| September 2018 - Thailand & Cambodia
Additional food pics and more photos may also be seen on my Tumblr. I decided on Thailand and Cambodia for this year's trip. Travel buddy kumi went with me. We had an eventful time getting here. Lyft and Amtrak were good. BART had some issues with maintenance, bus transfer, train transfer, and a “security incident” at SFO BART. (Mental note: Probably not a good idea to be standing behind a cop with his gun drawn if the person he’s pointing his gun at also has a gun drawn.) The BART ride which should have been about an hour, took about 2 hours. Still plenty of time to catch the flight though. kumi was already there. Quick check-in, quick boarding. The 13 hour flight to Taipei seemed short. Probably because I had a window row all to myself. I slept most of the flight. Long layover in Taipei, then off to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok to find Bangkok Airways agents waiting for me. Seems I had a very short layover in Bangkok and they wanted to make sure I made the flight. We also found out that we had been put on different flights for the 3rd flight. kumi’s flight was an hour after mine. Minor inconvenience, but still ok. I caught the flight and arrived in Koh Samui without issue. Anantara Lawana was there waiting for me. Since the resort close to the airport, the driver convinced me to drop off my bag, check-in, then we could come back to the airport to pickup kumi. That worked for me. Checked-in, welcoming drink. Got a free upgrade on our room to one with a plunge pool. Went back to the airport to pickup kumi. Returned. She got her welcoming drink. Then off to our suite. After more than 25 hours of travel, we made immediate use of the plunge pool. Anantara Lawana is a big, beautiful resort, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand o Chaweng beach There is a lot to do or not do here. We went diving the first couple of days. We dove with Silent Divers. They were great. They picked us up from the resort. All our gear was setup and waiting for us on the boat. The boat itself held a surprisingly large number of people, both divers and snorkelers. When it came time for our dive, they helped us with our gear. Between dives, they prepared an awesome lunch. The dives themselves were ok. The first one would have been good except there was a strong current. The others were very good. After the dives, we returned to the resort. We had to decide whether to make the 100 meter walk to the restaurant for lunch, or return to our suite and do in-villa dining. In-villa dining won out. It was a great choice. So much so that we did it again for dinner... Three nights in a row... I blame diving and a couple of massages... Laziness may have also influenced our decision . While in Koh Samui, I spent 3 days diving. kumi did 4. One of those days, we went diving with Discovery Dive Centre. The main reason for diving with them was they could get us inside Ang Thong National Marine Park. The dive sites, in my opinion, were not good. The boat was good. The dive staff were great. Poor visibility at both dive sites. kumi, on the other hand, liked the dive sites. After diving, we returned to the resort. This time however, instead of doing our usual siesta and order room service, we actually walked to Ocean Kiss, one of the resort restaurants for dinner. We did one other thing besides diving: We scheduled a private tour. Since it was just us, we went where we wanted and were on our own schedule. I can't name, spell or pronounce some of the places we went to, but I did take photos. We returned to the resort after the tour. kumi returned to our suite, I walked around the resort to take more photos. The resort staff were having some kind of sports day. I wasn't there for all of it so I wasn't too clear on what was going on. But what little I saw was entertaining. Later, pool bar, more plunge pool, sleeping by plunge pool, sleeping in bed, then dinner at Ocean Kiss. We stayed 6 nights in Koh Samui, Thailand. From there we went to Siem, Reap, Cambodia. We stayed at the Anantara Angkor Resort. This is the smallest Anantara resort I have ever stayed at. That's not a negative. It's a beautiful resort and we had another great room. Our first full day in Siem Reap was supposed to be a mellow day. We started out with the Anantara breakfast buffet. While at breakfast, the Anantara Angkor social media representative stopped by our table and introduced himself. He also gave us recommendations for things to do and places to eat. One of the places he recommended was APOPO. The APOPO Visitor Center in Siem Reap is an information center highlighting the recent history of conflict in Cambodia, the impact of landmines on local communities, and it gives the opportunity to meet and see the HeroRATs in action... Yes, rats. They use well trained rats (trained to the cost of 6000 euros each) to find landmines. These are big rats, but they don't weigh enough to set off landmines. It was actually very interesting. After APOPO, we went to the Angkor National Museum. As far as museums go, this one is very nice. The layout is well organized with a defined path of which way to go through the museum. The combination of ancient artifacts displayed with current technology worked well together. The optional audio tour added a very nice touch. We decided to have an early dinner after the museum. We got a Tuk Tuk outside the museum and had the driver take us to Jungle Burger. I normally never eat burgers while traveling because there is so much other stuff to eat. But this place was recommended by Anantara social media guy, so we went. It was great. Gourmet burger, fries or potato wedges, and a beer (I don't drink beer so I opted for something else) for around $7.00. I had the Mushroom and Creamy Black Pepper Sauce Burger. kumi had the Blue Cheese and Bacon Burger. BTW, the Bob Marley Burger is no longer on the menu. Our Tuk Tuk driver was waiting for us when we were done. We had him take us back to Anantara just in time to get my complimentary happy hour drink . The next day was was Angkor Archeological Park day: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, etc. We left the resort at 0500. The plan was to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. A quick stop at the ticket center then off we went. (Interesting note: They take your picture as part of the park ticket so it can`t be reused by someone else later.) We did arrive before the sun rose, but unfortunately, it was cloudy and raining. It was still a nice view though. The rest of the day we just visited different sites in the Park. The Park is huge. There is a lot to see and do. We spent over 8 hours here and still did not see everything. But we did manage to get in a rowing boat tour at Angkor Thom. We vegetated most of the following day. We went out when the sun went down. We got a Tuk Tuk and went to Miss Wong
for drinks. It's a cute place down an alley off of Pub
Street. I really liked the drink I had. I don't think kumi
could say the same about her mocktail. Of course we had a do nothing day. Eat, sleep, massage, sleep, eat, sleep. The following day was War Museum and Buddhist temple/mini killing fields. We stayed
6 nights in Anantara Angkor, then headed up to Phnom Penh. We
hired a private driver. This was a convenient and much better way
to go. I think the actual drive from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh
takes about 5 hours. But since we had our own driver, we could
make detours. One stop was the Preah Tis Bridge. It's one
of the few Khmer empire era bridges to haved survived to the modern
day. Another stop was at the Sambor Prei Kuk temples. They
were out of the way, but still interesting. A few stops and hours
later, we arrived in Phnom Penh. The
following day was another tour day. We started off with a buffet
breakfast at the Patio hotel. After breakfast, we met our
driver. The same service that drove us from Siem Reap to Phnom
Penh, would also be driving us around today. The first stop was
the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The second was the Killing Fields
at Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. We spent three and half hours at
Tuol Sleng. I didn't have the attention span for the Killing
Fields so I went back to the hotel. We stayed 3 nights at the Patio Hotel. The last night we went to a restaurant called Malis Cambodian Restaurant. Trip Advisor has it listed as $$$$. However, while there are some items on the menu that are pricey, there are many other food selections that are much more reasonable. Everything we had was very good and reasonably priced. Things of note about this trip:
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