Blogs from Angkor, North, Cambodia, Asia - page 89

Our three days at the Angkor temples were so mindblowing I don't know where to start. I am also recovering from a bout of Cambodia-Belly and this is my first attempt out of bed in a while so forgive me if this entry is a little all over the place. I can't really describe Angkor Wat or the other temples of the complex, they are bigger in size and their carvings more intricate and amazing than I ever could have imagined. No photos really do the place justice, it is just fantastic. Personal highlights include the obligatory sunrise over Angkor Wat which was one of the more beautiful I think I've seen, perhaps heightened by the trip through the trees in our tuktuk in the darkness which felt like something straight out of a Hollywood movie. ... read more

Someone has unzipped me from the crown of my head, down between my eyebrows, down the bridge of my nariz, lips, chin, to chest. I think it was God. From my eyebrows a lotus flower has bloomed, like the image of Diego Rivera's face on Frida Kahlo's forehead. Majesty: elephants in bas-relief. We have been playing on the temples of Angkor for several days, and I think it's best if we stay here forever. I'll join an archaeological team and Rich will take the perfect photo of himself dangling from the tallest lotus tower. And we will climb - feeling the sandstone with our hands, clinging to it for strength, pulling life from inside it. We are kids again. Or maybe since we are really now adults I should say that we've fully embraced Aldous Huxley's ... read more

We headed to Cambodia the next day to see the incredible Angkor temples. They were the centre of Khmer civilisation: between the 8th and 13th centuries a succession of Hindu and Buddhist kings created magnificant stone temples, thus most of the remaining temples are wonderfully incorporative of both religions. At 7am we caught a minibus to the Thai/Cambodia border; stopping off for an inexplicably long time at a random restaurant - think our visas were getting done. The landscape on the way was flat and dry, occasionally lapsing into green fields and banana trees. We got to the border and on meagre instructions from the guide, we muddled our way through immigration. We all got rounded up again and put on another bus - very different from the air conditioned, reclining seats of before: now 25 ... read more

Arriving in Cambodia was a bit like coming home to the Asia I have come to love so much. There were a lot of smiles and "Hello"s again (In Vietnam people sometimes looked at me as if I was a retard when I used to greet them with a big smile). Even the lady at customs gave me a big smile after she corrected a form I had filled out incorrectly. Compared to Vietnam, the traffic is a lot more relaxed. Actually the biggest danger in Cambodia is to be run over by a NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) car/truck. They are all over the place and a lot of people have mixed feelings about them. Especially the mine clearance teams are getting a lot of criticism. It is said that the real dangerous work is all ... read more

Hello everyone, so after staying in our first hostel for a couple of nights, we moved to Bangkoks more notorious backpacker destination of khao san road. This place has more or less everything you need, accomodation for under a quid a night, food for about 25 pence, yet more fake stuff...and a mcdonalds and burger king. We also took in some of the sights of bangkok on a tuk-tuk. We originally were just going to go to the Grand Palace, but then our driver said he'd take us to all the sites for 20 baht, or about 30p. So first we headed to the Big Buddha, a giant golden statue of Buddha, then to some other place that i cant really remember too much about, and then to the golden mountain, where you get a good ... read more