Day - 19 Railay Day Tour

Day 18 - railay beach exploration
  Today we woke up with the delivery of our groceries! Yes... We mainly ordered snacks of local fruits and some slabs of meat. Delicious!  After breakfast we met up with Nat at the bamboo bar whom I had to wake up because he had a long night of DJing. I asked him where he wanted to take us and he rambled off a bunch of names the last one ending in sunset. I didn't realize we were hanging out for the full day! Wow this was exciting. It was only four of us Phil, Nick, Chris, and myself because Nate wasn't feeling well today. 
  The first place we went to was the lagoon. We hiked up and down red clay walls which were surprisingly large making our trip slow and cautious. If you injured yourself here you would be SOL. We finally made it down in the lagoon which was filled with sea water from high tide. There were beautiful rock formations everywhere. We were literally inside the mountain, in a hole 100 feet in diameter and 200 meters high. Wow... We stayed down there for a while just enjoying this magical place. During our hike back we took an abrupt turn taking us out to see the expansive views of Railay West (the part of town with all the bars and restaraunts) at lookout point. While coming back down from the mountain Nat decided to climb into a tree and jump down like a jungle monkey which freaked me out! He loved joking with us and had a great time singing hooks of recient songs. Next we made it out to the diamond cave which was an actual cave with sparkling rock formations and pleanty of bats. We then picked up some large tortches back at the bamboo bar for our next location. This time we walked down to punang beach which was filled with all sorts of people. Some were nudists and others were Europeans who were way to comfortable sunbathing in their speedos. We turned off the beach and headed into the jungle, once again and found ourselves in a dark cave. This is what we had the tortches for. They revealed to us tiny bamboo ladders that we used to help us to scale to the top of the cave. Here we had expansive views of Railay East, that is where we are staying. We were so high up! We continued to thank Nat as for we wouldn't have known about any of these spots without him. We then made it back to the house after our adventurous day to relax. I showed Nat how to download new songs off the internet making him very excited. The whole trip he told me about Erin and how they met each other. I think he is in love! We then finished up our day on Railay East watching the sunset and relaxing in the sand. When we came back Nat brought his computer and gave us a dj set. The night ended after Chris and I ate at a hole in the wall thai food restaraunt where we both ate for 6 dollars... Not bad! We were joined at our table by a spider the size of our palms. It was crazy looking! We then made it back to the bars to hang out before making it through the town back to our mosquito net covered beds. Whew that was a big day!

Day - 15,16 Leaving Cambodia to our new home in Thailand

Railay
 The mission trip is over and now we have 10 days before we can get back home due to flight blackouts. We decided to make it out to Thailand since it sits adjacent to Cambodia. We  learned that we shouldn't wear any Cambodian clothing in Thailand because Cambodia is harboring their ex- prime minister right now. Nick had to buy some abercrombie polos before we left. 2 for 8 dollars! The treck to Thailand took a while. Before leaving Cambodia at 5 pm we one last time ate at Dr. Khauv's aunts house where she filled us up to the brim with a four course meal. It had soup, eggs, pickled veggies, stewed pork, and prawns (yes we were spoiled). I wanted to get some money before we left to Thailand so I walked out of the Aunts house where she had security guards and was told to get on the back of a motorcycle. SWEET! We zigzaged through town until we stopped at an ATM! I had never driven blindly through so many intersections before... What a rush. Once we said our goodbyes to Cambodia we boarded our plane to Bangkok (only an hour flight) where we saw one of the largest airports in the world! It was 4 stories high!! We then took another hour flight to Phucket; a small semi island on the coast of Thailand. Here we spent the night at a seaside cottage on the beach. It sounds nicer than it was... We were out in the boonies and slept in single room huts which barely fit a queensize bed on the floor. Oh yeah and we also had a fan that came in handy. I couldn't complain because we were on the beach!! 
  The next morning we woke up and strolled along the white sand beaches before meeting up with Nate in a taxi. Interesting story here... Nate flew from Seim Reap straight to Bangkok where he was unable to get a plane flight to Phucket. He was then unable to get a bus but he was able to get a rental car! This is peak season for Thailand because of new years where 80,000 people join together on an island for the full moon party... Don't think we are going to do that. So yes, after Nate drove 11 hours, he finally met us at the seaside cottage in a luxury van taxi.  From here we drove 2 hours to a coast town and then took a boat to Railay Beach. The ride was insane because they drive on the other side or the road here. That freaked us out at first!
  The views of Railay from the water taxi were breathtaking. This small town of 500 people is surrounded by 200m limestone cliffs which fall directly into the water. The only access point is by boat.  We were shocked and at a loss for words by the beauty of Railay as we pulled up to it's secluded beach.  We were met by a nice man who loaded all of our bags onto a dolly and wheeled us to our villa for the week. 
  Our villa has three separate huts about 12 feet off the ground surrounded by a large deck. Two huts are rooms with outdoor showers and bathrooms while the other hut is a kitchen and familyroom with two couches/beds. Every door opens up to let air draft through the villa. We are surrounded by monster cliffs and are only a few hundred feet from the beach.  There is a lot of wildlife here including the worlds smallest monkey! Yes MONKEY!
  It was 1pm here so we still had a full day of adventure ahead of us. Railay Beach is secluded which means sky high prices and no markets. So we paid someone to take a taxi to the closest city where they would then take a bus to a local market. They should drop off our order at 8am tommorrow morning. Railay also has no police in the town so the locals have some interesting rules here.  We decided that we would grab lunch which was delicious and then head straight to the beach! The beach was perfect. It's soft white sands led into the 80 degree water that had no waves, just smooth rolling water. It was like a gigantic swimming pool. Now we could finally relax. 
  I was told by Erin Jackson who was here a month ago for a teaching mission trip that I had to meet a man named Nat at the bamboo bar. So that night we headed there after dinner where we waited for him to show up. He was such a nice guy and sported dreads making him look black even though was Thai. He told me all about Erin and how they met and when he saw me and my smile it reminded him of her. He told me about island culture and how he was going to be a DJ at the full moon party for new years. He was only going to be here for a few days before he left but he wanted to take us around the island and show us the best spots. So we made plans to meet up around 10 the next morning. The rest of the night we went to the bars and relaxed as we saw Thai kickboxing and a woman walking with a large snake that we could play with. 
We met a lot of people out here from all over, even Sweeden and had a great time keeping up conversations. All and all I think we are going to have such a great time here in paradise. Oh and I forgot to mention that right now I'm laying in bed under mosquito nets trying to sleep. Kinda weird but fun nonetheless hahaha.

Days - 13,14 The Floating Fishing Town

Day - 13, 14

There was no break to rest after serving the orphanage. We adjusted 5 days in a row this week! The good thing is that my body is now able to take on a high volume of people without being sore. Our next stop on the trip was only about a 20 minute trip to a fishing village right outside of town. This village was very interesting because all the houses were built 20 or so feet off the ground to avoid the water from the floods. We didn't know where we were headed until our bus took an abrupt turn off the road and went down a steep decline. We came to a stop at a school which looked a little funny... Oh that might be because it was a floating school equipped with two small floating classrooms and a floating basketball court. It was an unbelievable sight! We set up our tables on the basketball court. It had a tin roof and was supported by a wire fence all around that let in a cool breeze. The basketball court had no lines and had a wooden floor that was close to raw wood. The greatest part was that the hoops were probably about 12 feet tall making the average 5'5" Cambodian look even smaller. The village head had promoted us to the town a few days earlier so we were expecting to see a lot of people. The first day we saw mainly school children and women. It felt a little slow even though we saw about 200 people the first day. Papa Khauv and Hungs father made a run to get a flyer printed up to promote us to more people. At one point I felt like we were running a children's daycare center because the kids would stick around and play with us after their adjustments. They only had school half day so the other half of the day they were free to run wild while their parents were at work.
The second day here we had a larger crowd of people. We saw 299 this day making it our busiest day of the trip. We had a few stroke patients today and one woman who had a piriformis injection which put her into so much pain that she couldn't walk or move her leg. Kim and Nate worked on her and managed to get some motion back in her leg. It took forever to get her onto her side to adjust her low back. This type of thing was hard to watch because she was hurting so badly... I think she was thankful that we took care of her. It was so much fun adjusting all the children. Personally I saw close to 20 kids each day. Some would laugh hysterically after there adjustments while others seemed stunned coming to the table not knowing exactly what to expect. Phil had the best child because he came to see us running in naked. We had to wrap him up like a taquito in a blanket before he was adjusted, but hey we didn't refuse anyone from getting checked. Kim really tried to connect with the girls giving a group of them French braids. Many of the girls had never combed their hair before so she worked really hard to get them ready for their braids. She became grossed out after we showed her that they all had a large amount of lice! Chris gave me some floss that he had in his bag and I taught the kids how to use it. They need some dentists out here badly to teach them simple hygene and donate toothbrushes and paste. Everyone was missing or had rotted teeth.
All and all this was a great place to end the trip. The weather was perfect here (mid 80's which is cold here so everyone came to see us in sweaters and pants) and we had a very friendly and responsive atmosphere.
After dinner both nights we all went out for ice cream at a gellato place called the blue pumpkin. Wow was it good. I picked out cinnamin the first night and coconut the second! I love ice cream. After dessert many of us decided to go shopping at the night market or out to pub street for some drinks. Both of these options were geared specifically for tourists and were nicely rennovated compared to the Russian market that was quite gross. It's funny here is Cambodia because they have the same items everywhere but everyone tries to convince you that theirs is real or better quality then their neighbors. So we laughed when we found shirts that said "same same but different". I haven't really bought anything yet because yes it's alllllll crap. Everything won't last and is made as cheaply as possible. I've been trying to find some decent items here but it's hard. On the streets of the night market there were food vendors selling interesting items. One was grilling partially hatched chicken eggs. Yuck!
Our last night here was a blast because we went out to celebrate Christmas. I'm not too into the whole Christmas thing but ill still go out and have a good time. A group of 6 of us went out dancing. Amy refused to dance so we picked her up in a chair and put her up on a raised platform in the middle of the dance floor. It was priceless! We all danced the night away and made it back by Tuk Tuk safely to get sleep for our 6 hour bus ride back to phnom penh. I'll be sad to leave this city but I know there is so much more to come...