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Published: March 3rd 2008
Hello Everyone,
Hope you are all doing well in the UK and beyond.
We are currently in a Land Down Under, and have been here for about 2 weeks enjoying the sun.
On our last blog we informed you that after leaving Laos we headed for Cambodia.
We begrudgingly boarded our boat from the stunning Island of Don Det, then changed over to a mini bus which drove us to the border. From the border we were transferred to yet another bus, then driven for a very long time on a cramped bus to Phnom Pen the Capital of Cambodia.
We reached Phnom Pen at around midnight, not having booked anywhere, we took to the Streets with our big backpacks and started enquiring at the many guesthouses along the riverbank. Luckily it didn't take us long to find somewhere to rest our sleepy heads, we snapped up the last room in the Happy Guest house, which made us very happy indeed.
We woke early and decided to head for the biggest market in Town, where we could buy cheap goods from H & M, Billabong and other well know brands. The market was huge, and bustling with
people trying to sell you there cheapy t-shirts and "real" rolex watches, so real they were light as a feather and the gold had a kind of yellow tinge to it, that hurt your eyes if you looked at it too long.
We spent the day wandering around, bartering at the stalls and contemplating presents for the family (note contemplating ;-)
After a busy day of shopping we headed back through the busy streets to our happy Guest house.
The following day we decided to head for The Killing Fields, which were closed due to some official meeting, so we headed for the S-21 museum, which was also closed....next we went to the National Museum, which luckily was open!
We had a good look around, then went for a walk along the river.
Luckily the next day everything was open, so we got to see the Killing Fields and the S21 museum. It feels a bit strange visiting these sights, but they are big tourist attractions, and the Cambodians like to make sure that visitors to their Country have a good understanding of what happened to them and their ancestors. After a day taking in the rather bizarre tourist
sights, we planned for our trip to Kampot, where we could visit the National Park.
The next day we boarded the bus for Kampot, and arrived in a very small Town, being hassled by many tuk-tuk drivers trying to take us to their friends guesthouses. We picked one friendly looking driver, who then walked with us up the road to his guest house (we didnt have to pay him for the walk), we settled in and found our bearings in the little town. After some lunch we were chatting to a restaurant owner who told us that the National Park we had intended to visit, was closed for the next 4 years whilst they built a new road leading to it, typical.
We were quite surprised that our oh so friendly tuk tuk driver/hotel owner had forgotten to tell us this information when we told him why we were visiting Kampot, but alas we had already checked in to the hotel, so we spent one night then headed further South for the beaches of Sihanoukville.
We arranged for a taxi ride to Sihanoukville, as it turns out there are no buses there from Kampot, instead of paying expensive tourist
rates we decided we would be fine heading South with all the locals, with their local taxi service.
We walked to the taxi station, climbed aboard and waited for our driver. Another local lady clambered in the back seat of the car with us, we all smiled and exchanged some awkward sign language, which has to be done when you dont speak the same language. Next another little old lady climbed onto the back seat with the three of us, smiled handed us both a banana (maybe we looked hungry) then we waited a bit longer for the driver whilst listening to some extremely loud music on the radio.
Next, two local men squashed into the front passenger seat together, and another man clambered into the back of the car with Jem and I, the banana lady and the other local lady. At this point we had 7 people in a five person car, we started to laugh at ourselves for being so tight, and not spending the extra pound or two, so we could travel in a little luxury (having a seat to yourself). Then the driver climbed in, started the engine, moved over to the right hand side
of his seat.......made room for one last man,who was actually the driver.
All 9 of us, headed to Sihanoukville, cramped up in the 5 seater car for around 3 hours, and whilst we couldn't actually speak to any of them particularly well, we felt we knew them very well by the time we reached our destination!
Sihanoukville was a typical sea side town, full of guesthouses, restaurants and little beach bars. After a few hours on moto-taxis attempting to find somwhere to stay, we settled for a noisy beachside room (as it was cheap) and explored our surroundings.
After exploring we discovered that there was a much nicer part of town to stay in, and it had free accommodation! so we stayed at the noisy beach side place for just one night then headed to our free loading digs.
Utopia turned out to be just as noisy as the beach side place, but as it was free, so we just wore our ear plugs everynight and hid under the covers in our dormitory hoping our sleeping bags would muffle out some of the noise outside.
The noisy accommodation was more than made up for, by the fact that a
few kilometres walk from us, there was a private resort and beach, we spent our days at the posh place pretending to be guests and using the facilities, we just paid $5 to the poolside attendent everyday who would then bring us towels and cater for our thirsty needs throughout the day.
We treated our time down in Sihanoukville as a little rejuvenating holiday for ourselves, and spent 5 days enjoying the sun, pool and cocktails, I think this was about the time you were all at work ;-)
After Sihanoukville we headed to Siem Reap where the famous Angkor Wat and masses of other ancient temples are. We arrived in Siem Reap late at night after a long bus journey, but quickly made friends with a local tuk tuk man who agreed to be our driver for the following days visit to Angkor Wat.
Our Tuk tuk driver was waiting for us early the next morning, and after some negotiating of which temples to visit out of the many which are in the area we headed straight to the most famous, Angkor Wat.
We arrived to a gaggle of children trying to sell us maps, bottled water,
tacky keyrings etc, but managed to avoid spending any money on unwanted postcards and made our way into the Temple. Despite it being an incredibley hot day, we wandered around the temple and the surrounding grounds for a good few hours, taking pictures and mingling with the tourists and monks who were scattered around.
A group of monkeys outside the temple took a liking to a shiny keyring on Jems bag, and a few came up to us and sat on the ground in front of us, looking up with their cute furry faces, waiting for us to give them some food.
A few hours later we met up with our tuk tuk driver and drove to the next Wat (temple). Now bearing in mind we had visited a ridiculous amount of temples in India we weren't sure how much we would enjoy the days events, we were pretty sure India had templed us out for good, but we visited 5 different temples that day, and spent a good few hours in each having a wander round, the temples were really impressive and some were so ancient they had massive old trees growing in amongst the rubble.
Post temple
visit we were quite hungry, so we headed to a restaurant recommended in the bible of Lonely Planet called Dead Fish Tower. Its a crazy restaurant spralled out over several different levels, with staircases hidden in nooks and crannies so you can't see where to go, or how to get up to the next level. Its hard to describe really, but imagine David Bowie in the Labyrinth when he's trying to get that baby and its all upside down and all over the place....We'll post some pictures instead. They also had a crocodile pool for you to hang over and watch whilst waiting for your dinner.
Anyways, the food was good, and it lead on to several bevergaes in nearby bars and some boogying to cheesy tunes.
A hungover day later, we headed across the border to Thailand, ready to meet our travelling buddies Sam and Luce, and then Will and Nina who were visiting for their two week holiday in the sun.
The border crossing was as usual, eventful. A small mini-bus packed with too many tourists with way too much luggage, who had to endure 6 hours of dirt track roads. Poor Jem had to sit on
the floor of the bus for most of the journey as her seat was broken!
Rumour has it that an un-named air-line are paying the government to slow down road improvements on the route to the border of Thailand, so that tourists will continue to fly over the border, instead of travelling on such an uncomfortable route. Cheeky Monkeys, but we went for the uncomfortable option anyway, as it was cheap!
Returning to Bangkok was quite a strange experience for us, as when we first arrived there we had only just left India. Two and a half months later we had seen even more Countries and were heading back to familiar territory. Whilst there we did our bit for charity and visited the restaurant Cabbages and Condoms, which supports Aids charities around Bangkok, promoting safe sex with the help of figures such as Captain Condom, dressed from head to toe in Condoms and contraceptive pills.
In Bangkok we stayed at the same hostel as before and met up with Sam and Lucy who were at the beginning of their travelling adventure. We boarded a boat for a tour around Bangkok, and stopped off at a dodgy snake farm,
and a stunning temple along the way. Our boat tour took us past villages of houses on stilts, and we were lucky enough to see a few massive monitor lizards who were just sitting on nearby rocks sunbathing outside people's houses.
Seeing Sam and Lucy was the first contact jem and I had had with anyone from back home in 4 months, it was so lovely to see some familiar faces, so we celebrated out in the City of Bangkok that night and headed to a bar to watch a band and have some drinks.
The following day we headed to the Airport to meet Will and Nina off the plane. The poor little monkeys had been flying for hours and were suffering from lack of sleep, so me and Jem boarded them onto yet another plane and made them fly down to Krabbi with us, part of the South of Thailand (we knew they would appreciate it once we arrived and they had got over the sleep deprivation).
We spent one day in Krabbi before deciding to head to the Island of Ko Lanta. Ko Lanta was a beautiful Island, which is luckily not quite so popular
with backpackers just yet, so it still has a very quiet and relaxing side to it. Our beach huts were literally, well on the beach. We stepped out of our doors, and walked only a few metres to the sand and stunning views of crystal clear blue water.
Our huts were at the Paragon resort which consisted of a wooden shack bar and restaurant, owned by a lovely man called Mong. Mong was really good fun, despite constantly trying to get us to drink monkey brain whiskey, and for the guys to drink monkey sperm, we had a really good time at his bar.
We spent a week lounging around, sun bathing, going for walks, snorkelling with the amazing coloured tropical fish, absolute heaven! then we headed to the next Island on our itinerary, Ko Phi Phi.
Ko Phi Phi turned out to be full of tourists in compariosn to Ko Lanta, and had alot more bars and clubs, a bit more like somewhere in Spain, but it was still a lovely Island, just very different.
Again, we spent our time basking in the sun like lizards, plus muchos fine dining and drinking. One day we hired sea kayaks
and paddled our way around the bay to Monkey Beach. The name speaks for itself really, there were alot of monkeys, some were so fat from all of the food tourists had given them they couldn't even be bothered to walk away from you when you stood really close, they just kind of looked at you, and then hopefully towards your bag hoping for some more grub. It was a beautiful beach with white sand and clear water, you could see all of the fish swimming around underneath you as you kayaked past.
After two weeks of relaxing in Paradise, we made our way back to Bangkok and said our goodbyes. We could'nt believe how quickly our time down South had gone, but we had yet another plane to board, onwards for the next leg of our journey, to Australia.
We are now in Melbourne and have been enjoying Oz for nearly two weeks. We will obviously update you on our Aussie adventures very soon, and we promise the blog wont be quite so gigantic!
Hope you have enjoyed this instalment.
Love from the Animals x x x x x x x x x x
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ros clare
non-member comment
Looks lovely
Hi you two.What a wonderful time you are having.I love the condom man.Keep on searching out the temples and keep having fun!Love you lots Mum and Richard xxx