TravelStream™ news feed for member graydominic4 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/graydominic4 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 07 May 2008 09:02:36 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208833140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208833140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208833140/tpod.html Wed, 07 May 2008 09:02:36 -0400 Dom's Big Trip - USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Austraila, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Singapore etc

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Hanoi, Vietnam

After wasting much of the day yesterday on a wild goose chase I decided to have a look round Hanoi today. It was about a 30 minute walk to the towns central lake area. There is a large lake and a small park area surrounded by various shops bars and restaurants. Had a fantastic pizza for dinner and a good look round the shops. I tried not to stay outside for too long a period today, as it was extremely hot. Apart from a few beers in the evening I had a quiet day, which made a nice change as it feels like day after day has been hectic for weeks.Sunday morning make myself get up early as the rest of the tour was due to arrive at about 06.30. We then had breakfast included at the restaurant "Koto" which was where I had eat with the girls on Friday night.There was no sign of the group though. I eventually went out for something to eat at lunchtime and left them a note. Came back after lunch, all I could get from the Hotel was that they had been delayed. Went out a few more times and popped back to the hotel to find they had still not arrived. By 7pm I went out and bought a snack then sent the evening finishing another really good Lee Child novel. The tour eventually arrived at abpout 22.30. Their train had been delayed from Hui by 14 hours !!! It then took an extra couple of hours to its scheduled time. They all arrived looking pretty tired after spending the night trying to sleep on the train station floor !!! This obviously made me feel much better about my wasted journey. Am so glad I got the flight now, whatever happens with the visa. No rest for the others though, as they have lost their day in Hanoi, and tomorrow morning we leave to head further north to Hamong Bay which I have been told is spectacularly beautiful. We then spend a day and a night cruising through some of the 3000 small islands of the coast of Halong bay.....
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Hanoi, Hanoi, Vietnam

The girls and I had about a 40 minutes taxi ride to Hue airport. Our flight was at 08.00 am and was scheduled to get us to Hanoi by 09.00am. Our tour leader Hong had been an absolute star and organised our taxi to the airport and arranged for our transport the other end, and also for us to arrive at our Hotel earlier than which was planned on the tour. This is where the benefit of having a Vietnamese guide has really counted, as the language barrier is a real problem. When you cannot get a taxi driver to understand what you mean by airport you know you are in trouble!!! Hong has been invaluable for our trip through Vietnam so far, and that the whole group is totally agreed on.The flight all went to schedule and we arrived at out Hotel in Hanoi at about 10.00am. I had been on the chinese embassy website for details about opening times etc, but as it is all in chinese I did not find it much help.I had been told the embassy was in walking distance, but decided to get a taxi as I was very keen to get there ASAP. I managed to obtain the address and showed it to the taxi driver and off I went( the girls went off to find the Indian Embassy ) The traffic was quite heavy and it took about 20 minutes to get there - the cost 16000 Dong ( about 55 pence )not too bad ! I arrived at the embassy at 11.00am just as they were locking the gates. There was a soldier on duty outside, but once again the language barrier is an issue. I had sensible got myself a small phrase book which had the normal useful phrases and translations that you might need on a holiday. This is great but as the words are totally unpronounceable to a typical english ( useless at languages ) idiot, then it was not much help.I do manage to find a notice board and a sigh which has the opening times as 08.00 to 11.00 and 14.00 to 18.00. I now have three hours to kill. There are a lot of local people hanging around in this area trying to sell you stuff books, maps, drinks etc and soon get fed up of getting hassled. It is extremely hot today, and I am dressed smartly ( as advised for a visit to an embassy ) so have trousers and a shirt on. I manage to see a continental style cafe that looks very smart accross the road so I make my way to that. I kill time by having luch and a couple of beers and reading up on Hanoi from my Lonely planet Guide ( they are just the best thing ever invented !! ) Three hours later I return to the embassy - gates are still locked !!! I hang around for 30 minutes, still locked. I then get to meet a really friendly vietnamese lady who speaks very good english. She explains to me that the embassy only opens in the morning on a friday !!! So basically my trip hads been a total waste of time, and I could of stayed with the group today and then got the overnight train with them to Hanoi from Hue.I get a taxi back to the Hotel ( 20 minutes and 33000 Dong this time - Yes I have been ripped off !! ) I unfortunately have met a couple of people this morning that have seemed to want to rip me off. Buying a can of drink, I am not given the right change, struggling to get the right change from the first taxi !! I give this taxi driver a 100,000 Dong note, he then gives me change for a 50,000 note. By this time after my wasted day i am seriously pissed off. When I proclaim very louding to him " Give me my f*****g change" I seem to overcome the language barrier and he grumbles and gives me another 50,000 note!!! It may be less than 2 quid we are talking about, but its not the point !!!!!Anyway I spend the rest of the day looking about. The shopping here once again seems, good everything is very cheap. or should I say "reasonably priced " !!!I meet Alsion and Margaret for dinner, and we go to a really smart restaurant called " Koto " This is run by a non profit organisation who train and educate young people in catering, and the art of serving customers. The place is great. The prices are more expensive but the three of us get a great meal and a bottle of wine and a few other drinks for about 6 pounds each.The girls had had no more luck than me today. They had got to the Indian Embassy to find it was closed for an Indian public holiday !!! They have decided to travel onwards to our next Tour location of Halong Bay a day early. I have decided to stay here in Hanoi, and have a quiet day to myself before the rest of the Tour arrives here on Sunday morning....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208583300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208583300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208583300/tpod.html Fri, 02 May 2008 00:49:58 -0400 Dom's Big Trip - USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Austraila, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Singapore etc

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Hue, Vietnam

We travelled about 4 hours up the coast by bus to Hue ( prounounced Way ) The tour is stopping here for two nights.I have decided, along with two American girls Margaret and Alison, to only stay here one night, then fly up to Hanoi ( Northern Vietnam ) so I can visit the Chinese Embassy on the friday to enquire about the possibility of getting a Chinese Visa. The girls are wanting to visit the Indian Embassy, as they have had to change their proposed travel to Tibet because of all the political unrest there at the moment.Once we arrived we immediately got taxi's to Hue Imperial City. This is where the historic Royal palaces are located within a walled city surrounded by a moat still to this day. This was originally to protect from imperial invaders many hundreds of years ago. The architecture and furnishings are truly spectacular, heavily influenced by the chinese style. There has been a slight but noticeable drop in the temperature! It is still what us Brits would term as sweltering - up in the mid 30 degrees, however at times there has actually been a slight breeze today which is oh so welcome !The pace of activity on this trip is certainly not letting up. In the evening the wholegroup went to a Royal Banquet. This involved dressing up in traditional vietnamese costumes. We have some newlyweds on our tour from Australia called Warren and Megan, so the group decided it was approppriate to let them be the King & Queen for the evening. We were served about 12 courses, were in our own spectacular private room and had a musical vietnamese quartet to accompany the evening. It was a real experience, and something quite different.Then it was back to the Hotel, and for me, to get my things together as I have a taxi picking me up at 06.30 in the morning to take me to Hue airport for our hour long flight to Hanoi........
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208368140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208368140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208368140/tpod.html Thu, 01 May 2008 23:48:46 -0400 Dom's Big Trip - USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Austraila, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Singapore etc

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Hoi An, Vietnam

Tuesday morning we travelled to Saigon airport. We are booked on a 10.20am flight to Da Nang and then travel onto Hoi An.The contrast between here and Saigon city is totally amazing. This is a small town that used to be a major trading post in the seventeenth century. It is now a popular tourist destination and is by the sea. There is an area near here called china beach. There is mile after mile of stunning beaches. There is not much here at the moment. But there are hoardings every where along the waterfront land. American companies have bought up huge sections of land and major holiday resorts and apartments are on their way soon. The boat has already been missed with regard to property prices, as land is now selling at 20,000 pounds per square metre here!!Hoi An is packed with architecture and beautiful old buildings that have european influences, in particular France from the colonial days.The place is positively laid back and genteel in comparision to Saigon. One of the main past times here is shopping. There are incredible bargains to be had. Clothing shops are particularly in abundance. And most places will make stuff to measure. The tailors have next catalogues there so you can pick stuff out of and have it made to measure if you wish. I am relatively sensible and dont buy much, as the thought of carrying the stuff about with me for the next month or so just does not feel worth it. However if I were returning directly home it would be a different story.The place is very relaxed, there are absolutley loads of little bars and restaurants. There is also quite a big market. I find out that it is very important not to stop and touch something there unless you are seriously interested in buying, as if you do the vendors, in particular the women, will follow you through the market almost hanging off your arm begging you to buy!!Hoi An has definitely been my favourite place to date I have visited in Cambodia and Vietnam. It is hard to describe what is so special about it - there are a maze of little streets with bars and shops. The art shops are amazing, and I treat myself to a large oil painting of a floating Vietnamese market. I looked forward to getting it framed, as I think it will look stunning!!We then spend the next two days frankly not doing a great deal other than wandering about and shopping and visiting the bars and restaurants. The whole group seem totally enchanted with this place. We are all agreed we could spend much more time here than the tour allows. I certainly would love to return and I cant recommend it enough. Preferably a visit soon before it becomes over commercialised and ruined as no doubt it probably will eventually.....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1207882380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1207882380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1207882380/tpod.html Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:11:09 -0400 Dom's Big Trip - USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Austraila, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Singapore etc

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

We set off from bangkok at 07.00am on the Sunday morning. There was 2 small mini buses which were very smart ( With the oh so important great air conditioning )Once out of Bangkok we made good progress and got to the Thai / Cambodian border in about 4 hours. We had lunch before we crossed the border. The place was a bit dodgy. A very poor area, with lots of beggars and children hassling all the tourists. It is the worst conditions I certainly have ever seen people living in.We got to the border and went through immigration etc. Our luggage went over on a barrow with a young lad pushing it( We were to get a different bus on the other side ) I did wonder whether we would ever see it again, but our guide Blair said they had never had a problem yet !! It took ages to get out visa's checked and stamped but finally we got through. Still stinking hot - no change there, but thankfully there was a big fan in the immigration office that we all huddled round !!!We found our bus fairly quickly and the luggage had all arrived at it too. The contrast with this bus from the last was significant. It was old, looked a bit delapitated, several knocks, scrapes and bangs on it - Anyone familiar with Gt Yarmouth I would say it made Caroline Seagull coaches look luxurious!!One thing you need to realise about Cambodia is that there is a time change when you cross the border - You need to put your watches back about thirty years !!!We then started our journey to Siem Reap which is about 120 miles. I soon realised why we were still expected to take about another 5-6 hours to complete our journey as the roads really are terrible. The road we were taking is actually Highway 6 - but it is 90% mud track ( although they are working on improving it now )It is nothing more than mud tracks. Although you are meant to drive on the right, I think that is a rough guide and not an exact science. It gets its name as the dancing road as there are so many potholes lumps and bumps that the old buses jump about like crazy, leaving you dancing about inside the bus!!We drove mainly though open fields and farmland and very small villages. The people are mostly living in shacks, the good ones having corrugated metal sheeting. Clearly the people are extremely poor. The children are playing in the dirt and the rubbish at the side of the roads, and it made the other side of the border seem affluent.Mercifully there was still some reasonable air conditioning on the bus. the driver would have to stop every hour or so and get out and check the bus - wheel nuts etc before we could continue.There were many signs of road improvements having started along the route. We were told however that the Government were being paid by Thai Airlines to go slow on the project, as once completed it would dramatically effect their business between Thailand and Cambodia - seems quite believable to me!!!We start to run into Siem reap, I am really surprised about how big the place is. there are also loads of Hotels - apparently it attracts 2 - 3 million tourists a year. So we eventually get to our Hotel at about 17.30, it is quite large and looks pretty good.........
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Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The first whole day in our new group we get a bus to take us to the Cu chi tunnels, about 90 minutes outside of Saigon.These tunnels were dug out by the Vietnamese and the Viet Kong during the war. They were used to frustrate the Americans. The terrain was very much jungle. They hugely frustrated the Americans, as the enemy would just seem to appear from no where and disappear just as easily. This area is now a living museum and has Vietnamese people demonstrating how they actually lived at the time, and how they survived. It is amazing how soi many people effectively lived in such small tunnels for such long periods of time. We did get to go through a section which was incredibly small and claustrophobic. it was a total relief to get out again, if for no other reason than the heat !I decided to take a free afternoon then, as the group were visiting the museum I had visited the day before. That evening I went with some of the group to actually have a meal on one of the street markets. This was a real experience, the food was fantastic, and cost an average of 2 pounds each!!Tomorrow morning we move out of Saigon. The place is a real experience, but it will be nice to get away from the traffic, and hopefully to a little less of a crowded place. Maybe even to a place where crossong the road does not take such planning and good fortune....
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Saigon, Vietnam

Xin chao ( Hello ) from Vietnam.We left Chau Doc, after our overnight stop here after crossing the border from Cambodia yesterday into South Vietnam, at about 09.00am. We travelled by coach in an easterley direction for about four hours and arrived in Saigon at about midday.After visiting the relatively sparsely populated country of Australia the asian countries are quite a shock. Unbelievably Vietnam is approximately the same size of country as New Zealand, but its population is 84 million, compared to New Zealands 4 million !We make relatively slow progress on the roads due to the volume of traffic. In Vietnam motorbikes seem to outnumber cars massively, I would say at least 20 motorbikes to every car. This is due to the high levels of taxation on cars obviously to stop this densely populated country grinding to a total stop !!Although we did not seem to travel a great distance, the traffic was absolutely horrendous as we approached Saigon. there is a population of 5 million people, and it seems like every one owns a bloody motorbike. The roads are simply clogged, every hour seems like rush hour, until you get to rush hour and then the chaotic traffic roads become surreal.Things you need to know about the traffic:- - You cannot wait for their to be a gap in the traffic to cross the road, there will not be one. - Pedestrians supposedly have right of way, so you have to just step out into the traffic. As the majority of vehicles are motorbikes they will manouvre round you. - Do not stop suddenly, or try to run, and the motorbikes should not hit you. They are not travelling at huge speeds ( as this is not possible ! ) - Pavements are for Motorbikes to park on predominantly, you will have to walk in the side of the road. Be careful when stepping out of buildings onto the pavement, as the roads are busy the motorbikes will ride on them too if there is space. - The above rules do not count with regard to buses. You will only step in front of them once !!! - Everyone pips their horn at least every five seconds, this is compulsory !!!!There are a few noticeable differences from cambodia. For a start there are actually old people, as there really does not seems to be hardly any old people about in Cambodia. We book into out Hotel, which once again is a a pretty good standard.The first half of our tour is now pretty much coming to an end. We have only tomorrow with our current group and Tour leader. After that two of the seven people are leaving the tour, but we gain a new Tour Leader and another 7 people to take us up to the maximum group size for this type of tour, before we continue our travels north right through the entire length of Vietnam.We have a few hours free to ourselves this afternoon. As a group we decide we are going to go to the Sheraton Hotel's roof bar/ cocktail lounge for Happy hour. Cocktails are buy one get one free from 17.30 to 19.00 - just as well as they are US$7 a hit. i suppose that has to be expected as even in Vietnam ( which is very cheap ) it is over US $250 dollars per night to stay there.It is still abslolutely scorching hot !! The overnight temperatures are 35 degrees C, I dread to think what they are getting up to during the day in the sun !!Happy hour makes us all happy, and we leave there to move onto a nice restaurant where our meals and drinks average at about 3 pounds each!!On the saturday we pretty much have a free day, but as tonight is our last night all together as a group we are all going out for a farewell dinner with our Tour Leader.I decide to have a look round the shops in the morning, and get my eyes tested and get some glasses for about 35 pounds, and some prescription sunglasses for another fifteen.In the afternoon I visit the war remnants museum with a couple of the others from the group. This is very interesting, there are some planes there that were left behind by the Americans at the end of the Vietnam war, lots of other exhibits including a huge photo collection, mainly of the Vietnam war, which illustrate graphically some of the horrors that were encountered. I suspect that there is a lot of government propaganda in play here as the Khmer Rouge hardly get a mention, and there is certainly no attempt to offer any balance. It has made me resolve to read up more about this, to try and get a better view of exactly what did happen.Once again we have a good meal out in the evening, with quite a few drinks. We officially start the second part of our tour at 18.00 tomorrow.The next day the whole of our existing group decides to go and visit the Royal Palace in the afternoon when it re-opens at 14.00. Our timing proves to be a big mistake, as the thermometers are hitting 45 degrees celcius this afternoon, and we are all lelting in the heat !!! Although this is a fabulously large and impressive building with an array of jewels and artefacts to look at, the highlight is a visit to the Elephant room as the air conditioning is fabulously cold. We spend more time huddled round this than we do looking at any of the other exhibits!!Those of us that are continuing with the tour through Vietnam meet back at the hotel at 18.00. We meet up with our new Tour Leader who is called Hong. He is a Vietnamese guy. We meet the seven new people joing our group. They consist of 1 english girl, 4 australians and 2 canadians living in Australia. We have a welcome meeting and have our itinerary explained to us for the next 9 days. We then go out for a meal all together, but arranged to meet Kate and Tara ( the two girls leaving our tour ) later in the evening.the restaurant we go to tonight is typical local Vietnamese. It is the cheapest place we have eaten in yet. I can now start to see that there may be some real perks by having a local guide working in his own country.....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208356920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208356920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/graydominic4/1/1208356920/tpod.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:31:17 -0400 Dom's Big Trip - USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Austraila, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Singapore etc

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Chau Doc, Vietnam

We left Phnom Penh today at 12 noon. All we had to do was pack our bags and walk 5 minutes down the road to get on a boat. The journey would take us predominantly south down the Mekong river into Vietnam. We travelled for about 3 hours at quite a decent speed along the river. The nearer we got to Vietnam the narrower the river got. As it started to narrow it got more interesting as you could see many fishermen on their little rickety old boats and people working and living by the river. As we reached the border we had to stop and get off to go and be stamped out of Cambodia. Then back on the boat for another mile or so, then to get off and be stamped into Vietnam. Were were unlucky as the immigration insisited on us getting all our luggage off the boat and x-raying it. This does not happen all the time here apparently. The weather was blisteringly hot. There were lots of children hanging around the border control areas selling postcards and drinks etc. The rule of trying not to buy stuff from children went out the window, as we were all so hot we stocked up on ice cold drinks. Mind you I had to laugh at their grasp of the rules of supply and demand as they were charging about 40 pence for a large bottle of water ( about twice the normal going rate ! )Eventually we get back on the boat and then have about another hours journey before we arrive in Chau Doc which is where we are stopping for the night. We arrive at about 4.30pm and have a 10 minute walk to out Hotel. Once again the standard of the hotels are surprisingly good, however the only thing that is really important is that the air conditioning works well - It is 39 degrees Celcius today !!We are staying right next to a market so I go and have a look about before Dinner. The whole group ends up having dinner at a Hotel right on the river ( where we got off the boat ) Our meals and a couple of beers comes to on average 100,000 Dong ( 30,000 Dong to 1 English pound ) It seems Vietnam is going to be even cheaper than Cambodia. The traffic is still just as insane as Cambodia with thousands of motorbikes everywhere. Chau Doc is a fairly small place though, but I have been warned by fellow travellers that I have not seen anything until I arrive in the capital city of Sai Gon when it comes to traffic. Well I will find out tomorrow as we continue our journey through Vietnam to Sai Gonor sometimes known as Ho Chi Min......
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Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Fortunately I wake up today feeling considerable better than I did the day before. We leave our Hotel for Siem Reap airport. Our flight to Phnom Penh is at midday and should take us about one hour. All goes to plan and we are at our Hotel by late afternoon. No time is wasted and within 30 minutes of our arrival we are out on a Cyclo tour of the City. Phom Penh is a bigger and more populus city than Siem reap. It is a real experience travelling on the roads. After being in Australia for a time where there is so much space per head of population Asia is quite a shock to the system.The people are generally friendly, although most of them are keen to try and sell you something. There are noticeable more beggars and street children in this city. It is estimated there are at least 20 thousand children living on the streets here. Our Tour company Intrepid advise us not to give money directly to any beggars or street children. The philosophy behind this is there are many organisations trying to get children off the streets and into schools. However the younger children in particular can earn good money begging on the streets so the families are sometimes reluctant to let them go to school.It is quite hard to keep walking past them or saying no, especially as there are so many with missing limbs and other horrible deformaities and scars. However a lot of the activities on our tours are run by charitable organisations that support the street children. Also our Tour Group as eat in many restaurants that support different charities. We have also bought from shops where the money goes straight back into these organisations.Thursday morning we are taken by bus to the Genocide Museum. This was formerly a school before the reigb of Pol pot back in the late seventies. However Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge philosophy was to kill all the educated people within Cambodia. All the schools and hospitals were shut, the Police force murdered. The idea was that everyone would farm for a living, and as they were not educated everyone in society would be equal.The Museum buidings were just one of about 300 locations like this in Cambodia which were used to detain educated people and their families. One wing of the building was used purely for torture. This was to extract information from people about their families, where they were living, hiding etcWe got to tour some of the prison cells, see some of the instruments of torture but by far the most moving experience was there is one building just full of the pictures of all the people that were detained there before being moved to the killing fields to be murdered. Every one was photographed and all their pictures are now displayed as a memorial to them. Although I had been warned about the place it does have quite an impact on you. The museum is packed with tourists but it is errily quiet as you move round the buildings.We then are transported out to the killing fields. This is where the people from the prisons were transported to to be murdered. The central piece there is a memorial that has been built to remember the approximate 20,000 people that were murdered at this particular sight. The memorial contains 8000 skulls and boxes of other bones which were recovered from the surrounding fields. Bones are still being recovered as after the rainy season when the grounds are really soft some still keep working their way up to the surface along with clothing. There is still clothing sticking out of the ground around the areas that were marked as mass graves. It has been a hard day today. The coach journey back into the city was particularly quiet. We all say we are surprised by the affect it has had on us all.The evening we go out again to another restaurant that supports a childrens school. We then find a nice bar and end up playing pool. We all end up having a bit too much to drink tonight and dont get back to our Hotel to about 02.00am. We are leaving Cambodia in the morning by boat. Most of us are agreed after yesterday we are ready to move on. Phnom Penh is very busy and I suppose could be quite depressing if you let it get to you. There are however lots of positive signs of growth in the economy and a stack of organisations that are doing great work to try and improve the lives of the people that live here and on the streets.....
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Siem Reap, Cambodia

We booked into our accommodation at the Freedom Hotel, Siem Reap. The standard seemed pretty good and certainly better than I was expecting.Some facts about Cambodia :-50% of the population is under 18 years old.Average life expectancy is 57 years old.Local currency is the Riel. You get 4000 to 1 US dollar ( Cambodia's unofficial currency )It is estimated that one third of Cambodians live on less than 1 US dollar per day.There are thousands of children living on the streets, in particular in the big cities.The seven of us plus our tour leader for the first half of our tour went out to dinner tonight. We had a really nice meal and a couple of drinks and the cost came to about 6 US dollars. The old tummy was feeling a bit dodgy tonight, hope it is nothing too much, as have been lucky with that sort of thing so far on the whole trip.On Monday we left the Hotel about 9.00am to go and visit a couple of the temples in Angkor Wat. This is an old historical city. It is an area of about 3km by 3km which is entirely surrounded by a " city wall " and a hand made moat. The temples were firstly built anything from about 800 to 1000 years ago. It is a truly massive area, the moat is so wide and deep that it must have took literally years to dig out. The about of stone used to build these temples is truly amazing, with seemingly nearly every piece has some sort of carvings on it. They are now a massive tourist attraction. Siem reap attracting about 3 - 4 million tourists a year, many of them being asian. Over the years the country has had massive political strife and many occurances of war. One of the most famous periods being from 1975 to 1979 when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government and renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. This was the period when the genocide took place and an estimated 1.7 million innocent Cambodians were slaughtered.We had a local tour guide to accompany us around the Temples and to explain the history. The heat here in Siem Reap is like nothing I have ever experienced before in my life. Official the temperature is in the high 30 degrees bracket, but whether it is the humidity as well I dont know but the heat is amazing. All the tourists are trouping around carrying large bottles of water. Once again this evening we visit a local Khmer style restaurant, whether it is the heat or the amount of water I have drunk but I dont manage to eat very much and am feeling a bit dodgy this evening.The next morning we are up very early so we are able to go to the Temple of Angkor Wat to see the sunrise about it. We are on a bus by 05.15 and are at the Temple by 05.30. The sunsrise was at about 06.00am and it was spectacular watching it in such a beautiful setting. Most days due to the heat we get a few hours break early afternoon when the heat is at its most opressive, as it is really to hot at these times to do anything much, in particular any sight seeing. After leaving the temples we then visit the Land Mine Museum. An estimated 6 million landmines still litter the Cambodian countryside most of which are scattered around the Cambodian/Thai border areas. Unfortunately although the wars are long over the mines still maim and kill Cambodians daily. There are people everywhere with missing limbs, including children, many who are begging on the streets.The temples are an amzing sight, and I can see why they are such a tourist draw.I am feeling pretty grotty today so when we get back to the Hotel at about 11.30am I decide to give in to it and spend most of the rest of the day sleeping. Tomorrow we are due to fly south to Phnom Penh so hopefully will be feeling a bit better by then.....
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