Land of the Rising sun

Wow what can I say but japan is amaaazing....sooo nice the people are all increadibly helpful to us foolish gaijin (thats foreigners) but my 4 words of japanese are standing me in good stead and we are having a blast - Kyoto has been fantastic both in itself and as a base for blasting off on the bullet trains to other cities - they are sooo fast that you can get from hakata (on the bottom island) to tokyo in about 5 hours (and thats not even the fastest as the Nozomi `the elitist train` that we cant get on with our passes does it in about 3!) its great fun - Kyotos temples were increadible and the old town of Nara was fantastic even though it was raining- we saw a giant Buddha housed in the biggest wooden structure in the world! We are in Aso San area at the moment - in a crazy youth hostel in Aso town and tommorow we go and have a look at an active volcano! then to Beppu an Onsen (Japanese Spa) town before heading to Tokyo for 3 days of crazyness. then its back home to blighty!!! OH MY GOD the real world again. Will be strange as!!!!! anyhoo bye for now off to explore....

starting back in Phnom Pehn the royal palace



At the Killing Fields - this is actually full of human skulls ranging from kids of 4 to 80 year olds...a truly tragic site.

Angkor Wat - bloomin huge it is
This is me at the top.

The amazing serene faces of Bayon
They are trying to remove a tree that was growing through the building
One of Sooo many carvings
Mel clambering down
Our electric bycycles and a very hot Mel
Cambodia whizzing by in our songthaw
Sunset Koh Lanta


Mel after being soaked tee hee

Happy new year! AKA getting wet at songkran

Wow the past 3 days (well 4 if you count my day off to recover from an atrocious hangover) have been mental not only did we spend 1 day coming back from the islands due to our phuket to singapore jaunt we have been absolutely soaked at the Songkran festival. What started off as a water blessing has turned into an all out water war with flour bombs and all sorts. We started getting into the spirit of things after leaving Koh Lanta - it was a great 5 days on the island doing absolutely nothing but going to the 7-11 for crates of beer! Leaving however was a true soaking being picked up in a flatbed truck we might as well have had targets painted on us as soak the tourists became the proffesion of choice - by the time we reached the boat we were piss wet through. Thankfully lying on boats for 3 hours allowed us to dry off by the time we got to Phuket we were in a mini bus and safely deliverd to our hostel - well not actually our hostel as these things go in thailand but one close enough for us to walk without harm to.

Next up we went early in the morning to phuket airport paid an extortionate 1000 baht departure tax for not actually leave the country (but as we were flying via singapore technically we did! but try telling thai officials that we want to pay the cheap 50 baht departure tax as we were flying to bangkok english suddenly became marshan but never mind) We arrived in bangkok thinking that maybe we had missed the rest of the festival ha not likely as soon as we approached the monument we realised all the roads were closed around koh san and we were going to have to walk with our bags for about 30 minutes through one of the most debauched festivals I've ever encountered....the thais certainly know how to party and we arrived conga line fasion to our hostel dumped our bags (with perfect flour hand prints on) and dissapeared to our room to emerge seconds later to the CD shop (our fave little bar/ funky music hangout) to get pretty much annihilated a quick jaunt out to a street party reveiled quite some fun too - the only downside was when the police show up battons in hand to break up the party and pure fear takes over as we surged away from the scene of the 'crime' so back to the CD shop it was - and who would we spot on arrival - helen and dave...super...the next day we bezzed around in a tuk tuk (no windows so getting proper wet!) saw more festivities in Pathpong and met helen and daves mates from home - then back to Rambutri to the shop again and even some carpet drinking action into the small hours. At 5:00am we retired - on awaking at 2:00pm i can only quote withnail and say a pig had shat in my head. Ouch. So after a day off here I am and its off to japan tommorow! bonkers...probably wont e-mail then so I will post some photos in a tick and write again when I get home.

Arrgh I hate air Singapore

Damn them we have just found out that we cant cancel our flight to Bangkok even though we are in bloomin Bangkok what a load of rubbish. So we have to travel by bus back to Phuket in order to take a flight via Singapore back to Bangkok again. Rubbish! So were going to be about 2 weeks delayed - bummer indeed but at least we are stuck in Thailand and not Japan - weeks would skint us and we'd have to make all our kind friends remortgage their houses and send us money! But never mind as punishment we are going to have an extra week and a half on thai beaches - its a hard life eh...

Ps if STA ever tell you that you can cancel part of your ticket if you travel by land they are lying...the little gits...

PPS the massage course is going amazingly well although I am aching a little from all the hard work..recieving one is definately allot less like hard work than giving one...

Back in Bangkok

ok so here we are again back in bangkok after a hideous bus journey from siem reap that took about 15 hours... shocking....but tommorow is the first day of work...a thai massage course (9am start for 6 hours a day)...gonna be good AND THEN ITS JAPAN COMING UP!!!! Cant wait.

So Angkor Wat is as amazing as everyone says its a truly fantastic place - really amazing and our electric bycycles were sooooo much fun. Zipping about the place making virtually no noise was most fun. But the temples are what its all about - probably the most impressive sights I've ever seen - Angkor wat surpasses the hype - its vast - but the real gem for me was the Bayon - covered in giant serene faces it was a joy to just sit in and soak up - fantastic. Its also given me the bug to go and see other big sights such as the Pyramids and Machu Picchu...but on another trip methinks...

anyway back to the chaos...