Phnom Penh

We arrived at our accommodation and did the usual walk around to get our bearings. We had lunch at a restaurant where they didn't even have a menu...it was noodles or rice. We were just looking for some fuel rather than anything hugely exciting and so both settled for fried rice with vegetables. We had read that there were a few sky bars in Phnom Penh and so decided we would get the glad-rags on and have some cocktails. We picked a bar at the top of the tallest building in Phnom Penh, and certainly weren't disappointed with the view! We had a couple of cocktails and then made our way down to the river front for some dinner.  A few more cocktails ensued at our hostel until we were thrown out at closing time and made (twisted our arms, honest) to go to another bar around the corner which was open later. 

The next day we got a tuk tuk to take us to the killing fields. There had been some to see near Siem Reap but I'd been told these ones were better, I'm not sure better is the right word for somewhere like this, maybe more educational.  The Killing Fields are a number of sites all over Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge killed over one million people in secret after the civil war. They were mostly killing highly educated people like doctors, lawyers and teachers. They also targeted anyone thought to have any connection to the previous government. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge was described as the Hitler of Cambodia. If you were targeted, the would also kill all of your family to ensure that there would be no revenge on them, this included new born children. The place was horrific but also a very peaceful place to be as everyone was silent while waking around. There is a monument which has the skulls and other bones which were discovered there on display. It's crazy to think that all this happened only about 35 years ago. 

We went to another NGO, Daughter's of Cambodia, for lunch after the killing fields. This one was for women and men fleeing the sex industry.  A huge amount of girls are sold by their families into the sex trade every year. This NGO provides over 100 woman and men with jobs and training every year. http://daughtersofcambodia.org - if you fancy having a wee look at what they do. 

It was a bit of a whirl wind visit to Cambodia but the only thing we missed out on doing were the beaches, and we'd spent so long at the beach in Thailand that we were a bit beached out! Next stop, Viet Nam! 

 

Kratie - Cambodia

We left Ban Lung in the morning for Kratie. The journey didn't seem as bad this time as it had the night we arrived in Ban Lung. I think we must have had a mini bus with zero suspension that day. We arrived in Kratie about lunch time and decided to go to the same restaurant we'd been at for dinner during the stop on that awful journey. When we were there previously we'd seen that they also have rooms on offer so thought we would check them out. A man followed us all the way there, telling us he knew nice places that we could stay. Regardless of how many times we told him we neither needed or wanted his help, he still followed us. Wanting some unearned commission I'm sure. In an attempt to lose him we told him we would be having lunch at the restaurant before we did anything else. He decided he would just sit and wait for us and eventually the guest house caved and gave him commission even though we hadn't seen the room yet or decided if we would definitely stay there. 

After lunch, we looked at the room and did indeed decide we would stay there for a couple of nights. We spent the day walking around, getting our bearings, and went down to the river to watch the sun come down. We booked a trip to see the Irrawaddy Dolphins for the next day and also booked our next bus to Phnom Penh for the day after. We went to a nice NGO for dinner that night. They were training young Cambodians to work in all aspects of catering and tourism. Whoever was teaching them did a fantastic job, it was by far the best service we've had since leaving Scotland. The food wasn't amazing but the service definitely made up for it. 

The next morning we got a tuk tuk about 30km away to the Mekong River where we rented a long boat and went out for about an hour or so to see the Dolphins. The Irrawaddy Dolphins are endangered, there are only about 150 of them left in the world and 70 of those are in there in the Mekong River. We saw a few close up at the beginning but then only from far away after that. The guy on our boat was very good at pointing them out to us. We didn't mind that we didn't get to see them up close as all the money from the trips goes towards the conservation of the Dolphins and that's all that rally matters anyway. 

After our time was up on the river, we asked our tuk tuk driver to take us a wee bit further along the river to a place we had seen when we arrived the day before. It was such a beautiful wee spot with buildings on stilts down on the river. 

When we got back we went searching for the post office so we could send some post cards and then went for dinner. I had one of my cheapest beers that night, about 50p for draft Angkor. 

We were leaving for Phnom Penh the next day and really glad to be leaving our accommodation. We stupidly paid up front for two nights but hugely regretted it as the guesthouse obviously had some issues with the plumbing as there was a rancid smell in the place on the second day. Note to selves - don't pay in advance again. 

Ban Lung - Cambodia

We left for our trip to Ban Lung around 6am after waiting an hour for the bus to collect us, we should have left at 5am.  We were told that we would be in Ban Lung for around 3pm-ish.  After being on the bus for what felt like an eternity, we were told to get off along with one other westener, it was already about 3pm by this point.  We were then asked to follow some guy who took us to a minibus.  The driver of the minibus didn't seem very pleased to be taking us to Ban Lung and the other lady to Kratie, but we were soon clambering over goodness knows what to get into the back seat.  We drove for another two hours (in the wrong direction) to Kratie to drop the lady off.  We were then told we would need to get onto another bus to get us to Ban Lung.  This one wasn't leaving until 6.30pm so we went for some dinner.  We discussed just calling it a day and finding some accommodation in Kratie since we were planning to visit there anyway, but since we had already spent the whole day travelling we decided just to keep on trucking. We walked back round to the bus station for 6.30pm but were told that the bus wasn't full yet and that they might not leave at all unless more people came. Thankfully, there was enough people wanting to head that way and we set off at 7pm.  The road to Ban Lung was the worst I've ever been on, it didn't help that there was zero suspension in the minibus.  After being jiggled about for another couple of hours, a lot of the passengers got off.  We then managed to lie down on the seats and get some sleep.  We finally arrived in Ban Lung at 1am! Nine and a half hours later than we were told we would.  After having to wake someone up to let us into the accommodation we brushed our teeth and hit the sack.

We had a bit of a lie in the next morning as we were both understandably shattered from our hell journey the day before.  We had a late breakfast at our accommodation and then decided to rent some bicycles and head to the crater lake which was about 5km away.  We were given "good bikes" for our journey but about two meters in my chain fell off which almost made me land in the ditch.  Back I went to get myself another "good bike".  The first part of the journey was quite flat but it wasn't long before we were heading up our first hill.  This was when we realised just how "good" the bikes were.  Mine felt as though it was stuck in the highest gear and Kay's in first! You can't really complain when they cost $1 to rent for the full day.  The road to the lake was full of steep hills and we actually had to get off our bikes a few times to push! Showing our fitness level here, or lack there of.  Once we made it to the lake we went for a wee walk around some of it.  They think the lake was created by a meteor as it is a perfect circle. We decided to jump into the lake to cool down after our cycle.  We cycled back to our accommodation and had some dinner.  We had spoken with a lady via email about booking a jungle trek for the following day/night.  She came down to our accommodation to speak to us about our options. She was the loveliest lady and we decided we would do a two day/one night trek where we would stay with a family in the jungle. We spent the night packing and had an early night in preparation for our big trek the next day.

We were picked up early the next morning for our trek but ended up sitting about a bit while they organised everything.  There were people of all ages going on treks that day, even a 70ish year old woman who was doing a 5 day(!) trek! Good on her, I hope I'm that fit at 70.  We were the only ones doing two days and so we set off with our guide in the oldest car on the planet.  At one point he had to put down my window so, pulled over, got a wrench out and used that as a handle, since there was no longer one there.  He later told us the car was a gift from his god father and so he couldn't get rid of it.  I suspect he spends all his earnings on rice wine but maybe it truly is sentimentality that's making him hold onto the old banger.  We drove for a short while and our guide pulled over to buy some red bull and some surgical masks for Kay and I. I, being a diabetic, obviously declined the red bull but the surgical mask came in very handy with the really dusty roads.  He was calling it red snow as the dust was everywhere, including a thick layer on every roof.  We arrived at a small village to start our trek and pick up our ranger.  We needed to have one ranger, who knew the jungle, and one English speaking guide with us.  The ranger had a huge backpack with him and when he weight it, it was 19kg(!!). We had our own things, sleeping bag liner, flip flops, bikini, camera etc, our hammock for the night and 3 litres of water.  They probably only weighed about 5kg max and that was more than enough.  I have no idea how he walked so far with such a heavy bag.  The guides bag was around 13kg too! We walked until lunch time, taking short breaks every 45 minutes or so to have water and a quick sit down.  The trek wasn't particularly hard but the 35 degree heat was a killer.  We had a filling lunch of eggs and bread and then set off again.  We had two dogs with us the whole time too, one puppy and one slightly older dog.  They probably did ten times the distance we did that day as they were constantly running ahead and then coming back again.  We had to walk over some fallen trees a couple of times to get over some rivers which was a bit scary.  We didn't see a huge amount of wildlife but we did see a massive poisonous spider...eeekk! 

After lunch we were told by our guide that he had received a phone call from the village we were meant to be staying at, they told him that they were having a celebration that night and they didn't want any outsiders there.  He also explained that there would be a lot of drinking at the celebration which would make it difficult for him to translate for us.  We weren't 100% sure we fully believed him but felt we had no option but to agree to changing the plan, and sleeping in the jungle instead. I wasn't overly bothered as this had been my preferred option anyway.  We just decided between us that we would speak to the lovely lady we booked with when we got back.  We paid more to do the home stay and so if we weren't getting to do it, we wanted some of our money back.

We carried on our trek for another few hours until we arrived at our camp for the night.  It was a beautiful wee spot next to a river with pools.  We went for a quick dip to cool down before dinner.  It was then I realised why our rangers bag was so heavy.  He started pulling out pots, pans, knives, lots of vegetables and meat, like a mary poppins bag.  While we were doing our trek, our guide made us some lovely cups out of bamboo and so we had some (very strong) rice wine aka whisky while we chopped up some vegetables.  Our ranger made us a beautiful meal of rice, vegetables and chicken and also a vegetable soup which he made by putting all the ingredients into a piece of bamboo and put it over the fire.  He explained that you didn't need to add any water as it would come out from the bamboo.  We set up our hammocks after dinner and had an early night, which was a good thing as the temperature dropped quite drastically through the night and myself and Kay were both waking up every hour or so during the night with the cold.  

The next morning we woke to some lovely hot coffee and breakfast.  Our breakfast consisted of noodles, vegetables, lizards eggs and frogs (I didn't partake)! Lovely! We set off after breakfast for another day of hiking.  We arrived at the rangers village around lunch time and had lunch and a refreshing cold beer with them.  It was here that we left the ranger and the beautiful dogs.  Myself, Kay and the guide left in the car and went to another village so that he could show us a bit of village life.  

Once we had returned to Ban Lung we collected our rucksacks and spoke the lady who owns the company with her husband.  She refunded us straight away, without us having to ask, once we told her that we hadn't been able to do the trek we had originally booked.  Although we couldn't understand what she was saying to our guide, we could tell that she was furious with him.  So, I think our suspicions were correct and he just couldn't be bothered taking us to the home stay.  We both thoroughly enjoyed or trek none the less and our time in Ban Lung.  We moved accommodation that night to a slightly nicer hotel as, although the other one was very cheap, it was also very noisy.  We just wanted somewhere clean and quite to rest our heads and our legs for our journey to Kratie the following day.

Siem Reap

Siem reap

We made our way down to the fake 7/11 at the bottom of our street to wait for the bus to Cambodia. Once we had collected everyone, we made the short journey to the pier. Unfortunately the ferry we were supposed to be on was already full by the time we got there and so we had to wait for the next one. Thankfully, it was only a 30 minute wait. We had a quick look around the shops but it was just tourist tat so we decided to have a cup of tea to pass the time. The tea in Cambodia is rank, but for whatever reason we just don't seem to learn and continue to order the weak tea with condensed milk...bleugh! I think we have this unlikely hope that one day they'll give us something which resembles the tea from home. The ferry didn't take long and we were soon on mainland Thailand heading for the border. As I mentioned in my previous post, there was a scam going on at this crossing, but thankfully we were well read up and ready to take them on. The bus pulled into a small restaurant under the pretence that our tickets needed to be checked, and that another bus was coming to take us to the border. We sat for a while and ordered some lunch. One by one people were taken away from where we were sitting, they were told that they were now ready to go to the border. When I went inside the restaurant to order some water to have with our lunch, I saw everyone who had "left" sitting inside. I figured this must be the part of the scam where they tell you that they need to arrange your visa for $50. When I got back there was only myself and Kay, and one other, an American, still waiting. We tried to tell him what we knew about the scam but he didn't seem very keen to go against the status quo. Next, it was our turn to go through. We were taken into a small room where we were asked to show our ticket and passports. We were then told that we would also need to purchase our visas before leaving for the border. We told them we had already organised E-visas for ourselves (which was a lie) and when they asked to see them, we politely but firmly told them that they didn't need to see them and that we would show the officials once we got to the border. We were bundled out of there very quickly and put in a taxi to the border. I tried to go back to speak to the American so that he could do they same but they wouldn't let me, even when I said I needed the toilet. They didn't want us to speak to anyone else and potentially ruin their whole days takings.  We were dumped at the border and made our way through Thai immigration, past no-mans land and into the Cambodian immigration office. Here we encountered part two of the scam. This is where the greedy officials want a back hander for just doing their job. He wanted the $30 fee for the visa but also 100 baht. This is only about £2, but if they are taking this from everyone that passes through that border everyday they'll be making a small fortune. They showed us a scrap of paper with " Fee - $30 + 100B " written on it. We stuck to our guns and pointed to the official sign above our heads which showed the correct price. He then pointed to his scrap of paper again to which we responded with "what is the 100B for?" This continued on loop for a couple of minutes until he gave in and walked away. We then handed our passports to the gentleman behind the counter and waited for them to be processed.  We had read that if you refuse to pay the bride, they keep your passports for a long time and make you wait and wait. Luckily for us, they obviously weren't in the mood to play games and we got passports back in about 5 minutes. We then needed to queue to have our pictures and finger prints taken, this was where we met up with everyone from our bus that morning. They all told us how they had been made to pay $50 for their visa.  Some, who had also read about the scam, paid as they were worried about onward travel from the border if they didn't. Another long bus journey and questionable food from a restaurant in the middle of no where, we finally made it to Siem Reap. The next day was spent getting our bearings and deciding what to do with our time in Siem Reap. We took a walk to the infamous Pub Street, had some lovely pizza for dinner and booked a tour of Angkor Wat with a tuk tuk driver for the next day. We had to be up ridiculously early the next morning as we wanted to see the sunrise at Angkor wat. This meant being up at 4.30am and collected from our accommodation at 5am. Our driver dropped us off about twenty past and we made our way to Angkor wat to try and get a good spot for the sunrise. Sunrise wasn't until about 6.30am so we had to wait around for quite a while. We did have a good spot though but unfortunately the sun rise wasn't very spectacular that morning. We spent a couple of hours waking around after sunrise and then our diver collected us again about 9am. While we were walking around inside Angkor Wat we had insense trusted into our hands and before we knew it we were being blessed and asked to make a donation. Kay went into her purse and took out some small bills. He looked horrified but it wasn't until later that we realised just how little we'd given him....about 3p! Still getting used to the money here. He then took us to Angkor Thom and Bayon where we spent our time making funny pictures with all the carved faces. One Frenchman wailed behind us "No Madame! Not the nose!" as I pretended to stick my finger up one of their noses for a picture. Next stop was Ta Prohm temple which I think was my favourite as it's very much untouched at the moment. There are still tree roots strangling the walls which made up the temple. Parts of Tomb Raider were filmed at this temple and some of the others too.  We went for dinner at a small place along the road from our accommodation and both had a very tasty vegetable curry. It's my birthday!!!! Kay made me go and get my own breakfast from down stairs, can you believe it, on my birthday! While I was down stairs though, she fashioned a cake and candles for me (12 cupcakes and 1 huge candle). After having some cup cakes as a second breakfast we went across the road to a nice hotel where we could lounge by the pool and have cocktails. I had decided that for my birthday night out we would do an organised pub crawl. Neither of us had ever done one before and I wanted to do something a bit different. We dragged ourselves away from the poolside and went for dinner to line our stomachs. Faces on, we got a tuk tuk to 'X bar' which is just off Pub Street and where our pub crawl would begin. We played a game of beer pong with some lovely Canadian girls before all the madness began. After a few warm up games and drinks at X Bar, around 70 of us headed off to the next pub. Drinks were only $1 but, as I keep encountering, there wasn't any sugar free mixers. The problem was easily solved by running across the road to buy my own mixer from the convenience store. At one of the bars later, Kay asked for "just vodka" for my drink and was handed a full glass of vodka! The spirits are cheaper than the mixers here so they are very free flowing with the alcohol! Had a lovely night meeting lots of new people. Definitely one birthday I will never forget. The next couple of days were very uneventful as I had food poisoning which in turn was leaving me very run down. Sore throat, swollen glands, ulcers, the works! Poorly girl.  Kay was very kind and went to the pharmacy to get me some medicine and in two days I was well enough for our next journey. We were headed to the North-East to do some trekking!