Hello southern Thailand, gee you're nice!

Sawadee from Koh Samui!

I'm writing from the icy cold office of the place I'm staying in tonight. I didn't plan to stay on this island, but when I arrived, they told me the ferries were oversold for the day and I'd have to stay. And no, I didn't get fooled...I actually went to the pier to make sure this was fact and not fiction and viola, here I am.

I'm staying in a place that costs three times what I was paying in Cambodia, but at $15, it's still not so bad for one night. Its a total resort town and I'm not even sure I can eat authentic thai food here, but my little bungalow is magically clean and adorable and the beach is across the street and the pool stays open till midnight, so I'm thinking I've landed on my feet. Ha ha, travel snafus cannot hold me down!

Tomorrow morning I will take a catamaran to the smaller island of Koh Tao where I'll (hopefully) get to scuba dive for the first time ever (!!!) and also rock climb. Since I just used three exclamation points in the previous sentence, I'll restrain myself on this one, but I am unbearably excited.

Bangkok was fun, too. I forgot I haven't written about that. I met up with the ever-hilarious Stephanie Finn and a friend of hers (Jordan) and we actually stayed right in the heart of party-central, at Kao San Road. I wrote to my dad that it was like all the spring break trips I'd never gone on as a college girl happening at full strength, right outside our door.

It was great to travel with someone I knew from before and hearing Steph's stories about India made me want to drop everything to go. She was in the Himilayas for pete's sake!

I think I'll have to come back and give Bangkok it's own post, but for now, I'll slap some photos up from Cambodia and cross my fingers that my time on the internet won't expire before they can load!

These were our boychild boat captains on the river tour we did in Siem Reap. When we got on the boat and they started it up and drove us off, Laura and I looked around like they were playing a trick on the adult who was supposed to be in charge. Nope! Anyways, our captain goes to school in the mornings (6 days a week,) drives the tour boat at night and then sleeps on the boat overnight, too. He sees his family ever couple of weeks, they live in the floating village down river a bit. Wait, did I already tell you that?

These are supposed to be the beautiful muses who inspired great kings (the dancing Apsaras) but they just looked hot and bored to me.

If you look closely, you can actually see Laura Croft raiding this tomb. No, no you can't. But did you look?

More temple-mania! We thought this one looked a bit cathedral-ish. Everything was so ornately carved - we just kept asking each other, "what would this have looked like back in the day," and shaking our heads over what the ancient Khmers were able to do. Its crazy to think how they've been reduced to such a poor, broken country. A very stark contrast when you get into the history and see the remnants of their once-great empire.

The little rooftop cafe/bar at the Popular Guesthouse. See, I told you it was sweet!

Houses on stilts above tributaries of the Tonle Sap - the water feeds the rice paddies (patties?) that you can't quite see in the background. The Cambodian countryside was such a trip after the chaos and dirt of Phnom Penh. I couldn't believe how much better off the people in Siem Reap seemed to be doing - it's quite, there's no trash and the absence of car and moto horns sort of freaked me out at first.

The start of the spread the daycare staff made for me on our "thank you dinner" night. I still can't get them doing it. So humbling.

Just another day in Phnom Penh. Really.

This is lunchtime at the day care. The kids eat the same amount of food as a grown man would and they eat family style, mostly managing to serve themselves and each other and their shirts and the table and the floor, but still mostly their mouths. Some of them are as young as 3. I think this qualifies them as geniuses, really.

And speaking of geniuses, the three older girls in the picture are some of the brightest! When we played hang-man to help them learn to spell (words like car, apple and Jesus,) they were always bouncing up and down. "Yam, yam, yam, issa letta A?" I think "yam" is like saying "miss" but it could've been that they were calling me Big Bozo Face or Hey Whitey. I'm ok not knowing for now. They also talked to me incessantly but, of course, I never knew what they were saying. I always answered and they had no idea what I was saying, but hugs and hair-braiding (lice! lice! lice!) sessions are a universal language, so we got by.