Well, when the sea is rough and the rain doesn't stop, it's time to leave the boat in a marina for some land travel.
On September 7, we took the night bus to Bangkok where our new Belgian friends were expecting us.
It's thanks to Philippe and Liliane that we discovered the Khao Yai National Park, a reference in South-East Asia. Khao Yai is 165 km east/south-east of Bangkok. We made a 4 hour walk in the luxurious flora. At night, we enjoyed the silence in the lodge where we were on our own.
The next day, we rode a bike in the stunning Ancient City. It's truly a city-museum where the old teak houses are the main attraction.
In Bangkok, we didn't miss the Grand Palace and the Wat Phra Keo (the temple of the Emerald Bouddha).
On September 16, we had to "suffer" during 15 hours (by bus) out of which 10 on the bumpy roads of Cambodia (where our average speed didn't exceed 25 km/h) to discover one of the marvels of the world: Angkor Wat.
Cambodians really have a culinary sense of humour, so did we as we discovered the very special cheese omelette they served us.
Angkor Wat, the largest temple (1 KM2) and the surrounding temples are superb and we certainly didn't regret the long trip.
The temple we preferred is "Ta Phrom", the Jungle Temple. The roots of the trees are competing with the walls of the temple which gives it its unique character.
On the way back, we admired the rice fields "dressed" in light green.
As soon as we were back in Bangkok, we took the night train to Chiang Mai,in the North-West of Thailand.
There, the landscape of hills and mountains is exquisite. There are even pine trees on the tops.
3 days later, we took the bus to Pai then Mae Hong Son for a quick visit to one of the villages of the "Long necks", a human zoo that we didn't appreciate at all.
Back in Pai, we choose to ride elephants for a 3 hour trek. We rode bare back for the first 2 hours and even had a bath on their backs in the river. They splashed us with their trumps and even laid on their side to make sure we could appreciate the water. We came out wet but happy!
After a last walk in the small Pai canyon we made our way back to "Minuit".
We were very lucky since we only "suffered" from 30 minutes of rain during one single day during our whole trip and we were in the rainy season. It sometimes did rain during the night to make the air cooler for the morning.
To look at more pictures, just surf on our web site.
Foe the ones who are interested, here are the 15 means of transport we used:
Night-bus, car, bicycle, boat (on the river of Bangkok), day-bus, pick-up truck, tuk-tuk, jungle-taxi, taxi, night train, motorcycle, songthaew, elephant, day-train and side-car.