Kingdom of Cambodia

After hearing lots of people big up Cambodia we were really excited to head onto our 6th country. Not only is it a beautiful country, but there is a huge amount of history here that neither of us knew anything about, and loads of bloody annoying animals.

We headed out of Laos, deciding to bus it through Thailand to get to the west of Cambodia rather than down through the south. We had an overnight stop in a small town in Thailand where as always we dined in style among the cockroaches at a local street stall. Thankfully it was after we had finished our dinner that the rat came out of the pipe beside us to get the leftovers.

Although the Cambodian people in general are lovely, there are a lot of del-boys, and on reaching the border we were the targets of 3 attempted scams within the space of 3 hours. Only one succeeded.

Our first stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap- the town nearest to Angkor Wat:

Its a site of temple ruins basically, but it is a really incredible. We cycled it all- about 40km- OLSG training!

Whilst walking through Angkor Wat admiring the ruins, Wayne thought he was being robbed of our plastic bag, only to turn around and find that a fat monkey was tearing out of his hands. Wayne was petrified- and in hindsight his face was hilarious!!! The monkey tore apart the plastic bag, ripped one of the rain coats, and opened and drank from the bottle of water! When the fatty was satisfied there was no food in the bag he sauntered off. Wayne was pretty smug that he had brought a spare plastic bag collected up our stuff and headed off. But fatty came running after Wayne again!!! Wayne sprinted off and was chased for about 100m before losing the monkey- all the time Keelin was shouting after him to please not get rabies!

From Siem Reap we headed to Battambang and then the capital Phnom Penh where we learnt about Cambodia's history. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge (The Cambodian Communist party) took over Cambodia and with Pol Pot as the leader, had a mission to create a peasant-dominated agrigarian cooperative. They drove everyone out of the cities and forced them to work in slavery on farms in the countryside. Besides this from 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge killed 2 million Cambodians who threatened their position. These were intellectuals (all doctors and teachers), people they thought to be intellectuals (anyone who could speak another language, people with fairer skin, people who wore glasses), and people of other nationalities such as any Vietnamese and Chinese. Battambang and Phnom Penh gave us the opportunity to visit the sites of mass genocide, mass graves and one of the most famous prisons, that was originally a school.

Old school used as the prison S-21

Cells in S-21

Some of the skulls found in the mass graves at the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh

We headed to Sihanoukville on the coast for some R&R, but due to some UK-style weather didn’t see a great deal of the beach so we decided to head to Kampot which is famous for two things Black pepper and a spooky abandoned hill top resort called Bokor hill station.

Bokor Hill Station...

Kampot Town

Us on the bamboo train...

Dismantling the bamboo train because we met one coming the other way

When we got to our last stop before the Vietnam border, Kep, we had a day of brilliant sunshine so trekked around the national park-fighting off lizards, centipedes, snakes, wild monkeys and a pack of 4 angry dogs that were protecting a group of nuns!

Wazza at Sunset Rock in Kep National Park

Waitress going to get our dinner...

Dinner

We were a bit gutted to be missing the Jubilee Celebrations, so we went to the beach

We'll hopefully have a Vietnam entry soon, until then, Peace.

Tarzan and Jane

At the Thai Border we flashed our brightest smiles to try and get out of the overstay fine but to no avail. We had to pay £10 each which we thought was quite steep as that works out at about 4 meals!

We got in a little longtail boat to take us the 3 minute ride to the Laos Border across the Mekong River.

Laos seemed to have a bit of everything to offer us- really beautiful scenery, pretty little French inspired towns, tubing and everything was cheap!

Our first stop was the little, rather uninteresting town of Huay Xai but it was from here that we went on the Gibbons Experience (an ecotourism project- meaning it was really expensive!)- where we trekked into the jungle for 3 hours and then for 3 days trekked and ziplined on wires 150m+ high and up to 500m long. (Please see the video of Mr Morley on facebook).

The drop out of the 2nd treehouse- the one we later had to do at 4am in the pitch black!

One of the treehouses

On the last day we decided to all get up at 4am to try and see some of the gibbons but especially to hear them sing… so we zipped in the pitch black of the jungle, jumping out of our treehouse from a tiny little ledge 200m high. Absolutely incredible- AND we got to hear the gibbons sing and caught a few glimpses.

Our Gibbons Experience Group

After a few hard days of trekking and general craziness, we headed to the beautiful, but lazy town of Luang Prabang- where no matter what time of day, if you went into any kind of shop and wanted to but something you would have to wake up the shopkeeper to pay for it!!

Procession of monks in the town at 6am

From Luang Prabang we went to Vang Vieng to do the standard tubing affair- where lots of English people rent a big tube get dropped to the top of a river and get drunk by stopping at all the bars on the side of the river whilst floating down it! It was good fun but it was dead quiet because of the low season.


Then we went to Vientiane the capital of Laos and did some sight seeing and lots of eating of croissants!

We hope that you're satisfied with the update and are very sorry for the lack of comedy in the post- anything amusing was sort of you had to be there (alhtough Shauna will of course claim this as her lack of input)- however coming very soon is the the episode of

Wayne vs. Monkey.

Not to be missed.

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(Thank you for the title Jaconelli)

Two weeks in "The Land of Smiles"

It is probably fair to say we both had reservations about Thailand before we got here... thinking it wold be way too touristy and just like Costa del Sol or something. And although there probably were a few too many English people, it was brilliant.

We didnt really have any set plans coming into Thailand and were initially going to head to the East coast thinking the west coast would be really rainy. But the forecast for Koh Phi Phi was good and it was on Keelin's hitlist so we headed there first. As we arrived on the island and were walking around looking for a place to stay all the shops were putting their shutters down as there was a tsunami warning. Slightly worrying. But we're still alive. Anyway, we found somewhere to stay and then headed out for dinner. Then, we both got far too excitable that there were people to talk to (Malaysia had been really quiet because of the low season) and got very drunk- too much party party. Neither of us could remember where we were staying and decided to sleep on the beach... only to be moved on by the police. Woops.

Apart from this, Phi Phi was incredible. It was so beautiful, with some deserted beaches and such clear water, and some of the food we had was amazing. We met up with Vanessa and Josh on the last night (when we were ready to consume alcohol again). And the next day we headed to Bangkok.

Maya Bay...where The Beach was filmed

Us with Vanessa and Josh

Bangkok was really cool. We thought it would be really dirty, which it is a bit but its also got some amazing temples (we did quite a lot of temple-bashing) and nice modern areas. It was a bit of an eye opener with all the ladyboys and dirty old western men though!

In Bangkok we got on an overnight bus to Chiang Mai which was 10 hours long. We paid about £14 for the VIP bus which was soooo nice- completely reclining seats, blankets, pillows and food. HOWEVER, at 5am, an hour and a half before our arrival in Chiang Mai they started blaring Thai Kareoke. Wayne's face was hilarious.


Chiang Mai was a really beautiful place, where the town has lots of temples, loads of bars and restaurants, and lots of smiley Thai people! We booked ourselves on a 3 day trek through the jungle, where we finally did some exercise for the 1st time in a month, bathed and rode elephants, slid down waterfalls and did some (painfully slow) white water rafting- no chance of a repeat of going overboard as in Ecuador.

At the moment we are just at the Thai/Laos border waiting til the morning when the border opens to cross over- just one day over our visa!

Enjoy the rain your end, and we'll update you in a couple of weeks.

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