Daily Grind Wonderings, wanderings and waffle

The more I encounter Buddhism - the more it appeals to me. I’ve come back from Laos and Cambodia where Buddhism is the main “religion”.

It doesn’t have any imaginary deities, no prescriptive doctrines and doesn’t incite hatred. Make others happy, make yourself happy. I purchased The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment and Sitting Still, American Style at Siem Reap airport - it’s a light-hearted intro to Buddhism.

I’ve uploaded the pictures from Laos and Cambodia onto Flickr.

A friend sent me a link to this lodge in Cambodia.

Well, it’s the last day of the holiday before we fly home tomorrow morning. It’s certainly been an enlightening experience. Already saying bye to some of the group who are making their own way home.

If you get a chance - have a go on the canal boats in Bangkok - they’re insane!

We did three Hindu temples/cities yesterday. I forget the name of the first one but Bayon, Angkor Wat and the Temple of the Lady were really good. I was expecting to be blown away by Angkor Wat like I was with Macchu Pichu in Peru, but it didn’t have the same WOW factor.

Learnt quite a lot about Hindu gods and mythology.

We head back to Bangkok tomorrow and will be heading home after that. It’s been a really nice holiday, maybe with a bit too much travelling involved (cars, boats, buses, planes).

I have had my first massage (Lao) and a second one in Cambodia which was very relaxing. Will try a Thai massage when we get to Bangkok.

Today’s highlight was eating a fried spider, purchased from the market. They also had a bucket of the live ones as well, the spiders were about the size of my palm

Tomorrow we start on our tour of Angkor Wat - the part of the holiday that I’ve been looking forward to the most. Think Tomb Raider and you’ll get the picture.

Post edit - Thai zebra tarantula: Flickr pic.

It’s frickin’ hot here and lots of mozzies. The traffic is mental - they swap sides on road according to no rules that I can discern. Been to a couple of markets, that I’m sure you could get lost in, if you didn’t keep an eye on things.

We took a flight from Bangkok to Chang Mai (?), where we stopped at a hotel on the Thai/Laos border. Then in the morning we took a river crossing to get to the Laos border contol. We got our visa sorted and picked up some Kip (local currency), then we got on a boat for a six hour trip down the Mekong River. All very relaxing and I took some good pictures (which you’ll have to wait for). Next day was another six hour boat trip with a couple of stops to see a local village; another village that makes whisky; and some caves. We ended up in Luag Prabang, the old capital of Laos. Couple of days there seeing loads of temples and doing lots of walking. Today finds me in Ving Viang (?). It’s a hole.

I’m getting a really good sun tan, it’s hot here!

12 hour flight from London to here yesterday, via Abu Dhabi. Was 31C when we arrived and is pretty humid - lots of water!
We’re off to the Laos border now (flying from Bangkok) ready to cross the border tomorrow.

Thai massage

Just when I thought all my plans were clicking nicely into place - the weather goes and messes up my train journey from Wales to Heathrow. I just hope the roads are all OK.

Helped my mum’s cousin get iTunes installed on her laptop, after the whole IT department of a company couldn’t install it. Heh!

Techy:

Vbscript.dll wasn’t registered on the Vista (urgh) laptop - so did a regsvr32 vbscript.dll (as administrator) - and the iTunes installer worked again.