Cambodia Summary

Days travelled- 11 days (1 week, 4 days)

Distance travelled- Approx. 2,200km (1,367 miles)

Hours on transport- 37 hours (1 day, 13 hours)

Destinations- 5

Top 3

3 - Ban Lung - This was a really rural area for us to visit, and the lack of tourists here made it more special. Even though we only spent the one day here (Laos New Years day at that) we had a wicked time riding from waterfall to waterfall causing mayhem as we moved.

2 - Phnom Penh - The capital has a lot of recent history to it. Its quite emotional at times but educating and interesting aswell. Learning about how and why the tragedies occured, shows us what human beings are capable of commiting and hopefully will prevent anything so inhuman happening again. I doubt it though. The shooting range was great fun, but you have to go there BEFORE you visit S21 and the killing fields. I guarantee you will not be up for it afterwards.

1 - Siem Reap & The Angkor Temples - This was an easy selection for the top spot in Cambodge. The Angkor temples are the countries biggest tourist attraction and its easy to understand why. Reaching Angkor Wat for sunrise was pretty magical to witness. Too bad the entrance fee is $20, but its worth it all the same. Feeding ducks to crocs was quackin stuff too (lame attempt).

Final Advice

There are not that many tourist destinations in Cambodia as it is a progressing country. We only went to 5 different places but it was absolutely worth the visit, even if it was just to see the Angkor temples. The currency situation in Cambodia is very strange. They use american dollars (4000 rial = 1 US$) but anything under a dollar is used in Rial - local currency. This way they make profit everytime they use there own currency through the exchange rate. But its shrapnel. I hate the fact that you have to pay to recieve your exit stamps in this country, even if it is only US$1, its not right. The people here were really friendly to us, more so than Vietnam at least. And the general food here is pretty good standard. In Phnom Penh they have petrol stations/coffee shops/grocery stores dotted around everywhere, and it just reminded me of being in an American gas station - no official dunkin doughnuts though. I can guarantee there will be some really beautifull unexplored areas to this country, and the tourism here will probably continue to increase over the years.

Waterfall hunting Ban Lung

We only had one full day in Ban Lung and we used our time as best we could. We hired some motorbikes and went to visit the 4 waterfalls in the area (although one was lacking water). The second one we visited was easily the best, and most crowded. The entertainment included a giant waterfight and wrestle around with the local kids. And also watching the crazy sons of bitches jump from the top of the waterfall which must have been 20 meter high. These kids probably weighed about 20kg anyway, so they didn't go very deep. Insane stuff, but brave none the less. There was also a massive rope bridge here that everyone was swinging on (again very stupid) and making all the little kids cry.

When we left, Maj forgot to take the chain off of his bike so when he tried to drive off the chain just snapped, luckily no damage, but got blessed with the name meathead from Abbie. You deserved that one bruv. The last area we went to in Ban Lung was a volcanic crater that was now a lake. We went swimming here and found a floating log, so we were trying out the cartoon methos of running with the log on water. Didnt go down too well in real life.

This was the most secluded area of Cambodia that we have visited and the language barrier was strong here. There wasn't any banks or western unions here so we had to wait until Laos to get our monies.

We met Vince in Ban Lung, a designer from Brick Lane in London, who recommended a bus that was travelling over to Laos the following day. Since we were having problems finding one we joined him on the bus to cross the border. On our travels we switched minibuses in Stung Treng (Cambodia side still) and met 3 lads from Leeds. Now these guys were straight loonatics, as you can imagine, leeds scum at its finest. They were drinking the Cambodians answer to guiness known as 'Black Panther' (nothing to do with any racial uprising group) and they were snorting diazapan aka valium, on the way to the border (and had knocked back over a hundred in the last few days) What a great idea guys.

We got the border and were made to pay a dollar fee for our exit stamps (taking....) and our visa's (the.....) and our entry stamps (piss!!!!). When the Cambodian customs pursposefully stamped my passport on a blank page after I asked them not to, I lost my temper a little and started having an argument with them. Maj managed to calm me before the Ak's were drawn luckily. Im running out of pages god damnit!

Ban Lung Photo Link:

http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4545171011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Irrawaddy dolphins at Kratie

The journey to Kratie wasn't too bad until they crammed 8 people, including us, into a 5 seater car from some town near Kratie, which took around 3 hours. Kratie wasn't much of a tourist destination, with only one main guesthouse that spoke English and served western food. It was only a brief stay at Kratie, as we only wanted to see the Irrawaddy dolphins, the fresh water river dolphins, so we arranged a tuk tuk the following morning to take us to the main area where these dolphins are chilling.

It cost us $7 for a ticket and a 1hr boat trip on the river. At first it was hard to spot the dolphins because they only just came up enough to breathe but once we spotted our first few, we were like pro's finding them. So now, our mission was to get a good pic, which took a bit of a while but we did manage one. These dolphins weren't as fun as the one's you'd see in the sea and these were a lot uglier with a bottle nose so we got pretty bored once we got our pic.

We had to rush back from the dolphins, so we could get our bus to Ban Lung, our next destination. It was Laos new year on the 14th and we weren't so sure about transport on new years day, so we thought it would be best to move today on the 13th.

Kratie photo link:
http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4544707011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Siem Reap and the Angkor Temples

Siem Reap is a must for anyone travelling south-east Asia just to see the Angkor temples. There is a really pathetic and un-looked after crocodile farm, but you have to catch the feeding as its only once a week. Orrrrr you could buy a live duck for 6 bucks and feed em yourself! Hands up for those who thinks we did it? Not I says me. Quack, quack, quack, SNAP! onedeadduck.com

Angkor Wat is single most treasured construction in the whole of Cambodia. Everything is named after it in some way or another - the beer, cigarettes, hotels, roads and so on. It is known as the Khymer pride built in 1112 -1152 by King Suryavarman 2, and it really is quite incredible. We made the effort of waking up at 5am, and cycling the 15km from Siem Reap so that we could watch the sunrise. Everyone had recommended that we be there for it. The Angkor Temples are spread out over a grand distance (not sure of the exact). So it was best to cycle between all the different areas. After a quick walk, climb and scramble around the temple we moved onto Angkor Thom and the Bayon, which was erected in 1181 -1219 by King Jayavarman the 7th. The Bayon has 54 towers with a total of 216 huge faces carved into them. They are supposed be the likeliness of the king. After we went to see the elephant terrace and the leper king terrace, where we took the time to find out a hidden carving of a nine headed horse creature in one of the exposed rooms.

The day we went to the temples was probably our hottest yet, easily in the 40's. And with all the cycling, lack of food and water, Abbie started to feel a little badly, so she headed back. Me and Maj cycled the full distance of the Angkors and as we were on our way back who might we pass but Abbie! Who had stupidly gone the wrong way, she is from Essex after all. By this point she was completely worn out so Maj gave her a backky (thats backky John not backin) and I cycled hers and my bikes back. Good job the northerners were there to pick up the weak southerner.

Siem Reap Photo Link:

http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4544535011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Chill at Sihanoukville

This place is the beach resort of Cambodia, where the sea front i a packed with sun lounges in front of restaurants and bars. The beach is not too big so there's limited space after the sun lounges taking their spaces. We got here in the mid afternoon from Pnom Penh and stayed at a GST guesthouse, which had bungalows for $5. Although we found this out a few weeks after we were here, but GST got done because a 72 year old man was having sex with a 14 yr old girl in one of the rooms and this was all over CNN. Funnily enough, they have a notice clearly stating that sex with girls under the age of 16 is prohibited-tut tut.

There really wasn't much to do for us apart from sunbathe, play cards, read a book or listen to music. It does have a drinking vibe around this place but we're not really into that so we just chilled. There are opportunites to visit the islands but we've visited some in Nha Trang, Vietnam, so we weren't too fussed. I went for a couple of good runs down to the isolated beach, which was nice, especially when we've spent a lot of time in the tourist areas.

Probably the most interesting we did here was update our ipods. They have shops here where you can update your music and videos on your ipod for a $1 an album. It can only work here because they download illegally and therefore make a profit. We left on the 3rd night on a night bus to Siem Reap. Many people have knocked Sihanoukville for it not being much of a backpacker scene but it has a real chilled out vibe so I enjoyed my time there.

Sorry, we forgot to take photos of this place-that's how chilled we were!

Phnom Penh of Cambodia

Ok a little history lesson for you to start with. In a nutshell Cambodia has some really troubled history that dates back only 30 years ago. In 1975 the khymer rouge, led by Pol Pot began the genocidal destruction of their own country in an attempt to wipe out all other political campaigns that opposed them. This includes the imprisonment and execution of 17,000 Cambodians, most of whom were family of the said parties, so that the future generations would not fight back. We visited the S21 prison, that once was a high school, but was transformed to hold the kymers prisoners captive. Classrooms were turned into cell blocks and torture chambers and the halls were used for mass incarceration. It is said that upto 100 people were killed here each day while the masses were being detained. Little of the building has been tampered with since its use in the 70's so it is clear to see the nightmare that those people had to live their final days through.

We also visited Choeungek, better known these days as the killing fields. This is where the prisoners were transported to (about 15km away from the prison and center) executed in the thousands. There were grave sites, that had been excavated and in one in particular over 1000 human skulls had been removed from an area the size of half a tennis court. All these skulls have been placed inside a huge monument dedicated to those people and you are free to see and even touch the skulls (I have no idea why?) The most disturbing images we witnessed were of tiny babies being swung by the legs into tree trunks and added to the body count. Walking around the grave sites it is clear to see the remains of human skeletons on the surface of the ground, real disturbing stuff.

Since those days Cambodia has worked damn hard to reclaim its name as a nation. The people here were unbelievably friendly especially our friend DJ. He was a tuk-tuk driver who took us around on our sightseeing day, and boy was he a character. He told us how he was pissed off that porn was banned and had been blocked on the net in Cambodia, this really upset him. He also explained the difference between BOOM!-BOOM! (sex) and BA-BOOM! (rockets). Great teacher.


Being in Cambodia we took the opportunity to go to a shooting range where me and Abbie fired an M16 assault rifle. She hit a big fat zero out of 5. And I nailed 8 out of ten on the targets. She claims that she was aiming for my target, the video tells us otherwise, haha. But it was great fun. We passed on the option of shooting a rocket launcher at a live cow, it was too bloody expensive.

Our guesthouse, the drunken frog, was a lovely little spot with bamboo huts built above the lakeside, and a bar/lounge area also over the lake. It was a great spot to watch the sun go down.

I also checked out the central palace, Maj couldn't get in because he had a vest on, and he would scare the royal family. He didn't miss much except some beautifully decorated golden buildings. The area surrounding the palace was really nice though, again, next to the Mekong river, it was defiantely where the money was being spent in Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh Photo Link:

http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4544100011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/