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Published: December 13th 2009
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The Road Home
Typhoon Ketsana cutting short our time in Vietnam meant we had a few more days to spend in Cambodia. We decided to start with three days in the capital Phnom Penh and then six days in the town of Siem Reap. The most memorable part of our visit to Cambodia was our interaction with the lovely Khmer people. Considering the tragedy of the Pol Pot regime in their recent history and the fact that they are extremely poor, they were by far the most genuine and friendly people we met in Asia.
Cambodia has an interesting mix of ancient temples and ultra modern 5 star hotels with amazing spas, plenty to keep a visitor occupied.
The temples of Angkor are a spectacular sight. Some of the temples are almost a thousand years old and they are spread out over a huge area surrounding the town of Siem Reap. It makes Siem Reap the perfect base for exploring the temples and our five star hotel made the perfect place to relax after a long day of climbing up and over the huge steps in the temples.
After an amazing stay in Cambodia it was time
to head back to Bangkok for a few more days. With better weather and a nicer hotel, it was a much more enjoyable experience than the first visit. We did all the typical tourist things, river cruises, visiting some of the temples, zipping around the city on a tuktuk, eating the fabulous food and doing some SERIOUS shopping! A trip to Bangkok is not complete without an evening or two spent drinking very cheap cocktails and eating some even cheaper green curry on the Khao San road doing some people watching.
Our final destination was the spectacular city of Hong Kong. There are so many attractions on the island itself and the surrounding islands that our days were jam packed with activities. One very cool attraction is the Peak Tram. When the population on the island started to grow, they had to start utilising the higher ground in the centre of the island and to get commuters from the city centre up to their apartments after a hard das work when they were knackered, they had to built a tram line up into the mountains. The view from the Peak was spectacular and it wasn’t even particularly sunny or
clear so I can only imagine the view during summer.
One other attraction in Hong Kong is the nightly light show which takes place across the harbour between HK Island and Kowloon. Businesses with premises close to the waterfront have decorated their buildings with various colours and styles of lighting. Each night at 8pm a soundtrack is pumped through speakers along the waterfront and the lights are choreographed to match. It is a really spectacular event, especially on a beautiful clear dry night like we got. Despite the fact that we hadn’t planned to go, we even found ourselves at Disneyland Hong Kong. Now I know what your thinking, but it was quite honestly one of the best days of the entire year! It truly is a magical place and we’re not even embarrassed to admit it. I’d go back again tomorrow J Of course a trip to HK has to involve some shopping with it being a tax free island and all. Our major purchase was an awesome camera which neither of us can use but which we got for a great price and therefore will learn to use!
We thought in our final blog we should
mention how much we appreciated people taking time out to read our entries, look at our pictures and leave us comments. It really spurred us on to carry on writing and posting pictures!!!
We decided to put together some interesting (well we think they are!) facts and figures from our trip to round off our final entry:
11,250 photographs
81 beds
363 days of adventure (it should have been 364 but we lost 21 Nov 2008 flying over the international date line)
26 Airports
14 Air Carriers
24 flights
5 rental cars
12 countries
2 Bridge Climbs
2 SkyDives from 15000 feet
4 SkyJumps from 192m
2 Bungee jumps 400m above Queenstown
1 hot air balloon ride at sunrise
1 very fun day of wine & cheese tasting
2 snorkelling trips on the great barrier reef
1 kayaking trip with wild dolphins
1 4x4 driving tour around the largest sand island in the world
19 new pairs of shoes
22 swimming pools
46,720 air kilometres (40,075.02 KM - Earth Circumference at Equator)
1 marriage proposal
1 positively life affirming and never to be equalled experience!
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