It's been a few weeks since I last wrote and so much has happened. After Singapore I spent a week alone in Bangkok, I stayed near Khao San Road in hopes of meeting some new people, fortunately I was able to befriend a wonderful 40year old Irish woman, a very fun girl from London, and a pair of boys from Bristol. Just across the street from where I was staying was supposedly the "best padthai in Bangkok", a restaurant called Thipsamai, and true to it's name, it's been the best padthai I've had yet. I don't know if it's the actual padthai, how cheap it is, or how the line for it proceeds down the block at about 7:30pm that makes me love it so much. In short, my time in Bangkok comes down to eating, a lot. One day I joined some girls and went to three different markets, two of which were floating ones. As I walked passed the endless vendors I munched on ribs, sweets, fried rice, shrimp, boat noodles, clams, and fried bananas. At one of the markets we ran into a group of Couchsurfers who had rented bikes and were biking around the outskirts of the city, so of course we quickly rented bikes and joined them. The next night I went out to Chinatown to continue my food adventure. I dined on half a duck, shrimp dumplings, crab shumai, and fried kale with pork. After my meal I promptly bought more food. By this point the people I was with were beginning to wonder if i'd ever stop eating, the answer is obviously no. To drive home the point of my food obsession, I spent a whole day at an anatomy museum where they displayed real human bodies that had been sliced and put in formaldehyde so that you could see all the little parts of the body. Babies that had been born conjoined or misshapen, parts of the nervous system, and pictures of people who had died and the weapons that had killed them, including someone who had been stabbed to death with a dildo. When we were done with the museum I ate three delicious spring rolls and a bowl of curry. The night before Sydney came I went out with a wonderful group of people from my hostel, we scarfed down fried fish, green curry, fried pork, chicken wings, two types of squid, pad si ew, and some tom yum goong.
Traveling with Sydney has been wonderful. She's a little slice of home and it's comforting to have someone around who knows you so well. Once she got into Bangkok we sped off to Cambodia. We woke up early and started our tour of the temples by watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat. Walking around and in the temples is amazing. Thinking about how old they are and how well they have stood over the years is something I still can't wrap my head around. It was also really cool to go to Ta Porhm, the Tomb Raider temple, and stand by the 'Angelina Jolie Tree'. To end our day we headed over to the Red Piano and ate some traditional Cambodian dishes. The next day we hopped on a bus, a taxi, a train, a tuk tuk, another bus and another tuk tuk and another bus to get to Vang Vieng, Laos. After 31hours we made it.
Vang Vieng has been so much fun, maybe too much fun because Sydney and I keep discovering new cuts and bruises with "how did this happen" and then a casual shrug. Most of our days here have been spent under the sun tubing down the Mekong River making friends who I will never remember their names. Either tonight or tomorrow we are headed off to Chiang Mai for Songkran!
