Merry Christmas - 2005! Love to All.........xoxoxo

Cambodia twilight

Noodlin' on the Beach

Cambodian Sunset

Ancient Mysteries - one of the great wonders of the world

December 25 - 2005 MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

This morning we checked into a luxe hotel and I am going to have a BATH! Joy. There are a lot of programs on tv on the Tsunami anniversary and so much pain is still evident. A year is a blip - it will take many years to recover. The Cambodian kids are so nice. They go to school at differing times of the day and the rest of the time they sell trinkets on the beach and are immensely curious and friendly and worldly wise. Today we are passing out a few trinkets to them - scarves, some pens and some lipstick for the manicure ladies. It's a way to give when you don't have your posse around. This evening we hope to go to a big seafood feast where you pay a dollar US and get a whack of shrimp, lobster, fish etc. but if that doesn't come about, we will go back for an Italian feast. You are still in slumber waiting for Santa to alight and we are in your next day! Enjoy, feast, love, laugh, cherish and appreciate. We love you all and wish you were here or we were there. Kisses and hugs all around.

Cambodia Christmas!

Hello everyone...MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM SIHANOUKVILLE CAMBODIA....We miss you. We love you. Send money. Mwaaaw!!

Ok, I have to qualify this email. This morning I woke up angry, sad, mad, blue, melancholy..you get the picture. I just can't put my finger on it but as much as I wanted to have Christmas on the beach and chill out here, it just hasn't happened. I have not found a comfort level here at all (as for Ivan - he's just glad to wake up).

Ok, for all of you out there that have seen the movie Groundhog Day - THIS IS IT...you wake up every day, see the same people every day and for the most part, there is hardly a minute of the day that isn't the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will be!!!! But..we do have to make the best of it when we can so today we booked into a swish hotel for tomorrow night - had an amazing Italian dinner tonight - a wee small thatched hut off the far end of our beach serves Italian food to die for - the restaurant is called Little Italy. The walk home was fun as we stopped off to watch Cambodians doing their traditional dance around candles in the sand and when they saw us, they asked us to join them, so we did and.....we ROCKED. Then we stopped to watch a bunch of pickled revellers (English, mostly, of course) playing with the fire dancing. I'm not sure but I think we saw a first or second degree burn here and there. And then...we met some Cambodian dudes who work at guesthouses and want to practice their english and so it is in Cambodia on Christmas eve. The bars are rockin' on the beach, there are buffets galore and garish lights and garish decor and Santa hats and tiny fireworks...and humidity and..nyah, nyah...the sea, the sand and the sun.

And so - another crazy day fades away and I am no longer mad, sad or out of sorts (and Ivan's still just glad to wake up in Paradise)....

We wish you love and happiness tonight and peace of mind and soul this holiday season. Namaste. Shel n' Ive.

The Summer Cottage

Root Canal

Wat at Angkor

Baylon Temple at Angkor Wat

Collecting alms at 6AM

NO, Ivan...you can't take him home!

A New Career

Safari girl and the gang

I see you too!

Village Work

Village Babies

Cold Cambodia

And I don't mean the weather, well, it has been a little chilly in the morning but overall I am referring to the sad state of affairs on the streets. For the past 3 days we have been exploring and dropping our jaws in awe at the temples of Angkor Wat which is one of the man-made wonders of the world. Wat is the word for temple in the southeast Asia and Angkor-Wat is the largest religious building in the world. One of the temples we visited is where they filmed Lara Croft Tomb Raider. We have climbed and scaled and photographed until we are temple, temple, shrine, shrined out! I really have no words to describe the awesome beauty and power of these monuments to the egos of Kings past. Many of the heads of Buddhas and important relics were looted during the reign of Pol Pot and many of the beautiful base reliefs have been chiseled off and sold to private galleries around the world but there are still thousands of Buddhas and Shivas to behold.

The cold I refer to though, is the plight of the people due to a communist regime. The dichotomy of walking down main street which is a playground of restaurants and bars where you can get Indian food, Thai food, Western food..any manner of massages, tour bookings, piano bars and shopping as opposed to the tugging children carrying children is heartbreaking. Many of the beggars here are land mine victims as Cambodia was one of the heaviest bombed areas by the US during the Vietnam war and the evidence is tangible. Some people have missing arms, legs or both and many are children. Some things stay in your mind and loop like videotape as was the scene for me last night. A little boy carrying a tiny baby was begging for money and the baby was crying. The look on his face was one of stress that children should not know. While there is little you can do about these things, it's hard on the western conscience. A way of life, a way of strife.

Tomorrow we leave Siem Reap for Christmas on the seashore but it may not be as pleasant as we hope as there has been a lot of storms along the coast and flooding in many tourist areas of Thailand - we shall see.

Everyone wants a copy!

Temple Art

Headliner in Luang Prabang Laos

ON The Slow Boat - Mekong River

The SLOW BOAT!!!

MUNK..er monk

Temple in Chiang Mai

This guy looks better than me! My friend Tina

Howdy from Thailand

Trekking in Lovely Laos

Today, with sadness, we leave Laos for Cambodia. The people of Laos are soft, gentle and beautiful. They are small in stature but big in heart and I adore them. We have had a fun-filled stay here and it's hard to believe we've been here for 9 days although it is time to move on. The stay here was rather economical as Ivan got a gig at a place called the Lao Lao Bar. It's owned by an American guy, Mark, who is in the process of transforming this bar into a very cool spot. It's a garden setting with a big firepit in the back where backpackers and tourists come to chill out at night. They set up a good PA system for him and he played there for two nights. While we didn't make any money, Mark fed us up nicely with Laos BBQ and hamburgers and beers (for me) and it was great. Ivan now has the distinction of being the first western entertainer to gig at Luang Prabang! Mark took photos of Ivan and printed up posters that were distributed all over town - there was a big crowd both nights. The second night, however, the neighboring business, who is the landlord of a competing bar, came over to complain and make big trouble so we had to shut down early. You know you're in a Communist country when....A highlight of one evening was a young man from Australia who swallowed a huge sword, majorly impressive. We also did a trekking trip through the jungle for 2 days and had a really good experience. It gave us the opportunity to experience village life and the hillside tribes. We started out taking a bus to a resort where we took a boat across the river and trekked for about 2 hours to a village where we had lunch and took photos of the children. We then trekked through the jungle with our intrepid guide Puaoy who pointed out all the fruits and woods and flowers along the way. The mahogany trees are most impressive. It was a long tiring walk but we finally came to our village for the night. It was a very tranquil and peaceful setting and one of the boys had gone ahead to set up our beds in a hut and to cook our dinners. There was only myself, Ivan and a doctor from Australia in our group so it was very serene as opposed to Thailand trekking where large groups of people tramp through the villages like stormtroopers. Our hut was fenced in and all night the villagers, particularly children, came to stare over the fence at us. We felt a bit like zoo animals but it was fun. The next morning we trekked for about an hour to the elephant camp where we got aboard an elephant and had a ride down to the waterfalls where we lunched. The view from the top of an elephant is great but when you are following another elephant, you do learn about their eating and evacuation habits in short order.

From the cascading limestone waterfalls we then jumped into kayaks and paddled down the river back to town where we arrived wet and tired but happy. Today we catch a plane to Cambodia to Siem Reap - Angkor Wat where the largest temple in the world is located and then we will head to the beach for Christmas. Ivan was very sick the last couple of days but back to form this morning which is a good thing as travel days can be hard on you and you really need your energy. This morning I got up at 6 to go watch the monks as they walk through town collecting alms, food and money from the villagers, very cool. The monks don't really need the dosh but it makes good karma for the towns people. I will post pix on a better computer later, this one is cacking out on me.

Laid back in Laos

Leaving Chiang Mai was tough, we would have hung on there with our bare fingernails if possible but as it was, we went one day past our Bangkok visa and took a minibus to Laos. While it all started out sedately, it quickly turned to chaos and hanging on with those same bare fingernails to the seats in the bus as we careened down the road playing chicken with ongoing traffic and plugging our ears to the shrieks of the Irish girls in the front seat. As it happens, there were three buses departing for the boats to take us to the Laos border at the same time. While the bus in the back was taking his time, our bus and the other were determined that one was not going to get there before the other and passing on blind curves and intersections was all part of the game. People in the bus were calling the driver a lunatic and yelling at him to slow down but in Laos...they don't hear so well. Testament to the fact that we made it, here we are.

The Boat Trip! We slept the first night at the Thai/Laos border on planks disguised as beds and set across the river in the morning to secure our Laos visas and catch the boat to Luang Prabang where we are now. Ivan and I caught one of the first boats and when we got across, I asked him for some money at which point a look of terror crossed his face as he informed me that the money belt with $2000.00USD was still back in the room. The Laos man next to us got on his cell phone and phoned the hotel telling them not to go into room #5 - fat chance! Ivan jumped back in the boat. There was a guy on a motorcycle waiting on the Thai side to take him back to the hotel and in the meantime I sat on the Laos side frantically ripping the packs apart while listening to the cellphone guy tell me over and over that there was no way in hell the money would still be there. Soon the boat returned with Ivan waving the thumbs up - a close call and another lesson learned. We seem to be in dire need of more lessons.

After lugging our stuff up yet ANOTHER STEEP HILL, there are nothing but hills here when you are laden with baggage, we took a bus to the boat dock. The boat was not the luxury model with padded seats as we were sold but a pre-war model with 45 degree angled seats and a smelly, knocking engine in the back. There were 70 seats on the boat and after those seats were full - they proceeded to load the boat to over 100 people at which point myself and a Spanish guy got off the boat and stated firmly to the agent that we were not going on a boat that was sinking lower and lower into the water with each loading passenger and his/her baggage. The funny part is that people were still trying to load onto the boat. While backpacking is a hardy proposition, this was insane. Long story short, they got another boat when mutiny was imminent. Although, it was still not the lovely luxury boat sitting idle at the end of the que. Bugger.

The trip down the Mekong is lush and lovely and as green as your eyes can handle. The touts on the boat wree selling ice cold Beer Lao (really, really good beer) at a fast pace and things went rather smoothly the first day on the river although very, very hard on the bum. The other option for getting to Luang Prabang are speedboat trips which take 6 bone shattering hours as opposed to 2 days as they rocket down the river leaving wakes the size of ocean waves. They went speeding by us so fast that we couldn't even get a picture of them and the passengers have to wear crash helmets with visors in order to keep breathing. We reached our night stop in the dark with everyone scrambling UP the hill AGAIN - UP - to find guesthouses. We hung out with the 2 Spanish guys - partners - who secured us a room as we toiled our way upward. As soon as we had checked in, the proprieter made the rounds of rooms proferring marijuana or opium as to the lodgers preference. Drugs in Laos - I don't think so but the Spaniards and Americans were firing up within ten minutes of our arrival. Don't they read the guidebooks??! The next morning we thought we were very clever to load onto the smaller boat with cushions. Not so clever it seems. The weather was cold, the boat was small and if possible, even more uncomfortable than the day before. We moved to the back of the boat and endured 6 more hours of banging engines and hard seats. The scenery was amazing but when you have check to make sure you still have a posterior upon arrival, not all that it's cracked up to be. The speedboat option was starting to make some sense.

We are here though and in the guidebook it says that Luang Pragang is laid back - comatose is more like it - just the way we like it. We are just strolling the old colonial town and hanging out. We plan to do an ecotourism trek here, elephants and rafting and visiting villages in the next couple of days. The temples here are beautiful and the goods, tapestries and cloth here are far superior to the Thailand merchandise. The Laos people are soft and friendly - very easygoing and there are some great little hideouts like Tangier bookshop which makes the most delectable chocolate mousse on the planet and you can lay on big soft cushions and read while eating. Yes.

We will miss the Thai food as it is our favourite so far. The Laos food is not as satiable but you can get anything you like on the western menu too. Spaghetti, tuna melts, fries, burgers - whatever. It's not pricey and it's plentiful and the markets sell a lot of good roadside local foods too.

Our room is $9.00 USD which is pricey as you can get rooms as low as $4.00 but we have a lovely bathroom and are comfortable and our bums do appreciate it. A few more days here and then to Vang Vieng in the south and then to Angkor Wat Cambodia and then over to the seaside for Christmas as we would prefer to be on a beach for Christmas.Our original plan of a month in Laos is not in the cards as our visas are only good for 15 days but that's ok, sea, sand etc. is a good option. As we have no set plans, things are apt to change daily.

Our best wishes to everyone at home as you prepare for the season, have a think of us and a little cheer. Will post pix soon. Cheers to you.

Why can't I look like her?

Oh my Buddha

Bangkok - and you hate rush hour!

Misty Morning

I miss Whitehorse!

Can I keep Him???

Everything's a Postcard here.

Can I keep him?

Rasta Mon

Teacher and Student and Let's Eat!

Cooking Lessons in Koh Lanta

Chiang Mai - Oh My!

While we were lamenting the loss of the beach and not liking the city scene in Bangkok, we are in love again with Thailand. Chiang Mai is a very cool city, weather is hot but not too hot with no humidity and evenings are cool. The city is laid back and has 300 temples to see! There is a moat in the middle where the old city is and where we are living in a lazy old guest house where you just mark down your drinks or whatever and take care of everything later. It's the Disneyland of food and drink and guest houses and it's cheap! We are staying in a huge room for 200 baht a day, about $5.75 Canadian and although the water is solar heated - scared to get in cold shower - it's a groovy place where the kitty's wander in and out and with a big paperback library in the foyer where everyone gathers for beers and chats. It would be so easy to stay here but our visas expire in a couple of days so we gotta go soon. Lots of people end up teaching English here and hang out for years.

Last night we went to the night bazaar with about a mile on each side of stalls filled with food, silk, shoes, paintings, lights - EVERYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE - and artists who do portraits from photos that are eerily lifelike. You can walk and walk and shop and drink and blah, blah, blah etc. On our way back our eye was caught by a free show mall where we sat down at a bar and watched Muay Thai boxing - these little guys kick the crap out of eachother every night and it's no holds barred, feet, fists, elbows - anything goes. Ouch. As it happens, our table was at a katoy bar (transvestites) and one of them came and sat with us (for a free drink of course) and we had a long chat with her/him about life as a bar boy/girl - I never know how to address this. She works for commission off the drinks she garners from customers and gets about 30baht (35 cents) from a one hundred baht drink - no salary. They really hustle. These are men who get breast implants and look and walk and talk very feminine but keep the original equipment intact and like men so essentially, they are gay with girl looks. She was very charming and sweet and very attractive as well. I feel sorry for them though, life is not easy hustling drinks and keeping long hours wears them out and they grow old fast. She was a sad soul.

Today we are temple hopping after I post this blog and tonight we are going to another blues bar where, reportedly, there is a hot guitar player so maybe Ivan can jam with him. His name is Took.More later. Damn, it's hot here today!

Rockin' at the Easy Rider Bar - Phuket

Hey Alex...I got a Tan!

Beach Life is Rough

Island Withdrawal

aaahhh...good-bye Koh Lanta...we had fun there! We partied down with the rastas one night and Ivan did a little jam here and there and we just bombed around and got wet and got sun and got real laid back. Our last day the sun finally shone on us and we took a 4 island snorkel trip which was very, very cool. We went first on a big smelly boat with a bunch of other folks which seemed to take forever and there was a guy in the back with the hatch open pushing the steering mechanism with his feet which, by the way, does not seem all that odd considering the state of most of the equipment here. We finally reached a fantastic stalactite-like island and hopped off for our first (Ivan's very first) snorkel. We saw many beautiful and psychedelic fish species and amazing anemones and colourful corals. Then, taking a good deal longer than it should have with buddy grunting below the deck and the engine spewing grit all over the place (not to mention the criminal traces of rainbow fuel on the water) we left for another island. This one not so great as the waters were murky and a longboat filled with Scandinavians hooting and hollering made for a quick departure. Our third stop was absolutely fantasmagorical. We all got off the boat and the guide took us into a black and eerie cave with a flashlight, as the opening faded behind us and the black engulfed us, it became very spooky and somewhat scary as we swam through the cave. Soon there was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel and I swear to God or Buddha, as is the case in Thailand, we reached heaven(nirvana)! We emerged on to a powder white sand beach in what seemed to be the middle of a volcano with monolithic towering stone walls covered in trailing vines and jungle vegetation. Amazing. Back in the tunnel and out again, we were greeted with another happy sight. A big, fast speedboat had come to whisk us away to our next island as it seems our former flotation device had lost all hope of steering us anywhere. The last island was called Paradise Lost - and yes, it did live up to it's name. A fitting end to the trip and back to our bungalow where my new dog, Scruffy, awaited us for a belly scratch.

BANGKOK - what can I say. Briefly, we spent 3 days just getting busy work stuff done. We got a package mailed home, bought tickets for the next leg of our flight and Ivan's hearing aids (well, one) is in the hospital and will join us later. We did do the seedy side of town called Patpong (should really be called ping-pong, for the shows, if you know what I mean) gyrating bar girls, touts selling shows - which we did suck into - but only once - and were rather sorry for watching a demeaning and altogether pathetic sideshow, hawkers, vendors, thieves and scallywags. We got our fill of pollution in large doses of smog, noise and filth. After hanging out til all hours of the night in Patpong and realizing the subway was closed, we hired a taxi to take us back to Watana Mansion hotel about 1/2 way to the airport where we were staying." Oh yeah, I know where it is!" he said after which ensued a ride at breakneck speed over the freeway about 10 minutes past our destination and almost at the airport, at which point we both yelled "Whoa, Stop" and had to give buddy directions which we were not totally sure of ourselves. We did get home though. Ya, everybody knows where everything is for a buck. Third world stuff. We also went to the backpacker nirvana where the bright lights and fast food never stop along with cheap clothes and bad music blaring the streets. Ivan played a few tunes at the Chivas bar for the folks and we headed home. One of the cool things about Bangkok is the river taxis which take you through canals and areas you wouldnt' normally see. They are fast, cheap and the cool air sweeps the day's grime away. There are many amazing temples to see as well, but we are saving them for our back trip to BKK after we finish Laos/VietNam/Cambodia circle.

Today we landed after 55 minute plane trip in Chaing Mai and are just about to go exploring. Ciao for now.