Advertisement
Published: February 3rd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Word to you all! hope all is good back in your respective homes. i will apologise for this entry as it will condence my couple of weeks in cambodia into one entry! i hope for your sakes that it wont go on for to long!
crossing into cambodia from thailand, is quite a testing and entertaining expiernce! i crossed into cambod through the notoroius town of Poi Pet, the wild west of cambodia! the rip of merchants run the town! there are no tarmac roads to speak of, its just dust roads, which makes traveling a little uncomfortable!
The bus that runs from Poi Pet to Siem Reap (thailand defeated) is more comonly know as the skam bus! i met some people who had traveled the skam bus and it had taken them 11 hours to get siem reap, compared to the normal travel time of 4 to 5 hours! i didn't really fancy taking the skam bus, i hadn't slept the last night in bangkok, and i'd already endured a seven hour bus journey from bangers to the boarder, so my plan was to get a taxi! it took me about an hour to get the right price
Ta Phrom
go on the tree! on a taxi! i was sat at the bus stop, and there was a cambidian guy who was trying to get me a taxi! he would offer me a price for a taxi which was way over the top, so i would just tell him that i was getting the bus! this fiasco went on for an hour until i gave him a price, and he agreed! so with a couple of people that i had met on the way, we jumped into the car and made our way to siem reap!
the road to siem reap, is just a dirt road all the way, massive craters litter the road, animals get transported on the back of scooters, cows get shoved into the smallest vans, and you occasionaly see quite horiffic crashes! after the journey had finished my body felt like it had been through 9 rounds with mike tyson!
Siem reap, is cambodias 'costa dela sol'! as it has cambodias biggest tourist attraction this is no surprise! package holidays now run to angkor wat, which in turn is taking the charm out of the city, with massive concrete construction sites popping up everywhere, catering for the rise
in tourism, it's also making the place alot more expensive, with more wleathy tourist's arriveing and possibly out numbering the budget skanks, such as myself!
visiting angkor wat though was well worth it! i spent to days wondering around the temples of ankor wat! i even managed to get up for sunrise over angkor wat. apart from the horeds of tourists, it was still worth it! the best temple had to be Ta Phrom, where the trees have grown over the temples! by the end of two days though i was all templed out!
note to all cockerneys! please stop coming to cambodia and teaching the cambodians cockerney ryhming slang! all over cambodia, people would ask me where i was from, when i told them, they would always say,
'arh, london! lovley jubley, up the apples and pears, alright geeza' but to name a few, plus they all spoke in cockerney acsents! i was sitting on the top of temple looking out over the country side, when i was acosted by three camodian guys, and all they would do is speak to me in cockerny! not the cultureal expierance that i was looking for! if i wanted to
Australia day
A cultural day, four cons, one pom, one mexican and a canadian, you guess whose who! hear people speak in a london accent i would of gone to london!! please stop this, your only a small part of the country, and you do not represent the mass, so please stop being such 'james blunts'! here endth the lesson (take heed peter carter!!!!)
from siem peap, it was to Phnom Phenh, the capital! for some education, about the Khamer Rouge, ad the genocide that they reeped on this country! Phnom Phenh, has some really cool arcutecture, there are lots of french colonial buildings all over the place, there are also plenty of markets over town as well! i only spent three days here. i visited the killing fields first, it didn't really have the impact that i thought it would have, theres a memorial stompa as you walk into the killing fields, then there are the fields, whcih are holes in the ground where they exhumed the bodies from the mass graves, their are still clothes coming out of the ground, and the occassional stack of bones, but on the whole it was really upto much.
after the killing fields i went to S-21! this place had more of an effect on me! when these
buildings started of life they where a school, then during the Pol Pot era it change into a prision where they carried out there mass genecied. the Khamer Rouge where very good at keeping records of those that they detained there! every person that went through had their pictrues tacken, and alot of these are on display. they also kept photo evidence of the tourter that they inflicted on people! it was a very sobbering expiernce, and some people say that what the khamer rouge did was worse than the genecide that hitler inflicted on the jews!
onto a lighter topic i think! after Phonm Phenh, it was time for some r&r so it was down to sihanoukville, for some beach action. i think i have a problem it seems that i'm being stalked by australians where ever i go! i even celebrated austrailia day, what it wrong with me! i traveled down to sihanoukville with a couple of ozzie guys that i met in phonm phenh! i only intended to stay in my guest house for a couple of days and then find somewhere alittle quiter, think i'm getting old! but i ended up staying there for a
Seim reap
just another bit of construction week! time flies when your having fun! met some really ace people while i was there, so that probably explains why i stayed there for so long!
the beach itself was something of nothing really, the sea stopped and then the sun loungers started, not a german to be seen either, strange! but there where some really nice islands dotted around the main land, and they where good! went snorkeling, i would like to say that it was good, but i wasn't it was the sh**est snorkeling i've ever seen, but you live and you learn!
my bay whatch skills where called into action as well! i strapped on my red swimming cozzie, put on my blonde wig, shoved a couple of balloons down my top and saved a damsel from being eaten by a shark, i gave that shark a good kicking!! okay so it didn't happen like that, the real story goe a little bit like this: a canadian, two pink ozzies and me, went to swim to a boat, we made it there alright, but one of the pink ozzies was having trouble breathing when we got on the boat, he had pins and needles in his hands and he couldn't feel his feet. a triffle worrying! the canadian who goes by the name of warren swam back in to shore to get a big rubber ring, while chris and i stayed with the dying jordan! we managed to lower him into the ring and then take him back to land! by the time we got him back to the main land he was completly green, and his hands where clamping up! so we took him to hospital where they put him on a drip! it turns out that he just had a really low blood sugar level, and the swim had just finished him of!
all over cambodia there are beggers, there is most deffinatly a marked difference in wealth between cambodia and their thai nieghbours! theres always constant reminders of the Pol Pot era, with so many land mine victims, it's pretty hard to see people with no legs no hands, arms, and theese people get no support from their goverment. it reminded me alittle bit of india with the amount of begging. india has it's leppers and cambodia have their amputees, it's just a harsh reminder of what happened to this place! and it will carry on for many more years to come, until all the land mines have been cleared!
now i'm back in thailand, i'm back on the island of kho phi phi! but this i will leave till the next edition, i think i've bored you anough and myself! hope your all good, will be back in touch soon! word!
saw some goats in cambodia, for a minute there i was getting goat withdrawel!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.06s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0364s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Razel
non-member comment
See ur in a bit of a 2n8 bout the Cockney Slang ;)
Easy Iraqnid, Couldn't help myself with the title... us Londoners have got to keep our heritage going! Randomly watched the film "The killing Fields" The other day... story of Dith Pram and some American photographer, very fucked up... apparently 1.5 million Cambodians were annihilated in the re-education (or ethnic cleansing) of Cambodia's urban population... Not surprised to find out that the US had some hand in the starting of all this, namely the bombing of Neak Leung in 74 and millitary aid passed on to the Khmer Rouge... bstrds!!! Anyways hope ur doing well... looks like the weather is sweet over there!!! It's fucking freezing in the Nam, suppose to snow tomorrow, but will probably end up just being a shitty frost. Anyways got to go, Take it easy bro, Razel