air conditioned shops to taEd breaks in and all theamazon rides were there - it's a small world, teacups, space mountain. Cinderellas castle was so small though it was alittle weird. Anyways being a 'single rider' is the best thing ever. The line ups for the ridEssex we're mostly 45 mins to an hour but they have a separate line for singles so they can fillempty spots and I didn't have to wait more than give minutes! So I went onspace mountain seventeen times and big gulch mountain seven ... read more

Well the heat is starting to get to me? Couldn't face doing much yesterday so I thought I'd head to thebreach for the day and find a nice tree to relax under and go for a swim. Managed to find the bus to the south side of hang kong island to a nice littletown calledrepulse bay. The beach was a little crowdestand I spied a little cove just down the coast so off I went to have a look for it. 34 degrees at 11 am is not the time foradventuring and by the time I got there I was a sweaty mess. But the swim was worth it water was warm but felt like ice. When up to my chest I couldn't see my feet which made me worry slightly about pollution. There were tankers ... read more

Well I've arrived no worse for wear. Flights were all on time and no major snafus. I did end up next to a couple from Louisiana with a toddler who decidedto kick me everyfive seconds between st. Johns aNd Newark but coulda seen worse. The 15.5 hr flight from Newark to hong kong went by way faster than I thought it would. Couple movies. And a couple of meals with an 8 hr nap in between did the trick. I was a little disappointed since we flew within 100 km of the north pole and I wanted to see the land/ice and northern lights. Well it was cloudy after we got toBaffin island and it stayed daylight the whole way so that was it! Anyways arrived in hong kong around 8pm and found the train ticket ... read more

What a day! wasn't really much here in Hamburg that I wanted to see but wanted to make it a base to see a few places out around. Wanted to go a bit east and see some of the old Hanseatic cities on the Baltic coast, see something a little different than the usual big city spots I go to. So after some research I decided on Lubeck, Wismar and Stralsund. Sadly Stralsund is close to 3 hrs away by slow train so that was a bit too far for a day trip esp this time of year with very short days. So anyhow got up at the crack of dawn (which thankfully is around 8!) and trudge to the train station to see how to get around. In Germany they have these great little tickets ... read more