Hey all!
These entries are a bit out of date as we are in Thailand now, but i will try and catch up with them all.
We left Vietnam and crossed the border from Saigon to Phnom Penh and immediately noticed the dramatic differences between the two countries. Usually you expect the transition to be slow and become evident once you reach the cities, but the poverty here was very evident. There were shanty towns and extremely poor people on the streets as we drove past. Another big difference was the colour of their skin. Cambodian people had very dark skin, in contrast to Vietnam where it seemed to be their main priority to keep their skin fair so they could obtain better employment.
We made our way to the capital Phnom Penh and noticed there was an abundance of Land Cruisers with tinted windows, which next to the poverty really stood out! We heard that the people who own them are corrupt officials who have received the cars as pay offs, which was pretty worrying because there was a lot of them around. Also it was believed that some of them are owned by pimps as they were parked up outside massage parlours all night. It is also quite surprising the amount of Western men with Asian girls that are walking around. The government has had a massive crack down on Western men and child prostitution and if you see anything suspicious you can report it to the authorities.
We decided to get involved in some charity work here to help out with the poverty issues. An Austrailian guy has set up a charity which arranges trips to the city dump where 1400 kids live and takes them food with the donations that people give. The families that live there work on the dump finding things to recycle and earn about $0.50 a day. We went to the market to buy food and then drove to the dump. It didn't smell as bad as we thought it would and i guess thats because there isn't any rotting food there just rubbish! The kids came running from all angles screaming because they were so excited.They lined up and at the truck and we gave the food out to them. It was so rewarding just to see their smiles once they got some bread and fruit. We were talking to them whilst they were in the queue and they were teaching us their handshakes and getting excited when they had their picture taken because they like to see themself on the screen.
We were so glad we went there and are hoping to volunteer in some orphanages on the way, when we get the chance to stay in one place for a long amount of time. After Phnom Penh we went to a place called Kampot and stayed in a bamboo bungalow on the river. This was our first bit of proper 'roughing it' because the bungalow didn't even have a door, just a curtain! We stayed in there for a few nights but the mosquitos were bad and then when a spider crawled in, Alistair nearly had a heart attack and we moved to an inside room!
As it was such a quiet area, we hired motorbikes (Note to mum and dad: ignore that part!) and went exploring through villages and to a seaside town. It was great to see things that you wouldn't normally see if you stuck to the main roads and when we got to the seaside, the local seafood we had was fantastic. We had a massive crab and king prawns with Kampot black pepper which is supposedly used in all the good restaurants in Paris. The crabs were in cages in the sea and whatever we ordered they waded out into the water and got it. It's probably the freshest food we have ever had. We left there and rode up to a lake to meet a local guy and his family that worked in the guesthouse. After we had been driving around for two hours, our friend Sophie, got off her motorbike and accidently lent on my exhaust pipe which instantly fused her leg to it and ripped a layer of skin off. When we tried to put water on it, a local guy was like "no no!" and rushed off to get some cream. Obviously they know more about it than us so she let him put something on her leg which turned out to be toothpaste! I don't think it did anything for the burn and it didn't heal properly for ages.
At night we ate at restaurant that was owned by a guy from Manchester and he sold the biggest rack of baby back ribs we had ever seen! It was like Alistair's dream and he's not stopped talking about it since! The guy also had some branston pickle which he showed us just to make us jealous that he was going to be eating it later! It's weird the food you miss when you're away. I really miss beans and cheddar cheese which i rarely eat when i'm at home anyway?
The place we were staying in was called Bodhi Villa and was so chilled out and everyone was so friendly, that we ended up staying a lot longer than planned. The place was on the mekong river so everyone went swimming all the time to cool down. The best time to swim was at night because everything was pitch black around so we could see the stars perfectly. There were also phosphosresents is the water which were bright neon in the darkness, it was absolutely fantastic! The local people here are so friendly and it was really nice to have kids running up to speak to us without asking for money. It's easy to start getting critical because sometimes it feels like everyone just sees you as a walking dollar sign. That is the case for most of the places in Vietnam but doesn't seem to be in Cambodia.
After Kampot we headed to Siem Reap which is where the temples of Angkor were found. We bought a day pass to go around the temples and managed 5 of them before i was a bit 'templed out'. We went to the one where Tomb Raider was filmed which was pretty cool but some of them were so busy it was difficult to get a decent photo. When we were walking inside Angkor Wat, it had just been raining and the stairs were wooden (you know what's coming!) and i slipped with my flip flops on and fell down the stairs. A little Japanese man had to help me up and luckily i fell on my side, so i got a nasty bruise on my thigh and not my back.
We spent most of our nights at the fab night market in Siem Reap, which was full of jewels, clothes and cushions (and yes i have bought cushions for my 'house' that i haven't even got yet!). There was a bar in the middle for when you were tired with shopping and a pool with fish in, that eat the dead skin off your feet!
On one of the days we got a tuk tuk to the Children's hospital to give blood as we couldn't afford to donate anything and got a bag of free stuff yeyy. When we came out, our tuk tuk driver was waiting for us on the pavement and when he tried to drive it off the pavement, the tuk tuk collapsed in front of everyone! Our excuse is that it was a really small tuk tuk and there was 3 of us in it, so technically it wasn't our fault!
Siem Reap was our favourite place in Cambodia because it had a really good atmosphere and there was some really good things to do. We didn't stay too long though as i was making us bankrupt from the night market, so we headed to Kratchie, slowly making our way up to the Laos border.
In Kratchie, the only thing to do and see was the mekong river dolphins. We arranged a boat trip to see them and expected them to be like normal dolphins were they jump out of the water etc. These were a funny shape and we only saw a tiny bit of their head when they came up for air. There is suppposed to be only 100 left in the river due to overfishing when the Khmer Rouge were in power, but we're not sure if that ius actually true. The trip was a bit of a rip off with price, but when it's the only thing to do, they know that people pay it. After the trip we only had £10 left so went to the ATM and realised that it only took visa not mastercard. We went back to the hotel to ask where another bank was and they said that was the only one in town and there is no other bank further up north where we were heading. Alistair had to use the last of the money to take a bus on a 4 hour journey back the way we came to get some more money. We had no ways of communicating with each other and because we had no money we couldn't eat or drink anything. Alistair didn't end up coming back until really late because his bus had broke down several times. It luckily, stopped in our town and didn't move for three days after that. If it broke down in another town he would have never have been able to contact me which would've been a complete nightmare.
We got out of Kratchie pretty quick and heading further north to Ban Lung, to do a jungle trek before we left Cambodia. The first day was really hard work as it was boiling hot and most of it was uphill. We weren't even following a path and the guide was just hacking through the trees with a machete. Alistair caught on camera the crucial moment that i tried to climb over a big log and ripped my trousers all the way up the crotch! I then had to make everyone behind me turn around everytime we climbed over something! When we arrived at the campsite there was a river and i pool that we all swam in because it was so hot and we then slept in hammocks (which was officially the worst nights sleep we have ever had). The guy next to me rolled over in the night and was practically on top of me! Normally just in hotel rooms i get bitten by mozzies constantly no matter what i do to try and stop it. So the jungle was a million times worse. I woke up the next morning and i had bites everywhere. Alistair said it looked like i was a junkie and that i've been hanging out with Amy Winehouse at the weekend! They actually do though and i can't stop scratching them which makes them flare up even more. The guide said there is not much malaria in the jungle, but it's guaranteed the mozzies that are carrying it will have it in for me!
The second day was much harder than the first because i had an upset tummy before we started our trek, so i took immodium to 'keep everything in' without getting to personal! I ended up sweating, feeling dizzy and weak and Alistair had to carry all the bags because i thought i was going to pass out. We arrived at a local village on the second day where we were going to spend the night. It was weird because the villagers weren't friendly like we were expecting and just poked their heads in the room we were sleeping in and stared. We had a final trek on the last day but Alistair had massive blisters on his feet from getting his socks wet, wading through rivers, so two guys picked us up on their bikes the next day and took us back.
We spent a lot of time in Ban Lung riding motorbikes to waterfalls and playing with kids in a lake which was supposedly created by a meteorite and we even stumbled across a village by accident who invited us to go and drink rice wine with them. As we were riding motorbikes we didn't think it was the best idea and declined, but some of the male villagers were really drunk and we started to get a bit of a bad vibe so we left.
Our visa had nearly run out at this point so we headed up to the Laos border to start our next month there.