OHHHH BUDDY!!!

Signing off. This is it. The end. Tomorrow is Wednesday and we get on a place at 8:15am, travel for about 22 ish hours and then land in LA at 11:15am -STILL Wednesday. Cool huh. We're just going to pretend that we're flying on a concord jet and it will only take us 3 hours to get home...

So we went to Angkor Wat on Friday. A-mazing. It was honest-to-goodness ancient ruins. I kept expecting Indiana Jones to come swinging from a tree or something, you know like at Disneyland, only this was for real. So cool. But... Also one of the saddest things I've ever seen happened this day. As usual, people everywhere are trying to sell you things- scarfs, t-shirts, postcards etc. Well, this time, it was children. Cambodia is still a struggling country and there are LOTS of REALLY poor people, especially children. So they all wait for tourists at the exits of the tourist attractions and just completely swarm you with souvenirs- "postcards?" "you buy?" "please, I need to go to school" We read that it is not recommended to give them money because it doesn't help them, they have to give it to their parents or guardians and it's better to give them food. Anyways, I think Kristina and I must have looked especially vulnerable because they seriously swarmed us and walked with us until our tuk tuk driver rescued us. I can not adequately tell you how horrible it feels to keep saying "no thank you" to so many gorgeous, poor, starving children. I know we all hear about poverty and Save the Children and all that but when there are 20 of them in your face personally begging you to help them, it honestly breaks your heart. By the time we got in our tuk tuk, we both had tears in our eyes and she had bought some postcards, and I bought some bracelets. What could we do?

In The Lonely Planet (our guidebook for this trip) it has lists of restaurants and shops that donate to good causes in the area so we looked up a cafe in Siem Reap called The Singing Tree Cafe. It's an organic, vegetarian cafe that also has yoga classes and a childrens center. The kids can go there (a lot of them are orphans) and learn and play and paint and then they sell the paintings in the cafe. Also- all of the profits from the cafe go back to help the kids. SO, that's where we went for dinner that night. And we spent some time in the gift shop and did not feel bad about spending a little money in there because we knew it would directly help some of those kids. We felt so much better knowing that we had done SOMETHING to help. Even if it was a small something.

So the next day was travel day and the road from Siem Reap to Bangkok is notoriously bad and it can take as long as 14 hours! But luckily the road has been improved and it was actually a lot better than some of the other roads we've been on. So we were not as terrified about this trip. We got on this nice, cool, air-conditioned bus, ready for a 7-8 hour drive and about 20 minutes into the trip the driver turns off the A/C.

I'll pause to let you think about that.

Needless to say everyone starts looking around going "uh, I thought this was an air conditioned bus" but the driver didn't speak any English and what are we gonna do? "hey buddy, drop my off here in the middle of this rice paddy, I'll just ride a cow to Bangkok" So we all opened our windows and sweat it out, literally. Imagine 40 sweaty, (mostly European...) tourists crammed on an old rusty bus with (not real) leather seats that stick to every part of your body. Yeah eww. PLUS there was no under-the-bus storage so they just used the front seat to put ALL the luggage. It was like the Leaning Tower of Luggage right next to our seat... They even put some of the bags on the floor of the bus in the isles...Fire Department, eat your heart out. (i'm pretty sure that's what the driver was thinking as he smoked his cigarette ON THE BUS-not a joke)

The drive to the border is about 4-5 hours and after an 1.5 hours in immigration (and more starving/begging children, only this time they had nothing to sell, they were just holding out their hands... can you believe it? luckily I remembered I had a box of granola bars in my bag so when they came over to us we just handed them out...they probably thought it was so gross, they're used to eating fried crickets...) we got on another bus- It was like we had all died and gone to heaven. I will never take air conditioning for granted again. I promise.

So we have been in Bangkok living it up since Saturday! We love this city. We spent all day yesterday in a mall that has a floor with Lamborghini's on it! Porches, you name it. There was also a food court that would do the entire city of LA shame.

Yes, I'll have a Porsche and a pair of Jimmy Choos please. Done.

Only in Bangkok.

Then to treat ourselves and our poor travel ridden bodies, went to the spa and got mani's, pedi's and facials. FOR UNDER 20 DOLLARS PEOPLE!!! not a joke.

That brings us to tonight. We just have to pack all our treasures and hop on a plane! So SAD to say goodbye to Thailand but SO HAPPY to say hello to America, our family and friends, and our own beds!
It has been an AMAZING trip and I will miss my travel companion dearly- I loved spending every minute with you Kris, even the hard ones.

Thanks for traveling with me everyone, I love you all!

I'm coming Jack!