Skippity doo daa skippity day

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OKOK we know, we're sorry. It has been TOO long but... hey we weren't being lazy we were just having fun! And YES it is hard to have time or even the energy to type ANYTHING. So as a result we've decided to do a little skip on Vietnam for now.... This being mostly due to the fact that we don't want to bore you with an emotionless step by step account of what happened and rather would like to entertain you with stuff thats fresh in the brain! Soooo readersss... here's part one of Cambodia!

Cambodia Part 1:

During the journey by boat from vietnam we were accompanied by 3 other Welsh girls who obviously were on the same cheapskate budget as us, seeing as the other 10 odd people in our Mekong tour had paid slightly more for a faster boat service. The slow boat (although there were no cushions, no toilet, no food, no water and limited shade) however proved to provide a nice travel experience. I especially enjoyed the comfortable wooden floor inbeteween the seats for sleeping. Winding slowly through the narrow canals gave us good opportunity to see the riverside communities and their daily activities i.e. washing cows. Recently however we were told that sometimes the people use the cows as a bait to fish for leeches, so maybe they were just cow fishing. Our driver suddenly announced a 5 minute wait when he pulled in at the bank, which turned into a half hour wait. We thought he was off harvesting some local mary jane but he went snorkelling to clear something from the propeller (his red eyes suggested a lack of snorkel).

When we arrived late we were asked if we were finished eating by our guide before even ordering at which point he brought some other poor sod over and told us we have to go with him in 20 mins. Then we were hurried to a border post which was a 10 minute walk and a 10 min drive away where we paid 23 bucks each for a visa which officialy costs 20, the other 3 we were told was necessary to make everything go smoothly.

Phnom Penh, the name conjures up dreams of the exotic but the first night made us realise these were dreams of single middle-aged men about young exotic Cambodian women working the bars. Lovely. If there was ever a time to actually pull the emoticon/smiley face :P now would definately suffice. Still we stayed in a cool $10 a night hotel with an amazing rooftop bar with all the trimmings.

After devouring the most beautiful English Brecky we've had since our fry ups in Dam, it was education time. Knowing absolutely nothing about Cambodia we went for a little history trip to the national museum and the royal palace/silver pagoda. There we learnt about the beginnings of the Khmer people and their religion, art and architecture. Loved the way even new buildings are built in their traditional stlye (check out the pics if your curious). This did not prepare us for our next history trip to the killing fields and S21 prison (which was delayed by a day because of an eventful night of pool with fellow Plymouth lovers ((read Cornwallish)) Steve and Jess, where we had to switch the lights off in the bar cos the barman was already gone).

Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader came to power in 1975 and immediately forced all public into the fields to work 12 hour days on nothing more than 2 bowls of rice. Every intellectual was killed, everyone with glasses, everyone who had someone in their family with glasses. Basically 25% of the population were murdered because they were seen as traitors of his extreme Marxist regime. The killing fields was a location where around 8000 people were put to death, usually for no valid reason at all. Now they have made a memorial to those who perished and an amazing audio guide which is quite depressing. S21 was a prison where these people were also held, tortured and killed. What makes things completely ridiculous about the regime was that Pol Pot and his main group of leaders all had degrees from Universities in the West. Anyway, after all our lessons in gruesomness, gore and destruction we have developed a great respect for the people here who are always smiling, laughing and greeting you wherever you go.

On one of the nights we spent chilling out in the Capital we were approached by a book seller. Many street sellers walk around the city selling books or lighters or hammocks etc. and you get to the point where it doesn't matter what they have to offer you any more, you robotically just say 'no thank you' and wave them on. This boy of maybe 10 came up with his tray full of books and after I said 'no thanks' he immediately said 'why?' and stared at me. This took me slightly by surprise and I said 'I'm already reading a book', he replies quickfire 'which one'. I tell him and he says 'well you can buy one to read after yours, what about this one... Everyone has to read this book in Cambodia'. I say I finish one then get another so I don't have to carry too much. He says 'You are man! For you no problem!'. I say ok for 3 dollar he says'5!'. 'No 3', 'OK rock paper scissor I win 5, you win 3'. We won and split the difference and gave him 4 at which he was very happy. Later we saw him passing again so we got him to sign the book, being very impressed with his English and cheeky little blighterness.

We finally decided upon plans to travel towards the temples of Angkor Wat. A gruelling 7 hour journey, especially for Bex with no trvel pills, was not the most enjoyable. I asked the driver to stop, which we thought wouldn't be a problem as he seemed to constantly be picking locals up and dropping them off, but I was waved back after scoring a couple of plastic bags. I came back not a moment too soon as Bex took the bag and filled it. Almost yakking myself I took the full bag up to the front and the driver stopped pretty quickly to let me chuck it out the door. It exploded on impact which made us feel lucky that it had held out long enough. ...Soooo after that DETAILED explanation of my (Becks) puking in the bus which Duncan is obviously still traumatised about but happy to share with the world, we arrived in Siem Reap where we were greeted by a tuktuk driver holding the sign 'Mr BuncaMurbock'. After a few seconds of confusion we realised there can't be anyone else with this name or anything closer to it than mine so we hopped in.

Our next hotelling experience was in all honesty not the best mainly due to the 'alternative' crowd which seemed to fill the hotel. We just didn't feel welcome but never mind eh! The staff were also crap. The excursions out with our tuk tuk driver 'John Cena' (after the wrestler) more than made up for it. We decided to do the temples in one day from sunrise to sunset, an absolute mission. John was the first tuktuk driver we decided to approach (funnily enough he didn't approach us), and after a brief introduction we were amazed by his English and liked his smiling honesty about the fact that he was nursing a hangover from a family party. The next day at 5 sharp we set off for Angkor Wat (the main temple in the Angkor Kingdom). We arrived in pitch black darkness without a torch but with the enormous orange glowing full moon to guide us we stumbled down the path toward the temple. It loomed up in front of us with spiky spires in the distance and we decided to cut away from the crowd and venture off onto the grassy ruin covered field for a more private viewing. People copied us, typical!

We spent the whole day being carted from one temple complex to the other. The midday sun was excruitiating and we were even told by the locals that it was an abnormally hot day. Of course its stupidly hot when we have the plan to wander around temples all day. We got through a good 5 bottles of water (at 1.5 litres a go)! Well I thought it was quite impressive considering we gulped down cans of cola as well. Coca cola for some reason is amazingly refreshing in this weather and when you are walking around with the sun scolding you all you can think about is tilting the cool metal of the edge of the can against your bottom lip, the condensation dribbling down your chin when you take those first most gratifying sips of precious cola nectar which slides down your throat so quickly the flavour takes time to be registered by your tongue and before you know it, entranced by the bubbly goodness, half the can has dissappeared and your preparing yourself for the ultimate belch of satisfaction. MMMMmmmm cola!

Unluckily enough even though I was probably about 100 photo's in to capturing the temples my camera decided it was time to go to sleep. So from 11 in the morning I was essentially just carrying around a dead weight... ah well. We approached the end of a 14 hour day and perched atop a mountain temple waited for the sun to vanish... behind the clouds. It was a pretty sunset but quite public as there were around 100 or so other people that make the same trek to see the same thing, all laying in wait with their camera's to waste space on the memory card for a less than average sundown.

John drove us back to the hostel and with such a long day behind us we decided to stay in the local vicinity of the hostel, this is when we discovered, the tuk tuk bar. In all honesty we had actually sat at the tuk tuk bar on our first night. It is exactly as it sounds, a tuk tuk changed into a bar with seats attached to it where the driver has to clamber over the side to get into the bar to serve people. During the different nights that we were in Siem Reap this is where we got the cheapest quality drinks and great interesting company at the same place (39 year old cop who got stuck in the jungle for 3 days (Simon), 28 year old salmon fisher from Alaska (Joe) who was boating around the Mekong on a raft, Fahd (don't forget our cycling tour in the future man!), a cool Dutch couple, a Canadian mootard etc. etc.). Before making the 100 metre trek to this bar we had a quick shower after which Duncan managed to get his fingers almost chopped off by the ceiling fan. HOW? can this happen you might ask.... low ceiling + dirty fast turning fan + tall Duncan + a complete lack of spatial awareness = ouch! Luckily enough we met a girl in the hall way which had some Hydrogen Peroxide to clean the wound with (after just having had to battle a small infection which turned up because of a mere shaving cut). We had met a couple of Aussies in the morning and had a general chat, expecting just to bump into them now and then, we didn't know that as a result of the injury we would meet up each day for an appointment with one of them. Kelly was a nurse and had heard us talking about if we would need to go to the doctor for stitches or not and her ears pricked up and we heard a call from the stairs below 'Stitches...? Who's getting stitches?'.

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