Cambodia - the road to Angkor

Having endured a 10 hour bumpy ride from Saigon (which btw should have taken only 6hr), we arrived in Phom Penh tired and somewhat moody. We didn't really enjoy being hassled by touts, tuk-tuks and the many cambodian kids selling anything from wooden elephants to photocopied bestseller novels but hey this is Cambodia! We better get used to it.

Phom Penh is rather relaxing for a SE Asian capital city. It boasts a shaddy waterfront, a few Khmer Palaces and a dilapidated central market. Highly recommended activities include visiting the humbling and terrifying Killing Fields, people watching cambodian style (ie. watching scooters carrying 3,4,5 or even 6 people zig-zag-ing in and out of traffic!), honing your bargaining skills in the central market to purchase soap, fried crickets, pirated software/DVD/CD, fake watches etc ... and finally avoiding every tuk tuk driver and / or book-selling cambodian.



I met up with a friend of mine A, who decided to join me for the last three weeks of my trip. It was odd to leave the world of "solo travelling" and I think it ultimately made me lazy but it was enjoyable nonetheless. We hit the road fairly quickly, heading north to Siem Reap, the home of Angkor Wat - Cambodia's finest and most reverred example of Khmer temples. The bus ride was challenging in that we got stuck with the worst seats possible, impossible to recline and too high to lay your feet. After 3 hours, all my blood was in my toes and I was growing increasingly pissed off with the whole journey, wishing I could swap seats with all those people sleeping comfortably.

Once in Siem Reap, we found a hostel and a designated tuk tuk driver in less than 5 minutes (yes the're everywhere). I, by then was feeling a little queezy from the anti-malaria medication. I had avoided taken them in Central America and most of SE Asia but I quickly realised that Cambodian mosquitoes were surprisingly vicious and decided to make the most of my medical kit now that time was running out! Wrong decision as I started feeling ill, bad tummy and all. So in the end, I took the medication for 5 days.


We visited the temples of Angkor, the lost city of Khmer Kings, all beautifully set in a breathtaking park outside of Siem Reap. We grew quite fond of "our driver" especially when we noticed that he was studying english whilst we were visiting the temples. Needless to say, our tip at the end of the 3 days more than made up for the tough bargaining we had done initially. We're suckers through and through!

After Siem Reap, we followed other traveller's advice and embarked on an 8 hr boat ride through Cambodia's remote river system to make our way to a small town called Battangbang. The ride was an eye-opener. We saw remote parts of Cambodia, where people lived in very basic conditions, on small floating shacks with little more than a flimsy roof to protect them from the elements. Unlike Vietnam, the land is not really cultivated as the entire country was ravaged by bombs during the Vietnam war (and subsequently by the Khmer Rouges) - which makes for very raw images of nature.


Our last stop in Cambodia involved getting our hands dirty ... and indulging in some local cuisine. We took a cooking course where to be honest the only good thing that came out of it was the Chicken Amok I made. I managed to completely destroy the remaining three dishes on the menu through a combination of lack of skills and sheer fussyness (ie. not liking the initial ingredients and therefore omitting them !).

I will therefore leave you with a picture of yours truly in Action.

Enjoy!