Eventually, we made it to the famous temples around Siem Reap - Ankor Wat and dozens of others, some of them partly swallowed by the jungle with huge trees growing on top of the builings. Spend quite some time climbing up and down temples, watching little monkeys coming out onto the streets in the late afternoon and cows walking through "open-air restaurants" or people riding elephants. When it was time to leave Siem Reap I decided to take a bus to Bangkok in the early morning. The trip through Cambodia was rough, unsealed roads, which means that the "street" had turned into one big field of mud because of the rain the night before. Anyway, we were bouncing along, I've learned to cherish the seats of the minibus, althrough not much space, especially for my knees, I don't know how the Khmers on those trucks survived....we passed some bikers with pigs striped behind them on the bike, I guess those didn't make a sound because their backbones where already broken because of these streets...I had a big laugh when I looked in the lonely planet guidebook: it's called the Boulevard of broken backbones...we made it to Poipet, the town next to the border, somewhen after 3 pm, the main road of the town had become a river, when we stopped at the bus station/place, our bus made a huge wave so that everybody at the station got wet feet...after another 5 min busride and a little hike across the border I found the place where the bus to Bangkok left from and finally got a bus at 5 pm ...I was wondering when I had left ASIA and returned into the western world: airconditioned, big luxus buses("2 floors") , and no more than 24 people where allowed to hop on each bus ( I still don't get why ), which meant not even half full- I felt like in Elvis' living room, big TV screens in the front, the roof plastered with leather, looking like a couch...and sealed highways with several lanes - what a smoth fast ride!!! Straight electricity cables! We stoped at an ordinary gas station: no 3- liter cocacola-bottles full of fuel at a little place along the street.... how I missed cambodia !!!!!!! I made it to Bangkok somewhen after 9pm and found a nice place to stay at one of the small streets ( =soi) off Sukhumvit Rd. I spend the next days running from different embassies to several tourist attractions and back, spending lots of time just "in transit". Anyway, I managed to see quite a few sights at the right shoreside of the Chao Phraya river, like the Royal Palace and the shining Wat(=temple) Phra Kaew, Wat Pho with it's large reclining buddah statue, Chinatown, the Vimanmek Teak Mansion, the Elefant museum, the throne hall and the beautiful red teak house of Jim Thompson. I headed down Sukhumvit Rd in the evening, looking for nice Thai food, walked down one of the small streets off Sukhumvit Rd, went around another corner and guess where I ended up ( what a coincidence, hahaha) ??? Flashing red lights reminded me of Las Vegas, no wonder it's called cowboy street...I waded through a ocean of bars with dozens of Thaigirls with short skirts waiting in front, and as it didn't exactly look like they were waiting for me ( or had an intention to feed me) I made it back to Sukhumvit Rd and headed further down to find something to eat, which I finally did, after walking quite a bit down the road, keeping myself bussy looking at the roadsite markets and trying not to run into one of those old western guys holding hands with their little thai chicks. After collecting my visas I left Bangkok, there's still a lot to see over there, but I'll be back anyway. I headed north to Ayutthaya, a city ( or let's say island as it is surrounded by rivers) with lots of ancient temples left from times when it was the capital of thailand - a small place though, I decided to rent a bike to get around, which was really enjoyable till it started to rain in the late afternoon which ended the trip a little early, at least I kept the locals entertained: picture me completely soaked, cycling along the streets ( that turned into lakes) with a big grin and only one shoe - as one of my sandals broke on the way...there were even people circling around me on their motorbikes just to make sure that they'd seen right - while others shouted at me, trying to tell me that the "stopper" on my bike was still in place ( couldn't be fixed). I took the train to Nakhon Ratchasima (Khorat) today, thankful that my backpack is such a comfy thing to sit on. Originally I wanted to see a place south of town, but I guess I'll head straight north to the border of Laos instead, as this rainy afternoon kind of puts me off wandering around in the middle of nowhere.