RedTiger

Fianlly got acess to an internet machine for a few hours! Well what can i say about Kuala Lumpur(KL)? the taxis havce an interesting system at the airport - you have to buy a ticket for your destination from a kiosk and then queue up for a taxi - you give the guy the ticket and off you go - presumably this stops unlicensed cabbies from getting in on the action and stops bona fide ones ripping tourists off. Having said that 100 Malaysian ringits to go 20km was daylight robbery anyway. another English traveller I met who lived here as a girl in the 1950's thought it might be something the British left behind - you have to have a ticket for everything! She might be right as the Malaysians use some quite old expressions ... read more

First day here I went for the minibus tour as it covered Hellfire Pass and the Erewan Waterfall which is on 6 levels and takes an hour to walk up it. There were thousands and I mean thousands of Korean and Japanese tourists here. Most varrived after we did so walking back down was awkward as you were walking into a human tide walking up!! Waterfalls are worth seeing although due to my ongoing troubles with my leg/foot I didn't get very far up them at all and spent most of the time sat at the bottom watching the 'army' of people marching up. At lunch there was some catty remarks between a Dutch lady and a Korean lady about the 2 Russians on the trip - there was an obvious age gap of about 20+ ... read more

My final day in Siem Riep and the tuktuk driver persaudes me to do the Floating Market trip despite my misgivings about the $30 fee for the boat - I did say to him I wanted to ride in it not buy the bloody thing! He assures me the price is only $30 because there is only 1 person and I get the boat to myself. So off we set and on the way pass some amazing rice fields - once the rice plants are established the whole field is a luminous light green - if bourganvillias had green flowers it would be this colour. There's no breeze today but I reckon if there was thie whole field would be shimmering too - awesome! This as it turns out was the highlight of the day. After ... read more

Had a reasonably pleasant 6 hour bus journey here with the same bus company that pissed me about getting to Ratanakiri. Apparently, they are usually the best in Cambodia - punctual, clean, toilet on board, stops every 2-3 hours, decent air con and their drivers dont stop everywhere and anywhere to pick up friends or to make extra money from spare seats! The hotel The River Garden will get a special mention (slagging) on TripAdviser hotel reviews and a stiff letter to Loneley Planet who recommend them as the mid price óur pick'in their 2008 edition. The staff are very nice but the rest of the experience is pretty awful and I suspect the white Ausssie guy who sits in the office at the back of reception is the ówner'and is more interested in his own ... read more

Proper Bacon and fried eggs with fried cubes of potato and onion for brekkie then the moto chap turns up 30 minutes late - no surprise there, and off to the market. Banlung Market is a big one as Banlung is the provincial capitol. The 'minority peoples'as the khmers call them are here in force selling all sorts of herbs and plants gathered from the jungle where many of them live, vegetables like potatoes and green stick beans they've grown, papaya and bananas, tamarind still in the pod straight from the tree, wild ginger root, rows of small fish six to a bamboo skewer and then smoked over a fire, blocks of shredded tobacco. The ínority peoples'don't look khmer and speak their own languages. My moto driver can understand odd words and they seem to communicate ... read more