i just arrived in bangkok for my diving trip. i head down to the island tonight and with any luck i'll arrive around noon tomorrow and then i'll start my diving class on friday. i'll let everyone know how that goes, but according to the people running the dive shop, it's impossible to fail the test. I'm not sure if that's comforting.

This past sunday I went on little bike trip with my roommate luke and our friend tom. We rode up to this place called Uodong mountain, its about 33 miles north of phnom penh. its more of hill than a mountain really, but there are couple buddhist temples on top and a few previous kings of cambodia have their remains up there. all in all the mountain was less than impressive, but the bike trip out and back was great. Literally every villager stopped what they were doing as we approached and waved to us, shouted "hello", etc. One kid, maybe around 16, even jumped on his bike and road with us for a few miles. i'm not quite sure why all the villagers were so thrilled to see us - my guess is they were really laughing at us for riding bicycles when we could spend $1 and take bus.