Cambodia

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30th July - 4th August 2010

Apologies but we are running a bit behind schedule with the blog as net availability in Vietnam is pretty poor. We will upload Cambodia now and do Vietnam in a few days. This one will be brief as Cambodia was a brief foray. Also, still no videos as they wont upload. Oh no I hear you cry.....dont you worry as we have every intention of boring you to death with them all on our return (hope your looking forward to it).

Our journey from 4000 Islands began at 8am when we got on the ferry to the mainland where we joined a bus literally full of people (some had to get on the roof) to the Cambodian border where we had to pay dollars to get out of Loas, dollars for us to confirm that we were healthy and then more dollars to enter Cambodia. This signalled the beginning of a rapid period of dollar evaporation during our time in Cambodia!

So we then jumped on another so-called vip bus which was due to arrive in Siem Reap at 9 pm. At midnight we eventually pulled up to Siem Reap bus station where we were greeted with a scrum of tuk-tuk drivers all shouting. We managed to get away from the crowds and met a very nice guy called Kim who spoke good English and didn’t shout once. After taking us to a guesthouse, we arranged for Kim to pick us up in 2 days for some hardcore sightseeing.

After the mammoth journey we had a pretty lazy day 1 in SR but day 2 was all about sights. Our alarm woke us at the horrible hour of 3.45am as we wanted (!!!) to go and see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. As soon as we stepped from the guesthouse to be greeted by Kim at 4.30, we noticed that it was pouring with rain and therefore very cloudy. Whilst the rain stopped shortly after, the cloud cover ensured that there was no sun in the sky when we sat for an hour in the grounds of Angkor Wat! However, we did manage to grab a seat and a cup of hot choc/coffee which was very much needed at that hour!

After a disappointing start to the day, we got on with our temple watching and trundled through about 8 of the things!!! We had one distinct favourite which had some very ancient trees growing through the walls adding something of interest (most of them were just old ruins. We later discovered that this was the setting for the Lara Croft / Tomb Raider movie). We also came across one temple which we very much wished we had had rock climbing gear to clamber as the steps were unbelievably steep... horrible to go up but so much worse to go down - see photo. After a hard day of templing we arrived back at the guesthouse at lunchtime in order to pass out in bed.

The next day we headed to the capital Phnom Penh by coach on a 6 hour journey. We had planned to do a cooking class and spend 3 nights here but were told that the classes were fully booked. Therefore we opted to stay 2 nights and cram the sites in. As it turns out, this was plenty of time for us as the main attractions in PP are related to genocide.....

We started our day of sightseeing at the Royal Palace which is very impressive then headed to get some brekkie before we met our tuk-tuk driver. First stop in the afternoon was Choeng Ek more commonly known as the killing fields. Out of respect we didn’t take any photographs with the exception of one of a memorial Stupa erected to honour the victims. On approaching the Stupa, we realised it was full of skulls and bones of the victims. It was a very depressing visit, but the worst was yet to come....

Next stop was Tuol Sleng (or S-21) which in its day was a school but was taken over by Pol Pot’s barbaric regime and became a prison / torture centre. The buildings were left untouched which added to the shocking impact. There were photos of the victims and of some being tortured - we even saw blood on the floors. We couldn’t stand the place so didn’t stay to see the whole thing as we were totally depressed.

The next day we were Vietnam bound and looked back with reflection at Cambodia. We were only there for 5 days and nights due to us wanting to spend longer in Vietnam although we went to the main attractions in the two big cities. Whilst we were more impressed with Thailand and Laos, the Khmer Cuisine was in our opinion the best of the 3 countries. Steve is planning to add some Cambodian strings to his culinary bow when we get back - this could end in tears!

Onward to Vietnam..........

S&E xx

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