Blue Dot Explore

February 11, View from the White Budda in Pai. Unfortunately, many of our Northern Vistas were affected by all the smoke from the ag burning. After a relaxing week and a half or so of chilling on the islands, we knew we had a big travel day ahead of us to get to our next destination, Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. What was supposed to be one big travel day, turned into two when things did not go as planned.  We had an uneventful night in Sihanoukville in which we mostly just hunkered down in our hotel room; a decision guided by travel advisories for the city and some harrowing tales from the googles (who knew that blood slaves were a thing?). Our bus departed at 8am and was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok around 6:30pm (according to the booking site), plenty of time to then take a night train to Chiang Mai….However, as we rolled into Bangkok after 11pm, after multiple delayed transfers, we just grabbed the nearest hotel room rather than getting on another cursed vehicle for up to ...

  After the go, go pace of hitting so many tourist spots and the larger cities, we were ready for some downtime. From Phnom Penh, we headed to the town of Kampot. This place was recommended by several other backpackers we had met and served as a nice waypoint on our way out to the islands. We originally had three nights booked, but ended up adding on another two. This isn't a spot with any particularly notable tourist stops, but we found some mini-adventures nonetheless.  We took out a motorbike to visit the pepper plantation and the nearby Kep Crab Market, where we learned that you can eat green peppercorns off the plant. And also that they are delicious. After several attempts at trying to explain to leave out the fish sauce and a shaky understanding that he got what I was saying via google translate, I YOLO'ed and tried the Crab with Kampot Pepper sauce.  Another outing included Bokor Mountain and National Park, which utilized Johnny's amazing moped skills to get us up...