Siem Reap - "it's 5 o clock somewhere"

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Siem reap - it's 5 o clock somewhere


After arriving by air with a cost of £142, as had to leave Vietnam as our visa had expired. We arrived with lots of Korean people who can I say don't understand the queuing aspect or personal space. We had to get visa's so queued very British like and the. We had to wait for the passports to be thrown back at you. The cost for a 30 day visa was $30 plus $2 As we didn't have a photo. When arriving we noticed the Cambodian people were extremely friendly, everyone knew Manchester and Liverpool due to the football teams. What struck me most were that the people were extremely poor, yet if you passed them on a street and they were having a gathering they would invite you to join them and provide you with beers and food. They had nothing but would give everything. They lived in shacks and yet were very proud people. Most women would be cleaning there little bit of land every 5 minutes to remove the dust, that was only going to be dirty again.

We had been warned about the gangs here and milk scams. After arriving at pub street a young boy only 11 years old approached us, spoke excellent English but was very dirty and had no shoes on. After a minutes chat he asked us for milk, we said we know what your up to and he turned nasty hissing and swearing at us. (After being in Siem reap for 2 weeks we won his friendship). Pub street was crazy and loud and people would have "dance offs" in the street. This was usually down to a girl calls Linda (street dancer) she was 13 and boy could she dance. However she belonged to the gangs, she sold bands and befriended people to make money. She often worked from 5pm til 3am on the streets with drunken people. We often saw the gangs following her to see if she was making money. It's heart breaking but we took her for dinner and tried to find out about her life Cambodia was where we spent Christmas and new year, it was 30 degrees + most days and we found access to a few pools, where we spent most of our time. We rented bikes to get around as there isn't a lot to do once you have seen the amazing Angkor what temples, we wanted to do sunrise so had to get up at 3:30am to get ready and arrive there for 5:00am when it opened. We had breakfast in the pitch black and waited for the silhouette to appear, it almost seemed magical. It's one of those seeing is believing moments. Siem reap was getting booked up so we made the decision to stay there for Christmas and new year after the last 8 weeks in the move every few days and sleeping on trains, buses etc... We decided to chill out. Christmas we managed to rope in a few people to have lunch with us who were lone travellers, one being Charles (older gentlemen living there from South Carolina) and his friend jack, both harmless (or so we thought) Charles purchased silk scarves to open but after a few times bumping into him he started to want to hang out at the pool and do day trips. The girls were with developed Tourette's whilst here, especially I ally Lisa who gets impatient and angry from obesity minute smiling and the next screaming out at people/Tuk tuks and anything that annoys her. We shared a dorm for the last 5 days and little did we know this would anger her too. Amy used to shout Lisa's name in the middle of the night, she's not sure why but it was amusing to say the least. At the pool we met another gentlemen who would always get a drink and use the term "its 5 'o' clock somewhere" to make him feel better about drinking before midday. As usual there were a few dramas, tears but mainly laughter and fun, we turn our bad experiences into laughter, and learn from them. Siem reap you've been amazing for meeting glass eye (Daniel), the Brasilians, Charles, jack, Tara, Jessie, same same bar, flashpackers, Linda, Jeffrey, Ricardo (Mexican singer), Mitch, dude bar, Gary (5 'o' clock somewhere), josh, roger and many more.....

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