10 crammed full days

Between November 22nd and December 1st we became determined fast travel road warriors, we went from Kochi, India to Bandos Island, Maldives to Yala National Park, Sri Lanka to Bangkok, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  I knew when we were creating this itinerary that this part would be crammed with activity and would fly by. Charles and I discussed whether it was wise to cram all this in, but we had to land in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Bangkok, Thailand in order to get to our next destination and so, we decided to lengthen the stopovers and spend a few nights.  We have learned that when traveling for this long any stop under 3-4 nights is hard and tiring.  But, we approached the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangkok with a little bit of a different attitude - these were bonus stopovers, not exploring destinations and when given the chance to spend three days or none, we decided we would take the three days.  Inevitably we wish we had more time in them, but it seems better to have spent a few days than to not see them at all. 

The Maldives was a once in a lifetime stop, it is a destination worthy of a honeymoon or anniversary because it is so far away and so expensive to visit.  The flight to get here didn't increase our flight cost in our package with Air Treks, so it was basically a free stopover on the way to our next destination.  The fact that the Maldives is made up of hundreds of small islands means that you have to take a boat or a plane to your hotel from the airport. We chose an island pretty close to the airport to keep the costs and travel distance lower. We stayed at Bandos resort for three nights - it was awesome. It reminded us a little of the Caribbean, but was much more rustic and felt less touristy. We spent most of our time relaxing on the beach, snorkeling, reading, painting (Charles, not me), and just enjoying the beautiful scenery around us.  The snorkeling was the best I have ever experienced.  We saw tons of bright colored fish, a puffer fish, and two pretty good sized black tip sharks. We really loved the Maldives and can see why it is such a famous destination. I doubt we will ever make it back there, but I am so glad we visited while we were so close. 

Charles' painting spot in the Maldives

Snorkeling - feeding frenzy

Early morning boat ride to the airport

Our three day stop over in Sri Lanka turned into something completely unexpected. We initially planned to spend a couple of days exploring Colombo, maybe taking a day trip to an elephant orphanage or visiting the Buddhist temples in Kandy. We completely strayed from that plan when I came across a national park in Sri Lanka called Yala. This park has one of the highest densities of leopards in the world. A little more research led me to a hotel called Chaaya Wild Yala, which is located within the park. The problem, it was about 300km from Colombo, and as we had learned in India, that meant about a 6 hour drive. We discussed it, slept on it, then booked a two night stay at Chaaya.  Yes, we have completely lost our minds at this point. 

If you ever make it to Sri Lanka you must go to Chaaya Wild Yala and do a safari in Yala National Park.  This three day stopover in Sri Lanka has turned into one of the highlights of our trip.  The people in Sri Lanka are so kind and the country is beautiful and full of incredible animals. On our drive from Colombo to the national park we drove through the hill country (the middle part of the island), we saw elephants and peacocks along the side of the road. The drive was slow, but the scenery was pretty, and the roads were much calmer than those in India, which we were happy about.  We arrived at our hotel after about 20 minutes on a rutted out red dirt road.  The hotel itself feels a little like camp, all the guests gather around chatting at the end of the day about what they saw on that days safari.  Everyone stays in cabins on the property and you have to have a guide walk you to and from your cabin after dark, in case there are elephants or wild boar on the trail.  After dropping off our stuff in our room we went to book our safaris for the next day.  We debated for a bit whether to do a half day or a full day, morning or afternoon, two mornings, or just one morning.  We ended up deciding to go out both morning and afternoon the next day. 

We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and stumbled out of bed to go meet our safari guide and driver.  This hotel was already awesome in my book, but it jumped even higher when I found that they had hot coffee and croissants waiting for those of us getting up before dawn to go on safari.  Our safari guide said that a line forms to enter the park just before six, so we met him at 5:30 to beat the crowd.  We were one of the first groups to enter the park that morning.  Getting out early ended up paying off.  Our first animal sighting of the day was a leopard!!!!

Our safari vehicle

First animal sighting of the day - a leopard

We waited for almost an hour to see if we could catch another glimpse of this leopard, but he was napping in the brush, so we moved on.  Our next animal sighting was a  sloth bear, which was more exciting to our driver and guide, as they are much more rare in this park.

Sloth Bear (aka Baloo from the Jungle Book)

We went back to check on the leopard, but he was still napping.  We waited a few minutes longer and saw him jump up into a tree, but I didn't get any more pictures.  The rest of our morning safari we saw several elephants, numerous birds - the most colorful being the peacocks and Indian bee-eaters, some spotted deer, and crocodiles feasting on something in the lake.  We went back to our hotel for a late breakfast/lunch and spent the middle part of the day, when it's hottest, hanging out at the hotel.  Charles attempted to paint on the terrace of the main building, until he had an altercation with some grey langur monkeys who surrounded him and began knocking over chairs and hovering above him seemingly ready to pounce.  He decided to relocate his painting to the pool.  I was heading to the pool when I was warned by a hotel employee that there was an elephant eating on the trail and that I would have to wait a few minutes.  Not wanting to interrupt a wild elephant from eating, I waited and ended up visiting with two lovely women from England.  Seriously - this place is awesome.  I finally made it to the pool and went for a swim and had just enough time to get back to the room and change for our afternoon safari. 
 
On the afternoon safari we saw two more leopards, several elephants, a few peacocks, spotted deer, sambal deer, water buffalo, several mongoose (or is it mongeese?), monitor lizards, crocodiles, and tons of colorful migrating birds.  It was a great afternoon!  We got back to the hotel just after dusk and were happy to eat dinner and get some sleep.  

Peacock and spotted deer

Mongoose (aka Rikki Tikki Tavi)

Third leopard of the day

Safari Sunset

The next morning we left Yala National Park, very satisfied with our animal sightings and loving our time at Chaaya.  We took the ocean road back to Colombo so we could visit the historic city of Galle, which has a history of both Portuguese and Dutch colonies.  

Charles on the fortress wall of Galle

Dutch church in Galle

We arrived in Colombo after dark, but we still had a few hours to kill before we went to the airport, so we did what all the guidebooks say people do in Colombo, we went shopping. We were surprised and rather happy to see Christmas decorations in the mall and hear that they were playing English Christmas music.  It was kind of nice to get a little touch of the holidays while we are so far from home.  That night at about 1:30 a.m. we boarded a plane to Bangkok. 

We had to fly through Bangkok to get to Cambodia since it has the largest international airport in the region. Since we had to fly in here we figured we would spend a few days exploring the city.  We arrived at 6:25 a.m. after a red eye flight from Colombo, exhausted. We spent a couple hours resting in our hotel and then decided to check out the sights around us. Turns out, we are staying in the major shopping area. We went to a mall called MBK, which is 7 stories tall and is filled with shops and stalls.  It appears you can find anything - you can bargain for watches, shoes, bags, or clothes, you can get a massage, a facial, or have your teeth whitened, you can buy televisions or camera equipment, eat at dozens of restaurants, sing karaoke,  the options were endless and we didn't even visit every floor.  We went across the street to Siam Center, which is another mall that reminded us more of the malls we have at home. Then we walked next door into another mall, this one puts the Houston Galleria and North Park to shame - it was full of every designer store you can imagine. There was a hall of mirrors, an aquarium, and a huge movie theater. The movie theater was playing Skyfall in English on the IMAX screen later that evening and we jumped at the chance to sit and do something mindless in strong air conditioning.  The movie was great and the theater was fantastic.The only thing that made us realize we were watching a movie in Thailand and not at home in Houston was this - before the movie started a song and film started playing, everyone in the theater stood (we stood too, even though we weren't sure what was going on). Of course I had to google this tradition, here is what I found - it was the royal hymn and a video of the king, and it is played before every movie.  Interesting.


Our second day in Bangkok we went to the Grand Palace.  This place is so full of color and pattern and sparkles it is hard to believe.  We made our way through the complex of temples, visited the famous Emerald Buddha, and then sat for a while to take it all in.  Charles worked on a painting and I wandered around taking pictures and enjoying the colors and watching the hundreds of people visiting the temples. 

Grand Palace, Bangkok

Temple of the Emerald Buddha

Charles painting inside the Grand Palace

After the Grand Palace we went to check on the suit Charles was having made, something he was really looking forward to doing while we were in Southeast Asia.  We stopped into the tailor to do a preliminary measure of everything.  It's rather shocking you can have a suit and a sports coat made in about 36 hours here for about 1/3 of the cost of a suit in the U.S.  We were both pretty hungry after our morning of sight seeing and mid-day fitting, so we decided we would head to the famous Khaosan Road for lunch, mainly because I felt like I couldn't leave Bangkok without at least seeing what it's like.  We had fun wandering down the street looking at silly t-shirts and random gadgets sold by street vendors, smelling the various scents wafting from the food carts, we even stopped at one of the many spas on the street and got foot massages. 

Exploring Khaosan Road

Charles on Khaosan Road

Later that evening we walked along the river, then went to find the Bamboo Bar and have a drink and enjoy their live jazz music.  The Bamboo Bar is in one of the oldest hotels in Bangkok (the Mandarin Oriental) and is famous for being visited by Duke Ellington, Roger Moore, Audrey Hepburn, Ray Charles, Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, and David Bowie.  The place was really cool, tucked away inside the hotel, we found a table among the many visitors from around the world.  Our last stop of the evening was the night market off of Silom Street.  We figured we would walk - it didn't look that far on the map, after about 30 minutes of walking in the sticky 90 degree evening, we found it!  You can buy pretty much anything at the night market, this particular market seems to specialize in knock-offs.  It was lots of fun browsing and even doing a little bargaining. 

I had to get a photo with the Texas plate at the night market

Our pimped out VIP tuk-tuk back to the hotel

The next morning we headed for the Thailand / Cambodia border.  More on that to come.