Blogs from Cambodia, Asia - page 778

So we arrived in Bangkok around 2am and headed to the Rambuttri Village Inn which we'd read about in the lonely planet, sounded like the nicest place so headed up there to grab a room, unfortunately the ever so friendly receptionist(not!) advised us in no uncertain terms they were full. We headed wearily down the road to find a cheapo hostel, we were only staying a couple of nights so we figured the cell, sorry room would be fine. The next day we got up late and headed for a wander around town, unfortunately we were up too late to get into any of the sights but to be honest Bangkok is more about shopping and waiting around for us so we headed to the markets to earmark presents and buy a few bits for ourselves ... read more

Hi Everyone!! Great to hear your comments and emails following our first blog attempt - we now consider ourselves veterans so here goes... We've been travelling around Cambodia for the last 10 days or so, and the vast differences with Thailand were obvious as soon as we set one foot across the border. Barefooted children pushing wooden carts on wooden wheels around by means of 'taxiservice', grubby toddlers begging for money and food, lots of rubbish everywhere and, most importantly to us at that point in time - the road just stopped. That's right, nothing but muddy, rocky, slippery clay on which we were about to travel 130 kms in about 10 hours. The dancing road, they call it jokingly. Well the joke was on us and boy did we boogie every time we hit a ... read more

Phnom Penh is a city of many smells Unfortunately, most of them are awful. The Cambodian capital is a place of stark contrasts - every so often you catch glimpses of real material wealth, but most of the time you see object poverty. You walk past an opulently decorated flashy bar which plays Western music and sells cocktails and aromatic cuisine, all priced in dollars. On the same street, just metres away, there is litter strewn everywhere; rotting vegetables and rubbish pile up in the heat; naked, malnourished children play outside until the early hours. There are many amputees and small children begging. In spite of this contrast, the Cambodians we’ve met have largely come across as upbeat, jovial and warm. The day we arrived we went to get some typical local food at a place ... read more

After a lazy morning we had a walk around the town. First impressions is that it's a nice town. Very different to the other places we had been to in Cambodia. You could see that tourism had been good for business. The buildings were much nicer and there were a lot of restaurants, bars and of course tuk tuks! The down side to having lots of tourists means there are also a lot of beggers, namely children carrying their baby brothers and sisters. There are also lots of limbless beggers. We have been told on a couple of occasions not to give money to these people because they are mostly on drugs. We have seen children maybe as young as 12 or so sniffing glue or something. VERY SAD. But they always seem to beg to ... read more

I read in the guide book that Siem Reap means Siam (Thailand) defeated, which the author that was a pretty subtle name for a city so close to the Thai border. Cambodians are supposedly still sore at Thailand for having occupied their temples for 10 years back a couple of hundred years ago. Yesterday morning we set our alarm for 4:30am so we could arrive in time to see the sunrise over the temple of Angkor Wat-the biggest and most famous. It has a huge moat in front so I got some pretty cool pictures of some bright patches of sunlight peeking through the clouds and reflecting over the temple and into the water. I went a little camera happy since each picture seemed better than the last as the sun crept up. We'd climbed up ... read more