The Ultimate Trip - Has ended

My previous post was cut short due to a power outage in Yangon. These apparently happen with sickening regularity for no apparent reason. While the rest of the country enjoys 24 hour electricity with only the very occasional outage, residents of the capital city are forced to own large generators to deal with the constant blackouts. At least I didn't lose what I had written.

......... The Shwedagon paya really is breathtaking. The central pagoda stands 100 meters tall and has a cap that is encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds (this you can only see in pictures). The main pagoda would be attraction enough, but it is also surrounded by a half kilometer square of smaller golden pagodas, teak pavilions, shrines and buddha images. All of these additional pieces have been donated by individuals and/or families from Myanmar and even abroad. We were lucky to find a good guide, Mr. John, who showed us around the paya and described the history, both legendary and factual, of all the different buddhist treasures. It was great to have someone explain what we were seeing - it was something that we missed at other sights we have been to.
Afterward, we hired Mr. John to take us to a nearby town, by local bus, and show us the sights there. Although not as spectacular, it was none the less interesting to leave the city and see life in the small town. There are plenty of farmers and fishermen here, as in the rest of SE Asia, and life does not seem too much different for the people of Myanmar. Of course we have only just scratched the surface.

We are now in Mandalay on our way to Myintkyina in the Katchin State (far North) with Mr. John as our continuing guide. It is a seldom touristed area, and much of it has only recently opened to foreign tourists, making it very appealing to us. As it turns out, John is originally from the Katchin State, he is Katchin and a Christian, so we should get a good view of local life in the area. We have requested to visit local families in the area, perhaps his relatives, and we shall see if that happens.
We had our first experience on the Myanmar tri-cyclo today traveling from the train to our hotel. These are similar to the cyclos in Vietnam, although there are two passanger seats, one facing forward and one backward, attached as a side car to the bicycle. Patrick and our luggage rode on one tricyclo, while Mr. John and I rode the other. We were met with many smiles and laughs from the local people, who obviously thought that a large Western man with two large backpacks on a tricyclo was a queer sight indeed. I was dishearted to learn that the boy peddling our bicycle had dropped out of school to get married - at 16. Considering he only earned 250 kyat from our ride, about 30 cents, I just couldn't imagine how he was going to support a family.

It is our first day in Myanmar and we already have fallen in love with the people here. Everyone is so friendly and helpful! People actually come up to us on the street to say hello and ask where we are from, and then leave with a smile and a wave telling us to have a good day. I've found that if I smile at anyone, they always smile back with big, warm, happy smiles. If there was ever a land of smiles, this should be it.
Yangon has a population of 5 million, but it is so quiet and full of trees. As far as capitals go, this is a fairly nice one. Granted, some places feel a bit rundown, but it doesn't have the dangerous feeling that Phnom Pehn had. Almost everyone here still wears the tradional dress. In fact, it is unusual to find a local in Western clothing and even causes heads to turn.
After a hearty breakfast at our hotel, we walked to the Shwedagon paya, the most holy Buddhist temple in Myanmar. Every Buddhist in Myanmar must make at least one pilgramage here in their lifetime. The central pagoda is so tall and gleaming that you can see it from many places in Yangon.

What a crazy day! The gods were definitely against us leaving Thailand today. We should have known things would be strange when we were awoken at 5:30am, first by the broadcasting of Muslim prayers over town loudspeakers, and then by the fishermen revving up their longtail boats. It was good to start the day early, though, because we had so many errands to accomplish one back in Phang Nga town before we could head to the airport to catch our 13:55 flight to Myanmar. This being our last day on our Thai visa, we had no choice but to leave the country or face fines. We arrived back in Phang Nga town around 8:30 leaving 2 hours before our bus to the airport. It seemed reasonable, but the complicating factor was we needed U.S. Dollars for Myanmar and we were very short on them. Most banks in Thailand accept Dollars for Baht, but will not sell Dollars. We took a chance anyhow, withdrew lots of Baht from an ATM and then proceeded to search for a bank with Dollars. After waiting in a few bank lines (ho hum) we managed to find a bank with $150, not a lot of money, but at least some. Our time had run out, and we arrived back at the bus station to see our bus pulling out. Luckily the driver was in no hurry and stopped in the middle of the road, holding up the other passengers and traffic, so we could collect our bags and hop on. Nobody else seemed bothered, so perhaps that is just routine practice in Thailand. We felt pretty smug at catching the public bus and only spending $1.50 each for a 1.5 hour ride.
We arrived at the airport at 11:30, changed into more respectable clothes, checked our email to see if Patrick's dream company had offered him a job, and then went off to try and exchange the remainder of our Baht. This led to the discovery that I had not recieved my passport back from the last bank - in Phang Nga. After 5 months on the road, it is amazing that this is the first time we have left something so important. It couldn't have been worse, though, because we couldn't change our first flight and we needed to be out of the country today. I was so furrious with myself, but what could I do but catch a cab back to Phang Nga and hope that I could return to the airport before the flight left. So, at 12:15 I jumped in a taxi for the 140 km round trip to retrieve my passport. I encouraged the driver to drive FAST, but at first I don't think he quite understood. He was driving at 100 km/hr and then took a wrong turn, costing us about 10 minutes. It was almost an hour to the bank, 2 seconds to snatch my passport, and then back on the road. At 13:13 we left the bank, but now the driver understood the problem. I thought to call Patrick, but the driver's phone wouldn't work and using a payphone meant first buying a special card. Then the driver stopped for gas! He was syaing "just 2 minutes, just 2 minutes", but I knew those 2 minutes would cost us. We drove on. Now the driver was going 140 km/hr, laying on his horn and taking every possible shortcut. I had made him so nervous that he kept checking his watch every 2 minutes, but I will say that he was quite a good driver. The minutes were ticking by. When we were still 20 km from the airport at 13:45, I thought the gig was up. I realized that there was no way we could make it back on time and I resolved to cry and/or bribe the ticket counter person just to get on the next flight. I figured it was time for a little bribing on this trip and I could easily just slip $25 into my passport and hand it over with the request. Little did I know that Patrick had already tried changing our tickets and was flatly refused. He was told "if you don't get on this flight, you can throw away the tickets". He did what else he could; preparing our bags, standing by the counter, calling our situation to their attention.
We arrived at the airport doors at 13:55, the exact time our flight was suppose to leave. Patrick was ready for me and we rushed up to the counter hoping we could still get on the flight. They had only just closed the doors to the plane and were still sitting at the gate. The ticket counter agents were none too pleased to see us, and questioned us as to why we were only just then checking in for the flight. But, they checked us in none the less and hurriedly escorted us to our gate. Thank goodness for small airports, because our gate was only 100 meters from the check in counter. We were the last people on the plane, which had obviously been held for us, and as soon as we were seated the plane pulled back from the gate. Phew, we barely made it. There was no possible way our bags could have made it on the flight, as they had warned us that the luggage compartment doors had already been sealed. We figured that they would likely make it on to the next flight in one hour and because we had a 3 hour layover in Bangkok we didn't worry.
Thai Airways is amazing! They really put the American Air companies to shame with their service and the condition of their planes. There was plenty of room on the plane, the seats were in good shape and clean, and the service was outstanding. Even on our one hour flight to Bangkok we were served a "snack" of dried bananas, pound cake and fruit juice, along with the standard drinks. And can you believe that our bags made it on the flight! They were the last ones on and the first ones off. This standard of service was repeated on our flight to Yangon, another 1 hour flight. We were served a full hot meal, excellent by airplane food standards, and just before landing we were given fresh orchid corsages. Now that is service!
Luckily there were no more mishaps, and we were pleased to discover that Myanmar no longer forces you to change money at the airport. We paid $5 for a taxi to drive us into town and then around to a number of hotels until we settled on the Beautyland Inn II, a nice place although a bit expensive. We can already tell how unusually friendly and warm the Myanmar people are. Yangon is a big city, and more modern than we expected, but not crowded or noisy. For now, we will try to get a good night's sleep and do our exploring tomorrow.

Even though Phang Nga town was a pretty ordinary town, we found it great to be somewhere that hasn't been heavily influenced by tourism.... yet. A real, honest to goodness, Thai town! The people didn't even speak much English. The road between Khao Lak and Phang Nga was gorgeows. We drove through thick jungle forrest and past steep limestone cliffs with a taxi driver who thought we were in a horrible rush. We checked into a very basic hotel and went off the explore the town. Our fist (and as it turns out only) stop was at an bizarre cavethat had been converted into a temple, just like so many in Asia. The weird thing was that the grounds were like a very spooky children's playground. There were hundreds of life sized paper mache statues in some strange poses. When we first walked up, we arrived at a sign directing us to either heaven or hell (I thought Buddhists didn't believe in heaven and hell). Towards the heaven side there were a handful of serenly posed buddhas, all painted golden. We only stayed a second, and then took the path to hell (ha ha). To get to hell, you pass into the mouth of a large dragon and then through his 100 meter long body. On the other side is a gruesome scene of large dark skinned demons killing light skinned humans. And they were killing them in the most horrific and graphic ways possible, which I won't go into here. It was really shocking to the senses. One family had brought their very young children to visit the 'park'. They kept dropping coins into this large and particularly evil looking skull, which caused it to emit a horrible moaning and groaning noise. The children were clearly upset, but the parents seemed to be making some point with the visit. Even if we hadn't been on the verge of heat stroke by this point, I think that scene would have ended our day.
The next morning we awoke bright and early to visit Phang Nga Bay with Sayan Tours. Phang Nga Bay bears a strong resemblance to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, except that P-N Bay is close to a mangrove forest delta close to shore. Our tour took us to some seldom touristed caves on small islands in the bay, along with the obligatory stop at "James Bond" Island (from 'Man with a Golden Gun'). We tooled around in a long tail boat, but missed out on paddling into the caves on kayaks. It looked like a lot of fun to squeeze into these caves that are entrances into the middle of the islands. In many of these caves the roof has caved in (pun intended) creating a small lake in the center of the island, surrounded by steep sides. They are beautiful to look at, and we had the chance to hike to a couple. The trade off we made for not kayaking, was that we were able to spend the night in a Muslim stilt village on one of the islands. I can't say they were the friendliest of people, but it was interesting to see up close their way of life. Their village is built on the water, somewhat attached to the island. At low tide, their houses sit atop mud flats, while at hight tide they are practically floating in about 5 meters of water. Everything is dumped into the water, so at times it can be a pretty stinky and polluted looking place.

Left Khao Lak this morning for Phang-Nga, and we are heading out for an overnight tour of the Phang-Nga Bay tomorrow. There is something called the "James Bond" island there, which we are hoping to completely avoid. It is actually why we traveled to this town instead of booking a tour in Khao Lak! All the agencies in Lak only offered tours that were single day and spent too much time at this tourist trap island. They even scoffed at us when we asked to avoid this island and could we possibly stay overnight at the Muslim village. Some didn't even know what we were talking about. Just goes to show you that people everywhere seem to think they know what we would like to do. No, no, you really don't want to stay the night there, come back to Khao Lak where the rooms and food are way overpriced so that we can take all your tourist dollars. Who cares if there are more interesting places to visit.
So, here we are hoping that the local company is better and that we made the right decision.
Our tour will end on the morning we fly out to Burma, so we will hop a bus directly to the airport. Then it is off, back into the third world! What an exciting trip we have planned. We are trying to see Burma with a bit more of a schedule than we have done in other countries. We will start in Yangon and visit Mandalay, Bagan, Kalaw, Inle Lake and Pyin. Hopefully, we will also have time to see a few smaller towns along the way.
Unfortunately, internet access in Burma is almost non-existent and they have censored the use of Yahoo (and most likely Blogger). We are trying to get around the block of our email, but will not know if it is successful until we are in Yangon. This means that we may be out of touch until we return to Thailand, between the 12th and 22nd of March. So don't worry if you don't hear from us, we are probably just enjoying ourselves too much to try communicating too hard!

If you at all enjoy fish tanks, diving is the sport for you! Our trip to the Similans was fantastic. It truely impressed upon us the majesty of the underwater world and how different it is from life on land. Diving in this area is like swimming in the largest fish tank ever and we were constantly surrounded by thousands of colorful tropical fish.
You don't have to be particularly in shape to enjoy diving, although it can help. The most important things are that you are comfortable swimming, that you remember to breath, and that you aren't afraid to be deep under the surface of the sea.
Honestly, when you are under the water watching the amazing multitude of fish and other sea life, all your fears are forgotten.
Our trip started out at 8:00pm on Monday night at the dive shop in Khao Lak. This, of course, was the same day we arrived in Khao Lak from Koh Tao, having traveled for almost 15 hours just to be on time for the boat. Needless to say, we were looking forward to getting to our airconditioned cabin on the boat!
The dive shop transfered us by taxi, along with the other 13 customers, 3 dive instructors and 2 dive masters to our home for the next 3 days. What a sight the boat was! There were 3 levels: the top deck had an open sun deck and a covered portion with hammocks, the mid deck had an open air dining area and an airconditioned VP room with TV and DVD player, and the lower deck was where our airconditioned cabins, bathrooms, the kitchen and the dive launch was located. It felt like we were back in the lap of luxury! The manager of the boat welcomed us to "our" boat, and said that we should treat it like our own home for the next 3 days (a home with 2 cooks, a driver, an engineer, and 2 boat boys). We then retreated to our cabin to catch some sleep before the wake up call at 6:30am. Our daily schedule looked like this:
6:30 wake up
7:00 Dive briefing
7:30 First dive
9:00 Breakfast, western style
1:00 Dive briefing
11:30 Second dive
1:00 Lunch, Thai style
3:00 Dive briefing
3:30 Third dive
4:30 Snack
7:00 Dive briefing
7:30 Fourth dive
9:00 Dinner, Thai style
9:30 Practically asleep in our food

In between we had time to lay around on the deck, snorkel around the boat, or visit the pristine white sand beaches of the Similan Islands. It was great letting someone else plan the days events!
The Similan Islands is a protected heritage site and is a National Park. That means that the only other people around were other divers and the occasional tourist. It is far enough away from the mainland to make it expensive and inconvenient for the average tourist to visit. This doesn't stop other divers from coming, even at a cost of $100 per day per person for the trip. Honestly, I can understand why. The area is beautiful and the islands are exactly the way I imagined Thailands beaches to be. And the diving is great - lots of colorful sea life, live corals and great dives for beginners without too much current. Sea Dragon Diving Center really made our trip special. They were well organized, their instructors and dive masters were professional, the food on board was great, and they chose great dives. In fact, each dive seemed to be better than the last. We did coral reef dives, rock dives, pinnacle dives, rock dives with swim throughs and some in the blue over sandy bottoms looking for the 'big' fish. We saw trigger fish, moray eels, lion fish, sting rays, leopard sharks, clown fish (like the fish in Finding Nemo), bat fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, pipe fish, glass fish, puffer fish, box fish, porcupine fish, oriental sweetlips, baracudas, wrasses, parrotfish, lobsters, shrimp, and so many more. These fish come in every color of the rainbow and when I say we saw one, what I really mean is that we saw thousands, all over, all the time! There were so many different colors swirling around, you couldn't remember everything. And I haven't even mentioned the coral, sea stars, sea slugs, anemonies and other slow moving organisms that were there. But the most impressive creature we observed during our whole trip, and the one that appeared on our last dive, was the manta ray! These are gigantic filter feeder rays that have a wing span of about 4 meters. Check out http://www.oceanlight.com/html/manta_birostris.html for more information and some pictures. It was amazing to see these huge creatures under water. When they first appeared it scared me a bit because from my angle they almost looked like killer whales. We had been swimming with one dive leader during the whole trip, and his constant aim was to seek out the large fish. This meant that many times he would swim quicly through a sight in search of sharks or larger fish. But on this particular occasion he all but missed the first manta. While his four divers were pointing up, totally in awe of this graceful creature, he was pointing to something on the ocean floor. The manta swam almost directly over his head, and if Patrick hadn't gone against his instructions to make no movements if the manta rays appear, he probably would have completely missed it. No small feat when a fish that large is directly over your head. Hans, our group leader, had warned us against getting too excited because we might pop to the surface, but this didn't stop Patrick from practically hyperventillating and sucking down all his air in about half the normal time.
Aside from Patrick having to leave our dive early, this was the best way to end our diving trip. I'm not even sure what could possibly top the trip, other than seeing more manta rays and some whale sharks in one dive!

Life has been too easy for us. How can we possibly go from the easy, laid back beach life of Southern Thailand to Burma? We will see, but until then we have another glorious week of diving and sunning here in paradise.
Yesterday, we were in Koh Tao trying to decide whether to head to Krabi or Koh Lanta. Today we are in Khao Lak wondering how we got here??? No, really, we had planned on spending one more night in Koh Tao and catching the morning boat today to Suratyani, the closest mainland port and a 6 hour ferry ride away. Our hope was to either find a live aboard boat to tour to the Similan Islands for some more diving or just to head to the easy going beach town of Koh Lanta. A few calls yesterday morning convinced us that we HAD to go diving with Sea Dragon, but the only boat with openings was leaving tonight, the 16th. If we caught the morning ferry, we couldn't possibly be in Khao Lak any earlier than 8pm tonight, and that was just too late. Luckily, there were two spots left on the overnight ferry and our bungalo was kind enough to let us checkout late.
We packed our bags as quickly as possible and put them in storage. What a relief to not have to carry around those big bags for the remainder of the day! Since we had nothing better to do, we snorkeled for a couple of hours and then went for a Thai massage. I have had many massages in my life and I have never found anyone better than a particular masseuse in Portland. But I will tell you that Thai massage ranks right up there. We went for the 2 hour version (a mere $10) and that is where it all happens. The object of Thai massage is to stretch and straighten every muscle in your body, even the ones that you didn't know existed. For two hours, our massagests pulled and contorted and rubbed and pressed and...... EVERYTHING. Sometimes I really felt like we were doing acrobatics. In the end, I swear that I gained an inch or two in height. I felt incredible and relaxed, the perfect state to board an all night ferry boat.
I couldn't go so far as to say that this ferry was a modern wonder. In fact, it seemed to be your basic run-of-the-mill old fashioned ferry without seats. Instead, they had plunked down a series of double matresses on the floor and we were assigned beds, two to a mattress. Yes, Patrick and I slept on the same mattress, although I may as well just been one long mattress, because there was no separation between the beds. The seas were huge and the room way too warm, with everyone working like little heaters. But, with an open window we had a nice sea breeze. I managed to get a pretty good night sleep, even if we were awoken way too early at 4:30am.
We were whisked directly onto the back of a pickup truck and taken to a cafe to await our next mode of travel, a bus. The travel agent had booked us onto an A/C mini bus directly to Khao Lak. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your view), this is not what we got. Unless you consider a full size single decker 'mini' and open windows 'A/C'. No bother, though, because our local bus was much more interesting than any tourist mini bus we could have taken. During our 5 hour ride I made friends with a 5 year old Thai boy and a 70 year old Thai man. The young boy and I played a sort of hide and then look game using Patrick as our barrier. He had such a great smile! The Thai man was super friendly even though he didn't speak a word of English, and he was continually smiling at us and wanted to share his meal with us (Clem would be proud). About halfway through the bus ride I realized that I am finally getting my traveling second wind. Perhaps all we needed was a little more 'local' experience and a little less 'tourist' experience. I am confident that our trip to Burma will put some more excitement back into our travel.
Now we are awaiting our boat departure for another 10 dives in the Similan Islands. This is suppose to be one of the top dive sights in the world. Sure wish I had a good underwater camera to take with me!

We have been here in Koh Tao for close to a week now, and are obviously enjoying it too much to write!
Actually, our first impression of this small island was that it was a place only for young, hip divers to come party and dive. Obviously not exactally our scene. As we disembarked from the boat we realized that the dive shop we had chosen was the first, and largest, shop you could reach. Meaning that everyone and their brother was chosing that shop to dive with. We took our chances with a guy we met on the boat and walked up the street a bit to Big Bubble (pretty bad name, I know). It turned out to be the right decision.
Yesterday we earned our PADI Open Water Diver card, after 5 days of classroom and diving instruction. It hooked us! We have decided to stay on another 4 days to complete the Advanced Open Water course. In order to do so, we will go on at least 5 instructional dives including: deep water diving (down to 40 meters), underwater navigation, naturalist (identifying plants and creatures underwater), a night dive for Patrick and a photography dive for me. I think that I have finally found my calling. Because I have a smaller lung capacity than Patrick, I almost always end a dive with about 50 barr more air than he does. It is great to see the whole underwater world up close and personal. Hmmmm, maybe I should stay on another 3 months and go for the Dive Master.......... just kidding.
We are currently residing in a great little bungalo that is sitting on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Thailand. There is even a hammock on the deck! It is only a 2 minute stumble down to a isolated white sand beach with great snorkeling. Turns out that all those party type people stay on one side of the island, and we found the quite side. We can sleep late, relax in the hammock watching the sunset, or just dive all day. Who could ask for more. Needless to say, we are in no rush to leave the island now.
However, we are planning to head to the West coast of Thailand on the 14th, and are now booked on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok to Rangoon on the 23rd. So, I guess we will have to get moving eventually.

I want to write about our experience in Cambodia, so that everyone reading this will be aware of some of the governmental corruption in third-world countries. Cambodia is certainly not unique, or the worst, but it surprised us just how bad it was. People boycott travel to Burma because of governmental policies, but somehow travel to Cambodia is considered OK. Obviously, I don't necessarily prescribe to the idea of boycotting travel to certain countries, we are heading off to Burma next, but I do think people should be completely aware of the governmental policies before they visit. We were absolutely not prepared. For some reason, I had the impression that Cambodia had progressed in the past 10 years, but now know this is incorrect.

While we were in Cambodia, we discovered that the current government silences anyone expressing an opinion contrary to the ideas of the regime, especially singers and poets. There are specific cases where people voicing an opinion are killed and the government has swept it under the rug. See http://hrw.org/doc/?t=asia&c=cambod for more information. In fact, just after we left Cambodia, the leader of the labor party, Chea Vichea, was gunned down while he ate his breakfast at a sidewalk stall. This horrendous murder was obviously intentional and probably was carried out by someone from an opposite political party. The current regime denied involvement and instead claimed that it was Vichea's own party that was responsible as a ploy to discredit the current regime. Of course this comes from a group who is all too willing to kill people to keep them quiet.

But I don't know too much about their politics and I don't claim to know who killed Vichea. What I do know is what I saw first hand. The Khmer people of Cambodia live in such abject poverty. In the cities, many people live, with their children, on the streets or in parks. You practically trip over them walking down the street. The lucky ones live in shanty towns, in makeshift "houses" of plywood without plumbing or running water. Walk a few blocks down the street, and you are among the wealthiest; perhaps 2% of the Cambodian people and all the foreigners. These people live in French villas and gated communities, while the people around them are begging for scraps to feed their children.
In the country, farmers are forced to farm land that was once planted with mines. They have no choice because they have families to feed. Every day Cambodians lose their limbs, and their lives, to these hidden mines. So many of these mines were planted by Cambodians themselves, either in the Khmer Rouge or the government they were fighting. The mines are a product of war. But the current Cambodian government will take no responsibility for these war relics. They spend no money on removing mines, no money on educating people about the mines, and will not give treatment to people hurt by the mines. When a young child has his leg blown off, it may take days for him to get to a hospital, if someone finds him and has a means of transporting him. It is also his responsibility to pay for the operation to remove the limb.

Which makes one wonder where the money we spend in Cambodia is going? I spoke of the $20 per day entrance fee to Angkor, which is collected by an international hotel company. This doesn't even buy you a pamphlet guide to the temples and each temple within Angkor then asks for more money as donations to help with upkeep of that temple. This place must get thousands of visitor each week, many of them shelling out at least $40 for the 3-day pass. So, why do they need to ask for MORE money?
I also mentioned a boat trip we took for $25/person from Phnom Pehn to Siem Reap. This is a boat that looks like a long, skinny airplane without wings. A tin can, if you will, that seats about 100 people, 2 per side, with a very skinny isle in between. There is only a single door into the craft, up at the front, so if you are sitting in the back say goodbye if the boat ever sank. On our ride, they overbooked every seat on the boat. That is 100 extra people! Luckily, we were able to ride on top, on the curved, metal surface for 5 hours in the blistering sun. We were warned ahead of time how terrible this ride could be, but there is something much more sinister about the ride. This boat is raking in about $5000 per ride and probably spending about $100 for wages and gas. My guess is that the people working on these boats make no more money than the average Cambodian, but the company who owns them, probably an international company, is making bank.

The Cambodian government has sold many of its resources, natural or otherwise to foreign investors. And they are doing this before the citizens of their country have a chance to improve their own standard of living. So the government makes money by selling the resorce abroad and again when it is reimported. Take rice for instance: rice is grown on farms in Cambodia and the farmers are forced to sell their rice, before the crop is even grown, to foreign bidders because they are in such need of money. Of course the government imposes a tax on the sale. The rice is then cleaned, packaged and sold back to Cambodians at a higher rate and the government again takes a cut. If you ask why the Cambodians don't just process the rice themselves, it is because they are so poor that they can't afford not to sell the raw grain.

What it boils down to is corruption. And I wish that all the stary eyed travelers that we keep meeting who have visited Cambodia and only talk about the beauty of the temples, would just open their eyes sometimes and see what is really going on.

This is it folks, we have finally decided to blow this popsicle joint known as Bangkok and head for the beaches of Southern Thailand. We have spent too much time here just being lazy. It is too easy to do when you are staying in a great home with such a wonderful and generous couple. They have made it feel like home for us, so it will be hard to leave, but we don't want to overstay our welcome.
Last night we met up with a friend of mine, John Bannister, who has been living in Thailand for a little over 2 years now. I have only seen him once in the past 10 years, so it was great getting together. It is always amazing to see the changes that occur in people over time, especially when they are living abroad. Luckily, we seem to still connect and I hope that means we will stay in better touch from now on. John brought us to a great Korean restaurant and then out for some "traditional Thai" nightlife, wink, wink. We wandered around in the area of Go-Go bars, which strangely reminds one of the strip in Las Vegas. It was actually much tamer than Patrick or I had imagined and we were in bed by midnight.
So we are heading off for Ko Tao, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. We have already booked our 4-day, open water dive course with a company called Big Blue - wish us luck. After we are checked out, it is off to Krabi on the Andaman Coast to continue diving until we run out of money or time on our visa. There are supposidly wild full moon parties down on Ko Tao, so perhaps we will join all the other tourists for a little raving in the moonlight.
Wish you all could join us!