Cambodia

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Hey guys yet again its been too long this time i havr an excuse though i have had a week off on the sick caught a nasty bug in thailand so spent a couple of days in a lovely thai hospital, thank god the insurance paid out.

Anyway where was i with this thing, Cambodia that was our next destination.

From stories and what we had read of Cambodia we were expecting a pretty grim experience in Cambodia and it did in some ways live up to it although i dont think its as bad as the stories made out.

We started with the border journey from saigon to phnom penh which was our first glimpse of the corruption crippling the country, we had to pay an extra $5 to the police just to get into the country, and get this you can actually pick up a policemans outfit from the local markets there just so you can pull over a few people and make a few extra bucks, unreal! the roads wernt much to talk about either if you can really call them roads more like dirt tracks, but thetr only bad on the journeys out of the country apparently the local airlines are handing over a little bit more cash to the government in order for the roads to stay in that state, we did not cripple though and faced the 6/7 hour journeys with nicely bruised bums.

Ok enough of a rant about coruption we did actualy arrive in phnom penh and the first thing i saw was a 4x4 with about 30" silver spinners on it not exactly what i was expecting but you soon get to realise the huge divide between the rich and poor, you either beg or exploit nothing in between. We managed to take in few sites here, but it tends to be all quite depressing, we visited the killing fields which have been excavated and have now got a nice big building filled with around 8000 skulls, which still have the cracks and bullet hole wounds from the horror of only 30 years ago. The horror that i am reffering to was the rule of the Pol Pot regime between 1976 - 79 where he massacred over 2,000,000 Cambodians in an attempt to purify the country. As you can imagine this was a pretty depressing site and really puts into perspective how lucky some of us are. From the killing fields we visited the S21 museam, which is basically a old school that was transformed into a prison during the pol pot regime, where people were tortured for years before eventually being executed. And you can feel that the cambodian people are still living with it today as they are still trying to prosicute those who were responsible.

From the horror of phnom penh we moved on to siem reap, the home of the cambodians proudest creation Anghor Wat, which is as amazing as all the books make out, we managed to get up at 5 and see the sunrise behind the main temple that is Anghor wat which is truly an amazing picture, something you would only ever see on a postcard. From there we spent 8 hours in the swealtering heat basically acting out our own version of tomb raider as we visited all the different versions of the Temples, from massive pyramid formations, to concrete mazes, would of been a great place for hide and seek. you can see from some of the pictures that they let you climb all over the temples, there are simply no rules there or health and safety for that matter. Funny but a bit sketchy a times especially the vertical steps that you more than often come accross.

After a day of Tomb raiding we were in desperate need of a beach break so headed for thailand and the island of kho chang, but you will all be happy to know that we ended up with 3 days of on and off tropical rain, surreal because the island would pretty much flood after 2 hours of rain and dry up within half an hour, we still managed a bit of beach action though and met two crazy dutch guys who were possibly the most entertaining people i have ever met, So wasnt all doom and gloom.

For pictures of cambodia check out :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221&l=5d5ae&id=501455138

also i have more vietnam photos on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2450&l=47ae8&id=501455138

Oh and actually i have some Hong Kong photos that you may have not seen on the following link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222&l=ef92f&id=501455138

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