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Where to start .... After a pretty bumpy flight and navigating the visa requirement at the Cambodian airport ( no joke the guy at the counter took our money and put it in his pocket!! Very official n all) we took our first tuk tuk ride to our hostel. The tuk tuk driver told us that our hostel was closed and that now it is only offering was as a restaurant. We took this to be one of the hussles that they sometimes run and were insistent that they take us there. Sure enough when the tuk tuk stopped at what we thought was the hostel, we jumped out looking a little to smug and the tuk tuk driver said again just restaurant - no hostel!! After chatting with the guy who came to meet us at the tuk tuk... guess what .. it was justa bloody restaurant! But then we realised that the tuk tuk driver had bought us to the wrong address - lucky cause that would not have been a good first impression of Phnom Penh!We made our way to our actual hostel and got to grips straight away with the 70c beers and $1.50 cocktails :) We chilled for the evening and chatted with the barman of our hostel who helped us plan our tour for the next day. We had two full days in P.P before heading to Siem Reap so decided that for one of those days we would go to the Killing Fields, the S-21 prison and the Russian market. We were picked up that morning by our tuk tuk driver and made our way out of Phnom Penh, through Cambodia's countryside to what has been officially called "The Genocidal Meseum", similar to the muesum in Santiago your given a headset to listen to as you walk through the now overgrown grassland. It would be easy to mistake some of the area as parkland. Butterflies are in abundance in this area. The dark sideof this is that they are only here in abundance because of the nutrients they find in the soil from the bodies buried there. I think memories of this particular museum will stay with us for a long time. Its not a place you go because you want to see it, it's more that theres a responsibility to know of what happened here from the stories told of those who survived the Pol Pot brutal regime. He and his forces the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the torture and massacre of 3 million of its own people in Cambodia. It's really hard not to get upset listening to what took place at the camps and how horrendously the people were treated. Over and over again the pathway brings you past mass graves. The Khmer Rouge killed people at night under the noise of songs of unity and glory so that anyone outside the camps would not know what was happening and ask no questions. Under Pol Pots regime he insisted that all who did not follow him were put to death, men, women and children. He believed it important that the children be put to death so that they could not avenge their siblings, parents or grandparents. They quote him as saying "better to kill an innocent in error than to let a spy live". Over the course of your visit survivors stories are told and it's simply heartbreaking. The final stop of the tour leads you to the tomb that has now been built to commemorate those who died there. The tomb is the image most widely associated with the killing fields, it's a tomb of skulls of those found to date on this sight. What is even more touching is that clothes and bones are still coming to the surface, those who look after the sight collect freshly upturned bones each month. Every rainfall unearths more of the soil used to hid these terrible happenings.The prison gave much of the same information, prisoners were held here until taken elsewhere I think they were without doubt two of the saddest places we have visited on theses travels. In the afternoon we made our way to the Russian market which couldn't have been further removed from the places visited that morning. I'm not sure it's actually Russian but it's a maze of stalls and sellers eager to sell their wears and put me in my element, even Rob was pretty taken with just how many stalls there were. They must have known we were coming though because every stall we stopped at offered us "Big discounts" for being their "very special friend" and the price was "just for you!" This is where the haggling skills come into they're own, so yep we picked up a few bits -sure it would have been rude not too!On our second day we took our time meandering the pagodas and the palace. The owner of the hostel had helped us book tickets for our bus to Siem Reap which at the time was a great help until the next day when we actually got on it!! They told us that it was a quicker drive and would save us a few quid. It turned out to be one of those "little did we know" situations. We were given two seats at the back of the bus beside a mam her two little boys and a baby. The barfing started about ten minutes into the trip!!! Whether it was travel sickness or something they ate they continued to barf in rotation for most of the trip. A cramped back seat mixed with hot temperatures, no aircon and puke what's not to love? We also found out why our bus was quicker- it was because the driver, drove like a maniac the entire way! He didn't slow down once, with only some of the roads paved you can imagine how bumpy the journey was. There was one portion of the road where we were thrown all around the bus, the pot holes were so big I don't think the sleepers, readers or barfers enjoyed that bit! We arrived at our little guesthouse and within minutes the horrendous drive was behind us. Rosy's guest house is on river front and it's a little find. The owners and the staff make you feel at home straight away. We learnt that we could get our visas for Vietnam delivered to the hostel so we decided to stay an extra few days to allow ourselves the luxury of not doing this ourselves. We spent our first full day visiting temples; they were spectacular. Our tuk tuk driver Sou Poul took us from temple to temple each more amazing than the last.We started with Angor Wat and from there saw Ta Prohm, Neak Pean, Pre Rup, Bavon, each temple showed something just as spectacular as the last. We were able to climb some of the temples and man they were a climb! We ventured from temple site to temple site in our tuk tuk seeing the treasures each place had to hold. We managed to make it to Phnom Bakheng for the sunset, that day the clouds were out in force so the sunset was a little bit of a let-down but we happily sat up the top of the temple until the sun went down before heading back to the guesthouse. We spent much of the following week wandering the town eating a little strange food and watching the world go by. If your a people watcher than this is the place for you. Siem Reap is a beautiful slow paced country-town filled with friendly welcoming people, it would be easy to see this place as the Bermuda triangle of travels - you could easily find your way here and never leave, and we met plenty of people that had done just that. One evening while there we tried a local favourite - a Cambodian BBQ it boasts some snake, crocodile, prawn beef and noodles that you can cook up yourself with the tastiest vegetable broth and wash it all down with some 50c beers. Sure why not!!The sour note of the week was a sunset boat cruise we took with Tara tours, there was us two and this one other guy who turned out to be a crazy. He spent his time talking to us about all the different types of animal he has eaten, and for such a confined space (spending the evening on a boat) I'm really proud of the fact that he made the whole night without getting a smack. The highlight of our evening was the boat trip back to land where we got to take a boat ride through the floating market where a lot of the locals live on boat houses. Similar to camp life in Costa Rica there's no electricity so when it gets dark you see a small glimpse of life on the boat based on torches being used inside. What struck me as unusual and amazing was that sections of the boat are cornered off into rooms each with wall hangings or wallpaper to show its difference. It reminded me of a dolls house so much effort and detail put into such a small space. While the boat made its way through the canal we were also treated to a far off thunder storm that was flashing in the distance. It was a picture perfect moment. It made up for the rest of the tour although we did come out of it with some nasty stings and bites on our feet. We had learnt our lesson with the bus on the way to Siem Reap so we made sure to book a good one on the way back to Phnom Penh (visas included). We arrived back to the capital and made our way to a different hostel where we chilled out with fellow travellers for two final days before making our way to the boarder. A big booboo on my part though -yet another hungover bus trip although the bus was lovely, it's probably the one I've been the most ropey on, and Rob wasn't to much better either - I blamed the pizza.
Food sensations: Water snake, frogs legs, crocodile - all bbq of course.Rice paper chicken and vegtable roles - these you make yourself yum! And finaly happy pizza ;0)
Music: Mostly cambodian stuff with a little chinese influence and vietnamese tunes (most of which sucked).
Next time Gooooooood Moooooorning Vietnam!
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