The Road to Cambodia

This is a rather belated blog as we've been struggling to get a good enough internet connection and we haven't spent much time in any one place, but here goes...

We left the luxury of our Thai beach island behind and hit the road to Cambodia, which is reknowned for it's extremely rough roads and corrupt border police - not great ingredients for a 9 hour bus journey! But we made it without even paying the semi-official surcharge (ie back-hander) at the border. Our destination was Siem Reap, which is the nearest town to the temples of Angkor Wat.

We had another dose of culture shock when we arrived - it's a much poorer country than Thailand, with mainly dirt roads and little infrastructure. The upside of that is that we were able to eat for $1-2 each at the nightmarket (cashpoints dispense American dollars, with the local currency only used for amounts of less than $1). 

We spent our first day in Cambodia at an orphanage. We were invited by one of the teachers, who we met the previous evening. There were 35 kids living there, ranging from 3-17 years old. It was incredibly humbling seeing how they live, sleeping 3 to a bed with yet more sleeping in their classroom due to lack of space. But we had a fun time playing with them, and even taught an impromptu 1 hour English lesson. In the evening the orphnage puts on a show of traditional Khmer dance for tourists, which gives their main source of income. We watched them making some of their costumes, and were amazed by how good the show was - some of them were very talented.

But the main event at Siem Reap was the temples. It's difficult to describe how vast the site is - something like 25 square miles containing 100 or so temples. The largest has a moat 200m wide and the central building is maybe 300m square, built from stone blocks, almost every one of which is carved or decorated. Our favourite temple was Ta Phrom, where the jungle has been allowed to take over. Huge tree roots are forcing the stone blocks apart, gradually disassembling what man created 800 year earlier - very atmospheric.

Pre Rup at Sunset

A small section of Angkor Wat

Ta Phrom

We also bumped into a really cool Dutch couple - Heman and Marieke - who we'd previously met in Thailand, and had a lovely meal with them on our last night in town.

After Siem Reap we spent 7 hours in a bus with the Cambodian equivalent of MTV blaring out on the way to Phnom Penh where we spent 2 nights. We visited a torture prison (Tuel Sleng) and killing fields created by the Khmer Rouge during their oppression of Cambodia. 100 victims a day were tortured and killed at these sites alone. Truly chilling and only 35 years ago.

We've now left Cambodia behind us and arrived in Phu Quoc, an island off the Southern cost of Vietnam. We needed some chill-out time after a couple of cities, and Phu Quoc has amazing beaches. More on that next time...

Hope everyone who reads this is well. We enjoy reading your comments, so keep them coming!

Marc & Liz