Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 204

As a general rule, the capital city of almost any country is my least favourite part of it. KL is the least interesting pert of Malaysia, for me. Bangkok is sprawilng, smelly and polluted and was teeming with the most aggressive tuk-tuk drivers in the country. Vientiane is the most formal part of Laos, a country I learned to love for it's informalities. Conversely, I've heard that the aggressive nature of the Viet people that defined my experience of the country is more accentuated in Hanoi, so I'm glad we decided to skip that leg of our trip altogether. So we arrived in Phnom Penh after a surprisingly easy bus trip from Ho Chi Minh City (née Saigon). I was expecting another vaguely boring urban representation of an otherwise interesting country, but I was almost instantly ... read more

Hi All As you can guess we survived the sky dive!!!!!!!!!!!!! One of the most scarey experiences of our lives. We were both scared at different parts...me when I was just going OUT OF A PINK PLANE'S DOOR AT 14,000 ft (the last person to leave the plane!!) WITH A WOMAN STRAPPED TO MY BACK....and Graeme was more afraid when we were actually trying to reach 14,000 in A PINK PLANE!! Photos will follow and if I could I'd upload Graeme's DVD of the whole experience, but it'd use up too much space. 60 seconds in freefall is a looooonnnnngggg time. You do about 120mph and cover about 2 miles...then they pull the shute! She even let me steer the thing which I wasn't so keen on. I'm like "You're the bloody expert, not me!!". And ... read more

So after the delights of the Angkor Temples it was time to head into Phnom Penh and check out Cambodia's more dark and recent history. Although most of our time in the capital consisted of shopping (more of that later to end on a cheery note), the biggest impression left there was undoubtedly our visit to the genocide museum of Tuol Sleng. During the brief period of 1975 to 1978, while the Khmer Rouge was the country's government, this former high school known as S-21 was used as a prison/torture site. If you don't want me to ruin your day then you may need to cover your ears or skip to the bottom of this blog, a visit here, though worthwhile, made us feel both sick and utterly depressed. The centre was one of many such ... read more

Had a very weird week: Spent a day and night in a private Chinese medical centre in Phnom Penh after one of the girls was struck down with a fever that turned out to be gastroenteritis and malaria. She had to stay there for 5 days on a drip...insurance company paying for her to go home now. Played footy in the Cambodian away kit with some locals on the Olympic stadium pitch in Phnom Penh, capacity 60,000. Scored 2 goals, set up 1 and won 5-4. There were around 3,000 watching, well ok, they were doing Tai Chi in the stands but they were kinda looking at us... Helped drink the guest house out of gin. Got chased by a mangey dog. Got an eye infection. Pharmacy visit was interesting. Went to a Cambodian nightclub where ... read more

So we had some hitches leaving Koh Kong. We didn't have enough money to leave and there were no AtM's in Koh Kong so I had to head back to the border with our trusty helper Pia on the back of his motorcycle. we left early with hopes that Jessie and I could make the boat at 8am. upon arrival at the border (i had to cross to use the ATM) we discovered the ATm was broken. So back to the guesthouse we went. At 9am Pia's boss said called the bank company and the problem was solved. We returned to the border only to find that this was not the case. I had to talk a Thai border offical into letting me hire a bike to take me to the nearst bank in Thailand (about ... read more