Scariest Drive of Our Lives.

We had booked a bus for 9am the next morning. We got picked up at 8.30 by a tuk-tuk and told we would arrive in Bangkok at 4.30pm. By this stage we were very dubious about any times given us.

The first part of the trip to the border was SO hot. We were sitting at the back of the bus again! (It seems that out of all of busses we have been on in the last three months we have spent an unfair amount of time in the back seat which is definitely the worst place.) It was boiling because we were sitting on top of the engine and the aircon was not working. I was sweating right through my dress.

We stopped and used one of the last squat toilets I hoped to see in a decent while.

We were dropped at the border after being stickered with a red sticker. The time it took to get through the border was crazy. I think it took about two hours. We were waiting in cue after cue. An old Asian lady tried to push in front of us at one point but I tapped her on the shoulder and gestured with my thumb and sent her to the back of the line. :)

Once on the other side we had to wait in a group and then were taken to get lunch. We were then put in mini vans and set off for Bangkok (back on the left hand side of the road again). Our driver was a mental case. He was driving so fast and crazily we were literally fearing for our lives. It took hours and I think he got lost once because he turned around and went back the way we had come a while. When we were coming into Bangkok on a motorway he was driving as mental as ever and popped a tire! So he made us all get out and stand on the motorway while he changed it.

That was okay and then he herded us all back in and set off like he was possessed. Things got even scarier, he was driving So SO crazily. When we got into more crowded streets the couple in the front at one point said "Slow down!" (They had kept their tongues up until then but it got too much.) So the driver starts yelling at them in Thai, then swerves to the side of the road, jumps out, marches around to their door, yanks it open and yells at them in Thai to get out of the van! I'm sure there were some swear words involved.
They didn't get out so he marched back to his seat and drove EVEN crazier (it was hard to believe). Everyone let out a sigh of relief when he told us we were there and to get out. He was horrid! There were pretty fairy lights in the trees there though which was exciting.

Then we were immediately descended apron by dodgy taxi drivers who wanted to rip us off. I showed one guy our hostels address and he said he know it and will take us for 400 Baht but I knew it was less than 100. I was like, "No way, we will go with you if you put your meter on". He refused and kept saying "It very far." Which is a total lie. I told him I had been there before and knew it was close. (I had and did.) In the end he went off in a huff because I wouldn't allow him to rip us off! So we went and changed our money on Kho San Road where we had been dropped and got the nice ladies in the booth to translate the address on google translate into Thai for us to show taxi drivers. It took about 6 tries before we got someone who would take us with the meter turned on! And it only cost like 56 Baht!

It was nice to be back at Joy's! We arrived about 8.30pm so it turned out to be a 12 hour mission - 4 hours longer than they said. I wish they would just tell you the right times! We relaxed that night after a return trip to our favorite restaurant Bamboo. Yum!

The next day we got our bags packed, collected our surfboards which Joy had kindly looked after for us while we were traveling (Thanks Joy!!!) and then headed off on the train to buy a few things. When we returned we waited a little bit and then headed off to get a taxi to the airport. It took us about 5 or 6 trys to get a taxi that time too. No one wanted to use their meter. Then the guy that we did get wanted to charge extra for the surfboards but we refused (we were all going in the same car after all)! In the end he agreed to turn on the meter. He had wanted us to pay 400 Baht. We had to pay two motorway tolls on the way which cost 45 Baht and 25 Baht and the meter came to 255 Baht so it only cost us 325 Baht instead of the 400 Baht he wanted. (25 Baht cost NZ$1.) We were so sick of people being rude to us and constantly trying to rip us off and lying to us! We were ready to leave Asia.

When we went to check in we put our bags on the scales and the lady said we could not have 3 bags. I explained about how we had booked before the baggage rules changed and were aloud 23kg each with no limit to the number of bags. She rang her supervisor and confirmed this. Then she said that two bags would have to belong to one person and two combined were over 23kg. We tried to say that we had previously shared all the bags. She seemed to accept this and then said that our total bag weight was over 46kg. This seemed strange to us since previously our packs had both only weighed about 12kg and the board bag about 14. So she made us go and unpack all our bags and take out all the heavy things. When we had done this (it took half an hour) we took our bags back and she weighed them again and they were well under! Here scales were broken! So we put all the heavy things into Steve's pack so it was packed all lumpy. So annoying! She didn't even apologise! We were hungry and not for noodles or rice so we had a burger from Burger King while we waited for our plane which left at 9.30pm. When we got on the plane it was so nice. We were in the 4 middle seats sitting next to a young Australian couple so they were good to talk to at the beginning and end of the flight. But I will tell you about the rest of it in the next post.

Old School Temples in Cambodia.

The following morning we got up at 4.20am so we could go and watch the sun rise at Angkor Wat. There was a tuk-tuk drive in the dark with a much better tuk-tuk driver and then we walked up to the old stone temple as the sun rose behind it. It was a very beautiful site but my camera didn't really capture the colours well.

There were a lot of other people with the same idea of I took some photos of them too. :)

It was hard for me to see through the crowd...

Between the four of us we had hired a guide for the day and he was really very knowledgable. His name was Sunith. (Said Sun-It.)

Here he is telling us all about Angkor Wat.

He was also super passionate about the relief carvings in the stone so he made it more interesting. He did a really good job.

There was this funny guide who was a Loas man but had a really strong and loud Texan accent! I kept looking at him expecting to see a cowboy or something but it was just this little Asian dude!

Here Steve is making a wish.

Some monkeys were getting up to some monkey business on the temple too!

The relief sculptures all told stories (mostly religious based at the first temple). The story that stood out most for me was about the Gods and the Demons using a big snake to twist a mountain on a tortoise's back. I have forgotten what they were stirring up now though. It was a popular story. I loved it when Sunith excitedly pointed out his favorite parts. We climbed up to the top of that temple and admired the view. (Not up these stairs though...)

Here are the stairs you could go up and down. Very steep!

Here you can see how the temple was constructed.

After a break for breakfast (we had been supplied a packed breakfast which was a few bits of bread, a few bananas and a little packet marmalade - we were not impressed, it was a rip off for the price we payed) we went to a temple with lots of heads facing in all the directions of the compass. We stopped at a bridge on the way though that had statues depicting the demon and Gods story again.

One side of the bridge shows the demons pulling the snake and the other side shows the gods.

Some of the bits of snake have broken and are gone.

That's our green tuk-tuk

The heads temple had been partially ruined because it had been left unattended for a long time and wild beasts like tigers had lived in it. Trees had grown in it and elephants had scratched their backs on bits of it! A tornado in the 80's (I think it may have been 1987) had also ruined part of it. During religious disagreements most of the images of Buddha had been removed. Most of the relief sculpture at this temple told stories of every day life of the time it was created.

Here Sunith is explaining about how the images of Buda have been removed.

Sunith was very excited to take pictures with Bron and Ryan's iPad. The relief sculpture in this temple I liked more as they were all of everyday events and scenes rather than religious in nature. 

The next temple we just walked through by ourselves.

We climbed up to the top of this one too in the hot hot sun.

Look how steep the steps are! Talk about vertigo!!!

I had to wear a t-shirt over my dress when we went up the top of the temples because it was a sacred religious site.

Can you see the reclining Buda in this photo? A long time ago some people took the stones of the temple and made this Buda.

No one is quite sure what these towers were used for.

There were some talented artists painting the temples for tourists to buy.

 And the last one was the one where Tomb Raider was filmed. It was really interesting because all the trees had half taken it over.

I liked looking at all the old trees.

This was my favorite temple. I liked it because I enjoyed seeing the merging of nature with something made by man.

Don't you love how this tree looks like it is delicately perched on the wall?

The trees were huge!

At 3pm we were finished and super tired. 10 hours of temple exploring! Ryan had a cold and had sneezed about 1000 times in the day! I nearly fell asleep in the tuk-tuk at least 5 times on the way home and kept jerking awake at the last moment as I was afraid I would fall out. That afternoon we had a good nap after lunch. Then we went out for our last dinner with Bron and Ryan. We had heaps of fun with you guys! I'm glad we met up and could travel together for so long!

We said goodnight to the geckos and packed our bags ready to head back to Thailand in the morning.