Video of our travels

One year after returning, I finally got round to putting together a video montage of our trip. I can't believe it was only just a year ago, it seems like a life time ago.
Enjoy: https://vimeo.com/71532420

Home (sweet?) home: End of an era

We've been home a week now and it feels odd. Its an extremely odd feeling/ mixture of emotions.

The first few days were great, actually a lot less depressing than I had expected. I found myself taking mental notes of all the novel little things, things I'd never noticed before but was suddenly acutely aware of and experiencing through a fresh pair of eyes. First and foremost, I found the concept of flushing toilet paper down the toilet and not putting it in a bin, ridiculous. For about 3 days after we returned, I had to constantly fight the urge to bin the paper and kept worrying I would block the drain/ kept imagining where the toilet roll must be ending up.

Another thing I noticed more was flies. I found myself more interested in them, more aware, more wanting to avoid them/ squat them. I had never had this relationship with flies prior to our trip.

Other little things that took some getting used to included not using foreign phrases to say please and thank you, and not having to accept/ give things with my left hand (as is done in Asia). I seemed to be more aware of strange noises such as lawnmowers and helicopters in the sky and I liked being able to drink tap water again, although I was hesitant and cautious at first (ironically, having gone 10 months around the world and travelled through some of the world's poorest countries without ever having to go a day without a shower, the day I got home, the water in our neighbourhood was off and I had to skip my shower and brush my teeth with bottled water!). One final thing that I found novel for a few days, was being be able to sit with the soles of my feet pointing upward and it not be considered rude/ an insult.

But now its been a week, and all of these novelties have more or less worn off, and what I'm left with is a sort of fear and realisation that its back to the real world. Its only just hit me tonight, as I attempted to pack a holdall for a weekend away and struggled (!) doing so, what an achievement the past 10 months have been. I think I have been blocking it out for the past week, not looking at any pictures or allowing myself to contemplate what has been and is no more. It's only just hit me that its over. We planned it for two years, it came, and now its over. We're not just having a rest at home and then getting out our shells (rucksacks) again to re-pack them. Nobody will ask us how long we've been away for and we will no longer proudly reply '10 months'. We wont do laundry, struggle with zipping up our bags, fumble with currency or check tripadvisor. I wont steal tooth brushes, spray mossie guard, take malaria tablets or wee in a squat. Its officially over and now the question is: what next?

Siem Reap & Angkor Wat

Well, Siem Reap is one of the places I have looked forward to the whole trip and I was worried, after some people's reports, that it wouldn't live up to expectations, but it actually ended up surpassing them! Definitely one of my favourite places in the world!

Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat, is the national pride of Cambodia, even the Cambodian flag has a picture of Angkor Wat on it. Angkor, literally meaning 'city' is an ancient city that was re-discovered in the 19^th century in the middle of the dense jungle and it is one of the top three 'lost cities' in the world (after Macchu Picchu). It has such an amazing feel to it. The whole of the ancient city, consisting of hundreds of temples, is part of a huge national park and you buy a pass to get in and can visit as many of the temples as you like. We opted for the three day pass, which could be used over three days (doesn’t have to be three consecutive days). 

Exploring the temples

So, we got to Siem Reap the town, late at night and checked into our hotel which was number one on trip advisor. It was lovely. Very peaceful, clean, all the amenities, and very friendly staff who always said hello to us and greeted us by our names. The night we got there, Jemma felt ill and it was raining outside, so we decided to order room service and we had fish and chips and burger and chips brought up to the room. It was scrumptious. The next day, we spent having a lie in, exploring the town, and getting our bearings. The 4* hotel next door had a pool that you could use, so I also went for a swim in that. The town of Siem Reap its self is very touristy, but that's why I liked it. Lots of Western food, and Western bars and a nice atmosphere, with night markets selling souvenirs and fairy lights in the street.

Main street in Siem Reap

On our second day in Siem Reap, we started our templing. The weather was really hot during the whole of our stay there and we took a tuk tuk from outside of our hotel. We we hired the driver for the whole day to take us around the temples. He was so lovely. First stop was not Angkor Wat, but some other amazing mystical temple set in the middle of the jungle. It was gorgeous. The best temple I have ever seen. The temples of Angkor have such a mystical feeling to them. Second stop was the Tomb Raider temple where they filmed Lara Croft with Angelina Jolie.

Tomb Raider temple

 That one was mind blowing. You see huge trees and roots growing out of the temple walls and wrapping around the temples – it is like nothing else I have ever seen! It was very impressive and showed the power of nature. It also felt like you could imagine what the person who discovered it felt like because it was literally hidden in amongst the jungle. It was stunning. The next few days consisted of experiences like this – riding around in the tuk tuk through the stunning Cambodian countryside (rice fields, banana trees, little hut villages) and getting out to explore these hidden ancient temples. We stopped for lunch at a really nice restaurant and had a break there, before continuing with more templing in the afternoon.

On the second day, we got up at 4am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I was a bit worried we wouldn't make it in time, as the hotel forgot to make Jemma's packed breakfast so we had to wait for it, but we made it there just in time to see this:

It wasn't as good as it could have been, due to cloud cover, but it was still stunning.

A lot of people had told us they were disappointed with Angkor Wat because there were too many tourists there. Luckily for us, we were there in the low season (rainy season, although we actually had fantastic weather), so there weren't as many tourists there – peak season there are 7000(!) tourists a day at Angkor Wat, when we were there, there were supposedly 2000, but we hardly saw any. The only downside to the temples, which wasn't too much of a downside, was all the sellers there -lots of little kids trying to sell you books, bracelets etc. We ended up giving in a few times; once because a little girl about 4 chased our tuk tuk for about half a mile and I couldn't resist her (she was so cute). Every temple you go to though, you hear 'Madame! 2 for $1, you buy me, you help me, 3 for $1!'

Another day, another temple

It is similar to this in the town of Siem Reap too, and one night when we went out, we had one small boy holding a baby in his arms, approach us and ask us to buy him milk 'I only want food not money'. So we went with him to the supermarket, thinking, ok, maybe we'll just buy him one bottle of milk for 20p, but no, he wanted a tin of powdered baby milk off the shelf with no price on it (the only thing in the whole shop with no price on it). We asked him how much it was and he said $18. We sniffed a scam and left straight away. Later that night, I googled it and found out it is in fact a very common scam, it happens every night in Siem Reap (we saw it happening to lots more people whilst we were there and the same boy even approached us the night after). Basically, the boy takes the tourists into the shop, they buy the powdered milk for $18 and then the milk gets given back to the shop to be recycled on the next gullible tourist and the shop and the beggar split the profits. Considering the average Cambodian makes around $100 a month, this is an extremely profitable scam! 

Day at pool

In between our three days of templing, we gave ourselves a day's rest, lying by the pool. I was getting templed out by this point. I also hit my head on one of the low doorways in a temple and it really hurt! I was happy to have a day's break. We ate in the town every night and one night we went to a restaurant that had a live show of typical Cambodian dancing on. We also treated ourselves to a massage one night (a 'seeing hands' massage, by the blind). It was something I'd wanted to do every since I'd seen it advertised but it was absolutely terrible. They spent 20 minutes just pinching our arms and then at the end of the massage they slapped my back with brute force. They said it was a Japanese shiatsu massage, it felt like amateur torture – it was awful! We did laugh a few times though, not at them, but with them, because they kept knocking the massage oil on the floor and then couldn't find it (because they were blind) so we had to keep reaching down for it. I had to burst out laughing at one point when I looked across and saw the blind woman battering Jemmas feet. Jemma was wincing in pain. I burst into raucous laughter, because I knew I'd be getting the same a few minutes later.

River front at night in Siem Reap

Overall, I loved Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor, it made me love Cambodia. It was much cleaner than the rest of Cambodia – no litter etc and very friendly people. Probably all a show for the tourists, but still, it was nice. I would highly recommend it as a holiday destination for anyone who wants to visit Asia!

More photos: Angkor Wat

Southern Cambodia – Sihanoukville & Kampot

After Phnom Penh, we decided to head down to the southern coast of Cambodia as we'd heard there are some lovely islands and beaches down there. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of rainy season, and when we got there, there were heavy monsoons. We checked into our first hotel in Sihanoukville and it was way below the standard we had become used to over the past 2 months in S.E Asia – no free soap or shampoo, no complimentary water! It wasn't that bad, it was actually the biggest room we've ever stayed in, but it just felt a bit creepy (high ceilings – they always creep me out). We didn't like the feel of the place. 

Biggest does not always mean best

That night, I wanted to ring my mum for her birthday but the internet didn't work in the room (sods law, the only hotel we've had in Asia where the internet doesn't work), so I went down to the reception to use it there, waiting until midnight to ring home. Then at 10pm, the woman started to turn off all the lights and shut the shutters on the front of the guest house and said they were turning off the internet and couldn't leave it on in case it burned. Despite our pleading, they wouldn’t change their minds, so we had to go to the bar across the road to use the internet there. When we came back to the hotel around midnight, we were locked out! We couldn't get back in. We had to go round a dodgy dark alley around the back and hammer the back door down. I could see a girl sitting in the room behind the door just looking at us. Eventually, when I shouted 'hello!' loudly several times, she finally let us in. The next day we checked out. The towels were dirty and there had been a hole in the bathroom ceiling. We didn't want to stay another night. Instead, we checked into a luxurious hotel down the road that is probably the nicest we have stayed in! The bathroom had a bath and a window onto the bedroom and it had a lovely pool. We went for a walk along the beach and it had a hippyish vibe to it, with lots of old Western men and young Cambodian women there together. The beach also felt very dirty, with litter everywhere, and we didn't trust any of the restaurants not to give us food poisoning so we ended up going back to our hotel and ate at the more pricey restaurant across the road which was lovely. 

New room, new pool :)

We shared a bottle of Malbec together and it reminded us of Argentina. We decided to treat ourselves to the wine, a nice meal and dessert because there was nothing else to do there. Food in Cambodia is quite a bit more pricey than the other countries because they use the US dollar as their currency, so everything is $1, which sounds cheap, but that's about 60p for a coke, whereas in Thailand it would be 30p, so Cambodia is double the price for many things, still not expensive though.

The next day we checked out and took a bus to Kampot, a town the Lonely Planet describes as a 'quaint little French colonial town'. On the minibus on the way there, we were discussing how, despite having done a round the world trip, we didn't feel like true travellers because we'd never travelled on a bus with live chickens before (something many travellers report as a norm). We ate our words a few minutes later, not because someone with live chickens got on, but because the bus stopped to pick up every man and his dog (bus built for 13 people, ended up holding 26) and we were travelling with live crabs stuffed between our legs. The bus stopped every 5 minutes to pick up some package or another (sea food etc), which had to be wedged in between our legs and made the journey go really slowly.

Kampot

Eventually we got to Kampot and a tuk tuk driver approached us with a sign asking us to stay in his hotel. As we had nowhere booked, we went with him and ended up in an average place (this time with free toiletries), but again, the weather was terrible, so what everyone had described to us as being a lovely coastal down, just looked miserable. Our hotel was on the bank of a river, where people supposedly go swimming in summer, but we just had to make do with borrowing an umbrella and walking into town. Luckily, we happened upon a lovely cafe, where they made Swiss hot chocolates and where the staff were really friendly and wanted to practice their French on us. We ended up hanging out there for a bit and then went back there afterwards for tea (fish and chips). In the end, we both decided we liked Kampot, despite the rain.

Restaurant we ate at - I liked the deco!

Angkor Wat

Today we visited the temples of Angkor and experienced Angkor Wat at sunrise. It was a dream and a childhood ambition come true. It was one of the most spectacular experiences of the whole round the world trip and I absolutely love Cambodia.

Out of this world!

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia, and while we were here we did all of the cultural/ historical stuff: some nice, some very sad.

On the first day we went to the national museum, which had a lot of old statues in it and had some beautiful gardens, it reminded me of Bali. Then we went to the Royal palace.

National museum

Royal Palace

The next day, we hired a tuk tuk for the day to take us to the killing fields and S21 prison to learn more about the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Before we visited Cambodia, we both read 'First they Killed my Father' and extremely sad an graphic book which tells the story of one young girl's sad plight after 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and massacred a quarter of the population. We also watched the film 'The Killing Fields', so we had a pretty good knowledge of what went on in Cambodia, the genocide and the sheer brutality of the Khmer Rouge, who took over the country, killed anyone they deemed intelligent, middle class, or basically anyone who wasn't a pheasant farmer, and then forced everybody to work on farms until most people either died from starvation, disease or was brutally massacred by the Khmer rouge soldiers. For anybody who doesn't know the history, it too much for me to write on here, so here's a link for more info. It really does defy belief. More information on the Khmer Rouge

Memorial tower with skulls and bones inside

I have never been anywhere like the killing fields in my life. Even the concentration camps in Germany don't have the amount of living history this place has. When I say living history, there are literally still bones and old clothes coming up from the ground you are walking on. All these years later (the killings happened in the late 70s), its incredible just how many dead bodies were dumped in the mass graves there, so much so that each time its rained, more parts come up from the earth. They say that the dead wont lie still. I couldn't believe it. Some parts are fenced off, but on the walking paths, we saw bones and clothes poking through and I even saw some teeth poking up on one part of the path.

 They have a big memorial tower with all the skulls of the victims in (the Khmer Rouge brought people to the killing fields to be murdered – they made them stand next to a pit and then smashed in their head and slit their throats, letting them fall into the pits). Men, women and children, all were killed in equally brutal ways. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge's philosophy was that you needed to get rid of the roots of society in order to create a new perfect communist society, hence why they even killed babies. By far the most harrowing sight, was a tree, against which the soldiers used to smash the heads of babies to kill them in front of their mothers, before tossing both of them into the pits. They used to hold the babies feet and then smash their heads against this killing tree. 

Killing tree: Used for killing babies

The man who discovered the killing fields after the Khmer Rouge fled, said he knew it was a killing tree because there were bits of scalp, blood and skull all over it. Killing fields like this, existed not just in Phnom Penh, but all over Cambodia. It is so very sad.

After the killing fields, we went to S21 prison museum, which was a prison the Khmer Rouge kept people in before they were sent to be slaughtered. People hadn't done anything wrong, they were forced to sign confessions that they had been disloyal to the party etc and they were tortured until they confessed and until they signed that their family had been involved too. In the prison, as well as seeing the cells etc that they were kept in, you also see hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the victims and putting a face to all those skulls you saw earlier in the killing fields memorial is heartbreaking. They also showed us a video about a couple who were both murdered and their love story. It was a very sad and draining day, much different to the day before looking around the palace and national museum.

More photos of Phnom Penh

Cambodia - First Impressions

It was a relief to get into Cambodia after the hecticness/ noisiness/ stressfulness of Vietnam. The border crossing wasn't a bed of roses though, we took a 3 hour bus to the border and then had to wait at the immigration office in a queue for about an hour and a half whilst they messed with everyone's passports and dished out visas. A few hours later and our bus pulled into Phnom Penh, capital city of Cambodia, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief – it was so much calmer than Ho Chi Minh City. We checked into our gorgeous hotel (we splurged and got a posh one for £10) and then we went out for tea. We needed cash first, but cash points aren't easy to come by (well not as easy as they are in Vietnam), so we had to walk for a while to find one, in the pitch dark. Whilst Cambodia is a lot calmer than Vietnam, its also a LOT poorer, and the streets are not very well lit at all, which can feel slightly dangerous. I think Cambodia is the poorest country we've visited on this trip – it actually seems poorer than Laos or Bolivia. For example, you have lots of people begging you for money, and you see women washing their naked babies with bottles of water in the middle of the street. There is also a hell of a lot of litter and rubbish – an overwhelming amount. I don't think they even bother to sort out rubbish – they seem to just toss it in the street, and it all piles up everywhere, which makes the towns look quite ugly (this was my first impression of Phnom Penh). However, despite all of this, Cambodia certainly has a charm – the food is really tasty (like Thai, but even nicer!) and the people are friendlier/ warmer than Vietnam. You don't have to worry as much about constantly being ripped off. One thing that has shocked me about Cambodia, is the amount of western old men/sugar daddies with young 20something Khmer (Cambodian) women – its actually worse than Thailand, which I wasn't expecting.

The countryside in Cambodia is stunning, and it was a relief to see the Thai style architecture again (temples, Buddhas etc) as you don't get any of that in Vietnam. I like all of the greenery: we are here in rainy season, so everything is lush and in full bloom. As you drive along on the bus, you see lots of rice fields, green banana trees and villages made up of little wooden shaks, babies running around naked etc. Its how you imagine South East Asia to be, well, at least how I imagined it to be, and its a country I've always been interested in. As we are here in rainy season, we have had a lot of rain, including some very scary thunderstorms which woke us up in the night and we had to check on the internet to make sure it wasn't an earthquake. I'm really enjoying all of the differences and there is a lot to see and do, but at the same time, I think we're getting tired now; tired of all the dirty squat toilets, long uncomfortable bus journeys and insect bites. It's not Cambodia's fault – its more the fact that we've been on the go now for 10 months, which is a long time to be on the go by anyone's standards and I never thought I'd ever get to the point where I felt like I'd had enough but I think we are nearing that point now... which is really convenient because we are nearly at the end now anyway. However, now we're near the end of the trip, I'm really savouring every minute and taking it all in more than ever. I know that as soon as I get back to the UK, I'll be daydreaming about trading in home comforts for foreign cultures, so I'm trying to remind myself of that now, because you don't know what you've got till its gone, and no doubt I'll read this blog a few months down the line and lament the lack of noisy buses and smelly toilets in my life.

Bus in Phnom Penh