One Month Later

It has been almost a month since I updated this. Busy month. It is also three months today since I arrived in Cambodia. The internship at BAB ended on the 27th. It was a very busy last couple of weeks trying to wrap everything up and have a final product completed. It was also many weeks of goodbyes and goodbye parties, and doing things one last time. Speaking of last times - the Fair, the enchanting alluring evil wonderful Fair... has been torn down. It was a sad day when I heard about it. No warning and no notice, the government just tore it down. Only one lonely ferris wheel still stands amidst a pile of debris. Shed a tear for the Fair.

I am back in PP for the next three days - I got back on Friday from Thailand. I was in Thailand for about 10 days with Grace. We flew into Bangkok on the 30th. It was a shock to arrive in a huge city, and get in an actual car, and drive through traffic on freeways. There is still an element of otherness - tons of motorbikes, some tuktuks, and pad thai in the street, but for the most part it is a huge major city and has everything that huge cities have.

We left Bangkok after only a day and took a bus and boat to Koh Tao, an island on the East coast of Thailand. The island itself was beautiful, but the area I stayed in was ruined by over development and overrun with tourists. We stayed there for four days to do an Open Water Diver Certification scuba course. The four days of the course ended up being the highlight of my time in Thailand by far. It is a very unreal experience breathing underwater. Very calming. The day after the course ended we got on a boat and headed to Koh Phangan, one island South of Koh Tao. This was much more what I expected Thailand to be. We stayed at a resort away from the main town/beach on the island. Beautiful. Left there on thursday morning at 10am and traveled for 23 hours to get back to PP. Went from truck to boat to bus to taxi to plane to tuk tuk.

24 hours after that I rented a dirt bike and drove 3 hours to the coast of Cambodia. Stayed overnight and spent Sunday touring through a town of ruined French colonial mansions. They were overgrown and abandoned, crumbling. Haunted looking. Leaving for Hanoi on Thursday..