Fascinating Cambodia

Entering Camodia from Thailand was a fairly straightforward experience, however no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you do get ripped off one way or another ....... something to be expected in South East Asia we have come to expect!

We settled for a few days in Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor. We borrowed some very ropey bikes and cycled 42km around the temples of Angkor starting at 5am to catch the sun-rise. The temples were amazing, there were so many of them, many of which are being restored so were not always accessible.

That day we also decided to go off the beaten track with our bikes and were walking through some thick undergrowth when I had a run-in with a very sticky yellow spiders web, and a very large, very scary looking black and yellow spider that made me scream when I saw it on my foot - not an experience I'd like to repeat!

Angkor Wat at sunrise

The many faces of Bayon temple in Angkor Thom

Ta Phrom - my favourite; it was amazing how the jungle had totally integrated with the ruins

After Siem Reap we headed for the Capital, Phnom Penh where we visited the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum and The Killing Fields. We had read so much about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge but it didn't truly sink in until we had seen the very sobering evidence of torture and horror that these innocent people had been through, and all in our lifetime. We also got speaking to a local man who ran a sandwich shop near to where we stayed, and who had lived through the whole thing losing his parents and four siblings. It was so interesting to speak to him first hand, and so amazing that he was able to laugh about it having lost so much of his family and having to go back to a Phnom Penh that was totally unrecognisable. A truly remarkable man.

Cambodia was a fasinating place. It was more expensive than we had envisaged as they us the US dollar and everything is rounded to the nearest dollar; you even get dollars from the ATM's; weird! Another strange observation of ours is that the women all wear pyjamas as day wear; it's almost like they can't be bothered to get dressed in the mornings!

We are now on Phu Quoc Island which is just off the South West coast of Vietnam, and is where we spent a very sunny and very boozy Christmas. More updates to follow soon ......