Tai Ming Plaza Hotel Phnom Penh

... Vientiane while he was there for work and dropped by the Childsafe HQ to say hey, but he was still in Laos trying to get Childsafe off of the ground and running up there.

It rained that evening, so we took it easy and hung out at the guesthouse. The next morning was nice. We needed to go by Rogue and get some music and movies. It’s brilliant, you take a flash drive or ipod in there and look through a huge catalogue of music, tv shows, movies, and audio books and pick which ...

... 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?

After a long 12 hour trip from Phonsavan to Vihn, we took a night train to Hanoi. In hanoi we ...

... tuk driver got saved. Afterwards, the Citipointe Band and & some of the muso’ from the Church all went out to dinner at Baan Thai. We all ate upstairs on the veranda of a cool traditional Khmer wooden house and we sat on cushions on the floor around low tables. I ate my favourite Tempura Shrimp & vegetables with chilli sauce!

... I've ever seen a skull up close and personal before and shelves upon shelves were hard for me to take.

There are several excavated sites where the remains have been dug up then incinerated and placed in a pagoda to memorialize them. It's really eerie walking around the grave sites and imagining the atrocities that were committed against the prisoners before they were murdered. There is a tree where children were beat against that has some remains as well. The ...

... my bag, I could smell oil or petrol so I asked Mei to go and get my bag as there were scooters and bikes in the cargo bit too, and if one of them had fallen over it would leak all over my bag. Mei went down to get it and one of the bikes had fallen over but he got my bag before it any oil had had leaked its way to my bag. I am very glad I worry otherwise I would have had a bag caked in grease. About ...

... have far to travel and had our ticket and were in the grounds by 9. Some of the temples were interesting enough but we were glad we opted for 1 day, although if we’d paid for a 3 day ticket I would’ve spent the whole time feeding the elephants. I don’t think I could ever get tired of them, they’re just so funny. After feeding them all twice we’d seen and done everything we wanted and were on our way back by 4 o ...

... remain, with barely enough room for a person to lie down. The larger cells display the remains of a "bed" and show graphic photographs of corpses that are barely recognizable as human, they have been so mutilated. Amongst the thousands of photographs of the victims, one really stood out. A woman stands holding her baby. The look in her eyes was all things at once, angry, challenging, compassionate, pleading, desperate, but most of all dignified. Desperate to protect the life of her ...

... hope they find paper to draw on.

The 6 hour ride back was entertaining with the numerous creative ways people transport goods or people. They almost defy gravity with how high they pile things on a truck or what they fit on a motorbike. We saw one go by with abut 50 ducks hung upside down and tied by their feet to a sheet of wire on the back of a motorbike...and yes,they were still alive.

We stopped to eat at a typical Cambodian restaurant. They way it works is ...

... At the end of the tour was a small exhibit of skulls from the killing fields of Choeung Ek are on display, showing how the Khmer Rouge used to execute the captives from S-21 at the nearby village of Choeung Ek. Important political prisoners were executed in the grounds and buried in shallow graves. Having seen so much today we decided to save the trip to Choeung Ek for another day, even though the tuk-tuk drivers outside were persistently trying ...

... and minerals. A couple of mosquito bits I got on my ankle over a week ago have been scratched into infection, proper scabbed up, and all yellow and pussy, and it really hurt when you touch them. And since then I have developed sores from burst spots on my chest and unfortunately my face also. Normally I eat very well, very good diet, especially here with Mandarin as we just buy fresh veg and fruit, we eat many a salad, and no meat, I have started eating things I hated before ...