Advertisement
Published: January 9th 2006
Ahh! The fresh air of Phnom Penh!
Our cycling tour of the city wasn't quite as pleasant as we had hoped!Our visit to Cambodia was fleeting and as such we did not in any way do this beautiful country justice. It took the whole three days we were in Phnom Penh just for me to figure our how to spell the name of their capital city, and I am still not sure how to say it! Well, that's not all we did, we visited the obligatory Killing Fields and S21 prison museum and learnt about the horrific period of Cambodian history under the Khmer Rouge. Despite all this the people were the happiest, smiliest people we have met on our whole trip. (Simon disagrees and thinks they smiled more in Laos).
We headed straight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, the base for the famous temples of Angkor Wat. I say straight ... our bus was supposed to leave at 7:30, but the bus company decided to economise and combine the 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30 buses into one - much to everyone's delight - then when we had actually got going we broke down and had to wait for a replacement bus. We were then tortured with synthesised Cambodian pop music and a screeching sit com about a family car
that looked as though it had been filmed with a webcam. We thought the bus was full, but they added plastic seats up the aisle just to squeeze a few more passengers on. Oh, and the local snacks at the bus stops were fried spiders! Forget the temples, this sort of 'fun' is really the bulk of what travelling in Asia is about!
Angkor Wat was worth it though. We weren't sure what to make of it at first, like visiting any famous monument there always has to be some adjusment between your preconception of the place and the reality. However, by the time we had watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat on the second day and explored the rambling temples, which looked liked they belonged in an enchanted forest, then we were completely hooked - as the 135 photos will confirm!
Finally templed out we hit the road, well the mud track, out of Cambodia and as much as we would have liked to explored Cambodia more, our return to Thailand did seem to herald the return of any easier existence for us. Bangkok and India - here we come!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0761s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
