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Hello there, welcome to the third part of my journey so far......I write this whilst in Malaysia but this particulary entry speaks of my time in Cambodia.....
The immigration for the Laos/Cambodia crossing was an interesting affair, not being that official and too many $1 "extra payments" for each of the immigration officers. Basically if you didn't pay, you didn't get your passport back......so we paid.....3 times.
The border was located in the middle of nowhere and on entering Cambodia we were greeted swiftly by our new Cambodian best friend. He advised us that there was one bus arriving and that was the only option to travel with, luckily there was a fairly extorniate price for this bus ($23 is a lot there)....but it was that or walk for many many miles.....so we paid.
Upon the bus were a number of disgruntled travellers who were less than happy with the conditions of the $23 bus. Our Cambodian friend tried to calm the situation with some comedy, asking for a little more money and when asked if the bus arrival time of 7pm at our final destination was right (journey time 8hours) he replied "it's a little bit right". The number of disgruntled travellers were not impressed but Tom and I cracked up laughing at his witty responses (we arrived a little bit right at midnight).
I had decided to go it alone for a bit as Tom and those we were travelling with headed to Angkor Wat, where I had already been 4 years ago. I went straight to the capital, Phnom Phen. Whilst there I visted a number of its highlight sites and spent a bit too much time saying no to literally 100s of motorbike taxi/Tuk Tuk drivers. I was surprised by how much English was now spoken in Cambodia, especially by the child book sellers (6-12yrs old) who would greet you with the question "where you from mate?" on replying England they would then say "lovely jubbly, diamond geezer, oi oi saveloy"....comedy prevailed and I bought 3 books in Phnom Phen.
I left for Sihanoukiville the following day....the main beach resort of Cambodia which was described as having endless white sands and warm turquoise waters. On arrival I was disappointed. Too built up along the beaches for the amount of people there and too much rubbish left by immoral tourists....I searched and found one nice area which rescued my opinion of the place and it did have a good nightlife to be fair but overall it was a shame as with a little care it could have remained a paradise. The highly enthusiastic beach child fruit / bead sellers must have been informed of my arrival by their Phnom Phen counterparts....comedy once again prevailed and I bought high quantities of pineapple, mango and beads.
I returned to Phnom Phen to meet with Tom. On meeting him, he informed me he'd left his bag containing many important items (e.g. passport) on a bus in Siem Reap (6hours away)....long story short we recovered the bag with everything in the following day....with a huge amount of fortune. This delayed us in getting to Vietnam due to organisation of Visas...so we had 4 days to fill in Phnom Phen.
We visited the Killing Fields and S21 prison whilst there, the settings of the barbaric torturing and execution of 1000's of innocent cambodians in the late 1970's - 2 million were killed in total in just over 2 years. Both were uneasy to visit and quite upsetting to be fair, we couldn't bring ourselves to take photos and although "tourist sites" we were surprised by people wishing to take photos of things such as the 10 metre high tower filled to the top with skulls of the geoncide victims. The worst part about this being that they were seperated into age catergories as well as men, women and children......
So maybe I ended this on a slightly somber note but reality can be somber at times....It's now part of Cambodias' history and they are recovering as a nation which is good to see...an experience like that certainly brings you back down to earth....
So that's Cambodia.....I've since travelled through Vietnam but i'll write that leg of journey up another time.....
Hope all is well with one and all.....bye, ciao, tchau, au revoir, aufwiedersehn.....
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