Holiday In Cambodia

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I've had this song in my head for days...
We spent a little longer in Saigon and (to our surprise) were sad to go; it was a nice city, with much less hussel and bussel than Hanoi with nice coffee shops and things to see - including the embalmed body of Ho Chi Min, neither of us have ever seen a dead communist leader before. We also picked up a very nice watch each that were supposed to sell for $10,000+ but we got $35 each.
We weren't happy about it, but we then got on a bus to Phnom Peng, which was relatively short and stress free compared to the 26 hour one to Saigon. W passed through the Cambodia border without any real stress and got to Cambodia's capital city and to a hostel without any worry.
Not having had enough of the ugly side of humanity Alice and I made our way to 'S.21' the infamous infantry school turned into a torture and detention centre by the Pol Pot regime. I wont go into the details of all that we saw, but it was pretty horrific (there were 'no smiling' signs) and between reading about it and seeing the locations. both of us know way more about the Pol Pot Regime than we did. We also saw a couple of other less stressful museums and spent a few evenings on the river front sipping 50p glasses of beer in very posh hotels (Alice had a small panic attack, convinced we would be mowed down by a criminal with a machine gun, but i wasn't supposed to mention that).
We made our way south and to the coast to the port town of Sihanoukville, basically because after a series of unpleasant museums and large cities we felt like we deserved a break.
Sihanoukville was a pretty non-descript town, but it had a nice, stereotypical tropical, beach and we chilled out there for 3 nights. We were only supposed to be there for 2 nights, however we came across 25p for a glass of tiger beer and we were in no fit state to leave when we intended, so stayed an extra day.
So we got back on another 10 hour or so bus ride to Siem Reap and the Angkor Ruins. It's difficult to know what to say about them really, they were totally overwhelming in person. It's the oldest pre-industrial city in the world, spread over some 400km (needless to say, we didn't see all of it). They started building it in 802AD and it was attacked and emptied in the 16th century.
It was cool, although as i say, a little overwhelming, looking at piles of stone and temples all day tends to all blend into one after a few hours. Some people spend a week looking around, although due to time constraints we were only able to spend 1 day. Today we get on another bus (our last) to Bangkok.
Sorry again at lack of photos, i try6 every time i swear it's just not happening

Chris+Alice

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