After arriving in Bangkok and having been too long (5 days) in this amazing but dirty and incredibly hot and humid city I started off to the nice and small Island of Ko Samet, near Pattaya. Here I had two laid back days with a nice bungalow under palmtrees right at the beach. A really beautiful island, very easy and fast to reach from Bangkok also by public transportation.

On June 18 I went on to the even nicer and more quiet island of Ko Chang in the very South Eastern corner of Thailand. The island is covered with a very beautiful rainforest with waterfalls in the interior and has very inexpensive and nice bungalows right at the beach....yes life can be good sometimes....

Leaving Ko Chang I'm driving up north along the Cambodian border to finally arrive in the bordertown of Aranyaprathet. The next morning I'm crossing the border to Cambodia, which is almost like travelling back in time....selfmade or unbelievable old vehicles, motorcycles loaded heaviliy with everything from wood, paper to dozens of chickens and even whole huge pigs, people pulling big wagons themselves, the streets are in terrible condition.
What comes now is probably the most funny and adventureous part of the journey: Let's simply call it "Camel Trophy" (hope you made it back the same way, Mat and Sonya!!)With another four backpackers we rent a ride on a pick-up truck to Siem Reap, 150 km from the border. The one half of the truck is loaded with all kinds of stuff, on the remaining 2 squaremeters we're sitting with 9 people...The roads: Take the worst farm road you could ever imagine, add huge (sometimes up to 1,5 m deep) potholes and mudholes; think, how it would look like in a Steven King movie and then you're almost there...sometimes small "lakes" are there, where the street is supposed to be with children swimming and playing around, sometimes pigs and small cows are lying in the mudholes.
At one time we're stuck for about two hours at one place in the middle of the ricefields (the sun is beginning to go down...), because two big trucks are stuck in the mud in front of us. We finally end up with some of the pick-up trucks being pulled THROUGH the ricefield by tractors and back on the "road". Luckily, some of us change to the first pick-up truck that is pulled through the ricefields by bribing the driver. A couple that stayed on our original truck arrived in Siem Reap the NEXT MORNING. We finally arrive there at 10 pm: 12 hours for 150 km!!! (at one place even a bicyclist was passing us!!)

In Siem Reap I'm visiting the marvellous ruins and temples of Angkor. It is really an overwhelming site which is well worth all the travelling efforts (pain?!). I spend around three days to visit all the temples. On top of some of them, big rainforest trees where left, with all the huge roots coming down along the walls! Just amazing.

The people in Cambodia: Living in almost unbelievable poverty, but very, very friendly, always smiling, touching my hairy arms and laughing about my red hairs and my red beard!!

From Siem Reap I travel on to Phnom Penh, which is certainly very dirty, but still has a certain charme , cause of its colonial buildings, the Kings-Palace and its Boulevards.
In the "Cloud-Nine-Guesthouse"that can be highly recommended because of its great atmosphere and ist friendly personnel an american girl had bought weed for $5 and now can't get rid of it anymore.....free joints for everyone in the guesthouse...

Interesting also the Killing fields, where thousands of bones and skulls are exhibited to show the terror of the Pol Pot Regime. After 30 years of civil war, Cambodia has now the first time (!) peace for more the one year in a row...

From Phnom Penh I travel on to Saigon. Most striking for me: the incredible traffic: millions of motorcycles are rushing through, so that you are feeling like in an asteroid field in Star Wars!!!

Saigon also has to offer a lot in terms of cultural things, lots of pagodas, museums, colonial-style-buildings, markets and chinatown....

Also to be recommended: A trip to the Cuchi Vietcong Tunnels, which are very, very narrow and were sometimes literally built below the feet of the American soldiers!!

From here I travel on to Dalat, a small city in the mountain region. Funny in the morning: While I'm walking around in shorts and T-shirt being happy it's not that hot and humid as always, all the Vietnamese people are walking around in winter jackets, hats and earcaps, because the say it's freezing cold!!!

From here I'm driving on to Nha Trang at the coast.

Here THE thing to do is the famous and notorious Mama Hanh's boat trip (some will certainly remember with a big smile)!!You pay just $7 for what is basically a one day partytrip on a boat (o.k. there's some snorkeling too, but forget about that). The whole thing began pretty relaxed on a nice sunny morning in Nha Trang. After a while Mama Hanh spoke to us: Everybody listen now to what Mama Hanh says: Don't be lazy! Put lots of suncream on because it's FUCKING hot. Today you have free party, free dancing on the boat, free pee in the sea, free buffet, free wine free weed and free fucked up!" Well, and that's basically what is was: We had an incredible seafood lunch buffet, a great fruit buffet in the afternoon, free weed and dancing the whole day and not to forget the floating bar: We stopped in a nice bay, everybody got a lifesaving ring to float around, after a while Mama Hanh came, said:"Now everybody dry your hands", and was passing joints and portwine to everybody out there....Even the Lonely Planet says: A word to the wise: Don't try to party - out Mama Hanh. How she does, day after day, for now 10 years, nobody knows.....And believe me, we ALL were passed out!!! From the nice seaside town of Nha Trang (with its great bars) I went on to Hoi An which is very cute and laid back town near Da Nang at the Central Coast. Great beaches and a really great atmosphere and great seafood!!In Hoi An you can visit the ruin site of My Son with temples of the Cham Culture, which is , however, a bit disappointing, since most of it was destroyed in the Vietnam war. (By the way, in this war, the US dropped more bombs than in the whole world war I, II and the Korea war together!!!)Through great scenery along the marble mountains, the sea and lots of spectacular views I traveled to Hue, the old Emperors town, capital in the 19th century (or so), which is famous for it's great and well kept tombs of the Emperors and it's citadelle which, however, was largely damaged in the war, when the Vietcong took over for 25 days during the Tet offensive in 1968.Well, from Hue we traveled on to the Laos border. After crossing the border we arrived in a very small village, where we were told to get a bus around 1 pm. When we arrived there we were told: "No more busses today, next bus tomorrow morning!" Well, no hotel or so around, but we had already managed to get a room in a private house, when a bus arrived, which went about half the way to Savannakhet (our destination), and where a Hotel was supposed to be....After a nice rodeo ride over bumpy and dusty roads (we had a really nice tan) we arrived in Mung Phin, even smaller and quieter than the other village. We finally manage to find the "Hotel". A very run down building (the last guest entry ist about one month old), a wasp nest on the ceiling, but moskito nets (!!) and o.k. beds, for 50 cents each. After a very special dinner, we have a really special experience: Mark gets one guys' guitar and begins to play old Rock'n' Roll songs and within few minutes we are surrounded by the youth of the village which is cheering and obviously having fun!!! A really unique experience!

After leaving from mid-Laos we took a really crowded public bus for another rodeo-ride for the Thai border. The bus was totally packed not only with people, but also with living chicken which were just crammed below the seats, frogs in bags (we almost incidentally put our backpacks on them, not knowing what was in the bags) and small living pigs in bags....
During the many stops small children came into the bus to offer small snacks: Grilled bugs, cockroaches (spelling??) and fried worms and all sorts of "delicatesses"....well, we didn't feel like trying!!!!

I finally arrived at the Thai border: What a luxury on the other side of the border, I hadn't seen it this way before I had left Thailand!

From the border I traveled to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, where I did a 3 day trekking tour with Elephant riding, rafting (Yeah all that touristy stuff!!) and a good and very tough trekking to the native villages, then to the quiet city of Chiang Rai in the "Golden triangle".

On the way back south I visited the historical city of Ayuthaya with all its tremendous wats and chedis. (Actually that was my last station to visit ANY Cultural stuff and I was really glad about that fact!!)

From Bangkok I moved on to the South-West coast of thailand: Krabi and then took a boat to the beautiful island of Ko Phi Phi, in terms of scenery probably THE highlight of the tour: Clear, emerald water, palmtrees and rainforest all over the island, nice beaches, and great snorkeling and diving opportunities and not to forget really nice bars and seafood restaurants...YEEEEEEEEES!

After leaving after 4 days ( yeah, I had to shed 1 or 2 tears when I left...) I traveled to the East-Coast and the Island of Ko Samui: A nice island, but a bit shocking after the relaxed places before and being only among backpackers all the time, since the island is very touristy and crowded with package tourists and families (espicially German ones I have to admit..), nevertheless a good place to party and have fun and meet nice people....

Well, for full moon I went to the full moon party on Ko Pha Ngan: Arriving one day before the event it was almost impossible to find any accommodation at all. I ended up with walking 30 minutes from the main village along the beach to my small (but friendly and romantic situated) bungalow "resort" without any electricity (well it worked the third night for a few hours) and big spiders (and one snake, as someone reported me) in my room. The Full Moon Party is not easy to describe: An event with around 10.000 people on the beach all of them either drunk, stoned, taking Ecstasy or diet pills (I actually took one, I just heard it only works after taking 4 or so...) or drinking mushroom drinks. Anyway almost everybody partied till 6 am when the sun rose and even when I left totally passed out around 8 am lots of people were still dancing on the beach.... a very strange and bizarre happening!

Finally I came to the beautiful island of Ko Tao, north of Ko Pha Ngan. This is also a very nice island (well, sorry guys, in my oppinion way nicer than Ko Samui and Ko Pha Ngan) with nice (but mostly shallow) beaches, lots of Coconut palms ( a couple of tourists are seriously injured every year by falling coconuts, and I was almost too), just a very laid back and beautiful place to spend the last days of a vacation trip...

I did lots of snorkeling and some diving trips (around $30 for two dives) too and had just a great time for the last 5 days of the vacation (except of that damn motorcycle trip, when one tire blew off, I had to walk home for 1 hour and that rental guy wanted me to pay that certainly 5 year old tire, which I didn't of course after discussing 1 hour ...).