Ludwig's Odyssey

Thailand - Bangkok and Koh Tao

We arrived late from Siem Reap and after a quick transfer, headed back to the hotel we stayed at when we first came to Bangkok back in March.

It was like being home, lovely comfortable bed and great sleeping.

It was almost like deja-vu, on our first full day, we headed to the shopping malls as we had done before as we were in need of new clothes and various supplies. Our second day was more touristy, we visited the main sites of Wat Pra Kaew & Grand Palace and also Wat Pho, both very busy places with lots of tourists but so beautiful and very much worth the visit. Wat Pra Kaew complex has so much gold around it’s nearly blinding and we spent a good few hours taking it all in. After a pit stop, we then went on to Wat Pho which houses a huge reclining golden buddha. It’s so big you can’t get a whole picture of it.

The complex around Wat Pho also has much more to offer and again we spent a good few hours taking it all in.

After this though, we both admitted that we had seen enough temples to last us for a while, nevertheless, the following day we also went to Golden Mount, another temple but we didn’t really go there to visit the temple, moreover to see Bangkok from up high and see the sprawl of this huge city.

We spent a few days after, just relaxing and eating nice street food. We also made a visit to China Town and had delicious Prawn Wonton and Duck Soup.

Bangkok is a great city and we really enjoyed it but after a few days we were ready to get out and get to the beach.

We made our way to Koh Tao by way of train to Chumphon with an overnight stay in a very uneventful town, followed by a somewhat fast and rough boat ride to the island of Koh Tao. The sea was quite choppy that day and we were very happy to get off the boat after nearly 3 hours of feeling nauseous...

And so, here we were, on Koh Tao, a tropical paradise but the prime reason we came was to learn to dive as it is the cheapest place in the world to get an Open Water qualification/certification.

Before our arrival, we had booked up a course with Alvaro Diving. For such a small island, there are so many dive centres on Koh Tao that it is difficult to choose the correct one from afar but we were recommended Alvaro by our friends Mike and Rita who had just recently dived with them and it was one of the best bits of advice we could have had.

The owner of Alvaro came to greet us off the boat and take us to his dive centre so we could fill in the paperwork and get started the following day.

Immediately we felt the relaxed atmosphere at this dive centre and we were sure that we had made the right choice.

We chose a package that included some discounted accommodation next door and so dropped our bags off at our bungalow and started to read through the book we had been given, homework was set for us too! The bungalow wasn’t much but the view was fantastic which made up for it.

The following day, we watched a 2 hour video followed by some more reading. The day after we started to learn the skills underwater with our Instructor Sascha from Germany who speaks great english and is a great teacher too, a really relaxed guy who loves diving and teaching people the skills. We were taken out on the Sea Cutter or SS Alvaro II boat which is a great boat and much nicer looking compared to competitors boats in the bay. We spent a good 1h30 underwater, only about 3 Metres deep in a shallow bay (rather than a swimming pool which we were glad about) and by the end had a rough understanding of what it meant to breathe underwater.

Day three consisted of our first two dives in which we had to apply various skills that we had learned but we also had time to enjoy the dives and to see lots of wonderful underwater life, we even saw a black tipped reef shark on our first dive so that was pretty cool. We were only meant to go to 12 metres today but our naughty instructor ;-) took us to 21metres (you’re only supposed to go down as far as 18 metres on Open Water, to go further down you have to do an advanced course or get a deep diving certification), still we didn’t mind, we got to see some stingrays!

The last day, we completed two more dives to 18 metres and we were starting to feel more confident that we could really do this! We also had to pass a multiple choice exam and we did, all the revision we had done paid off. So that was that, we were now officially Open Water certified divers, hooray!

We celebrated with some of the guys and girls from Alvaro that night with a nice meal and a few drinks.

We then spent the next couple of days just relaxing we walked to Sairee on one day (the main beach area) and we were glad that we were staying in the quieter Chalok Bay area we also’ moved house’ to a new place with better facilities, such as a flushing toilet!!

The bungalow we were staying in was very basic, it did the job whilst we were doing the course but wasn’t so good to relax in.

The diving bug was now set in and we spent the next two days diving. Our first two fun dives at South West Pinnacle and Shark Island were enjoyable because we could just dive and enjoy without having to stop and practice skills. The visibility wasn’t as good on these dives and we don’t think we saw anything new (as we had already dived at these two sites before) but great fun all the same and we could now practice on improving some essential skills, Wendy her buoyancy and Me my breathing so as to not consume too much air and stay in the water longer.

The next day, we dived twice again but at a new location and these were our best dives yet in terms of what we saw. Absolutely amazing. It really was like diving into an aquarium fully loaded with big fish such as big schools of Barracudas, Queenfish and Cobias, we also saw some other huge fish that are more solitary such as Bluespotted Stingrays, Moray Eel, Groupers and Titan Triggers. I won’t list all the fish we have seen as it will be boring to read but suffice to say that every colour of the rainbow was accounted for. If you wan’t to see what they look like, this handy page lists the fish you can see around here and we’ve seen about 90% of them I would say.

Aside from fish, the corals are beautiful and all the wonderful little creatures that live on them, our favourite strangest sighting are Nudibranch, they are amazing little things, so colourful.

These two dives at Chumphon Pinnacle were by far our favourites to date, the visibility was great and we had the biggest grins on our faces when we came back on the boat. It also helped that we had such a great guide in Daniel from Switzerland, such a nice guy.

It made us think of dear departed Ray that day, one of his passions was diving and he would have been so happy for us.

A few more days of relaxing and not doing too much in general (sitting on the beach reading our books) ensued before we departed on a special day trip to Sail Rock. It takes about two hours to get there from Koh Tao as the site is closer to Koh Phangan so this meant an early start but breakfast and lunch was included. This is meant to be one of the best dive sites in the world when the visibility is good and I think we were lucky that day, we enjoyed two great dives with our guide Sofia from Chile, such a sweetie, (it really is a good cosmopolitan mix at Alvaro) and saw lots of the impressive Bat Fish and big schools of other fish as well as lots of varieties of the omnipresent Angel Fish which are so colourful. I’ll quote one of the Instructors who said he loves this site, it’s like “fish soup” and it really was, so many fish all around us. Another bonus at this site was the ‘chimney’ that goes through part of the pinnacle, it’s good fun to go through at around 18 metres and swim up and out of it at around 6 metres.

We also enjoyed a third dive as part of the package back at one of the sites we had dived at before but with our confidence growing now, we could really enjoy this site more than the previous times we had dived at South West Pinnacle even if the visibility wasn’t as good.

We decided to stick around Koh Tao for the last week off our Visa, we had thought of moving on to other islands nearby but we were settled and we made some nice friends so it was good to not have to move for the sake of moving, I don’t think we would have gained much by going to Ko Phangan or Ko Samui (the diving isn’t as cheap that’s for sure). As they say in this part of the world “Same Same, but different”.

We spent most of our days at the beach although it did rain or was overcast on a couple of days so we couldn’t ‘top up the tan’ quite as much as we’d hoped. Oh, how we suffer... ;-)

There are many shallow bays just around where we are staying so we made the most of it and did some snorkelling to see if we could spot some Green Turtles that live around here, and we did! We swam with two different ones on two separate days who were very big so must have been quite old, we just watched them whilst they fed on the algae not really taking too much notice of us so we could get really close, probably only a metre or so from us. Just beautiful. Hopefully we’ll be lucky to swim with one in the deep someday.

We did two more dives, bringing our total up to 13 which were good fun, one back to Chumphon and we did see something new, a Porcupine Puffer, much bigger than we thought then to another site that we hadn’t been to before called Twins, the visibility wasn’t so good there but we did see Nemo at last! poor little soul all on his own with his dad. There are lots of clown fish in the area but 99% are of the pink variety.

The only thing that could have made our diving experiences better would have been a underwater camera as we haven’t been able to take any photos, maybe next time!

So it was with mixed emotions that we left Koh Tao, keen to move on and visit new places but sad to leave new friends behind.

A long journey awaits on a night ferry and two buses to get to our next destination, Penang in Malaysia.

Bangkok

Shark Fin, bloody awful.. but funny that Snails are called Les Cargot (should be escargot of course) not sure who Les is!

Koh Tao

Ok so this isn't one we took but this is what we saw and how close we were to the turtle.

Another pooch keeping us company

The Alvaro II anchored up

Cambodia

Cambodia is a strange country. It seems to us that it has lost its identity and looking to its richer neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam as inspiration. I suppose our view is only one from a fleeting visit so we may be doing the country an injustice. Certainly the Khmer Rouge had a massive influence on how the country has developed in the past 40 years. Not since India have we seen such evident poverty. Our bus journeys from the border of Vietnam to Phnom Penh, from Phnom Penh to Battambang and from Battambang to Siem Reap offered views of mostly wooden traditional huts that people live in, as well as endless paddy fields. We’ve seen a lot of paddy fields on our travels so far but none more so in Cambodia, another remnant from the Khmer Rouge era when the population was forced to work the land. The people can be charming and friendly but you always get the feeling they are trying to scam another $1 or $2 out of you, I suppose it is to be expected from such a poor country. All in, Cambodia has turned out to be a bit more expensive than we thought, not so much for accommodation and food, but just to be a tourist and to visit places and get taken around in Tuk Tuks.

So we arrived in Phnom Penh after an easy seven hour bus journey from HCMC and booked ourselves into a lovely room, by far the biggest room we have had on our travels with a bathroom that was as big as some of the rooms we’ve stayed in in the past! We were greeted by towels shaped as monkeys (we’ve had swans, flowers and squids too!).

We decided to try a place to have some food and chill out as we heard they had happy hour beers for $0.50 (well most places in Cambodia do but we didn’t know that at the time). We sat on a table next to some really nice guys, who for want of a better expression where expats from Canada, Australia and Ireland. All three of them had somehow found their way to Phnom Penh and sort of not moved on for a few months. Personally, we couldn’t see why you want to live there as there isn’t much to do but they were happy enough and who are we to judge. We had a good night with them, Paul and Jerry the Australian and Irish man invited us to another bar where we got hustled at pool by the local girls! All good fun and we enjoyed their company, they were good down to earth people. We saw them again for the subsequent two nights we stayed in the capital city and it was nice to share experiences on travelling.

We visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, we paid our entry fee which wasn’t the cheapest and only after found out that we couldn’t see much if anything of the Royal Palace due to an official engagement of some sort, scammed! The Silver Pagoda was nice enough but had we not visited this at all, I don’t think we would have missed much so we were a bit annoyed but laughed it off as a ‘welcome to Cambodia’ scam. The same day we also visited Wat Phnom which is the oldest temple site and where the city gets its name from. Penh, a lady founded the first temple on this site which is the only hill (Phnom) in the city. So Phnom Penh means Penh’s Hill. This was a much nicer experience and we also had to take cover inside for 30 mins during a heavy downpour. On the way back we smelt something bad, looked up and there was a tree full of fruit bats, amazing sight.

The following day, we had the inevitable ‘miserable’ day as we visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek with an audio tour which was really well done and informative followed by a visit to S21 or Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Those poor poor people, whatever did they do to deserve such a horrible fate. We don’t really want to spell out what happened there as it is quite gruesome but if you are interested, there is plenty of info on the web about the atrocities.

Although we would say, we get the feeling that had we visited these places some twenty years back, they probably would have been more shocking but It is strange how we have been desensitised to such brutality, there is so much death and destruction on the media these days that seeing skeletal remains and pictures of the dead has become common place.

So to bring back some joy, we met up with Claire, a friend we had met back in Goa (she’s the one on the boat with us, the very last photo). We have been on very different routes and countries but somehow ended up in Phnom Penh at the same time. We had a good catchup, enjoyed a few beers and were hustled by a very cute eight year old girl into buying some bracelets from her. This little girl’s english was really good and she was so street wise, imagine your eight year old doing the same, I think not!

Arising early, we left PP on the bus for a seven hour journey to Battambang.

No sooner had we got off the bus than we arranged with our tuk tuk driver to take us to the bat cave for sunset. We quickly checked in to our hotel for the next couple of nights and were taken out of town, some 12-15km to a small mountain range where this bat cave was.

Wow! We saw so many bats, we watched for around one hour whilst all the bats exited the cave, there must have been millions of them, the Asian Wrinkle-Lipped variety apparently. They made beautiful murmurations as the sun came down and it was worth the journey to Battambang for this alone.

Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia but it certainly didn’t feel like a big place, it was a quick and easy walk around to see the old colonial buildings on the riverside. Battambang didn’t have much to offer really but we did have fun on the “Bamboo Train”.

I’m plagiarising the lonely planet and other internet sources here:

The bamboo train runs from O Dambong, (4km south of Battambang) to O Sra Lav, via half an hour of clicks and clacks along warped, misaligned rails and vertiginous bridges left by the French.

Each bamboo train (known in Khmer as a norry) consists of a 3m long wood frame, covered lengthwise with slats made of ultra-light bamboo, that rests on two detachable axles with wheels, the aft one connected by fan belts to a 6HP gasoline engine, which cruises along at about 15km/h

The genius of the system is that it offers a brilliant solution to the most ineluctable problem faced on any single-track line: what to do when two trains going opposite directions meet. In the case of bamboo trains, the answer is simple: one car is quickly disassembled and set on the ground beside the tracks so the other can pass. The rule is that whichever car has fewer passengers has to cede priority.

It was very silly and possibly a little dangerous but good fun all the same and apparently may be stopped in the future so I guess we were lucky to experience it.

We left Battambang the next day and headed to Siem Reap. Let’s be honest this is the real reason people come to Cambodia, to visit the temples of Angkor.

We checked in to a nice place which had a free fish spa not too far from the main drag called ‘pub’ street...

We did visit this pub street on our first night expecting to see lots of drunken backpackers but it was surprisingly calm and actually there were more families enjoying their evening meals. The beer was cheap so we did some good people watching.

The following morning, we hired bikes and set off early to go and visit some of the temples. We bought a three day pass as we knew we would need more than one day to enjoy all the major sites as they are spread out over quite a big distance, in fact by the end of the first day, we had cycled 42km!

We should explain, for those who haven’t been, it’s not just Angkor Wat that you come to visit, there are many temples of all shapes and sizes (see the map below to get an understanding).

On the first day, we started off in the Angkor Thom complex and we visited; Bayon with all it’s amazing faces, Baphuon which had views from the top, Phimeanakas and the Terraces of the Elephants and also of the Leper King. We made our way north out of Angkor Thom complex and headed to Preah Khan which would turn out to be our favourite. Just as we got into this temple it rained hard for about 20 minutes so that kept the crowds away which always makes for a better experience. This temple isn’t on the main circuit and hasn’t been renovated as much as the others so its ruinous state made it feel more authentic to us and there were the classic Tung trees growing through the stones of the temple which makes for great photos as all the roots envelope themselves. After staying at this temple for quite some time, we moved on to see the next temple down the road called Neak Pean. We got off our bikes and entered into what we thought was it. Walking around however, we noticed the similarities between this temple and the one we had just visited, it didn’t dawn on us until about 10 minutes later that we were in fact still in Preah Khan! We had entered into this temple again but by a different gate!!! Silly idiots that we are.. In our defence this temple complex was vast and did sprawl over an area of some 5sq kilometres.

We then finally visited Neak Pean which was an anti-climax, followed by Ta Som which is a small scale version of Preah Khan and finally Pre Rup which was a Hindu temple so the architecture was quite different to the other mainly Buddhist temples we had seen. The views from up high were good here too. We made the long cycle back and were quite exhausted by the time we had arrived back..

The following day, we didn’t get up quite so early (we weren’t really interested in seeing the temples during sunrise as most people seem to be) and visited Banteay Kdei which was poorly made truth be told, then Ta Prohm which is the famous temple for tree roots eating their way at the stones. Ta Prohm is going through renovations and has been ‘touristed up’ to make it safe for the hoards of Asian tourists that flock here now, so much so that there is a route for visiting the place and you get shouted out if you go the wrong way around, ridiculous! The filming of Tomb Raider has had an affect on it’s popularity and this did affect our enjoyment somewhat. It was too crowded and it somehow felt unauthentic, we had expected to enjoy this one but we much preferred Preah Khan for the experience although we did manage to get some good photos as we were ‘naughty’ and went into places you’re not supposed too.

We then made our way to the famous one, Angkor Wat. Wow this place is huge. It took us about eight minutes to walk over the two causeways to get to the centre of this complex. It’s so big and bold, it’s more of a fortress than a building dedicated to religion. The most striking aspect is the Bas-Reliefs galleries that go all the way around the temple, an area 1sq Kilometre, so much work has gone into them and you can’t imagine how many people or how long it must have taken to carve.

We felt somewhat ‘templed out’ by the end of day two. We had given some thought to visiting some other temples quite far out such as Banteay Srei the following day but as we have had the luxury of seeing very similar ones in India at Khajuraho and we had already seen the best temples, we decided to not do too much for the next couple of days before we took our flight to Bangkok.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at Angkor although Wend kept saying that “it was so different when I was here sixteen years ago”! She was lucky to have been here then and have the place virtually to herself, it’s certainly got more crowded since.

Our Lasting Memories of Cambodia:

Temples of course.

Bats!

Paddy Fields.

Old Traditional wooden houses.

Beef Lok Lak, we ate this quite a lot, nothing too amazing but it came with a lovely lime sauce which made a change from all the soy and chill sauces we’d been eating in Vietnam.

Cambodian People’s Party Signs everywhere.

Phnom Penh