Blogs from Cambodia, Asia - page 849

So i made a great mistake by trusting my research on payment/money prior to my departure ... i'm buying dollars with my euros to then exchange it again into cambodian ril ... however it's best to have ril, as depending where ya wanna buy bottle of water it can cost approx $1 (which is about 3,800 ril), but the moment u get away from the tourists (which obviously i try with the bycicle) you can get same size bottle for 800 ril ... 15 minutes from the busy section of Siem Reap i found myself between tin plate shacks and bamboo huts and was in heaven. I found a little path leading to a tempel complex where i got to talk to a young monk who invited mi into his humble one room home. We talked ... read more

I've just come back from a work-sponsored junket to Phnom Penh (thank you the Australian tax-payer! ;) ), for two nights and three days. It wasn’t really a junket, as I stayed in drab hotels and didn’t pay for anything on a work credit card, though I did do lots of shopping at the Russian Market. Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia) is actually quite a pretty city, with lots of pretty buildings dating from its French colonial period (though all in need of many coats of paint) and a really nice riverfront area. There’s no skyscrapers and a population of 1 million, which is a nice change from the sky-scraper-laden 10 million people + city of Bangkok! Phnom Penh had such a nice feel to it, I’d really love to go back there for a ... read more

Some time during 2004, I was thinking I should do some overland travel in Souteast Asia. Since I had gone over from Singapore to Bangkok a few years ago, a trip starting from Bangkok this time seemed to be the natural choice. I wondered if I could travel from Thailand all the way to China. When I had done my research, I found that there might not be enough time for me. So instead of travelling completely overland, I decided to cheat, i.e. to fly a few sergments here and there. Finally, my route became: Bangkok-(plane)-Siem Reap-(plane)-Ho Chi Minh City-(overland and with intermediate stops)-Hanoi-(overland)-Guilin. This trip almost took me a month. As I had only stayed in Bangkok only for a short while, I would start to write from Cambodia. There will be separate entries ... read more

Hello again, I've written about communism, poverty, and world history. Yet the most response from any email has been: EDDIE MURPHY DID NOT SAY IT'S AFRICA HOT, IT WAS MATTHEW BROADRICK! I do appreciate the correction and apologize immensely to Neil Simon who deserves better than Eddie Murphy. Here's some neat things I've done in Cambodia... *Saw an alligator farm. In America, fences would be surrounding the alligators with sensors making sure that no one could possibly get hurt. Needless to say, the security is obviously very lax in Cambodia and I was literally 2 feet away from some of these beauties. It's pretty cool and scary at the same time. In order not to be bitten, I promised to never buy an alligator bag and to rent the B movie classic, Alligator. *The first hotel ... read more

December 18, 2003 - Thursday - Traveling to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat for Christmas by Charlie Original Story with many photos are here at http://ajarncharlie.livejournal.com/24784.html As I crossed the border into Cambodia at Poi Pet, one could not help but marvel at the amazing variations of vehicles and cargos being pulled, pushed or driven from Cambodia into Thailand. If one has ever seen the earlier movies of Mel Gibson (such as "Mad Max" and “Thunderdome”), one might be able to envision the sites one saw unfolding around them as they attempted to pass through Thai immigration into Cambodia. Mad Max had nothing on the reality of the vehicles on the roads of Cambodia. On this particular morning, after waking early from my hotel in Aranyaprathet on the Thai side of the border, I managed to ... read more