Capitol Guesthouse Phnom Penh

Were a bit behind on our entries again so I'll try and remember back to last week. We arrived in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capitol city, around 7pm on the 11th. The tour company who we were traveling with left us outside their guesthouse in the middle of the city. We had a look at the rooms and they were basic but cheap so we decided to stay. No windows but we've stayed in far worse! We decided to stay 3 nights in Phnom Penh so the following day was to be our only full day. When we went out t...

today's the start of our vacation for the vietnamese new year, called Tet. Tet lasts for an entire week, during which all businesses and government offices are closed...for the entire week, and then some. communism. bah. so, carmen and i fled the country. we took a bus to the border, which lasted about two hours, then we stood in line to EXIT Vietnam for one hour, then we had to walk across the border to the Cambodian immigration and stand in line for half an hour before waiting another two a...

- Took a boat down Mekong Delta to see the floating markets

- Saw a woman making rice paper and sweets from coconut milk - they use every part of the coconut and nothing goes to waste.

- Chau Doc for the night on a floating hotel

1 Aug - before entering Cambodia by boat. We stopped off at a little viallge by the water. The speed boat trip to the border took an hour and then a further hour and a half into Phnom Penh.

2 Aug - day trip round the city with a tuc tuc....

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries - Aldous Huxley Once is never enough I was unbelievably pumped to get back to Siem Reap because it meant I was gonna be seeing the nearby Angkor temples, only a few km from the town. The celebrated temples of Angkor are Cambodia's greatest tourist attraction and, in my opinion, the highlight of any trip to South East Asia. The 100 or so temples are the sacred remains of what was once a much larger administrative and religi...

Friday 13th, a good day to get on a 6 hour boat. Actually it was. Having had a really good night sleep thanks to the mosquito net (oh how i taunted the mosquitoes that couldnt get in) i got up early had a lovely baguette with cream cheese for breakfast as my complimentary breakfast and then made my way to the boat. I thought the boat trip was to take us to the border, where we would change boat and head up to Phnom Penh, but we got to do a bit of sight seeing. We first visited a fish farm on ...

Finally, Dan has come back to Cambodia! Having got a taxi to the lakeside area, i bumped into Tha, who took me to the Greenlake Guesthouse. Basic accomodation, for $4 a night with a cheap restaurant and alcohol in the terrace area, i couldn't complain, with toilet and shower in room. Only cold water, but considering it was hitting top 30s during the day, hot water would have been too much. Anyway, once i checked-in, i just wanted to sleep, having not slept for 24 hours. Within in a minute of ...

Our bus ride here from Ho Chi Minh was fine on the Vietnamese side of the border and bumpy (to say the least) on the Cambodian side. The locals had wisely seated themselves at the front of the bus. We were positioned at the back, over the tyres, so flew through the air each time the bus hit one of the many potholes on the road. We stayed at the Capital Guest house in Phnom Penh...very cheap as it seemed to make most of its money from running a brothel at the same time. We spent two good days ...

After our night in Chau Doc, we were out in the sampans(?) of the locals on the Mekong Delta to visit the Champa village in the delta. After that we got onto a ferry to take us to the border crossing. It was a very long day, we'd left the hotel at 7am and arrived in Phnom Penh about 7pm. Got a city tour booked for the next day, got some food and went to bed like the old ***** we are! Today was the city tour - we went to the Killing Fields, Toul Sleng genocide museum, the russian market, the r...

Well we last left you in Vientaine and allot has happened since then. We've jumped from one capital city to another. In Vientaine we explored the city and it was a really nice treat to eat in some nice restaurants and drink in some nice bars, as oppose to our usual street vendors. We went to the Buddha Park, which was surprisingly really beautiful but the journey there was, to say the least, an ''experience''. We caught the local bus that only took about an hour but we were some what of a spe...

what a relief.. vietnam was a very strange leg of the trip. i liked it but didnt and its very hard to explain why.. i think it had a lot to do with the people.. i dont know if ive said it before in the blog and i dont feel like sifting through entries so ill go on anyways. vietnam is very different from thailand and cambodia. they are a very self sufficient country and have quite a sturdy economy mostly fueled by rice export, they are 2nd largest exporters in the world. because of this they r...