Cambodia

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It's Vickie writing again as Jack's feeling too lazy!

Phnom Penh

We arrived in Cambodia on 1st April. We made friends with a fellow traveller called Michael on the bus who had been to Phnom Penh before and also recommended a guest house to us. We went with him to The Drunken Frog (Sounded good to us!). It was made up of small rooms over the lake on stilts. It was lovely watching the sunset and the thunderstorms from.

We were a bit wary of going to Phnom Penh originally because we heard some negative comments from people we have met but we actually had a great time, well an educational time as on our time here we saw some quite heartbreaking things so here we go......

One our first day we went to S21. This is where the The Khmer Rouge, totured, killed and held people in the late 70's. There were pictures up of each and every person that had been imprisoned here and it was horrific. There were men, woman and children there. Some of the children were babies. Its horrible to think what they went through.
When the Veitnames overthrew the Khmer Rouge and went to S21 they found 14 bodies in the rooms upstairs. They thought it would be nice to take pictures of how they found the bodies and put them on the walls in the rooms they were found in. This was horrible as you can just imagine them in there with you and the beds were there with the schackles and even still dried blood on the floor!

The second day we went to the Killing Fields, as you can imagine this wasn't very nice either. There were pits everywhere and they haven't even finished excavating the site yet!
There was a big monument which held the skulls of the people they have found so far, it was massive. While we were looking at it a man spoke to Jack about how his brother had died here, the man started crying and it was very emotional.

Also in the afternoon we went to an Orphanage. We got told you can visit but you really should take some rice with you. We took a 50 kilo bag of rice which cost 50 dollars! We couldn't believe how much it cost. More expensive than back home we are sure. No wonder they can't afford buy it themselves. There are 90 children at the orphanage and this will feed them for one day. They also don't get any support from the Government, they depend solely on tourists.

It was lovely when we pulled up. The kids came running over and its amazing how much English they know. Straight away we were roped into playing vollyball with them (Very poorly I might add!) There were a couple of little ones that took a shine too us and wouldn't leave us alone, it was a really great experience.

We spent quite a bit of time at our guesthouse and we're made to feel completely at home. We spoke to a couple of the guys running it and they were telling us about their experiences under Khmer Rouge rule. Both had most of their families killed and one was sent to a hard labour camp as a boy. It's so sad that everyone we speak to has the same sort of story.

We both read the book 'First They Killed My Father' by Loung Ung which gives a harrowing account of life under Khmer Rouge rule which is definitely worth a read.

Sihanoukville

Then we went to Sihanoukville in the south of Cambodia. Its a beach place, its really nice but the touts are on your case every minute on the beach and it gets so annoying you just want to tell them to f off!!
But we did find a beach a little bit further away where there was hardly anyone there and it was much nicer. It think we only got asked about 15 times that day if we wanted a massage or a manicure!!
We stayed in Sihanoukville for 5 days and just pretty much chilled under the umbrellas on the beach catching up on reading etc as there wasn't that much else to do so it was really nice.

Also on the beach in the evenings they have BBQs which were lovely. Our first night here we had a BBQ at one of the restaurants and they had an open mic night (I think you know where this is heading) well near the end of the night they were asking for requests so I asked them to play a song from one of four bands, they started playing an Oasis song but couldn't remeber the words so they got me up there and I had to sing in front of about 60 people.......how embarassing!!!!!

Kampot

After Sihanoukville we got the bus to Kampot where we wanted to visit the Bakor Hill Station as it sounded lovely. We arrived there and went to the tour operators to arrange the trip only to find out that they were not running the trip until after their New Year! This was a bit of a shame as it was a wasted journey as there isn't anything else there to see or do so we just booked the bus for the next day to go to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap

We arrived in Siem Reap on 10th April, we arrived at 7.30pm after a 13 hour bus journey. We had to get a Tuk Tuk from the bus station to the town and the man who we thought was the Tuk Tuk driver wasn't he just came along for the ride and pestered us to organise a tour with him! We told him that we were too tired to organise anything that night and we took his number. When we got up the next morning he was waiting outside the guest house for us! How annoying! We said we were going for breakfast and when we got back he was still there! He was so persistant we ended up booking a sunset trip to Ankor Wat and a day trip to the temples with him.

Our trip to watch the sunset at Angkor Wat was great apart from it was so cloudy we couldn't see the sun setting! It was great to walk around at that time of the day as there weren't as many people there.
The second day we visited four sites Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Bayon and Ta Phrom.

Ankor Wat is beautiful and the sheer size of it is just amazing!
Bayon was really nice as it has massive faces carved into the stone,
Our favouorite site had to be Ta Phrom as there are massive trees growing out of the ruins and it has been untouched unlike all of the other ruins where they have been restoring them so it looks a lot more rugged.

The day after visiting the temples we just had a bit of a chill out day as we were so tired from all of the walking around, and it shows how un-fit I am because I could barely walk my legs ached so much!

Tonle Sap

The day before leaving Cambodia we went to visit Tonle Sap which is the floating village. We booked our tickets through a decent tour operator so we thought we would get a good trip.
We got picked up from our guest house by a tuk tuk and drove down to the port. It was about 30 minutes away and it was great to see a bit of the countryside on the way.

When we arrived at the port we got told that our ticket was not the correct one and that we had to buy another one! After a bit of an argument they finally let us on the boat.

Jack and I had a boat to ourselves. There were 2 guys and a little kid on the boat with us. One to drive the boat and two to do um nothing! On the way to the village one of the men told Jack that there was a orphanage on the lake and did we want to buy some pencils and books and visit it. Jack agreed but when we stopped off at the market they were asking 20 dollars for a pack of 10 small pads and 5 dollars for 10 pencils! Bearing in mind there are 60 children at this orphange we had to decline as we would have to come home to England if we bought one for each child. We felt really annoyed because they were basically having us on to make money for themselves and didn't obviously care about the children.

When we said we just wanted to go around the lake they agreed but they ended up turning the boat around to take us back which we were really pissed off about as this wasn't the deal with our trip!

So we didn't actually get to see much of the floating village at all and to top it off when we were heading back one of the men said to Jack could they have their tip before we docked! They were asking for 5 dollars each for basically taking us to a shop and back! We were so pissed off at this point and said no they were not getting a tip, they had been trying to con us the whole time and we hardly saw the village!
Anyway there is my rant over for now.

On the 17th April we headed to Thailand but more about that on the next blog.

Lots of Love

Vickie & Jack
xx

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Photos

S21
one of the torture cells

S21
how the room was found in 1979

S21
mugshots of people who came to S21

Phnom Penh
View from our guesthouse on the lake

Phnom Penh
John - the manager of the Drunken Frog

Phnom Penh
Sunset over the lake

Killing Fields
Stupa filled with the skulls found while excavating the mass graves

Killing Fields
Uncovering a mass grave

Killing Fields
Each hole is another mass grave