Train ride

After flying into Orange County airport in California, spent the night in nearby Costa Mesa. The next day I needed to travel to LAX as I was on call for another day. Not being in a hurry decided to take the train up to downtown Los Angeles.

I went back to SNA on the hotel van and caught a shuttle to the Santa Ana train station where I purchased a ticket for fifteen dollars. After waiting for about 15 minutes a train arrived. The upper deck had plenty of open seats that were comfortable and provided a great view of the areas that we passed through. The storage areas above the seats were a bit on the thin side so a thick or overstuffed bag wouldn't fit. No one was seated next to me so I left my bag on the floor.

The train accelerated smoothly and was very quiet. The ride was fairly soft and pleasant. It may not have been as comfortable.if the train had been full but today we had plenty of room. The station announcements were easy to understand so it would be hard to miss your station unless you were sound asleep.

The bus from Union station to LAX was seven dollars and took less than a half an hour. The trip took longer than the shuttle van would have but we didn't have to sit in rush hour traffic nor did we have to go through security as on a plane. In the past I had taken a United Express flight but no flights were available today and I don't know if the route is being flown anymore.

Diving Kauai

For our first vacation of 2010 we traveled to the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. We did our diving with Fathom Five Dive Shop in Koloa. It's very close to Poipu beach where we had rented a condo.

We did a shore dive at Koloa Landing to start as we had my cousin's teenage son who wanted to do a padi discovery dive. Our instructor James did a great job and we all had a great time. We couldn't get too deep on the discovery dive but the area was very interesting in the shallow water. We got to see a dragon moray eel, a scorpion fish and other very beautiful animals such as Hawaiian sea turtles.

We would like to do this dive again as there's much to see and Fathom Five is a great dive shop.

Sea Turtles in Hawaii

I'm amazed at how many turtles we see when snorkeling at Waikoloa on the Island of Hawaii. They are supposed to be left alone but they seem to be everywhere and will sometimes swim up to you to say hi.

At home when paddling Black Canyon from Hoover Dam the birds and land animals are the most interesting with the large herd of big horn sheep that are commonly seen.

In Hawaii being in the water is really fun at there are lots of interesting fish, turtles, and whales.

Snorkeling in Maui, came upon a leatherback sea turtle sleeping on the bottom and left it alone. I was impressed by the size sea turtle and later read that they can reach 2,000 pounds.

The above image is of a Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle.

Japanese Food in Waikiki

There are many great Japanese places to eat in Waikiki.

Today I had a great katstu-curry at Tonkatsu Ginza Bairin at 255 Beach Walk. Their phone number is 808-926-8082. I heard both English and Japanese spoken there.

Tonkatsu is a breaded deep fried pork cutlet, very popular in Japan.

The restaurant is very beautifully decorated looking like it could be in Japan. The tonkatsu was as good as the best that I've eaten at in Japan. I really love tonkatsu, when in Japan, my uncle Mamoru and I seek out the best places to have tonkatsu for lunch.

Winter Paddling near Las Vegas

The weather has turned cold in Southern Nevada, the kayak tour business, near Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, has slowed. This is actually our favorite time to paddle from Hoover Dam as the hot springs are wonderful when the air is cool.

What we consider cold isn't all that bad as it stays above freezing most of the time. The sunny days, with the temps sometimes getting into the 70's, actually feel warm, especially for someone who went to school in Nebraska.

Another great reasons for visiting Black Canyon this time of year are that there are few people on the river for a nice wilderness experience.

Desert Adventures is using this slow period to sell used tour and rental boats to make way for the new canoes and kayaks coming in the spring. These boats are a great deal as they sell for half of the retail price of a new one. The boats have had many trips down the Black Canyon of the Colorado river and on Lake Mead but have lots of life left for a private owner.

Our store is a 1647A Nevada Highway in Boulder City, Nevada 89005. Phone number is (702)293-5026 email: info@kayaklasvegas.com.

Flying, Lake Mead, Colorado River

My friend Joe Kahl and I flew a Cessna 170B borrowed from friend Doug Mueller to Pearce Ferry today. Joe works with birds and other animals for the Bureau of Reclamation in Boulder City, Nevada. His field work takes him along the Colorado River between Lake Mead and Yuma, Arizona.

Joe also hosts an American folk music program called patchworks on Sunday afternoons with KUNV 91.5 for the university of Nevada-Las Vegas radio station.

We flew over Iceberg Canyon and ended up at Kingman for breakfast. The airport restaurant is a popular place to fly into for a meal. We met with up with Paul Gaines that owns a composite aircraft repair shop at the Kingman, Arizona airport.

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

We flew into Siem Reap, Cambodia from Bangkok on an atr72, the flight was less than an hour and uneventful. We processed through immigration by getting a visa at the airport, we forgot to get a passport size photo for the visa but they took care of that for an extra $2 usd.

It's interesting that everything priced here is in U.S. dollars, they take the local currency but there's no need for it. Sometimes you get the local currency as change. We had a one hundred dollar bill, a lot of money in Cambodia that was hard to spend, so best to bring $20 bills or smaller.

We had our hotel, the viroth, arrange transportation and our car and driver was waiting for us when we were done with immigration and customs. The hotel is moderately priced, the rooms and service is very good. They don't have a tour desk so we went to the neighboring soria moria hotel. The staff there was great and we booked a full day tour of the Angkor area with them.

The next morning we had breakfast at the viroth at 7 a.m. then met our tour guide and driver, then off to the temples in a car that I think was a toyota camry. Our driver didn't seem to speak much english but the tour guide's english was outstanding as was his knowledge of the area and it's history. He reminded me of our guides at desert adventures in Las Vegas who do a great job for us day in and out.

Our driver Tony and guide Lee took us to Angkor Wat first. The temple was originally built in the 12th century as a hindu temple, it's now Buddhist with two monasteries. It took hours to go through the temple as it's very large. Our guide explained the stories that were carved into the stone walls of the temple, mostly of battles fought and folklore. One wall was about the sea of milk story of hindu creation.

Much restoration work is in progress, some of the damage was from natural causes such as water, other damage, bullet holes and artillery hits, were obviously man made. The blocks of stone are quite large and heavy so the work must be very difficult as building the place must have been in the 12th century. Holes were drilled into the blocks to insert pieces of wood so that elephants could drag them from the quarry from a quarry 40 km from the northeast. More info on the history and construction can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat

We visited another temple that was used for the filming of tomb raider, had lunch then visited Angkor Thom, the big city. There were once a million people living within the 3 km square area. 

The temple we visited there is called bayon. It was very beautiful with many stone buddha faces all over the building. It was later converted into a hindu temple and many of the buddha images were destroyed or converted to hindu gods. It's interesting that the large faces remained mostly intact.

We took the next morning off and spent lunchtime at the Angkor Museum. The museum was well done and worth a couple of hours to see the all the great art work and displays on the history of the area.