Day 2 or 3... not really sure!

Seeing how we kind of skipped through the time space continuum to end up here on Wednesday, I'm not really too sure of what to call today! Either way, it's Wednesday, October 6th... Travis' Birthday!! It was a good day, there wasn't much sleep to be had throughout the night, jet lag kind of set in. For the most part we were all up out of bed around six in the morning and made our way downstairs for breakfast, most of the hostels or hotels that we will be staying at have free breakfast that is offered to their guests.

It finally started to set in that we weren't in Canada anymore as we looked outside and noticed stray dogs running around, dirt roads, and a river that looked like most waste disposal places back home.

Last night we kind of got ripped off getting to the hostel from the airport, rather then pushing for the taxi to turn on a meter, we just took what the first person offered, 400 baht which is the equivalent of about 13 dollars for a ten minute ride. This morning we took about an hour taxi ride into town to the train station and it only cost about 250 baht, so now that we know to never get in without the meter going, it won't happen again! 

We got to the train station and were bombarded by people begging for money, offering us rides in tuk-tuk's, offering to help us out with info on the trains and everything in between. We got some help which led to us purchasing our tickets to head to the Cambodian-Thailand border town called Aranyaprathet which was about  215 km away and a 7 hour train ride?? haha... It actually wasn't too bad, at some points it was really crowded and everyone was squished in to the max but for most of the trip it was quite comfortable. 

We arrived in to Aranyprathet around 7 or so, and we got hooked up with a couple of tuk-tuk drivers that drove us to our hotel called the Market Motel. First experience for most of us on a tuk-tuk and it was sweet! The motel was pretty nice, we have a pool, individual rooms, and everything else. Quite different then what we were expecting when we were planning this trip. We went for a swim and had a birthday dinner for Travis to round the day off. 

DAY 1

This is the beginning of a blog that we will keep for the duration of our adventures and trek through Southeast Asia! The "5 Canadian Ninjas" referred to in the title of our blog are... Nicole Wight, Tara Gusa, Spencer Wilson, Travis Dunnet, and Adam Christensen. We started off in Yellowknife, NT and ended up in Asia somehow?! Our trip will consist of travelling through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and ending up in Hawaii to close it off.

Day 1
Starting time... 4:15 AM (October 4th, 2010)
Ending time... 12:30 AM (October 6th, 2010)

Today was the first day of our travels... well kinda 2 days! Don't really know where Tuesday disappeared, somewhere over the pacific, I believe? Our flights consisted of a quick trip from Calgary to San Francisco with a near trip ending crash as we were landing. The next one to Tokyo was a little bit longer, 12 hours to be exact! When we arrived in Tokyo it was like entering into a whole new world full of strange new characters, currency, people and too much sushi to account for but there was a familiar logo... the giant golden M that also coincidentally sold sushi as well. We chilled in the Narita airport for about 4 hours where we enjoyed sushi and good chocolate, don't really have a clue to how much we paid for this stuff but it was good  to say the least! Our next flight to Bangkok was about 7 hours long, not to shabby comparing to the last flight. Upon arrival, we waited for bags, went through passport control and caught a taxi to our hotel that was fairly close to the airport. The hotel was fairly nice, we had a room for us guys and a room for the girls averaging about $10 per person! To our surprise, there was hot showers (well for everyone except Spencer) and fairly decent washroom facilities. The beds were about as comfortable as lying on a oak coffee table but once you kinda get used to it, it's not that bad. Well... That's all she wrote for Day 1!