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Published: February 21st 2010
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Hey everyone, thanks for the comments, its nice to hear from home!
So after our flight got into Bangkok we noticed a difference straight away! Everything's clean and the people are really friendly and happy to help you. We had a few days to look around the city so we mainly just stayed in the area of our hotel which was near the khao san road and did some exploring there. There was some sort of festival on the first night so all the streets were covered in little lights in the trees and it looked pretty amazing! Although the roads are still mental compared to home they seemed really mellow after India! The hotel had a pool too so we thought we'd better get going and start getting a tan!
On the third day we met everyone from our Gap tour and got all our things ready to go the next morning.
We left in the morning of the 14th to head over to Siam Reap in Cambodia by bus. The scenery was really good, lots of fields and trees and cute houses. The border crossing went smoothly and didn't take too long either. Once we got to
Siam Reap we all went out for a group dinner to a local restaurant which had probably the best food we've had since leaving home! I had morning glory chicken with rice and Jason tried the Khmer curry. After the meal we went for a wander through all the street markets, which have loads of places where you put your feet into a fish tank and let the fish nibble off your dry skin! Decided to give it a miss this time! Got our first tuk tuk back to the hotel!
The next day we went on a group tour of Angkor Wat. Our tour guide Allan was brilliant, she told us loads about the Cambodian culture, weddings, growing up in the countryside, the war and her experiences with land mines. It was good to hear about all the things you wouldn't see for yourself while we were there. The temples are all really beautiful, a few still have trees growing through, around and on top of them and there's a lot of carvings and detail. We walked through them for a couple of hours then headed for lunch at a nearby restaurant. After lunch we went up into
some of the buildings. Not a good idea if you're not good on heights as the steps are huge and really steep but you get great views from up the top. Allan also took us out to a pink sandstone temple and a land mine museum. The land mine museum is owned by a man called Aki Ra who had laid hundreds of mines as a child in the war, but now helps people to remove them and deactivate them and the museum has hundreds of old mine shells all over it. We headed back to Angkor Wat and climbed up the temple in time for sunset. There was guys selling beer and drinks at the top and one policeman offered to sell Jason his badge! It wasn't a very dramatic sunset but it turned the temples into different shades of orange and pink anyway so still good.
The day after this was Saturday and we had a 6 hour bus journey to the capital city, Phnom Penh. We weren't leaving til after midday though so a few of us decided to take a boat trip out to the tonle sap lake and see the traditional floating villages in
the morning. Sometimes a tiny little canoe would come up beside our boat and someone would jump on and ask if you wanted anything to drink. There was also one that came up beside us with a little girls who had a snake round her neck, trying to get it onto the boat! We stopped by a big floating raft/restaurant place and had a look around at their fish. There was crocodiles, turtles, catfish and other random animals floating around. We got to Phnom Penh around dinner so we went to a restaurant on the riverfront that sponsors orphaned children. The food was good and all the kids came out and performed a little show of traditional song and dance then put flowers in everyones hair. We went out for a little drink afterwards and had some cocktails, a little girl came up us trying to sell some flower bracelets and literally stood next to us for about 20 minutes saying "pweease sir" and tapping Jason on the arm. So hard not to buy everything they want you to!
The next day we went to see the Tuol Sleng prison and the killing fields. The prison was pretty rough,
they have got photos of the last 14 people murdered there on the walls in the rooms it happened. You could see for yourself how brutally they were killed and there was still blood stains splattered on the ceiling. There was also rooms showing the sort of instruments they used for torturing the prisoners, filled with hundreds of pictures of the prisoners after capture. The cells are still intact and they are just tiny little brick boxes, not even enough room to properly lie down in. We were lucky enough to meet one of only 7 survivors (another 4 of which have since passed away) and he told us about his time in the prison even showing us which cell he was in. The killing fields were also a bit creepy, still covered in bits of rags from the people who were killed there and you can see the size of the pits they killed everyone in. Theres also a tower which is full of skulls that they found at the site. So a pretty harrowing day but it was important to learn about what had happened, it was so recent and the country seems to have come so far
in only a few decades. At night we went to the Foreign Correspondents Club for a few drinks to cheer us up and saw a great sunset over a palace from there.
After Phnom Penh we went south to Sihanoukville which is a beach town. Had a nice lazy day on the beach and a mexican dinner 😊 We went to a place called bamboo island the next day which was amazing! We took a boat trip out and stopped for a little while to snorkel and fish, neither of us caught anything but afew people in our group caught some wee ones which were cooked up for lunch later on! The island had a little hut/bar on it with a little puppy, cats, chickens and goats just hanging out there too. there wasnt any seats, just hammocks or big floor cushions and it was really nice and chilled out! The sand was squeaky too which was really strange but the water was lovely and clear!
So from Sihanoukville we headed over to Vietnam across the land border by bus. By this point i had an ear infection because i flew with a cold from india and my
ear never un popped so i was fevery and miserable when we got to Chau Doc across the border and just went to bed for the day! I didnt see hardly any of Saigon either because i was resting there too but after that it got a little bit better!
xxx
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Lauooora
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Misss yooouuuu!!
I miss you guys so much, I hope these 79 days pass by bloody quick! Sounds like your having an amazing time! The trip sounds pretty intense at times, but fab n totally life changing, and you guys really deserve an awesome time! Love you both loads! Keep having loads and loads of fun! Can't wait to see you! Love and hugs!! xxXxx