History, dress making and Guinness

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Hello!

Very sorry we have been rubbish at updating, the computers in Asia are pretty slow and unpredictable so we waited for some Westernisation to write again.

So, since Angkor Wat, we made it through another white knuckle journey through the Cambodian countryside, with cows getting in the road every 5 minutes and the bus driver using his most important weapon on the bus - The horn!! beep beep beep.. ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Molly fell asleep still though despite the bus drivers efforts to keep everyone awake including the 3 screaming small children.

After much fun and games on the bus journey from Siem Reap, we were faced with the haunting yet important history of Cambodia. The city of Phnom Phen. This city was oozing with culture and history so we decided to hit some of the 'Hot Spots' for history and head to the 'Tuol Sleng museum'. This was a high school that was used for many tortuous activities during the Pol Pot era. People were taken here as prisioners and tortured for months on end, it was all a bit surreal and eary to say the least! We were glad we went as we have come away with more of an insight into the real world, all very serious, we apologise!

After finding this museum quite unreal and scarily modern looking (it was only 30 years ago), we decided that it was best we did something where our brains could relax and enjoy itself again, so we headed to a posh hotel to enjoy the poolside. On arrival we were told to put our bags through a metal detector! Wondering what we had let oursleves in for at 'La Royal' hotel, we were told that the Queen of Spain had arrived the day before and that they were being extra cautious!! So we swam in the very posh pool with one eye on our books and one on the posh looking seats that were set out at the end of the pool, no Queen appeared though, but we had a great Sauna, Jacuzzi and swim all the same.

In the evening, Molly did her good deed by buying a poor woman who had her 4 children on the street a goody bag filled with drinks and nibbles to keep them going through the evening. She was soo chuffed and we walked off feeling like we had helped someone that day. The streets were full of beggers, mainly children who opted to stare at you whilst you had dinnner in hope that maybe you would give them one dollar..

We stayed here for about 2 days and this seemed enough so we headed on the speed boat to Vietnam heading through yet another interesting immigration where passports go AWOL for half an hour and mysteriously show up again with a new stamp splattered in the middle..
We landed in Chau Doc, in Southern Vietnam near the Cambodian boarder late afternoon to be followed around the entire town (which was only small thankfully) by a persistant dweeb who carried on asking us if we wanted a ride on his bike to the hotel we were looking for.. annoying bugger, we even legged it across the park and into a bank (with our backpacks on) and we still didnt lose him. In the end we found a nice hotel and he carried on effing and blinding at Dan through the window as we told him to go away. To recooperate after a busy day, that night we opted for a decent meal and went to the fanciest restaurant in town, Molly had a steak and Dan had a rack of lamb. This is actually down playing this meal a little, it was probably our best meal this holida, yet most expensive at 40 dollars-20 quid!!! Because it was harvesting season the entire town was full with swarms of tiny little flies and as we hitched back on a rickshaw (a push bike with a carriage on the back to sit 1 person on it) the swarms of flies were all in our faces and hair! So instead of partying it on down in the area, there was actually nothing there in the evening, we decided to join our female OAP travelling buddies, Billie, Wendy and 'The Blonde one' and had some drinks with them at our hotel.

The following day we follwed our guide 'Dung' pronounced 'Ung' and headed out to the floating markets, fishing houses and villages. We got a little too friendly with her mind you and she proceeded to tell Dan her entire life story of how she was in love with a 52 year old Aussie, who was bold, fat and ugly but she loved him all the same even tho she only met him for an hour or so. Even with Dan's gallient counselling efforts, she concluded that she would never find anyone like him again (even though she was was only 27) and would live her life alone. Very weird!! So we spent a lot of the tour talking about her love life rather than the scenery and actually didnt learn all that much about the area other than the villagers nick your food off your boat when you go for a drink-nice! ha! It was actually a really nice ride, especially when 'Ung' invited us back for mango and papaya.. we wont tell you what happened next.. 😊

Only joking..

After, oh yes, another white knuckle ride of dodging traffic, beeping horns and our mini bus being washed twice on our 5 hour journey we made it into Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, Vietnam's capital. Ho Chi Minh was a fantastic city, lots of greenery, despite what the lonely planet prepared us for, no beggers-phew and lots of lovely places to stay, eat, drink and see. We started off our first day by having a wonder around the 'District 1' area which, according to the lonely planet, was the place to be and see everything. On the way to the War Museum we stumbled across a very unfortunate soul who had actaully had his entire face burnt off, he didnt have a nose, lips, etc.. Very terrible. When arriving at the museum we were informed of all the horrendous things the American's used to do to the Vietnamese during the war and one of the them was throwing grenades at people to burn their skin off but to not actually kill them. So that explained something, but did stick with us for a long time i can tell you!

On a happier note we decided to take the vietnamese tailors up on their offer of dress and shirt making and Molly got a summer dress made out of deep purple chinese silk and Dan got a carky green shirt made out of cotton. They both fit perfectly and cost next to nothing so were both pretty chuffed about that. Most importantly Dan had his first guinness in about 7 weeks from an Irish pub, it was out of a can but apparently tasted pretty authentic and kept his mouth watered for another few weeks.

On our last day we decided to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels, these were used by the Vietnamese during the war time and they lived down in these tiny tunnels and are all very proud of them! We had a serious mishap in the morning, after thinking that we had booked a taxi to take us to the tunnels, we hadnt realised that we were actually booked on a tour bus with 30 other people and our hotel reception had also told us the wrong time, so you can imagine as we strolled downstairs half an hour late our tour guide, Minh, was pretty peeved and announced to the whole bus that they 'didnt need to wait anymore' whilst glaring at us, how were we supposed to know!!!!!! Ideeeots!
Anyway, after getting over the embarressment and talking RATHER LOUDLY that it wasnt actually our fault that we were late, we managed to thoroughly enjoy the tunnels. They have left them exactly as they were when they found them, there are boobie traps there, Dan was in his element! Our guide took us to one of tunnels that was available for tourists to go down, Dan got stuck in and Molly chickened out. It was 120 meters long and it apparently been enlarged so tourists can travel comfortably (?) on hands and knees. Dan is not chlaustrophobic but this experience was a little unnerving for him. The temperature was roughly 32/33 degrees outside with fairly high humidity, inside the tunnel the temperature and humidity seemed to rise significantly. This was an interesting experience probably one you wouldn't rush back in to do again!
These guys lived down there for weeks on end in similar tunnels to the one Dan went down in. These people crawled for 18 hours to get the head office underground so not to be seen by the enemy above soil, which was only 5 kilometers away, well only 18 hours-ha!

There were some evil looking boobie traps, most of them involving sharpened bamboo sticks and iron rods, with which the American's were supposed to be impailed after falling in. You need to use your imagination but the pictures paint a pretty good picture.

So after our epic journey through South East Asia, we are leaving behind the tuk tuks, food poisioning (touch wood), mental traffic and heading to the bright lights and Westernisation that is AUSTRALIA!!
See you on the other side..

Dan and Mol xxxxxxx

Pictures to follow tomorrow.

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Photos

rickshaw!!
They did a lot of sitting around

Landmines
Reconstruction of an area where landmines are present

People washing in the river
There was a man brushing his teeth in the water, our guide told us this was actually really stupid as theres loads of disease in the river

Tunnels
This was an entrance to one of the tunnels, very small!!!