Onwards Onwards...Cambodia awaits

Hello everyone!

It has been a little while since our last blog and that is mostly because we were lounging around the pool at doug and tom's beachhouse near pattaya, here in Thailand. Since it is along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand, it made for a perfect (and uber luxurious) stop over between our journey to Cambodia.

Alas, it was time to pull ourselves away from the comforts of the beach house (and from YAT, the sweetest puppy who will one day guard the beach house) so we could get a move on. We left for the beach house last Friday night and this morning, Wednesday, we set off on our journey towards Cambodia. Doug and Tom were so wonderful to allow us to stay at the BH while they went back to Bangkok and reality and something called a job? Not sure about that one though. Anyway, as I said it was time to get on with the journey so today we woke up and took a small pickup bus into town, where we caught a larger (but somehow much more sketchy) "aircon" bus (they really throw around the aircon word in thailand, gotta love 'em!) to Rayong which is a small town near some of the beautiful islands on the gulf. Once we had made it to Rayong, it was straight on a bus to Chanthaburi - where we are sitting in our guest house drinking singha to relive some of the heat.

And boy, it is hot. When we first arrived, the Thais were complaning it was "too cold" for them. They looked at Jay and I as if we were crazed apes jumping about in the "cold" weather (25-30 is no good.) Gladly, the temperatures of this dry season have returned to normal and we are enjoying some hot hot hot dry dry dry sunny weather, but I will take anything over waiting for the 504 streetcar in the miserably cold weather (sorry Rory!)

But I digress...

Being back in Thailand has been wonderful, I knew I had missed it a great deal but you can't really know the wonderful feeling that fills you up in this country. One day here and Jay felt it already too. Haven't been back to my old teaching town yet, planning on doing that on our next round in Thailand, which should be around the 11th of February because Karl is coming to visit! Woot! And after a few days of partying with karl, my mum is coming too! Well, we are some spoiled travelers to be sure.

Tomorrow we will be heading out on the several stop mission to Cambodia. We will take a bus from here (Chanthaburi) to the border of Thailand and Cambodia, where we will cross into Cambodia on a hopefully painfree visa experience. We will travel from the border to a town called Pailin where we will not be staying (what kind of tourism agency advertises a town as the move heavily land mined town in Cambodia!?) but moreso because it is a less exciting alternative to Battambang, a city a few hours outside of Siem Reap. We will probably stay there a few days until the next big move over to Siem Reap, where we will see the temples of Ankor (and be thinking of Aunt Rachele the whole time!)

We are well, safe and full of pad thai. We are missing everyone at home, but, the fun has only started...

Love love and more love, from Thailand....

Maeve/Jay