Tuesday 23 November 2010
Entry No. 8 by Clare
We visited The Angkor Temples, the main five. We spent most of the day climbing and walking around, they were huge beautiful stuctures. They were so touristy it was hard to take a good photo, we had to sneak off around the backs were nobody seems to go. This was our last day in Siem Reap, we booked a bus for the next day to Kratie. After our 5.30am alarm we got our bus, we took about 9 hours in total after a swap to a minibus half way through (really bumpy ride). Kratie is a riverside town, with narrow streets and a big market. We got ourselves a room and rested for the evening. The following day we got on a trip to visit the Irrawaddy Dophins, which cost us $10 each, we set off at 7am, tuktuk to the riverfrot & a boat from there. The trip was overall quite dissapointing, we hardly saw any dolphins and were back by 10am. We napped and went to the market, brought some pineapple and some rice and beans in a bamboo stick with a little coconut juice (a local speciality) and booked a bus to leave for Ban Lung. We watched a beautiful sunset that evening (see my facebook photos) with a beer, it was lovely. Once we arrived in Ban Lung Josh had been feeling sick all morning on the bus. We arrived at this hotel around 6pm called 'Star' it seemed ok at first for a $5 room, but we started to notice it was really dirty, ants all over the bathrooms, lots of cockroaches crawling in under the door, flys etc it was really horrible. Early the next morning Josh was feeling worse (D&S) so I went out to find a new hotel to swap to, I found one for $8 but it was so much nicer. Josh stayed in bed all day so I went an explored the market, which was so cheap, a bunch of bananas for 20p and I went off the look at tour offices. This town was very prone to powercuts which was bad for Josh stuck in the room. The next day Josh was a little better, I took him to have some food early morning and to check out some treks I'd found. Josh starting feeling bad again so he went back to the room for the day. We had some rice in the evening and just played cards. Josh was a little better the next day so we went for a big walk around the town, lots of sports being played by the locals, volleyball and bowls mainly. We relaxed for the rest of the day as we had an early start for our trek. The first day of our trek started at 8am, we went off with our trekking bags from a jeep ride to a boat to the first villiage. We were also with an Austrian journalist there to do a piece on rural villiages in Cambodia. We trekked through the forest for about 6 hours to a waterfall, stopping for lunch and water breaks. Josh and I were with a ranger, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, who lived near the jungle and a tour guide. We had a beautiful waterfall all to ourselves, it was so clear and we swam as soon as we arrived. Our tour guide cooked us dinner on a fire, we went to bed in our hammocks about 8pm. I was a bit ill in the night and didn't sleep well in a hammock, Josh was OK. We had a really hard start to the trek, up a mountain, it was so hard to walk. After this we walked a further 5 to 6 hours through the jungle to a village where we slept in a storage shed belonging to a farming family. We slept in our hammocks again but made them into tents, another early night. The final day was a lot easier, we visited a dam made in The Khmer Rouge era to force the farmers to try to continue farming all year round. We then visited a mass grave of the village from the Khmer Rouge era, where around 100 bodies were found. After we trekked to the centre of the village and visited the local primary school, cemetry and meeting room. The population is 1300. We had lunch in a locals house and got a boat to another village. The buildings were quite different here, more land also. We walked in on a local celebration, drunken Cambodians everywhere singing and swaying. We left back for the town after. One of the tour guides saw a small puppy on the road and stole it to have as his own, it was really cruel but is the kind of thing that hapens all the time there. The next day we wanted to get money out and the ATM's didn't accept our cards (all mastercard) and we only had about $46. We we planing on leaving the next day for Laos as our visas run out and go to Don Det, a small Island. But they don't have ATM's so we have to get a bus to Pakse, further up and miss the Islands, after paying for our bus we had only a few dollars, so we walked 8km to a lake which was lovely and clean and we swam. After we returned we spent almost our remaining money on some beer, bad priorities. The following day we got up, got on the bus and stopped for an hour at Stung Treng and got to the Laos border about 2pm, paid the stupid stamp fees and had to wait there until almost 6pm for our bus to Pakse. The man who worked there all seemed a bit dodgy but friendly and we tried to teach them card games but they didn't understand. When our bus arrived we were really happy, then we were told it was full and we had to get into the luggage compartment (under the bus). It was really uncomfortable, already had 3 people in and they said in 15 minutes it reaches Don Det, so we thought we would get a seat then. We arrived, the three got out and then another 3 girls and a man and his son got in, we had another 2 hours to go. It was horrible, the other girls were complaining explaining they had spent more money than the locals and didn't get a seat. The drivers assistant was just getting rude and threatening to throw us all off. We arrived and walked for about 90mins looking for a guest house. Everywhere was full becasue it was lame on a saturday night. We found one and just relaxed. The next day we wanted to go to the province's Museum but it was a public holiday so it was closed. We walked around, went to the market and we booked a bus for the next day to Savannakhet and had some dinner. We had a 5 hour bus ride, it was really uncomfortable. In Savannakhet, we went to a Dinosaur Museum as there are many fossils and bone remains from the area. A team of French Archeologists sponsor it. We went to a Karaoke bar in the evening which was very cheesey but a fun night. We hired bikes the next morning, cycling around the town and riverside was really nice. We cycled to the bus station to look at tickets for our next visit. We also tried some lovely barbequed Bananas, yum.
Monday 15 November 2010
Photos
Here are some photos from the trip so far in no particular order, its just the first time we have got round to doing it and the order that the camera uploads them. Enjoy.
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| View over Hong Kong from the peaks |
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| At the Forbidden City |
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| With Black H'Mong people in Sapa, they aren't children, they are just small |
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| During our cultural trip to Disneyland |
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| I stole her stuff |
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| Forbidden City again |
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| Big Buddha in Hong Kong |
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| Giant Pagoda in Xi'an |
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| Clare and our Sapa guide Linh |
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| Walking through Sapa |
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| Elephant in the Citadel of Hue |
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| Monkey drinking Red Bull on Monkey Island |
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| At the Killing fields in Phnom Penh |
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| At the Angkor temples |
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| Fishing village near Pursat |
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| View of the sunset in Kratie |
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| Shoes I got made in Hoi An |
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| A foot massage by fish in Siem Reap |
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| On the Bamboo train in Battambang |
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| The Crocodiles at the Crocodile farm in Siem Reap |
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| Halong Bay |
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| Girls from a town near Battambang |
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| An entry into the Cu Chi tunnels, ridiculously small |
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| Photos from our bus during the flooding between Hanoi and Hue |
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| Silk Worms at the Silk farm in Siem Reap |
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| From the Phnom Penh killing fields |
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| The weather we had to get through after Koh Kong Island |
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| And this is the boat we were on during that weather |
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| Handsome man with a rocket launcher |
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| Halong Bay tour |
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| The Citadel in Hue that was bombed during the way |
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| A torture room at S-21 |
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| Angkor Wat temples |
Sunday 7 November 2010
Entry No. 7 by Josh
This has been the first time we have had the oppurtunity to write a blog, because the internet speeds are frustratingly slow in most places of Cambodia so thats why it has taken a while. Sorry.
So I will continue from where we left off from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City-HCMC) in Vietnam. On our first full day we got a coach to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 2 hours away from Ho Chi Minh Central. They are probably the most famous series of tunnel networks in Vietnam from the war. It was really interesting to see how the network was built, and it was really well thought out which is why it worked so well against the Americans. The traps were everywhere and the site now still has signs everywhere saying 'Danger!! Mines!!'. We got the oppurtunity to get in the tunnels which was really horrible. I am far too big for it and it had been raining earlier that day. I was also wearing a bag which made in even harder, so I didn't really enjoy squatting through the tunnels for about 5 minutes, but its unbelievable to think that the villagers at the time spent around 6 hours down there at a time. On the way back we stopped off at a handicrafts place that the government fund so is fully staffed by disabled people or land mine victims, its a nice idea but and you can see them making the pictures, sculptures ect but the price in the shop is way too high (roughly 45 US dollars for a bowl) so I don't think they sell much. Back in HCMC we spent a couple of hours at the War Remnants Museum. It had a lot of old weapons and tanks and had a lot of documents about the war and the anti-war movement around the war, however it was presented in a quite obviously biased way. For example, the north Vietnamese troops are always 'glorious' and the USA army are always 'barbaric'. Overall though, the museum was quite impressive, and they had remade a section of a South Vietnamese prison which was quite grim. That evening, we found a vegetarian restaurant that was really cheap, which we would go on to use a few times in the next few days. That evening, I found out about Brighton's 4-0 away win at Charlton.
The next day was really relaxed, didn't do anything significant, just explored the city. We did more of the same the day after that, but managed to find an olympic sized swimming pool so we had a nice swim. I think me and Clare both agreed that HCMC was the worst place we have been to in Vietnam. It has quite a lot of tourists, so everything is pretty expensive, and there still isn't that much to do
We had an early bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Cambodia is apparently the worst place in the world for corruption and scamming, and we experienced that even on our bus journey into Cambodia. The only place to get a visa there is on the border. So on our bus the driver told us that the only way to get a visa was to give him the money and he will sort it out for us. We sort of just ignored him thinking we would sort it out ourselves so he went away. The only tourists on this bus were us, and a Japanese man and he gave the man his money. So as we approached the border we were the only ones there without our visas sorted. As we went through immigration we spoke to a english girl who had done the same with her driver but had given him 25 dollars for it (the Lonely Planet says that the usual rate is 20 dollars). So we asked the border control officers where we can get one and they just said to get one from our driver. We knew it was probably more expensive than it should be so we got back on the bust and just went for it and gave him the 24 dollars (cheaper than the other driver, suspicious). As it turns out, the visa booth was just a one minute drive up the road and as I saw it had a price list on for 20 dollars for a tourist, I asked him for the money and our passports back. But it was too late and he just got it done for us, making 8 dollars out of us. It was really frustrating but being in the minority in their country where every official is corrupt, there is really nothing you can do about it, so we just had to accept the losses. The bus dropped us off in Phnom Penh quite far away from anything significant. We walked around for about 15 minutes in the heat before giving up and getting a tuk-tuk to a hostel we knew the location of. Phnom Penh is quite expensive and was fairly busy so we ended up getting a room for 10 dollars a night, more than we usually pay for a room. We found Phnom Penh to be fairly boring, especially considering it is a capital city. But the next day we hired a tuk-tuk to go to S-21 (Toul sleng prison) where they kept and tortured thousands of political and regular prisoners between 1975 and 1979. It is an old school converted by the Khmer Rouge, yet knowledge of its existence has since been denied by high ranking Khmer Rouge officers when they were trialed. Most prisoners weren't killed here, but taken to the killing fields about 20 minutes away to be killed. So that is where we went next. It doesn't look like much when you arrive, the only buildings are a small museum and a tower full of bones dedicated to the 8000 people who died here. But when you walk around the ditches that have been excavated its quite strange. In some sections, the heavy rain has caused the bones to be lifted to the surface, so you can be walking around and will occasionally see a tooth or a piece of a bone on the floor. In the killing fields, nobody knew what happened here as they used to play loud music to drown out the screams. But it was really sick, they never used to use bullets as it wasted ammo, so they would bludgeon them with farming tools, and they even had a designated tree where they used to hit babies against to kill them. Before coming to Cambodia, I din't know much about the genocide here so we are learning quite a lot.
On our last two days in Phnom Penh we had to go to the Laos Embassy for our visa and spent the rest of the day around the market, which is huge. Our next stop was a seafront town called Sihanoukville. We found a room for 4 dollars and ended up staying for 2 nights and 3 days in the hostel that was called M*A*S*H. The weather was amazing during the day but every night was torrential rain and lightening, then you wake up sweating in the heat in the morning, it was really odd. The area of the town we stayed in seemed to be full of old English men with their young Khmer wives. Clare got challenged to a game of pool by a ladyboy where the winner could take me home, and she accepted the challenge. Clare lost the game of pool on the black ball, but luckily I don't I was the ladyboys type so I got away with it. The hostel we were staying in had a dog which had just given birth to puppies in the last three weeks. They were tiny and couldn't walk or open their eyes properly, but Clare became a little bit obsessed with them. After one night of heavy rain we woke up to find one less puppy, but Clare made us look for it. I found it soaking at the bottom of a step it had obviously fell down, so being a hero I picked it up and saved it, and it was OK.
The next place we went to was also along the coast, it was fairly small and was called Koh Kong. There are 40 white people living in the town, all running restaurants and hotels, so when you speak to one they say things like 'you're new in town, whats your business here?'. It feels like a western film or something but it was actually a friendly place. It had a large market which was fun and we also spent a day there going to Koh Kong Island, where we had a BBQ on the beach and went snorkelling. You aren't allowed to sleep on the island, apparently because their is a lot of illegal logging that goes on that they don't want tourists to know about so we got an evening boat back. But the weather was horrendous on the boat so the journey wasn't very nice. We wasted another day in Koh Kong thinking there would be something to do, but there wasn't so we just went swimming and relaxed and looked for where to go next. Roads aren't very well made in Cambodia so everytime you want to make a big journey you have to go back to Phnom Penh annoyingly. So going back on ourselves, we got our bus back and got an immediate transfer in Phnom Penh onto a bus going to Battambang. Battambang was quite poor, and it showed, and everything shuts down at around 9pm, but we managed to find some things to do. We found a dirt cheap veggie place just open for breakfasts for locals, and we went there on both days in Battambang. On our second full day there we met a tuk-tuk driver who took us around all day doing some things in the neighbouring towns around Battambang. He took us to a peanut farm and through a papaya farm, then onto a mountain that has a lot of Buddhist shrines at the top, surrounded by monkeys that bite, and then on the way down you can go into the killing caves which is were a lot of bodies were dumped during the war. That day we also went on the Bamboo train which is closing in December to become a commercial train line. But basically its a track with lots of one carriage mini trains. In fact, they are just a platform on wheels which local villagers use or its used to transport rice. The track only has one line so if a platform comes the other way, then the general rule is that whoever has less weight on it, has to disassemble the carriage and let them through and then ake the carriage up again. Annoying, we had a light carriage so we had to stop 3 times and nobody ever got off for us. The village we stopped in was a brick making village so we had a little look round the furnaces. Our driver, called Mr Tony was a really nice guy and grew up nearby so everybody knew him. He bought us some snacks for the day as well. One of them was his favourite, which is coconut and jasmin wrapped in like a sticky rice dough, packaged in a leaf. It costs less than 2p each and called something like 'Noom Com' and Clare and I have become a bit addicted to them, eating them most days when we can find them now. We left Battambang the next day and went to a small nearby town called Pursat. I don't really know why we went there but it was Ok. The room was 3 dollars and we only saw one other white person in the two days we were there. We went to a floating village that changes location depending on the weather. We shared a motorbike to get there and hired a boat when we were there to look around the village. For some reason, in a small village of about 3000 people, they even had a floating police station with police canoes. Seemed a bit unneccesary. Other than that, Pursat was quite boring. Its not very developed so we didn't see any alcohol or bars there, so we ended up staying in for the evenings and watching TV.
The next day we came to Siem Reap, and found ourselves a reasonable hostel. It is very touristy here, it feels a little bit like a Spanish Villa town in the summer or something like that. The market is very big and there are loads of restaurants and bars. Its the best place to get to the Angkor temples from so there are basically tourists all year round here. After the first day here settling in we went to a crocodile farm which was quite good fun. The farm boasted about conserving crocodiles and looking out for them, however in the farm shop they were selling croc blood, bags, stuffed crocodiles and other products, and most restaurants around town sell crocodile meat so I am not that sure that they care too much about the well being of the crocodiles. For dinner, we went out to a vegetarian restaurant and met someone who we had spent some time with in Vietnam, so we stayed out drinking with her until quite late. The next morning we had a vegetarian cooking class which we had heard about. Not my thing at all, I don't have the attention span for it but it was good fun, and Clare liked it. We learned how to make a few things like Spring rolls. Then in the afternoon we got a tuk-tuk to the national museum but didn't even go in because entry was 12 dollars. We spoke to the tuk-tuk driver and he agreed to take us to the War Museum which was only 3 dollars entry. It was actually a really good display. They had loads of destroyed helicopters, artillary, anti-aircraft guns and normal tanks, and you could get inside them and hold guns and mines and stuff. They also give you a free tour guide. Our one was a nice guy who was a land mine victim and lost his fingers from the shrapnel. But he didn't like his job, because every time he cried when he explained about how each thing worked, as he had lost lots of friends during the war. It was quite sad, his family had all died in the war and he wasn't paid to work there, they just provided him with a bed instead, but he was actually a nice guy and would always say 'now you know how lucky you are'.
The next day we went to a silk farm outside of town where you can see the whole process of making silk. I guess it is government funded because its free to get in and you get a guide, and they use minimum technology in order to provide more jobs. It was really interesting, and they had hundreds of thousands of silk worms alive at any one point.
The next day was my 21st birthday and I woke up with Clare having loads of small presents for me. I told her I didn't want to carry anything really so she got me lots of small sweet presents like bracelets. We went to a vegetarian place for breakfast and Clare treated me all day. She took me to a new hotel where we would stay for two nights. It is probably the nicest room I have ever stayed in, with everything you need like a swimming pool and stuff so it was amazing to stay there, and we got the best room in the whole hotel for only 18 dollars a night as well. We found a gym/spa thing during the day which we thought would be fun for my birthday so we went there but it was a bit of a con calling it a gym/spa. The steam room wasn't steamy, the sauna wasn't hot, the jacuzzi wasn't warm or bubbly and the gym equiptment wasn't working, but we made it fun and didn't take it seriously so it was still good. Then we went for a swim back at the hotel before going out into town. I didn't want to do too much on my birthday, just have some nice food and drinks at the good bars. We played pool, had some Gin and Tonics, found some nice bars with some nice cocktails, had dinner at a Thai restaurant, then went back to the centre for some more drinks. We also had a 'Dr Fish massage' where you dip your feet into a tank full of small fish that bite away all the dead skin from your feet. Its sounds really wrong, but it feels alright after a while. Clare didn't like it so didn't do it for long and used their promise of 'If my fish don't make happy, we will no charge'. The night was really good, stayed out until the bar street was closing down in most bars then went back to the hotel. As we had planned for the next day, we did nothing all day. We stayed in our nice room, had beakfast in bed, watched 18 episodes of prison break in a row, and only left the room in the evening to get dinner.
Today we are looking at finally going to the temples, then planning what we are doing next. We are thinking about going on a long trek possibly somewhere in North Cambodia, nearer the Laos border.
So far, Cambodia has been really good fun. The weather is quite hit and miss, but mostly is a nice warm temperature and not too hot. The people here are really friendly, and considering what they suffered in the war, they all seem open to talk about it. Most people who we have met have been personally affected by it, given that a quarter of the population died, but they just seem to get on with it. Most of them only seem to be angry that none of the Khmer rouge leaders are getting punished for what they did. A lot of them still work in the government today, which people don't like. The trials for a lot of the high ranking officials are still going on today, but are in the meanwhile are being kept imprisoned in a nice facility. It seems unjust that they aren't punished and most just die of old age or disease now rather than exectution or whatever. A lot of people don't like that Pol Pot was allowed to die of natural causes as well rather than being executed or punished severely. From what we have read, most Khmer Rouge don't even show remorse, they just deny responsibility, but the whole trialling system is flawed here, mainly because like I said before, everything is corrupt. You can even see the corruption yourself, people who we have met say that the police take money off the tuk-tuk drivers and take bribes for almost any crime, its ridiculous but people just get on with it.
Anyway, I'm finally done.
So I will continue from where we left off from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City-HCMC) in Vietnam. On our first full day we got a coach to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 2 hours away from Ho Chi Minh Central. They are probably the most famous series of tunnel networks in Vietnam from the war. It was really interesting to see how the network was built, and it was really well thought out which is why it worked so well against the Americans. The traps were everywhere and the site now still has signs everywhere saying 'Danger!! Mines!!'. We got the oppurtunity to get in the tunnels which was really horrible. I am far too big for it and it had been raining earlier that day. I was also wearing a bag which made in even harder, so I didn't really enjoy squatting through the tunnels for about 5 minutes, but its unbelievable to think that the villagers at the time spent around 6 hours down there at a time. On the way back we stopped off at a handicrafts place that the government fund so is fully staffed by disabled people or land mine victims, its a nice idea but and you can see them making the pictures, sculptures ect but the price in the shop is way too high (roughly 45 US dollars for a bowl) so I don't think they sell much. Back in HCMC we spent a couple of hours at the War Remnants Museum. It had a lot of old weapons and tanks and had a lot of documents about the war and the anti-war movement around the war, however it was presented in a quite obviously biased way. For example, the north Vietnamese troops are always 'glorious' and the USA army are always 'barbaric'. Overall though, the museum was quite impressive, and they had remade a section of a South Vietnamese prison which was quite grim. That evening, we found a vegetarian restaurant that was really cheap, which we would go on to use a few times in the next few days. That evening, I found out about Brighton's 4-0 away win at Charlton.
The next day was really relaxed, didn't do anything significant, just explored the city. We did more of the same the day after that, but managed to find an olympic sized swimming pool so we had a nice swim. I think me and Clare both agreed that HCMC was the worst place we have been to in Vietnam. It has quite a lot of tourists, so everything is pretty expensive, and there still isn't that much to do
We had an early bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Cambodia is apparently the worst place in the world for corruption and scamming, and we experienced that even on our bus journey into Cambodia. The only place to get a visa there is on the border. So on our bus the driver told us that the only way to get a visa was to give him the money and he will sort it out for us. We sort of just ignored him thinking we would sort it out ourselves so he went away. The only tourists on this bus were us, and a Japanese man and he gave the man his money. So as we approached the border we were the only ones there without our visas sorted. As we went through immigration we spoke to a english girl who had done the same with her driver but had given him 25 dollars for it (the Lonely Planet says that the usual rate is 20 dollars). So we asked the border control officers where we can get one and they just said to get one from our driver. We knew it was probably more expensive than it should be so we got back on the bust and just went for it and gave him the 24 dollars (cheaper than the other driver, suspicious). As it turns out, the visa booth was just a one minute drive up the road and as I saw it had a price list on for 20 dollars for a tourist, I asked him for the money and our passports back. But it was too late and he just got it done for us, making 8 dollars out of us. It was really frustrating but being in the minority in their country where every official is corrupt, there is really nothing you can do about it, so we just had to accept the losses. The bus dropped us off in Phnom Penh quite far away from anything significant. We walked around for about 15 minutes in the heat before giving up and getting a tuk-tuk to a hostel we knew the location of. Phnom Penh is quite expensive and was fairly busy so we ended up getting a room for 10 dollars a night, more than we usually pay for a room. We found Phnom Penh to be fairly boring, especially considering it is a capital city. But the next day we hired a tuk-tuk to go to S-21 (Toul sleng prison) where they kept and tortured thousands of political and regular prisoners between 1975 and 1979. It is an old school converted by the Khmer Rouge, yet knowledge of its existence has since been denied by high ranking Khmer Rouge officers when they were trialed. Most prisoners weren't killed here, but taken to the killing fields about 20 minutes away to be killed. So that is where we went next. It doesn't look like much when you arrive, the only buildings are a small museum and a tower full of bones dedicated to the 8000 people who died here. But when you walk around the ditches that have been excavated its quite strange. In some sections, the heavy rain has caused the bones to be lifted to the surface, so you can be walking around and will occasionally see a tooth or a piece of a bone on the floor. In the killing fields, nobody knew what happened here as they used to play loud music to drown out the screams. But it was really sick, they never used to use bullets as it wasted ammo, so they would bludgeon them with farming tools, and they even had a designated tree where they used to hit babies against to kill them. Before coming to Cambodia, I din't know much about the genocide here so we are learning quite a lot.
On our last two days in Phnom Penh we had to go to the Laos Embassy for our visa and spent the rest of the day around the market, which is huge. Our next stop was a seafront town called Sihanoukville. We found a room for 4 dollars and ended up staying for 2 nights and 3 days in the hostel that was called M*A*S*H. The weather was amazing during the day but every night was torrential rain and lightening, then you wake up sweating in the heat in the morning, it was really odd. The area of the town we stayed in seemed to be full of old English men with their young Khmer wives. Clare got challenged to a game of pool by a ladyboy where the winner could take me home, and she accepted the challenge. Clare lost the game of pool on the black ball, but luckily I don't I was the ladyboys type so I got away with it. The hostel we were staying in had a dog which had just given birth to puppies in the last three weeks. They were tiny and couldn't walk or open their eyes properly, but Clare became a little bit obsessed with them. After one night of heavy rain we woke up to find one less puppy, but Clare made us look for it. I found it soaking at the bottom of a step it had obviously fell down, so being a hero I picked it up and saved it, and it was OK.
The next place we went to was also along the coast, it was fairly small and was called Koh Kong. There are 40 white people living in the town, all running restaurants and hotels, so when you speak to one they say things like 'you're new in town, whats your business here?'. It feels like a western film or something but it was actually a friendly place. It had a large market which was fun and we also spent a day there going to Koh Kong Island, where we had a BBQ on the beach and went snorkelling. You aren't allowed to sleep on the island, apparently because their is a lot of illegal logging that goes on that they don't want tourists to know about so we got an evening boat back. But the weather was horrendous on the boat so the journey wasn't very nice. We wasted another day in Koh Kong thinking there would be something to do, but there wasn't so we just went swimming and relaxed and looked for where to go next. Roads aren't very well made in Cambodia so everytime you want to make a big journey you have to go back to Phnom Penh annoyingly. So going back on ourselves, we got our bus back and got an immediate transfer in Phnom Penh onto a bus going to Battambang. Battambang was quite poor, and it showed, and everything shuts down at around 9pm, but we managed to find some things to do. We found a dirt cheap veggie place just open for breakfasts for locals, and we went there on both days in Battambang. On our second full day there we met a tuk-tuk driver who took us around all day doing some things in the neighbouring towns around Battambang. He took us to a peanut farm and through a papaya farm, then onto a mountain that has a lot of Buddhist shrines at the top, surrounded by monkeys that bite, and then on the way down you can go into the killing caves which is were a lot of bodies were dumped during the war. That day we also went on the Bamboo train which is closing in December to become a commercial train line. But basically its a track with lots of one carriage mini trains. In fact, they are just a platform on wheels which local villagers use or its used to transport rice. The track only has one line so if a platform comes the other way, then the general rule is that whoever has less weight on it, has to disassemble the carriage and let them through and then ake the carriage up again. Annoying, we had a light carriage so we had to stop 3 times and nobody ever got off for us. The village we stopped in was a brick making village so we had a little look round the furnaces. Our driver, called Mr Tony was a really nice guy and grew up nearby so everybody knew him. He bought us some snacks for the day as well. One of them was his favourite, which is coconut and jasmin wrapped in like a sticky rice dough, packaged in a leaf. It costs less than 2p each and called something like 'Noom Com' and Clare and I have become a bit addicted to them, eating them most days when we can find them now. We left Battambang the next day and went to a small nearby town called Pursat. I don't really know why we went there but it was Ok. The room was 3 dollars and we only saw one other white person in the two days we were there. We went to a floating village that changes location depending on the weather. We shared a motorbike to get there and hired a boat when we were there to look around the village. For some reason, in a small village of about 3000 people, they even had a floating police station with police canoes. Seemed a bit unneccesary. Other than that, Pursat was quite boring. Its not very developed so we didn't see any alcohol or bars there, so we ended up staying in for the evenings and watching TV.
The next day we came to Siem Reap, and found ourselves a reasonable hostel. It is very touristy here, it feels a little bit like a Spanish Villa town in the summer or something like that. The market is very big and there are loads of restaurants and bars. Its the best place to get to the Angkor temples from so there are basically tourists all year round here. After the first day here settling in we went to a crocodile farm which was quite good fun. The farm boasted about conserving crocodiles and looking out for them, however in the farm shop they were selling croc blood, bags, stuffed crocodiles and other products, and most restaurants around town sell crocodile meat so I am not that sure that they care too much about the well being of the crocodiles. For dinner, we went out to a vegetarian restaurant and met someone who we had spent some time with in Vietnam, so we stayed out drinking with her until quite late. The next morning we had a vegetarian cooking class which we had heard about. Not my thing at all, I don't have the attention span for it but it was good fun, and Clare liked it. We learned how to make a few things like Spring rolls. Then in the afternoon we got a tuk-tuk to the national museum but didn't even go in because entry was 12 dollars. We spoke to the tuk-tuk driver and he agreed to take us to the War Museum which was only 3 dollars entry. It was actually a really good display. They had loads of destroyed helicopters, artillary, anti-aircraft guns and normal tanks, and you could get inside them and hold guns and mines and stuff. They also give you a free tour guide. Our one was a nice guy who was a land mine victim and lost his fingers from the shrapnel. But he didn't like his job, because every time he cried when he explained about how each thing worked, as he had lost lots of friends during the war. It was quite sad, his family had all died in the war and he wasn't paid to work there, they just provided him with a bed instead, but he was actually a nice guy and would always say 'now you know how lucky you are'.
The next day we went to a silk farm outside of town where you can see the whole process of making silk. I guess it is government funded because its free to get in and you get a guide, and they use minimum technology in order to provide more jobs. It was really interesting, and they had hundreds of thousands of silk worms alive at any one point.
The next day was my 21st birthday and I woke up with Clare having loads of small presents for me. I told her I didn't want to carry anything really so she got me lots of small sweet presents like bracelets. We went to a vegetarian place for breakfast and Clare treated me all day. She took me to a new hotel where we would stay for two nights. It is probably the nicest room I have ever stayed in, with everything you need like a swimming pool and stuff so it was amazing to stay there, and we got the best room in the whole hotel for only 18 dollars a night as well. We found a gym/spa thing during the day which we thought would be fun for my birthday so we went there but it was a bit of a con calling it a gym/spa. The steam room wasn't steamy, the sauna wasn't hot, the jacuzzi wasn't warm or bubbly and the gym equiptment wasn't working, but we made it fun and didn't take it seriously so it was still good. Then we went for a swim back at the hotel before going out into town. I didn't want to do too much on my birthday, just have some nice food and drinks at the good bars. We played pool, had some Gin and Tonics, found some nice bars with some nice cocktails, had dinner at a Thai restaurant, then went back to the centre for some more drinks. We also had a 'Dr Fish massage' where you dip your feet into a tank full of small fish that bite away all the dead skin from your feet. Its sounds really wrong, but it feels alright after a while. Clare didn't like it so didn't do it for long and used their promise of 'If my fish don't make happy, we will no charge'. The night was really good, stayed out until the bar street was closing down in most bars then went back to the hotel. As we had planned for the next day, we did nothing all day. We stayed in our nice room, had beakfast in bed, watched 18 episodes of prison break in a row, and only left the room in the evening to get dinner.
Today we are looking at finally going to the temples, then planning what we are doing next. We are thinking about going on a long trek possibly somewhere in North Cambodia, nearer the Laos border.
So far, Cambodia has been really good fun. The weather is quite hit and miss, but mostly is a nice warm temperature and not too hot. The people here are really friendly, and considering what they suffered in the war, they all seem open to talk about it. Most people who we have met have been personally affected by it, given that a quarter of the population died, but they just seem to get on with it. Most of them only seem to be angry that none of the Khmer rouge leaders are getting punished for what they did. A lot of them still work in the government today, which people don't like. The trials for a lot of the high ranking officials are still going on today, but are in the meanwhile are being kept imprisoned in a nice facility. It seems unjust that they aren't punished and most just die of old age or disease now rather than exectution or whatever. A lot of people don't like that Pol Pot was allowed to die of natural causes as well rather than being executed or punished severely. From what we have read, most Khmer Rouge don't even show remorse, they just deny responsibility, but the whole trialling system is flawed here, mainly because like I said before, everything is corrupt. You can even see the corruption yourself, people who we have met say that the police take money off the tuk-tuk drivers and take bribes for almost any crime, its ridiculous but people just get on with it.
Anyway, I'm finally done.
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