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Published: December 12th 2008
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Hi everyone. It is a while since we could get online so there is lots to write. We are having a great time and enjoying all the sunny weather we are having. Swimming in tropical seas whilst thinking of cold / snowy England!
Cambodia:
Wow . It is a country that left us with very mixed emotions.
It has a terrible modern history with the Pol Pot regime. It is hard to understand how one man can mess up one country so much; how teenagers are so brainwashed to begin torturing others, and how people all seem to do things they don’t want to do because they are worried what will happen to them or their families. Visiting the killing fields near Phnom Pen was heavy going. It was simple genocide of people considered to be intellectuals. This meant people like teachers and doctors were shot in the head / bayoneted and thrown into mass graves. Medicine and religion were banned, old books were destroyed. Everyone had to become farmers, wear the same clothes and work on rice production farms / schemes. Nobody was happy and they couldn’t escape. It only stopped because the Vietnamese invaded. It is
hard to see why the Western world didn’t help other than Pol Pot kept all the killing secret. When I saw a picture of him in the S21 prison museum he looked like a normal nice man - hard to believe he caused so much suffering.
Incredibly, after all of the bad past, the people in Cambodia were friendly and proud of their country. They take a great deal of national pride in the temples at Angkor and rightly so, they were amazing! We decided to spend a day there, hired a tuk tuk driver for $15 for the whole day, and got up to watch sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was actually cold first thing in the morning! We spent the rest of the day climbing lot of very steep steps and exploring all the old temples. It is a massive location and like one big playground for Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. We could have spent a month seeing all the temples. I had a great day and we were shattered by the end of it.
Malaysia:
We decided to fly to Kuala Lumpur after all the trouble in Thailand with the airport and
Cambodia
School run everything. We stayed at a great hostel and spent two nights there. The Petronas towers looked amazing at night and we went up the the sky bridge, which connects the two towers, to get a nice view over the city.
We made our way down the country to Melaka and stayed for a couple of nights. It is an old British colonial town and was a nice stop before our trip to Singapore
Singapore:
Well Singapore only got one night as we have both been before. We did a bit of shopping and then went to the airport. Off to Oz!
Australia:
Cairns is bloody hot! It was 33 degrees when we landed and the humidity makes it seem so much hotter. We met my friend Andrew Potter and we went out for a few drinks and tried to cool down in the pool by the ‘beach’ front. Cairns doesn’t actually have a golden sandy beach like you’d imagine, just a muddy estuary, so they have built a fake beach and pool by the sea!
The next day we went on a trip up to Port Douglas and out to the Great Barrier Reef.
I went diving and Gem, Andrew and we all did lots of snorkelling. The reef as everyone says is amazing and we saw a little Reef Shark on the bottom. We all looked like Tele-tubbies as we had to wear stinger Suits to fend off the Box jellyfish.
Gem and I said goodbye to Andrew a few days later and climbed into our Hyundai Getz hire car to make our way down the coast to Sydney. I love driving but the Getz is not really a driving dream and I’m left to drool every time an Australian Holden V8 Morano overtakes, engine roaring! Gem has named the Getz Gabriel after the angel - very festive. She has also bought a Christmas CD to listen to each day which I’m already bored of! It is hard to feel it is Christmas when it is 40 degrees.
We are in Townsville now and are moving on to Airlie beach tomorrow - The great Eastern Oz road trip has begun!
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