Coast-to-Coast...to Coast: December 2014

It was also my brilliant idea to take a bus to do an overland border crossing from Siem Reap, Cambodia to Thailand. When I say brilliant, I actually mean horrible, because that’s what it was, absolutely horribly terrible. Not only were we on a bus for four hours, but then we waited in a line with all our baggage for another two hours before getting back on tiny shuttle van for another four hours. Then we were dropped off in the middle of Bangkok without any phone or map to find out where we were. Our plan was to take an overnight train to Chiang Mai but since it was close to New Years, we knew that it might be hard to get weekend overnight train tickets. So anyways, we finally found a Tuk Tuk that wasn’t trying to rip us off and got to the train station. We were able to get two tickets on an overnight train to Chiang Mai and even got an upper and lower berth that were together! We had heard that the train derails occasionally and it was so rickety sounding and loud, I was convinced it was going to happen while we were on it. It’s pretty hard to sleep on a train…so many noises and movements. But it’s certainly better than sitting up all night!

When we arrived in Chiang Mai, we didn’t have any reservations for a place to stay and we quickly realized that it was going to be very difficult to find a hostel or hotel since it was only a few days before New Years. Don wasn’t feeling very well so I left him in a Starbucks with all of our bags while I went out to find a place for us to sleep. Ended up going through a “travel agent” who found us one of the only hostels that still had room for us in all of Chiang Mai. But let me tell you, it was pretty obvious why they had rooms left. It was pretty terrible. Not only was it next to a very loud restaurant but the bathroom was the size of a small closet. The shower was just a hose on the wall and the drain was on the other side of the tiny room and since the floor wasn’t sloped towards the drain. After I had the “shower” on for about a minute, the whole room was flooded with water.

Aside from the place that we were staying, Chiang Mai was wonderful. One of my favorite places we had been so far in southeast Asia. It was so full of art and culture. All of the markets were filled with handmade crafts and beautiful things. The variety of restaurants and types of food was astounding as well.

Side note: back in Cambodia, we had realized our intense love for Indian food so in Thailand, we were very excited to find out that there were lots of delicious Indian restaurants!

We spent most of our days wandering around Chiang Mai going to bookstores, eating fresh fruit, and hanging out in coffee shops. It was a wonderfully relaxing time. Since we were there for New Years, we got to be a part of their exciting countdown festival. All evening before midnight, the night festival took place along with all kinds of musical and theatrical presentations on the stage. We ate our way around the night market…literally trying everything possible. That’s a huge part of the fun of traveling - trying all the weird and different kinds of foods!

We also made our way into one of the temples where monks where helping people light off paper lanterns to commemorate the new year. We used a permanent marker to write on the lantern and then set it off! It was one of those surreal moments where I felt like I was in a National Geographic magazine. It was so beautiful and amazing to experience.

Close to midnight, we headed to the big stage. I grabbed Don’s hand and I pushed our way to the front to be close to the stage. I knew that this might be the only time I’d ever get to experience a Thailand New Year’s celebration so I wanted to be right in the thick of it! I wanted to get confetti in my hair and have ringing ears by the end of the night. A bunch of what we could only guess were Thai dignitaries got on the stage while the emcee was talking in very rapid Thai. We had no idea what she was saying except the occasional “Happy New Year” and “2015” that she would say in the middle of a sentence!

At midnight, confetti was falling from the sky everywhere. Once again, it was one of those surreal moments where you can’t believe you are actually experiencing it and instead it feels like one of those moments where you're outside your body watching yourself experience it. So surreal and beautiful. Breathtaking. After all the pomp and circumstance, a Thai band gets on stage and starts belting out Guns n' Roses and AC/DC...little kids are screaming out lyrics "Highway to Hell" without having any idea what they are singing.

Eventually, we got tired and started to make our way back to our hostel but along our way, we were invited to have a drink at this little frozen yogurt shop. It turns out that the owner is American and wanted to invite all kinds of people over the shop for a New Years party - totally random but awesome. One of his workers was Thai and was literally shoveling beers and mixed drinks at us to have all night/early morning long. A few other Americans ended up showing up at one point and we all hung out and talked/drank/ate until about 4am when we decided it was probably best if we headed back to get some sleep. It's random experiences like that make me love traveling. You never know who you will meet up with along the way. It was honestly one of the best nights our of whole trip just because it was such a unique experience! Like I said before, it's not often you're in Thailand for New Years.

Sitting in truck during our overland border crossing

This photo is pretty adorable

One of the temples in Chiang Mai

The view out of the front of an open air bar on New Year's Eve in Chiang Mai

Chang Classic, of course

Brooke Classic, of course

Glass blowing at the New Year's Eve Night Market

Lanterns in the sky

We lit a lantern to ring in the new year

This was a moment for life

I've never experienced a celebration like New Years in Chiang Mai

VAVA, the frozen yogurt shop we hung out in to the wee hours of the morning on New Year's Day

Don's good at catching some of the my more photogenic moments

We flew to Phnom Penh from Bali and it was like going to a completely different world. The traffic was horrendous and there was no where to walk except in the road or you would be walking through piles of trash. It was one of the dirtiest places I've ever been. It was actually really sad too because it was very clear that there was no middle class for the most part...either you were very wealthy or you were very poor. Our first day we wandered around for a few hours but Don was having some serious stomach issues and was very weak and tired so we headed back to rest and hang out for most of the afternoon.

Another day we rented a Tuk Tuk and driver to go see the Killing Fields, which was amazing and heavy and dark all at the same time. The same day, we also visited some of the bigger temples and palaces in downtown Phnom Penh.

I experienced the wonderful deliciousness of a pumpkin latte shake for the first time in Phnom Penh as well as what I like to call “the drink purse.” It’s pretty much like a plastic strap that goes around the cup and has straps that you carry it with. If I could have, I would have grabbed about 100 of them to give to all my family and friends because honestly, the drink purse is one of the best inventions since sliced bread.

It was my grand idea to take an overnight bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap…good news is that the bus had these strange mostly reclining sleeping beds so that we could sleep or least sleep a little bit more than we would have been able to if they were just seats. We arrived in Siem Reap without any problems. Except that time in the middle of the night when suddenly the bus pulled over and was stopped for at least an hour…I asked the driver where he had been when he came back to the bus. Turns out he needed to eat his dinner at 3am. Needless to say, public transportation in Southeast Asia is consistently exciting! Never a dull moment.

Siem Reap was fabulous, much smaller than Phnom Penh. It wasn’t nearly as dirty and had much more culture than Phnom Penh. Lots of cool coffee shops and stores lining the streets. Our primary reason for being in Siem Reap was to go to Angkor Wat and some of the other temples in the archaeological park but we ended up really enjoying the area. We spent several evenings just walking around and eating and drinking our way through Siem Reap.

Christmas in Siem Reap could have been any day of year besides the few restaurants who were advertising a Christmas Dinner special but we didn't go for that. We decided to stick with a favorite...vegetarian! I skyped with my parents and grandparents who were together in Washington state and we also skyped with Don's dad, sisters, and brother-in-law very quickly while we were on a bus.

Angkor Wat was phenomenal and absolutely exhausting. We rented the hotel's Tuk Tuk and driver for the day and spent about nine hours visiting Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and some of the other ruins. It was far more magnificent than we could have ever imagined. The place is so big, we were barely able to see half of it.