It was pitch black when I arrived, along with about 500 others, at the temple for sunrise. Luckily I had my headlamp with me, as there were no lights to be found, and you're walking over a 900 year old rock road with varying surface heights. This photo was taken with quite a long exposure as i set my camera on a wall and aimed as best i could.

This was my second day of temple trekking, and it really is a full time job plus overtime. For my day at Angkor Wat, I woke up at 4:30am, threw on clothes, and grabbed a ride on a scooter taxi to the temple. It was awesome to see just how big of a crowd was flocking here for sunrise. I stayed at the temple from 5am until 10am, heading back to my hotel for some sleep while smartly avoiding the hottest part of the day. It was well over 100 by 1pm. At 4pm, I jumped back on a taxi, and headed back to the temple to explore the carvings and stay for sunset. Around 7pm, it was time to head back to shower and find food. Oh, and a beer...

This is what everyone's been waiting for. It was quite a surreal experience to watch the light slowly change overhead, while 50 meters to my left are the calls of the locals saying "Chair for sunrise only $1. Come with free coffee!"

Almost...

With the sun fully up, the details of the temple show themselves. For an idea of the size of this building, look at the people standing in front of it.

No, there wasn't a hit of acid in your coffee this morning, and you're not catching trails from buddha's arm, for there are indeed 8 of them.

Beautiful

up close with the central and tallest tower of Angkor Wat. While standing near the tower, a bird close to the top dislodged several quarter-sized bits of the tower which would not have tickled if they had landed on my precious cranium.

Over the centuries, looting of an epic scale has taken place at all of the temples. Most of the buddha statues have been taken in their entirety. Of the ones that remain, the vast majority have had only their heads stolen.

There was a tour guide nearby when i came upon these buddhas. i asked him how old they were and he tells me, öh, these aren't the old ones. These are from the 16th century." I guess it's all relative.

This was one hell of a steep and slightly scary climb to the upper portions of Angkor Wat, but well worth the views and being closer to the main towers to truly appreciate their scale. After climbing back down, myself and a german lady exchanged commentary on the various styles people had while descending. It was pretty funny to watch. I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of chinese and korean tourists, of their "holy shit this is way scarier going down"expressions.

Wedding party outside of the temple.

My eyes were sweating.

This is just a tiny section of the carvings on the wall that surrounds Angkor Wat. There are over 2400 feet of them, it is truly mind blowing. This section shows people being judged and going to either heaven or hell. This is a scene from hell where the demons inflict torture on people. The figures are a shiny black from millions of fingers touching them over the centuries.

Outside of the major temples are tons of food stalls and souveneir (sp?) stands. Manning all of these are tons and tons of children. And they are renlentless in their sales tactics. First they ask you if you want to buy "cold drink." From there it quickly progresses to bracelets, 10 postcards for $2-which quickly drops to$1, scarves, books, flutes, mouth harps, etc. After many no's from me, they ask where you are from. Giving the answer, they proceed to tell you your state's capital city, population, name of the president, ending with "now you buy!" After a "no," they'll ask you the captial of Madagascar. I told them I didn't know, and they told me "Because you not know, you buy!" I eventually caved and bought some bracelets from one of the little girls. Within 5 seconds of the money exchange, a different little girl who was trying to sell me things earlier came running over saying, ÿou told me no, and now you buy from her!" all the while i'm sitting there eating my fried noodles. after a while, i got them talking about school and their families and they chilled out on the sales pitches. the little boy on the left gave his farewell to me like this. "Bye bye, nice to meet you. I go home now and my mom kill me cause you no buy." They even wanted to charge me for taking their photo.

The sun winks goodbye behind a large veil of haze. And I am ready for a shower.

One, a beautiful fully functioning Canon g10...the other, a very sexy paperweight.

So after having myself and my camera dumped into the gulf of thailand, i had to wait almost 2 weeks to get back to bangkok to shop for a new one. Unfortunately for me, my model is no longer in stock in camera shops because the newer model, the g11, came out 6 months ago. As i was narrowing down my search for the cheapest g11, i came across a nice little shop that had a g10 for sale on consignment. Instead of paying $600 for the g11, i scored with a gently used g10 for half the price. Bingo!

The following few pics are from Koh Tao. This is a lovely little island in the gulf of thailand. We ended up meeting up with some of Tara's friends from the yoga retreat she was on back in Chang Rai. We then had 5 gorgeous days of getting ceritified for open-water scuba diving and riding a quad all over the island...mostly on sandy rocky narrow "roads." More of these pics and pics from the next island, Ko Lanta, when i can get them from tara's camera as mine wasn't feeling well from too much salt water and sand ingestion.

Ahh...sunrise at the Chumpron pier. Very soon after I took this, we boarded the ferry for the final leg of the journey to Koh Tao, a 1.5 hr ride. Cake after the 9 hour bus!

This is one of the coolest things that are made in Thailand. I believe it is called a con-fi. Spelled phonetically...It is a 2.5 ft radius metal ring, with 3 to 4 feet of tissue paper attached. Running radially to the center are 3 metal wires with a flammable paper-like material suspended in the middle. They basically operate on the same priniciple as hot air balloons. What you are seeing here is stage 1. The lighting of the fuel. You are also seeing my sexy shorts. First pair i've purchased probably in 15 years.

The second stage in the process of making the con-fi airborne is to move it up and down to capture the hot air within the enclosed space...

We have lift off! These things will fly and are visible for about 6 minutes until the fuel is all burned up. They get so high that eventually they look like a little orange star.

Me and the girls. The redness in my face is more sweating and sunburn than drinking...although by the end of the night i think i was just red from drinking.

All the girls had the same form...straight arms. Why? Because all girls have weak girly-man muscles. Believe me now, think about it yesterday.

Can you believe I didn't make the olympics? Just look at that form! That stupid grin!!

So this is the guy. I don't even know his name. The girl behind him does because I think they made out later. This guy, out of nowhere, came flying at me on the rope swing, crashed into me, hereby sending myself and my camera into the water. There was a small 666 chiseled into his scalp.

After 20 hours of travel, finally back in Bangkok. As is the case with Thailand, if something takes 20 minutes, it really means 30. 60 means 90, and in my case 15 hours really means 20. It is currently 8:07am, been on the go since noon yesterday, and am now trying to kill 2 hours until my hotel room is ready. Looking forward to a shower followed by a looooong nap by the pool, followed by camera shopping, so hopefully will be posting new photos later as it's been a while. The plan is 2 days in Bangkok, then heading eastward to Cambodia. So for now I'm going to try to control my sweat, try to put off a pending bathroom stop, and get myself to a mango shake.

So...after meeting up with Tara last Monday, we made it to Bangkok and finally arrived on the island of Kho Tao after a 15 minute tuk-tuk ride, a 13 hour train ride, lots of drinks with friend Joe and girlfriend Ae in Bangkok, followed by a mile walk with all of our bags, an 8 hour bus ride, a 2 hour ferry boat, wrapped up by a 6 minute ride in the back of a pick-up truck to our skanky-ass room. We were too tired to look at any other places, so took the shitty place for 2 nights. Yesterday we started our scuba certification class, and as long as it all goes well tomorrow, we both should be certified. I'll post pictures once i get a new camera. sadly, my G-10 is dead due to a very unfortunate push into the gulf of thailand by a very drunk british guy. more on that later...
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So I've met up with my friend Tara, we're in Bangkok and in a few hours we'll be taking an overnight bus followed by a 2 hour speedboat ride to the island of Ko Tao where we'll indulge in beach time and scuba certification classes. I wasn't going to post this next little story, but Tara is forcing me to do so...

This happened about a week ago.

I was sitting at an outdoor bar with some friends in Chang Rai. To our backs was the street. Two of the girls that worked at the bar had gone out to get some food on their scooter. After 20 or so minutes they pulled up behind us and promptly fell over with the scooter practically on top of them. Being the man of action that I am, I jump off of my stool, stand in front of the scooter (so it is facing me head on), with the intention of grabbing the handlebars and pulling the bike to an upright position. While I begin this action, I'm lifting the bike upright, but unknowingly when i grab the handlebars i also inadvertantly twist the throttle. As the bike is almost upright, it is also starting to come straight at me. At this point I understand what is happening, but my mind cannot react quickly enough to let go of the throttle. So yes, I run over myself with the scooter. The bike bashes me out of the way and I go a tumbling down the street and the scooter again falls over about 5 ft down the alley. Luckily the bike is unscathed, and Derek ends up with a few cuts and bruises on his left leg, and a giant bruise on his ego. Not sure if anyone here is familiar with monty python, but i definitely could have won the "twit race."

The next 20 or so photos are from my journey between Chang Mai and Chang Rai. I know there's a lot from the boat trip, but it was just so beautiful...The rivers are very low this time of year and the boats go down them like a pin ball, or a drunk Florencia if you will, to ride atop the deepest parts. You knew it was going to be an interesting ride when the final thing you saw the boat pilot do was throw an extra propeller into the boat. bon voyage

This was the interior of the bus i rode from Chang Mai to Thaton. Can you say 1950's? My final destination was another town called Chang Rai, and i could have either taken a direct 4 hour busride from Chang Mai to Chang Rai, or, plan b was to take the bus to Thaton, stay the night at a riverside bungalow speaking german with a bunch of germans, then take a 4 hour boat ride to reach Chang Rai. I went with option b.

View from my bus window.

This may have been the cutest thing i've ever eaten. and it was full of chocolate. i had a whole box.

If you can zoom in on this photo, many of the dark, goatee looking appendages on the dragons heads are not part of the statue, but giant bees' nests. The swarms around the heads were unbeliveable.

The backside of this statue was absolutely glowing in the setting sunlight.

The sun sets over one of the wats in Thaton. This place was called the 9 levels, and there were obviously 9 different temples on the side of this mountain, each one higher than the next. I made it to level 8, but level 9 was too far and it was going to be dark, and i still had a 5km walk back to the guesthouse.

Who's ready for a boat ride!

This is the man! He zig-zagged our boat the whole way to stay in the deepest parts of the river. We still scraped bottom a couple of times, only once was he phased by it. Probably because instead of just scraping the middle bottom of the boat on the bottom of the river bed, we scraped the right side on a large hidden boulder, making the whole boat cant pretty sharply to the left. When i looked back at him, he just nodded and laughed.

This was my view for the 4 hour ride. It's funny because i expected, you know, benches or seats. Instead there were little pillows on the floor and tons of life jackets so we all just padded ourselves, stretched out and enjoyed.

Please feel free to ad a caption to whatever this expression is.

Every 2km or so, there'd be group of kids playing in or near the river. I like this shot for the tenacious hole-digging.

About midway through our journey, our boats pulled over onto some rocks and i'm thinking, a bathroom break, what great timing as pee was about to come out of my eyes. Alas, it was not an official bathroom break, but instead everyone had to get off and walk about a half mile so the pilots could navigate a stretch with two gnarly rapids. The photos don't do the skills of our piloti justice. These boats are very long with a propeller jutting off the rear of the boat at the end of a 6ft long drive shaft which is attached to an 8 cylinder car enging which is mounted in such a way that the pilot can swivel and swing in all directions. And it ain't light. To watch these boats turn almost sideways to negotiate a bend, then snap through 180 deg to avoid the rocks and round the next corner was something to see. I think that myself and fellow passengers had one eye on the boat and one on all of our luggage which was still packed at the front of the boat, doing a mental checklist of what wouldn't survive if wet.

Getting back onboard after rapids avoidance...the guy in the blue shirt is an aussie that i had seen biking up and insane hillclimb as our bus passed him the day before between Chang Mai and Thaton. He was a few days into a 2000 km bike ride through Thailand and Laos. As we passed him I yelled hello and he waved without looking up. When i met him before the boat trip I mentioned that i had seem him biking up a wicked hill the day before, and he says, "You're the lad that yelled hello, thanks for stopping!"

So our boat rounds a bend, and this is the scene that unfolds in front of us. This is an elephant camp at one of the hill tribe which exisits to take people, mostly westerners, on elephant rides through the village and river. I saw about 30 elephants in all. It's amazing how gentle a happy elephant is. You literally can go right up to one and "pet" him, and they just tap you with their trunk. You also don't realize how big some of these guys are until one walks right up to you and stops a foot away. That is called trust.

So we're just sitting in the boat as our pilot is taking his time "docking," which means driving the bow of the boat up onto some rocks, as this herd is splashing toward us. Quite a feeling to be 3 feet away and just 2 feet above water level as 40 some elephant legs thunder past.

Self portait with elephant. You could buy a bag of bananas and sugar cane for .80c and feed these beautiful animals. If you fed too slowly, they would put the end of their trunk in your face and give a hard breath. It stinks. When the bag was empty of food they would tap you with their trunk then point over to the food stand. After 3 taps and me not moving they would give up. This guy i took the photo with kept rubbing his head on a wooden pole. Finally i understood and scratched him really hard where he was rubbing. Not sure if he liked it, or couldn't feel a thing from my feeble human hands.

After a 30 minute pitstop to pee, grab a snack, and feed some elephants, it was about time to hop back onboard for the 45 minutes until reaching our destination of Chang Rai.

This is my trusty pack, or my "house" as eric told me i would refer to it as, also enjoying the ride perched at the bow of our scorpion-tail long boat. I definitely have brough too much stuff along. Could lose 20% and be very happy.

Ok, here's a few photos from my 2 day motorcycle trip outside of Chang Mai to the mountain village of Samoeng. As i look back through these posts, i realize that i've been spelling "Samoeng" differently almost every time i type it. so be it, i'm not fixing them. This was a thrilling 2 days, full of beauty and adrenaline. Sometimes the adrenaline was from the awe of what i was seeing, or the thrill of riding corners on such a great little bike. Sometimes, it was from other...

this sign was in the national park in the northern interior of thailand. the second rule is quite easy to abide by.

My canon G10 was hanging nicely from a tree branch for this pic. She's a great travel partner and i rarely go anywhere without her. Oh and that's some silly waterfall behind me.

So i really fell for this little bike. She was only a 250 cc, but the redline was at 12,000, and once the rpms went above 8000, shit really went bananas. My route to Samoeng, as suggested by jim who rented me the bike, was one i shall never forget by a combination of pure beauty and sheer terror. The "road" he pointed out on my map was to be very scenic, but also very treacherous. I didn't know this until i was on it. It consisted of very steep, very ruddy, dirt inclines and declines. There were two moments coming down the mountain where i think i was praying, and i'm an athiest. the hill was incredibly steep, the ruts were so deep and soft that the rear tire kept sliding down into them, as this is a sportsbike with slick tires, not knobby-tired like a dirtbike. i would let the front wheel go where it wanted and basically slide the locked back wheel all over to keep her up. i didn't see the license plate until after we finished this "taxing" part of our ride, about 2 hours worth. Once i saw it, her name came to me. i call her...

...El Diablo Negra!

This was one of the best rides of my life. It was like RT 125, but 85 miles of it. It had everything...switchbacks, sweepy fast curves, tight little twisties, crazy altitude changes, hardly any traffic, and a beautiful road surface. Bliss.

This is what Somoeng morning traffic looks like.

On the left is my little bungalow in the mountain village of Samoeng.

This is a particularly important work-out, as it exercises the often overlooked 3rd and 4th arms.