Before I left home I was somehow under the impression that travelling was quite tricky and that I'd have trouble meeting people along the way. Obviously I was wrong. South East Asia is ridiculously easy to travel around (you can book buses and trips from pretty much any hostel) and the place is overflowing with super friendly travellers all doing the same thing as you! So now I'm really annoyed with myself for coming to the conclusion that I needed to book onto a tour for Cambodia and Vietnam, cos doing it myself would have been a million times more fun and cheaper. But oh well what's done is done and I'll just have to learn to embrace the nice hotels and aircon buses and try not to miss the random banter with crazy travelling folk for a while!

Met the tour in Bangkok where I was half an hour late from the laptop fiasco. That was ok though seeing as one of the guys turned up half an hour later after being in the pub for an hour! The group is a mix of a group of 4 Canadian students, two older Kiwi and Australian couples, and three singletons who are all quite a bit older than me! I'm sharing my room with Di, a 56 year old Australian woman who just so happens to share the same birthday as me, which is good seeing as we were celebrating it while in Phnom Penh! She's definitely still a 20 year old at heart though. So yeah quite a different bunch, there's a lot more polite conversation about the scenery, but I'm getting used to it and we've had some pretty fun nights out to be fair!

The first night I managed to lose everyone in Bangkok within 5 minutes (so unlike me) so did some drunken shopping on Khao San road instead. I need to stop doing that really but it's so good and soo cheap! Next day was the bus into Cambodia, one point where I really appreciated having everything done for me seeing as the border's quite confusing, at least now I don't actually have to think anymore! We arrived in Siem Reap and went on a tuktuk-that's-not-a-tuktuk (calling them tuktuks is illegal in Cambodia apparently!) tour of the city. It's a really nice city actually, lots of little fairy lights everywhere along the riverbank, you can only tell you're in SE Asia from the millions of motorbikes everywhere. The Cambodians really squeeze every last person they can onto those things, it's not that unusual to see a family with 4 kids and a chicken all on one bike, impressive stuff!

That night we went out to the Temple bar on bar street where me and Marla (one of the Canadians) shared the most horrible bucket while Di the 56 year old danced on the tables... bit awkward seeing as Cambodia's quite a nice reserved country! She's been giving me scotch before bed every night, definitely not your average grandma!

Next morning was our first exloration of the Angkor Wat temple complex, so we poked around four temples - one with lots of statues with 4 faces, one field which used to be a palace, the temple used to film Tomb Raider, and a temple which was tinged pink with lots of carvings. They were all pretty interesting, all made by different kings and with either Hindu or Buddhist motifs everywhere, and they let you wander around as you like - no secret passageways found though. I can't really summon up enough passion for history to understand how anyone would visit all 300 of the temples here though, a lot of them were built in a hurry and are pretty much just a pile of rocks. My favourite was the tomb raider tomb, it looks like the trees have come out of space to rip the place apart with their roots, and it has that authentic feel that a lot of the others don't have cos they've tried to restore them - some look like big jigsaw puzzles done by a really impatient kid who put all the pieces in the wrong place.

So after the templing we went to a buffet and a traditional dance. I clearly didn't get the memo that this was for old Americans - the place was full of them! I think Cambodia and Vietnam might appeal to a slightly different type of tourist than Thailand, there seems to be a lot more of the refined culture vultures and much less of the smelly backpacker type around. I miss the smelly backpackers! Anyway the show was quite nice but the food wasn't the best. Tim our guide has been taking us to some really nice restaurants so far, so at least we're trying local food the way it should be tried, and beer's only 50 cents! He's introduced us to frog, durian fruit (banned from some places cos it smells bad, I thought it smelled quite nice :S), deep fried tarantula and a whole bunch of different insects so far! The Cambodians had to eat what they could during the Khmer Rouge regime you see. I'm learning!

Next morning we got up at 4am to get to the Angkor Wat temple for sunrise. Which would have been fine except there wasn't a sunrise... not even a tinge of orange, just grey clouds everywhere. So we just wandered around the temple feeling a bit cranky and sleep deprived for a while, played with some monkeys (aka ran away as they tried to kill us) then went back to the hotel. So jealous of other people's photos, I think sunrise at Angkor Wat's one of those things people always rave on about, at least I can pretend. Then we went to Tonle Sap lake and the floating villages which was a lot more impressive. The lake's more of an ocean it's so big, and the villages have schools and churches and everything, all floating around. We got ambushed by a load of kids floating in metal tubs with snakes draped around them screaming 'TWO DOLLA' for a while, which I'd read about before so wasn't very surprised, although the snakes were pretty big! Poor kids, they looked so depressed! But you're not supposed to give them money or it encourages it - dilemma. I gave them crisps instead only to have a particularly crazy little girl yell at me for not giving her more, sigh.

That night we just sat around the hotel balcony sipping scotch seeing as there was a massive storm going on. It's been like this every night so far, we went for a swim in the pool ( yeah I have a pool now) in a massive downpour the other day which was cool. It's getting a bit annoying though, everyone said Cambodia was the hottest country! Next morning we got on our nice aircon bus to Phnom Penh without even having to think about a thing, well at least I'm relaxed!