After taking an all-night train to Chiang Mai, we spent a couple of days exploring the many temples in town and enjoying the night markets and food. We then took a public bus and taxi to Tha Ton, near the border with Myanmar.
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, was our first stop in the country. It is a large city with many dirt roads off the major streets. During our two days there, we visited reminders of the Killing Fields period of the country’s history.
We left Phnom Penh at sunrise on a boat that took us five hours up the Tonle Sap River to Siem Reap, the nearest city to Angkor Wat. We each bought three day passes to the Angkor temples, which cover an area of 77 square miles.
This overview provides some snapshots of our visit to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. As we visited some sites associated with the Killing Fields and genocide, be warned that there are some disturbing images that follow.
We took a 12 hour all night train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. From there, we boarded a ferry for a five hour trip to Ko Pha Ngan.
We spent three weeks visiting three major areas of the country: Bangkok, Northern Thailand and Southern Thailand. In Bangkok, our major activities were viewing the temples and seeing the city by foot and by ferry. In Northern Thailand we visited Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. Southern Thailand, our last stop, was experienced on the island of Ko Pha Ngan.
We arrived in Paris to cold, winter weather. Sandy’s parents met us there and we spent the next few days sightseeing in Paris and in Chartres, about one hour south by train.
We traveled to London on the fast Eurostar train, which makes the trip, via the English Channel tunnel, in under three hours. This train trip was a Christmas present from Sandy’s parents.
We took a 17 day family trip to Japan in June 2002. It was the first time the girls had been to Asia, so it was a quite different experience for them.
After arriving in Japan, we spent the first three days in Tokyo. We visited several of the city sights, including the zoo, Ginza and Shinjuku. We also took a day trip to Nikko, which was a two hour train ride each way.
