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Wow, it's been almost 3 weeks since the last blog update, shame on me! We only left Laos 3 days ago with only 1 day left of our 30-day visa. We really enjoyed this very laid back country. WE enjoyed a very nice New Year in Luang Prabang, although the city was loaded with tourists and prices went up 300%! Leaving there was almost like leaving a comfortable cocoon; the real Laos was waiting for us in Ponsevan, a city with the Plain of Jars near it but the vicinity is also testimony to the plain load of bombs the Americans threw on this poor country every day (!!) between 1964 and 1973. You can see bomb craters everywhere, hardly any trees and its dangerous to walk of the path as 30% of the BOMBS DID NOT EXPLODE AND LOTS ARE STILL THERE TO be cleared. The plain of jars were beautiful nevertheless but we were happy to be moving on to Vientiane, which did nothing to impress us so we left it after just one day. We took a bus to the south, got our Thai visa for 2 months along the way and visited Wat Phou in Champasak; a sleepy town at the Mekong with famous pre-Angkor temples at a beautiful location. The more south we got the hotter the temperatures, the better the food and the more relaxed the people. Close to the border we stayed 4 days on Don Khone, part of the 4000-island area. We had a nice bungalow at the river, 2 hammocks, a comfortable bed, good food and nice scenery, what else do you need? But our visa ran out so we had to move on and crossed the border with Cambodia the 16th of January. We went to Kratie first to see the Iriwaddy dolphins and then on to Phnom Penh, my god this city is hectic ater quiet Laos. But I will fill you in about that later. There are motorcyclists everywhere and they absolutely drive like maniacs, so you need eyes in the back of your head. We visited a few landmarks, one being the very depressing Tuol Sleng museum, a former interrogation/detention centres under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime 1975-1979. The atrocities commited here are inhumane. The scary bit is that they were commited by very young people at the time, totally indoctrinated. Most of them are now 'normal' husbands and wives leading a normal life. Most people responsible for this genocide are given amnesty from the government and some are in the current government, unbelievable. We decided to give the actual 'killing fields' a miss, as we had enough to think about after this visit. Off to Kampot next then. A provincial town south of Phnom Penh it has some colonial buildings and a totally deserted French colonial hill station, Bokor Hill station and national park. We visited this park part of a tour group and had a good day out. We saw a ghost town up Bokor hill, built there for the cooler weather by the French early 20th century. It was used by the Khmer Rouge as late as 1998 to hide and a lot of bullet marks in the building are witness to the fighting. After this bit of history we went to Sihanouk ville for some beach. We thought we could just relax and work on our tans but only partly succeeded in this. Sihanouk Ville is a Benidorm in the making and it attracts a lot of chavs - it makes for some nice people watching for a little while but because of the enormous tourism boom you get also bombarded every 5 minutes with Cambodians wanting to sell you a massage, manicure, fruit salad, jewellery, most of them kids who are so jaded or cheeky. Worse are the beggars, most of them missing one or more limbs and looking appalingly and begging for the dollars in your wallet... So fter 3 days we decided to pack up and take the 10 hour bus ride to the north of the country - we have now arrived in Siem Reap our final destination in CAmbodia
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