Day 1: 09/08/08 bangkok

we had anotehr early get up in order to catch the bus by 6am :( not fun times!!! we pent our time sleepig on the bus to get to the cmabodian border. disembarked and took a short tuktu ride to the border where we entered cambodia! we then had a quick lunch whilst we waited for our visas and next were met by our pick up trucks in which we were to journey to siem reap. when we say pick up truck we mean pick up truck, along a pot hole ridden dusty road for 5 hours! after much whingeing kim settleed in her sleeping bag in the cabin to avoid too much back pain to no avial (yes brim did have to shout to get ehr there!), meanwhile brim, tony and miek wrapped themselves in surgical face masks to protect from the dust, we were bone shaken and dirt covered by the end! havinga rrived in siem reap we showered and then met again to go and have some dinner. we amnaged to lose miek and nick along the way so the rest of us ate at khmer kitchen, whilst discussing wether the 2 boys were gay! went back adn crashed!

Day 2: Angkor Wat

ANOTHER early wake up, this tiem thought to see the sunrise over angkor wat, yet the cloud rise which occured was not qutie so spectacular!!! however in good spirits we headed to ta phrom the jugnle temple which is where lara croft was filmed running through in tomb raider. temple was covered and entwined in the jungle with massive trees and there roots everywhere on the walls and floors. getting there so early meant we avoided the crowds and it was lovely and serene in the shadowy temple. off to angkor thom next which is basically a city temple, it has 5 gates and a moat surrounding it. the terrace of the leper king and the terrace of elephants were next adn then to the royal palace and bayon. we sat down for some lunch where miek got hounded by some children to buy postcards and who he then managed to royaly upset (she even swore at him!) as he bought from soemone else!! lunch was delicious and we managed ot avoid being bitten by monkeys :D now we headed to angkor wat, the largest temple that everyone recognises on the postcards and exceeds expectations. it is huwage and absolutly beautiful. its evry hard to explain and dscribe what they are like, you ahve to see them (or some photots when we can finally get them up!) really to be abel to understand sorry! we ahd a ncie break also in the huge temple where our awesoem guide told us stories of his life, how he survived the genocide and was made to work for 3 years, 2 months and 20 days when he was 11 without a break....incredible stories and we were hooked for ages! after getitng back we met again to go to the angkor wat bar for happy hour and were meant to meet some others later.....but got a bit carried away! finally ended up at the blue pumpkin where we lay on sofas and ate dinner off trays.....why all restaurants are not like this we DO NOT KNOW!

Day 3: Siem Reap

Not such an early get up today meant we got a LIE IN and after soem yummy pancakes we all headed off to the tonle sap lake. here a whole community of cambodians and vietnamese refugees manage to live in river huts (some are like shacks on water) and transport themselves by wooden canooes. children included. we even saw one little girl more concerned with making her unifrom look tidy to us thatn rowing the boat on her own. we found it incredible how they lived so humbly with their whoel life depending on this river and lake. up to 10 people live in one hut with just one room where they all sleep, sometimes 3 babies to a hammock. we thought it must be hard for the children as well as there isnt a great deal of land for them to be able to play on as the lake is surrounded by marshes and mangrove swamps. its a cirular community, once ur born there getting out is practically impossible...makes u think. just an example we saw an incredible scene where little children were literally fighting over packs of noodles handed out by a restaurant and literally devastated to go home empty handed as there were a good 40 boats clamoured round a small restaurant. on a lighter note we all did enjoy the naked boy wrestling (wrong as it sounds!) especialyl when this girl came in and kicked butt!

Back in Siem reap we stopped off for lunch near the old market where we sat on incredibly comfy chairs, (parents we want them fr uni, they are the big round ones with big cushions that they have in ikea that engulf you!) kim and nick had the same papaya salad but somehow nicks managed ot be icnredibly spicy!! he said he should of gone for the beef and mango sandwich again which brim agreed is delicious! off we toodled again for the landmine museum, again a definite experience to make you think. we learnt that cambodia is still riddenw ith between 3-6 million andmines they thought which could take up to 100 years to clear. the museum was run by a ex khmer rouge soldier ho was forced to plant landmines during the genocide and therefore learnt hwo to difuse them. he uses these skills to difuse landmines found and believes to have done over 50,000 since the war ended! they set up the museum to educate people and have included an orphanage for children affected by the landmines. all over the country we saw maimed people as a result of these attrocities.

To lighten our moods after a reflective day we went to temple club for dinner where they do traditional khmer dancing whilst having dinner. this turned out to be highley entertaining, especially when we managed to make them laugh at nicks ridiculous behaviour whilst performing tut tut! they are supposed to be poised and show no emotion. also we didnt reallyl get the dances, they cearly didnt tell the stories they were meant to! afetr dinner we went for a few more drinsk at a mexican place, another happy hour (kims mum: we tried the singlapore sling.......ridiculously nice and ridiculously easy to drink as it does not taste alcholic, you would be on the floor :p ) this may have contributed to kims tearfulness during a conversation with nick and mike (both cairopractors) who were the first people to completely agree she should never have her spine fused and proceeded to tell her they thought she could be treated and they would find her someone at home....she literally ended up in floods of tears of happiness! eventually we thought we would go for a dance as you do as it was the last ngiht with all the group.......we ended up in zone one a local cambodian club thanks to our tuk tuk drivers who stayed with us all night. it seemed normal with a bit of hip hop, then came the cambodian pop where you shuffe round doing wierd hand movements ina circle (but we did expect them to ahve different music) BUT what we did not expect was the slow dance for the next 15 minutes before a return to hip hop.......slow dancing in a club?!!!!!!!!??! it was like a school disco! in true spirit brima nd nick thought not to waste this opportunity and had a traditional cmabodian slow dance. when the hip hop came back on we all got up on the podium to show them how it was done!

Day 4: phnom penh

slept through the alarm in the mornign to be woken by amy our guide at 7:11 telling us we had 15 minutes (in our defence it is the first time we have been late ALL TRIP!) we said goodbye to the group and went off with amy to our next destination. pretty much slept and read on the bus (brim read first they killed my father....a girls story of the genocide, yes you will cry if you read it, better not to read it in public therfore!!, if anyone wants to read it its not onyl a story but a history of the terrible genocide by LOUNG UNG.) we recommend it very much so. went to the russian market on arrival where brim purchased a lovelly scarf and kim 2 lovelyl bags and fell in love with a prada bag (dont worry daddy i didnt buy it....totally impraactical untill miami!) had dinner at mekong river boat adn then watche da film on pol pot (the leader of the khmer rouge who were the leader of the regieme and genocide) this gave us our history for the next day.

Day 5: Phnom penh

The royal palace was our first stop fo the day. it is very similar to thaialnd in that its very ornate and more for show than practicality, a good example of this is the 90kg of gold buddha statue encrusted in 2086 diamonds....as if there aernt enough buddha statues already without wasting precious stones on another one! (we had seen FAR too many buddhas by now!)

Our useless guide for the day took us to the national museum, what a delight, MORE BUDDHAS.........rooms full of buddhas, small, big ones, stone ones, jade ones, bronze ones, intact ones, broken ones....you ahve to realise anywhere you g there are at least 10 buddhas in sight..we do NOT need to see anymore buddhas and definitly NOT pay to do so! yes we finnished the museum in record time...25 minutes!!

The toul Song genocide museum (s-21) was the worst part of the day. this was a high school which was turned into a prision and torture centre by the khmer rouge. Inamtes were systematically tortured here sometimes for over months by the most horrfic means, including water boarding. babies, childrena dn women were among the innocent men imprisoned for beign too intelligent or in any way a threat to communism and the khmer rouge regiem. this basically was the last stop before being taken to the killing field for the victims. first of all they were held in the prision, lined up on the floor their ankles shackeled and had to ask to turn their heads to sleep. there is a record and photot of the 10,000 people that spent time in this priison, only 7 survived. during the walk round brim was ridiculously ill and pretty much spe dthrough in order to make it to the toilet (this kind of turned out well for me as i didnt particularly want to spend a great amount of time looking at the horrific stories and pictures, especialyl when you feel sick already!). kim however spent her time reading everything she could and wandered round astonished how one human being can possibly treat another this way and was reduced to tears.

stopped off for lunch where brim then ahd to head back to the hotel as she was too sick to even move whilst kim headed on to the killign fields. here there is a monument where all the excavated skulls are held....it towers over you and reminds you of the 1/4 of the population that died under this regieme. the killing fields are literally pits in theground where victims were taken, made to kneel and killed in various ways and thrown into the pits to rot. a loudspeaker played music to disguise their cries to the surrounding villages...walking around you see many graves where hundreds of bodies have been found and walk over bones proving many more still remain.....

dinner was a funny afair, we were meant to go for a quick drink and move on but this turned into dinner when the biggest storm EVER hit the roof terrace we were sat on, we moved for cover and decided agaisnt venturing out to another place to eat! was nice to be abel to treat amy who we have not mentioned enough as she was an absolutly fantastic guide, we became godo friends by the end, especialyl as it was jsut us 3 for a few days :)