Hope & Anchor Guesthouse, Restaurant & Riverside Bar Phnom Penh

... it into the exact opposite, a prison of insufferable cruelty and despair. The site was truly haunting.<br><br>John and I headed back to the hostel, a walk that took about twenty minutes or so, and had lunch. After this I did a good bit of blogging, had a shower, then met up with John, Derk and Erik at 5.30pm to go out for the evening. We got a tuk-tuk to the riverfront, and headed up a flight of stairs to the distinguishedly-titled Foreign Correspondents' Club. You don't ...

... hotel in early evening and went for a stroll by the river, which is not as pleasant as it sounds. The riverbank was muddy and very crowded. For some bizzare reason, there were hundreds of locals standing by the river looking at the water, so we went to see what the attraction was all about. Lo and behold, there was nothing, nada! People were just looking at the murky water going by... weird... Guess there was not much else to do on a Saturday night...<br><br ...

... at Phonsavan to catch a glimpse of the mysterious 'Plain of Jars', a bunch of huge pots spread across three different sites. Its origin and meaning is still not well understood. Anyway, a very interesting sight. Watch out for UXO's! Did you know that the americans held a secret war in Laos and this became is the world's most heavily bombed nation? <br><br>After a long 12 hour trip from Phonsavan to Vihn, we took a night train to Hanoi. In hanoi we ...

... leave&#8230; Coinci-mental. Becky was out to visit him and was making her way home a few days after me. The Zeppelin bar, some hours later, Peter the Bulgarian owner raised in the country of Africa and owner of countless bars in his time as well as speaker of 8 languages. A good bloke all round really. Drinks did flow like the Mekong River and White Russians that looked like ice-cream sundaes came at me like silver bullets to Werewolves and I did my best to put my 6:00am ...

Its been a while since our last update, &amp; we've been fairly whipping through the countries.We only had 10 days in Cambodia &amp; divided our time between Phnom Phen, Otres beach &amp; Siem Riep, the town closest to Angkor!<br><br>Phnom Phen was a fun place to be. Big, hot, scruffy &amp; busy but with a faded colonial charm &amp; friendly, smiley people. The highlight of our stay was an afternoon spent at a kick boxing match. Amongst the 10 bouts was a championship fight so ...

... of bars and restaurants and we found solace in a great little Indian just around the corner from where we were staying. The Magic Sponge held weekly poker nights and so one evening myself, Mish and Rob duly attended, hoping to win the odd Dollar or two. There were some interesting characters around the table with each person playing the game with a differing degree of seriousness. A combination of bad cards and terrible play meant that I left the table first ...

... classes ring the top of the stadium, while a soccer match goes almost unwatched in the stadium itself.<br><br>All ages and getups involved. Nearly all the instructors were wearing jeans and even thongs and working up a healthy sweat... as did I.<br><br>We took along Soriya, Sraepao and Seanglay from the house and school and achieved ...

... saying and they couldn&#8217;t be older than six years old. They were running around a gate of a place where thousands of people were killed and they were so poor. I was angry at the situation, but I was more angry that I felt like either their parents or the government had let them down. They were begging for money and I felt like every person who gave them money was somehow helping in the process of selling their childhood. Maybe this is naïve or a useless emotion ...

... to apply for the visa instead of at the boarder, but we told him we rather wanted to get our visa at the boarder. Him being very eager for earning a few extra baht in commission, he did not deliver us at the boarder but at what he called the Cambodian consulate, who, surprisingly wanted to have much more money than the boarder crossing people. Well, we finally got angry with him so he took us this time to the right place, where it was relatively easy to walk through the ...

... luxury complete with a peak-hatted driver, were emblazoned with logos such as 'Adventure Expeditions' or 'Angkorean Safari' but the occupants, most of whom seemed past retirement age, didn't look much like expedition members.<br><br>At a kind of motorway toll station we dismounted to buy our photo identification that would allow us to visit the temples for the next three days. I had never expected that there would be a purpose-built motorway leading into the temple compound ...