Hey there readers,
Emily here, sorry again about the long pause in our updates! In Cambodia right now… Ellie’s birthday was on the 20th and we went to the famous Temple bar at around 2 o clock in the afternoon and kept up the festivities long into the night. It was good timing as loads of people we knew were in Siem Reap at the same time, so we had a good b’day dinner with a beautiful cake at the end (which ended up all over Ellie’s face, of course). After that quick celebration in Siem Reap we moved onto Phnom Penh, meeting up with Laura, Flossie and Lara once again! We visited the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng (S21) together which was definitely difficult emotionally, but worthwhile. After those excursions a lot of our time was spent in an air conditioned café (it is REALLY hot here, 120 degrees yesterday!) where Ellie discovered the most delicious chicken fajita in the world (unlikely I know, but it was AMAZING). After the other three girls moved on (sad times) Daisy, Ellie and I went to the national museum after attempting to go to the Royal Palace and being rejected for our slutty clothing. We were in fact wearing floor length skirts and shawls, but apparently because shawls are potentially removable they don’t count. Grrr. The museum was dinky but fun, and I woke up early the next morning, donned a T-shirt and trekked to the Royal Palace by myself (leaving the other two sleeping). After my little excursion it was onto Sihanoukville, a town on the coast of Cambodia! We all loved it there and were quite happy to get back on a beach, although the jellyfish which we kept coming across meant we didn’t spend too much time swimming around (Ellie had never seen one before and her reaction was hilarious… let’s just say I learned a lot of new profanities). We went to various beaches around the place, our favorite being Otres which was fairly deserted and had no electricity! We had to go down the bumpiest, dustiest, orangest (not really a word?) and remote(est) road in the world to get to this beach… at one point a piece of metal flew off the tuk tuk narrowly missing Ellie’s eyeball! We were afraid that we weren’t securely attached to the motorbike after that incident, so we definitely held on tight while bouncing around in the back. The next beach we ventured onto was an exclusive PRIVATE beach, but we decided to crash the party as it was slow season. As we got settled on our lovely, comfortable beach chairs a young Cambodian man appeared from nowhere asking us for 6 dollars to be there. Ellie immediately got very lary and explained that we could just lie in the sea the whole time… “surely you can’t own the sea!”. We decided to bugger off rather than paying this EXTORTIONATE amount, but we were told we could lie on the skanky part of the beach for only a dollar. We took him up on the offer and headed towards the end of the beach, but as soon as he was out of sight we took a sharp turn back onto the beautiful bit. We lay there undisturbed for a few hours until Ellie decided it was safe to sit on one of the sunbeds… immediately the man reappeared and a few minutes later, we were escorted off the premises. Our final day in Sihanoukville we rented mopeds and headed to Victory beach. The morning was spent learning how to ride these beasts (don’t worry parents, we were given VERY stupid looking riding helmets to ensure our safety) and we were soon doing wheelies around the town. We decided to be CAREFUL (yes parents, give us some credit) and go on the empty roads until we felt more comfortable. However, Daisy’s brilliant navigation skills took us directly onto a highway towards Phnom Penh (Ellie and I knew we were DEFINITELY in Brig) where trucks were passing us every 2 minutes. We eventually turned around having taken the map off Daisy, and we headed to the Snake House. This was a restaurant with various reptiles housed inside… there were cobras, pythons, lizards, crocodiles and even a rabbit. Ellie however, simply remembers having ruined her pancake by pouring what she thought was sugar all over it… SALTY SALTYYYYY! After Sihanoukville we returned to Siem Reap and our lovely Daisy left us (we miss you D!). We started volunteering at Anjali about 10 days ago and are loving it… we have to teach them English and General Studies as well as doing “workshops” in the morning… so far we’ve taught them charades, wink murder and the memory game. They’ve taken a shine to wink murder, which our khmer translator now calls “the killing game”. Yes, we are a great influence. While they wanted me to be the detective, they simply wanted to watch ellie die dramatically! We made model volcanoes today which we are exploding tomorrow, as long as we can find baking soda!
Lunches at Anjali are quite a treat, as we get free genuine Cambodian food, which is usually delicious. We did have a bit of a mishap the other day however… while enjoying what appeared to be tofu soup we asked Sitha (our lovely translator/fellow teacher) what the darker cubes of tofu like substance were. He replied with something which sounded like “plan”, which we assumed meant some kind of plant. However, we couldn’t have been further from the truth. When going through categories of food our next lesson (carbohydrates, protein etc) Sitha reminded us of the protein we ate… “Blood!”. Realizing that the cubes were in fact congealed blood, we had a slight panic attack seeing as we are both very squeamish. After a few mutters of “oh my god, it was blood, I want to die…” I quickly said “it’s done, it’s done, we just have to get over it” and we moved swiftly on.
Oh, the Bartlett family has also been reunited in Cambodia… the rents are currently in Phnom Penh, but will return to Siem Reap in a few days. It’s been amazing to see them, and it’s also been amazing to sleep in their luxury accommodation at the FCC! (way better than what we’ve been staying in due to our strict budget).
Heading to Vietnam soon, will keep you posted!
