The last stops of our Cambodian experience were Kampot & Kep; two amazing little tows just 40 kms away from the Vietnamese border on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. We visited Kampot first and spent 2 days there practicing the "dolce far niente" (sweetness of doing nothing). In our defense, there was no much to do there and that's what drew travelers there, searching for peace and quietness in this old French riverside village full of old colonial houses...

….And Sihanoukville revealed itself in all her splendor laying on the coastline of Cambodia, when we reached the top of the hill after kms of jungle and now ready to descend to town with our bus from Phnom Pehn, on schedule for a change. What we did not expect, was a tropical rainstorm which took us by surprise this time of the year; the wet season in fact is officially over in October; but rain thoroughly accompanied our first day at the beach. We pleasant...

Here we are entering another Asian metropolis, Phnom Pehn, with its noise, traffic, pollution, Tuk tuks, rubbish and phenomenally lively buzz. It came as a bit of a shock to our senses, after many days of small villages or provincial towns, to enter the capital of Cambodia where more than 2 mils people frenetically live their existence. We got dropped off after an 8 hours bus ride from Battambang at the West of town and as soon as we touch ground we got litera...

So….our next Cambodian destination was the country second largest city called Battambang, which we reached via a waterway through the biggest lake in Cambodia, Tonle Sap, and down to a smelly river leading to the city. The skanky boat ride was a blast albeit very long. We cruised in fact for 8 hours along amazing fishing villages and zig zagged around fishing nets thrown by local villagers. Fishing here is a matter of subsistence and hunt for cheap proteins t...

After 5 days in BKK, it was about time to get on the road. We are trying to make it a proper road trip and avoid flying anywhere, main reason is to keep as close as possible to the people and the land we will travel across. So we started this experiment by taking a 3rd class, no airco, hard seats, diesel fuelled train from BKK to the Thai/Cambodia border and stayed overnight in the last Thai village and last train stop - Aranya Prathet. The train ride was a bl...