Bangkok--> Siem Reap

To answer the question on everyone's mind. I fell to the tyranny of the Temples. Heeding every warning not to miss them, I paid the $20- a full days budget- to enter the enormity that is the grounds of the Angkor Temples. The guy I am traveling with, a 30+ Couchsurfer from Boulder I met in Bangkok named Brad, and I rented bicycles and ended up doing a 26km circuit which was a lot of fun. The temples themselves was as I realistically expected. Big temples, big tourists. The best temple was Angkor Thom which you were able to walk through and felt more like I was in an Indiana Jones Movie.

Some of the best times I had though were laughing with some local kids who were trying to sell us postcards. I lent them my hat and Brad was teaching them numbers. Then later we sat down for a cold drink in a small stall/restaurant place and spent the time being taught useful phrases in the Khmer language! On girl's name was Ngyuen which sounds like my name, so she liked me.

Backing up a bit, I had a great time in Bangkok since I last updated. Thursday night I met up with abour a dozen couchsurfers, both hosts and guests, for dinner. Afterwards, three Canadian travelers and I went to Patpong, an area of gogo bars and an all-around circusy atmosphere. I wasn't really interested in going but lets just say one of the Canadians was a female of a certain sub-continent descent, and she easily convinced me.

I'll keep the following description short but honest. There were gogo dancers. There might even have been uncomfortable objects being retrieved from anatomical places they had no earthly business in ever being. It was sick for lack of a better word. I left and chatted up a young Thai guy outside waiting for my friends. Eventually Sofia, yes thats her name, and I left the two other guys, chatted for awhile in the lobby of a nice hotel nearby after using their bathroom and them shared a cab ride to our respective homes.

The next night I hung out with three more CS'ers, Alya from Moscow, Charly from Cameroon- who was living in Bkk, and Brad, my current travel partner. We went to a bar, ate some crickets on the street, and had a good time until it was time for me to leave.

Saturday Sofia and I met up again, got a massage and then met a contact of hers in BKK. A friend of a friend type deal. Nice guy, another Canadian and we hit it off. We only hung out for a bit and then we went home cus I had to get up early.

At 5 the next morning I took a cab across town to Brad's hotel, and we got picked up by a minibus to the border. I let Brad book out bus tickets and this was his choice. I wouldn't let him be in charge again. The ride was more expensive, and full of lots of hassle because they are trying to get us to pay extra for stuff like 'assistance' with the visa.

After all we got to the border, and got our own visas. The guys at the visa service usually deal with guides who take around $35 from tourists for the $20 visa, then pay the officials $25. We came to the window wanting to pay only $20 but got the glass shut in our face a couple times when we kindly asked for only the $20 price listed on the sign. Finally we paid a little more as a bribe and finally got our visas after we were told to wait 3 hours for the $20 price. THEN we stood in line through immigration for 3 hours. In the heat. That was rough. A 3 hour cab ride along the bumpiest road ever to Siem Reap finished out first day in Cambodia.

The second day was yesterday at Angkor. And today was a day off to plan and prepare for our upcoming journey. At my suggestion, Brad and I are setting off on uncommonly used roads up to a remote but supposedly beautiful region in the Northeast of Cambodia. I don't expect there to be much internet up there so it may be a couple weeks before I can update this again. Just know while you don't hear from me that I am bathing in waterfalls, hiking through remote jungles and, less glamorously, holding on for dear life on the back of a motorbike along horrible bumpy and dusty roads for hours on end.

The journey is the destination. And this is Evans Journey.