Cambodia
Our entry into Cambodia started fairly auspiciously as our minibus drove off the main road and headed down a dirt track to the 'special tourist boarder crossing'. Visas were stamped in a grass roofed hut and 'special admin fees' extorted. Our first stop was the tranquil river town of Kratie with the usual mix of crumbling French colonial buildings and crass new Chinese looking stuff. While watching the sun go down over the Mekong we got talking to Judy, an American on a driving tour around Cambodia. She invited us to join her the next day for the drive to Phnom Penh, a real treat not to be in a bus! The landscape in Cambodia is flat (really flat), with rice paddies for as far as can be seen, punctuated with evenly spaced palm trees.
Cambodia really feels like the wild-west of Asia; the main road into Phnom Penh was a traffic clogged two lane, dusty, pot-holed road. Slowly grass shacks gave way to the proverbial decaying buildings and suddenly we arrived in the capital. We stayed in the back-packer area at Lake Boeng Kak, each guest-house complete with floating restaurant and competing sound systems. A few days were spent arranging our Vietnam visas, loitering in air conditioned supermarkets and cycling around the city's sights; including the harrowing S-27, the infamous Khmer Rouge prison centre - a twisted testament to the former regimes appalling crimes.
From Phnom Penh we bused out to Battambang, Cambodia's second biggest city. Probably one of my less memorable bus trips, compounded by 35 degree C heat, no aircon, more use of the horn than brakes, pot holes and 20 odd guest-house reps fighting at the bus door for our attention on arrival. With bad weather we had an enforced stay in Battambang before taking the boat to Siem Rep. We found a great cheap room at the top of an expensive hotel, with roof top restaurant and hammocks, so we spent a day catching up on reading and finding post cards. The highlight for me was the 3 hour xylophone solo played over the town's public address loudspeakers - NO ONE could escape it, not even with ear plugs.
The boat to Siem Rep was amazing, winding through tight tributaries which slowly opened up into marsh-lands and then finally into lake Tonle Sap. Along the way we stopped at floating villages to drop and pick up people and cargo. These were fishing communities complete with schools, shops and town halls. After six sun burnt hours we arrived at Siem Reap to get mobbed by shrieking tuk-tuk drivers, one of which took us to a guest-house in town. The development in Cambodia is probably at it's most extreme in Siem Reap, where the displaced and poor live in the streets and in the bushes along the side of the road to the temples of Angkor - no where are these people catered for. We spent three days exploring the temples by bicycle and tuk-tuk. The first day we visited the amazing Angkor Wat, truly impressive and awe inspiring, but very hot work to get around the whole thing. Temple The Bayon was also impressive with it's 216 huge faces following your every more - apparently all of the same king! The second day we took a tuk-tuk to some of the more outlying temples including Banteay Srei, considered a girly temple because of its pink sandstone. Third day was spent cycling back to the best bits we'd seen and generally getting lost in the temples.
An uneventful bus trip got us back to Phnom Penh, where we held up for a few days resting before tackling the Vietnam boarder. Before leaving we visited the SCD orphanage, an organisation doing a great job caring for children who's parents have been killed by explosives, AIDS or have simply abandoned them. Taking a bundle of toys, rice, pens and note books we spent half a day helping the kids practice their English, checking homework and playing a three hour game of football in monsoon rain.
The next day we triumphantly crossed over into Vietnam, braving the four stage visa checking/stamping/bag scanning/form filling boarder guards, we arrived in Saigon two hours later. And so began our adventures in Vietnam.........
Cambodia really feels like the wild-west of Asia; the main road into Phnom Penh was a traffic clogged two lane, dusty, pot-holed road. Slowly grass shacks gave way to the proverbial decaying buildings and suddenly we arrived in the capital. We stayed in the back-packer area at Lake Boeng Kak, each guest-house complete with floating restaurant and competing sound systems. A few days were spent arranging our Vietnam visas, loitering in air conditioned supermarkets and cycling around the city's sights; including the harrowing S-27, the infamous Khmer Rouge prison centre - a twisted testament to the former regimes appalling crimes.
From Phnom Penh we bused out to Battambang, Cambodia's second biggest city. Probably one of my less memorable bus trips, compounded by 35 degree C heat, no aircon, more use of the horn than brakes, pot holes and 20 odd guest-house reps fighting at the bus door for our attention on arrival. With bad weather we had an enforced stay in Battambang before taking the boat to Siem Rep. We found a great cheap room at the top of an expensive hotel, with roof top restaurant and hammocks, so we spent a day catching up on reading and finding post cards. The highlight for me was the 3 hour xylophone solo played over the town's public address loudspeakers - NO ONE could escape it, not even with ear plugs.
The boat to Siem Rep was amazing, winding through tight tributaries which slowly opened up into marsh-lands and then finally into lake Tonle Sap. Along the way we stopped at floating villages to drop and pick up people and cargo. These were fishing communities complete with schools, shops and town halls. After six sun burnt hours we arrived at Siem Reap to get mobbed by shrieking tuk-tuk drivers, one of which took us to a guest-house in town. The development in Cambodia is probably at it's most extreme in Siem Reap, where the displaced and poor live in the streets and in the bushes along the side of the road to the temples of Angkor - no where are these people catered for. We spent three days exploring the temples by bicycle and tuk-tuk. The first day we visited the amazing Angkor Wat, truly impressive and awe inspiring, but very hot work to get around the whole thing. Temple The Bayon was also impressive with it's 216 huge faces following your every more - apparently all of the same king! The second day we took a tuk-tuk to some of the more outlying temples including Banteay Srei, considered a girly temple because of its pink sandstone. Third day was spent cycling back to the best bits we'd seen and generally getting lost in the temples.
An uneventful bus trip got us back to Phnom Penh, where we held up for a few days resting before tackling the Vietnam boarder. Before leaving we visited the SCD orphanage, an organisation doing a great job caring for children who's parents have been killed by explosives, AIDS or have simply abandoned them. Taking a bundle of toys, rice, pens and note books we spent half a day helping the kids practice their English, checking homework and playing a three hour game of football in monsoon rain.
The next day we triumphantly crossed over into Vietnam, braving the four stage visa checking/stamping/bag scanning/form filling boarder guards, we arrived in Saigon two hours later. And so began our adventures in Vietnam.........
