Temples? You havent seen temples...

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Hello again. Firstly, I apologise there are no photo's and I know its slightly boring without them but were working with some seriously retro internet here. Its like England when internet was first introduced - anyone remember that? Were are moving onto the capital, Phnom Penn in a few hours and so im hoping it will get better, although im pretty sure it wont. Im sure I will get a chance soon and you can have a look. I have already taken over 400 photos in just one week!

Since last time we have mainly focused our attentions on Angkor. a 150km are of temples built by the Khmers, some over a 1000 years ago. They are simply amazing. Everyone says that they are one of the top spots in Asia and I totally agree. There are literally over a hundred temples scattered around. These were the places where the higher people in society and monks would come and prey and use. Everybody lived in wooden shacks surrounding these areas. We are talking about a population of over 1million when London was only 50,000 people. The main attraction is Angkor Wat, and we went here for sunrise and then spent two days exploring the others. I have over 200 photos of Angkor alone! The temples are just amazing, and without photo's I cant really write too much more.

The way to visit Angkor is usually by tuk tuk and we did this on the second day. On the first day we opted for bikes and cycled over 25km which was great but pretty tiring. We settled for the easy option the day after. This led us to meeting a really great guy, our tuk tuk driver for the day, Mr Sanghean. He was a 25year old who had moved here alone to be a tuk tuk driver from a smaller village over an hour away. His english was pretty good and he helped us loads throughout the day and we got to know him well. We had arranged payment for the day, which im sure you will be pretty shocked at because it was 12$ for the 4 of us. This is actally slightly more than you can get them for but he seemed nice and his english good. On finishing the day we paid him slightly more due to the hard work he put it and handed over 20$. He was really happy with this and inisistd he showed us good places to go tonight to eat and drink for no charge. We declined, thanking him for his good job and went for a well earned shower.

We went for a few drinks and later in the evening we bumped into him again! We decided to go and check out the club he rated and we were not dissapointed. He came in with us and we all had a dance etc for an hour or two with basically everyone due to the lack of Westerners in there and the atttention we attracted - in a good way. People were very friendly.

Cambodia so far is great. What I so far haven't mentioned is the levels of poverty here and how everyone wants your business. Also, as our tuk tuk driver explained, "Cambodia has a problem with social evils" i.e. prostitution, which he insists they are working on. Sadly, it is all aimed towards westerners and we have seen our fair share of Western people taking advantage. I am actually quite surprised at the friendliness of Cambodians towards westerners because of this. We found ourselves continually insisting to Mr Sanghean that not all western people are like this. It is not just a problem in Cambodia, it has been everywhere. I wanted to mention it because I want to give a real account of how things are. Everything else you can read in a guide book.

Anyway, so far, I love Cambodia. Mum, dad, I dont think you would - its not the typical American holiday we are used to. Plans are to move to Phnom Penn today, and then on to Sihanukville (to the beaches) a few days after this. Hopefully leavin Cambodia for North Vietnam on Wednesday/Thursday. Until next time, Li Hau (Goodbye - or something along those lines)

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Photos

Hostel - Phnom Penn
This is where im staying in Phnom Penn - $2 a night each :) Our room is one of those on the left hand side

Angkor Wat inside
This would have been a swimming pool some 1000years ago...

Marge Simpson
Magg's Marge Simpson impression with his Krama (Cambodian head scarf which we all wear quite regularly, just not like this)