Cambodia - suk sabai sai sabrok!

PHNOM PENH
After another long bus journey, we arrived in the sweltering, sprawling city, Phnom Penh. Our first stop was the famous Russian Market, Psar Toul Tom Poung. It is packed with rows and rows of trinkets, jewellery, art, clothes and food... It was fun for the first 20 min until the heat and smells forced me to step outside for a breather amongst the many tuk tuk & mototaxi drivers... who turned out to be pretty sweet guys once they accepted that "NO, for the fifth time, I do not need a ride anywhere!!" (the most said phrase during our visit to Cambodia).

Sarah joined back up with us in Phnom Penh after a visit to the coastal city of Sihanoukville! To celebrate we enjoyed a night out on the town. We were very surprised by the night life in Phnom Penh and had a great time... However, after realizing that just about every Cambodian girl in the club was a prostitute I found it hard to get past the amount of sadness & pain I could see through the dancing & boozing...

We spent a lot of time driving around the city in a tuk tuk with our favorite driver who we called Angelo . It was a great way to see the rugged, crowded city and its people. On our last day with him, Angelo very kindly pulled over and treated us to some very sweet & refreshing surgar cane from a street vendor. Thanks Angelo! We visited one of the many Pagodas in Phnom Penh, Wat Phnom, which can be recognised by a gigantic clock outside. It had the most beautiful Buddhas that I had seen so far...

Choeung Ek - A memorial filled with more than 5,000 human skulls that were left behind at the Killing Fields located near Phnom Penh. Signs were posted around the field to mark the spots where over 300 victims were detained, executed & dumped daily by the Khmer Rouge executioners during the 1975-1979 genocide...

BATTAMBANG
Rach & I continued west to the very quaint town, Battambang. We explored the countryside, following the Sangker River by bike and past many remote villages and amazing scenery on our way to Ek Phnom. Sadly, we saw many shoeless kids walking along the dirt roads on our excursion... One of these shoeless girls was hiding from the sun inside the ruined temple and she stole my heart. I wanted to steal her away and take her home with me... instead I gave her the measly 8000 Riel ($2) that she needed for a week of school...

Phare Ponleu Selpak - we went to this amazing and, from what I can see, extremely effective arts school and orphanage to see their circus performance and were blown away by the talent and passion we saw. We had dinner at the school and had the chance to meet a couple of the performers, learning their stories and the problems that Cambodian children are facing today. We returned the following day to purchase a few of the students amazing paintings and hope to be able to help this organisation in a much bigger way in the future....

SIEM REAP & The Arrival of Kirk and Cabral!

I have never been so shocked, surprised and excited to see someone in my life, until 2 of our best and wildest friends from home jumped out at us from the shadows in Siem Reap, yelling "Aye gurl, What bus you catch?!" I think Rach & I must have woke up the whole city with our shrieking. We had no idea that our friends had been planning this surprise and Sarah & Jessie had been in on it for months! You guys are amazing!! XX

Angkor Wat - One of our days was spent exploring the spectacular Ankor Wats. We learnt a lot about the history and culture from our Cambodian tour guide who, as a child, was one of the first people to start working as a vendor at the temples after the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Out of the hundreds of Apsara carvings around the Angkor Wat this was the only one smiling...

Enjoyed a Khmer cooking class at the Temple Restaurant on Bar Street.

Had a treatment by Dr. Fish after a night out.... can you guess who's feet the fish liked the most??

Chres Village School & Orphanage

One day we loaded up a tuk tuk and headed out on our way to surprise the kids at the Chres Village Orphanage with toys & food. Jess handed out photos of the kids that her boyfriend Johnny had taken during his stay at the orphanage last year... They called him Teacher Johnny and spoke about him with the brightest smiles I've ever seen. They were ecstatic when they found their face in a photo!

A group of us learned how to play with a South East Asian toy that looks like a badminton birdie with a spring at the top. Its supposed to be kicked around without touching the ground... I saw a group of people doing some pretty wicked tricks with it in a park in Vietnam. We also enjoyed some hula hooping, colouring, a failed attempt at dodge ball & later a session of very entertaining (for us mostly) karaoke.

There were 5 classrooms, one of which was turned into the girls bedroom at night. The teachers told us how they loved coming to work as the children were always so happy and eager to learn.

If your interested in learning more about this amazing orphanage go to - http://www.cambodianorphanage.org.uk/

The people in Cambodia are the most kind hearted people I've met on my travels and I have truly been touched by this amazing place...

A breeze through Vietnam...

With only a week to get through Vietnam, it seemed as though we spent the majority of our time on buses. Luckily, the beautiful scenery we came across was definitely worth it. Hanoi was our first stop. We managed to find the best Hostel around - Drift Backpackers, which was our home and family away from home for the few days we were there.

Our first day was spent at the Maison Centrale Museum - a prison built by the French in 1896 to detain the Vietnamese opponents to colonialism, and then again during the second World War to house the Americans. It was very eye-opening & a great introduction to the Vietnamese culture.

The following day we joined a few of our new friends on a day trip to Halong Bay which was beautiful, yet sad when we realized the amounts of pollution that tourists like ourselves were creating around this spectacular collection of small limestone Islands.

We were still able to enjoy the fantastic seafood lunch that was served on the boat, a visit to a floating village, a short kayak through the arches in the Island cliff sides that lead into serene lagoons, and a stroll through the enormous Dong Thien Cong caves.

One thing we noticed when arriving in Hanoi was the endless amounts of scooters and motorbikes that littered the city roads. We were told that the only way to cross the road was to take a deep breath and just walk, and hope that the riders would avoid you... it was quite a rush once you got the hang of it! We were surprised to find that the popular bars with the with the cheapest beers were on the corners of a junction of 2 busy roads with stools basically in the middle of the street. We learned to hold onto our beers very tightly that night.

I will always remember Hanoi for the very calming lake that was placed in the middle of this crazy, scooter infested city. We spent a lot of time strolling around this safe haven, and even witnessed the appearance of a turtle, which is lucky according to the Hanoians, and that hadn't been seen in the lake for nearly 10 years. Unfortunately Jessie had to leave us in Hanoi, and Sarah who had already seen a bit of Vietnam, was on her way to Cambodia, so Rach and I made our way down the coast to Hoi An.

Hoi An is a charming little city in the middle of the Vietnam coast. Filled with cute cafes, tons of tailors and shoemakers, this quaint city is every girls dream. Rach & I spent our days cycling between appointments, enjoying homemade passion fruit sorbets, Vietnamese pancakes and learning how to make a few light and very tasty Vietnamese dishes. An excursion with our friend Chris along the coast led us to a very bizarre cave that had wall carvings and statues that we decided must be some one's gruesome visions of demons and hell.

We enjoyed an authentic meal of Vietnamese pancakes in the neighboring city, Da Nang, and a good night out on the Cua Dai Beach. We managed to stumbled across the street side hotspot for local workers who were either starting their day or finishing it and were catching up on an early morning meal of mystery meat & noodle soup on their miniature tables and chairs in near silence. We decided to join them... Being a vegetarian... and 2 mixed girls from Bermuda, this encounter made for a very interesting experience.

The closest we got to sightseeing in Saigon after 24 hours on a bus and a 2 hour stop in Nha Trang, was our trip to the Saigon Central Post Office - a beautiful Gothic building that was constructed when Vietnam was part of the French Indochina. The highlight of our stay in Saigon was the cheap and delicious food that we devoured in abundance at the Ben Thanh market.

I definitely think that another, much longer, visit to Vietnam is needed in the future... even if it is just to satisfy my intense love for the many tasty treats we came across in Vietnam - Vietnamese iced coffee, tea, mango salads, fish hot pots, pancakes, homemade passion fruit sorbets, grilled corn & chili sauce were just a few of my favs.... mmmmmmmh yum!