Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 201

George left last night. She is headed back to Thailand and visiting Chaing Mai before she heads home to Melbourne. I have decided to travel to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. I am going to visit some of my friends from TEFL, Deb and Nige. They're from Sydney and will be working in Phnom Penh teaching English for the next 6 months. I booked a speedboat that will take me from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh along the Tonle River. The boat ride was 5 hours long and was quite cold and wet some of the time, since I decided to sit on the roof of the boat. I enjoyed the ride and was very surprise that the people along the way were very friendly. They would stop their farming to wave their hat at ... read more

Into Cambodia - Week 7 Since the last update I spent a few more days on Phu Quoc island (in southern Vietnam) than originally planned because there was supposed to be another typhoon on the way - which incidentally never materialised. I intended to leave last Tuesday but had to wait 3 more days until the boats were allowed back out... That time was spent mainly between 2 activities: chilling out at the beach and riding a motorbike around the island (sorry I still have not added photos but I will come back to the web cafe tomorrow and upload the lot). It takes a about a half day to tour the island by bike, and I headed up to Bai Thom in the deserted north and back down the east coast, which became quite hairy ... read more

The Dark Side I had two extremely different experiences in Phnom Penh. The first is what most people see...the piles of human skulls, prison museums, depressions in the landscape left over from digging up mass graves, gun ranges, etcetera. It brings you closer to the dark side that lingers inside all of us. These people weren't afflicted with anything that isn't inside each of us after all, but extreme circumstances can crop up out of seemingly nothing and make people do strange things. It's the all too common lesson of mass violence that for some reason mankind has yet to learn. I imagine most people are eager to leave Phnom Penh and I can understand why after a few days of depressing activities. However there is something very amazing lurking just underneath the craziness of this ... read more

This was just a stop over city for us. We arrived by plane from Singapore in the evening and left by bus to Siem Reap by noon the next day. We only had 2.5 days in Cambodia, as it was a last minute side trip, and the focus of our trip was the Angkor Temples. We stayed at Embassy Place Apartments. The place was massive: a full 2 bedroom apartment with kitchen and huge living room. It is a hotel in the Accor group and I would recommend it. It is expensive for Cambodia standards but not if you had a group of four. It is the capital of Cambodia but from the view we got you would not know it. There was not the hustle and bustle of most capitals and no large buildings. The ... read more

We left Vietnam, heading for Cambodia on yet another bus. This time however, there was only about 10 of us on the coach allowing ample space for us to stretch out. We had opted to get our Cambodian Visas on the border, opposed to buying in advance. Once on the bus the guy was offering to sort it out for us, at a slightly inflated price, but to avoid any potential stress we decided to opt for this option - We were glad that we did! One couple insisted on buying their visas at the border themselves to ensure that they paid the true price. Everybody else got the necessary stamps in their passports and were back on the bus and it pulled off. With so few of us on the bus it was obvious that ... read more