Bougainvillier Hotel Phnom Penh

... via bus every morning along with the mail (there's a post office but no one uses it). Then I'm all set and take my purchases and newspaper to my usual cafe along the waterfront. <br> <br><br> There is something about the cafes in Cambodia that I absolutely love, a bit gritty, a tad sleazy, something secretive, like a shot out of an old Kung Fu movie where the hero stumbles into a smokey cafe and the men sit in dark corners looking like they're about to ...

... the city- yet no one knew its exact location or what atrocities occurred within.<br><br>On a lighter note, we ended our day with a trip out on the town for some local Angkor brew with a local expat I met through a mutual friend. We dined on lovely French cuisine, enjoyed cocktails over the river of the Foreign Correspondent's Club, and all for the meager price of $11 a head (for the whole evening, tuk tuk rides included)!!!<br><br>

<br><br> We caught a bus right down the middle of Cambodia to Phnom Penh. Our main aim here was to sort out our visas for Vietnam - something we had left rather late. We weren&#8217;t expecting any problems but we only had 4 days to get to Vietnam to meet Nathan so couldn&#8217;t really afford any delays at the same time. We arrived however on a Saturday and so the embassy was closed which left us with the Monday and Tuesday to get it all sorted providing there ...

... dit stadje. En met m'n ogen open kwam ik voorbij een boedhistische ceremonie. Een stuk of 8 monniken zaten naast elkaar en daar tegenover zat een groep van ongeveer 30 mensen. Ik stond geinteresseerd te kijken en werd zowaar naar binnen gewoven door een meisje. Ik ging dus als enige niet-Laoitiaan tussen de mensen zitten en bleef rustig afwachten. Na +/- anderhalf uur zitten op m''n knieen en geen idee hebbende wat er aan de hand was werden de monniken in een tuk ...

... someone to run activities like face painting and craft projects in a toy store - but by chance or serendipity the day that my application went in the company had a staff member leave suddenly and so they called me in to interview as a replacement for her - as a stock merchandiser, event planner and in a kind of brand development role! Cool huh!<br><br>So things are all coming together and I'm in for another Southeast Asian tour of duty!

... up the speed of killing at the end)<br>The big U N Tribunal is ongoing now.<br><br>What I found most upsetting is that this all only happened 30 years ago, and I can't understand why it was allowed to continue. I know the borders were closed and fear ruled all through the country, but its within my life time - I was doing my O land A levels whilst this was happening. I obviously need to read up more, as I don't know enough to ...

... for breakfast.....the naan was the only saving grace....but we survived the experience thankfully!! In the afternoon we collected the passports from the Laos Embassy, with visa! and headed around the corner to the vietnam embassy for visa number 2. Here the process was completed as you wait and we left with our visa 20mins after arriving...job done - wicked! We then had dinner at the lakeside, with a friend we had made when trekking ...

... from the centre!<br><br>We did see some interesting things though. From the chaotic looking floating market to the beauty of more rural parts of the delta, a visit to a Cham village and a fish farm. Also one couple on the tour were from France but the lady was actually Cambodian and the man was Vietnamese so that invited myself and another lady to a really authentic meal just eating street food. It was a very good ...

... too bad no motos were into it... so we came to a poorer town called Kompong Thom, that gets barely any tourists at all, and found a guide, two actually, since matt is coming along! haha.... so as of tomorrow we are on a REAL journey! motos in the countryside, looking for long lost temples, only known to the wind and the rain... and soon... ME!!<br><br>I hope you like all the new pics... sorry it took so long... talk to you soon. bye!

... by a sharp slap administered by her mother who had noticed the girl drooling over my right knee. I sought to reassure the anxious mother that this kind of thing was always happening to me and there was no cause for alarm.<br><br>It wasn't until 4:00 pm that we arrived in the old French riverside town of Kampot. Since we had set out at 5:45am, it had taken us over ten hours to travel 105 kilometres and cost us about 50 pence each. We were apprehended by some moto boys who soon had us ...