arrived here in bangkok after another long bus ride (temps in this a/c bus from the border to bangkok topped the last bus ride, it reached 100 deg for quite a while).  staying in khaosan road, which is a complete zoo.  spent yesterday wandering around high price malls (reminiscent of hong kong malls, complete with lamborghini and maserati dealerships inside the mall), surprised that there’s enough rich thais to support such a culture.  also rode around the nice sky train and metro and water taxi.

today decided to take a day tour, which was a bit of a mistake.  haven’t quite done anything so touristy for years and neither one of us really enjoyed it.  went to see a war cemetary, a wwii and jeath (japanese, english, australian, thai) museum and the bridge over river kwai.  then took a ‘tourist’ train on the railroad built by the japanese POWs including over the ‘death bridge’.  ended the day at a waterfall overrun with shops and kids swimming in it.

we weren’t aware of the deadly riots here in bangkok until looking online tonight.  someone warned us about it yesterday when we were walking around, but we dismissed it as one of those scams.  kind of sad that we had to assume it was a scam and doubt the guy’s intention.

off to bhutan tomorrow for 2 1/2 weeks where it should be much different than the craziness of southeast asia we’ve experienced so far… can’t wait.

spent the day touring around angkor wat and some surrounding temples.  based on input from a few people who’ve been here recently, we decided that 1+ days touring the temples would be enough, i guess piles of stones get old after a day.

saw the sunset last night with the hordes of tourists.  today our tuk-tuk driver who picked us up from the boat terminal yesterday took us around today, very nice guy.  started out by going to banteay srey, which was almost an hour tuk-tuk ride from siem reap.  some well preserved carvings in red sandstone.  then worked our way back, hitting ta prohm, which is the classical jungle taking back the temple scene (temple of doom).  what made it more exciting was the road was flooded so we had to take off our shoes and wade along the road for about a 1/4 mile, with all these motorbike drivers driving past offering to take us for $0.50 to $100 (yes, $100) for the ride.  then hit the two most popular temples, bayon in angkor thom and of course angkor wat.

we were done by mid-afternoon and templed out.  good decision in only spending one full day here.  off on the bus to bangkok tomorrow for a few days before our flight to bhutan.

after spending a couple days in ho chi minh city, including visting the cu chi (viet cong) tunnels where we saw an extremely anti-american war film, we made our way by bus to phnom penh in cambodia.  relatively unexciting bus ride, except that it ranged from 88 to 93 degrees inside the bus with a/c on for almost the whole ride.  pretty hot.

spent a couple nights in phnom penh, yesterday visited the killing fields and tuol sleng (the security ‘prison’/detention center where the khmer rouge interogated and tortured prisoners), pretty disturbing stuff.  they had a huge monument/stupa at the killing fields filled with skulls they excavated in the mass graves on display.  but that should end the depressing/disturbing portion of our trip…

took the boat to siem reap this morning, pretty nice.  rode on the top of the boat for most of the journey and it was cool to see the locals fishing and the housing.  off to angkor wat for sunset tonight…

two things of interest, people in vietnam (and maybe a little here in cambodia) think that erick’s on of those foreigners who goes and picks up some local girl (me) for his stay.  we were getting some pretty weird looks when we were holding hands…  other thing, erick managed to leave his camera (or maybe it was stolen) on the bus to phnom penh.  good thing i brought two.

made it to vietnam without any adventures, which is good.

really hot and humid here, i think we’ll just have to get used to it for the next week and a half, until bhutan.

went to see the war remenants museum, which was interesting and depressing.  erick thinks it’s the most one-sided  museum he’s been to.  i agree, with the exception of the nanjing massacre museum.

off to see the viet cong tunnels tomorrow and some temple that’s like disneyland.  should be interesting…

it’s been too long since i’ve traveled internationally.  to make up for it, erick and i are spending 5 weeks in asia.

rough itinerary:

vietnam (ho chi minh city)

cambodia (phnom penh, angkor wat)

bangkok

bhutan (including a 10-day trek)

hong kong

taiwan

i’ll update the blog whenever i can…

namibia pics posted at http://robinliu.org/africa/namibia.html.

sitting here in johannesburg airport waiting for my flight to hong kong…

after our adventure leaving khaudum np, max and i headed up to the northeast section of namibia to the caprivi strip.  much more ‘african’ with little villages along the way.  we stopped to find someone to deliver a message.  ended up at this small village school.  as soon as we stepped out of the car, about 20 little kids mobbed us (right behind the ‘beware of children’ sign).

from there headed to the border yesterday, drove through botswana to zimbabwe and victoria falls.  saw the falls yesterday afternoon, had dinner at the british colonial victoria falls hotel (that was really, really weird, definitely *not* african).  max dropped me off this morning at the airport and he’s driving back to windhoek through botswana…

these three weeks have gone by fast, as usual, now onto what i’m sure will be an emotionally draining 2 days in hong kong…

made it out of khaudum np with some difficulty and lots of adventure/drama.

now we’re in the caprivi strip, hopefully we’ll make it to victoria falls.

due to a family illness, i will now fly from johannesburg to hong kong, then back to SF.  so my trip will have me circumnavigating the globe, from oak to dc to dakar to johannesburg to hong kong to sf.

… max almost forgot his camera.

… we got such a good deal on the car (this one’s for max’s benefit)

… we saw 10 lions including a mating pair

… watched the mating pair have sex 4 times

… spent 4 hours in the bunker and had an elephant, hyena, and rhino check us out.

next, off to khaudum park in the east.

after checking out some cool rock paintings yesterday, we’re now in etosha np, the most popular game park in namibia.  we’ll be here for 4 days, 2 days at the research camp max was at earlier.  so far we’ve seen lots of zebra, wildebeast, springbok, ostriches.  rumors of lions near the gate last night and lots of signs of elephants…