Mainly Cambodia

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Starting the new travels in Asia, went to Hong Kong straight from a snowstorm in Christchurch and found the new climate a punch in my face. Air temperatures of 35 degrees and humidity levels around 80% was a big turnaround for me and I quickly got a very close relationship with my aircondition in the tiny hotel room I was staying at. I arrived 1 day before Lea and did my best to make something out of my day though eventually I ended up sleeping it all away. It was too much for me, I'm a wuzz...
Next day, after having tried to get some breakfast that wasn't too weird and scary which I almost succeeded at, I picked up Lea at the busstop and we both agreed that the aircondition was a good friend.
The next couple of days we wondered the Hong Kong area where we were staying (Kowloon), tried out different food - got disgusted by some and liked others - and didn't really do much else. At some point we watched The Symphony of Lights at some harbour where several skyscrapers had organized their massive amount of different lights, video screens, spots and whatever, to match a soundtrack that got played every night around 8pm and it was pretty amazing!
In generel we both agreed on Hong Kong not being the best location for us. Too crowded and dense in both temperature, air, smell, people, buildings and whatnot else. Some small foodshops almost made us sick by the smell, but hey, we're just spoiled westerners so I guess I shouldn't complain. When the food was good, it was REALLY good though and I did manage to get a level up in chopstick'ing though have yet to master Dim Sum. They are amazingly slippery!
All in all I must admit that I prolly wont return to Hong Kong any time soon though, without a really good reason.

After Hong Kong we had a small stopover in Macau, which is supposed to be a country? Never heard of it though, and as I write now I know too, that their money can't be exchanged anywhere pretty much, so I'm happy we only ended up having $20 Macau left which is about 13DKK. We pretty much only went to Macau to depart from their airport instead of the Hong Kong one - giving us the right to brag about having been in yet another country - so we stayed there for only a couple of hours after which we continued on to Bangkok for the next 5 days.
Booking our first sleepover, we were a little optimistic and thought we'd try out something authentic which placed us in a little guesthouse somewhere that not even our taxidriver could find without several asking-abouts. We got a small room with the hardest mattresses I have ever tried - apart from sleeping straight on a floor -, bathroom in the courtyard and only a fan in the ceiling (no aircon), so being the posh westerners as we are, that went on for one night exactly after which we went up a couple of grades and landed on a hotel in a double en-suite room with aircon, TV and a view over the main tourist road in Bangkok called Khaosan Rd. Yes, we are spoiled, but why not when you can afford it? :D The following days where pleasant to say the least. Taking Tuk-tuks here and there in Bangkok watching temples and the like while eating out for every meal. Actually I don't think any tourists in Thailand ever cook. Buying off the street is extremely cheap and can be really good as well, if you find the right spots.
At some point one of the Tuk-tuks managed to make us drop by the Bangkok tourist office (Tuks usually want to make small scam-stops at 'random' shops to make you buy a little, from which they get comission.) This stop ended up with a booking for the next 3 weeks taking us through Siem Reap and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, back to Thailand through Bangkok and down to an island called Koh Phangan for a fullmoon party and further on to a town called Krabi, everything included. That suddenly settled our previously undecided plans and off we went.

First stop Siem Reap, Cambodia to see temples and floating villages. Everything with our booking went really well and the hotel they booked for us even proved to be really nice and comfy. Siem Reap was an amazing town. Very small and very au-natural apart from the town center that is pretty much build on tourism. The town had a great atmosphere to it and was beautiful in it's own pretty trashy way.
After settling for a bit in the new environment, we booked a tour to go and see Angkor Wat which is THE national treasure of Cambodia, being smack in the middle of their flag and all. Basically it's a huge and ancient temple build somewhere around the early 12th century, starting out as a Hindu temple but later converted to Buddist when taken over by a new king. Siem Reap has got around 200 different temples hanging around it's outskirts whereas Angkor Wat is the biggest. We spend a whole day temple-crawling and managed only to go through 4 of them. Pretty happy we stopped at that point though as it's a pretty common desease amongst travelers in that area to get what they call "Temple overload". We felt it coming but evaded at the very last second.
As for the actual experience, we got a Tuk-tuk following us the whole day and a guide that we followed the whole day. He took us through heaps of history behind whatever and was really good at showing us what we wanted and be relatively quick about it. The temples were amazing in so many ways which makes it really hard to explain through written text so I wont. Instead I'll reveal that the temperature in Cambodia isn't quite the arctics and walking around in half jungle, half open land proved REALLY REEEEAAALLLY hot! We probably sweated half an ocean each that day, which is a bad mix with non-water-reststant sunblock, rare spots of shade and the need for permanent mosquito repellment. Ended up with sun burns, a couple of mosquito bites, realizing what prickly heat is and having a massive pile of amazing photos!. Hope none of those bugs had any of those billions of leathal illnesses that they all seem to carry around here. Time will tell. In the midst of all of this we went to a tiny restaurant to get some lunch, had a dish called Amok Fish which is supposed to be good native Cambodia cuisine and we LOVED it!!! It is here by recommended to everyone out there. Cambodia Amok Fish. Look it up, hunt it down, cook it and enjoy!
Next day was spend partly in a boat watching the floating village float around and partly checking out the main places where Pol Pot and his red army (Khmer Rouge) managed to kill one third of the Cambodian population during less than 4 years, targeting everyone educated and people living in the cities, turning the country into a Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. It's sick!.. and only happened 30 years ago (1975-79) No wonder the country is still feeling it, and showing it.
Before watching all of that, Lea and I had postponed reading up on the Cambodian history but now, after realizing pretty much what happened, it all makes more sense...



Last day in Siem Reap each of us both gave the other a present of a 1 hour fullbody Khmer massage which got further celebrated afterwards by a good meal and heaps of Angkor Ale.
The massage was amazing and is currently waiting to get challenged by a Thai massage, so I guess we have to try that one as well 😊

After Siem Reap we took a bus down to Phnom Penh which is the capital of Cambodia. We tried to check in at the hotel showing on our itinerary but they turned out to have already rented out the one airconditioned room that we had booked and didn't have anywhere else to put us. First flaw in the booking system. This lead us to another hotel which looked much nicer though, so it didn't really matter that much, apart from wasting a bit of money.
The atmosphere in Phnom Penh was way different than that of Siem Reap due to it's bigger size and capital-ish-ness. One thing was all the sleasy old white men walking around with early-teen thai girls on a backdrop of adverts shouting about the crime of child abuse being punished no matter where you are from or who you are, only underlining the obvious problem even further. That's not too interesting though, me not enforcing the law and they not minding it so putting that aside and watching the traffic instead leads to a whole nother chapter even though I'm writing it as part of this text.
To get it all started, they have policemen stationed at most bigger intersections hanging around and having lunch or something. Eating donuts. Once in a while one of them may jump out in front of someone checking for their drivers license and stuff but that seems pretty much to sum up their doings throughout most of the day. Watching those corners may give you some sense of safety... if you're blind. Turning your head slightly to observe the actual road will probably vapourize that illusion and make you wunder whether those policemen are simply random guys in costumes. First of all you will se an insane amount of moped, most of them loaded with mainly 3-6 passengers, usually being whole families with kids, grannies and all. These will all be on the road, pointing in some direction and going for it, but logic and traffic rules seems missing.
You may easily find a main road where most people stick to the rule of driving one direction in the left side and the other direction on the right but then suddenly having some dude zigzagging through traffic on the wrong side of the road as he went too far in on direction, turned around to go back but didn't bother changing side. Everyone does it. Even tuk-tuks and we were in them a couple of times as well. Makes you hold on to whatever just a little tighter. The thing to understand though, is that Cambodian traffic is all about giving way. There is no place that you have the right to be more than anyone else, so if someone turns out in front of you, you make room for it. Example being taking over someone by crossing into the other side of the road having heaps of oncoming traffic where the oncoming cars and whatnot will simply make room for you on 'their' side of the road.
Another example is doing a left turn onto a bigger road (they drive in the right side here) if the traffic currently doesn't allow for crossing the road, they simply drive on the left side zigzagging through opposite-going traffic till it allows for them to change side.
Enough of that. Our whereabouts in Phnom Penh can be listed on a very little piece of paper. We saw one further Pol Pot related sight being a school that he turned into a prison and toture chamber before prisoners got send to the killing fields for execution. Heaps of photos of late prisoners and their last posture arranged in some absurd mechanism of torture. Both Lea and I had nightmares the following night...
Finishing off Cambodia we headed to Phnom Penh airport thinking that we already payed everything through the agency but as it happened, the plane ticket was the least expense in departing from that airport. When we checked in, they surprised us by having a 15kg maximum luggage weight with $6 pr. extra kg which weren't written anywhere so us having seen only >20kg thresholds before had a good bunch of paying up to do and no chance to rearrange hand/check-in luggage as the hand luggage for some reason was free-rolling.
On top of that, we had a $25 airport tax to pay each so having been used to a full meal for $4, this was aggressively mugging our wallet.
We ended up departing though, heading for Bangkok again so here ends the adventure of Cambodia and first chapter of Asia with Lea.
Summarizing my impressions I've had a blast so far and intends to continue rolling! Cambodia was amazing and all reminded me a little of the Roskilde Festival which I know is unfair, but it had heaps of similarities.. sorry :P
We're getting a little more used to the heat by now but aircondition and plenty of cold showers are still being exploited to it's fullest and appreciated to great extend.

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