Hello all,

Sorry to have taken some time to update you all. We are now in Cambodia, as you may have guessed from all the pics! We arrived in Phnom Penh, spent 3 nights here, then went to Siem Reap for 4nights and 3days at the temples of Angkor and are now back in P.P. just for the night before heading south.

Our journey here from Laos was perhaps our most 'interesting' yet, or should i say chaotic, confusing and at times quite terrifying! It started out with a boat from the islands in Si Phan Don to the mainland whose engine kept cutting out, leaving us to drift swifty down the Mekong each time. We them got a minibus whose driver joked with us that the reason he was travelling so painfully slowly was because his brakes didnt work! Our final leg was on a bus which seemed to travel at the speed of light (or at least felt like it compared to how slowly we have become used to travelling everywhere else!). The driver was a COMPLETE mentalist....he literally floored it the whole way from the border to Phnom Penh, nearly tipping the bus over at one point when he swerved to catch a turn he nearly missed on roads which were slippery with the rain. He also had a serious superiority complex as he felt the need to deafen all us passengers and everyone on the road with his headachingly-loud horn CONSTANTLY warning everyone he was coming! Amusing at first, but once the headache started to kick in we just wanted to ram his head into the stearing wheel.....the anger soon subsided once we arrived in Phnom Penh to lots of smiley happy Cambodian faces, cool bars, cosy funky restaurants and our mate Rich who we met first in Luang Prabang, then in Vang Vieng, Vientiane, then here and also in Siem Reap. We just cant shake him off...! So straight off the bus and ready to collapse into bed at the first guesthouse, we bumped into him and were swayed pretty quickly to join him for a drink or two. Ended up having a really cool night and instantly were in love with the place.

Spent time here mostly chilling out, but also seeing the markets (and being thoroughly grossed out by the fish sections, one of which i literally turned and ran from as the sight of fish bits, live crabs and machette's hacking away nearly made my stomach turn. Thought you might all enjoy sharing that image with me! To get over the trauma we treated ourselves to ice cream at a parlour called Swesons (American i think...anyway, very exciting - the first ice cream parlour i've ever been in...what could be better than a menu consisting solely of ice cream?!?!?!) and found ourselves being the focus of much amusement as we drew our spoons and battled over my last scoop of cookies and cream...the locals found it quite entertaining, i didnt even notice they were laughing as, im sure you can imagine, i was quite concerned with Joe stealing my last spoonful.

So onwards and upwards...we arrived in Siem Reap on Monday. Came to really love the place the longer we spent there, though the people weren't as warm and friendly as they are here in P.P. Our bus ticket included a 'free' (that word means nothing over here!) tuk tuk from the station to the central area with all the guesthouses and we were unfortunate enough to have a really nasty guy drive us. He took us to a guesthouse which we didnt want to stay at, obviously because he was getting commission or something, and when we didnt want to stay started getting nasty and pressuring us into giving him the business of taking us to the temples the next day. When we also didnt want to do that he started demanding that we give him some money, and then shouting and swearing at us that we were 'f*cking bad tourists'. Not a very pleasant first experience but we were soon over it. We cycled 2days running round the temples - about 40k the first day and 30k the next, and on the last we got up at 3.30am and cycled in darkness (not very wise with hindsight - we were both convinced at the time that the moonlight on the trees in the surrounding forest were people ready to jump out at us horror-movie-style!) to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Beautiful and well worth it, though when we returned later in the day to see the last temple adn watch the sunset we copped out and got a tuk tuk - my tree trunk legs had done me proud but Joe's skinny bot hadn't fared so well....haha, anyhow we were both feeling pretty wrecked and figured we deserved the rest!

So after a sad farewell to beautiful Angkor and Siem Reap we are back in Phnom Penh, and off to Sihnoukvile tomorrow morning for some beaching and relaxation. it really is such a hard and tiring life all this travelling, sight-seeing, eating, drinking...i mean i can't tell you how exhausting it sometimes gets.....oh well, we plod on!!!

I have only one final update - we are developing a serious vendetta against ants at the moment as they are everywhere over here, in even the nicest and cleanest of guesthouses, i got bit by so many red ones in Angkor (they really are quite unfriendly as totally unprovoked they would just hop on up to my ankle and start munching away!), and today there was a nest on the bus we were on and the little blighters got into our bag where we had some yummy little cakes for lunch and started helping themselves. We were far from impressed and had to throw them away. So we were cross and i am now not too forgiving everytime i see one...!

Well, thats all from us i think. Any further ant escapades, tuk tuk driver attacks, ice-cream parlour antics....i will of course be sure to update! Have uploaded a fair few pics from the rest of Laos, here and Siem Reap so you can see some of what we are seeing...and perhaps begin to understand just why this life is so exhausting (tehehe...!)

Love to all, missing you all as always.

Love Vic & Joe

x