Phnom, Penh and Siem Reap

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Arrived in Cambodia from Saigon after 6 hours on the bus - the shortest trip so far I think!!! Luckily we picked up a hotel rep just before we arrived at the bus station to guide us to his tuc tuc and take us to his hotel as the bus was swarmed with Cambodians pulling us, shouting in each ear and holding up guesthouse notices for us to go with them... it was quite overwhelming!! Phnom Penh is a mix between old and new, a very friendly city with alot of character. We headed to the riverside to check out the area, really lovely at night as it is all lit up, with loads of street sellers & unfortunatly quite a few begging kids...but instantly you get a feal of what Cambodia is all about and already we really like it.

That night we also stumbled across a supermarket which like two kids in a candystore we ran around for hours picking up late night snacks....cheese....cheese...cheese!!!

The next day we took in the sights to understand a little more of what the cambodians had gone through, starting with the Killing Fields:

-This is the mass grave sights where the Khmer Rouge brought all their victums - any intellectual, foreigner or person with any education, including their whole families were most definately killed. There is approx 140 mass graves holding up to 500 ppl in one grave, shocking to believe this happened only 30 years ago!

Toul Sleug S21 Genocide museum:

- this is a former secondary school turned into a prision and torture house, for thousands of victiums and their families, they were held in tiny cells, built in the classrooms or mass cells which held up to 50ppl at a time. Some ppl were held there for up to 6 or 7 months tortured before they were sent to the killing fields.

In the 5 years that Pol Pot and the Khmer Regime was in power they managed to wipe out a quarter of the countries population, mostly those with any education or those who were not true Cambodians working in the fields. All the cities were evacuated and everyone was sent to the country to farm rice, in labour camps, in which millions of ppl died due to starvation or due to the soilders that held them there. Really educational but shocking!

- sorry little history lesson for you all there!

Also visited the King Palace, very beautiful.

We then travelled down to Siem Reap, by yet another bus, arriving in time to jump in a tuk tuk to try and catch the sunset? Unfortunatly we got stuck in a massive rain storm so no sunset for us, we did get our first view of Ankor Wat in the rain!

Very early start of 5am to try and make the sunrise - we were there for 5.30 but the sun wasnt!!!! We then managed to look around the temples for nearly 8 hrs - and surprised ourselves. It was a really cool day the temples are spread out through wooded, jungly parks and just pop up all over the place so we drove around by tuc tuc stoppping off at each one.

So many temples, all with a different charater, it was really interesting, however, you are bombarded with little kids selling you just about anything, which some how i got talked into buying a far few dodgy souvenires - oh well think it only came to abot 3 pounds so cant complain, its for their ''education''!

The final day we hired motorbikes (and drivers) to take us to this temple about 70km away, it was a fantastic ride through the countryside, with stunning views of local life and plenty of rice farming. The Temple was the most impressive one yet and well worth the 1 and half hour journey to get there. the trees have destroyed the temple and left it in ruins, but you can climb all over it and explore as you want which is great fun, it is also so tranquil as there is hardly any people there due to the distance.

Cambodia has been great, the people are really friendly, and the countryside is really rugged and stunning, it is a great country with such a tragic history which all the people are happy to talk about. I would have loved to spend more time here, but will have to come back and explore more in the future.

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