Siem to be Reaping the rewards

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As the title of this blog suggests I am now in Siem Reap, home of the Angkor temples, and heading towards the end of my stay in Cambodia, which I have really enjoyed. Since last writing this blog we spent a few more days in Sihanoukville, which has been the best beach place I've been to so far. We basically lazed about for 3 days sitting on Serendipity beach and then drinking at night. I also enjoyed my favourite meal so far of bbq barracuda which I had three nights in a row I liked it so much. I have no idea if it was really barracuda. On the last night there me and Dan found a British run pub where we sat in from 8.30pm until 4am. We watched three premiership games and of course the rugby world cup final. It was a disappointing result but it was a good atmosphere in the pub apart from this drunk irish guy we met who would periodically wake up from his drunken stuper to shout 'Go Springboks!'. At 4am we staggered out of the pub onto the back of a moped taxi and back to the hotel where we had to get a taxi to Kampot at 8am in the morning. I slept the whole journey.

Kampot is another fairly small town with very little to do. On the afternoon of our arrival we visited two caves around Kampot. The first cave we visited was Phnom Chhnork which was fairly small but held a 7th century brick temple which to me looked like a little brick outhouse. Next was Phnom Sorsia, which was a big cave complex. This was a lot more exciting as we walked down into the cave and then went through loads of different tunnels in the pitch black. The next morning we took a tour round Bokor Hill station which is about 30km outside of Kampot and is located inside Bokor National Park. The best thing about this tour was that we made our way there in a shared pickup truck. With 7 other tourists we sat on the back of the truck as we bumped and skidded our way up the hills in bokor national park. It was a really fun ride as you had to duck branches every 10 seconds. I often lost concentration and got a face full of leaves. Bokor hill station is an old french station which was built in the 1920s. However it has twice been abandoned due to fighting and is now a ghost town. Our first stop was to visit the abandoned palace before going to the proper town. In the town there is an abandoned church, hotel, water tower, casino, post office and other buildings. Just behind the church you can walk to the edge of the cliff where jungle stretches almost all the way down to the sea. The hotel is huge and once held a casino on the top floor. However they decided to build a new casino further down the hill as too many gamblers were jumping off the cliff after losing too much money and having too many drinks. Im not sure how a short walk up the hill deterred them! After walking all around bokor hill we headed back down on another bumpy journey where we took a slow boat back down the river into Kampot.

An 11 hour coach journey the next day saw us arrive the next day in Siem Reap. At one point the bus broke down and had to be pushed. On the night we explored Siem Reap's bar street. It is a really chilled out atmosphere considering the street is full of bars. We sampled a few of the bars including the much talked about 'Angkor What?' Today we have been round the local markets and visited a miniature model of the angkor temples just to get a taster for tomorrow when we actually see them.

In 2 days we will be headed into Thailand before heading up to Laos and then back into Thailand. I have really loved Cambodia as a place to travel. It is definitely my favourite country so far. Although it doesnt have many places to visit they all offer something different. Also the fact it is dead cheap helps.

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