Blogs from East, Cambodia, Asia - page 5

After spending night at Victoria Hotel in Chau Doc (5star hotel - very nice), we travelled by speed boat up the Mekong River to the border with Cambodia. We had to disembark for customs out of Vietnam, then back on boat for another 5 minutes, before getting off again to go through Cambodia immigration post. Saw how people live along the river - fishing and using the water for the rice crops. Arrived Phnom Penh around 4pm. Got a tuk tuk to take us to our hotel. A tuk tuk is a motorbike with a trailer type arrangement with four seats hooked onto the back. Very easy way to get around and very cheap. Our hotel room has its own private swimming pool - nearly the same size as our one at home. so really nice ... read more

The ride to Bousra Waterfall is fun and easy. Most of the drive is along dirt roads that are in decent condition. As always there are a few patches that have eroded or deteriorated. Sometimes there is a large rock just randomly sitting in the middle of the road. At one point while having a conversation with Dima, I don’t notice a rock in the road and just narrowly avoid it at the last second. The drive is beautiful as we pass mountains and farms all along the way. At one point we pass a large coffee plantation and you just smell them roasting the beans. We decide that we are definitely stopping there on the way back for lunch and a cup of coffee. After about 40 minutes or so, we arrive at Bousra Waterfall. ... read more

Wir fuhren die letzten 15km zur laotisch/kambodschanischen Grenze und wollten uns den Austrittstempel hohlen. Die Beamten sahen aber das wir mit dem Motorrad unterwegs waren und sagten es sei nicht möglich mit dem Motorrad nach Kambodscha zu fahren. Wir hatten schon viele Geschichten darüber gehört, taten aber unwissend. Es gibt kein Gesetz das den Verkehr über die Grenze regelt und man ist auf den Goodwill der Grenzposten angewiesen (oder evtl. Geld). Sie gaben auf und sagten wir sollen die Kambodschaner doch selber fragen. Also sind wir rüber zum Kambodschanischen Grenzposten und fragten nach. Zuerst wollten sie nichts wissen und sagten es sei nicht möglich. Vy insistierte und zeigte ihnen wir alle nötigen Papiere hatten, um die Grenze zu überqueren. Die älteren Herren wollten uns nicht durchlassen oder legten es drauf an das wir ihnen noch ein ... read more

Well I am almost into the travelling part of my time in Cambodia now. I am due to come back to England on June 12th, so I have got a lot to fit in. I am meant to be returning to my voluntary placement to do two days of work on Thursday and Friday and then that is finished. Actually I have just returned from a long weekend in Kratie, which is situated about 350 kilometres north east of Phnom Penh along the Mekong river. It involved an eight hour bus journey there and back, which was very busy as many locals were visiting relatives for the king's birthday holiday weekend. It was interesting to pass through rural Cambodia and see the typical Khmer wooden houses built on stilts and realise how remote and poor the ... read more

Days 168-169 (Fri 22nd – Sat 23rdFeb) Sen Monorom, Mondulkiri So, I got a midday bus to Sen Monorom, Cambodia’s wild east. The bus took around 5 hours and a pretty uneventful trip. I arrived around dusk. It was pretty wild on first impressions. It was very windy and significantly colder than anywhere else in Cambodia has been. I checked into a guesthouse, had a cold shower as there was no cold water, then popped out for dinner. Within 20 seconds of leaving the guesthouse the power in the town went. As I had no idea where anything was and it was completely dark I went back into the guesthouse until the power came back on. When the power came back on I went to a restaurant called the Khmer Kitchen and had some food. I ... read more