Phnom Penh

The main reason for any travellers visiting the capital Phnom Penh is to see the devistation left behind after the horrific rule of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's. And that is exactly why we decided that we needed to visit.

We took a short 4 hour minibus from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and our lives flashed before our eyes more than once. This driver seemed to have a death wish and was over taking at the most ridiculous times on the road. He would beep his horn to basically say 'I am coming through whether you like it or not so move out of my way'. I couldn't help but watch the road but it really set in the 'if you dont die, you win' theory once again. I shouldn't really moan as this was actually the first journey that has got to its destination on time. 

We arrived at a random station on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and were again greated by a group of Tuk Tuk drivers who were eager to get your business. Stupidly, we hadnt really researched Phnom Penh as we assumed that the same as Siem Reap and Bangkok, there would be a central backpacker hotspot that you would be taken to upon arrival. We were wrong... 

We had the name of one hostel given to us by Lisa's brother so we decided to try this. Not one of the Tuk Tuk drivers here understood what we were saying. They couldnt even understand when we asked them to just take us to any hostel/guesthouse/hotel/anywhere we could sleep as it was getting late and we could do our research that night for somewhere to stay the following nights. One finally said they would take us to the riverfront. Sod it, we thought and got in...

The place we stayed was pretty rubbish, we payed over the odds to sleep in a room above the restaurant that was not sound proof. We stayed for one night and ended up at 19 Happy House and ended up making it home for the next 6 days. This place was your typical backpacker hostel, complete with cheap beer on tap, English dvd's and an absolute lad who worked there (whos only job seemed to be to sweet talk the customers and ply them with weed). He spent the entire time we were there telling us how sexy we all were and when I was sat on my own whispered "hey, sexy lady. I want to show you around the city on my Tuk Tuk tomorrow girl". Believe me, it took all my willpower to say no, a hard offer to refuse!!

First on our agenda was a night out. The owner recommended a club not far from our hotel so we had a few too many drinks and headed to the Heart of Darkness, which was actually pretty good. They played some absolute tunes and we made some Cambodian friends who swiftly asked us to Facebook friend them - can't get away from it!!

We spent the next day hungover watching films, very cultured and decided we would go to both the killing fields and the genocide museum the following day. Now, I won't say too much about these two places as I think if you are interested in them you should come and visit for yourself and there are no pictures as it felt a little disrespectful to take any.

Choeung Ek, more commonly known as the killing fields is a site that the Khmer Rouge used to kill thousands of Cambodians in the 1970's. It is now a memorial but some harrowing sites are still there. A number of mass graves and a killing tree, used to kill babies were among the worst. I suggest using the audio guides that can be provided to really get the right information from a visit here. It is deeply depressing and hard to stomach that this was taking place less than 40 years ago and for 3 years no one seemed to notice that millions of people were being killed. It is a very quiet place and the tour here ends with visiting the new stupa that has been built as a memorial, all the skulls and bones of bodies found at Choeung Ek are displayed here for people to pay their respects.

After our time here, we made the journey to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formally the S-21 'security office' used as a prison to house and torture anyone the Khmer Rouge saw as a threat before they would take them to Choeung Ek to be killed. There are mug shots of every person that entered the prison displayed and some of the cells are still there too. Its horrible to walk around as it has an eerie feeling about it, and you get a sense that there are a lot of souls still there. Only 7 survivors left S-21 in the 3 years it was open. 

Although it was a tough day, I recommend that you go here if you visit Cambodia. Although it is very cliché, you leave there questioning humanity but also feeling extremely lucky to have been born and raised in Britain.

Apart from this, we have seen the various markets that the capital had to offer, even visiting a huge mall where they have a lot of 'designer' clothes and accessories. We also took a tour of the city, and our Tuk Tuk driver did his best to give us a history lesson on the way round until we got to the Grand Palace (we actually made it in this one). It was a little underwhelming as they had a lot of work going on in the buildings and you couldn't go inside but we ended up being a tourist attraction ourselves once inside the gates! We have learnt that we will be stared at wherever we go and this day was no exception... A group tour was looking over at us at every opportunity and when myself and Leanne were having our picture taken, they approached us and asked if they could have a picture with us. We said yes and at this point there were only a few of them. The next thing we know, it seemed like the whole class had run up to be in it. So here we are, me and Leanne as foreign exchange students and a few more from our very cultured day.

We had quite a bit of time to kill in Phnom Penh so ended up going to the cinema and also went for some pizza, nothing too much to say about that apart from a short while after eating it, Lisa bought this balloon and we were happy (sorry mum).

With another 5 days until our visa will let us go to Vietnam, we decided that we had seen all thay Phnom Penh could offer and have made a last minute trip down to Kampot. Kampot comes with our first large mixed dorm so lets see if we can meet some fun people here.

Angkor Wat and the infamous Water Buffalo on Koh Rong

After two random girls were let in our room at 1am by the Thai receptionist, our alarm sounded at 4am so we then had to get ready in the dark not to wake the girls sharing the bunk underneath mine (when we returned at 11am they were gone and we still have no idea who they were). We set off to the Temples of Angkor. We sat eagerly awaiting the sunrise at 6am and although it was already fairly light, a few glimpses of orange managed to peak through the clouds, it was a shame the weather wasn't great but the view was still pretty spectacular. We spent the morning exploring Angkor Wat and the other temples including Ta Phrom, where Tomb Raider was filmed, never felt better walking around pretending to be Lara Croft. Seeing the temples was great, but I cant help but think the tourist elements completely ruin it. One minute you're walking around a deserted temple, the next you bump in to someone trying to sell you a guidebook or bracelet for "only one dollar lady" which tainted the whole experience. Still, the temples were worth a visit:

On our return in the Tuk Tuk, I dropped my camera out of the side and watched it roll and bounce down the road as we were driving off. I had to run back and get it and amazingly, considering it is already held together by sellotape, it survived!! I swear it is indestructible.

The next day we decided to go to Chong Khneas floating village on the Tonle Sap lake. Somehow, we managed to get ourselves in between some major beef between our Tuk Tuk driver and our 'tour guide' on the boat. The tour guide was all chatty and friendly once we got on the boat, took some photos of us and was chatting away until suddenly he switched and started saying we didn't like him and asking us what the Tuk Tuk driver had said about him. We got a long sob story from him about how they used to be friends but now he tells all the tourists that he is a bad person before they get on his boat. All feeling awkward, we tried to ignore him and take photos of the floating houses. We got dropped at a crocodile farm with our tour guide now ignoring us and our boat had driven off!! Wondering if we were ever going to get off this floating farm we stood staring at the crocodiles contemplating if the water was infested and if we could swim back...
After our boat finally came back they drove in to the middle of nowhere on the lake and turned the engine off, whilst we contemplated the swim again, our guide sat on the front of the boat looking as if he was going to cry. He had more of a moan about his old friend and made us swear on the sun that he hadn't slagged him off. Of course we did it but this bazaar bitch fest was like watching an episode of Hollyoaks. After this he perked up a little, we visited a floating school, and Lisa even drove the boat. Even though this was so good to see, and take in the strange way people live (the children row themselves to school), I have never been so glad to get off a boat and away from the most weird, insecure tour guide I've ever met.

Siem Reap came with making our first friend!! Woohoo. I was beginning to think I was just stuck with these two mugs for the whole trip. Rory is our 21 year old bartender who guessed that Leanne was 18, and me and Lisa 20. With this compliment (?) we sat drinking at our hostel bar and then made him come out on Pub Street with us. After a few more buckets and Leanne falling off a table (she is still moaning about her bruised elbows now) we decided to call it a night.

(SO cute just for you Laura Meares)

The next night, we took a night bus down to Sihanoukville. I settled down on our flat beds ready for what I thought would be a smooth ride when a Canadian introduced himself as my 'roommate' and apologised for being 'on the large side'. Now, this would have been too bad if the beds weren't the size of a single bed. He proceeded to talk to me about the Cambodian economy and other such boring topics until finally the bus light went off and I could try and sleep. I layed on my side for the entire 12 hour trip with no room to breathe and only one stop for the toilet. The 'toilets' were several holes in the ground crawling with cockroaches. We all braved them with a high level of screaming and running outside and got back on the bus. Once we finally got to the pier, we were met with the worst storm we have seen yet, thunder and lightning and the worst rain. Luckily, the let us wait until it calmed down before we set off and believe me, even the night bus was worth it. 

When you're staying in this: 

And your view of the beach looks like this:

How can you complain? Sure, we may be sharing it with a fair few gecko's, a cockroach and a couple of rats, but it actually doesn't seem to matter.

The first person we met was the Koh Rong Ferry manager who gave us some island rules. He banged on about the amount of water buffalo there were and how we were not to go near them, we had to move out of their way, we weren't allowed to ride them and we definitely weren't allowed to try and take pictures with them. We set off to find somewhere to sleep (and take a selfie while sat on a water buffalo) but annoyingly, I am still yet to see one of these mysterious creatures. What I have seen though, is a huge amount of dogs, they are everywhere!! Not being a dog lover, this isn't ideal but the island are actually taking good care of them, making sure they are spayed, neutered and healthy and I somehow though a lot of them were quite cute. 

The island itself has intermittent electricity and we have cheered every time our fan has finally come back on, so as you can guess, the heat here is hard to deal with but our tans are slowly coming on.

We set off on the one hour trek across the jungle in search of 'the best beach you will ever see' and wondered how hard it could be? A small island couldn't house that hard of a trek could it? The advice we were given this time: (genuinely) watch out for the venomous snakes. And if you get bitten, don't panic (yeah right), just get back to the pier and we will speed boat you to the mainland for anti-venom.. 

A little worry set in but we don'd our walking boots for the first time and set off on what was described by Leanne as 'ultimate rock climbing'. Myself and Lisa looked at each other and thought it wasn't that bad... Until we got to the next stage. Climbing down jagged rocks with some frayed string and a few true roots to hold on to was not what we were expecting. We finally made it to Long Beach, and what a disappointment!! The novelty of having the beach pretty much to ourselves was great, but the sand was rough and a lot of rubbish lined the shore... After the trek we were all sweating so much - all fear of the sea disappeared and I got straight in. After a while on Long Beach we decided to brave the trek back to our side of the island, realising that what we had climbed down, we would now need to climb back up (now this was definitely ultimate rock climbing).

It turns out that snakes were the least of our animal worries as we approached our bags on the sand... The biggest dragon fly you will ever see had taken a liking to our stuff and was circling it like it had marked its territory. 3 screaming girls running to get one item of clothing at a time trying to dodge the dragon fly was the funniest (and most ridiculous) thing ever. I have never been so happy to see our bungalow when we got back, coming back on the trek is honestly the hardest physical thing I think I've ever done, and I don't think my heart has ever beaten so fast, but WE DID IT!!

We also rented a kayak and managed to make it to another pretty much empty beach without falling in.We snorkeled but saw nothing... My fear of the sea is also fully back after standing on something that wiggled under my foot as I tried to fix my snorkel, lets keep working on that one shall we...

We have spent an amazing few days on Koh Rong and i'm quite sad to be leaving our little bungalow but also excited to get to our final stop in Cambodia; Phnom Penh (and a room with air conditioning).

Bangkok & the long long road to Siem Reap...

After our not so fantastic day out in Bangkok we had a much better night planned. We were off out to meet Jess and Chris for dinner. I went to school with the both of them and Jess is one of my oldest friends and they happened to be in Bangkok at the same time as us (amazing considering they are on a 10 month trip). After a huge catch up and a few too many Chang's, we hit The Club on Khao San Road. It was so good to see some friendly faces in a city we were all hating. We got some tips and some horror stories from them, got drunk, danced and got a selfie with some of the army on the way home - what a fabulous night!! 

Saying bye was strange as it will now be December when I next see Jess back at home - weird

Back at home by 12 because of the curfew we were sure we'd wake up in time for our 7am call for going to the floating market. Guess what? We didn't go. By the time the tour knocked our door the first time I had already decided that the girls could go without me as I had already been. After they had knocked "twice time!!!" the girls also said no way were they getting up. We didn't manage to get our hungover selves out of bed until the afternoon when the receptionist shouted at us for not waking up :(

We did a bit of shopping and booked our ticket to Cambodia. Less than £5 for a ticket in to the centre of Siem Reap (or so we thought)

This time we made our early morning pick up and got on the minibus. After 5 long ours spent next to the worst smelling man, we were at our stop. We bought our visas and had some bants with the Cambodian men who thought it was "lovely jubbly" that we were British and that we all looked "same same.. But different". If any of you have seen my passport photo, i'd just like to take this opportunity to let you know that when they were giving them back to us, they thought it was Lisa! (Gutted Lis).

We made 2 potential friends on the bus but quickly realised they were both one of the B's. Double B is what we have decided most girls we have met so far fall under. I think you can guess what kind of B the patronising 'ive been travelling for 2 years' girl fell in to. Safe to say we sacked them off and found a separate place to stay. 

The border itself took a while and we then had another long journey with too many 'just 40 minute toilet break'. We finally got to a bus station in the middle of nowhere at about 8pm. Just a mere 4 hours  longer than we were told to expect. We were ushered in to a tuk tuk to make our way to the town centre and one of the first things we saw was 3 men crash their scooter and fly in to the air and skid across the road. A horrible sight and we held on tighter to our seats. 

Our first dinner was on Pub Street, our new favourite place. We were soon reminded where we were when a cockroach fell off of the ceiling and in to one of our glasses - welcome to Cambodia!! I have now had 3 fall on my on different occassions, and yes i've screamed every time.

Our first day in Siem Reap and i already love it, even the tuk tuk drivers are more polite! We spent the day exploring and the evening trying to drink 2 buckets each to get an Angkor What?! T-shirt. Success. 

What a night, and my hangover was one of the worst. Luckily we have just moved hostels to one with a pool, and im currently sat in the garden waiting for brownie and movie night to start, pretty amazing.

Bangkok has you now...

So here we are, i'm currently sat in our lovely air conditioned bedroom in Bangkok loving the little break from the heat. We've been here now for almost 24 hours and i can't say i'm wanting to stay much longer. Having been to Bangkok before i feel like i've seen almost as much as i can and i definitely cannot take the constant feeling that you are being scammed.

Our flight was really smooth, and seemed to take a fraction of the 15 hours that it actually took

although i had the most annoying man sat next to me whos body seemed to take up all of his seat and half of mine. 

As this is the first time that the other two have been here we decided that on our first night we would have a walk up to Khao San Road and have a look around and explore, i think that they both agree already that its a bit much! Today we have done some sight seeing, went to the standing Buddha and then decided to climb up the 400 stairs of the golden mountain just as the sun was finally coming out. Safe to say we appreciated the fan at the top more that the scenery! After being called a "pussy licker" amd told "you are stupid for walking, car bombs, fighting" we decided to give in and get a tuk tuk to take us to the grand palace. Last time i was here we fell for the 'no tourists allowed at this time... Get in this tuk tuk' scam so never got to see it. This time i thought we'd be more clever and walk straight round the other side of the building to the tourist entrance. Well, that failed.. we didnt walk far enough and were told that today was a Buddist day so no tourists allowed, this was told to us by ankther tourist so we thought it would be legit. No, as we drove past back to our hotel we saw the tourist entrance with an OPEN sign right in our face. So, this is the second time i have failed at seeing the grand palace - third time lucky?

Travel companions

Here we are, god help us.

Why?

Why travel?

So why have I decided to quit my sensible job and go travelling? I must admit that I have had some mini breakdowns over this very question. Am I doing the right thing? Am I stupid? Will I ever get a job when I come back? But then I try to think logically... this is something that I've wanted to do for so long so why not?

Two years ago after a year of living and working in High Wycombe as part of my degree, myself and the JLH (Jo, Laura & Hannah, yes I realise how un-cool that nickname looks when you write it down) decided to spend our hard earned savings on a summer away in Thailand. We saved every penny of our (tiny) salaries for six months and went away for five fabulous weeks. I have to say that those five weeks were some of the best I've ever had and although I felt that we did and saw so much, even sat on the plane coming back I knew I had to go back again as I knew there was still so much to see.

So since then, I've known that I had the travel bug although I continued to deny it when everyone said it would happen. I always knew I'd go away again at some point but I got a job after graduating but almost a year in to working there, I got the final itch to go again. My rental contract on my house was coming up for renewal, my friends were in the same boat and after loosing my dad so young, it confirmed to me that life really is too short and so I have stopped questioning whether this is the right thing to do and thought its now or never, and now here we are 37 days to go and with only a flight booked we have a lot to get sorted!

Why blog?

I feel like blogging is kind of like keeping a diary, and every diary I have ever written, I've read back a month or so later and chucked it in the bin because I am so cringeworthy! But after seeing and reading my good friend Jess' blog (amateurbackpackers.com) I realise that it isn't so cringe and it is the simplest and quickest way to keep everyone back home up to date with what you are doing. This saves repeating the same stories over and over when you get home and trying to individually update everyone whilst you are away.

On a personal level, I have had a tough couple of years (understatement) and I know woe is me, la la la. I am not one to look for sympathy and I hate the pity look that people give but being away for three months is going to help me clear my head and get away for a while, simply cut my self off for a little while. The blog is going to help me share our stories with everyone without being too connected to back home. Wow, writing that down it sounds a lot harsher than I mean, I love and will miss everyone at home, but I need to find some peace in my head while I'm away. And gutted to Lisa and Leanne who will be my own personal 24 hour counsellors while we are on the road - good luck girls!