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A friend who I met in South America in 2012 emailed me in the summer of 2013 suggesting that we travel somewhere together in the winter. I live in the North East United States and she lives in Sweden, and winter in the Northern hemisphere was the best time for both of us to travel South – out of the dark and cold, and into the light and heat.

I had always wanted to travel to Thailand and the trip was already long overdue. She had never been there. We decided on South East Asia. I put together a list of things I wanted to see and looking at the map of that part of the world I realized I would be too close to Angkor Wat not to go there as well. The flight is 22 hours to Bangkok from New York and I may not get back to that part of the world for a stretch, so “hit all the spots.” We decided on Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

So the plan was: fly to Bangkok, Thailand and meet there. Spend a few days in Bangkok and fly from there to Siem Reap, Cambodia to check out Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area. After a few days of exploring the temples, we fly to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia and spend a few days there and just outside of town at the Killing Fields. There were no direct flights from Phnom Penh to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) so we would take a bus. After a few days in Vietnam we would travel back to an Island (Ko) in Thailand and chill out at the beach. I had heard about Ko Samui, its the second largest island after Phuket, and they had a well serviced airport. We were to spend a few days there decompressing from the trip and then fly back to Thailand for one night and then out to or respective countries from Bangkok.  Since I was flying through Dubai to and from, I decided to break journey on the way back to break-up the connecting flights and spend a few days checking out Dubai.

 

 

MORE TO COME

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BANGKOK

 

 

 

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CHIANG MAI

 

 

 

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SIEM REAP

 

 

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