3/25/2005 9:56 PM

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a trip report. I started out strong with a short trip in 2001, and planned to post a major trip report eleven months later. However, romance struck. Instead of the activities I planned, I ended up hooking up with a girl I had met on my very first trip and who was my second LT ever.

I’ve been to Thailand a lot of times since then, but hadn’t had much time to really monger.

This trip, my itinerary is to land in Bangkok and take a meter taxi to Mo Chit. There I will take the air-con bus to Pattaya. I’ll stay the night, try out Soi 6 and make a few stops at Lólita's. I’ll also buy a cellphone and sim that should work in Cambodia, and book a morning minibus to Koh Kong. Then, it’s the evening in Koh Kong and the morning ferry to Sinoukville. I’ll stay a few days in Snooky, then take the bus to Phnom Penh. After PP, I’ll fly to Siem Reap to meet up with others for the non-mongering part of the journey where we’ll see Angkor and then head into Thailand for other spots.

This first leg of my journey will be eight days long once I hit the ground in Thailand. I’m doing it all out of a small backpack. I have done my best to pack the essentials (condoms, K-Y, vibrator, Vitamin V, American Singles) and to pack light. But, I also love gadgets, so I have my laptop, pda (which doubles as my mp3 and notes), a set of travel speakers so we can have good tunes in my rooms and a few other things. For clothes, I am packing about 2 pair of travel pants (can be long pants or short), 1 swimsuit, some undies, 2 T-shirts and a few lightweight button shirts with short sleeves. I can’t believe I got it all in this backpack.

I’ll post a pick of the items and the pack so you can check it out. I’m proud of my pack job, even though I feel it possibly could still be lighter.

I’ll be posting as I go and I bought a new digital camera for this trip and am hoping I can pay the Cambo girls to take some photos. Thank you to all those on this board for all your help and advice in the past – especially Sancho for lots of recent Cambo tips and to Merlin and Epi for other useful necessary bits of advice.

--

Well, I tired to post from my departure point, but EVA put in my the overflow 4th floor lounge (crappy) that is borrowed from ANA. There is no wireless here I can grab (not even T-Mobile for which I borrowed a friends account), and there are modem jacks on the wall for the PCs – not Ethernet! I can’t believe it in 2005! Oh well. Here's the post from Tapei.

Here's my travel gadgets layed out:


Just about the complete contents of my backpack after everything is ready to pack:


(I apologize to all my friends for such a long delay in my post -- there's a reasonable explanation, but I won't bore you with the details here. Anyway, everythings ok now -- so I'm finishing what I started)

(Message edited by rastaman on July 21, 2005)