Phnom Penh & Angkor

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Fourth country on the list was Cambodia. The smallest one so far, so we passed through pretty quickly. Cambodia reminded us a lot of Laos: back to basics in every possible way... Cold water only, cockroaches all over the place and terrible roads.

We got to Phnom Penh first, a rather modern city which looks kind of misplaced in this country. We were lucky to discover a great laid back area to stay near Boeng Kak Lake. Tuk tuk drivers are a plague though here and they will harass you every time they find a good chance. Phnom Penh is the home of the royal palace and silver pagoda, but the most intriguing part is the history of the Khmer Rouge regime and Pol Pot. We visited the S21 prison, a former high school transformed into a torture and interrogation prison, and the killing fields where all the mass graves can be seen. In a time period of only 4 years, 1.5 million cambodians were killed here, things like this make you think for a second...

Next up were of course the famous temples of Angkor. A big mistake many people make (and so did we of course) is thinking that there's only Angkor Wat here. The huge amount of temples are spread out on a big area and it takes you several days to see them. We tried to see as much as possible on three days and had a tuk tuk to drive us around. The last day we tried to visit some outlying temples by bycicle, but apparently all the noodles and rice not only make you skinny but also pretty weak. So after about 50 kilometers we crashed, and so did our bikes.. We got a cozy ride home with a bus of Koreans, but before getting to the guest house, we joined them to watch the sunset.

After about 10 days Cambodia, we already moved on to Bangkok again to start our trip trough the South of Thailand. Internet is expensive here, so we'll have to keep it short this time 😊

Nick & Steven

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Photos

End of the road
Our trip trough the rice fields around Phnom Penh ended here in the middle of nowhere.

Temples of Angkor
This one temple was left in its original state of discovery. No wonder they had been hidden in the jungle for so many years.

Temples of Angkor
Cambodians believe(d) these girls will wait for you in heaven. Maybe time to change our religion...

Temples of Angkor
The steep climb on the towers of Angkor Wat refers to climbing the holy mountain.

Comments

[familie Feys]

To say hello.
Hey Steven & co, We volgen met veel interesse jullie prachtige expeditie. Het hoeft niet veel of we komen er zó achteraan. Voor jullie allemaal: nog heel veel zien en ervaren en vooral ook lots of fun. Take care! the Feys-family

[Johan H (ex-bureagenoot)]

Dag Steven en Nick, Heb zonet jullie site eens doorlopen, ziet er zeer goed en heb spijt dat wij niet in het zuiden van Thailand zijn geraakt. Tis tof om nog eens foto's terug te zien van Thailand en cambodia. Ik ga nu de komende maanden mijn doctoraat proberen af te werken en dan hopelijk voor enkele maandjes naar Zuid-Amerika. mvg johan