Khymer Land

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My 6th country of visit on these travels brought me to the lovely country of Cambodia. What a hassle it was getting here though. After our overnight bus in Laos, we eventually got to the Laos-Cambodia border after a 4 hour tuk tuk journey from where our bus dropped us off. Unfortunately, we decided to not visit 4000 islands as our Lao Kip's were running extremely low, and we just wanted to get to Cambodia rather than prolong the travelling. We got stamped out of Laos, where the customs charged a $2 (everything in Cambodia is dealt in US dollars, and anything under 1 dollar, is given in local currency, so we end up with a lot of different currency) 'stamp fee', then walked across the border, to where we visited the doctor. Quite random, but we had to fill in a little card asking if we had swine flu symptons, then he checked our temperature. He then asked us for some kind of vaccination card, but we did not have it. So to get around that one, he charged another $1 and we were on our way to get our Cambodian visa. We were charged a random $23 dollar for it, but that wasn't the end of the 'petty extorcian' (as the Lonely Planet calls it), as we were then charged a further $2 by the Cambodian stampers. We were then offically in Cambodia. Unlike the Lao border, where there were about 20 tuk tuks to 1 person, there wasnt much in the way of transport. To cut a long story, very short, we ended up paying a whopping $45 to take us the 8 hour journey to Phnom Penh, the capital. Unfortunately, we didn't have any other option as the nearest town was 50km away. It isn't that much money in some standards, but considering we are all on a tight budget, and with food and accomodation we have been spending roughly $20 a day, $45 for one journey is a lot of money. To say the least, my first impressions of Cambodia weren't the best.

We arrived in the capital quite late, so we went and got a beer and some food, and I chilled out and watched the Man U - Arsenal game in our hotel room. The next day, we did a bit of exploring. We checked in to a new hostel in the backpacker district, and went for some breakfast. That afternoon, we decided to visit the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. It is basically an old school that the Khymer Rouge adapted into a torture place/prison. The Khymer Rouge were a sort of communist group that took over the country between 1975-9 and killed a reported 2 million people. The crimes they committed were as bad as Hitler's. As you can imagine, it was quite an interesting place to go to with a lot of the torture equipment still on show, as well as some disturbing images of the victims.

The next day, we decided to head north to Siem Reap. We got picked up at the bus station by a tuk tuk driver holding our names on a piece of paper, I felt very important. We checked into our guesthouse and then headed to the pub once again. The quite well named 'Pub Street' is where all the action happens, you could almost call it Costa Del Siem Reap though, with the looky looky men (kids selling books) and all the bars (selling very cheap drink). The next day, our loyal tuk tuk driver Sam picked us up and took us to THE touristy thing to do in Cambodia, the Angkor Wat temple. There are hundreds of temples in the area, but Ankor Wat is the most famous as it is reported to be the biggest religious building in the world. It wasn't the size that impressed me, but the carvings and architecture (listen to me, I sound like Nicola) of the place. Considering it was built more than 800 years ago, they are amazing. Some of the other temples aren't in very good condition though, and some are now being restored. That night, it was time to visit the Angkor What? Bar. One of our friends from Mildura had a smart t-shirt from there, and he told me it was free when you buy alcohol, so we just had to go. 5 buckets and 3 t shirts later, we all had our t shirt and we were all quite drunk, maybe me slightly more. Well, the next day was a write off to say the least so I'll skip that. I had now accomplished my Siem Reap goal and we booked another overnight bus to the beach resort of Sihanoukville.

We arrived around 6am, greeted not by Sam but by the pouring rain! We went straight to a guesthouse and decided to try and get some sleep, at least until the rain went off. Well, if we kept up with that idea, I would still be sleeping now! The rain never stopped for 3 days, and we never even saw the beach, never mind set foot on it. We wasted our days, in the pub pretty much. We made a few friends though, Lois from Engerland and a nice Ozzie couple that we had met before at the now infamous night in Siem Reap. Lucky for us the beer is extremely cheap, and the games of pool free. We did find a nice pub owned by a loud Glaswegian called Bobby aswell. He tried his hardest to get the Scotland game on Saturday, but to no avail. As I said, after 3 days of rain, we decided there was no point in staying there, so we booked our bus to the border, and back to Thailand.

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