Cambodia

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Helloo!!

We have now been in South East Asia for a week - it has flown by so quickly!!!

We traveled from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia - one of the longest journeys ever! We got a taxi to the station, a train, another taxi then we had to get one bus for 5 hours to the border village, then got ripped off buying our visa as the tuk tuk from the bus took us to to the 'visa office'.. all was ok as we did get real visas and they organised a taxi to take us to Siem Reap - 2 hours - and there was a free guide & tuk tuk waiting to take us to a hostel in the centre. Finally! The hostel they took us to was pretty good, we had huge double beds and got air con - all at the price of US$6 a night each!!!

On our first day in Siem Reap we went around the markets, each buying some harem trousers and bags, and Emma bought a kaftan for the temples - ridiculously cheap. Later that evening we went out on the famous 'Pub Street', which is exactly as it sounds. We even had our first buckets which sorted us for the rest of the night!

Next morning we had a early start (8am) to go do the Angkor Wat temples, probably wasn't the best idea having a big night out before it, but we just about managed! We opted for the short circuit, which included all the sights that we wanted to see. We were pretty impressed with the Angkor Thom (which included the Bayon temple, Elephant terrace, Phimeamakas), all the statues and carvings are absolutely beautiful and so detailed. It took us a good few hours just to get around Angkor Thom, and just as well we started early as as there were less tourists and at around lunch time it was stupidly hot. After lunch we did the famous Angkor Wat temple, however before we even made it to the temple we had to find some shade as Emma thought she was going to faint! (shows how hot it was). After sitting in the shade for a while we proceeded to walk towards the temple with Emma looking like a classic tourist - kaftan over her head, spraying water in her face and using a hand held fan. We were actually fairly disappointed with the Angkor Wat temple, it had a lot of scaffolding (which was green and definitely ruined the site) and inside the decor was very samey. We ended the trip by going up a mountain to view the sunset from a temple which was situated at the top. Tamara climbed the stupidly steep steps of the temple and the views were incredible. As the sun started to set millions of tourists arrived so we both made a quick exit!

The next day we travelled to Phnom Penh which was another 6 hour coach ride. Today we visited the Killing Fields and the S-21 prison, was a fairly depressing day but very interesting at the same time. There isn't actually much to see at the Killing fields as most things have been removed from the site, so all that is left is the momument that holds all the skulls/bone fragments and clothing. They do have mass graves which have been excavated and lots of information about what happened and what has been found, we even watched a short documentary on it. Then we headed to the S-21 prison, which used to be a secondary school. This was very sad as there were literally thousands of photos of all the prisoners that had been tortured and died at the prison, some of the photos were very graphic. Only 7 people survived at the S-21 prison and this was due to their skills - such as painting and photography. The stories we read about spent there were absolutely horrific, and we were very glum and silent when walking round the cells.

So we are in Phnom Pehn until Wednesday, where we plan to travel to Vang Vieng, Laos to go check out the tubing! Tomorrow we plan to just chill and maybe get a cheeky massage!

Missing you all,

Tamara and Emma
xxxx

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Photos

Victory Gate
Entrance to Angkor Thom

Temple @ Sunset
Temple at top of mountain

Killing Fields
17 glassed tiers holding skulls and bone fragments of victims

Skulls
over 8,000 skulls were found in the mass graves