After about an hour long bus ride, we arrived in Phitsanulok, a town convenient to hang out it because it's on the railway and also has very reasonable and nice accomodations. We decided this would be a good place to find a room with A/C and maybe even a TV to spoil ourselves a little bit. After some searching we ended up in a place recommended by our guidebook called the Lithia (?) Guesthouse. We got a great room (clean, large, comfy bed, TV, AC, hot shower, and even a refrigerator!) that included a free breakfast for the low low price of 460 baht! (That's about $15) The hotel also had an attached restaurant called the Steak Cottage where we enjoyed filet mignon and a pork steak for dinner our first night there. Not quite Outback ... read more

Cooking, dancing, boxing, zipping, trekking, rafting, elephant riding, and saving lives - You can do all that and more in Chaing Mai! We arrived by train at 8:00 AM and took the first day to get oriented, find a place to stay, find A/C checkpoints, and start looking at tour companies for all the many activities available here. The A/C checkpoints were easy because all the maps show the 7-11 locations and they always have nice cool air and are popular with foreigners, hence why they are on the maps. After getting settled in and checking out our entertainment options we booked a dinner show at the Old Chiang Mai Cultural Center. They picked us up at our hotel and treated us to a personal buffet, they kept bringing more and more food to us versus ... read more

Another history lesson! Back during WWII when Japan occupied most of southeast Asia they decided to build a connecting rail line between Thailand and Burma to provide a better supply route to their troops during the war. Since Japan took over the region they had over 60,000 POWs from Australia, Great Britain, Holland, and the US to use as slave labor to complete this very ambitious project in a rediculously short period of time. They also hired around 200,000 (estimated) Asian laborers (from all over Asia) who were promised good pay and good working conditions, neither of which they got. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that around 90,000 of those asians died in the process, while just over 12,000 of the POWs died, from malnutrition, disease, accidents, and beatings. All these workers were ... read more

Are all things you will find in abundance in The north east region of Loas. Before I explain the title I must warn fellow travelers about the 8 hour very windy road up to the high plains. It seem like the maxium road grade over here is a lot lower because we only gained maybe 3000 feet or so in 150 miles and it took 8 hours. Do the math, we were going fairly slow because we were practically doing figure eights to get up the mountains. Luckily I popped some motion sickness pills before we headed out and Cara did the pressure point cool '70 style wrist/sweat bands and we had no problems. Unfortately several of the passangers weren't so lucky, several of the passengers filled the barf bag that was conviently placed in the ... read more

After a long bumpy ride to Siem Reap, the taxi car stopped and transferred us over to a tuk-tuk. The tuk-tuks here are a bit different in that they are actually like little carriages hooked up to motorbikes. The bike tuk tuk driver drove us around looking at places to stay and we settled on a cheap guesthouse just outside the center of town. For those who don't know, the currency here in Cambodia is Riel, but they actually use US dollars just as much or actually more than Riel. Basically they don't deal with coins so anything less than $1 in change is given in Riel and sometimes depending on what they have in their register you just get a mixture of currency for greater amounts as well. This was a bit confusing but we're ... read more