It’s the second day of the tour and I’m in a little village a long way from Bangkok. The first part of the tour started with a few hours of sightseeing in Bangkok, all of which I’ve seen before. So although I went with the group, I can honestly say that I wasn’t too interested in seeing the sites. Later, about 5, we left to catch a train for a small(er) city south. Since the journey was going to take us about 13 hours we got a sleeper car to pass the night. It hasn’t been the first time that I have been in a sleeper, but this one was a little bit different than any I’ve been in before. Instead of being in a cabin with four or six beds, this sleeper had two beds next to the aisle, no cabin. It was a little bit strange but I like strange sometimes.

After arriving at our hotel in Khaosok (about two hours away from the train station), I was finally able to take a shower. The place that I have is really nice, it’s a bungalow hidden in the jungle, right above a river. I am really impressed with the bungalow too. Since I’m the only male by myself on the tour I get the room to myself, and for where it is at (in what seems the middle of the jungle) it really seems nice. At least it has hot water for showers. There are monkeys hanging around and all sorts of other animals like lizards too. Really is a nice place

Later this afternoon, in fact in about twenty minutes we are heading out to canoe down the river, which river I don’t know, but it should be fun.

Just a note, I’m writing this about three days after I went on the canoe trip. The last few days have been moving really fast, and even now as I write this I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to catch up on all of the days and things that I’ve done since the last entry. I’ll try though.

The canoeing trip was really fun. It wasn’t anything like I had expected, first we were passengers and not rowing. I didn’t like the idea of that at first, since I’ve always been the type of guy who wants to row, or drive, or do my own physical thing, but I have to say that in the end, I did enjoy just letting the river go by as I leaned back and relaxed. Not a lot of interesting things happened that I can talk about, but it was fun. We saw a couple of snakes in the canopy above the river, and there was one point in front of a temple that fish would gather and wait for the boaters to feed them. Supposedly that was the only place on the river that the fish were safe and they knew it, so they stayed there. They were so thick and so eager to get the food that they actually jumped into one of the boats. Unfortunately not mine, but at least two other canoes. We also stopped for some swimming but I wasn’t in the mood. The water was really moving fast and it was also very dirty, so I chose to just hang out with the other people that didn’t swim and drink coffee.

It’s kind of boring here in Bangkok. I’ve been here since Sunday (today is Tue) and I’ve got one more night here before I leave for Cambodia. After Myanmar I wanted to take some time to just get myself “centered” before heading out again. The last couple of days I’ve been walking around the city, going to different districts and retracing some of the places that I went to two years ago. The city is large and the streets are really difficult to distinguish from one another, so I’ve probably spent an equal amount of time just being lost as I have been going to any particular place. No worries though, lost can be a great way to find new things.

I’ve been planning my trip to Angkor Wat and the more time I spend reading up about the journey, the more nervous I become. It seems every article about the says it is the worst places that tourists get ripped off. They talk about people being dropped off miles from nowhere, taken to hotels that they didn’t want to be taken to, and other stories about bribes having to be paid, and being lied to about where to get a visa. I think I’ll be okay, mainly because I’m older, male, and I have a pretty good idea of how the process should work. Who knows though, those words could come back to haunt me, and my next entry will be how I had to walk 30 miles with both packs on to the next bus station. Really though, if I get ripped off a little it’s not that much of a concern, and it certainly won’t be the first time, or even the last that it happens.

I’m thinking after Angkor Wat, or Siem Reap (the city next to Angkor Wat) I’ll head to Phnom Penh for a few days. I’m interested in seeing what the city is like and learning more about the killing fields. I can still remember bits and pieces from the news back in the seventies, so it will be good to see it in person.

Other than that I’ve scheduled another tour to Singapore. The last tour was so much fun I thought that I might as well do it again, and this one was a good fit, time-wise. I leave July 23 from Bangkok, and end in Singapore Aug 6. That leaves me almost two weeks for Cambodia. After the tour is finished there are few options that I’m starting to plan. Right now the most likely is going to be Singapore to Jakarta to Hong Kong to Taiwan to Philippines. I don’t know for sure though what I’ll be doing, just thinking that those cities or countries are doable. I really want to see Hong Kong and Taiwan this trip, so I’m pretty sure I’m going there.

About the only thing of interest that has happened to me is that I was walking along a canal when I saw a head above the water cruising along. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but my first thought was that it was a snake, and a big snake by the size of the head. I stopped to take a photo of it as it kind of bumped up against the wall. Just then a rat started running away, it then stopped and ran back to where it started. Stupid rat, it was then eaten. During this part I still didn’t know what kind of animal it was, but eventually I did see legs, so it was a big lizard.

It’s Saturday two days after I left Dubai and a lot has happened that I may or may not tell you about. It started as all trips start with the taxi ride to the airport, the hopes and the expectations of a great trip running through my head. I know that once I step out of the airport everything will be different, but I never know how much different the new country will be. The one thing that I do believe is that my first impression will usually determine whether I enjoy a country or not. It’s because of this that I always try to keep my mind open and look forward to every event. Sometimes bad events turn out to be not so bad, and a little hassle can be a good thing.

So why am I making such a big deal about this? Well I screwed up. I didn’t have the visa I needed to get to Myanmar so I’m in Bangkok right now. Not that that is such a bad thing, I love Bangkok, it has a vibrancy that kind of overwhelms but is also kind of welcoming. The problems have been with me trying to fix everything and still get to Myanmar by Sunday before my tour starts.

See, this is where I’ve debated whether or not to tell the story, it’s rather long and there is no doubt that most people reading it will find it funny, I am also convinced that it will sound as if I’m complaining, but this is furthest from the truth, like I mentioned I want to keep my mind open. So let me say that it was a “butterfly effect” when I lost my boarding pass in the Bangkok airport. I went to get a new one printed, but they wouldn’t print it because I didn’t have the right paperwork to enter Myanmar. So I went to get a Thailand visa so I could go to the Myanmar embassy, but then I remember that my bag is going on without out me. I manage to get them to stop it and send it to baggage claim, only they lose it for about an hour. So then I make it to the embassy and apply, which is a story in itself, but I get the big thing taken care of, now to find a hotel. I was settling into my room when I realized that I had to make a new flight reservation. Turns out that they were going to charge me full amount, which didn’t seem fair to me. So I make some new calls, and I get a partial refund of nearly two-thirds, only they don’t take credit cards and they close at 430, and at that time it was 4, but they were open until 11 the next morning. Since there wasn’t anything else I could do, I decided to have a beer and chill out. I fell asleep within 15 minutes, lasting maybe a total of a half of a beer was gone, and I woke up at 8 in the morning. I had been totally stressed, hadn’t eaten anything, and had only about 3 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours… my body just decided to shutdown.

I got up this morning well rested; in fact I spent about 5 minutes walking around my room mumbling that I couldn’t believe that I slept so long. J I didn’t really like the hotel that I was in, so I found a new one on the Internet that I stayed in before, and it said that they had three rooms available, so I pack my backpack and head to get my new ticket to Yangon. The taxi drops me off at the wrong place, but it was close, and after arguing with the security guard for 15 minutes, I finally call the airline again and she tells me that they’re around the corner. My bad. I even gave the taxi driver a huge tip because I thought that my problems were ending… I think if I had more money I’d have been throwing it out the window in shear joy that everything was turning out as it should. Stupid. So I get the ticket and get back to the hotel, grab my bag and catch a taxi to the new hotel, only they don’t have rooms. Hmmm… I wasn’t going to argue at this point, so I get online and find another, and that’s where I am now. I leave for Yangon tomorrow morning at 915 and meet up with my tour later on.  Oh, and as a side note, as I was unpacking at the new place my boarding pass that I thought I lost fell onto the bed. This was the boarding pass that started the “butterfly effect” when they wouldn’t print me out a new one.