Cambodia

Sun 8 Feb

Flew with Vietjet from Luang Prabang, 

Laos, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2 hours on a small 60 seater propellor plane, you feel the turbulence a lot more. Nice crew, they gave us a snack and a drink.

Got a Tuktuk to our Hotel, it's the best yet!, Malita Angkor Villa, Siem Reap. The staff are in fact so helpful and ingratiating it's a tad embarrassing! To get to it you have to walk up a long road that has a gully of stinking water all the way along, but hey, if you can hold your breath for 20 mins it's fine! 

We borrowed some wonky push bikes from the hotel to get past the open sewer as fast as possible because it was making Matt gag!

                                  

           Alison, you'd love it here! Gin and Tonic $1......or a bucket of it for $4.50, why not?!!! ;-)

We hired Mr Rah and his Tuktuk for a couple of days to do Angkor Wat, the 1st day we did the 'grand tour', which includes some of the smaller Wats, the 2nd day we got up at 4.30am to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat....was it worth the early start? Honestly...... no. Not at this time of year anyway, the sky didn't have much colour. It did mean we could walk around before it got too busy though.

We took loads of photos, but here are just a few...

                            

                                  Funny heads!, bit grumpy looking.

   One of the guides wandering around got us to stand with our hands up and look at them,

   and took a snap, we didn't know why until we looked at the photo

                                

 

    Our Tuktuk driver, Mr Rah....aka Morgan Freeman

                           

              

                                                  

                                           

                                               Tree root tastic 

    The crowd that had been waiting for the sunrise...all disappointed 

                             

      

      

         Elephant Terrace

                              

                                 

    Watted out. Wat wat.

Got a bus to Phenom Penh, should have been 6 hours, but with terrible roads and road works it took 9 hours! Didn't like Phenom Penh that much, stayed a couple nights, Matt feeling poorly with excruciating stomach pain, it got so bad I was looking up hospitals thinking his appendix was going to explode! 

Thank goodness it was a bit better next day, got the bus on to Sihanoukville, heading on to Otres, fancying the coast and some beach time for the first time on the trip so far. 

When you get off a bus anywhere you are surrounded by Tuktuk drivers, moto drivers etc all trying to get you to go with them, all at very increased prices. We always walk away from this, find a cafe and wait til it all dies down. 

In this instance we went to the Bus station cafe, the guy that ran it was lovely, we were the only 2 customers. He said he had 'like a Tuktuk' and would take us to Otres, the quiet beach area. His Tuktuk was an old car with the roof cut off!, a total wreck really. He chucked our bags in, put his little daughter in the back with me and off we went. 1st stop was to get some air in the back tyre! We got a lot of looks driving along. What a lovely guy though, he drove us up and down until we'd found a room.

                           

                              Monkeys chilling out

    And another

Pretty beach, but lots of Russians come to this area, the men and women strut up and down in thongs, saw a few hairy arses. Don't worry I didn't take any pictures.

It's a bit much really in a country where they swim fully clothed! They get into the water in their jeans and shirts, women too, sometimes they wear sarong hoops. It seems really weird the 1st time you see it, but like everything out here, you normalise it pretty quickly. Not many can swim so they use inner tubes and other floatation aids. 

There was a bar down the way that played drum and bass til 4am so we decided to move into Sihanoukville to get away from the noise, bad timing, it was Chinese New Year, all the hotels were full and doubled their prices! Found a shitty room for $20. The town is pretty touristy, we renamed it Shitanoukville. 

                              

4ft bed with sponge bob cover which Matt strangely liked, because he has an affinity with Patrick Star!!......yes we did both fit in.

The beach was insane, thousands of Cambodians come here for the New Year from Phenom Penh and around, all swimming fully clothed, sitting around eating giant prawns, shrimps and crabs by the bucket load.

There's some real money around too, we lost count of the number of brand new Toyota pick ups and 4 by 4's going by. It's in stark contrast to the locals who have been kicked out of Otres and live in a shanty on the roadside. The kids are proper filthy and collect cans and plastic bottles for a few bucks.

We tried to get our Vietnamese visa at the Embassy, but it was shut for 10 days for the Chinese New Year. Decided to head on to Kampot, further along the coast......