Marco-YOLO

Diving in Phuket

Phuket, Thailand - Beachy stuff, scuba diving and underwater photography. I got to do my first wreck dive on the King Cruiser wreck. That’s me jumping in the water above.

Fair warning. Lionfish may not let you use the restroom on King Cruiser!

Bangkok, Thailand – Jarisara and Tsvetan’s wedding at the Mandarin Oriental.  We also went wat-hopping and did other touristy stuff.

Siem Riep, Cambodia – Fun times on Pub Street. I also walked into a Buddhist temple’s attached dormitory and helped some young monks with their English homework.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia – A spectacular ruin of one of the largest pre-industrial cities in the world. That’s me at the bottom of the first image.

Posing with friends in front of ruins at Angkok Wat.

What you’d expect.

We took a bus to Naples in the morning. On the road between Rome and Naples, we passed a 1st century Roman road, Castle Gandolfo (Pope’s retreat), the second largest palace in Europe (after Versailles and in which scenes from Start Wars had been filmed) and a number of rock quarries.
When we got to Naples, it was lightly raining. We could barely see the outline of the island of Capri. We drove around the city and took a few pictures. After that we drove to the city of Pompeii, stopping at a coral and conch art factory which was ridiculously overpriced. One unspectacular looking broach we saw cost 32,000 Euros and even the tiniest and most basic piece cost about 120 Euros. They did demonstrate for us how the art was fashioned from the conch which was interesting to see.
Arriving at Pompeii, we had lunch and then walked around town. By now the clouds had passed and it was a nice sunny day. We walked to the square which has a church around it and saw a bride and groom taking pictures together. Children were playing by the fountain and locals were walking their dogs. I passed 20 parked cars in a row without seeing an automatic transmission. Italians, men and women, all drive stick. Very nice! I like!
We left the modern city of Pompeii and took a short bus ride to the ruins of Pompeii.

Pompeii has been the highlight of the trip so far. It is simply amazing how advanced the inhabitants of this ancient city were both socially, in the development of their civil institutions and technologically. Surprisingly, there is much to see in this ruined city and it is not too difficult to see what life would have been like for these Romans prior to the eruption of Vesuvius. Gymnasiums, Theatres, Bakeries (very impressive!), Bars/Pubs, Public baths and toilets as well as the Courthouse that also served as stock exchange.

The brothels were the most interesting. Pompeii had 25 brothels. The one we visited had 5 rooms with pictures of sex positions posted over the doorways. You paid for the position and “fun time”with a lady of the night ran about what today would be the price of a beer. On the streets, phallic shapes pointed in the direction of the red light district to help drunk Romans get to where they wanted to be.