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Published: April 25th 2006
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It's the comedy pic!
And it's still not getting boring! Hello All!!
And so we left Mumbai and India behind and headed on our jet plane for Bangkok. We only spent one full day there before we left for Cambodia and we go back in a couple of weeks so I won't go into any detail as to what we did - just visited the Royal Palace Complex and a couple of Wats (Buddhist Temples) and I'll load a few snaps up of Bangkok we've been there another day or two.
So we left Bangkok really early in the morning so that we'd avoid queues at the border with Cambodia which we sailed through with no problems. For some reason I expected things to be completely different on the other side of the border but of course they weren't!. We arrived at Siem Reap fairly early in the afternoon, so we decided to head out to the floating village on Tonle Sap lake. This village was absolutely amazing as the houses were literally floating on this lake (if you didn't manage to work that out from the name of the place!) and there wasn't only houses, there are floating schools, shops, pig farms (!) and even a church! It
was absolutely amazing to see. People live on this lake through choice as Tonle Sap lake is massive, and so people living on the lake fish evey day and sell the catch at markets. Kids would paddle up to us in basins, flirting close to certain death just to say hello and other kids would wave from the relative safety of a floating house, it was fantastic!
The next day we headed to the ancent city of Angkor and the vast number of temples it contains out in the middle of the jungle. First we went to Angor Wat for sunrise but unfortunately it was very cloudy that day (later on it rained! which was brill coz we haven't seen real rain for 2 months! I just stood out in it like a weirdo whilst everyone else took cover from the torrential downpour!). We then headed to the Bayon Temple, which is famous for its many faces looking down at you and watching your evey move! After that we we to Ta Prohmn which is a fantastic temple which has literally been taken over by the jungle. Because these temples were 'lost' for hundreds of years, the jungle encroached
and grew around them, spectacularly so at this temple which now depends on the trees growing through it to keep the walls up! This temple was used when filming the original Tomb Raider film but obviously the Cambodian guides haven't seen the film otherwise they wouldn't be broadcasting that fact so proudly! We then went to the Terrace of the Elephant King before heading to the largest religious structure in the world - Angkor Wat. This temple is amazing, it's pretty damn massive, surrounded by moats and a lake, the carvings on the walls both inside and outside are awesome and the top of the central tower gives fantastic views of the surrounding jungle.
After these temples (which took up a good 8 hours of the day) we headed to The Landmine Museum. It's run by an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier who goes out every day searching for the many landmines which reside in the countryside armed with only a bamboo sitck and he disarms between 50 and 100 landmines a day. This man also provides a home and education for around 20 landmine victims. We were given a guided tour by a very courageous 19-year-old lad who lost his leg because of a landmine when he was only 9, and given an explanation of how the landmines worked. It was a very humbling experience as this lad told us his story, and we discovered that even today many people are dying because of landmines.
Today we headed back to Angkor for a few more temples, best of which was Bantar Saray which had amazingly detailed and preserved carvings. Also went to the War Museum and was again shown round by a guy who had been forced into the army when he was 13 and as a result was blind in one eye, lost a leg and had nails, ball bearings etc in his body and had lost most of his family and friends. But this guy was great as he had a wicked sense of humour, and although that might sound bad you realise that this sense of humour must be the only thing that can keep people going - as from this museum and the landmines museum you quickly realise how bad this country has had it in the last few decades. All the kids here are fantastic as well, they are all really funny and friendly and quickly forget they are trying to sell you stuff if you start talking to them!
So anyway tomorrow we head for Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, hope everyone is fine and dandy - I see the weather is warming up in England, although I can guarantee it won't get as hot as it is here!
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The last 3 games, Lost 1 won 2, Still in playoff zone.