Before I start on Cambodia – we forgot to tell you that Mikey fired an M60 machine gun at the Cu Chi tunnels which he was very excited about! Anyway back to Cambodia....... so after a relatively easy border crossing we made it to Phnom Penh safe and sound. The first major difference between here and Vietnam and Thailand was how poor everyone is. There are beggars everywhere, mainly women and babies or small children wandering around on their own. They are absolutely desperate and will beg for the bottle of water out of your hands. We couldn’t help but give them any food and drink we had on us or buy them baby milk. They were, however the most friendliest people we’ve met and so much nicer than the Vietnamese. The other difference was the temperature – reaching 40 degrees most days with 90% humidity and we could only afford fan rooms not A/C rooms – yuck!
We stayed in Phnom Penh for 5 nights and because of the heat could not do too much. Also Mikey got really really sick. Sick as in vomiting, delirious ramblings and feverish shaking. In 10 years I have never seen him so ill. The worst was his temperature in the heat and trying to bring it down. It was very scary and all I could do was pour cold water over him repeatedly. I thought if he was still alive by the morning I would have to take him to hospital, luckily his fever broke overnight which saved us tapping our medical insurance!
(Jakey and Little Annie may not want to read the next part......)
Anyway so that kinda took up 2 days which meant that we didn’t see a lot of the city apart from the Killing Fields and S21 torture museum. They were definitely an eye opener, especially as all that happened not too long ago. The Killing fields is a great memorial to all those who died and the tower of skulls is an emotional testimony to the brutality that took place there. The skulls were labelled in age and sex which made it more real. Around the fields bits of clothing and fragments of bone of the dead were just lying around where they were left. The most upsetting part was a really large and old tree where the Khymer Rouge would smash the babies and children against. It was awful but we think it’s good to see these things so that their deaths are acknowledged and respected and it really makes you think about life and how lucky we are. That day we also went to the S21 torture museum. This was an old school turned into a prison and torture area where thousands of innocent Cambodians were sent before being sent on to the Killing Fields. Out of all those thousands and thousands, only seven were found alive at the prison when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. What was worse, which we found out afterwards, was that ex prison guards were the tour guides there! How crazy to be showing people around the place that you tortured and killed people, considering that graphic photos were on display everywhere showing what they did.
Anyway, enough horrible stuff!! We were going to explore a whole lot more of Cambodia but by this point we were extremely travel weary and I especially was getting fed up with the dirt and grime. So instead of moving all around we took the typical travellers route and went next to Siem Reap. On the bus ride there we stopped at a small town for a wee stop and encountered one of the grossest things ive ever seen. Ladies were walking around with big trays of deep fried crickets and cockroaches and stuff which was fine, I can deal with that. What I couldn’t deal with was the great big trays of TARANTULAS! There were hundreds of them all piled on top of each other, and to top it all off, the ladies had buckets of live ones too which were crawling all over them. Oh My God. One stupid lady was blocking our way back onto the bus and I was freaking out so some nice one legged beggar went and shouted at her to move away and let me on. Mikey gave him a dollar for his kindness! Although I was freaking, Mikey found it very exciting and had to get back off the bus to go and buy one of the tarantulas! A dead one of course but that is still disgusting. His plan was to eat it – after eating snake he thought he was fab – but when we got to our hostel he opened the bag and discovered that the evil crone hadn’t given him a deep fried, honey coated one but just a dead spider! With all the hairs still on its legs and everything! And it stank! So basically he didn’t eat it which I was very glad of. Before we got to the hostel however, we arrived into Siem Reap and were dropped at the bus station. As our bus pulled in, about 50 Cambodian Tuk Tuk drivers / hostel pushers ran straight for our bus and surrounded it like a deranged mob. As we got off about 20 surrounded us shouting ‘Tuk Tuk’ and ‘stay at my place’. They were really desperate for us to go with them and jostling us until Mikey did his big deep voice and told them all to shut up. Astonishingly they all did shut up! It was really bizarre and felt like we were in the middle of a riot. If it was dark I would’ve been well scared.
The only real reason to go to Siem Reap is to visit the temples at Angkor. We did this over 2 days and hired a nice little man called Cheang and his tuk tuk to take us around all the temples. First we did a sunset tour beginning at Angkor Wat which was beautiful and huge. We then went to Bayon where there are massive stone faces all over the temple. The best was the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed and we have pictures of us standing under the tree that Lara Croft fell under. We then watched the sunset from the top of a really high temple on top of a hill. There were hundreds of people sat on the ancient ruins waiting for the sun to set and everyone clapped when it went down, it was a bizarre experience!
The next day we did a sunrise tour and watched the sun come up over Angkor Wat. This meant getting up at 3am to wait for our driver. Early mornings are not good! The drive there in pitch black was fun though except when we stopped somewhere in complete darkness I didn’t know where we were and then saw a car pull up next to us and what looked like a man with a machine gun stepped out. To put it politely, I almost pooped in my pants and thought that this was it, we were gonna die in the middle of nowhere and no-one would know. Then he stepped in front of the car headlights and I saw it was an old man with a crutch! Mikey was totally oblivious to my near death experience! We were actually right outside the temple and completely safe! To get through the temple we had to stop and pray to the Budda and light incense, it was really cool. The sunrise wasn’t all that great but we had a little Cambodian boy bringing us chairs and hot chocolate while we waited so that was fab! The rest of the day was spent visiting various temples – we are now all templed out! Angkor was truly amazing and it felt like we were at an Indiana Jones film set the whole time. Certainly an experience we would recommend.
We also spent time down ‘Bar Street’ where buckets of Mekong Whiskey became our friends and managed to catch up with Bonnie and Tyler again (the Canadians) which was great and watch traditional Khymer dancing shows – very graceful.
That sums up Cambodia really, apart from the most painful massage we have both ever experienced – which will never be repeated! After 2 weeks there we took a very cramped and painful bus ride to the border where the aisle was filled up with bags and people and my seat didn’t have leg room so my knees were under my chin for 6 hours on the worst road ever with the biggest ditches. Lots of squealing pigs tied to the back of scooters kept passing us too - very strange and not animal friendly! We heard that the road is kept so bad so that a certain airline makes more money from flights between Siem Reap and Bangkok. Once we crossed the border though we knew we were back in Thailand especially when a nice comfortable coach with a toilet rolled up to take us into Bangkok. So, back to Thailand we go.................................
p.s. mummies and daddies may want to look at the pics first coz some are a bit grim xxxxx
