After Jodi left Ko Chang, I stayed there for another couple of days, waiting for my Cambodian visa to come through. To ease my shift into solo travel mode, I moved to another beach, spent some time in a hammock reading, explored the southern end of the island and sampled some of the seafood. I also made friends with a lovely local family who had just set up a restaurant and travel office down the road from where I was staying. They even invited me to join them for a meal with them on their day off!
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| Hanging out with Jim at her lovely family-run restaurant |
A full day's bus trip got me to Siem Reap in Cambodia, and by the evening I had found some new friends to join on a tuk-tuk tour of Angkor Wat the next day. This amazing World Heritage site covers a huge area and contains ruins of impressive Buddhist and Hindu temples and entire cities surrounding them. Some of the ruins are well preserved, others have been completely swallowed up by the jungle over the centuries. You've probably seen images of tall trees growing on top of these crumbling buildings, literally tearing them apart with their roots. More recently the site has been invaded by hordes of tourists, but this doesn't detract too much from the experience. We had a great day exploring on foot, with our faithful driver waiting at each temple to take us on to the next one on his Cambodian-style tuk-tuk, a kind of motorbike-drawn chariot.
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| Exploring Angkor with Lila, Steffi, Carlos, and our driver Barang |
I went back to Angkor for a second day on a rented bike with a broken rear axle (which I only realised after about 7km of hard pedalling). So I got some good exercise as I completed the circuit and visited the rest of the site.
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| Trees with an appetite for ancient architecture |
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| Angkor Wat |
My last days in Asia were spent on Ko Tao, another island in the gulf of Thailand, doing a bit more relaxing and some scuba diving. My hopes of spotting a whale shark were not fulfilled (though one of these amazing creatures had visited the same site just days earlier), but there were plenty of other cool creatures to see. I also completed a Nitrox and deep dive course, so next time I go diving I have the option of paying more money to breathe less nitrogen (more oxygen) and thus dive deeper and longer. In some places it's worth it.
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| Thai BBQ'd fish with mashed spuds & salad - YUM! (should've taken notes as I watched it being cooked) |
Finally I headed back up to Bangkok to catch my flight back to Sydney. I was already at the airport when I found out that my flight got cancelled (the plane was stuck in London due to snow) so I got to hang out at the Qantas business class lounge and drink gin&tonics for a few hours before flying home via Melbourne. Ten months and a couple of days after leaving, I was back in Sydney, but the adventures were not over yet!
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