Blog
We have just got back from Kartie after a hectic bus ride, but more on that later.......
How is everyone? We are now past half way of our trip and believe it or not we are quite exhausted, travelling does take its toll when you are trying fit everything thing in to a small space, which is why sitting here as we type this we can’t not believe how much we have done in 3 months. However we are now in South East Asia and as much as we are going to see these countries there are going to be plenty of opportunities to relax ..............in paradise.
But so far so good in Cambodia, we left you last time having pretty much just arrived to what we thought looked liked organised chaos, with a million mopeds, tuk tuk’s and people all in the road. This has now become the norm, even seeing an elephant walking down the road amongst the traffic isn’t unusual and I’m thinking of writing to the major of London to raise a few issues, it might go like this: -
Dear Boris,
London has major issues with transportation, may I advise you introduce the following to ensure congestion is eased and traffic flowing, especially as we are coming towards the Olympics. This is also a tried and tested method in Cambodia and is very successful.
- Donkeys and carts
- 5 million mopeds
- Tuk tuk’s
- 50 elephants (great for carbon emissions)
- And remove all traffic lights
Yours lovingly Justin Pilmer esq and Amy Pullin
Anyway back to it, as you all know we were due to go with a small ex-pat charity we found to a small village a hour from the capital. We woke up early and all sat on benches in the back of a large military truck amongst the food and water. We knew we had arrived as we had to stand up for the remaining 2km’s of the journey as the road turned to a dirt track, either side of the dirt track were flood plains, which were low due to the time of year and rice was growing at a rapid rate. Also on either side of the tracks lay these huts on stilts level with the dirt track, put together with whatever wood was available and a gang way was built to the dirt track. In total there were about 25 – 30 houses.
Driving past them it did bring home how good we had it, but when we started to see kids come out of the huts with huge smiles on their faces running after the truck we started to feel good as they were so happy and they didn’t know anything else. We stopped the truck and distributed one bag of food per hut, which contained noddles, rice, fruit, salt and soy, some familys were cunning and spread themselves out pretending to need more than one even pointing to a pig hut pretending it was a home (which was almost convincing as the pigs had a hut built from bricks, whilst their own homes were made from sticks and wood!!) So distributing the bags all the people were very happy and grateful, they made the best out of their lives. On one occasion Justin walked on the gang way to an old lady and gave her a bag, walking back he went straight through the gangway and broke it, very embarrassed he apologised but they and everyone else were too busy laughing to care. We then played with the kids, having a water fight and they had a great time, we had a wonderful time. However they were extremely poor and we have both decided to do something to help when we return to the UK.

We have since made our way north of Phnom Pehn to Kratie, which as we are discovering with coaches here took two hours longer than expected. The bus drivers seem to pick people up en-route or drop them off outside their homes for some cash in hand. Kratie sits on the Mekong river and although hasn’t much to offer it is the best place to check out some rare dolphins. So arriving last night (suppose to have been yesterday afternoon) we had some food and an early night ready for some dolphin action early the next morning. So early in fact we were the first tourists to arrive after an hour tuk tuk ride from the town. We hoped on a boat and we immediately saw dolphins, swimming around catching fish on their way to work, quite an amazing site.
We have since got a bus back to Phnom Pehn, and jesus what a knightmare, again stopping enroute to pick up randoms and taking 4 hours longer than said, as well as trying con us in to eating at a restaurant. But we got back in one peice, back to the comfort of our hostel which feels like home now.
So back to our favourite hostel in Phnom Pehn for a couple of nights before we head south to chillax in Shanoukville for 5 days.
Well until then, we miss you all.
J and A