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Cambodia started with a 6 hour bus ride from Saigon (after Phu Quoc) to Pnom Penh. We arrived at roughly 7pm and got a tuk tuk to our hotel that we had researched previously in ye old bible that is Lonely Planet despite the book often being highly inacurate in terms of price and sometimes exchange rate. That evening we went round the corner for an Amok curry and took an early night, so we would be fresh for our trip to the S21 Prison and the Killing Fields early the next morning.
At 9am our tuk tuk driver pitched up and we wnr to the S21 Prison which was essentialkly the place Pol Pot took thousansa of people to be beaten, totured and nealy all killed as part of his re-education programme to reset Cambodia to the year zero in terms of beliefs and tolerance. Basically he wanted to start Cambodia from scratch and instill the beliefs he thought important into every single Cambodian without contest or dissent. Overall about 12 people lived from thier time in the prison. After we wnet to the killing fields which was not any sort of a spectacle but it was more the though of how many people had been killed by Pol Pot that mattered. There was a tower of sculls in the centre, balanced on shelves on a 6ft by 6ft room cotaining 14000 skulls that had been dug up, some of the skulls you could see the gun shot entry holes and the places where they were beaten over the back of the head. Most were killed by hand rather than by gun to save bullets....
The next day we just milled around the city chilling and getting a feel for the place. We tried to go to the Palace there but I was wearing a sleveless top was not let in without buying a $10 t-shirt, so we decided to skip that one, opting for a couple of brews instead.
The day after we took a bus to Siem Reap that was supposed to be about 4-5 hours but ended up taking nearly 8 hoyurs as mid way we had a double tyre blow out on the rear left wheels of the coach causing us to skid but thank god not crash. So we all had to wait outside in the baking sun while the driver and co driver put on 1 new tyre before getting to a service station to purchase and put on a second tyre. We arrived in Siem Reap in the afternoon having left early morning and got to our hotel without a hitch and checked in; also managing to book a tuk tuk driver to take us round the Angkor Wat temples at sunrise the next day.
We got up at half 5 the next day for sunrise at the Angkor Wat temple which did look amazing. There were a serious amount of tourists there so we got ahead of them to get some peace and quiet especially with the stupid amount of Japanese folk knocking around in huge droves. WE soent a total of 6 hours wondering around the various sites of different temples and had a very enjoyable half day. The book says at least one day, if not 3 is needed but we very much disagree. One you have spent 6 hours looking at, walking through and around as well as climbing up temples of diffrent shape and sizes it starts to get a bit samey. The temples were magnificant as you will eventually see in the pictures (which we are hopeful will go up soon as we are in Singapore at the moment at heading to Oz in a couple of days). That evening we met up with Olly and his friend James aka Frank and Jimbo. Will came down with a pretty serious illness, too horrible to describe in this blog but similar to 'Val Disease' for those who have been to Val D'Isere. Me, Frank and Jimbo went out for a meal and ended up in a bar come club til 4am which was great fun and I could tell Jimbo was a good lad. The next day Frank and Jimbo went to the Temples while I chilled and had a wonder and Will stayed in bed to try and recover. In the evening us three (not including Will) went for a huge curry and some beers for the ridiculously cheap price of $7 each.
Early the next morning we boarded a bus to Bangkok with Will still very ill. We got through the border easily despite me ripping half the skin off my shoulders having carried both mine and Will's backpacks across the border as he at this stage could barely muster up the strength to walk the couple hundred metres across the border such was the extent of his illness. We arrived in Bangkok that evening and soon found a nice hotel named the 'D and D' Inn on the famous Khao San road, renowned as a backpackers haven with good nightlife (ask Rivlin!) and places to stay. Our crib even had a pool!
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