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Benny and Dani's Travels
We Entered Cambodia through the South Of Laos border, this isnt one of the most popular ways of getting into Cambodia as the roads are awful!! As we were in the South Of Laos it made more sense for us to go this way. As we were leaving Laos and entering Cambodia the road started to deteriorate...it went from a paved road to a dirt track, a very uneven bumpy dirt track!! We were heading for Siem Reap but had to stop over for the night in a little town. To get to the town we travelled by mini bus and then got a boat across a river and then got another bus. The second mini bus journey was crazy, we were travelling through some really rural villages and everytime we hit a bump we hit the roof! Ben, Jackson(one of the Australian guys we were travelling with) and i had the back seat, which was unfortunate for us but mostly Jackson as we hit a very big bump and our seat collapsed Jacksons side, it was so bad it was funny! We had to travel with a lopsided seat for about 2 hours. The bus we were in was about to fall apart at any moment and we were covered in dust from the road.
We finally ended up in the town we were stopping at, i cant remember the name but lets just say tourism isnt its priority. We had been travelling since 8am that morning and finally arrived by about 9pm. We all wanted a decent room with a nice hot shower as we were so dirty from the dusty roads, we headed to the only hotel the town had and unluckily for us it was full! i think everyone must go there on ther stop overs! So we had to find a guest house, there were a few around but they all looked a bit grim!
We eventually stopped at one that wasnt exactly decent but it was a bed for the night! It was infact the worse room we have stayed in in Asia. There was an open window with what i can only describe as a green grocers potatoe sack nailed against it to act as a mosquito net! There was a huge spider right above the door, which suprisingly didnt bother me that much but Ben was freaking out!! The Bathroom was minging and i couldnt touch anything without a tissue!! The beds were clean but we stayed in our sleeping bags that night and didnt have a very good nights sleep.
Apparently the guests house in the area rent the rooms out per hour if you know what i mean, there was some lovely pictures on the wall which would have appealed to the male customers!!
After that horrible night was over we set off again at about 6am. Luckily we had a decent coach Journey and the roads to Siem Reap were fine!
Arriving in Siem Reap was another hillarious experience, We must have been the only four westerners on the coach and as soon as we got off we were bombarded with tuk tuk drivers and hotel touts. We were surrounded by about 30 Cambodians all trying to get our custom, I have never xperienced anything like it, even India could not compare to it!
So each of us had a group of different people trying to get our custom which was ridiculous, nothing like the orderly taxi queues you get in England! Eventually i chose the calmest tuk tuk driver for us to go with. We found a nice hotel...finally we were in Siem Reap!
While in Siem Reap we visited the famous Angkor Wat, it was very impressive and huge! There were several temples and the jungle temple is where Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie was filmed. Angkor Wat is unbelievable, its mad that they made it with man and elephant power!
We had a boozy night out in Siem Reap and to be honest dont remember much but we did take plenty of embarassing pictures, so check them out!
The next day feeling a little worse for wear we headed to a floating village near Siem Reap which is on the Tonle Sap lake( the biggest lake in South East Asia). It seems more like the sea as you cant see anything other than water for miles! The floating village was amazing, they had a floating school, basketball court, hospital, mobile phone shop and of course all the houses were floating! The kids used metal basins to float to each others houses and some of the houses had fish farms underneath. Unfortuanately i only got to take about two pictures as my batteries died in my camera.
After Siem Reap we got a coach Phnom Phen, the city isnt so impressive but we wanted to go there to see the genocide museum and the killing fields. While travelling we have both read quite a bit about the Khmer Rouge and it was really interesting to learn a bit more about it.
We visited both the museum and the Killing fields in the same day and it was probably the most depressing day we have had while travelling. The Khmer Rouge made no sense at all and to see how they treated innocent people including little children and new born babies was really disturbing. We have some pictures from both places, there is a photo with the rules that the Khmer Rouge had at the prison and that will give you an insight into just how ridiculous they were.
We didnt do much else in Phnom Phen, we spent just over a week in Cambodia, although the latter part was quite depressing we had a really good time and if we had the chance i think we would go back again.
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