Hello my lovelies!

Hope you are all ok? We are missing you all lots!

I think we last left off when we were leaving Thailand to enter Cambodia?

Well we boarded the train which we had read was going to be crowded and cramped, and found a nice comfy seat straight away!! So we were happy travellers! Whilst we waited to get going the train guard came along and partioned off half of our carriage for "Monks/disabled and elderly", the Monks soon found their designated area and brought some colour to the carriage with their bright orange robes!

It was a good journey through the countryside and we had soon arrived at our destination. This is where things got a bit more complicated! Jon had done his research and read about the tuk tuk drivers picking people up from the train and delivering them to random dodgy visa people before even going through the Cambodia border. So sure enough, even after explaining that we already had a visa (we didn't) our tuk tuk man took us to two different visa places, saying "you get visa, you need visa". In the end we paid our fare and walked to the border. Here we managed to get our visa's officially processed, but had to pay the corrupt officials their beer money!! ha! Next we found an illegal taxi, who had to pay the tourist and traffic police money! A crazy corrupt system! Our taxi driver was a lovely bloke who was studying aswel as working and chatted with us about himself and his country all in brilliant English, virtualy the whole way to Siem Reap!

Siem Reap was a nice place, we borrowed bikes from our guest house to explore a little. Its completely set up for tourists, as many people now visit to see the Angkor Wat temples. We sampled some Cambodian "Amok" curry and watched traditional dancing in one of the many restaurants in town!

We decided to bike around the impressive Temples of Angkor Wat, and it was a brilliant way to see them. We could stop and start as we pleased and despite it being so hot we managed to get a bit of a breeze whilst on the bikes! Everyone seems to have a bike in Siem Reap, and people were so friendly, a young local lad rode alongside us, asking about our travels and explained that he wants to study to be an English teacher!

Our next stop was down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city. It was only a short bus journey (6 hours) and again it was through the rural country side, where we saw naked kids playing in the puddles of padi fields and buffalo's cooling off too!! On the bus we also met a lovely couple from India. We met up with them for a few drinks the next evening which was great.

The guesthouse we stayed in was run to help a school that had been set up next door, it was a brilliant set up, that was helping local families and children. Here we met another lovely couple, from Cornwall! Kate is so excited to be meeting people again, and have someone new to talk to other than squarepants (Jon)!!!

We visited the genocide museum, which was a chilling place to go. Here we learnt about the Khmer Rouge killings from 1975-1979, which went into the millions. The genocide museum is actually the building where many Cambodians were brutally tortoured and killed with orders from the khmer rouge leaders. Black and white photo's of the dead victims faces line the walls. It was a very sad experience and every person in the country has been affected personally in some way by what happened.

Of the small part we saw of Cambodia, we really enjoyed it. People are friendly and smiley despite not having alot, and so many organisations have been set up to help people in unimaginable situations. It really makes us realise how lucky we really are, cheesey but true!

Now in Vietnam, Saigon!! Which is crazy!! On the bus here the usual crowds of food sellers surrounded the bus selling all sorts of grub, even the local delicacy of roasted cricketts Some of them were huge!!!

Lots of love to you all

Kate and Jon