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All we ever seem to do is apologise for is being so lame at writing a blog but I'm going to say it again anyway. Sorry, again we have just been too busy. We are actually in Vietnam now but we had a fantastic time in Cambodia.
On the first day we met the group in Bangkok there were 10 of us in total, all women with the exception of Chris, he was loving it!!! The next day we left early to Siem Riep on a very long and bumpy bus ride through Thailand, and crossing the Cambodian border. The road on the Cambodian side to Siem Reip was amazingly bumpy (story is a particular air line pay the goverment to keep the road this way in order to encourage more people to cross the border by air rather than road) but when we weren't sleeping we enjoyed the fantastic scenery and local villages we passed. We arrived fairly late in the evening so we just managed to go for our first meal at the Khmer Kitchen and spent most of the night trying to remember everyones names! We had a fairly early night to get everyone ready for the next few days to come.
One of the highlights was getting up at 4h30 am (not really a highlight but the view was worth while) to go to the Ankor Wat temple to see the sun rise over the main wat, and then spending the next 12 hours roaming around the site looking at the fabulous wats, it was soooooooo hot though by the afternoon we were just dying to get a cold shower. There were some amazing temples, Ankor Wat, the main one, we also saw Ankor Thom (Ta Prohm) which is the one featured in a tomb raider film, i enjoyed running around pretending to be lara croft (I can wish). Me and all the girls seemed to have the same idea when coming on this trip to lose weight!! So the next temple Baphuan was perfect as we had to climb quite a lot of stairs (well i say stairs they're more like mini mountains) to get to the top, the only way we managed to do it was thinking about our legs and bums, legs and bums!!! The view was beautiful though and definitely worth the pain. The day was amazing and the temples were stunning but it certainly wore us out so we treated our self to some happy hour beers and cocktails. Oh and suprise suprise i had to go to the chemist as i had an ear infection!!!
Also in Siem Riep we went ty a floating village, it was crazy to see these families living in huts on the river and depeding on the season their houses move up or down the river. It struck me as sad that the kids didn't have gardens to play in but they seemed to be enjoying playing in the river (you wouldn't catch me in there if you paid me). It was quite incredible to see a whole village on the river, houses, a school and also shops, one even was selling electrical goods!!!!
One thing about Cambodia is that approx 60% of the population is under 18 and a lot of these children work!! They try to sell you anything and it will always be $1, even if you take a picture of them they want $1.
In Siem Reip we enjoyed a night in at the hotel bar where me and Kim enjoyed a couple of bottles of red wine (so nice from beer for a change) and we all chilled and played cards. Bless the Irish girls they were a tad slow getting the rules of the games which made it even more amusing especially as we used it to our advantage!!!!
After Siem Reip we headed to Kompong Cham where we stayed in a hotel on the Mekong River. We were only here for a day but manged to fit quite a lot in, we all went on tuk-tuk rides and visited the Phrom Pros and Phrom Srei (man hill and woman hill), we visted a little village and chatted with the locals and saw one of the local ladies pulling rice from a paddy. It's crazy to see the house (or shoud i say wooden huts) that these people live in and its the norm to have a few chickens, a cow, cat and dog as pets. Its getting quite strange that we will see cows roaming around on the side of the road and think this is normal!!!!
That afternoon we then went and watched a performance from the local kids doing local dances. This was really great to see as this was a special programme which is aimed a local kids who are orphons, many of whom have HIV or Aids or were previously street workers and the aim of the programme is to teach them the arts in a way to help then vent their emotions as well as teach them skills that hopefully provide them with a brighter future. It was really nice to see that something positive is happening to these poor kids but at the same time it's quite heartbreaking.
The next day we had a flying visit to Phnom Phen where we stopped off for lunch. From first glance it seems a crazy city, people everywhere trying to sell you things, the place was manic. After a quick lunch we were back on the bus travelling to the homestay. Here we met the community leader, heped teach the local kids english, play games and had diner. It was incredible to see the children learn english, so not like the children at our schools, they were so intent on learning and devoted all the attention to the volunteer American girl there. This village is one of the poorest villages and they rely soley on volunteers to teach them, that is when they are not working. That night we met a local family and sat in their house talking about our lives and theirs.
The man of the house was a Khmer Rouge solider durng the khmer rouge regime until it was discovered that his family was fairly well educated and then thrown in to prison, and most of his family were killed. He told us a little of what it was like but mostly he wanted to know about us and the type of houses we live in. They thought that everyone lived in wooden house and was surprised to hear different. Some of the guys from the group stayed in that wooden room for the night (amongst the rats running around). Chris, myself and three others went to a different wooden hut for the night, en route to where we were staying we came across a scorpion which didn't bode well! The 5 of us slept on the floor in one room. Kim and myself had a mini adventure in the night when we needed to go to the loo only to have to go out in to the garden to find it. We managed to wake the guard dogs at the same time which was a little scary as they were growling at us, but we managed to come away unscathed! Woke early and the sound of the family at work and also in part to the numerous pets they have (cows chicken, cockerals etc).
From the homestay we spent a few days in Sihanoukville which is a beach town, chilling on the beach, and catching some rays. We also went out on a boat for the day which was extremely amusing as everyone was expecting a nice luxury boat, instead of which it was a long tail boat in which we got absoluteley soaked. That night we went out to a local club to celebrate one of the girls' birthdays which was fun, except for the young western guys being very sleazy with the local Cambodian girls!! After crawling home at 4h00am, the next day was a write-off with all of us surfacing at around 13h30. So after some well needed breakfast me and the girls went and enjoyed a relaxing Cambodian massage and then we met up with Chris at Starfish cafe for some cheesecake and coffee. That night was a little more tame; went for a Mexican, had a few games of pool and hit the sack.
We then headed back to Phnom Phen for a few days. Here we visited museums, the royal palace and strolled around the gardens. Its a really lovely city when you get to look around. One morning at 5.00 myself and 4 of the other girls and Pal our tour leader (who is very amusing) joined the locals on the riverfront to do aerobics. This was very entertaining, and the bonus was watching the sunrise. Needless to say Chris stayed in bed!!!!!!
That day we had quite a traumatic day as we visited The Toul Sleng museum(prison museum) and the killing fields. The prison, formerly a school before the Khmer Rouge, was where they held and tortured victims of educated familes, men, women and children before taking them to the the fields of Choeung to be killed.
After this we made for Saigon in Vietnam where the first leg of our tour ended. Here we lost four of our group and picked up one more - a bloke as well, which made Chris' day. We spent quite a lot of time just wandering around Saigon and relaxing as the last 2 weeks had been pretty hard going, and didn't really get to appreciate the city until the last couple of days before we headed off on an overnight train up the east coast. But that's another story...
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