Cambodia

hello!

After a long and hot journey on the bus we finally reach Cambodia. Having checked into the hotel we quickly head out on a cyclo tour of Phnom Penh. This was really good fun, although my cyclo driver drove us into another motorbike which was not great, but was all fine! The roads here are equally busy, being on the front of the cyclo you get to see first hand how close you get to other moving traffic!

On our second day we visited the killing fields, a sad day. After this we went to the prison which was also difficult to take in what happened.

In the evening we are at a charity restaurant 'friends' which teaches former street children how to cook and work in front of house - it's been one of the best dinners of the trip so far.

We travelled by coach to Siem Reap, we had 3 nights here before heading back to Bangkok. We headed out in the eve for food and then a walk around the night market which was nice, not as busy as some of the other ones we have visited.

The next day the alarm goes off at 4:30am so we can see sunrise at Angkor Wat - all I can say is wow! The place is awesome, and I actually managed to get some decent pictures (when the uploader is working again I will post up). It certainly is one of wonders of the world, it's incredible. After sunrise we went back for breakfast and then headed back to explore the whole place.

Mid morning we made our way to the Tomb Raider temple that has all the trees that have grown trough the temple, it was very impressive, I've never seen anything like it.

We also visited a school called New Hope, it's a project set up to help get children back to school and as part of this they have a medical centre to support the children's family. It was a very impressive set up, many volunteers go to help out here, I would like to go out next year to help at the school. We actually spent some time in one of the classes which was really good, we helped with getting the kids to work on their alphabet and writing.

We had a free afternoon and a group of us went to the children's hospital and gave blood. Hopefully it will help someone in need.

I would definitely like to go back and do some volunteering work, it really does make you realise how lucky you are when you see the conditions these little kids have to live in.

We departed cambodia on the 30th January and started the very very long journey back across the border and back into Bangkok. The safety net of the organised tour group has now gone, now it really is one girl, one rucksack and a pair of skates!

Photos to follow when the internet speed is a bit quicker :)

Lou x