Gettin the real travelling on the go: Kolkata (India) - Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) - Siem Reap (Cambodia) in 4 days, breathtaking Angkor Wat and Davy's input to the blog since Varanasi

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The day had arrived when we had to leave the safety on India, place we got to like a lot and we got to know how it works there. It felt a little bit like starting the travels all over again, going to a new country. Different time zone, different currency, different language, different people... A little scary but it turned out it could only get better! 😊

As an inseparable part of our travels, I got really sick the morning we were leaving Digha and spent just as awful day being extra sick on a bus and on a plane. Of course, the day when I got better, Davy got sick too but I guess we are getting use to it and we are sightseeing even when we are sick and we are getting better on the way.

Anyway, we had another travelling day ahead of us, leaving Digha in an early morning, 5 hours on a bus, trying to avoid as much Kolkata as possible and going straight to the airport which turned out to be the worst airport we have ever seen. Our bag was too heavy (AirAsia is pretty much the asian version of Ryanair so it was kinda a big deal), our flight was delayed, no shops or restaurants after check-in and we didn't eat the whole day... And then it took 4 hours to get from Kolkata to Kuala Lumpur and it was like arriving to a different world. One gets completely different perspective on everything after spending a few weeks in India and first thing we noticed about Kuala Lumpur (which is obviously a huge and vibrant city) was how quiet the town is. It felt clean, civilised, modern, good and quiet. As we arrived in the middle of the night, we had to get an expensive taxi to the city centre and since the moment we liked being in Malaysia. Sitting in an air-conditioned car and observing the big city with all its lights. Our guesthouse was right in the centre of Kuala Lumpur and in the middle of Chinatown so it was quite handy as we were able to try all the different stall food (not a good idea on a sick stomach but who could resist all the yummy exotic food. Well Davy could and someone had to try them out!😊 and in a walking distance to the famous Petronas twin towers and to the Menara telecommunication tower. We took lots of pictures of the Petronas towers (as you will probably notice from the gallery) and went up to the Menara tower which has an amazing view and you can see the whole city with all its tall buildings. And we got completely stuck in an aquarium with an underwater tunnel so you can observe sharks and rays swimming all around. It was amazing. And Davy loved Kuala Lumpur as Chinatown is full of stalls with clothes and ManCity jerseys that are amazingly cheap. And it was hot. Super hot. The weather was very different from India. Much more humid and much more sticky. But I guess for all of you back home struggling with winter and cold, that is not a good reason for a complain.

And after a little more than very fast 48 hours in Kuala Lumpur we spent another sleepless night travelling, getting 6 am flight from KL to Siem Reap, Cambodia. 2 hours and we landed in my new favourite country (or kingdom to be accurate). Although Siem Reap with its Angkor Wat is obviously very touristy, it feels very peaceful. Gentle and calm. And people are soo friendly and smiley. It's absolutely different feeling than in India (with exception of the mountains which are so special and do not count as a typical India) or KL. Even all the people and children trying to sell you stuff by the temples are not annoying in any way. When they pretty much force you to buy something in India and you might feel a little uncomfortable, they are still very polite here and you actually want to give them some money, considering the history of Cambodia, everything that happened to the people here and the fact how friendly they are.

We spent 3 and half days exploring Angkor Wat and it is impossible to describe how beautiful it is. Breathtaking. Spectacular. Amazing. There are no proper words. Every temple is different than the other and everytime I thought: This is my favourite, we discovered another one, better one, nicer one, bigger one. Some of them are so big and you can spend hours just wondering around and exploring every corner and tower and carving. Some of them have great view. Some of them have just a special athmosphere. So to put it simply we were very impressed and absolutely amazed. This is definitely the place where no matter how high your expectations are, you still get overwhelmed by the reality. Spent two days cycling around which was the best feeling. After the Indian dirty air, it was amazing cycling in proper nature, passing by the temples and monkeys and feeling the breeze which makes the hot weather a little bit more enjoyable. And of course, we had some encounters with monkeys, Davy trying to feed them and one of the monkeys jumped on his back trying to get more cashews of him. That was crazy! Got some yummy ale mainly western food which helped our bellies to get better and even I ordered something ordinary like a pizza but it feels good to be eating again.

So we uploaded some pictures and there are some missing from today when we went to visit a few more temples including Ta Prohm, the famous one with the huge trees growing over the walls but I guess there is so many of them that you will get sick of looking at all the temples anyway. Coming home from the temples, sitting in a tuk-tuk and enjoying the landscape, we had the same thought with Davy, that it would be amazing to come back here and stay for longer and live here, maybe teach English and to be able to absorbe more of the culture and calmness of the life here and maybe to help a little bit. Cambodia has something that I was missing in India, it is not as hectic so you can actually feel the goodness of life. We are getting an overnight bus to Sihanouk ville in about 30 mins and are planning to stay there just for a few days, to enjoy sun and sea and probably to celebrate our 3rd anniversary and then we are hoping to head north to less touristy places and to continue to Laos afterwards. Hopefully we will be able to find some cheap places to save some money and to explore some tourist-free sites and national parks.





I was just getting used to not writing this blog but here we go again, so Varanasi was pretty cool, the holy city which it did feel like to me with all the temples and all the Buddhists and ashrams and babas and the city at night time was just a cloud of smoke kinda like in a cloud at the top of a mountain so it was definately the most holy looking place ive ever seen or been to but I think simona was looking for some spirituality and a sence of life but she just didnt feel it. At night was brilliant just sitting on our roof top listening and watching nature unfold before our eyes, monkeys, dogs, mice, cats, squirals, you name it they can all be seen at the tops of any rooftop, 6 stories high, it was absolute quality but the same as anything if you do it for too long you get bored so after a week or so simona wanted to something special for my bday so she sorted out tickets to a beach near Calcutta. theres lots of small details which id love to put in but just trying to catch up on this blog si hard enough so ill fill you all in later. So we arrived in a place called Digha with a couple of days to spare before flying out to Kuala Lumpar and it was so nice, so peaceful, getting away from the madness of Varanasi where all you could hear during the day was beeping cars and tuktuks constantly, so much so that i dreamed about them and then actually woke up to them beeping. So the few days in digha were perfect, no noise just me and simona on the beach not being annoyed and we stayed in our first hotel as a treat. walking the beach most days and getting the odd scooter on the beech when we felt lazy was just what we needed. Then on the day of my bday i woke to simona bringing me in a cake which she had planned with the staff the night before and of coarse i was in total shock but another amazing day and a sensational way to finish our indian travells.

After that we got our flight to kuala Lumpur and i must say i liked it right from the start, it seemed like we had been away from the real world for so long and now we were back in it, with proper menus with food i actually wanted to order and shops with real clothes, adidas t-shirts and runners all really cheap, the hostel was cheap and the wifi actually worked properly, it was just nice to be back somewhere that felt proper and nothing was any hassel. We visisted a few of the tallest towers in the world and just walked around the markets and got on our first ever mono rail which was cool and just enjoyed the couple of days we had there. Forgot to mention that every day or other day one of the 2 of us were sick with stomach problems but its so often now that i think we are just getting better at dealing with it now. We went to see one of the worlds biggest aquarium too which was really spectacular, im not one for seeing animals locked in cages or anything like that but you could see the animals are treated well and some of the stuff we saw was excellent, in particular there was one tunnel you just walk through for about ten mins and its like walking at the bottom of an ocean, huge sharks, massive eels, giant turtles and just big fish, like fish that was twice the size of me, a fish. We then got our flight to Cambodia which was short and sweet and ill fill you in an that next blog

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