Hello all, must apologise for the photo but as we don't have any of our own photos on here yet we're relying on the 'library photo's'. Can you believe all they had for Cambodia was this orangutan. Never mind the amzing sights of Angkor Wat, I haven't even seen a ruddy oragutan - although Rob has bee poorly with a chesty cold and flu like symptons and did resemble this orangutan at times when he was feeling sorry for himself.

Right, it's been a while since our last update so we've got a lot to catch up on. We spent 5 days in Bangkok. Sadly the Kho San Road is not what it once was and now resembles somethng closer to Magaluf - although Cat & Van we still enjoyed sinking a few Singhas. Needless to say we still had a great time. We visited lots of amazing temples and the Grand Palace as well as the more sulubrious sights of Pat Pong. Dingy, sad but somewhat funny we lasted all about 20 mins before bailing out but it had to be done. Thanks to Sam Collins (who we met in Africa) we spent an evening at the roof top bar of the Banyan Hotel which offers amazing views across Bangkok and had a lovely evening.

Key things to note about Thailand:

They don't do a basic bikin wax

Everyones out to make money and the tukl tuk drivers will rip you off

The taxi drivers don't like to use their meters and try to charge up to 5 times more - always tell them to get lost as you will find one who will take you on the meter

Beauty treatments are cheap as chips but reseble soemthing from the 80's

We loved it, it's a bonkers city!

From Bangkok we got the government bus service up to Aranya Pathet (can't spell it) to cross the border into Cambodia. Rob very cleverly looked up all the schams on the interent so we were prepared for everythng they were gong to throw at us. Predictibly the visa officials tried to charge us a tenner more to cross the border, we bartered them down to two pound fifty - corruption is rife in this country! The came the taxi / tuk tuk scham for the journey to Siem Reap. Siem Reap is about a 3 hour drive from the border along a dirt track with more potholes than you can imagine, bizarre for a main route and border crossing. Rumour has it that an unnamed airline is paying off the government to avoid building a road, thus discouraging people to travel by land. Taxis like to take their time and travel in packs, dropping you on the outskirts of Siem Reap so you then have to barter with a tuk tuk driver who promises to take you to the hotel for free - but you need to stay in one of his commission hotels. They try and tell you that taxis can't go into the town as they aren't based in Siem Reap - Bo**ocks! We had fun and stood our ground, eventually the taxi driver just took us to our pre-paid hotel - it's funny really, it's as if they think you don't know what is going on!

Siem Reap is the town base for Angkor Wat. Rob has put some photos onto snapfish - it was AMAZING! We hired bikes and cycled around 30km around the whole area taking in all of the temples. Angkor Wat is amazing in scale but some of the smaller more run down temples hidden in the junlge were more mysterious and intereting - thanks so much to Dixon and Katie for their generous gift.

From there we headed on to Battembang - the 2nd largest city in Cambodia. Allegedly a place where, according to the lonely plant, 'elegant riverside town....french-period architecture....and the remarkable chilled atmosphere that keeps travellers lingerig'. Bo**ocks. It's a s**t town with no sign of elegent river living as we know it and barely a restaurant to eat at, let alone a bar. It also pi**ed it down for 2 days. Still, with a smile on our face we hired a tuk tuk for the day and saw some more temples and some of the horrendous killing caves of the Khmer Rouge.

After a hasty departure we are now in the capital Phnom Penh staying as short a time as possible in order to plan our next trip to the coast - hurrah! We hvae a very basic guesthoue here but it's only two pound fifty a night and is nestled on stilts over the lake and is very picturesque.

A few observations about Cambodia:

Corrupton, corruption, corruption

The vehicle of choicee is a scooter and the aim is to get as many family memebers on as possible along with a large item you need to carry. This includes young babies under the age of 1 - no need for any head protection

If you don't opt for the vehicle of choice, then the car everyone loves is the good old Toyota Camry - they are everywhere

Road rules need not apply, just pull out whenever and drive on any side of the road, if all else fails just beep your horn more times than the next person and you will get right of way.

That's it for now, we'll update again once we're back from the beaches

Lots of love

Steph & Rob

xxx