When I look up a word in the dictionary, I get unusually annoyed when I see the word itself used in its definition.

redundancy /rĭ-dŭn′dən-sē/ noun

• The state of being redundant.
• Something redundant or excessive; a superfluity.
• Repetition of linguistic information inherent in the structure of a language…

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Yeah, ok, it’s not the exact same word and the definition makes sense, but I’d rather not have to look up the definition of “redundant” to understand what the “state of being redundant” is. The 3rd definition given above gets it.

So that got me thinking, how often does that happen and does it form a chain of words? Let’s define every word in the dictionary as a node and draw lines to every word that appears in its definition.

For simplicity I:

• used the English 2024 WordNet dictionary
• ignored entries with spaces in them
• filtered out punctuation and stop words (e.g: a, of, us, but, they...) in definitions
• aimed not to spend more than a day on this (spoiler alert: this took way too long and I couldn’t even get it to work 100%)

Some of the filtered words include Salpiglossis sinuata, sea snake, polling booth, occipital protuberance and my favourite, beefsteak geranium.

There were 67,780 such entries out of a total of 161,705. Initially I was also getting errors for around 12k words but that’s because the .words() method was returning all adjectives tagged as a but their internal tag elsewhere in the wordnet was s.

As for the actual word chains, I just straight up brute-forced it. No fancy data structures or clever algorithms. I just looped over the word: definition map twice and checked for matches. Yeah, it’s dumb, but it’s was a Sunday morning. It took about 2hrs to process on my M1. Let’s plot the results!

Ah yes, as expected.

I am using the vis.js library for this (first time). Whilst the code is working, the visualisation is simply too dense. I needed to do some more filtering. I removed words with 0 chains and made sure I am not double counting things. Oh and I need to turn on the physics setting!

Let’s check out how things look on a random sample of ~1000 words.

Note: it’s interactive! 🕹️

Great! We’re starting to see some clusters emerge! The arrows indicate who appears in whose definition:

This means “twisting” appears in the definition of “worm”.

I pre-computed the above graph so that it loads faster, which will come in handy for the full results below.

A month later: optimising, hacking & crying

Future Petar here. On that beautiful Sunday morning everything indicated that I was going to finish this before noon, just in time to go out and enjoy a nice day at the beach. What a fool I was. Apparently, visualising 85441 nodes and 384717 edges is more computationally expensive than landing on the moon. I spent a few more Sundays trying to render this giant network…

TLDR

❌ What didn’t work:

• loading everything at once (23MB of nodes and edges) crashes the server
• loading in batches also crashes the server
• waiting for the network to stabilise before adding a new batch takes an “infinite” amount of time since it gets slower with each batch
• tuning the physics parameters (this did result in some improvement but not enough to solve the problem)

I wish the batched approach worked because it resulted in some cool behaviour. See the below (sped up) video:

✅ What (kind of) worked:

• loading the most heavily connected nodes first with physics off, then letting the network stabilise
• zooming out the canvas before turning on physics

Unfortunately this approach also immediately starts to chug, even with just ~7% of all nodes and ~3% of all edges, but if you wait ~2 minutes you get a semi-usable network. Interactivity is choppy but, hey, it works.

Final results

Here’s the precomputed network for 5839 most-connected words (10000 edges) after a few minutes of stabilisation. Give it a sec to load. This one is also interactive, but you’ll notice it’s not as “floaty” as the sample earlier; that’s because physics have been turned off.

I am disappointed I didn’t get to load the entire network but I am kind of tired (and bored) of this side project – I first jotted this idea down back in 2021 – better to publish it now rather than never. With a bit more tinkering I think I could get this to work and also look into some questions such as “what’s the longest chain?”. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve the performance, here’s the Github repo. Thanks for reading!

I am not car aficionado, in fact, I am probably less interested in cars than the average person. As the tech bros have slowly crept into the automotive industry, I can’t help but feel like I’m witnessing a car crash in slow motion.

Cars are the Smart TVs of today

Have you tried shopping for a TV in the past 5 years? Actually, scratch that – have you used a “smart” TV in the past 5 years? – it’s awful. Sure, displays are getting better, but manufacturers insist on cramming bloatware and spyware, embellished in the worst UI imaginable, running on a processor designed for a smartwatch.

The Essential Smart TV Pooramid

Picture quality is at phenomenal levels, even on low-cost offerings, but those inky blanks come at the cost of compromised privacy and ad-infested UI.

So what do cars have to do with any of this? Every product that takes a concrete position in human dynamics, be it a TV, a fridge or a car, follows a relatively predictable evolution: it starts of limited but promising, gets meaningful upgrades, and eventually slides into into the valley of “enshittification”. Few are those who climb their way out of the shit-pit, fewer still are those who avoid it entirely.

100% science based chart

What’s so wrong with cars then?

We live in an era of peak automotive power, utility and luxury. Much like with TVs, we probably reached the first plateau of quality: image clarity, super thin displays, etc. Then we started getting things nobody asked for: frame rate interpolation (why God, why!?), insane image presets, automatic audio adjustments. I won’t talk about 3D TVs. Let’s just pretend that never happened and that drawer in your cabinet isn’t full of dusty 3D glasses that haven’t seen the light of day for the last decade.

Cars are entering the “frame-interpolation” era, the slippery slope into the loathed, anti-consumer, anti-logic Shit Pit.

Let’s just fire through this:

• Hiding critical/often-used buttons behind touchscreens for the sake of minimalism (and cost?)
• On that note, poor physical layout in general (genuinely thinking that you can rate cars’ on a “hazard-light-button-placement index”)
• YOUR LED LIGHTS ARE TOO BRIGHT GODDAMIT
• Cars are getting too big; why are manufacturers pushing “crossovers” and SUVs on consumers and why are consumers buying them? I could write pages on this point alone.
• Combine the two previous points for peak blindness
• “Low profile” rims/tyres/wheels/whatever: cost a fortune and more prone to getting scratched
• Subscription style plans trying to creep their way in
• ALL the privacy violations you could think of
• Rubbish software and UI all round: it’s 2024 and I dread it every time I need to pair my phone to a car
• That weird glossy pastel paintwork that’s so popular all of a sudden (I’m allowed one subjective point on here, OK?)

The car of the future

I don’t think we’ve reached the depths of the brown ocean… yet. Who’s to blame here? Consumers? Manufacturers?

I know I sound like a luddite here but the same way I just want a good display from my TV, I want less from my car, not more.

I miss my 2005 Toyota Corolla 😢

With ChatGPT (the free, 3.5, version) it finally feels possible. There are caveats of course, which I will mention.

The entry prompt

I want to practice my Spanish by translating things from English. Act as a Spanish tutor. Your task is to correct my translation and explain each correction. Provide me with a text in English that obeys the following:

• consists of 4 to 5 sentences
• includes at least 1 example that would require the subjunctive mood
• includes a mix of past, present and future tenses (and variants thereof)
• take inspiration, but do not limit yourself, from the following list of topics: weather, friends, politics, health culture, cooking, hobbies, nature, technology, business, family

Respond in Spanish, apart from the text in English.

The last bullet point is important. If you don’t direct ChatGPT it will almost always give you text about vacations. This fix isn’t perfect, but it seems to be relatively varied so far and you can always use the “regenerate” feature to re-roll a topic.

The direction about the subjunctive mood is not necessary; it’s just something I want to practice. Similarly, the instruction for tenses is also up to you to modify but I think it helps vary the text (otherwise you get boring past-tense-only paragraphs).

Example output

Por supuesto, estaré encantado de ayudarte. Aquí tienes el texto en inglés para que lo traduzcas al español:

“Last night, my friends and I went to a cooking class to learn how to make traditional dishes from different cultures. The instructor suggested that we try our hand at making a spicy Mexican dish. While we were cooking, we talked about our favorite family recipes and shared stories about our childhood. Next week, we are planning a hiking trip to a nearby nature reserve. I hope the weather will be favorable and that we can enjoy the beauty of the outdoors.”

Por favor, traduce este texto al español y luego estaré aquí para revisar y corregir tu traducción, explicando cada corrección. ¡Buena suerte!

Notice that it has included a blend of the suggested topics, instead of remaining in one single topic. Some tweaking to that instruction may be required. Otherwise it has followed all other instructions correctly.

The exit prompt

In a single reply you can include your translation and provide instructions for the correction.

There are some intentional mistakes in here to demonstrate the problems ChatGPT experiences… also don’t judge my Spanish too much 😅

Anoche, mis amisgos y yo fuimos a una clase de cocinar para aprender hacer platos tradicionales de culturas diferentes. El instructor sugerió que probamos hacer un picante plato de México. Como cocinamos, hablabamos sobre nuestras favoritas recetas de familia y compartimos cuentos de nuestro niñez. La proxima semana, planeamos una caminata a una reserva natural cerca. Espero que el tiempo sea favorable y que podamos disfrutar la belleza del aire libre.

–

Please correct all mistakes, including places where the sentence can be made more natural for a native Spanish (Spain) speaker. Ensure that I have used the correct tenses in all places and correct me if I haven’t. Ensure not to highlight or explain things that are already correct. If there is a typo or a misued accent, highlight it but do not explain it. Explain the remaining corrections.

ChatGPT’s reply:

The emphasis is present in the original reply.

¡Muy bien! Has hecho un buen trabajo. Aquí están las correcciones y las explicaciones:

“Anoche, mis amigos y yo fuimos a una clase de cocina para aprender a hacer platos tradicionales de diferentes culturas. El instructor sugirió que intentáramos hacer un plato picante mexicano. Mientras cocinábamos, hablábamos sobre nuestras recetas familiares favoritas y compartíamos cuentos de nuestra infancia. La próxima semana, estamos planeando una caminata a una reserva natural cercana. Espero que el tiempo sea favorable y que podamos disfrutar de la belleza del aire libre.”

Explicaciones:

1. “amisgos” - La palabra correcta es “amigos,” que significa “friends.”

2. “clase de cocinar” - Usamos “clase de cocina” para indicar “cooking class.”

3. “aprender hacer” - Cambiamos “aprender hacer” a “a aprender” para usar la estructura correcta del infinitivo “to learn to.”

4. “platos tradicionales de culturas diferentes” - Cambiamos “platos tradicionales de diferentes culturas” para que la descripción sea más clara.

5. “sugerió que probamos hacer” - Cambiamos “sugerió que probamos hacer” a “sugirió que intentáramos” para usar el subjuntivo y expresar una sugerencia.

6. “picante plato de México” - Cambiamos “picante plato de México” a “plato picante mexicano” para que la descripción > sea más natural.

7. “favoritas recetas de familia” - Cambiamos “favoritas recetas de familia” a “recetas familiares favoritas” para que el orden de las palabras sea correcto.

8. “nuestro niñez” - Cambiamos “nuestro niñez” a “nuestra infancia” para usar el sustantivo correcto.

9. “estamos planeando” - Cambiamos “planeamos” a “estamos planeando” para expresar una acción en progreso.

10. “a una reserva natural cerca” - Cambiamos “a una reserva natural cerca” para expresar la cercanía.

11. “disfrutar la belleza del aire libre” - Agregamos “de” antes de “la belleza” para indicar “enjoy the beauty of the outdoors.”

¡Sigue practicando y mejorando tus habilidades en español! Si tienes más textos para traducir o preguntas, no dudes en decírmelo. Estoy aquí para ayudarte.

Conclusion

I’ve been using this approach for a few weeks and overall I’ve been impressed by the replies it generates. I’ve checked a couple of the translations with my actual Spanish tutor and she agreed with 99% of the corrections.

There a few issues to note however:

• It’s inconsitent in its own corrections. In the corrected text it gives: “una reserva natural cercana“ yet in the explanations it gives “a una reserva natural cerca“ which is the same as what I wrote!

• It highlights/corrects things without changing them. In its explanation it halluciantes reasons for the “correction”. This didn’t occur in the example I provided, but it’s by far the most annoying mistake it makes.

• It still explains typos, despite being told not to. For instance, it highlighted and explained the mispelling (amisgos)

Despite this I still think it’s a great way to practice my vocabulary in written form. Translating 4-5 sentences each morning has been a fun exercise, in addition to the rest of my practice routine.

I am still experimenting with the prompts, and with the recent addition of Custom Instructions I may not need to copy+paste the prompts each time.

I am now on my 1000th attempt of trying to master Spanish and so far it’s proving to be my most dedicated run. It still has its ups and downs but I think I’ve learnt some things about learning.

When you first start learning a new language, you are likely to focus most on writing and reading. If I can’t even read or write yet, what’s the point of trying to listen and talk?

There’s some logic in there, but I think that kind of approach is flawed. I deferred speaking Spanish for a long time and I regret it. What I had failed to realise is that, much like in body building, targeting one muscle group and ignoring others is not really a good idea.

I am at a stage now where my reading and writing is miles ahead of my speech and listening skill. I assumed that if I grow a rich enough vocabulary and I can use it in writing, I will automatically be able to use it in speech. I mean, how hard could it be – I already know the words and grammar – I just need to speak it instead of writing it! To continue the body building analogy, I now have the the guns that make me feel confident, atop skinny legs that can’t take me anywhere.

Listening and speaking is just so different. It’s as if those neural connections move at a snail’s pace compared to the super neuron speedway of my reading and writing. I can almost feel my brain searching for the words that I’m hearing and I, as an outsider, am telling the little librarians in there that I know this entry exists, just hurry up and find it for me!

Me speaking Spanish

This is what I refer to as buffering. It’s awful and frustrating. It gets better, but only if you practice it. So don’t ignore speaking and listening early on; start earlier than you think you have to.

On top of that, learn from different resources; Duolingo will only take you so far. At the time of writing I am on Unit 78 out of 211, or just a mere 37% of the way through the entire Duolingo course. I’ve been at it for a number of years, starting, stopping, killing my 300-something day streak, restarting, and so on and so on.

Last month’s “streak”. The blue dates indicate that I missed practice for that day but Duo saved my streak

Now, I really do recommend Duolingo, but I definitely find it a bit of a chore sometimes. Also it’s rather repetitive and just not all that exciting after a point. My biggest problem with it is what I mentioned earlier: you need to practice speaking and Duo only gives you a smidgen of speaking exercises and they don’t even emulate real conversation.

I’ve started paying for private lessons just so I can start speaking. Of course, you get the added benefit of having a 1-1 teacher who can teach you more grammar and throw different sets of exercises to you than what you’re used to with Duolingo.

And that’s the other thing: Duo gives you the impression that you’re acing certain topics but a lot of it is because you’ve subconsciously memorised the answers. That’s not a bad thing, but it gives you a false sense of your own ability.

Other apps I recommend (I am not affiliated with any of these):

• HelloTalk: language exchange app; good but most conversations fizzle out eventually
• Conjugato: practice conjugations; I ended up paying for the full version because of how much I liked it

Ultimately though, find someone you can practice speaking with after you’ve got some of the basics down, continue with Duolingo, and get a textbook. That’s what I’m doing now. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve got no idea how to construct good GPT-3 prompts, so if you want to skip to end, go ahead. Otherwise let’s just get into it and see what this gives us:

Attempts 1 & 2: Write a creative DALLE2 prompt

Complete nonsense, not even worth mentioning

Attempt 3

I came across a website which specified a bunch of useful lists for creating DALL•E prompts. For example:

• format: 3D Render, Book Cover, Cartoon...

• style: Abstract, Anime, Art Deco, Art Nouveau...

• perspective: 85Mm, Bokeh, Close Up, Dark Background...

Let’s use them to create this instruction:

Create 5 varied DALL•E prompts that use different styles and formats as well 
as a variety of scenery detail information and objects. Use the following 
template:

A [format] of [description] in the style of [style], [perspective].
You need to replace the parameters in the brackets. Use the lists to choose 
from for each one. The description parameter needs to specify an object or 
subject performing an action, in some sort of scenery.

1. A 3D Render of a cityscape in the style of Cyberpunk, Long Shot.
2. A Book Cover of a woman in the style of Art Nouveau, Close Up.
3. A Cartoon of a cat in the style of Anime, On Canvas.
4. A Diagram of a heart in the style of Gothic, White Background.
5. A Glass of water in the style of Impressionism, In the Distance.

Kind of getting there, but it’s not very inventive. After about 10 more variations of the above, I couldn’t get GPT-3 to produce anything new; it kind of got stuck in a loop. Let’s try something more creative.

Attempt 4

Come up with a brand new description of a painting or photograph, 
specifying the art style, the atmosphere, the framing of the subject, 
the lighting and the medium. Describe the subject.

This is a painting of a young woman in a white dress. She is standing in a garden, surrounded by flowers. The light is shining on her from the left, and she is looking towards the right. The painting is in a realistic style, and the colors are very bright.

That’s more like it! Let’s give it to DALLE. (I will remove the “This is” portion of the prompt)

Let’s generate another prompt:

This painting depicts a beautiful summer day at the beach. The sun is shining and the waves are crashing onto the shore. The colors are very bright and vibrant. The subject is framed by the beach umbrellas and the palm trees. The medium is oil on canvas.

It completely forgot to specify the subject this time. I suppose there doesn’t have to be one. It also chose to use the same description for the colours/vibe.

At this point I noticed a mistake in my prompt. I’ve asked it for a painting or photograph – then I ask it to specify an art style – and at the end I ask it to specify the medium. Perhaps that’s why it chose a painting both times? Let’s try improving it.

Attempt 5

Come up with an original description of a painting or photograph, specifying 
the subject, what they're doing, the atmosphere, the surroundings, the 
framing of the subject and the lighting

In this painting, a young woman is standing in a sun-drenched field of wildflowers. She is wearing a flowing white dress and has a bright red scarf tied around her waist. The woman’s hair is blowing in the breeze and she has a serene look on her face. The painting has a warm, sunny feeling and the woman looks like she is in a state of bliss.

What’s with the women GPT-3? 🤨 I regenerated the output 3 more times and it was more or less the same thing.

Attempt 6

Come up with an original description of a scene, specifying the subject, 
what they're doing, the atmosphere, the surroundings. Decide whether 
this is a painting, a photograph or a 3D render.  

Describe the framing of the subject and the lighting. If it's a painting 
decide the medium.

The subject is a young woman, standing in a forest clearing. She is looking up at the sky, with a sad expression on her face. The atmosphere is one of melancholy and longing. The forest is dark and shadowy, and the sunlight is filtering through the trees. The woman is framed by the trees, and the light is shining on her face. This is a painting, done in oils.

Seriously? C’mon, I even maxed out the randomness to 1 (was 0.75)! To make a long story short, I tried a few more generations. I played around with the “presence penalty”, which affects the model’s likelihood of bringing up new topics. Nonetheless, it kept focusing on women or young girls as the subject, occasionally choosing a boy or “itself” (I) as the subject.

It is clearly struggling with the medium because it almost always chooses a painting and appears to defer the decision I am asking of it by simply stating:

This could be a painting, a photograph or a 3D render.

Let’s try to fix that.

Attempt 7

Come up with an original description of a [medium], specifying the subject, 
what they're doing, the atmosphere, the surroundings and the lighting. 

Replace [medium] with one of: photograph, painting, 3d render, sketch. 
If it's a photograph specify the film type and the lens. If it's a painting 
specify the style.

It’s a photograph of a young woman, she’s sitting on a bench in a park and she’s looking at the camera with a smile. The light is soft and there’s a bit of a breeze.

It’s a 3d render of a cityscape at night. The streets are empty and there’s a light rain falling. The lights from the buildings and streetlights reflect off the wet pavement.

It’s a sketch of a man in a suit. He’s standing in an office with his hands in his pockets. The lighting is bright and there’s a window behind him.

This time it gave me 3 outputs for the price of one, presumably because of the substitution instruction, though it did skip the painting for some reason. We’ve kiiiiind of escaped the “woman loop”.

Let’s keep trying.

Attempt 8

Come up with an original description of a scene, specifying the 
atmosphere, the surroundings and the lighting. Optionally specify 
a subject and tell me what they're doing. Tell me if this is a 
photograph, a painting, a 3d render or a sketch. If it's a 
photograph specify the film type and the lens. If it's a painting 
specify the style.

It’s a painting, in the impressionist style. The scene is of a park in the early morning, with the sun just starting to peek over the trees. The light is soft and diffused, and the colors are muted. The grass is still damp with dew, and there are a few people walking around, enjoying the peace and quiet of the morning.

And once more:

It’s a beautiful sunny day and the sky is clear. The scene is of a young woman sitting on a bench in a park, reading a book. She’s surrounded by trees and flowers, and the sun is shining down on her.

You gotta be shitting me.

Let’s take some steps back. I’ll limit it to just photographs since I’m noticing that it’s forgetting to mention some of the specifics I am asking it for, which is odd because I’ve seen examples of extremely long and convoluted instructions that people have given it and it follows them to the dot.

Attempt 9

Come up with an original description of a photograph specifying the
subject and what they're doing, the atmosphere, the surroundings and 
the lighting. Specify the film type and the lens.

In this photograph, the subject is a young woman standing in the middle of a road. She is looking to the left, away from the camera. The road is empty and there are trees on either side. The lighting is natural and the film type is color. The lens is a wide-angle lens.

AAAAAAH! STOP! 🤬

Attempt 10

Same as before but this time ending with Don't choose a woman as the subject

A young man in his early twenties is leaning against a wall on a sunny day. He is wearing a worn leather jacket and jeans. His hair is messy and his eyes are looking down. The background is a busy street with people walking by. The light is bright and harsh.

The film type is 35mm and the lens is a 50mm.

Well, if it’s stupid and it works… You know, at this point it doesn’t feel like it’s headed in the right direction any more. Even if we escape the “woman loop”, we still aren’t producing enough creative variations. Let’s revisit what we tried in Attempt 3 but change up the description parameter.

Final attempt…?

Write a sentence using the following template:`

A [format] of [scene] in the style of [style], [perspective]. You 
need to replace the parameters in the brackets. Use the following 
lists to choose from for each one:

format: ...

style: ...

perspective: ...

The scene parameter needs to specify an object or subject performing 
an action. Describe the scenery. Describe the mood and the lighting.

A 3D Render of a small girl in the style of Banksy, from a Low Angle perspective. The girl is drawn in black and white with a few strategic color splashes. She’s standing in front of a dark background, with a single light source coming from the top left. The mood is playful and mischievous, with a hint of danger.

You know, that’s pretty good! Another one:

A Photograph of a Girl in a Blue Dress, In the Distance. The girl is standing in a field of tall grass with a light breeze blowing her dress around her. The sun is setting in the background, casting a golden glow on everything.

Noooooooooo, please god no! Hit it again!

A painting of a sunset in the style of realism, wide angle. You can see the sun beginning to dip below the horizon, and the sky is a beautiful orange. The lighting is very warm, and the mood is peaceful.

A photograph of a rose in the style of Impressionism, 85Mm. The rose is in a garden with ivy crawling up a white picket fence in the background. The lighting is bright and the mood is cheerful.

Well, that’s not so bad. But it’s not great either. New generations are at least somewhat varied.

There are clearly issues with this approach. The last example specifies an impressionistic photograph; clearly some of the combinations of styles and formats just don’t make sense. I kind of hoped that GPT-3 would have a taller creative ceiling but perhaps it needs to be guided more. A lot of the generated prompts are pretty tame. I wanted lamas driving Ferraris in LA, not roses in gardens.

It’s now 00:30 and I don’t have the energy to create better prompts for my prompts, nor can I figure out GPT-3’s obsession with women.

And with my last few DALL•E credits, I leave you with…

This took 5 attempts and I’m not even happy with it!

Siem Reap

At the start of July we flew from Bangkok to Siem Reap. We had already sorted out our 30-day e-visas, making entry pretty smooth, though the lack of tourists certainly helped. We also took a slight risk in not booking an exit flight, something that is stated as a requirement for entry, but evidently it isn’t since we didn’t get asked for one.

Stress on arrival

We had organised a pick-up from the airport via our Airbnb host. I was a bit surpised that it was a tuk-tuk but it only cost $3 so no complaints there – however – we ended up having a somewhat stressful start to our trip here. Cambodia uses both the US dollar and the Cambodian Riel, neither of which we had on arrival. The 2 ATMs in the airport kept erroring out with our (Monzo) cards – no problem, we’re kind of used to this – we just resort to our Revolut cards which tend to work better.

Guess who had forgotten to top up their Revolut cards! And in order to top up we needed internet, for which we needed SIM cards… for which we needed to pay in cash!

Before realising that we hadn’t topped up our driver patiently drove us into town to a few other ATMs which also didn’t work, at which point we awkwardly had to explain that we needed SIM cards first. He very kindly offered to pay for a SIM card at a small shop, after which our problems were solved. We were a little annoyed to later find out that we got massively over-charged for the SIM card: $25 for 12GB of internet, for 30 days. For reference, the very same day we went to an official Cellcard shop and I got a 70GB SIM for just $11. But hey, it got us out of a pickle so who cares.

Motorbike rental

We had booked this Airbnb months before our arrival and were a bit shocked to see how far away it is from town. We had clearly misjudged the distances on the map. A 30 min walk to the town center wasn’t so bad the first day, but we quickly decided to rent a motorbike for a few days. I was quite shocked at the prices! But haggling is pretty much a must here in Cambodia. We managed to swing the price down to $8 a day. In return we received the shoddiest looking bike the shop had: it almost always failed to start on the first (or second, or third) time, had a broken left mirror, no under-seat storage and a broken spedometer! Oh and it had over 300,000km on it! Still, I have great respect for these little machines. They just seem to keep going.

Renting the motorbike was a great decision, since it allowed to explore the temple complex of Angkor in complete freedom…

A note on driving in Cambodia

Two words: corner cutting.

It’s diabolical. Whether it’s small roads or complex junctions, it’s mayhem. Just go slowly and look in every direction. In some ways the chaos sorts itself out, but you are forced to be part of it, forced to cut corners and wiggle between cars.

Another way to grasp the picture: Cambodia has outlawed driving with your lights on during the day, but there is no law requiring lights during the night!

The Angkor Temple Complex

Churning of the Ocean Milk

This is probably the first place I have visited in my travels that made the words “must see before you die” ring true and loudly.

We planned on saving Angkor Wat for last, since we had read that its magnificence overshadows the other temples. As such we planned to spending the first day exploring the temples inside Angkor Thom, Preah Khan, and Preah Neak Poan.

We rode to the ticket office (which is nowhere near the temples). We weren’t sure if it was the right place as the vast parking lot was virtually empty. This was the first sign that the temples that awaited us will be practically devoid of any tourists.

A 1-day ticket cost $37, but they had a promotion running that let you use the ticket for 2 days, which was perfect for us.

Guide or no guide?

We opted to drive ourselves and not hire a guide, mostly because we had a guidebook and we have been somewhat let down by the guides in Thailand. I will admit though that the guides here, that always seem to be swarming you, sounded like they spoke very fluent and relatively sophisticated English. In these struggling times I did feel bad not hiring their services, but through experience I’ve found that I don’t get much out of it. It’s nice to learn more, yes, but I prefer the tranquility in exploring and immersing yourself in private. A few paragraphs in a guidebook will never be sufficient in describing the history of any place but it allowed us to strike a nice balance between knowledge and independence.

The walled city of Angkor Thom

After a scenic ride along the mostly straight roads, we passed through the South Gate of Angkor Thom, a few turns later arriving at the main entrance of Bayon, the temple of faces. Throughout the temple, countless faces emerge from the stonework, protected by an outer wall meticulously decorated with sprawling bas-reliefs depicting important events of ancient Khmer history and culture. Expecting crowds, we were stunned by the lack of people here. The eerie silence along with the hundreds of faces watching down on you resulted in a mind-bending experience.

Next we drove to Phimeanakas Temple and did the short trail to Baphuon (typically it’s done the other way round). Baphuon was another fantastic experience, seeing as we were mostly alone.

Looping back we walked along the Terrace of the Elephants, before hopping on our bike and heading to Preah Khan. A much “flatter” construction, but what it lacks in height it makes up for with its maze-like corridors so perfectly aligned they give the illusion that you’re in a hall of mirrors.

Finally, we rode to Preah Neak Poan. One of the smaller but rather unusual temples, in that it is a simple, small tower that sits in an enclave of moats.

Angkor Wat

We arrived around noon, where the plan was to avoid the morning crowds (that come here for the sunrise) and spend the day exploring the temple, popping over to Ta Prohm and coming back to Angkor Wat for sunset.

There were markedly more people here than the other temples, but most were actually Cambodians. A common thing to do here for locals is to dress up in traditional Khmer clothing and take photos at the temple. It was also a Saturday, so I imagine that it would have been even emptier on a weekday.

Angkor Wat is indeed huge. What makes Khmer architecture beautiful is its excess. An excess that is present both in the decorative sense and embedded into the base structure. Even the small libraries, with an interior no larger than a modern living room, stand on elevated multi-level platforms. Every inch of stone is intricately decorated with Hindu and Buddist carvings, which is made more impressive when you let the size of the temple sink in. Borrowing from the guide book we had, it’s simply “devotion etched in stone”.

Monkey, chilling

Monkey, admiring

It cannot be overstated how surreal it felt to be there practically alone. We couldn’t understand why but I suppose most of the visitors were busy taking pictures in the courtyard outside the main building. To have this ancient wonder of the world all to ourselves was special.

Whilst climbing the stairs of this library, a green snake dropped out of nowhere and “fell with style” down the stairs, much to my confusion.

I have to admit however that it all somehow felt a bit flat, underwhelming. Every piece of literature speaks, if not shouts, about the grandeur of the temple – when you look at the scale, the quality of the carvings, the architectural and logistical undertaking by the thousands of workers/slaves, all taking place in the 12th century – then it’s easy to understand why this site is considered culturaly and architecturaly monumental.

To explain the cognitive dissonance here, I think it’s because of something counter-intuitive: restoration and conservation.

Though the other temples in the complex have recieved some attention, they look and feel much older (and some are in fact older). Some, like Ta Prohm, have been engulfed by the jungle, giving them the romanticised look of ancient ruins that I expected. To put it simply, Angkor Wat has been preserved and restored so well that it takes a departure from common expecations, or at least, my own.

This is not to say that we weren’t appreciative of the exprience. I don’t say this lightly: you must see this place before you die.

Koh Rong

Cambodia is not as beach-rich as Thailand, but we had read good things about the islands of Rong and Rong Samloem. We had also read, and heard, one too many disparaging antectodes about Sihanoukville so we planned on just skipping that town completely. That meant getting a night bus that drops you off at the Sihanoukville port and then getting a boat to Koh Rong almost immediately.

The Night(mare) Bus

Pre-COVID the bus schedule was probably a lot richer; we only had the option of a night bus at 20:00 or luxury night bus at 20:30. What made it luxury? The presence of a toilet. I wish I was joking.

Half excited, half terrified at the prospect of beds on a bus, I kept my expectations low and I was still disappointed. The booking website didn’t bother to explain that beds are in a bunk, where the lower bunk is basically on the floor, level with the gangway, and has zero lights. You are given a thin slit by the window that only served to make the bunk feel even more like a bunker. But to its credit, there was a power socket on the roof and an AC that couldn’t be turned off, so I taped it off, seeing as the millimeter thin blankets didn’t do much. At 169cm I just about fit the length of the bed.

In all honesty, the surroundings weren’t that much of an issue. What made it uncomfortable was the maniac driver, who must’ve thought that luxury means rally and bus means 4WD WRC fitted a fuel-injection turbocharged engine with an air intake restrictor. At times I thought the bus is about to tip over. At times I felt like we’ve genuinely gone off-road. Though seeing the state of some of roads we must’ve driven on at a later date, off-road wouldn’t be a terrible description.

The island

This was once a much loved destination for tourists, but the pandemic has ravaged the brittle tourist economy here. As soon as we arrived the place felt dead. We felt dead, if I am being honest, having gotten close to zero sleep and then endured a sea-sickness inducing boat ride to the island.

We were somewhat prepared for this. Booking our stay here was painful, because the island only caters to hostel-loving partygoers or those willing to drop a small fortune for a week’s stay at a mediocre resort. Nothing in between. We honestly felt pretty ripped off paying $25 a night for a smelly, dirty, damp room. But what we found was the best compromise. A few dollars less will only net you a shared dorm or a shack disguised as a bungalow. Double that price and you’d maybe get an okay resort.

What I’m saying is that no matter the price, your expecations would not have been met. We genuinely don’t ask for much, we don’t look for luxury; so long as it’s clean and private we’ll be happy. I fully understand that these businesses are barely staying alive and keeping the prices high helps these families live. Perhaps it was cheaper pre-pandemic. Perhaps not. I’m aware that islands tend to be more expensive, but having had just spent a month in Thailand, where the quality was much higher and the prices were lower, we couldn’t help but feel swindled and unwelcomed. I suspect that countries with less developed tourist-economies need to charge more until development improves, tourist numbers rise, allowing prices to go down.

The beach itself was decent. The strip at Touch beach is now the most bustling part of the island (according to the locals). A short walk through the frog filled forest along the shoreline took us to Long Set beach where Nest Beach Club was the only nucleus of life around these parts.

Those frogs are incredibly loud during the night and they are venomous! 🐸

We had only booked 2 nights, and I am glad we did that because we weren’t really enjoying ourselves. There was little to no atmosphere here and pretty much nothing to do. We questioned whether we’re not giving the island a chance, but after discussing it with each other we realised we’re not going to feel good staying any longer in that dank room and we wouldn’t feel good paying extra for the quality that we saw after shopping around for different accomodation.

It felt good getting off that island, as much as it pains me to say that.

Kampot

Buses to Kampot on the regular ticket websites were not be found, so we had to pay extra for a shuttle. At $12.50 it wasn’t the worst deal in the world. Despite leaving 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, we arrived in Kampot in the late afternoon because the driver seemed to be doing half the town’s delivery chores.

Kampot was nice. It was to Phnom Penh what Chiang Mai is to Bangkok; a smaller, quieter town with a charm that you can’t quite put your finger on. Likely it’s the old French colonial buildings that are left on one side of the river, now hosting a small collection of restaurants and bars.

One thing that stood out here was the rather large and unexpected community of elderly Americans. Primarly single men; at least I assume they were single as they were always by themselves at the bars and restaurants. I think there exist some unfavourable connotations with this… scenario, which I won’t go into, but I will say that a pretty large drunk man that fit the above description crashed his bike right next to us whilst we were having dinner. He was okay.

I expected a few more markets in Kampot and a few more things to do. The river boats are a nice option at night, but once again I think the town was marred by the slow post-pandemic recovery and generally low season.

Bokor National Park

We did enjoy renting a bike here and driving around the Bokor National Park. It’s a lovely ride up to the view point(s), the road twisting left and right with a gentle upwards slope. On the way we saw numerous packs of monkeys, with some pretty large individuals strolling across the road. We also saw an enormous Great Hornbill flying over in the distance whilst admiring the view of the first viewpoint.

We didn’t see it as close as this image depicts it but I had to include an example. (Source)

The roads there took us through a number of abandoned buildings which were made eerier by the frequent fog rolling over the hills. We came across a giant abandoned-looking but very much alive hotel, the Thansur Sokha. We needed to use the toilet so we took that as an opportunity to go inside: it was very grand! Quite strange to find it amongst so many desolate and forgotten projects.

La Plantation Pepper Farm

Kampot is supposedly famous for its pepper and not having all that much else to do we figured it would be interesting to visit one of the farms. We had also wanted to do a cooking class this whole time so when we found out that they did one we booked it pretty quickly.

Weirdly, you had to drive yourself there. It was a fun 45 min drive through rural-ish Cambodia: the road was unpaved and it had been raining heavily the night before which resulted in an abundance of wet potholes. Zig-zagging in an effort to avoid them was a fun challenge.

The plantation is well maintained and looked after. It’s been there for quite some time and the two owners, a French and Belgian couple, do a lot of work to support the local school and people.

Typically the cooking class is booked fully but luck once again was on our side and we were the only ones in the morning slot. That meant we got through everything a lot quicker. I think the class was aimed at people who don’t tend to cook – not that I am some Michelin level chef – but everything was pretty simple: peel, chop, mash, put it in a pot. I was hoping to learn something new but even the banana bowls for the fish amok we made were pre-prepared. I was also surprised that we didn’t prepare a single peppery dish, like traditional Lok Lak. Instead we made a green curry, fish amok and green mango salad. It was still a good experience and it was nice to sit down and enjoy what we cooked in the plantation’s large restaurant overlooking the fields.

After that there is a short, free guided tour of the plantation as well as a taste testing session. All the peppercorns you can imagine. My favourites were the green (fresh) pepper, that almost pops open inside your mouth, and the red pepper. The smoked and salted varieties were also delicious.

Phnom Penh

Our journey to Phnom Penh began with the bus company having overbooked the shuttle, which meant we had to be uncomfortably squished for a couple of hours until some of the other passangers got off early.

We arrived at our hotel in the afternoon, dropped our bags off and went straight to the curry house opposite for a filling meal.

We weren’t sure what to expect of Phnom Penh apart from knowing that we probably don’t want to spend more than 3 days here. It’s an extremely un-walkable city, with a lot of streets lacking a pavement completely. Despite being a big dirty capital city it didn’t feel all that bad, I must admit. I had expected it to feel like Bangkok in some ways, but it’s way less built up. Nonetheless, 2-3 days is plenty.

Sorry for disturbing you little kitties, but you were too cute to ignore

Street 240 and Bassac Lane in particular had some great bars and lively atmosphere. In general, Phnom Penh actually has a rich collection of restaurants and cafes, different cuisines and price ranges. The Russian market was jammed full of things and reminded me a bit of the visual cacophony experienced at Chatuchak market in Bangkok. Walking through other, less touristy markets was interesting: we got to see where the locals do their grocery shopping. We were actually a bit jealous of all the fresh produce they have access to! Raw fish and meat hanging on hooks, splayed on tables, draining in baskets, it’s all there to see and smell.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21)

S21, the central node of the Khmer Rouge’s torture prison network, was harrowing, numbing. I don’t think I can write anything that will capture the essence of this place. The horrors that occured here are beyong comprehension.

Standing in the very rooms, cells, where the atrocities took place, I felt some sort of guilt for failing to feel, and I mean really feel what happened here. Something inbetween sorrow and numbness.

National Museum of Cambodia

The next day we visited the museum. In our messed up holiday routine, we rocked up at 11:30, which is when the museum closes for lunch; the same thing happened when we visited S21 the day before! We killed 2 hours by walking along the river all the way to Koh Pich island. There was nothing to see there.

The museum had some interesting artefacts, but overall it was pretty small. I genuinely don’t think the $10 entrance fee is justified. In fact, I think this museum easily falls in the “skippable” category.

Our visit happened to coincide with the (assistant) American Secretary of State’s visit, and that’s only relevant to us because a section of the museum was closed because of it.

The End?

This is where our Cambodia trip ended, somewhat prematurely. We had originally set aside the whole month of July for it, but after about 2 weeks we felt like we’d seen enough. Honestly, we felt really torn leaving – in some ways we felt like we hadn’t given it a chance – but we also had to try hard to relax and enjoy ourselves, which was a self-defeating exercise. We mulled over the decision for a long time, actively discussing why we’re feeling the way we were. It boils down to, in no particular order:

• Tourism was low, affected heavily by the pandemic and the incoming rainy season
• Higher prices for lower quality (be it food, accomodation or tourist attractions)
• A genuine lack of things to do and visit

Combine all 3 and you get low mood.

The last point is controversial and I don’t know how to feel about it. Is it true? Can I honestly say that if I only visited a handful of places? Our rough plan before the trip included a collection of landmarks, towns and beaches to visit.

Certainly not a comprehensive list, but it includes more than just the regular tourist hotspots

We marked plenty of places but the reality was that for a lot of them getting there was difficult (especially with limited options after the pandemic) and that the places themselves are just not all that great. Citation needed? Probably. For instance, take Virachey National Park. It’s far, remote and hard to get to (9h-12h bus trip from Phnom Penh) and ultimately we ended up asking ourselves… is it worth the effort? From what I saw online, it looks neat but it doesn’t look magnificent. Part of me is wincing as I type this because I may just be spouting bullshit, given that I didn’t actually go there myself. I am sure doing a multi-day hike there would be a cool experience but we didn’t feel excited enough by it.

And that’s what answered it for us in the end: if you have to invest more effort to feel good about a place than you get out of it, then maybe you ought to leave.

You could say that we just weren’t willing to spend enough to enjoy ourselves in Cambodia – perhaps that’s all it takes? I wouldn’t describe myself as tight (I am sure some people might), but I certainly don’t like being charged more than what I deem something is worth. And after Thailand, we kind of felt like we were getting taken advantage of in Cambodia. Again, this sounds monumentally stupid in isolation: the country and its citizens are so poor compared to us privileged travellers and I’m the one complaning about being taken advantage of… I suppose I’m still trying to dissect my feelings.

Backpacking, even in the slightly more budgeted way that we approach it, is not always easy. There is also this unexplicable lack of tolerance for “travel bullshit” that you start to exhibit as you get older, and you slowly start gravitating towards a more pampered holiday. I don’t like that. Yet, I don’t have the energy to stay in shitty hostels with loud 20-something-year-olds on their gap years.

Cambodia, I will return to you. You left me feeling torn. I am sure some would describe you as an uncut gem; perhaps I am still scrubbing the muck off you, hopeful for your glimmer.

Bangkok

After a delayed, long and uncomfortable economy flight, we arrived in Bangkok in the early evening. We passed immigration control, picked up our bags and bought SIM cards for the month ahead. Unlimited data for £23 probably wasn’t the best deal ever but it was quick and easy.

We ordered a Grab (Thailand’s Uber) and had a relatively smooth ride to our hotel. As the driver approached the destination, I couldn’t help but worry that we had booked something dodgy – the neighbourhood seemed rough and loud, a concrete overpass looming over the dimly lit streets – but a left turn followed by a right and a lush jungle revealed itself amidst the grey buildings. The hotel “courtyard” was like a hidden greenhouse, with fairy lights sprinkled amongst the trees, light reflecting off of the meandering koi pond.

Day 1 Naivety

On our first day, wherever we are, we like to just go walking around. No set itinerary, just wander for a bit, then maybe decide to visit a landmark whilst enjoying a cold drink somewhere.

10 minutes into our walk, a stranger strikes a conversation with us. He looked a bit rough, but was friendly and had a warm smile, so we chatted for a bit. The usual, where we’re from, how long we have in Thailand. He then proceeded to tell us how lucky we are that today is the only day that the “big buddah” is open and that the government are running a promotion: they’ll cover the cost of petrol for tuk-tuks so tourists can enjoy a cheaper trip. This is all delivered to us in somewhat broken English, but we just nodded and thanked him. We didn’t want a tuk-tuk just yet, we just wanted to walk. He left us after a while.

Another 5-10 minutes down the road, we’re met with another elderly man with a warm smile, who starts giving us the same spiel. This time it even came with a free tourist map! For just ฿50 we can get a tuk-tuk to a number of tourist destinations. Our alarm bells weren’t really going off – this was clearly a scam – but we were being naive. After all, how exactly would this scam even work? We’re just giving them ฿50 to drive us around. I don’t know how we didn’t realise it, perhaps it did feel a little too good to be true, but we hopped into a tuk tuk with the friendliest and most polite driver we’ve ever met…

It was still morning and we hadn’t had breakfast so we asked if he can first take us somewhere to eat. He showed a smidge of concern but quickly obliged. He took us to some random dingy Thai place that served really unappetising food that we didn’t consider breakfast food. Next to it was a tiny coffee stand. We ordered a couple of coffees and just before paying the barista said:

“Can I ask you a question?”

Her face said it all.

“How did you find that tuk-tuk driver?”

At this point it clicked.

“Yeah…” she said slowly, “… that’s a scam. The whole story is made up. They will charge you extra for ‘tickets’ and pressure you into buying souvenirs.”

We thanked her and slowly walked across the street to a place that seemed to serve more palatable food. Our driver patiently waiting in his tuk-tuk, smiling at us. We perched on the side of the café, slurping our coffees, wondering what to do.

We decided to just tell the driver to take us to Khao San road. His smile started to fade away. After some back and forth (he even showed us a fake gasoline top-up voucher), we just said we don’t believe this and we don’t want to go. Any remnants of his polite manerisms completely gone now. Disgruntled, we all got in the tuk-tuk and he drove us a short distance to Khao San road. We paid him ฿100 and he begrudgingly drove away. We shouldn’t have done that – why bother giving someone like that your money – at the time it seemed like the best way to diffuse the situation.

Khao San Road

During the day, this street is much like any other. Perhaps it’s a little wider.

As the sun sets, a transformation begins to take place rendering the street unrecognisable. Lights. Music. Food and alcohol. All in excess quantities. It’s a sensory overload, each bar competing for your attention by cranking up their sound systems to 11.

We walked up and down a few times, taking in the action from different sides each time. Tonnes of people vlogging and streaming their experiences. People enjoying beers on street chairs. Ladies and ladyboys alike trying to convince customers to attend their bar.

We settled for a quieter bar on an alleyway just behind all the action. It was a fun experience.

Before all this we had spent the day at Wat Pho, here are some pictures.

The Giant Reclining Buddah of Wat Pho

Up above and down below

The tallest skyscraper in Thailand, the Mahanakhon, revelead the sheer scale of the city. The views speak for themselves.

We managed to grab a table at the sky bar which we shared with another couple. We got chatting to them over some drinks and had dinner with them at a lovely up-market Italian restaurant where we ordered way too much food. Being from Hong Kong, they were frequent visitors of Bangkok and knew all the nice spots! They told us about the market at Jodd Fairs, which is where we met up with them again the following night.

Jodd Fairs market was great, but what impressed us more was the Chatuchak Weekend market: a labyrinthine jungle of over 15,000 (yes, fifteen thousand!) stalls.

Ayutthaya

Having only heard of the infamous temples of Ayutthaya, we decided to book a day trip to witness them in person. It was a pretty packed tour: we ended up visting a total of 5 temples as well as the Bang Pa-In Royal Palace. The main temple, Wat Ratchaburana was fascinating, though having already seen a bunch of similar stuppas and chedis the same day I have to admit we felt a little templed out by the end of it. I was dissapointed that the guide didn’t give us more historical information about the temples and instead just let us roam around by ourselves (this was a constant theme through the various tours we did in Thailand).

Phuket (Kata)

Beach-bound and eager to escape the fumes of Bangkok, we flew to Phuket. Younger people flock to the Patong area, but we were feeling something quieter so we decided to head south, to Kata. This ended up being a mistake because it was too quiet. The pandemic has ravaged the tourist economy in many places and Kata was no exception. We found it a bit depressing.

It appears that Kata is a popular holiday destination for Russians: the place was full of Russian restaurants and every menu had a Russian translation. Nothing wrong with that – you can replace “Russian” with any nationality – it’s just that at times it felt like we weren’t in Thailand.

What added to (or maybe created) our dejection was that we got scammed upon arrival. The hotel we had booked via Airbnb was permanently closed! Airbnb refunded us, but the host left a bad review for us; something that Airbnb refused to remove. The whole experience left a bad taste in our mouths.

To summarise, Kata appears like it’s probably a nice family destination in normal times: the beach is nice, though not spectacular, and there is a small but sufficient number of restaurants. We only stayed 2 nights.

Koh Phi Phi

As the boat approached the island our smiles grew. This was the type of scenery we were after. Green-topped rock formations jutting out of the deep blue water, like giants taking a dip in a spring. Amidst the scattered boats, the pier reveals itself atop what is now clear teal waters and golden sands.

Nui beach, a 30 minute kayak away, completely empty

Phi Phi is essentially two giant rocks connected by a thin strip of sand, forming picturesque bays on either side. The isthmus is a maze of shops and restaurants, though you quickly learn your way through it. We stayed for 4-5 days, enjoying the narrow beach and shallow waters, kayaking to Nui beach, and doing a couple of fun dives around Bida Nok and Bida Nai.

A local resident getting a tattoo at one of the many parlours here

Koh Phangan

Whilst in Phi Phi a restaurant owner told us about the approaching Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan. Once a month, this party consumes the entire town of Haad Rin. We figured we should give it a go, despite personally not being much of a party-goer.

Surprsingly you can organise transport from Phi Phi all the way to Koh Phangan, despite it being an island on the other side of the mainland! That speaks volumes for the development of Thailand’s tourism industry. We paid ฿1200 (£27) each for a boat-bus-boat service to Thongsala, a small town away from the party scene. We stayed here for a couple of nights in what was probably the best value for money resort throughout the entire trip: Dakonda Resort. For just ~£15 a night per room, we basically ended up with a private beach, which we enjoyed swimming in during the night, against a backdrop of distant thunderstorms.

Haad Rin

When we travel, we mostly plan things day by day. It was time to book a night or two at Haad Rin and we quickly found out that prices sky rocket just for the party. Be it hostel or hotel, everything was expensive. We found something for around £25 per night: literally a 3m by 3m (if that) room, with a barely functioning fan, dirty bed and a rusty padlock that would have fallen off if you sneezed on it. At this point we didn’t feel safe leaving our stuff in such a room, so we “upgraded” to a room with a slightly more sneeze-proof lock and AC.

I was apprehensive about this party but I did appreciate going to it. It was crazy to see so many people jammed on the shore, music blasting, fire spectacles lighting up what isn’t already lit by the thousands of party lights. And in reality it really wasn’t as savage as I assumed it would be.

There is a beach in this photo (Source)

Koh Tao

The tickets for boats headed to Koh Tao were dwindling fast but we managed to nab some just before closing time. The ferry was mostly full of people returning to Bangkok and Koh Tao was purely a transfer point for them. We wanted to come here because we had read that the island is infamous for some great dive spots.

Diving

We didn’t have any hotel booked. Instead we first had a late breakfast, after which we rented motorbikes with the intention of checking out different hotels. The first one on the list was a dive resort that had a modest bungalow for about ฿500 a night; we were about to book it when they told us that if we book diving here we’ll get a discount on the room. After some deliberation, we decided to splurge on getting our Advanced PADI certification (about ฿9000 each), which meant we could get a nicer room (with AC) for ฿700.

The advanced course consisted of 5 dives and unlike the Open Water course that preceeds it, it was basically a walk in the park. The course is designed for you to pass, with only a very small amount of theory and multiple choice questions. We had to complete 2 mandatory dives: 30m Deep Dive and Underwater Navigation, and we then had a choice of 3 other dives. We opted for Peak Performance Buyoancy, Wreck Diving and Night Diving.

We were lucky to have incredible visibility on almost all dives, at least 18m for sure. The wreck dive is where things got pretty murky; near the anchor line of the HTMS Sattakut it was like swimming through pea soup. After ascending a few meters things cleared up and we could see almost the entire wreck quite well.

As someone who doesn’t know much about the ocean wildlife here (or anywhere), I was suprised at the lack of bigger fish, primarily sharks. I just assumed there would be loads of them. I knew that it wasn’t whale shark season so the odds of seeing some were zero. We did have a “fun” encounter with a trigger fish – on a night dive, mind you – where it had decided that it didn’t like us and promptly stuck out its trigger at us. We promptly made a sharp U-turn.

We also saw a Moray eel swimming, which is quite unusual as they tend to always hide in corals and holes. It had various fish paparazzi-ing around it, so they must’ve found it unusual too.

Snorkeling

Having the freedom to explore the island on our motorbikes, we went to do some snorkeling at Tanote Bay. We enjoyed it so much that we came here twice.

The water here was incredible. This was the first coral reef that I have seen in such vivid, true to life colours, thanks to the shallow water. There was an entire rainbow of fish swimming around you at all times, probably used to the human shape, unafraid to get close. My partner even saw a large black tip reef shark on our second visit.

Best dinner on the whole island?

Panning around Google Maps in search for things to do, we came across Sun Moon Thai Restaurant and decided to check it out. It’s literally one lady’s home set in the hills of the island, overlooking the eastern shoreline. It was beautiful.

And we had the whole place to ourselves

There is no menu. The owner, Thay, will cook whatever you want. There’s something wonderful it that simplicity. The food she cooked for us was delicious and bountiful – she said she won’t stop cooking until we say so – but we got plenty full on the first couple of dishes she made for us.

She also showed us her mushroom farm. It was fascinating; her yield was apparently a few kilos a day! She had lots of stories, of how she learned to cook when she just a young girl, going into restaurants and asking to just watch.

Khao Sok

We had heard that Khao Sok National Park is a must see and were surprised that we could organise transport from Koh Tao to it. That involved getting on a sleeper ferry. At first it was hilarious: 50 odd tourists packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines wrapped in tiger blankets. But once the lights went out and people started nodding off… to the Spanish dude that slept next to me and didn’t stop snoring, you owe me a night’s sleep 😒

I am dubbing the bungalow we stayed in here as Cockroach Casa. I must’ve dealt with half a dozen cockroaches, some of them of formidable size. Pretty gross, but other than that it was actually not too bad of a place.

A local gas station bearing some post-apocalyptic vibes

The national park was honestly nothing exceptional. The boat takes you through the (artificial) lake, slowing down past some interesting looking rock formations. Every picture you’ve ever seen from this park was probably taken in this one little cove. We didn’t have exceptionally sunny weather which certainly undermined the blues of the water and the greens of the cliffs. Nonetheless, the boat journey is rather boring, taking about 1 hr 30 mins, all of it enjoyed with the grating sound of the boat engine throughout.

Things did pick up once we arrived at the lake house. We got there earlier than other groups, allowing us to take one of a limited number of kayaks and paddle around for a bit. We also enjoyed swimming in the lake and jumping off the pier until the food was ready. As we were eating, other groups started arriving; completely drenched as it had been raining heavily over the lake.

After lunch we hopped on the boat for another 20 minute journey to the start of the hike. It was wet, muddy and a lot of fun! Everyone attempted to avoid the mud but after a while we just gave up and slid directly through it. It was also the first encounter we’ve had with leeches! They really do suck hard and their squidgy bodies make it hard to remove them.

Eventually we arrived at a cave entrance: this cave is almost a kilometer long, but after the incident with the Thai boys that got stuck in some other cave, we were only allowed to travel a short distance into it. This only applied during the wet season. The cave was full of water, so we had to wade and swim through it. It was freezing and dark, our headlamps illuminating the bare minimum. Sharp rocks jutted out the water. Frogs croaked quietly in their crevices. We arrived at a clearing: the home of a whip spider. Our guide picked it up and casually placed it on his body, letting it crawl around, losing it in the process.

If it wasn’t for the hike and the cave I would’ve felt let down by this tour, but I’m glad we did it.

Chiang Mai

Situated in northern Thailand, Chiang Mai was the last and probably one of our favourite cities we visited before leaving for Cambodia. It really was a charming old town, less busy and frantic than Bangkok, and a lot less party orientated than the islands. The old city is guarded by a not-so-ancient ancient wall, the streets inside it hosting a collection of hip cafes and kaleidoscopic temples. Just outside the gates, we found weekend markets; a Saturday and a Sunday one, the latter being much larger, but both worth a visit. Straying a little further northwest, we stumbled into the fancy neighbourhood of Nimmanhaemin which offers more expensive restaurants and bars, a lot of which appeared to be Japanese.

Local hiking

On our first day here we rented a motorbike and rode to a local hiking route, the Monk’s Trail. It was a really pleasant walk with a gentle elevation which takes you to a small temple and meditation spot, with a quiet waterfall running through the middle of it all. We didn’t expect to see so much from such a small trail.

On our second day we still had our trusty 110cc Honda Scoopy – in hotrod red – we rode 45 mins to another hiking trail, Mon Jing, in the mountain of Nang Mo. Despite only taking you to an elevation of 850m, this trail was hard. Not the hardest thing I’ve done my any means, but the gravelly terrain paired with the scorching temperature made it intensive. Oh and did I mention the thousands of gigantic spiders? And snakes? Ok, we only saw one snake and it quickly slithered away into hiding but still… The orb weavers were actually everywhere, including in the middle of the path, so whilst you were constantly watching where you were stepping due to the horrible terrain you also had to look up every now and then to ensure that you don’t walk face first into one of those monsters.

Doi Inthanon

One of the last things we did in Thailand was visit Doi Inthanon, the highest point in Thailand, which hosts two relatively recent chedis and a beautiful flower garden. It gets somewhat chilly at the top, about 16°C when we were there, which amusingly the locals find really cold! Interestingly, it’s also the only place in the country which gets cold enough for some morning frost to form on the vegetation – the closest thing to snow here – most Thais have never seen snow.

On the way to the chedis we stopped by Wachirathan waterfall: one of the more impressive waterfalls we’ve seen here. After wandering around the temple the tour proceeded to a small market where we bought some dried fruit and wasabi nuts to snack on. We also tasted some lychee wine and banana whiskey: not bad! We had a delicious lunch as part of the tour, and finally proceeded to a short hike through the forest, which eventually lead to some beatiful rice paddies. The hike ended in a local village known for its coffee production. We got to taste lots of different coffees and teas; the villagers kindly explained to us their history in coffee making and how they are eager to share their methods with anyone who wants to learn. We bought a scarf from them as a small token of appreciation and support.

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And that was Thailand! What followed was a short flight back to Bangkok, one more night of market exploration, after which we flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

General Thoughts

We loved Thailand. The pandemic had clearly left its mark, but we still enjoyed ourselves. Some parts more than others, but that’s how it goes. Before setting foot here I feared it may be too touristy, too polished, which may be the case under normal circumstances, but at this time it made our trip better. Yes, there were times and places where I wished for more of an athmosphere but overall I enjoyed myself. I sincerely hope that business picks up for the country and its residents.

There’s still so much we didn’t get to explore. We will definitely need to revisit!

The route

We didn’t have a pre-planned route. We had a list of destinations and landmarks that we wanted to visit so we had a rough idea of where we wanted to go. Below you can see what our route ended up looking like at the end of the trip.

San Jose → Puerto Viejo → La Fortuna → Monteverde → Quepos → Uvita → Puerto Jimenez → COPROT → Drake’s Bay → Jaco → Santa Teresa → Samara → Tamarindo

The red points are generally larger towns that we stayed in for longer; the blue are smaller ones that we either visited for a day or only stayed in briefly.

San José

The capital, located in the heart of the country, is unfortunately nothing to get excited about. Apart from the central market and a couple of above average buildings, there isn’t much else. Having said that we decided to kill some time at the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum, which was very interesting and showed a lot about the roots of the country. The market, a maze of narrow alleys and stores full of souvenirs (and smelly agglomerations of meat and fish), was a bit disappointing. It was dark and cramped and made me feel a bit unsafe; the neighborhood is not a good one.

In fact, the most fun we had was away from the center - Barrio Escalante - streets filled with chic restaurants and bars, offering delicious but rather expensive food.

Dessert at Franco’s

Drinks at Saul’s Bistro

COVID-19 in Costa Rica

In general, we did not have many problems entering the country. The country’s GDP is heavily reliant on tourism, meaning tourists actually have more freedom than locals in some sense. Whilst no COVID test was required for entry, mandatory health insurance determined the length of your stay (max 90 days). Local vehicles were restricted to drive only on certain days based on their number plate, but rental cars and tourist buses were exempt. The biggest effect we felt was from the nightly restrictions: all restaurants and stores had to close at 21:00. It was not the end of the world but it meant that we could not enjoy different places fully. Masks were mandatory at all times.

Puerto Viejo

This particular town is one of the hotspots on the country’s Carribean coast. As a typical beach town with shops and restaurants connected by dirt roads, we came here with two goals: lie on the beach and drink piña coladas.

Cliché Instagram shot, check.

A typical cocktail here cost around ₡3500 (£4)

Despite the obvious party vibe – do expect to be offered drugs every time you’re walking around, or even having dinner! – the town still manages to remain somewhat charismatic.

The town itself is quite small but it offers enough in terms of restaurants for the 4 or 5 days that we were there. You’re likely to find a few more fish dishes here, alongside Costa Rica’s staple foods, rice and beans. Plenty of shops too, though the clothing prices made my eyes water!

I do recommend you either walk or hire a bicycle to Playa Cocles. This beach is much larger and the atmosphere is much calmer. You’ll find a few bars and restaurants along the road there too.

Cahuita

Puerto Viejo doesn’t offer much beyond its beaches, so we did a day trip to Cahuita National Park. We took the bus there, for about ₡2000 each. The park entrance is a 10 minute walk from the bus terminal. Entrance to the park is free but you are encouraged to pay a donation.

Despite its small size, Cahuita National Park has a range of spectacular terrains and views

If you head here on a whim, like we did, you’ll probably be arriving without a tour guide. Outside the park entrance you’ll most likely be met by a friendly local who will offer you guide services. A couple of things to note: this type of guide will not be official (i.e.: they probably haven’t gone through all the certifications required to be officially recognised as a guide in CR) and they may not have equipment with them. Nonetheless, we decided to hire one of these locals, after haggling and reducing the price significantly. If my memory serves me right, they initially wanted ₡50,000; we paid around ₡20,000 plus tips at the end.

We were met by a different man than the one who took our money: a frail yet jovial old man, with a large branch for a walking stick and the unmistakable smell of booze draped around him. He introduced himself as Ronald and he apologised, for he said he had one too many glasses of rum the night before. He explained that he has been a guide for over 30 years, that he grew up in the jungle.

Ronald, at the end of the guided walk

Ronald was very polite and eager to share his knowledge; he kept insisting we ask him questions! He told us a lot about the endemic fauna and flora, making a particular point about Costa Rica’s rich supply of medicinal plants. Some of his claims about these plants sounded dubious but as a sign of respect we simply nodded along.

We were surprised that within two steps of walking into the park, Ronald told us to stop and look: he had spotted a lizard. Nearby he spotted a turtle. He said that normally there is also a crocodile that lounges around but he was nowhere to be found today.

It is important to note that seeing wildlife in these parks is not guaranteed. That is the nature of… well, nature. Other than the limitless leaf-cutter ants marching alongside us and a sleepy sloth, we didn’t notice much more in terms of wildlife along the guided part of the tour. You see, Ronald only walked with us for 1-2km – the entire trail is around 8km – we said our goodbyes, paid him a tip and carried on by ourselves.

I do recommend you get a guide, official or not, because they will the spot the wildlife. They know where and what to look for.

A sleepy two-toed sloth

The 8km trail will take you through a variety of landscapes. You can take a break at a secluded beach that feels all yours, then head through into the deep jungle where you might get lucky and see some snakes. The trail does have large sections with no tree canopy, so it’s recommended you bring some water. We heard from other tourists that park officials may require you to dispose of plastic bottles before entering, so if possible bring a reusable bottle to limit the chances of confiscation.

Cahuita National Park was an early highlight in our trip; I thoroughly recommend you go there if you are already in Puerto Viejo.

One final note: the exit is right next to the bus stop. Busses come once every 1 hour and they are likely to be packed, which means they won’t stop to pick you up. That happened to us and the other couple of tourists there, so we ended up calling a local taxi to come and pick us up.

Manzanillo

Another local delight is the small town of Manzanillo, south of Puerto Viejo.

The journey there is worth doing by itself. A 1 hour bicycle ride will take you along a smooth paved road that undulates through the otherwise untamed jungle. As the sun’s rays pierce the canopy, they also bring to attention the thousands of gigantic spider webs spluttered across the telephone wires. Howler monkeys can be heard wailing in the distance and if you’re lucky you might see toucans fly between the trees.

You can hire a squeaky retro bike like this one for about $7

The town itself felt very quiet, with most shops and restaurants closed. There is a national park nearby, Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Gandoca, but we were told that due to a recent storm the paths were extremely muddy and hiking was ill-advised.

La Fortuna

After soaking in the sun and sea for a good few days, we rented a car and headed towards the northern central valley.

Water-rafting in the Balsa River. Just one of the many things you can do in this area

We arrived at our Airbnb, 5 minutes from the cente, after a ~5 hour drive from Puerto Viejo (which was mostly spent behind series of long lorries). It’s not a large city, but in comparison to Puerto Viejo it could be considered big. The town center is surprsingly colourful and bustling, with a nicely maintained park nestled in the middle of the town’s grid system. Around the park you will find a plethora of restaurants, bakeries, sodas (small local cafeterias/restaurants) and tour centers.

The town center. Credit: arenal.net

We had decided to rent a car for this part of the journey because the attractions were somewhat spread out. In retrospect, you could probably get away without one, but you’d have to organise transport to the national parks and whatnot via tour agencies, which also comes at a cost of course.

Night Walk

There is so much to do in La Fortuna: let’s kick things off with a night walk in the jungle! As mentioned before, the town center is full of tour agencies all selling the same thing. We shopped around for the best price; outside Mercado de Artesanías, a large souvenir market, we found a man tending a small stall. He introduced himself as Sergio. We chatted for over 10 minutes; he was a very sweet, passionate man, who absolutely loved his community and the nature around it. Don’t be fooled by this modest description of him – he has been a guide for many years and has even done work with the BBC – or so he tells us! In any case, we fell in love with his charisma and decided to do the night walk with him.

A poison dart frog that Sergio carefully caught and placed on leaf for us

The advertised duration of the walk was around 2 hours – lost in his passion, Sergio took us around the entire reserve, which took almost 4 hours! – not that anyone is counting, but in total we saw about 9 sloths, various bugs, a racoon, a kinkajou, some common lizards and of course posion dart frogs.

I cannot stress the passion and knowledge that Sergio had for his surroundings. He was full of wild stories too. At one point he grabbed a millipede and demonstrated how they produce cyanide as a defense response, letting us get a whiff of the poisonous, yet aromatic gas!

These guys are everywhere in Costa Rica. Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/7123973401

If you ever find yourself here, find Sergio and tell him Petar and Jess sent you! ❤️

Hot Springs

Heading north-west of the town along the main road you will find dozens of hot spring resorts, all varying in price and luxury. Fortunately you can also find free access to the very same hot river that the private resorts are built around. We were told where to go by our Airbnb host; we parked at the side of the road where we had to pay a small fee of ₡2000. We headed down a small path that leads you under the bridge ahead. When we reached the river we thought we were at the wrong place, since the underpass you have to traverse didn’t inspire us imagery of relaxing hot springs!

Beyond this tunnel lies paradise, trust me.

Through the underpass we could see a stone wall on the other end, with warm steam rising through the lush greenery. We hopped over the stone wall and discovered the river opening up and a couple of early birds already soaking in the natural pools.

Find a nice spot to nestle in; the current is actually quite strong!

As the day went on, more and more locals and tourists began gathering for a chance to soak in the blissful stream, some even bringing half a fridge’s worth of food and drink with them. I highly recommend you come here, and even if the rain starts pouring down, you won’t mind it one single bit…

Luxury Spa Resorts

As mentioned earlier, the area is full of high-end spa resorts. Enticed by the possibility of a moderately affordable spa break (we hadn’t learned that Costa Rica is very expensive yet), we looked at staying one or two nights at the Baldi Hot Springs Resort. Much to our disappointment (but to the delight of our wallets), even a single night’s stay here was way too much given our budget. We did however decide to buy the day-pass which gave us access to all the spa facilities and came with lunch included.

As the night grew, thunderstorms brought torrential rain down on us. Surrounded by hot steamy water, one could say that there were worse spots to be stuck at during a rainstorm! All in all, it was fun and relaxing day, and for about $60 it’s not the worst deal in the world.

One of the many pools scattered throughout the large resort

We had to get our money’s worth, so of course we stayed until the night

Vólcan Arenal

The perfectly shaped cone is an unmissable sight in the skyline; for most of the time we were in La Fortuna it was unfortunately obscured by cloud near the rim. Driving west of the town will take you to the national park which contains a number of trails. We first drove to the Peninsula Sector. We bought our tickets there for about $15 each. The short, paved walk will take you to the edge of the peninsula jutting out into the lake, proving a… cloudy view of the volcano.

Behind all that cloud lies the volcano

A golden tortoise beetle (genus Microctenochira) found along the walk

We also saw a rather brave white-nosed coati and a lot of large birds, including a number of great currasow hiding amongst the bushes.

A Great Currasow: large and clumsy, but still quite majestic

This walk wasn’t particularly long so we had plenty of time in the day to go and do another hike in the national park. We drove to the other visitor center; in total I belive there are 3 centers in close proximity to each other. We didn’t do the “1968 Lava Trail”, if that clears things up…

The entrances are a short drive from eachother. One ticket gets you into all of them.

The hike to “Mirador Colada” is pretty easy, though it does take some time. The first part of the walk takes you through secondary forests: young trees and tall grass dominating the terrain. After sometime you enter the primary forest: untouched trees that have been growing for a very long time. We came across one of the most monumental trees I had ever seen (and I’ve seen Canada’s Gnarliest Tree!).

The images don’t quite capture the true scale of this imposing Ceiba giant. Its circumeferece alone was something to gawk at. The sign posted nearby states that the tree is 30m tall and is estimated to be around 400 years old. If the twisted roots and vines don’t add enough mystique to its character, we were later told by a guide in Monteverde that despite what the officials say about the age of the tree, it’s only ~50 years old! He claimed that the 1968 eruption wiped out most of the trees in the area and after the natural process of soil enrichment (volcanic ash, lava, etc.) the tree grew at an accelerated rate. I wasn’t able to find many sources about either estimate. Nonetheless, this was an awesome thing to see.

The end of the trail will lead you to a viewpoint near the base of the volcano, where you can see the igneous rock curled into knots from when it was still hot lava.

Rio Celeste

Not too far from La Fortuna is another wonderful site to explore, Rio Celeste. This river and waterfall are famous for their turqouise coloured water that almost appears to glow. I’d say this is a hike/walk you can do without a guide; it’s quite a busy trail so the chances of spotting wildlife are low.

Don’t be disappointed if the colour isn’t as impressive as the pictures in the brochures – when we went the waterfall was kind of murky – it changes depending on the weather and acidity levels of the two rivers that merge into Rio Celeste, under a process known as Mie Scattering.

Most people come here just for the waterfall, but there is a secret little spot outside the park that you can take a dip in. It’s quite cold but in the afternoon heat it’s exactly what you need. We actually saw a snake swimming upstream just as we were getting out of the water! Below is a still taken from a video we took but it’s not very clear unfortunately – I think it’s most likely a Costa Rican Water Snake (Hydromorphus concolor).

The turqouise colour can be seen here too

A surprisingly strong swimmer 🐍

That was pretty much all of the action in La Fortuna, and that’s without mentioning any of the restaurants or other activities we did in detail (like water rafting).

Monteverde

Whilst we were in the heart of Costa Rica, we couldn’t miss going to the cloud forests of Monteverde. There isn’t all that much else to do here so we knew we’d only be there for a few days.

Santa Elena is a tiny town in the mountains of central Costa Rica, but despite its small size it is well worth visiting. The main reason for coming here is to witness the magical forests in which tree crowns gently push through the low hanging clouds.

As is the case with all rainforests, there is a tonne of wildlife to see here; we were very interested in seeing the gorgeous Resplendent Quetzal: a bird of paradise known for it’s kaleidoscopic colours and wonderfully strange calls.

I will describe getting here from La Fortuna using 3 words: jeep, boat, jeep. You’ll see advertisiments for this phrase, or equivalent, all over La Fortuna. It’s the primary method of getting to Monteverde since it avoids going all the way around Lake Arenal, which can take an entire day. It consists of getting a shuttle from La Fortuna to Lake Arenal, then boarding a boat, then another shuttle to Santa Elena. It may sound like a hassle but the drive takes you through the peaks and troughs of the luscious mountains resulting in great views.

The Cloudforest

The guide we met in La Fortuna, Sergio, gave us the number of a friend of his, Eric, a fellow guide. In fact, Eric used to be a researcher and expert of the local area, having several species named after him. He was the old-school explorer-scholar type: his utilitarian khaki gilet had more pockets than you could count, each filled with a a tattered compendium of different endemic bird species. He was a shy, softly spoken man, I estmate in his late 60 or 70s, who lit up with energy whenever he spoke about the wildlife in the area. I distinctly remember his grumbly half-monologue about new discoveries in the epigenome of two bird species previously thought to be different now considered the same, and how that simply made no sense to him. “Too much hair-splitting”, he’d say.

Though Eric didn’t live in Santa Elena, he kindly picked us up from the main street and drove us to the Moteverde Reserve entrance. Tickets were $25 each and Eric’s services cost us another $25 each, plus tips. Not cheap, but I highly recommend getting a guide because they will spot the wildlife and you won’t. Besides, quetzals are tricky to spot – they’re an ellusive, shy bird – guides have telescopes/binoculars and they are trained in spotting wildlife. We came across a group of guides at the entrance (waiting for customers) all pointing their telescopes at the far treeline above: one of them had managed to spot a tiny rare snake in the dense crowns only because a bird “had been acting strange”. 5 minutes later another group formed around a guide who spotted a rare beetle 30 meters up a tree branch. I had trouble seeing it even with a telescope.

A golden scarab beetle, Chrysina aurigans

A well camoflauged side stripe pit viper

Eric would spend some time walking silently before abruptly yet nonchalantly producing an extremely convincing bird call. He taught us that quetzals can do 8-10 different calls and he would demonstrate each one. These birds are highly intelligent and each one has its own twang or accent when singing.

He had an excellent story for us: a few years back, when he was stil an active guide, he worked alongside another colleague who never quite got the hang of some bird calls. One particular quetzal learned to immitate the guide’s ersatz call and from then on the rest of the guides didn’t know if they could hear their colleague or the quetzal’s mimicry!

I remember expecting to see a little more wildlife in the reserve, but such is the nature of nature; it doesn’t always come out to play. At the end of the day, we got what we came for: quetzals. We did also see a couple of different toucan species, some howler monkeys, various butterfly species and a handful of other birds that I can’t remember the name of.

Ziplining and Ficus Root Bridge

Santa Elena is pretty small. We were pretty conscious of how expensive some of the activities here are so we didn’t go out to eat or drink. Our hostel had a pretty good kitchen so we whipped up some basic meals to save money.

One of those fund-draining activities is ziplining through the cloud forest canopy. There were a two or three different providers who operate in different local forests. I believe we ended up going to Selvatura Park. It was pretty fun but I didn’t feel like it was some once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We also went to the local (free) attraction, the Ficus Root Bridge. It’s a short walk from the center. We went down some inconspicuous path into the forest which ran alongside a stream. The ficus tree had sprawled its root(s) across the small chasm, creating a natural bridge over the stream. It unfortunately didn’t lead anywhere, but it did make for great Tarzan-esque pictures!

That’s mostly it for Monteverde. At this point we had made plans to go to most southern parts of the country in order to spend 10 days at a turtle conservation eco project, as well as visit the infamous Corcovado National Park, all of it detailed in the next part.

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Yet to finish writing about the rest of the trip!

Note: This post comes across as negative towards Costa Rica, but I had an absolutely amazing time there. These are simply things that one might want to be prepared about if travelling or moving there.

Paradise is expensive

Even for westeners, the country can prove to be quite expensive, and even more so for backpackers. Of course, we were mostly travelling to touristy destinations, which are expected to be pricier than usual.

General

• Carribean Coast and the central valley are cheaper than the Pacific Coast.
• Car rental is extortionate and prices vary a lot between companies; prices are cheaper on websites, not in store!
• Even small hostels can charge a lot for a shared room ($20 per night, per person!)
• AirBnb can prove cheaper and nicer for couples or group travellers.
• “Cabinas” (a basic hotel/hostel hybrid) are common; not always the cheapest.
• Natural parks charge anywhere from $15 to $25 to enter. On top of that if you fully want to enjoy them you’d want to get a guide (another $25 per person + tips).
• Food is expensive, both in restaurants and supermarkets (more detail in Food and Drink Section)

Banks

• Banks are common in most towns but check before you go! In some places, even touristy ones, there are no banks or ATMs!
• VISA is the preferred network. Our Mastercards did not work in ATMs despite the logo being shown (only exception was BAC ATMs and even those were finicky). Paying in shops/restaurants with it worked fine.
• Some remote places will have a low signal to the banking network, meaning their card readers only work half of the time.

Food and Drink

The food in Costa Rica varies from place to place, both in terms of choice, quality and price.

• Surprisingly, Costa Rican dishes are a bit bland (I’m sorry!). They aren’t bad per se, just not very interesting.
• Enjoy the fruit! Costa Rica has access to some exotic fruits that you won’t be able to find elsewhere easily! My top picks are: guanabana, granadilla, pineapple.
• In restaurants, I’d say you are overpaying for the quality of the meal, but the portion size makes up for it.
• Local cafeterias/restaurants, known as “sodas”, are a cheaper alternative but you’ll still be spending more than you should
• Going to the supermarket? You can say goodbye to western (especially european) foods – availability of cheeses, yoghurts, olive oil, cured meats is low – and when you do find something it will be extortionately priced. For instance, a 300g bag of granola cost around £4 in Tamarindo; here in London I can get a 1kg bag for £2.
• Wine is expensive! That was a bit surprising really, given Costa Rica’s relative proximity to Chile and Argentina.

Infrastructure

Despite being the wealthiest in Central America, Costa Rica is still a developing country. This is reflected in its civil infrastructure.

Roads

• Towns adhere to American style grid system.
• Watch your step! Even in San Jose, there are deep drainage ditches between the pavement and the road, usually with no pedestrian ramp (i.e. you have to hop over).
• Some of the road junctions we saw are mind-boggling (5-lane high-speed road connecting to a 2-lane entrance of a busy roundabout?!)
• Most beach towns are simply a single stretch of paved road; beach on one side, shops on the other. Behind the shops it’s a jungle!
• Dirt/gravel roads are the norm; they connect to the main paved road in each town.
• Depending on how remote you go, don’t be surprised to have to cross a small river. Bridges are currently being built in some areas.
• You’ll get away without a 4x4 in most areas but a larger car (with more clearance) is recommended to avoid potholes and stones.
• Driving on the highway? Expect to get stuck behind a series of trucks. You’ll need to get comfortable overtaking long vehicles.
• Be watchful of roadsigns: a lot of the times there are unmarked roadhumps that are othewise hard to see.

Everyday Things

• Ask if you can drink the water! In a lot of places on the Pacific Coast the tap water isn’t drinkable
• No hot water is the norm in most places (though you rarely need it, given the temperatures).
• Toilet paper is not be flushed in the toilet – not sure why – I assume it’s due to a poor drainage system.
• Power outages are common, especially in remote areas, sometimes lasting days.
• Bus stops are often unmarked with no way of knowing which bus stops there or when. Your best bet is to find the central terminal or ask a local.

Other

• The driving culture is terrible: everyone wants to be first, drivers can’t seem to stay in their lane and everyone is using their phone. My advice is to drive defensively.