Nepal!

Greetings from Nepal! We flew in to Kathmandu yesterday around midday. Our guesthouse had sent a car to pick us up, and we were off. If it is possible, driving is even more hectic in Nepal than in Thailand. Maybe it was just because the roads are narrow. Our guesthouse is located in an area of town called Thamel, which is tourist central. Every shop is either selling souveniers or imitation North Face mountaineering gear. As soon as we got settled in our rooms we began to prepare for our trek around Annapurna. We do not want to be in Kathmandu when the election happens on Thursday. So today we finished getting the necessary permits, and now all we need is bus tickets and a place to store the stuff we are not taking on the trail. We saw the public buses, and they had people crowded on the inside and even on the roof, and we decided to take a tourist bus instead. Our trek will take us a minimum of three weeks, then we will have the option of going to Annapurna base camp. So we might be trekking for a full month. So I probably won't update the blog for a while, but I will be having fun! So until next time, hope everyone is doing well! Thank you for reading and for your comments! Namaste--Mark

Pictures!

Hey all. I have pictures! Here is the link. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2235670&l=9c5a9&id=3308283 please please let me know if for some reason it does not work. I don't have much time right now, so check out the pics, they are for most of Thailand and Cambodia, I think they cover most of my posts. Kevin and I arrived in Chachoengsao this morning from Chiang Mai. An interesting overnight bus ride... Kevin dreamt we were getting robbed and proceeded to try and strangle me. I slept with one eye open the rest of the way. Chiang Mai was relaxing, we did not do much except a lot of reading, and one day took scooters to a temple on top of a mountain with 306 steps. So we only have a couple of days left in Thailand, and I will spend them getting ready for Nepal, hopefully resting, and attending a monk ceremony for a family friend of David who is becoming a monk. I will probably be on the computer at least once more in Thailand, but if not thanks for reading! Peace!--Mark

Return To Thailand!

Hello all! I am now back in Thailand after my Cambodian adventure! Like I stated in the last post, Kevin and I rented motorcycles on Easter Sunday and set off into Cambodia. I have ridden a motorcylce a handful of times, most recently two and a half years ago at Kevin's ranch in Montana, so I would not say that I have a lot of experience. Kevin, on the other hand, grew up riding dirtbikes in Montana, so he did have a lot of experience. The bikes that we got were 250 cc, which means that they were pretty big, and powerful, especially compared to the scooters that everyone else was driving. So needless to say I was pretty nervous when we got the bikes and I had to pull out into a busy street in downtown Phnom Pehn. I wish I could put pictures up, because I have never seen driving like they do in Phnom Pehn. They have four way intersections with no stoplights or stopsigns, and people just slow down enough to make sure they don't hit each other. The majority of vehicles are motorcycles, and no one wears helmets. I will try to put up a video that I took when I get my camera cord. Anyway it was like being thrown in the deep end when I am used to the kiddy pool. I just went slow, and stayed on the side of the road, and tried not to run into anyone. We made it out of the city, and onto the highway, where it was a little better. I have already described the driving conditions in Thailand, where people use the middle of the road as a lane, and it was no different in Cambodia. The scariest part was the buses, who are all on a schedule or something. They were the fastest things on the road, and would pass at any point, Kevin and I were both pushed almost off the road on numerous occasions. So for the first couple of hours I was still nervous, and drove reletively slowly on the side of the road. After a while, however, I got used to the bike and the other cars and was not afraid to do my share of passing and use the speed that the bike had. It took us like four hours or so on that first day to get to Kompang Thom, and we checked into a hotel for seven dollars a night. We then took the bikes down the road to a nearby temple, and I got my first taste of offroad riding, even though it was on the road. We drove for about ten kilometers on a really bad dirt road, with lots of potholes and stuff. This was another new experience for me, and I had to ask Kevin for some pointers on how to not fall. He was really helpful, and I concentrated on practicing because I knew the next day we had 80 kilometers to go on the same road, and we were also going to go on worse roads. We made it to the temple, and I did not fall once. We spent like an hour there, it was the oldest temple in Cambodia, and it was pretty cool. The next day we set out early, because it was slow going on that dirt road. It was fun though, because pretty soon I was confident enough to go fast, and with our powerful bikes we were the fastest guys on the road. Our destination for the day was Preah Kahn, another temple. It was going to take some luck to find it, because we were taking an oxcart path to it from the main dirt road. We had high hopes when there was a sign on the main road pointing the way, but pretty soon down the oxcart path (after passing oxcarts) we stopped seeing farmers, signs, or anything that would help us determine our way. We were lost. In a mine infested country side. I started to get a little worried, and I did not have high hopes for us to find the temple, or the village thatwas supposed to be nearby. Kevin had hit his shifter on a stump, and it bent to the point where it was unusable. Lucking he had a leathermen tool, and he was able to bend it enough so he could drive. We set a time that we would turn around, and we continued to drive. We passed some uninhabited houses that only increased my worry, and the the trail ended all together. It was the perfect occasion to turn around, assuming we could find our way back. Careful to stay on what little path we could see, we turned around. Eventually, we came back to the main dirt road. Preah Kahn had eluded us. We just skipped it and went to the next city on our plan. It was a small town consiting of only a couple of roads, restaraunts and guesthouses. We stayed in a guesthouse. We had been planning on staying at Preah Kahn, or the nearby village, and had bought hammocks and mosquito nets for sleeping outside, and were getting eager to use them. At dinner that night we met a guy from Austria who was doing the same thign we were, except he had a couple of weeks on the road. He had even rented his motorcycle from the same place that we had! He taught us some Khmer words and gave us some driving tips. The next day we saw him again at breakfast, then set out for Koh ker, determined to sleep outside. Luckily we did not get lost, but we did stop and ask for directions numerous times along the way, and each time the directions we got were opposite of our instincts, which is probably the reason we got lost the day before. Koh Ker was a cool temple, with one main site with a seven tiered pyramid and lots of little sites connected by one dirt road. We check out all the sites, then found one we thought would be quiet and began to set up our hammocks. The mosquitos were out in force and Kevin and I were both struggling with our hammocks when two of the temple guards came up to us. They were just kids, maybe 18 years old, and they did not speak a word of english. We tried to make it clear we wanted to set up our hammocks and take a nap. One of them was uniterest and walked away but the other one took Kevin's hammock, used a stick to get the rope through each end, then did the same for me. Then when he realized I was completely clueless he tied my hammock to the trees, and then tied the mosquito net to it in some way that i could have never figured out. He did the same for Kevin, then left us to our naps. We had been laying there for an hour, wondering if we would be able to stay the night, when an older guy in army fatigues drove up on a scooter. We got out of our hammocks and tried to be friendly. Luckily the guy who tied our hammocks came back, and the older gentleman relaxed when kevin shared some bread we had brought and he smoked a cigarette. We asked if we could stay there and he said no, but our helper from before made it clear that he would help us if we followed them. We followed them to the restaraunt at the main site of the temple, where there was someone who spoke english. We told him we wanted a place to sleep, and we were not picky, so he said we could stay at his school. We followed him down the road to the school he worked at. He turned out to be a really nice guy, very hospitable. We found out the chief of police stayed there too, so we would be safe. The school was run by a NGO called Heritage Watch, and besides provided education and day care service to the vearby villages, it also taught them bee keeping and other skills. We tried to set up our hammocks on the porch, but our new friend laughed at us and told us the hammocks were too small for us and we would never be able to sleep in them. We agreed, and set up our mosquito nets on the porch and slept on the ground. It was a great night. Our friend had been a police officer until he stepped on a mine, and lost his right foot. We talked with him for a while, and soon the other members of the house came home. Besides him there was another guy who worked at the school, then the policeman and his wife and child. All seven of us slept on the porch. It was an amazing first hand look at how rural Cambodians really live. The next day we set out for the next temple and then Siem Reap again. The temple was cool, it was my favorite. It was similar to Angkor Wat, but it was collapsed in places and overgrown with trees and vines. So we spent a couple of hours there reading and hanging out, and also climbing all around the ruins. I am sorry I don't have pictures yet. Then we went to Siem reap, which was kind of a crazy ride because the previous days we had been on dirt roads, and then we were back on the highway and city traffic. But we made it. We got laundry done, then hit the bars. We played pool with some English guys, who were getting mad that Kevin and I were winning, then we went to a different place with a foosball table. Needless to say they did not like playing bar games against us. We called it a night after that, and the next day we drove back to Kompang Thom, as it was a good halfway point for our final drive to Phnom Pehn. On Friday morning we drove back to Phnom Pehn, just thankful that we had survived the entire trip, and the only damage to our bikes (that they noticed) was a couple of broken turn signals. We stayed in Cambodia a couple more days, until Sunday. On Saturday we went to S-21, a school turned Khmer Rouge prison turned museum, and the killing fields and the russian market. On Sunday we took a bus to the Thai border, then a bus to Bangkok. Then we just made it onto a train to Chiang Mai. It was an overnight train, but they only had third class tickets, which means no bed. It was a 16 hour train ride, but it was not too bad. Now we are in Chiang Mai! I think tomorrow we are going to rent scooters and go exploring! We plan on staying here untill Friday, when we meet up with Greg and David in Chachoengsao. That is where my camera cord is so I promise pictures! I hope everyone is safe and happy!--Mark