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Dusty Cambodia
Entry 10 of 102 | show all | print this entry |
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The journey to Cambodia has to go down as the worst one so far. We left the hostel at 6am, got a tuk tuk to Kho San Road, and waited and waited for the bus. A man eventually came and took us to the bus, where again we waited, 2 hours later we finally started to move out of Bangkok. Durin this time our Cambodian 'helper.' tried to rip us off by offering to get our visas for us, at double the price for ease insisting we wouldn't get it for $20 - big fat liar!!! Once we got to his office on the border town for 'lunch.' Me and Sarah decided to abscond to the border ourselves with a frenchman and an Irish couple. We got across the border and got our $20 visas!! fine. On the other side we waited for our bus after a while and no show me and Sarah went solo and got a taxi, after arguing with the men who naturally tried to fleece us with the taxi, ha they do not mess with me. We had a 3 hour very bumpy ride as Cambodia hasn't heard of tarmac with Mr Boon our taxi driver who had to stop a few times as he couldn't see where he was going due to all the dust from the 'road'. You notice the poverty immediately with people living in wooden huts and wearing rags for clothes if any at all. We finally got there at 7.30pm.
It took us a while to find a guesthouse as many were booked, we did find a hotel but realised we could probably get one somewhere cheaper, so we went out and found one for $5 a night, returned to the hotels grabbed our bags and ran, they were not amused ;-) Once refreshed we had our first bit of Khmer food and a much needed large beer at the Red Piano former home to Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. The beer and lack of sleep made us slightly spaced out, it was time to hit the sack.
The next day after discovering all Cambodian breakfasts came with baguettes we went in search of a bicycle (on Louisa & Jasons suggesstion) to go and explore Angkor Wat. We got them for $2 each and began to tackle the Cambodian roads of whci have no traffic laws whatsoever, just beep your horn and hope the other person moves in time!! It was a long, hot and sweaty ride to the temple with a slight diversion to a random Cambodian village due to rubbish signage. Once we parked our bicycles we explored Angkor Wat, an absolutely huge and amazing temple which I dared to climb it's narrow steps to explore the top, whilst Sarah laughed at my efforts from below. How they built them without a JCB I have no idea, well worth a visit. We decided to leave the other temples till the next day where we had already decided that we would go by Tuk Tuk instead. We retrieved our bicycles after being surrounded by 20 children trying to sell us postcards. The journey back was uneventful apart from the sight of two live pigs strapped to someones bicycle, oh and an extemely sore ass! After tea we went to a bar next door aptly named Angkor What? where we had a jug of beer, I also accosted the frenchman from the border and brought him in for a beer, he was actually Belgian and called Bernard. As there was graffiti on the walls (including Leeds United!!!) we added our names and of course Operation Row 2007.
The following day we booked the bus to Phnom Penh and got ourselves a Tuk Tuk to take us to the temples, one felt like royalty as he drove us there and between temples. We explored a couple of big temples Indiana Jones stylee in our operation ROW t-shirts accompanied with gun posing position photo. We also visited the temple where Angelina filmed Tombraider and I have to say that was my favourite. It was an amazing temple with the trees somehow growing out of the walls and winnig the battle with the temple, there were tree roots eveywhere, quite a sight. Alas it was too cloudy and our plan to stay for the sunset went out of the window so in times like this the only thing to do is go shopping and have a curry - marvellous ;-)
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