OK, so the last time you heard from me on here I was about to travel to Cambodia with Kirsty.
We arrived in Siem Reap after an interesting journey by private 'car.' We loved the place straight away - it was like a French city that had been taken over by Asian people - lots of french colonial buildings, lovely restaurants and bars and most importantly - shops!

We settled into 'Shadow of Angkor Hotel' and went and had some delicious food for Lunch.
Later that night we went out on the town to Bar Street and met two Canadian's - Jeremy and Peter. We had a few laughs over cocktails and headed back to our hotel for an early start the next day.

The following morning we bought out tickets for a half day tour of the famous 'Angkor Wat Temples.'
The first one we went to was Angkor Wat itself - a beautiful huge temple with green gardens and a massive mote around it. The second was Angkor Thom and it's crumbling surrounding sister temples, they were also all beautiful in their own way with lots of nooks and crannies to worm through.
We went to a few other smaller temple ruins, and the last one we went to was where Tome Raider was filmed - this was our favourite - the main sight being lots of very old trees snaking through the crumbling brick work.
It was a very hot day and after about 6 hours of temple trekking we gave in and went back to our hotel.

After a knackering day we had some dinner in a nice restaurant and stayed in bed watching our first TV in weeks with Breakfast in bed in the morning!...Bliss....

We decided to have a chill out day. We went to a gorgeous hotel pool and swam and sunbathed, followed by a massive night out with our new friends 'The Canadians.'
We were supposed to be going to Battambang the following day on a bus that was picking us up from our hotel at 8am. Seeing as we didn't get back until 6am I think it was safe to say that we knew we weren't going to get on that bus! So, at 7:45 I had to shout out to the guy banging on our door that we were still drunk and won't be joining them!....another lazy day in bed it is!

We arrived in Battambang the following day and checked into our lovely hotel room. We found a Gecko Cafe with supports a charity and ended up eating there everyday.
We planned to stay only 2 days so after lunch at the Gecko we got in a tuk tuk and went to the famous Killing Caves from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge day's. We hiked up hundreds of steps to get there but it was worth it for the magnificent view on the way up!

We were to tired to trek back down the hill so we decided to pay a dollar to go back down on a motorbike - I was just a tad scared and closed my eyes all the way down (sorry Daddy!)

We hoped back in our waiting tuk-tuk and travelled 20 mins to the bamboo train. Literally a plank on bamboo tied together (no sides), a hand rail at the front, an engine on the back with a driver and a long straight (bumpy) track to the other end. Me and Kirsty hoped on and travelled through the countryside past the little villages and came to a stop for a break (or to basically scam us into buying a drink from the village shop!) So we sat for 15 mins talking to the villagers before heading back on 'the train.'

Day 2 was spent on the internet and eating food. Not much else to say there! We were also too lazy to eat out so we ordered food from the gecko and got it delivered to our room. Only to realise that they didn't give us any cutlery - so I had to eat my spag bol with a toothbrush...no joke!

The next day we had a 5 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh (Capital of Cambodia.) We had a crazy tuk tuk ride to 'The Lake' where all the cheapest and nicest backpacker accommodation was.
We ended up sharing a 3 bed prison room with a weird German girl. The view from the decking was amazing! The tables and hammocks sat on a decking which hovered over the lake - beautiful.

Over the next few days we spent our time either chilling out on the hammocks reading books and eating yummy food or sightseeing. We went to see The Killing Fields from The war on the 2nd day and the S-21 torture prison which we thought was really interesting and quite disturbing.

On one of our days there we helped out at an orphanage (S.C.A.O) We stayed there for a few hours and watched there English classes being held by the other volunteers. We didn't really do much though which was a shame - it would have been better if we stayed there for a few days or a week then we could have taught them English and played with them.

We treated ourselves to a nice meal in town on the last night and said goodbye to Phnom Penh the following day and headed to Kratie.

There is nothing to do in Kratie apart from see the rare Irrawaddy Dolphins. We travelled in a tuk tuk through the most beautiful village I have seen yet. The villagers' houses were right on the Mekong river front looking out onto a truly stunning view of the sunset.
We watched the dolphins on our private long boat for an hour and watched the sunset go down before going back to our hotel.

LAOS TIME!!!
We left Kratie and headed up alongside the Mekong river to the Cambodia-Lao border. We got through the border and after 3 bus rides and a boat trip we landed on Don Det (Four Thousand Islands) in southern Laos. To some Don Det up: Swimming in the Mekong River, hammocks, cocktails, bike rides through the village and lots of cocktails at sunset. So perfect really! :)

We stayed here for 3 days doing exactly what we mentioned above, we would have liked to have stayed longer but we didn't want to get even more fat by sitting around doing nothing but eating, so we moved on up to Pakse and from there a bus trip to Tadlo....

Tadlo. A two hour bus ride through remote road side villages, rice paddies and lush green hills. I'm so glad we came here instead of boring Pakse as firstly it was beautiful(!!!) and secondly no one seemed to know about it. So we ended up being two of about 7 other westerners there!

We stayed in a cute little hut sitting over a pond with nothing but beds and a mossy net covering them. Surrounding us were villagers homes with children playing in the lake and running around after pigs and chickens.

The main attraction in Tadlo, and our reason for going, was the waterfall. It wasn't the nicest or prettiest waterfall in Laos but it certainly was the quietest with no one but Kirsty and I to enjoy it, sat in a quiet restaurant in front...

We stayed here for 2 days just reading our books and chilling out.

We then travelled north again to Savanahket. We only stopped here as the bus ride would have been torturously long. But we actually had a good couple of days cycling up the Mekong river front, visiting temples, museums and drinking hot chocolate (well...just me on the last bit.)

After Savanaket we travelled right up to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It was surprisingly nice with little else to do but chill out in the cool cafes and dine in the French restaurants...and that's exactly what we did!

I'd spoken to my crazy new girlfriends Flo & Tash that I met in Australia on Skype one night and they said they would be in Vang Vieng at the same time as me - that weekend! So as girls do we screamed our heads of with excitement and agreed to meet up with them two days from then. We were ecstatic as we had been trying to meet up since we left Australia.

So off to crazy Vang Vieng we went!

We met up with the girls and their new addition Hilary (legend), and after settling in, we wasted no time in getting ready to paaaarttyyy the night away like good old times in Aus.

We went straight down to Bucket Bar and loved it immediately, got straight on the buckets and shots and had a great night which ended in pancakes in bed at 4am.

The following day was supposed to start at 1pm for tubing....but obviously we were very hungover and there was no way I was getting into a bikini and drinking buckets that early! So we went for breakfast (which wasn't a lot as I nearly puked it up) and watched a few episodes of Friends on the TV. We eventually got our act together and joined other partiers in a tuk tuk to the river for Tubing!!!!!

The only way I can describe it is like Magaluf/Ibiza on the river...which obviously = AMAZING!

We weren't drinking that day but had a great time on the zip wire, playing volleyball in the mud, and tug of war.

We went back around 5ish, had dinner and went back to bucket bar for a repeat!

The following morning I woke up in Hilary's bed and clearly passed out laughing about something instead of walking 3 steps back to mine and Kirsty's room. I jumped out of bed, got ready and gathered everyone together for breakie time. We went back to the river for more tubing, this time we had a few shots and buckets to get us going. Little did we know that later on that day we would end up at the hospital cause some idiot pushed Flo in, she hit her foot on a rock, and sliced the arch of her foot open as a result. Seven stitches later we were all out drinking again to 'numb the pain'....more thing!

The next morning was hell for me as I said goodbye to the girls in a rush (still drunk) with my bus waiting for us outside. What made it worse was that I realised that I had lost my beloved camera, the girls didn't have it, so I lost it - thank god for insurance!!!!

With a banging hangover, Kirsty and I travelled further North to the gorgeous town that is Luang Prabang. LP is known for it's French buildings, French food and sophistication all set on the pretty Mekong. I only had time to stay here for 2 nights as I had to get down to Phuket.

We had our first evening in a lovely restaurant with great food and bought a few things in the night market which was one of the best we had been to so far. The following day we went to one of the two famous waterfalls in Northern Laos - Tat Kuang Si. It was multi-tiered, tumbling over limestone formations into a series of cold, turquoise pools, which hundreds of butterflies and a bear sanctuary - just gorgeous. We spent a few hours here swimming and sunbathing before travelling the hour ride back into town.

My last night in Luang Prabang was also my last night with Kirsty after a month of travelling together through Cambodia and Laos. We went out and had a lovely meal and a few drinks to celebrate and remenise over the past month. We were sad to leave each other, but we both had a great time, and I was ready to move on to the next and last bit of my trip - The islands of Thailand!!

Watch this space :)

PS: 3 weeks until I am home!

xxx