'Battenburg mm'

'Battambang' 13/08/2013 - 14/08/2013

We only ended up staying in Battambang one night and one day but while we were there we managed to do so much! The tuk tuk driver who'd met us from the sleeper bus offered to take us out for the day to see and do all the things we'd wanted plus more!

Our first stop was the famous bamboo train, it's not quite how I'd imagined it in my head but it was such good fun, the locals were given use of the old rail lines 7 years back as the track wasn't good enough for commercial use. Everytime you met a bamboo train coming the other way one of them would have to be dismantled and the people clamber into the bushes as the other 'train' passed. No wonder the track wasn't good enough for real trains it was curved like a snake and had huge gaps in the track which made for interesting if not painful jolts (especially if your sat at the front)!

We traveled on it at pretty high speeds for about 20 minutes until we arrived at a little village, the kids immediately jump on you and shower you with gifts as well as trying to sell you bracelets and what not. They also took us to a rice making factory and showed us how different grains were harvested which was cool, as I had no idea before this!

This was a grasshopper they'd made out of banana leafs, awesome!!!

After the bamboo train was the amazing 'suspension bridge' if anyones been to Bristol or seen bigger you can understand why Olly and I thought this one was shit, but we were told how vital it was to the local villages, if anything it was fun to swing on!!

Fruit bats were the next stop, they were HUGE! I'd never seen such big bats and they eat 'fruit' as their name suggests and so are not nocturnal like most bats! Apparently according to our tuk tuk driver ' Mr Excellent' it's not uncommon for the locals to catch them slice there throats and BBQ them up. There is pretty much nothing the Cambodians won't eat.

This was a temple we stopped at and had lunch, there were 376 steps up to the top and it was over 1,000 years old.

After this we hopped on the back of moped and rode up a mountain to get some good views of the Cambodian countryside around Battambang, Cambodia oddly in most of the places we've been to is really flat, especially at Battambang which is one of the best places for growing rice in the country. Due to this there are many more killing fields in the area, as this is where a lot of people where forced to work in the Khmer Rouge regime, we wen't to a killing cave, which as the name suggests is somewhere they would push men, women and children in. They didn't necessarily die on impact either which made it really haunting. 

We drove down the mountain and were told if we wait around for a couple of hours millions of bats come out of the caves to feast, so we grabbed a few beers with the German guys we'd met and waited up high on a cliff we'd scaled! They apparently came out at 6 pm on the dot. Having been waiting for a while we were getting impatient. Quite funny really as I thought about David Attenborough and his crew waiting for weeks just to get a shot of a rare animal, and here I am getting ragey 2 hours in. When they finally came it was absolutely wicked, there were literally millions of them, I have some brilliant videos but this is the only half decent photo I managed to get of them swarming in the distance!

Up early tomorrow for a slow boat to Siem Reap.

'Ahh Ko Wong'

Soukanville and Koh Rong 6/08/2013 - 12/08/2013

Arrived into Soukanville and it was raining SO hard, managed to pile into a tuk tuk, we didn't know where to stay so we drove around trying all these different hostels, even one which had burnt down the year before. Ooops. Finally found a good one for $6 a night, couldn't do much as the rain just didn't stop! We had the worst meal ever on a mouldy table cloth, Olly got given linguine instead of noodles.... WTF.. in Asia, so funny!!
The next morning we went down to explore serendipity beach, I got my eyebrows threaded which was an experience. They were desperate to do Olly's nails but he wouldn't have it haha, the russian guys next to us got a full manicure, and massage, not a bad place to be pampered as your looking out to sea!

 In the evening we wen't for some beers, again. Met up with a lovely american couple and had some greek food. We had booked an early boat to take us to Koh Rong island the next day, really excited about this as it is meant to be paradise on earth :)

When we got back to our room I went to grab the last two pieces of toilet paper only to find they were crawling with ants, I quickly dropped it (on my lap) it was so rank, I had ants in my pants, when i managed to finally back out of the toilet i realised how many there were... This picture is terrible as I was freaking out trying to take it, still with ants on my legs, biting me as well...! We still stayed here another night (when we returned from Koh Rong) though as it was the cheapest room we could get. Ewwwww

This is how many bags were crammed on our bus, the white stuff on the steps by the doors our two large bags of ice. We drove with the doors open like this all the way. 

We had the most amazing cabin looking out to sea and into the jungle, I got my hammock so I was happy. We made friends with two of the local dogs, they never left our side the whole 3 days we were there!!! We took a wonder down the beautiful white beach and found some good food, music and drinks!

The view from our bed :)

The next day we rented some kayaks and kayaked to a small island just off the main Island of Koh Rong, it was a lot further than it looked and it felt weird to be kayaking so far out at sea! We smoked some weed we had bought the night before and went snorkeling, it was pretty magical, the fish seemed so much more interesting and I was amazed by the smallest things :) we collected lots of shells on the beach so we could some decorations for our hut. We managed to tie them together with some dental floss I had, good job i think ...

The next day we hiked across the island to Long Let beach, so named because it's well... really long. It is a whopping 5km, and is definitely the most beautiful beach I've ever seen except that it is home to a million sand flies, hence the lack of people in the photos! They bite you and then piss on you to celebrate, some of the bites can be really nasty, so we swam here a while and then missioned back to our chalet, with the dogs in tow of course!

The sun set from our cabin on our last night!! So purple!

We got the boat back the following day and stayed one more night in Soukanville in the ant nest haha!
Here's the amazing sleeper bus, I don't think I've posted a picture of one yet! They all vary depending on where it is you get them, some are more comfortable than others. Olly usually has a problem with them because he is too tall and doesn't fit! This one was obviously made for midgets because I couldn't even fit lengthways in it! Another great nights sleep ahead :)

'Gnome pens'? (These titles are getting more ridiculous)

'Phnom Penh' 3/08/2013 - 06/08/2013

After having got back to the mainland and in search of money (as Don Det has no ATM's) we managed to find the only ATM around and surprise surprise it didn't work. Great.. Slightly panicky now and wondering how we were going to be able to pay for our visa into Cambodia we ran around asking people. Turns out it was all fine and they could drop us off to an ATM on the way... for an extra $5 of course...

We crossed the border without a problem, and waited for about 2 hours for our visas to be sorted, finally as the rain came down we were piled back onto the bus for our 15 hour bus journey.. eurgh! (It was only meant to be about 10/11 but it was 4 hours late)

First impressions of Cambodia were not what I expected, I didn't imagine the city to be so full of life and appear to have as much wealth as it did. Everything was in dollars and seemed so expensive in contrast to Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, again another shock as I expected Cambodia to be dirt cheap. We arrived really late so went straight to a hostel (literally a 'point at that one' and off we go kind of thing) BEDTIME.

The Tuk Tuk driver from the previous night was hanging around outside our hostel in the morning and sat down with us for breakfast to negotiate a price for the day as we wanted to go to the killing fields and the genocide museum. We managed to get a reasonable price given the distance and off we went. (Before you go any further i just want to say that most of the photo's and story's of Phonm Penh are a bit haunting and quite disturbing)

We arrived at the killing fields not really knowing what to expect, I'd briefly heard of PolPot and the history in Cambodia but not to the extent I was about to. We arrived and paid a little extra to have a head-set to explain everything we were seeing as we were walking around.

To fill you in Pol Pot was an fascist 'revolutionary' leading the Khmer rouge with a communist regime forcing millions of Cambodians out of there home and away from there families to work 15 hour days slaving in fields etc. He would kill anyone who was educated, had a skilled trade or wore glasses. He brutally murdered over 2 million of his own people as well as leading a million or so into situations where they had poor malnutrition and no medical care, he was a monster. This all went on until 1979 when the Vietnamese liberated the country, he even held a seat in the UN and was funded by the American government. Some of the stories bought me to tears it was so recent and so upsetting, I can't believe one man could have such hatred in his heart.

These are bands placed around the mass graves as a sign of respect to the people who were killed.

This is just one killing field, there were thousands all over the country, people would be taken here blindfolded to be beaten, tortured or shot.

This was the worst part, a tree where they had actually found the remnants of babies brains and skulls, they would hold them by the legs and violently bash them against this tree amongst other horrible things.

The genocide museum, once a high school  in the heart of the city converted into a place for torture after the city was abandoned. Again some of the pictures and stories here were chilling.

In the evening we went out to get some food and drinks, this is a photo I took of a woman's stall, she's selling all sorts. I think you can just about make out the snake on a stick, haha. She wasn't happy with me taking this photo and tried to charge me a $1. 

We found a group of children on the way home who were so cute, we ended up playing with them and swinging them around for a good half an hour. As you do...

To the bar for a few more beers...

The following day we just sorted out laundry and what not, not much to report about. Booked a bus to Soukanville in the south.