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Sam & Danielle's travels
I've had trouble uploading the last few blogs, so they are a bit out of date, but rather late than never...
Kuala Lumpur was very nice-for the last few days we went up the sky tower and tried to go up the Petronas Towers but it seems that they are closed on Mondays. We also plucked up the courage to try the food at one of the street stalls and were so impressed that we went back the following night!
When we arrived in Singapore we caught the MRT (tube) to our hostel, which was right next to the little India tube station. We stayed at the G4 hostel which was awesome-it was so clean and our room was lovely! Singapore is a lovely place and it would be great to live there-even the tube stations are spotless and everything is so modern, but as a tourist there's not an awful lot to do. We went to the Battlebox, a British bunker from WWII and saw the Merlion statue, but that was all we could find to do. We wanted to go and have a Singapore Sling in the Raffles hotel but it worked out at about 10 pounds, so we decided to leave that experience for when we have money!
We are in Bangkok at the moment! I wasn't really sure what to expect from Bangkok, in fact I thought I would hate it as I've only heard negative things about it, but after going to Indonesia I guess everything seems nicer, and I actually really like it here! We decided to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel and ours is about 5 minutes away from KhaoSan road. It's quite swanky compared to some of the other hostels we've stayed in-it even has a minibar! This is our third and final night in Bangkok. On our first day here we went to see a temple with the recling Buddha (the biggest recling Buddha in the world, apparently) which was pretty amazing-it has little pictures on his feet made out of mother of pearl and it was massive! All of the buildings around it are covered in little bits of mirror and shiny tiles so everything seems to sparkle.
The following day we visited the grand palace and the big market (can't remember the name!) The palace was very similar to the temple and had lots of statues. Sam, of course, was very happy with the number of photo opportunities. I was a bit umimpressed with the market-it was a lot more expensive than i imagined by then the pound has taken a few hits recently. Whilst in Bangkok we also visitd the River over the River Kwai and had alittle look around the war museum near by. We tried to walk ver but it was such a rickety little structure that we made it about halfway before turning back. There was a little bit of steel between the railway tracks and you could see through the gaps to the river which was a little bit unsettling, but definitely worth a visit! We went for a few drinks along Khao San road, which again, wasn't as cheap as we'd expected but something i think you just have to do while you're there! I thought that Bangkok would be a eally dodgy place to go, but apart from a few men saying 'Ping Pong show?' as we walked past we didn't see anything bad, apart from a few very old European men with very young Thai girls. We got robbed blind for the flight to Siem Reap from Bangkok-we had three options, the first was to get an organised bus from Khao San road which is apparently a known scam as the companies get comission from the hostels so they make the journey as long and uncomfortable as possible so you stay at the first one they take you to. Option 2 was to take a train, a few buses, a few tuks tuks across the border by ourselves. Option 3 was to fly for about £130 each. As we idn't have much time we decided to fly over, which saved us about 15 hours. Siem Reap was quite nice. We stayed in a little guest house called Palm Garden Lodge, which was down a dusty dirt track which was so lovely-we had a big room with a 4 poster and a tv, and the bathroom was spotless. On the day we arrived we went to watch the sun set over the tenples of Angkor, which would have been nice if it wasn't for the fact that every other tourist in Cambodia was doing the same thing and we couldn't see the sun through the clouds. The next day we went on a small tour via a tuk tuk. I must admit that we were a bit unimpressed by Andkor Wat, which sounds terrible, but it didn't really compare to Borobudar and Macchu Pichu. I think the only negative thing about traveling is that sometimes you get spoilt with nices views, etc, and if you don't see them in the right order then it can be a bit of an anti-climax. It was still very good though, but I think 1 day was more than enough. One of the temples has trees growing out of it, it looked really abandoned and cool-i have a feeling that this one (the bayon i think) was the one that was in Tomb Raider. We weren't very brave with our culinary choices in Siem Reap..one night we went to an Irish restaurant and the second we went to a different restaurant, where Sam was served a lovely chunk of glass in his curry and my food came out about ten minutes after Sam had finished his (but we do eat quickly so this is not really saying a lot). The next day we took a little bus to Phnom Penh-we saw little turtle things for sale at one of the little cafes that we stopped in along the way-very odd indeed! For our first day in Phnom Penh we tried to go to the palace and silver Pagada but i couldn't get in as they wouldn't let me cover my shouldes with a shawl, which i guess i should have seen coming. That night we went out for a drink with a girl we met on the bus. For what i thought was my penultimate day we went to a market and the S-21 museum which was rather sad but i felt like we should go while we were there. This is when it all got a bit crazy, as thanks to my mum i realised that my flight was the morning of the 6th, not the evening. To cut a long story short i had about 5 hours to get from Phnom Penh in Cambodia to Bangkok so that i didn't miss my flight home. The girl on the phone said that it would cost about $300 but when i arrived it was a lot less which was a big relief, but really was my only option. It was horrible leaving Sam, he came to the airport with and dropped me off at departures, but because of the mix up it felt like we'd lost a day together. I am home now and still adjusting to the cold! I arrived back on Friday and started work again on Monday, which was a big shock to the system but Im slowly getting used to it! Sam is in Vietnam at the moment and is planning to come home on 1st May, so the blog is now in his safe hands.
When we arrived in Singapore we caught the MRT (tube) to our hostel, which was right next to the little India tube station. We stayed at the G4 hostel which was awesome-it was so clean and our room was lovely! Singapore is a lovely place and it would be great to live there-even the tube stations are spotless and everything is so modern, but as a tourist there's not an awful lot to do. We went to the Battlebox, a British bunker from WWII and saw the Merlion statue, but that was all we could find to do. We wanted to go and have a Singapore Sling in the Raffles hotel but it worked out at about 10 pounds, so we decided to leave that experience for when we have money!
We are in Bangkok at the moment! I wasn't really sure what to expect from Bangkok, in fact I thought I would hate it as I've only heard negative things about it, but after going to Indonesia I guess everything seems nicer, and I actually really like it here! We decided to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel and ours is about 5 minutes away from KhaoSan road. It's quite swanky compared to some of the other hostels we've stayed in-it even has a minibar! This is our third and final night in Bangkok. On our first day here we went to see a temple with the recling Buddha (the biggest recling Buddha in the world, apparently) which was pretty amazing-it has little pictures on his feet made out of mother of pearl and it was massive! All of the buildings around it are covered in little bits of mirror and shiny tiles so everything seems to sparkle.
The following day we visited the grand palace and the big market (can't remember the name!) The palace was very similar to the temple and had lots of statues. Sam, of course, was very happy with the number of photo opportunities. I was a bit umimpressed with the market-it was a lot more expensive than i imagined by then the pound has taken a few hits recently. Whilst in Bangkok we also visitd the River over the River Kwai and had alittle look around the war museum near by. We tried to walk ver but it was such a rickety little structure that we made it about halfway before turning back. There was a little bit of steel between the railway tracks and you could see through the gaps to the river which was a little bit unsettling, but definitely worth a visit! We went for a few drinks along Khao San road, which again, wasn't as cheap as we'd expected but something i think you just have to do while you're there! I thought that Bangkok would be a eally dodgy place to go, but apart from a few men saying 'Ping Pong show?' as we walked past we didn't see anything bad, apart from a few very old European men with very young Thai girls. We got robbed blind for the flight to Siem Reap from Bangkok-we had three options, the first was to get an organised bus from Khao San road which is apparently a known scam as the companies get comission from the hostels so they make the journey as long and uncomfortable as possible so you stay at the first one they take you to. Option 2 was to take a train, a few buses, a few tuks tuks across the border by ourselves. Option 3 was to fly for about £130 each. As we idn't have much time we decided to fly over, which saved us about 15 hours. Siem Reap was quite nice. We stayed in a little guest house called Palm Garden Lodge, which was down a dusty dirt track which was so lovely-we had a big room with a 4 poster and a tv, and the bathroom was spotless. On the day we arrived we went to watch the sun set over the tenples of Angkor, which would have been nice if it wasn't for the fact that every other tourist in Cambodia was doing the same thing and we couldn't see the sun through the clouds. The next day we went on a small tour via a tuk tuk. I must admit that we were a bit unimpressed by Andkor Wat, which sounds terrible, but it didn't really compare to Borobudar and Macchu Pichu. I think the only negative thing about traveling is that sometimes you get spoilt with nices views, etc, and if you don't see them in the right order then it can be a bit of an anti-climax. It was still very good though, but I think 1 day was more than enough. One of the temples has trees growing out of it, it looked really abandoned and cool-i have a feeling that this one (the bayon i think) was the one that was in Tomb Raider. We weren't very brave with our culinary choices in Siem Reap..one night we went to an Irish restaurant and the second we went to a different restaurant, where Sam was served a lovely chunk of glass in his curry and my food came out about ten minutes after Sam had finished his (but we do eat quickly so this is not really saying a lot). The next day we took a little bus to Phnom Penh-we saw little turtle things for sale at one of the little cafes that we stopped in along the way-very odd indeed! For our first day in Phnom Penh we tried to go to the palace and silver Pagada but i couldn't get in as they wouldn't let me cover my shouldes with a shawl, which i guess i should have seen coming. That night we went out for a drink with a girl we met on the bus. For what i thought was my penultimate day we went to a market and the S-21 museum which was rather sad but i felt like we should go while we were there. This is when it all got a bit crazy, as thanks to my mum i realised that my flight was the morning of the 6th, not the evening. To cut a long story short i had about 5 hours to get from Phnom Penh in Cambodia to Bangkok so that i didn't miss my flight home. The girl on the phone said that it would cost about $300 but when i arrived it was a lot less which was a big relief, but really was my only option. It was horrible leaving Sam, he came to the airport with and dropped me off at departures, but because of the mix up it felt like we'd lost a day together. I am home now and still adjusting to the cold! I arrived back on Friday and started work again on Monday, which was a big shock to the system but Im slowly getting used to it! Sam is in Vietnam at the moment and is planning to come home on 1st May, so the blog is now in his safe hands.
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