Night on the Town

More Pics

These are from Thursday but got dropped in the Internet outage.

Alive and well in Hong Kong

Ramen from "the best food court ever" -Stef

Return Trip

The Katathani resort has been giving us a hard time about the internet connection we're overpaying for so our Thursday evening updates were delayed.

2 great dives yesterday, and 1 mediocre dive. The first and third dives were really, really cool. All kinds of aquatic life (incl. lion fish and some morey eels!). We took turns with the underwater camera, but haven't seen the results yet. Our secon dive, we ended up fighting a pretty strong current at the bottom and at the surface, where we endured a rough 200m swim to complete our skills tests and earn our PADI open water certification! Which hopefully means that next time we're on vacation somewhere and want to dive we can just spend a day or two in the water without all the prep time.

We had dinner in Kata Beach last night and headed back to the hotel pretty early. Our ride left the resort at 9:30 am local time, (7:30pm PDT) to head to Phuket airport. It's currently 6:46 pm local (3:46am PDT) at the Hong Kong airport. We are in the midst of a 7 hour layover, our flight to SFO leaves at 12:30am on May 16. We're scheduled to land at 10:30pm on May 15. So, one way of looking at it is that we arrive at SFO before we left HK. Might be kind of a long flight.

I'll try and write a summary post and get some more pics up after we get back to SF. Now to enjoy the wonderful eating and shopping at Hong Kong international airport!

--Pete

Phuket Again

The honeymoon is wearing down, I booked a car for our ride to the airport Saturday.

We spent a few minutes in the beach this morning (first pic), then completed the written portion of our scuba cert., I lifted an island (take that Edwin and Jesse!), and then we watched the sunset on the beach (panorama).

We also had probably our best meal of the trip. It was just Stef and I in the Italian resturant on the resort (literally no other patrons), but instead of feeling like the place was empty, it felt like it was set up for just the two of us, with a private chef, wait-staff, and piano player, playing just what we wanted to hear (with some Bob Marley on his breaks). Great food, great atmosphere, the best company a man could ask for, all in all aperfect meal. I even got a Fernet as a digestif!

Bummed the week has to end, but looking forward to our dive tomorrow!

--Pete

Thursday Night

Diving yesterday was extraordinary, with super clear water with a ton of fish swarming all over us. We finished a bunch of our required skills and should have everything else done by the end of the week. Had a great time reading at the beach this morning, the water was a lot calmer and I could float around in my back for a while without fear of drowning, which is always nice. I have to admit i was a little irritated we had to go in to take our diving exam with James, our instructor (Pete got 100% while I merely passed with an 88) but made up for it by watching the sunset on the beach. This week has been a lot more about scuba diving than I expected - I thought it would be more about just lying around, but I guess I'm glad we can dive without all these tests and whatnot in the future, whether it's in Hawaii this summer or maybe South Africa next year. Had a great meal in the hotel's Italian restaurant where we were the only customers being serenaded with love songs on the piano. Was so happy I almost cried, as sappy as that sounds. Now we're going to watch Tomb Raider, part of which was filmed at the jungle temple we visited in Cambodia. Pete has been trying to download the movie pretty much our entire trip and was finally successful yesterday. Tomorrow is our last full day here. We're doing 3 dives and will be open water certified by the end of the day. Hope it goes well - I've been taking my Dramamine!

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No Diving Pics, but...

Here's one I took riding in the back of the pickup from the pool to the dive shop. Probably unsafe, but def. fun.

Also two pics from dinner at Capannina, rumored to be one of the best Italian resturants in Asia. Note the calzone bigger than my head. Best gnocchi I've ever had.

We bought hats for tomorrow's boat trip. It took a bit to find hats large enough to fit our oversized noggins, but Stef negotiated a good deal, 220 Baht for mine, 250 Baht for hers.

Pics of the hats later, right now I need to convince Stef to watch something other than Korean soap opera before I go nuts.

--Pete

PS - Just so everyone is aware, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim recently teamed up to create a rock opera about Imelda Marcos' rise from poor farm girl to first lady of the Philipines. I am not joking. It's called "Here Lies Love". I plan to listen to it as soon a I get back stateside.

Phuket from Underwater

Great dinner last night at Mom Tri's. It was recommended by the LonelyPalnet guidebook and our friend Thien. I had the seared Tuna and 2 terrific glasses of Chardonnay, Stef had the sea bass, and we split the fried banana with toffee ice cream (which may have been the higgling of the trip). We sat on a patio about 50 ft above the water and watched the waves crash on the rocks below. Absolutely stunning!

First dive lesson today, it went pretty well. We watched some video last night and this morning, read some book, and jumped in the pool! We went most of the day in the pool actually. We practiced taking our masks off, clearing them, using secondary air sources, and even taking off our scuba tanks under water and putting them back on. It rained for a lot of the morning, which was somewhat refreshing (and looked really cool from underneath the water). Unfortunately, since we were in the water all day, no iphone pics to post. Got a few cool underwater shots with point and shoot though.

Tomorrow we're getting picked up at 7:45 to go out to sea for an open water dive. Pretty exciting!

Resting back at the room before heading out to dinner.

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Phuket Comes Alive!

After a very refreshing nap / rehydration session, we met our neighbor Barry's friend Thien for a beer on the far side of the resort (south side of Kata Noi beach). It was the first real face-to-face conversation we've had with someone else in over a week, and we haven't been at each other's throats. I think our marriage is off to a good start.

Thien runs a scuba shop in Kata and we're signed up to get in the pool tomorrow, and dive in the ocean Wednesday. We have a little bit of homework to do the next two nights, but hopefully it will pay off.

Also we witnessed one of the most gorgeous sunsets I've ever seen.

--Pete

P.S. Singha is apparently 5.5% ABV, a little stiffer than most beers, and helping to explain Stef's light-weight-date status last night.

Phuket Day 2

Halfway through our our first day in Phuket and we're already hiding from the sun, at least for a few hours.

Stef had 2 beers too many last night (3 total, not sure what happened there, Singha isn't particularly high ABV), which resulted in an early night for us yesterday. This is supposed to be the relaxing part of the trip, but it may take some time to unwind. We've been in such a go, go, go mode for a couple of months, even taking the foot off the gas a little bit last week felt like a big slowdown. Trying to hit the brakes completely and sit in a beach chair for 8 hours isn't quite as easy as we thought it would be.

The water is a perfect temperature, and crystal clear, but the waves are a little rough to stay in for very long. We decided to leave the resort and walk into town (Kata Beach) for lunch, which ended up being 2 hours roundtrip of walking along narrow roads, with little or no shoulder, several blinds turns, traffic coming from the wrong direction (they drive on the left here), intermittent stench of garbage, and 90 degree heat. Needless to say, we'll pay the taxi or tuk-tuk from now on, if we leave the resort again.

On the plus side, our room is so comfortable and has such a great view of the ocean, it's hard to be upset about anything for very long.

It's also probably better if I don't get horribly burnt on the first day of the trip. I guess age and experience have finally taught me something! It only took horrible face scarring sunburns in North Carolina, Costa Rica, Mount Shasta, and Sayulita for me to finally learn maybe it wouldn't kill me to reapply of couple times a day. Also, I'm using an ultra sport SPF 70 on my face (and neck, ears, shoulders, tops of feet etc) Stef has insisted on protecting her investment.

Meeting a friend of a friend who runs a dive shop in Kata for a drink in an hour or two, hopefully he'll have the lowdown or what we need to see and maybe we can even line up a dive for later in the week.

--Pete

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Happy Mother's Day!

Hello from Thailand! We made it to the Katathani (on Kata beach in Phuket, GPS location from Google maps: third pic) mid-afternoon, just in time for a late lunch at "Fisherman's Wharf" (first pic) one of the six resturants at the resort.

Our room is very nice, great view of the ocean (second pic), though I'm not sure exactly what body of water this is.

The resort is much bigger than either of us thought, but I guess that's what happens when you get distracted planning other events prior to your travels (we also bought a Thailand guidebook at the airport this morning, having failed to do so previously).

The water seems a little rough, and we saw a lifeguard (?) warn some people about going in, that combined with Uncle Geoff's near drowning at the shore last summer is enough to make me wait for a friendlier tide to take my first dip.

Anyway, thanks and much love to both our Moms'; we hope you (and all the other mothers) have a great day!

Goodbye Cambodia, Hello Thailand!

6:30 am and we're packing up to leave Siem Reap. Pete is feeling much better today, practically normal it seems, thank goodness we went to the doctor before the trip to get antibiotics just in case. He was so awesome yesterday, gamely getting up at 4:30 in the morning to see Angkor Wat at sunrise and patiently (mostly!) posing for photos even though he was going to fall over any second. We came thousands of miles - we were gonna get our photo taken in front of Angkor Wat if it killed us. Thankfully it didn't come to that and we got him home nice and safe and in bed by 7am.

Sunrise was an unbelievable experience. The pink started coming over the horizon when we were still a km or so away and I was like, omg, hurry up! We had the slowest tuk tuk driver ever, though apparently he knew what he was doing 'cause we got there right on time. Once you get to Angkor Wat, there's this moat with lily pads in front, a giant gate, and behind it, the famous spires of the wat. We were walking across the bridge just as the pink was starting from behind and I was literally paralyzed there, it was so beautiful. Then I started taking pics like a crazy person (blending right in with the tourists from China getting off of giant buses) until Pete was like, seriously, it'll be better from inside. I had totally forgotten we hadn't even gone in yet.

I will never forget the experience. Pete was pretty delirious by this time, so I took plenty of pics and video to remind him about it later. I'm sure everyone else will be subjected to slideshows at our place sometime - apologies in advance if you get tired of seeing them!

Pete sent most the day in bed and I wandered around the hotel with my book, enjoying the air conditioning and drinking smoothies. Read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - first book I've finished in a while as I have absolutely no attention span - and am about to start the book by the lady who wrote The Historian. I remember Des lending me that book in LA a few years ago and not leaving Pauline's house for the next 3 days, I was so addicted. Great historical trashy romance. Got another massage, the best one yet. Mere, I think you would agree its the best when they crawl right up on the table with you - it means they're gonna beat you up a little, which is my ideal massage. Started watching Mad Men finally (so good!) and ate our room service in front of the tv while watching a very confusing cricket game. Does anyone understand the rules?

We've had free wifi here, so it's been nice (and easy) to send these updates in, I'm not sure how it will be in Phuket. Either way, having this iPad has been the best thing ever - Pete, I publicly apologize for giving you so much grief for buying it!

Happy Mother's Day to any moms that may be reading - we'll try to call from Phuket. Signing off for now -- Stef

Sent from my iPad

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

The higher res images from the DSLR and the point and shoot are a little nicer, but you'll have to live with iPhone pics until we get back (easier to post).

What you can't see is how miserable I am. Stef was a real trooper for putting up with my whining. Odds were good that over the course of the trip one of us would get a little sick, and of the two of us, odds favored me. Still worth the 4:30 wake up.

Siem Reap Day 2

We visited 3 different temples today, Angkor Thom, Ta Prom, and East Mebon. The pics don't really do it justice, but it was pretty awesome.

Tonight for dinner we went to the Siem Reap chapter of the FCC. Stef had an Italian style pizza and I had the Pho Ca, which was pretty tasty, but not nearly as good as the Pho I had at the Phnom Penh FCC (which might be my current request for a last meal). They had some live music, I think they were Americans, playing acoustic style rock. They were playing Radiohead when walked up, but also managed to cover Hey Ya, Rehab, a Lady Gaga medley, and my favorite, a medley of Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls > Stand By Me > the Police's Every Breath You Take. Really great stuff to listen to vs. the over played dance hits from 2 years ago blasting last night or the Backstreet CD we heard a few times through on Wednesday. Plus the place was packed! After literally being the only 2 customers in restaurants the past 2 nights, it was nice to be in a crowd. We couldn't stay too late, as we have an early morning on the agenda for tomorrow. I wrung out my shirt (figuratively, but I literally sweated through it) and we walked back to the hotel. Siem Reap is a lot easier walk in than the bustling streets of Phnom Penh, little bit more of a small town feel for sure.

We're scheduled to meet our tuk-tuk driver at 5 to catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. Wish us luck with the early morning!

--Pete and Stef

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East Mebon

This temple used to be in middle of one of the two huge Angkor lakes, the East Baray. We got there just as light was fading and were just about the only people there. Absolutely surreal. We've both said this was something we'd have been too frightened to try on our own, but together it has been amazing. We've given each other the strength to push outside of our individual comfort zones. I guess that's how you know that you married the right person (in case you didn't get enough of our vows on Saturday).

Anyway, pictures:

Ta Prohm

aka the Jungle Temple. The forest started taking over this temple hundreds of years ago, which makes it very photogenic in the present day. Feels kinda like being in Tomb Raider, the video game, not the movie.

Angkor Thom

from this morning. Bayon temple and some periphery. Back at the hotel
escaping the midday heat (I think I sweated out 2 gallons of water in
2 hours).

How have we only been here 4 days?

Day 4 of our holiday in Cambodia and since Pete has been doing the heavy lifting with the updates, I thought I'd better put my 2 cents in too. Cambodia has been a lot different than I expected - in that it's not all that different, I guess. It probably helps that we're staying in nice hotels with all the modern amenities but everything has been really comfortable. The people we've interacted with are beyond amazing, polite, and super super smiley. In direct head to head competition, Pete has shown himself to be far superior in terms of learning the language -- I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he is patient and I am not, a fact that is becoming more and more obvious the longer we are married (which has been 5 whole days now!).

Like Pete said, the drive over here was an eye opener. In terms of the scenery and seeing how people live, but also in terms of how ridiculous fast our driver was going given how many people were on the road. At one point, I think an entire school let out and I thought we were going to take at least a few little guys out as we blew past them, but they were totally unconcerned. In America, we freak out if a kid is in the front seat. Here, we've gotten used to seeing families of 4 or even 5 crammed on a moped, baby dangling over the road, no helmets in sight. In fact, Pete saw a 3 year old steering a moto the other day and I'm pretty sure I saw one driving a van.

Yesterday was a great day. Another free upgrade, bubbly in the room, massage, and dinner at this weird place with a live crocodile pit. The decor was crazy - a huge warehouse with multiple levels made from thin planks you accessed by climbing really steep creaky ladder-like steps. It kinda looked like that painting with all the staircases that don't lead anywhere. After dinner, I literally couldn't figure out how to get down until someone showed me. I could see where I wanted to go - just, for the life of me, could not figure out how to get there. I also compared it to Winchester Mystery house - its like they just couldn't stop themselves. Oh, the place probably holds a few hundred people - did I mention that we were literally the only ones there? That's shoulder season in Siem Reap.
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We cam back home and spent the rest of the night drinking and playing pool in the elephant bar downstairs in the hotel, which I guess is kind of famous. I enjoyed several tequila sunrises (I'm on vacation!) and Pete looked very debonair in his linen outfit drinking scotch. Today, we've hired a tuk tuk driver and are going to check out some temples. Tombraider comes to life!

Some last thoughts, in case I'm too lazy to update again. I keep thinking we're on safari (except w/o animals save the occasional monkey or elephant) because everything seems very 1920's lodge here. Everything's kind of old-timey in a modern way. Pete may have to grow a mustache, smoke a pipe, and start saying things like good day, old chap. Another thing, in retrospect we should have brought every pair of underwear we own, as 3 showers a day seem to be the norm. It is HOT. And next time, I'll leave the hair dryer and flat iron at home.

I am absolutely loving each minute of this trip. At one point last night, we were racing back in our tuk tuk, through the pitch darkness near the hotel, hair blowing every which way, and I turned to Pete and said, what are we doing here, we're normally very conservative. But maybe not anymore?

Signing off - Cheerio all that!

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Siem Reap

The hotel pool from our room at the Grand Hotel D'Angkor

Honeymoon Day 3

Last night after my update, we lounged by the pool for a bit, than went and had a great dinner at Khmer Borane near the riverfront; fried fish with tamarind flavoring, spicy beef with bell pepper, and then some spiny fruit for dessert. Not sure what that was called. Then a few drinks at Touck on the second floor overlooking sunset on the Mekong. It was amazing to watch the commotion along the river road. Cambodian traffic never ceases to astound. Watching vendors drag their carts at snail pace through the traffic with hardly a look up as they almost get creamed by passing Landcruisers was like watching a game of Frogger from the balcony - except even more chaotic.

Speaking of traffic, after an early breakfast today, we left for Siem Reap. We booked a van a few days ago, $10 each. It included a bottle of water, sanitary wipe and something like a geeweibao (per Stef). Stef and I shared the front seat bench with the driver, and there 6-8 others in the van as well. It was a 5 hour drive through the Cambodian countryside. Very eye-opening. A lot of poverty (as evinced by the state of disrepair of the wooden shacks), but a few nicer / solid looking houses and astounding temples mixed in. Scrawny cows wandering all over, the driver had to stop or swerve several times to avoid those who wandered into the road. I took some video footage of the drive, but that might have wait for our return as well.

Lots of smiling faces everywhere though. Our guidebook described the Khmer people as very happy and friendly, and we've certainly found that to be true. Though I think, our tuk-tuk driver from yesterday, James Bond (that's how he introduced himself), may have overcharged us a bit. We ended up giving him $25 for 8AM-12:30 and $10 for 5PM-7:15, + $2 for his lunch / gas. By contrast we've secured a driver for the entire day tomorrow for $15, and the temples are much farther than our circuitous travels through Phnom Penh. Don't know if I mentioned it before, but most prices are in US dollars, and US currency is universally accepted. We've received change in Cambodian Riels (I think that's right) a few times. The exchange rate is roughly 4000 Riels to $1 US, no coins of any kind are used.

Our room at the Grand Angkor in Siem Reap is really nice. Upgraded to a suite again, and gratis bubbly on arrival! Thanks for mentioning our honeymoon on the reservation Stef!

Tonight a massage, a bar with a crocodile pit, and tomorrow, temples!

She added a few sentences to this entry, but I'll see if I can convince her to provide an alternate viewpoint tomorrow.

--Pete

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Day 2 of the Honeymoon

After I sent the email yesterday, we did make it out of the hotel for a bit. We walked through Wat Phnom on our way to dinner. Wat Phnom is on the will where Lady Penh found 5 Buddha statuettes, which were the inspiration for the founding of the city of Phnom Penh. We ate dinner last night (some very tasty sweet and sour fried fish, and a slightly spicy beef dish) across from a Scottish guy and a Cambodian who lives in Santa Rosa, but is visiting family here for a few months. We walked to and from dinner, which is a bit chaotic. Traffic seems to flow in every direction all at once, and they've certainly never heard of a crosswalk, you just kind of step into the middle of it all. The tuk-tuks are a much better way to get around.

We then enjoyed a cocktail at the hotel's famed Elephant Bar. I had a e sling and Stef had a Femme Fatale, invented for Jackie O's 1967 dinner at the hotel. Both were served in signature glasses. We ended the evening with a Swedish massage at the hotel spa' we erased any kinks remaining from the flight over.

Today, Wednesday, we got up around 7 (actually easier than at home, thanks to jet lag), then headed out around 8. We had breakfast at the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club), which had a beautiful view of the Mekong River. We then visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. My words won't do it justice, you'll just have to wait for pictures. We also stopped by the national museum and the Russian market before grabbing some Thai fried rice and cold beers for lunch.

Currently back at the hotel avoiding the midday heat. It's on par with mid-July on the east coast, very warm, and very muggy. Fine for sitting by the pool writing email, not so great for traipsing around.

We're going to try and head out later for some dinner and maybe a sunset river cruise. Tomorrow morning at 8, we catch a bus for Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.

It's been really neat learning about all the Khmer history, particularly the ancient and the very recent (the current King was a ballet professor in Paris immediately preceding his coronation!) and we're both having a blast. I'll see if I can figure a way to upload a few photos later.

Love,
Pete and Stef

P.S. - I'm going to send all future updates only to our daily blog at http://peteandstefdaily.blogspot.com/ so I don't spam up everyone's inboxes. I'll try and get something up there every day or so.

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Honeymoon Report

Here's the email I sent my parents after we arrived in Phnom Penh. I'll try and update the blog as we go.

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "peter.r.wise" <peter.r.wise@gmail.com>
Date: May 4, 2010 12:34:47 AM PDT
Subject: Re: Travel itinerary

Greetings from the future! I'm sure you'll get tired of that joke over the next two weeks. It's currently 3 pm-ish on Tuesday. We're checked into the Jackie Onasis suite at the Raffles Phnom-Penh (free honeymoon upgrade, score!)

It did take us almost 24 hours of travel starting when we left for SFO, but it's been shockingly pleasant so far. We both slept almost 8 hours on the flight over and Cathay Pacific had a great selection of inflight entertainment (the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes lived up to the hype). After 3 hours in Hong Kong we caught our next flight to Phnom-Penh. When we got here we realized we forgot to bring passport photos required for the Cambodian Visa. It ends up they'll scan your passport photo for $2, $8 less than the UPS store would have charged to take that photo, after fearing we'd get sent back to SF, we lucked out big time. 

$7, 20 minute Tuk-tuk ride to the hotel (and we were only on the wrong side of the road for 1/2 mile). It's been great so far, Stef is getting to feel some real humidity, and Pete is reminded how much he enjoys west coast summers, but scenery has been stunning, just completely different from anything I've (Pete) ever seen before.

Will try and update again in a few days, and if I can find an Apple store with iPad accessories, might include some pics! But don't count on that.

Thank you all so much for making this past weekend so special for us. We're both still super stoked about how well everything went! 

Love,

Pete and Stef 

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