and now for something a bit different...

Ok Angkor is pretty awesome but it all gets a bit same same. Yesterday howver I went to a different kind of site which was just simple and magic. About 40km north it is a little creek running through sand stone which has been carved with lots of bhuddist and hinda images. A perfect place to chill out, swim and escape the heat. And on the way in I noticed a lot of potential sandstone crags and some big boulders ...

I met up with Mark again last night and today we headed out to the Rolous group which after everything else was just a waste of time. So now just a bit bored waiting until I catch my flight back Bangkok tonight and then back to brissy. The is a bit of a dengue fever outbreak so I donated some blood at the childrens hospital here. I figure it will help me to sleep on the plane :)

Angkor

Wow. It's big.

On one hand you can't help but be impressed with the size and the effort that has gone into creating these temples. On the other hand there are so many and they are so big (as well as the usual Asian heat and peddlers and beggars etc) that it is almost like a bludgeon to your head. And I guess it is reasonably physical as well. I have no idea how far I've walked or how many stairs I've walked up but I feel pretty wrecked. I've seen about 30 temples, terraces, gates, bridges etc over the past two days and have a pretty good feel for the different styles and features.

My favourite, and probably most peoples favourite, is Ta Phrom which was chosen by the french conservationists to be left as it was found half consumed by jungle, with massive buttress roots and strangler figs growing through the stonework. It's been in the Tomb Raider movie so therefore it must be good. My suspicious is that after so many temples people take a morbid satisfaction in seeing one dying a slow death by strangulation at nature's hands.

Other highlights have been just chilling out chatting with various monks, beggars, peddlars and tourists. Some very interesting stories. And of course a very patient dragon fly!

The life of Pai ... and onto Angkor

Well we jumped into a minibus and headed up to Pai. I hadn't heard much about it but apparently it is known for Trekking and white water and elephant rides. The white water was brown and the elephants didn't have the same appeal for the others so we signed up for a trek with Mr Chart!

Now this deal advertised itself as 'No elephants! No whitewater! Just trekking!' and said you'd be living in the jungle and learning survival skills which sounded a bit more interesting that just walking around. If only it lived up to it.

It started out pretty good. The guides cut us all walking sticks which was a good omen for how hard it would be. The walking was easy enough and the pace was pretty slow. Every ten minutes or so we would all stop for a bit. Eventually after 2 hours we got to a nice enough waterfall where we stopped for about 2 hours to BBQ some chunks of pork.Then finally we moved on and walked slowly for another couple hours until we got to a dodgy jungle hut. We were expecting to make our own shelter but seeing as it was destined to rain we weren't too upset that our skills weren't put to the test. But then the guides made us bowls and cups and collected wood and started cooking and we were all bored sitting around doing sweet FA. We asked on several occasions if we could help or learn or try or anything but NO! All I wanted was to get my own little jungle knife and start hacking bamboo up into stuff. Dammit!

So out comes the book and the cards. If it wasn't for them we'd have gone crazy. There was two other guys Matt (Dredds) and Mike (John Lennon) who were also on the trek. After a fairly decent, but many hours overdue, dinner with plenty of rice whiskey to go around we slept pretty badly. Next day was slow. Real slow. I ended up in front of the lead guide for a lot of it just cause I was sick of stopping whenever he did. And every half hour or so we would have to stop for a few minutes and let the two other guides catch up. And every time we stopped for a break it would need to be for way too long. And then to top it off we finished walking early in the afternoon for night number two in a dirty Lisu village. A pretty ordinary village with lots of very mangy dogs. And the offer of pork for dinner which was green and stank - 'We can wash it!' No thanks!

More cards. More bad sleep. Another slow day. And then some fresh fruit and the trek is over.

So in celebration of such a great trek we found the Shisha bar and got wasted. I think we each spent 160 baht on drinks. Good times. Mark and Alex put on a bit of a show (ask me for details!).

Then back to Chiang Mai for one last bit of climbing action - Mark and Alex had healed up a bit. Then on a spur of the moment thing I decided to waste a bit of money on a flight to Cambodia and spend a few days at Angkor. So an over night bus to Bangkok then straight onto a plane (and by straight I mean waiting around in an airport forever), then straight onto a bike to the temples (and by straight I mean wasting time filling out ooodles of paper work to get into Cambodia).

So far so good, the temples are seemingly endless and cover huge areas of land with massive moats. It is crazy to think that all that remains is just the stone temples and to think about the vast wooden city that surrounded it all. It's huge!