Ah yes are journeys of near death experiences begin! yes its our week in Cambodia

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Yes so we arrived at Khao san road at about 7am, hungry, but ready to get our bus. As soon as we got there it didn't quite feel right. This was mainly due to the mass of mini-buses which were there waiting and leaving but not going to Cambodia, or even the border. Eventually after around an hour of waiting, which was explained previously to be half an hour, a very odd man with almost a... well... a... hells angels transvestite look to him came trotting over shouting Camwodia! Camwodia! in the annoying way fruit sellers do.
And yes yet again another 1km trek began to our bus, starting with just a few of us but many more people joined like a stick of shit that was wafting down the road collecting flies to an unexpectedidly FUN adventure. luckily our bus wasnt as bad as the stuff on the end of the stick, so as we headed off on our journey we all seemed to manage to fall into a deep sleep, like we had all been drugged... maybe we had... maybe we had...
"OK!" suddenly woke us up "you get out here and get your visa" the bus we were on had perched down a small alley way outside a hostel a few km from the border were we got told to get food and Visa to enter Cambodia. However myself and maria and a few others decided not to as the price of $35 seemed a bit to much. Then after a while people who bought the visas there slowly started disappearing. It took a while to realise the only ones left were the ones who had not yet bought there visas. Bugger. However, the bus was still there ready to go and the driver was still there wasting time by polishing his shoes.
At this point we actually made a new friend. An Australian named Craig. A very nice ol chap who turned out to be a photographer and had been travelling for 13months. All this was due to his winning of a photography competion by the way... travelling that is... lucky for him... grr! but we also managed to persuade him into possibly getting a taxi with us as for some reason we wern't looking forward to the next bus journey.
After an hour our group finally got told we could move on. On the bus we went to "The border."
We arrivesd and we all jumped off the bus and randomly started walking across the border filling in forms handed to us and being told the bus may leave without us. We ignored the weird cambodians and carryed onto buy our visas. Strangely, to me, we bought our visas when we were actually in Cambodia were a cambodian told me it was $25. This was more strange as above him was a sign that clearly stated TOURIST VISA $20. After trying to confront him, and hearing others say "my only costed $20... mine was $23" I eventually stopped as i became worried that i might be shot! Hey they got to make the money some how... bastards.
Then, again, we were on our way, visas in hand and mind on the ball. we got a free shuttlebus to the bus station where we found out our bus left an hour ago... pain. We spotted our strange cambodian tourist guide {the one who had obviously done too much coke} and said what people say which he replied to as Wa no longar in 'hailand now, now wa in Camwodia...
Soon after this a crazy Frenchman started to blurt things out which he really shouldn't have been saying. Obviously he was swearing at them, but he was also complaining that his country payed for these roads . But what we found the worst was him saying "you sell your babies for $5 each" Around this point i was about to take a photo when a very kind Camwodian told me not to, as someone might smash my camera due to all the gangstas and drug dealers which would be shortly arriving in the area we were in.
Crap!
We quickly found Craig and asked him whether he still wanted to get a taxi.. "yes" {quicker reply than i thought} whilst trying to haggle on a price for a taxi, which we managed at $50!!! a lanky and calm, probably the calmest, Dutch man appearesd saying I'll come. Gave him a quick glance to be sure he wasn't a mass murderer and headed on our way.

-Is the suspension going to break-
We did have four people and travellers bags packed into your every day saloon but nevertheless the car steamed on -all of this was just after a 16year-old-boy jumped into our car, had a look around like a child wondering were the big red button was, and pretend he was going to drive. This scared me- However the road was pretty scary to. it wasn't your every day flat slightly bumpy tarmaced road. It didn't even have tarmac, or slight bumps.. it had massive ones mainly due to the road actually being made out of pot-holes... 4hours- 4hours of maria crammed in the back with a lanky Dutch man and an Australian and me sat in the front with my bag between my legs. yes it didnt quite fit in the boot so hey cut the circulation off from Toms legs instead. We didnt realise how bumpy the road was until we spotted a car throuh the dust over taking us... bumpers scraping on the floor and then being propelled back up by a metre. But it was fine, we still carryed on, dropping off the higher parts onto the lower by reaching some odd angle, then popping back up just before we drove into a large pile of materials which looked like they should be on the road to make it smoother. Hey we're in Cambodia though.
We had a quick stop off at sort of garagey, house petrol station where i bought some water which cost 500Riel. i gave her the 4000Riel note and she handed me back 3000... thats just cheeky... i ran over it in my head before i made a fool out of myself and then confirmed 4000 minus 500 is not 3000. As soon as i caught her eye she immediately threw the other 500 back at me and gave me a disgusted look. Cambodians.
Of course we did actually survive the journey, otherwise i wouldn't be writting this. we had many of chats with our new freinds. Just realised i havnt introduced the dutch chap. Hes dutch called Jochem and is also a photographer. Coincidence i know, they're also both 26, we all love the same type of music and they ended up staying where we were. being the Jasmine lodge hostel. How quaint.
We arrived, had to pay for our rooms that night walked into our room and saw a rat... bugger. obviously it had been there a while too as as i walked in i, without thought, labelled my bed and realised that it was actaually the rats bed as it had many droppings on it. We spent the night huddled into a single bed and every time i woke up during the night i gave the bed a good hard whack hoping i would get the rat. Never did though. Sadly though we had not yet experinced the toilets, yes 75pence doesnt get you that far so we had to share the bathrooms with probably about 25 (not all occupied) over rooms. I would have guessed that when i got into the toilet (not literally) someone had just had a shower as the floor was about 2inches wet! we met our new freinds and explained our new dilemma, their faces screwed up and then they laughed we changed rooms closer to where they were and we had the delight of now having an en-suite.

-officially day 1 in Camwodia - should have worn a helmet-
We decided to actually do something productive that day so we organised a boat trip to the floating market. whilst paying for it all we heard a loud bang. Sadly to me, it was the same kind of bang i experienced when i heard my friends crash their cars'. 5mins later and it was all paid for, we finished our breakfast and began on our way. Outside there was a large crowd around the pavement, and quite a few police officers. We eventually realised that there was an accident... and quite a lot of blood... an awful lot actually all on the pavement too, not to mention a man extremly still! however there was life and the ambulance surprisingly came quicker than it would have in England. Craig spotted that as he was being carried off that it was infact his eye which was mostly damaged.
Anyway, that aside, we carried on to the floating market. We had a fascinating journey there and managed to get a feel of some Cambodian countryside. When we arrived we had a very cool motor boat to ourselves, well except for the driver of course. We troddled along down a winding river for about 20min and arrived at a monstous lake. After a few moments we noticed hundreds of small boats in the distance, we soon arrived at them whilst passing large families on small boats. This was an extremly impressive sight, it was a whole village well a town on boats, they had everything: a church, pigs, shops, toilets (on the lake)... it was awesome. we stopped off at a shop which also hade a crocodile farm located on it! We were warned by a driver the shop is free to look around, as is the farm, you just have to buy a drink (which was surprisingly expensive). the farms were pretty cool apart from the fact that there were about 80crocs in a room/pen no bigger than your parents En-suite bathroom . But yeah that was kinda disturbing. There was also a Cat fish farm, same principal apart from i got to feed them, Yeahy. yeah then we bought a drink $1 one American dollar, thats alot for a can of coke in south east asia. Hey better that than getting fed to the crocs.
Also the pricing is very confusing in Cambodia as they use: the american dollar, Cambodian Riel and the thai baht- tres confusing.
Carrying on though, it was all amazing until my camera ran out of battery, and therefore so did i......
Later on we had dinner with our new chums which was really nice as we had other people to talk to and we discovered we had not yet gone mad as they could understand us... phew. We also decided that the next day we would go to Angkor Wat and grab ourselves a three day pass and go to sleep.

-first day of Angkor Wat !WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW! 13thApril-
Im going to say this now rather than half way through but basically im not going to write much for Angkor as it would be like this- It was amazing, very nice, mind boggling, great history so on and so forth. I mean it was all of these but i only have to say them once... so there...
It was all going amazingly well, it was so beautiful and you could smell it in the air whilst we where buying our passes and you could just feel all the culture through the ruins as we felt the Ango.... HA! My camera ran out of battries again, just before we got to the monkeys too, how devastating. These monkeys were really cool though, Maria was handing them bananananans and they were taking them I said "i wana go" And then the big evil daddy came and ripped it out of my hands. he had quite a beer belly. He managed to eat the bananana in a few seconds and then spotted the bag of banananas, Maria was aimlessly whailing around, and it pounced and stole the whole bag!. fat bugger. However the 15or so banananas soon became 2 and me and jochem decided it would be best to go as they would soon need more for there banananana addiction! Then suddenly out of nowhere a small monkey came jumping at my leg, 'quick hop to the side aha bottle + prod + face = he disappered fairly quickly. However Maria and Craig weren't blessed with having the awesome strength of holding a bottle!!! They eventually managed to weave there way through the angry monkeys and we soon ended up at restaurant no22. . Here we grabbed some lunch and laughed about Maria managing to get a monkey stuck in between her legs as she was half way through a quick stride of escape. We then did plenty more exploring came back and played some pool.
{Also on the way back we witnessed another motor bike crash and someone was obviously very annoyed with who did it as we heard a loud smack as we drove past (it wasnt him slapping his wrist- it was more like a jumping right hook to the jaw)}
After a short rest we went to a near by resturant and got a very small Large Pizza and managed to finally guzzle some beer down our jugulars.
Soon after laughing at a load of drunk Cambodians at the resturant we trekked back to our snazy ass crib and ended up discovering that it was their new years that nite. Bit random, but hey its Cambodia. Therefore we stayed up fairly late talking and laughing and drinking some pretty nasty beer....

-Wat the 2nd Angkor day-
Yeah we didnt manage to get up that early today, mainly due to the fact of last night but the rest was very needed. just before breakfast i made a clever decision (1st time for everthing) to go buy me a new battery for my camera and meet the guys at our restaurant. However i took a little bit longer than i should have as i kinda misjudged a turning {meaning i had forgot to take the turning} and walked 1km in the wrong direction. Hey the exercise is good though, even if it is 40degrees.
After a scrumpcious british breakfast which was Ok and a fruit salad we pondered back to Angkor and all and spent another awesome day there and experienced a Cambodian Angkorige watidge Sunset... It was as good as it sounded.
Later on we found a small local resturant which how can i put, did the best spring rolls in the world. No exaggeration, no joke, the best, in the west.

-3rd andd finalll dayyyy attttt Angorrrrrr Wattttttt-
Today we got up at 5:00am so we could experience a sunrise.
We were going to do this the previous day but as our tuk-tuk driver was extremly drunk on beer and whiskey from the night before we decide best not to.
Surprisingly though the sunrise wasn't amazing, i mean it was amazing but it wasnt aww amazing. We walked and explored till around 9:30 and then decided we where too tired and needed to go back for an early seista {This was extremly easy in our room as it was dark wooden panelled and had no windows, therefore no light} . Snore... snore... We then arose with masses of energy and completed the rest of our day in a fairly chilled out manner and managed to view an extremly worth while sunset at the end of our day to complete our ANGKOR WAT trip.

-Day 6 in Camwodia-
Well today there isn't much i can talk about really as we didnt do that much. In results of this im going to make my text as big as possible so it looks like we did more than we did in reality.
(me clearing my thoat) ATE, PLAYED POOL, RELAXED, ME AND CRAIG CREATED A NEW GAME OF POOL --->AMAZING, CALLED CAMBODGE, SLEEP

-Day 7 fluttered by -
Jochem has stayed another day today as he originally planned that he was going start his journey to Veitnam but instead wanted to photograph some butterflies at the butterfly resturant. Therefore we got up and left reasonably early and walked down to the restaurant. (we didint get a tuk-tuk cause were cheap scapes) We could see the sign, oh excitement, got to the front gate, pushed it... oh... locked. Butterfly restuarant shut for the new year. opens Wednesday Bugger. In result we wandered down to a bar/rest. called the Soup Dragon and struffed ourselves rich full of beer and spring rolls. Splendid.

-Day 8-
Jochem has stayed one last day, he has to leave tomorow its all been planned, we actually got up early to go down to the restaurant, walked of course, as were broke, through the blistering heat to get there and hey... what do you know... the gate is actually open, brilliant. We hads a small wander around sat down down at the cafe thing... sorwy ther ar no Butterfwis todey........................................... ha. ha. ha. That is how our day ended. Well, after more spring rolls from the Soup Dragon, and booking our bus back to Thailand.

-!?!Day 9 today we leave!?!-
Ah yes what a fun day, the day started off as normal i rose from my bed of money and climbed into my helicopter to fly me to the restaurant for breakfast... well slightly exaggerated i suppose. But we did go and join up for breakfast nice and early and have our usual british breakfast with baguette? then soon after, after completly racking our brains for travelling back to thailand, we waited outside hoping a random strange man would point us in the right direction through the haze of heat. And what do you know Thaiwand thaiwand who goin two thaiwand aha thats us. Sadly though as we were going back to Thailand with Craig, Jochem on the otherhand was heading off to Vietnam and we had to go seperate ways. Therefore we had to do that really annoying quick goodbye thing which consists of a hug and a pat on the back, and soon after you wish you could have actually said goodbye properly as you might not see them again.
After that bit of annoyment and hanging around for about half an hour our bus/coach/minibus/small van arrived__oh dear. We did all manage to sqeeze on in the end however after piling our bag on the bus behind the driver and a few travellers saying Sod this im getting a taxi. I must mention now i prob picked the worst seat on the bus, i was sat on the back row in the corner with no room, no curtain (the only one with no curtain) and a wasp which occassionaly decided to annoy me by perching on the window where i wanted to lean.
Then the bus left, oh little did we know this would be one of our closest experiences to death we and many others have yet had.

-BUS OF DOOM-
After talking to a few swedish people on the bus we soon realised that they hadn't been across the road from Siem reap to the border yet and were actually finding the tarmaced road fairly difficult to deal with. However we did keep warning them it was to get worse.
Me, Myself and Maria also soon realised that the seats we were sat on were also extremly uncomfortable as they were directly above the rear wheel axle and whenever we hit a bump we felt it the most, travelling a few feet in the air. However the journey most go on and after about an hour and a half of travelling we hit the unsurfaced road, God i have never missed tarmac so much in my life I mean it didn't start off that bad it was only after another hour or so, when i was really feeling the heat as i had no curtain to shade me, and the bus began to slide slightly whilst bombing around the dusted road corners. To me however the biggest worry was rolling the bus as the road we were travelling down basically looked like we were driving length ways down a very large speed bump with 1foot drops on either side... which we kept dropping down... and alsomst rolling, especially when doing so around corners. But yes we did survive i hear you asking, all together we were on the bus for about 6hours which wasn't fun at the time but hey it is now. We arrived back at the border and it went so much easier on the way back no probs at all and we were even lucky enough to have a bus with air conditioning on which we could actually sleep on.
Late that night we arrived back at Khoa San road and began to say our goodbyes with Craig but mentioned that if he had enough time the next day we should meet up (as he leaves to go back home to Australia, Brisbain tomorow) Then we immediatly haggled a tuk-tuk driver to take us on our 2min ride back to the hostel for a lovely price of about $2.50(pounds by the way, we have no pound sign on this computer)

An yeah i think finally that's about it for Camwodia. We almost died, witnessed people almost dying but all good fun... hey were travelling and it's Cambodia, anything can happen in Cambodia.

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