solccs

Dopo un giorno passato a rilassarci (ne avevamo davvero bisogno dopo il viaggio del giorno prima!) e a visitare la citta' e i mercati di Siem Riep, ci alziamo ancora a notte fonda (4h30) per iniziare la nostra prima giornata a Angkor Wat. 2 ragioni per andare cosi' presto: uno, si evita la massa di turisti giapponesi, cinesi, coreani, etc; due, la temperatura e' ideale (alle 10h ci sono gia' 30gradi). Decidiamo di andare in bici per muoverci un po' ma anche perche' e' il mezzo piu' economico.
Passiamo tutta la giornata visitando i templi e alla sera siamo distrutti. Con le ultime forze che ci rimangono andiamo a mangiare al mercato locale, prima di ritornare alla nostra guesthouse e metterci a dormire. Il secondo giorno, di nuovo sveglia alle 4h30. Questa volta decidiamo di noleggiare un tuk tuk (una specia di carrozzella trainata da una moto) per poter visitare un tempio a 30km da qui. Devo dire che in tuk tuk la vita e' molto piu' facile: si sta a sedere tranquilli tutto il tempo e si cammina solo quando si visita il tempio. Niente male!
Domani, comunque, ritorniamo alle noste bici per visitare il tempio di Angkor Wat. Abbiamo lasciato il piu' bello per la fine. Vedremo...

As part of our accommodation deal here in Cambodia we get free bikes to use at our will. Nothing more welcome than that for us bike-aholics as the city and the Angkor sightseeing region is roughly of similar size than Kyoto and we so thoroughly enjoyed our cycling days there. But what a different experience cycling in Cambodia's traffic mayhem is to the organised roads of Japan! It's beautiful, you just make up your rules as you go and improvising at every corner and every slip-road. It's beautiful! Just like driving in Venezuela just with a larger variety of vehicles. Scooters, bikes, pedestrians, cows, cars, tractors, trucks, tuk-tuks...all somehow find their way through this daily maze. For a tourist on a bike it's an eye-opening experience into road-etiquette. First rule: When in doubt smile and floor it! Ooooh Visaka! I think of you and understand better now how you managed to drive in Luxembourg with ease and cool with a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other and somehow still making conversation to your co-pilot... :-D
Taking a tuk-tuk is also fun and most tourists take them here. We found the experience a bit too colonial for our taste. It felt a little like being the first one into a Japanese shopping mall in the morning and everyone bowing to you... I don't know, it's very comfortable and convenient and it brings the locals some money, but we stick to our bikes most of the time.
So our cycling experience has been nearly as enriching as the sites we've seen. We explored the architectural colonial leftovers of Siem Reap (I can't help but feel that this must be like Havanna in Asia) and all but one of the Angkor sites. They are beautiful and I can only compare them with Pompei... Much of our enjoyment has also come from the fact that we took our landlord's advice and leave every morning for the Angkor sites at 5am. Sounds ridiculous, but there are three very good reasons (apart from seeing the moon reflect on the Angkor lakes at dawn). One: Tourist groups start arriving towards 9am and that's when Angkor turns into the Louvre, the National Gallery or the MoMa in terms of crowds. So before that you have them almost literally to yourself (they open at 5am). Two: The heat from 10am starts getting really, really penetrating and at noon it is nearly unbearable so that after every temple visit of 20 minutes you need to take a break of 40 minutes to drink a litre of water. So in the evening the temples you remember as best are almost invariably the ones you saw early in the morning. Three (most importantly for me): Light. The light you get early morning really shows the temples at their best. Every day we look back at the pictures we took during the day and the best are always the ones at dawn. After 9am the sun shines down hard and the reliefs on the walls of the temples become to contrasted and nuances become too difficult to see (to our untrained eyes, anyway).
Anyway tomorrow we'll do our last early morning to see the main highlight, Angkor Wat. We've kept the best for last. More about that soon...

So our rainy days in Thailand are over. We've decided to leave to explore the North. All in all it's been veeeery relaxing here on the islands. Monica got to stay at the beautiful beach she had been dreaming about, I got to snorkel around a bit, we both got to read and relax loads and we can now confirm that Thai food is as good as they say... Although the whole tourist experience is a bit to pre-packaged for my personal liking. Everything is tourist-friendly and ready-made. You just need to pick it up and try to avoid getting a little ripped off in the process. A very recomendable place to visit when you're in need for relaxation and pampering. You'll get spoilt to bits here, but we're craving for a little more adventure and discovery so off we are heading North!
After all this easy tourism I was complaining to Monica how I didn't like having things the easy touristy way...not enough of the explorer spirit...it's like sterilised tourism... Little did I know how drastiocally things were going to change!!!
After our nighttrain to Bangkok we heard in the news that the North was very flooded and battered by recent rains. We decided to change our plans and visit Cambodia, or Angkor to be more precise. We also promised ourselves to travel with the locals and choose the cheapest travel-options available to us (something we have been doing already, but there is little you can do differently on the islands in Thailand). So we bought 3rd class tickets to the Thai-Cambodian border. The train was packed, with people, animals, plants, you name it... We had to stand for long parts of the 5 hour journey and after initial mischievieous looks from the locals we got drawn into conversations and discussion where we'll never find out what they were about...
At the border town (it looked and felt like you'd imagine and Asian 'El Paso' in the days of cowboys and bandits) we spent a night in a little hotel (Saloon :-) ) for less than 4E and a had our cheapest full meal, yet, for less than 2E.
The next day we crossed the border on foot. Also a strange experience...there's a duty-free zone with casinos and such, and then you're deep rural Cambodia. To get to Siem Reap, the city near Angkor, the cheapest 'organised' transport is a bus that takes you on a hell-trip lasting 6 hours (150 km; you do the math!) dodging potholes on the worst dirtroad we've seen here yet. Apart from the beautiful landscape, the smiles of people waving from their vehicles (scooters, overloaded pick-ups, tractors, bikes, four-legged animals of many a kind, etc.) and the thrill during the first half-hour or so the trip was utter pain in the bones! Oh, how I wished we would be back on a comfortable ferry full of foreigners hopping from an island to another....!

A quick entry to say hello and confirm to everyone that Thailand really is just about the sea, the beaches and, well, the sun? It has been quite rainy for the past few days. We've had to limit our activities to sleeping, reading and eating as the picture illustrates.

We're still on Ko Phangan and although it is a little more touristy than Ko Tao we will stay here for the rest of the week. Today we moved hotels to a nicer beach (Monica won't settle for anything but the best). Hopefully the weather will improve and we'll get a chance to get a closer look at what's under water around here, which is what I'm really keen on.

Ieri abbiamo affittato uno scooter per cercare una spiaggia migliore (non che la nostra fosse brutta pero' perche' accontentarsi quando possiamo avere la spiaggi piu' bella dell'isola...??) e ne abbiamo approfittato per vedere l'isola, compresa la famosa spiaggia del full moon party. Verso sera ci siamo avventurati al mercato per cercare qualche cosa da mangiare. Non e' stato amore a prima vista, ma probabilmente perche' non ci siamo adattati ancora del tutto a questo paese e poi perche' non mi sembrava molto reale (c'erano tantissimi occidentali che mangiavano). Vedremo nei prossimi...

We'll write again from there... Hope everyone is well.

Che viaggio per arrivare fin qui! Piu' o meno 30 ore di viaggio, fra aerei, treni, autobus, traghetti prima di arrivare a destinazione, ovvero a Ko Tao, un'isola nel golfo della Tailandia. Ne e' valsa proprio la pena! Una volta arrivati abbiamo ancora dovuto prendere un pick-up che ci portasse al nostro hotel, dall'altra parte dell'isola. La strada (se si puo' chiamare cosi', perche' assomiglia piu' a un sentiero di montagna che a una strada) finisce all'hotel e posto piu' sperduto non esiste. Veramente un bel posto per rilassarsi e adattarsi alla bellezza di questo paese. Noi ci siamo rimasti 3 giorni, passando il tempo a sguazzare o a dormire. Un sogno!! Oggi ci dirigiamo verso un altra isola, Ko Phangan da dove invieremo altre foto. Per il momento godetevi queste!

From Aso we took the train to Kyoto, Japan's capital of tourism, I guess. There is so much to see here that our three-day-stay still wasn't enough to do it real justice. That doesn't mean we didn't try and make the most of it. We cycled most of the time through the city going from one cultural attraction to the next. That in itself provided a great change from our habitual public transport. Taro obviously provided the invaluable guidance and knowledge to make it all the more interesting and enjoyable. Another welcome change from the usual limitation of reading your country guide and local brochure. Kyoto is also the home of Japanese Geishas and we even managed to take a picture of one as she was walking through an alleyway in the geisha-quarter Gion. She didn't seem overly pleased to pose, I don't think, but given that I had chased her down like Taro chasing down Helena Christensen in Copenhaguen years ago, she couldn't refuse my wish.

Our next stop was Kamakura, a small town just South of Tokyo, where Taro's 'Japanese home-base' is in Japan. They organised a huge welcome-barbecue for us in their garden with friends and ex-colleagues of Taro's.
It was great. In fact, the Kikuchi's spoilt us rotten with their food, hospitality and generosity. In the following days we visited the area around Kamakura, its beach, the great buddha and even got to drink tea out of ridiculously expensive bowls.

Another big thank you has to go to the Kikuchi's for our time in Kamakura.

After kamakura it was time for our final stop in Japan: Tokyo. The first impression was quite intimidating as we hit the rush hour on our way to our hostel and stations and publis transport turned into very busy commuter-beehives with very little room for backpacking tourists like ourselves. Eventually we settled into the rhythm and started our own busy sightseeing around town. We saw some of the shopping streets with some impressive modern architecture, went to see the capital's imperial palace gardens and shrine, saw a rainy Tokyo skyline from the Metropolitan Government Buildings, got up early for sushi at the fishmarket and more... In general Tokyo felt like New York. Very busy, upbeat and modern. Suddenly our quiet days at the farm in Aso seemed so far away...

Anyway I think that's our Japan-stay in a nutshell. A final HUGE THANK YOU to Taro for being the best Japan guide we've ever had! ;-) and to Verena for providing all the laughs.

We're now off to Seoul to spend some time with Verena and Taro in Kimchi-land. Hope you readers are all well and dandy. We'll write again soon! (hopefully from Thailand).
To see some more pictures of our time in Japan and Seoul with Taro and Verena check out Taro's galleries on Flickr:
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Gallery2