Day 59: Chapter Nine - I Think we Need a Holiday

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So we're in Cambodia, our last country! I can't believe we'll be going home in two weeks. It sort of feels like we've been gone for longer than two years.

Anyway, we flew into Siem Reap from Ho Chi Minh City and we both felt pretty good about it as soon as we landed. No more the stringent guidelines and barking orders of Vietnam, here it's a bit calmer, and amazingly people let you as an adult, make decisions for yourself!

There's still the hassle element, but here perhaps even more so than in Vietnam, the reasons for people wanting money from you are pretty self evident. You've just got to smile and get on with it. Fortunately, there are a lot of organisations here that are set up to help people who've basically lost any sense of a normal life thanks to the civil war etc.

There's always that conflict about what's the best thing to do to help. A little kid, and I mean little, comes up to you and wants you to buy a book and you don't know whether buying it will help them, or if it'll mean they'll just be someone's dogsbody for longer,so you can offer food, but it isn't always practical. Then people say, don't give money to kids of beggers because either someone else will take it off them, or it breeds a begging culture, which is all very well except that that person is hungry today. I don't know. At least though if you go to one if these NGO places and buy some handcrafts, or eat something, you've got a fair idea something useful will be done with the money.

Crikey, I've been carrying this on too long.

Anyway, Angkor.

Angkor is amazing. Really amazing. Phenomenal really. We'll add some photos when we can, but they probably don't do it justice. Just go and see it for yourself. Mind you, don't go on the weekend of Chinese New Year.

We were so lucky, because we got to see everything we wanted to without too many people around, but on our last day we decided to go out in the afternoon just to get a few extra shots. Mistake. It was manic! We actually took a photo of all the people, rather than the temples! Thank god we'd already been there otherwise we would've hated it. But we didn't, it was great.

And now we're in Phnom Penh.

Today we went to see the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, and then to the National Museum which I liked quite a lot. It was pretty much a big collection of Buddha's, but it's all housed in a very nice building.

Then we tried to go to both the Russian and Central Markets, but the Tuk Tuk drivers decided we didn't need to know that they were closed for Tet. We'll try again tomorrow.

After that, we were planning to go down to Kampot for a couple of days, but Jim is pretty keen to head to the beach, so it'll probably be Sihanoukville for awhile, before we head back to Bangkok.

Oh yeah, Tav if you read this, you know you hinted that we should bring back something ultra expensive for you?.....

See ya round like perfectly shaped rissoles,

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