Guro and Caroline Blog

Cambodia in five days

Got onto the bus for Cambodia and did the usual circle around town picking up people before getting back to where we started - could have had half an hour extra in bed!! Seems this is the trend of the buses in south east asia. The bus took us to a small river by the Mekong, and a boat took us to the local coconut sweet shop! Very tasty, but found the snake wine most facinating... Went onto an island where we held a python (10kg 6 foot/2 meteres and 13 years old, placid soul) before lunch. Then back on the bus for 3 hours before sunset cruise to Chau Doc on the border. Aquired some new friends, Mark and Lea from Reading and Anthony from Australia.
The next morning we headed out in local rowing boats to see the local floating market. They row the wrong way - facing forewards! When Caroline started paddling with one oar to help our rowing lady go faster than Marc and Michelle, she got worried I was feeling left out, so she let me have a go at the rowing! Very excited I got up (after they had insisted I put a lifevest on) remembering my days of getting in the fishnets in a small fjord in Norway, thinking I would be great at this. After 3 minutes zigzagging and almost hitting 2 floating houses and another rowing boat, I realised rowing forewards was not for me though... Poor rowing lady had a bit of a job catching up with the others :)
Got onto a bigger boat heading for Phnom Pehn and got more friends - Nicky and Quentin from NZ. Passed the easiest border crossing ever, more boat, more bus and tuktuk to a hotel. Cheapest room so far - $2 a room!! Including all the biting ants. Lovely communal space by the lake though. So a late night :) and long sleep in the morning. Didn't do very much the next day. Just wandered. Caroline and I got very excited in a pharmacy checking out all the drugs we could think of. Like kids in a candy shop. Saw monkeys outside a temple as well. Then had a very late night in the hostel :)
The next day was a much more somber one as we went to the killing field and S21 - one of the Khmer Rouge prisons. Chilling history this country has. And absolutely amazing people, very impressed.
As both Quentin and Anthonys birthdays are coming up we decided to go out to celebrate. Went to the Foreign Correspondence club and saw Paul Ubana Jones play, much fun. After that we headed to a party in a strange place by a pool... Full of posh expats kids. Funny funny, esp when Anthony threw himself out in the ocean of tuktuk drivers shouting: tuktuk please!!!
Very hard to get up 3 hours later for the 6.30am bus to Siem Riep the next morning. Strangely we managed to sleep most of the way, even though Caroline couldn't really fit her legs in anywhere.
In Siem Riep we managed to start our Angkor Wat tour almost as soon as we got there, sunset over the main temple. Somehow we were convinced that going back for the sunrise was a great idea too, so next morning we started at 5am. Doing funny things to my body clock this. Angkor Wat is amazing. Absolutely huge (which is a good thing as most of korea and japan were there at the same time as us), and very impressive. Even though I might have vomited a little bit on it at the end of sunrise... Dodgy indian from 2 nights before needed to come out. Very funny in retrospect. In the evening we headed into town to meet up with Maggie and Ian, and to have our first Khmer meal. With Khmer folksong/dance on the stage.
So somehow we managed to finish Cambdia in just 5 days. Still would have loved to stay a bit longer.
After a very sad goodbye to Marc and Michelle and Anthony this morning we brought Nicky and Quentin with us to Kratie on the way to the Laos border. Got a 2 hour taxi on a very bumpy road! Paid $34 which sounded horendus until we calculated that the same trip in a taxi would have been 750GBP in London.
Will let you know more when we reach Laos! Might be a while as aparently there is no electricity on the island we are going first...
Lots of love, c&g

posted by Guro @ 13:27