Kho Pah Ngan

Idyllic Island with beautiful beaches,  jungle,  peace, and good parties. 

We enjoyed our week here in Kho Pha Ngan spending on the beach, on the motorbike,  and on two good parties.  Definitely a good place to come back and to enjoy ;)

Kho Tao

The economy of the island is almost exclusively centred on tourism, especially scuba diving.

Here I explored the first time the underwater world. We did our courses for Open Water Advanced Divers at the diving school Crystal and enjoyed our time under the water and with some nice people.  Diving is so much fun. A new world opened for us - so amazing. One of my best decision of life.  

North Thailand - Mae Hong Son Loop

With night train we arrived in Chiang Mai and rented stright a motorbike for a week. We explored North Thailand by Motorbike which was an amazing experience. Mae Hong Son is the most mountainous province in Thailand.

The loop is approximately 600km long. The Mae Hong Son Loop is a circular route which starts from Chiang Mai and takes you through the Mae Hong Son provinceending back up at Chiang Mai.

Amazing views, strawberry and watermelon fields,  good roads and sleepy towns with interesting spots. We also visited the long neck Tribe.

Hello Thailand for March 2015 - Bangkok

Over the Boarder from Cambodia to Thailand,  we arrived in Bangkok.  

Bangkok welcomes more visitors than any other city in the world and it doesn’t take long to realise why. Its the main gate to south east Asia. This is a city of extremes with action on every corner: Marvel at the gleaming temples, catching a tuk tuk along the bustling Chinatown or taking a boat or ferry through the river. Markets with all stuff u can imagen to need one day, to tasty street food to romantic rooftop restaurants - everthing here. 

From Sihanouk Ville to Siam Reap

From the Island by boat to the coast, stayed overnight in Sihanouk ville, enjoyed the country side by motor bike,  and then with overnight bus 15 hours to Siam Reap.

Siam Reap - good place to be and enjoy.  Really touristy and so many different restaurants and bars.  But the most interesting part for sure are the temples of Angor Wat. By bicycle we explored every single Temple.  The smallest and not exposed to tourist were the most attractive.  Sure Angor Wat is amazing and huge. 

Angkor Wat was first a Hindu, later a Buddhist, temple complex and one of the largest religious monument in the world. The temple was built by the KhmerKing Suryavarman II in the early 12th century.

Magical atmosphere by bicycle - great !!

Koh Rong - The Island

By day Bus we drove to Sihanouk ville, to the beautiful coast line of Cambodia.  By speed boat we managed to arrive on Koh Rong Island. In the middle of nowhere.  Cute little island with one of the most beautiful beach I have seen so far. Amazing. The village it self it occupied with a lot of Backpackers and little bars and restaurants.

Cambodia - Phnom Pehn

Cambodia - friendly people - smiling all over the country. We arrived in Phnom Pehn, crossing the boarder from Vietnam to Cambodia by Bus. 

  Cambodia became a protectorate of France in the 19th century, being ruled as part of French Indochina.

 It became an independent kingdom in 1953 under Norodom Sihanouk. The Vietnam War extended into Cambodia, giving rise to the Khmer Rouge, which took Phnom Penh in 1975 and carried out a campaign of mass killing. Over 2 million people were killed without reasons (population in that time was around 8 million) including women and babys. Pol Pot wanted a communist population without any good educated people and other ideas.The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant.  We always just speak about Hitler in Europe, but actually this kind of person you can find in other histories too and it is so sad and shocking to see what a human can do - incredible. 

 You walk through the killing fields in Phnom pehn and you can still see bons and cloths laying around. (With rain and earth moving they come visible)  The government pick them up every month. You really can imagen the graves with dead bodies. Some of them have been opened to expose them in the memorial in the middle of the area. Also the prison S21 where people were killed and hurt is just incredible sad.

The whole world didn't notice this crime until years later. Following an invasion by Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge were deposed and the People's Republic of Kampuchea was established. After years of isolation, the war-ravaged nation was reunited under the monarchy in 1993 and has seen rapid economic progress while rebuilding from decades of civil war.