Hello all!! As I type, I'm sitting in my nice little hostel in Bangkok, listening to the fountain murmur in the courtyard and feeling the morning breeze through the open patio doors. It's nice to be back!
I left Luang Prabang after a few days and headed down to Vang Vieng, a town just down the Mekong River. Probably the oddest thing in terms of Laotian tourism, this town is known for having tons of restaurants filled with low tables and cushions and big TVs up front playing nonstop episodes of Friends. After frying my brain for a while with that, I took off on what I thought would be a simple 3 km walk to a cave I'd seen on my map. Of course, 10 minutes out I realized I'd forgotten the map, then I couldn't remember the name of the cave, so I figured I'd just find it. I walked for a loong time until I finally came to what I thought was my cave.
After a swim in the cold-water lagoon, I hiked up to the mouth of the cave-- a scary, super-rocky, straight-up route. Once inside, I scrambled along the slippery rocks and admired the reclining buddha that was inside. I'm thinking to myself, 'this is a cool cave!' and then I noticed the sign in white chalk: "cave --->" So I went deeper into this gnarly mountainside until I got to the real cave-- a pitchblack (good thing I'd brought my headlamp, AC!) place with tons of cool rock formations and what seemed like no end. I walked back far enough to start to lose sight of the light at the mouth, and far enough to get a little scared by myself. That was probably the first moment on this trip that I'd cursed solo traveling-- I do better with someone to egg me on! But it was a gnarly place and really unexpected-- I had no idea it would be so agro. After I got back to my bungalow, I checked the map and found out that the cave I had been to was actually 7 km out of town, for a round trip of about 8.5 miles. Finally-- some exercise!
The next day I left Vang Vieng via the Mekong River, headed for Vientiane on kayak. Again, this was an experience that turned out to be a bit more adventurous than I'd thought. Our group of 7 foreigners and 3 guides went through class 3 rapids on kayaks that had seen better days, wearing life jackets that were probably 20 years old. It was really fun though (and I was the only one besides the guides who didn't tip over!), and was much better than sitting in another bus for 3 hours. I didn't stay in Vientiane long, as I'd heard it was missable, but flew out the next morning for Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
Phnom Penh is a busy, crowded city that I didn't really take to. I chose to go for the historical aspect of it, though, as there are a number of memorials for victims of the Khmer Rouge there. I went to the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Museum (the S-21 prison), knowing full well how depressing it would be, and it was much as I'd expected. I think it's important to know the history and important to see what has been done, but they are places I'd like to forget.
After a day and a half in the capital, I took a bus up to Siem Reap, the gateway town to Angkor Wat. The first morning I took a bicycle into the complex and explored three of the temples, meeting up with a nice English couple along the way. It's amazing to see how huge these places are, and to think that so many people used to live and work in this complex. My favorite temple of the first day was the Bayon, a place with 216 of these smiling faces-- very cool and kind of eerie.
The second day I took a tuk-tuk into the complex at 4:30 to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. It was well worth it, and turned out to time the whole day perfectly-- most of the temples I visited that day were nearly deserted. The best temple of Day 2 was Ta Phrom,
the 'jungle temple' of the bunch, and so so cool. I nearly had the place to myself as I poked around the ruins, climbing over tree roots and taking tons of pictures. Ta Phrom is so fascinating how it's been utterly claimed by the jungle-- it was my favorite all around. I went to 4 more temples after that and beat the crowds at nearly every one; it was a great way to see such a popular tourist attraction.
My third day in Siem Reap I decided not to go to the temples and instead had a totally enjoyable day hanging around the town. I ran into a couple I'd made friends with at the Thai-Lao border and we all went off for $4 hourlong massages given by the blind-- it was the most amazing massage I've ever had.
I left to go back to Thailand after that via bus. I've heard a rumor that airline companies have bribed the Cambodian transit authority to not improve the roads from Siem Reap to the Thai border so people will be motivated to fly instead of take the bus, and after a 6-hour pothole-fest over a dusty road, I believe it. Our bus didn't have air-con (though I'd been assured that it did when I booked it), and by the time we got to the border you could run your finger down your face and leave a trail of clean skin through the dust. After a somewhat confusing border crossing, there were 11 of us from the dustbowl bus who were all headed to Ko Chang, an island just over the border. By the time we got to the town where the port was, the last ferry was long gone and our driver took us to a guesthouse in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. Luckily, we had two very strong-willed Lonely Planet-wielding women who convinced the driver to take us to a place in the book, where we all stayed. We all had dinner together and took the first ferry the next morning to the island.
I loooved Ko Chang, especially after running around Cambodia and Lao for so long. I stayed in a nice bungalow complex that had a great restaurant, a clean beach, a massage center (I had another good one there!) and fast Internet (almost unheard of so far in SE Asia). There were fire dancers at night, and even though they're pretty standard on the islands, these guys were amazing-- the best I've seen. I had a great time just chilling out and meeting people on Ko Chang; it's definitely a place I'll go back to.
I left Ko Chang to go to Chanthaburi, a town on the way to Bangkok that I'd heard was the gateway to a great national park with a beautiful waterfall hike. When I first started planning this round the world trip, the first guidebook I bought was for Thailand,
so I read about this hike about a year and a half ago and have been obsessed with it since then. I definitely built it up a bit too much in my mind; the town was mediocre and out of the way, and I got scammed from all angles getting into the park, and then the hike was nothing to write home about. But I had a nice swim after the hard hike, so it wasn't a total loss.
Now I'm back in Bangkok and am meeting up with my friends in just one hour! I'm excited to see them, but it's also kind of weird, since I'll be leaving Thailand so soon. I've got about a week and a half, though, so I figure that's at least 15 more servings of pad thai! =)
I spent a couple days just wandering around the town, delighted to find old churches to poke around in and random windmills on the edge of the city, and took a really funny and informative walking tour from a guy at my hostel. 
One night there was a really long parade that celebrates the marriage of two royals way back in 1600something, an event that happens once every five years (I was going to see the Simpsons movie that night, but thought I should perhaps 
have the twice-a-decade cultural experience instead). Another night my hostel put on an all you can eat barbeque, which is just about the best news a poor meat-eating backpacker can hear. We all stuffed ourselves on the pasta, veggies, and kebabs that came out first, and then they started cooking the cutlets. So we all tried those out too, complaining that we were already full, and then we learned they still had sausages and ribs to bring out! I probably ended up eating more meat 
on that night than I have for the entirety of my trip so far, but it was delish. Of course we all went out for waffles afterwards, though!
I biked into the nearby village of Damme, which is teeny tiny and totally charming. The road there is along a canal, and there are fields and windmills along the way. I had lunch in a little courtyard café and walked around inside one of the churches.
Now I am in Berlin and am having a great time, but I think I’ll post some pictures and stories about this city once I leave (I have a couple days to go here). Hope you all are well!!
