Entering the third world..........

SIEM REAP                                                                                                                                        Our decision to travel to Cambodia and Vietnam was not a decision made lightly. Typhoon Ketsana having just devastated Manila in the Philipinnes and had made its way to Vietnam and killed 47 people in a city called Detsana. We were pretty sure we were south enough of the typhoon that we wouldnt be effected and decided to take our chances!

We were travelling from Koh chang to Siem Reap, Cambodia which we were told would take 6 hours on a bus. 1 boat, 7 buses and 8 hours later we arrived in Siem Reap!! Nightmare journey trying to get there. Our bus driver from Thailand to the border was a mentalist!! He was literally overtaking cars at 70 mile an hour around corners!! We were all terrified! 2 lads from Blackpool, Steve and Pete were on the bus with us and we ended up spending a few days and having great craic with them. We had to cross the border in the dodgyest town ever called Poipet. Even though im not too long after a 3 week trip through southern USA and Texas, this town was the closest thing ive ever seen to the wild west! It was full of bandits!! really dodgy town - which had nothing in it but beggars and casinos!!? Weird place. After walking across the border and changing onto about 4 different buses we finally got onto the bus that was taking us to Siem Reap. Got talking to a few really interesting people on that bus. Siting beside some english guy called Dave who is at the end of a 8 month world trip - he had been to all the places were going and was able to give me loads of tips and advice. Also there was an 80 year old woman on the bus!! She was travelling on her own and has been travelling for the past 50 years!!! only stopping as a neccessity to work or whatever. She has been to over 140 countries!! Crazy.

The difference in landscape between Cambodia and Thailand is almost instantly noticable. First thing i noticed was how flat Cambodia was compared to Thailand. Thailand always had mountainous backrounds where as Cambodia was flat as far as the eye could see. Just paddy fields and Skeletal cows everywhere!! The roads too were 10 times worse than Thailand and there were virtually no brick houses along the way. The closer we got to Siem Reap, the more we thought about how it might have been a bad idea. Ketsana had hit Cambodia and the longer we went on the worse the flooding got. In some places we could only see the rooves of houses. Cows were stranded on the main roads because all the fields were completely flooded. Strange and eerie feeling not knowing what we were heading towards. When we finallly got to Siem Reap the bus had to leave us outside the town because it couldnt get in due to flooding! We had a hostel called the mango inn booked for the night and a tuk tuk driver assured us he could get us there so we 'tuk' our chances!! Pete and Steve came with us as well. The first thing i noticed about Siem Reap was the amount of amazing 5* hotels in the place!! It just felt wrong and arogant having all these beautiful and luxurious buildings scattered through a really obviously poor city. Of course these hotels were to accomodate the hoards of people who come to visit the temples of Angkor Wat - this after all was the reason we were here as well. Angkor Wat is Siem Reaps (and Probably Cambodias!) number 1 money spinner.

The golden mango inn was lovely and after a nice shower we were good as new. Me, Ruth, Will Pete and Steve went out for a meal and a few drinks that night on the main packpacker street, very originally named 'Pub street'! Along the way our tuk tuk struggled at a snails pace through 3 feet of water until eventually it packed it in and the engine died!! Me and Will had to get out of the tuk tuk and push it with the driver through the flooded streets! It was such a strange experience, when we finally got to pub street it was like a river, but everything and everybody was just carrying on as usual! SO we took off our flip flops and waded through the streets until we found a restaurant with not quite as much water as the rest!! I know it was probably devastating for the city but it was really cool with the place totally flooded. We had a relatively early night because we were going to Angkor Wat the next day - should be interesting!!

Up bright and early at 9 oclock, quick breakfast and off we went to angkor wat. It is recommended you spend 3 days visiting all the temples at a leisurly pace but we only had one day. Another cardinal sin is trying to see too much so we devised a well thought out plan to visit about 8-9 temples finishing at the temple of Angkor Wat which is on the cambodian national flag. Off we went in our tuk tuks and even though the place looked like venice, luckily enough, it was a beautifull day! Tuk tuks dropped us as far as they could with the floods and we walked the rest of the way knee deep in water to our first temples Banteay Kdel and Ta Prohm. The walk up was an interesting experience with kids and adults literally hanging out of your clothes begging and pleading with you to buy something from them. In the end i cracked and bought 10 postcards and a t-shirt for 2 dollars! 

We spent the whole day visiting the various temples and each one was more impressive than the next and each one was also different from the next. Even though it was roasting hot and we were walking around temples for 8-9 hours i dont think any of us got bored - i certainly didnt anyway! We bought a book of the history of the place as well so it was nice to know what we were looking at. Also, for all you Tomb Raider fans out there, we were at the temple where Tomb raider was filmed (think it was Ta Keo or Ta Prohm). It was when she came here that Angelina jolie started buying Cambodian kids!! Angkor Wat was the last temple we visited and at this stage the sun was beginning to set and the place was starting to empty out. The top level of the temple was closed off for renovation but the guards there started offering to let us up in exchange for a little back hander!! Ruth, Pete and Steve werent interested but Will being the giant kid that he is couldnt resist this opportunity for mischief!! I have to admit i was tempted myself so me and Will decided to go back to your man and see what kind of money he was looking fo. We agreed on a price of a tennor (which i wasnt willing to pay but to Will this was pennies so he coughed up the fee) and were ready to go up. The guard was acting very sketchy and wouldnt let us go up until every person was gone. The longer we waited the more nervous i got, mainly because of how sketchy your man was being. I suddenly realised this was a big deal and could turn out very bad for us. If we were caught god knows what would have happened - arrested? Bashed? After all this place was a national treasure! The one thing that was certain is that the guard was not gonna admit to taking a bribe from us and he would of screwed us over in a heart beat! What started out as a fun little adrenaline rush was now a ful scale crime (in my head of course!). After 15 minutes of waiting and me telling Will my thoughts we aborted the mission and went back to the others with our tails between our legs. Funny tho!!  

That night the 5 of us went out for dinner and drinks on pub street only this time we were out for a proper piss up!! Ended up being a really good night and went on until all hours in the morning. Met a few nutcases in a bar called 'angkor what?' danced and played pool there before going to some other all night bar with some australian dude we met. In that all night bar Will called us all up to the bar and there was about 7 shots of this yellowy lookin drink. He wouldnt tell us what it was, we just all had to drink it. So after we all downed them and gagged for a bit, the bar man pulled out a bottle of what we just drank. In the bottle there was a cobra snake wrapped up and in its mouth there was a scorpion hanging out of it!! MINGIN!!

Next morning we didnt rise until about 2 oclock! Our tuk tuk drivers had been waiting for us outside the hostel since 9 that morning to take us to the floating village. On the way to the village we saw one of the funniest things ever - a little boy, naked, ran out of his house to the side of the road and right there on the side of the road bent his knees and started taking a shit!! it was gas, and before we could register what we had just saw it was gone. Hilarious. he floating village was realy cool. Its a village where all the houses are on stilts about 3 meters high. During dry season they can walk from house to house etc but during the rainy season the village is only accessible by boat and the whole village is submerged in water. Really strange.....kids cant go out to play, there are no fields to work, i dont know how they survive or what they do on a daily bases. We didnt hang around too long because it was getting dark already because of our late start and we were all pretty hungover. We caught the sunset on the way back on the boat which was nice. On the drive home we were going passed lots of huts in quiet streets. Every family was literally just gathered around a candle and chatting to each other (with the exception of a few with tvs). It was like a little day trip to ireland in the 1920's!! We had a nice meal and an early night before leaving the next morning for Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia and one of the worst affected areas of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime......

PHNOM PENH                                                                                                                                 The bus journey to Phnom penh wasnt too bad. a mere 6 hours which somehow has become a short journey all of a sudden!! However when we arrived and had to get off the bus it was like arriving in hell!! We were well used to being bombarded by taxi drivers and tuk tuk drivers trying to get us into there cars, but this was 10 times worse then anywhere else. I saw some man walking off with my bag in his hand. At first i thought he was working for the bus company and just unloading the bus, but then i realised he was marching off down the road with my bag! he wasnt stealing it, just trying to put it in his car. I had to leg it over to him and literally tug of war to get my bag back! when he eventually gave up he went straight back to the bus and by chance did the exact same thing with ruths bag! I actually couldnt believe what was happening. Meanwhile there was about 20 other ''battles'' going on with other travellers. Honestly if you just paused and looked around for a second, it was the funniest thing ever - but not haha funny, more ''get your fu*king hands ooff my bag funny!! it was unbelievable!

To get away from the madness we went into the nearest bar we could find to get away from the madness! After a bit of looking around on the internet we decided to go to a hostel called 'Nomads' which Ruth picked out. When we got to Nomads i waited with the bags while Will and Ruth checked it out. Ruth came out and said it ws grand lets stay here. When i got inside the Hostel i couldnt believe my eyes. The place was the biggest dumb ever, with fold out beds in dorm rooms and mattresses the width of book! It was grand, but what i couldnt get over was the fact that Ruth chose it, saw it and still agreed to stay in it! Who was this woman and what had she done with my girlfriend!! e arrived there late enough so just settled in and went for a strole through the market that night and had a nice meal. Phnom Penh was a major eye opener to third world poverty. Firstly, Kids the same age as Conal were out at 12-1 at night selling books and any other shite they had. Also woman were begging in the street with there babies and toddlers sprawled out on the pavement for all to see in nothing more than a nappy. none of the kids were crying or struggling or moving so im pretty sure they were sedated. Horrible thing to see. ALso on the way home, we walked down where there was a food market earlier that day and we were literally dodging rats as we walked down the road! They were everywhere!!! Disgusting. Ruth was pettrified and pleading to get out of Cambodia! In a way i dont blame her but as much as an annoyance and pest these people and things are, you cant help but feel sorry for these people. I almost felt guilty as well for having such a better life especially when you think of Sean, Conal, Lucy and Ella. They're so lucky!

If you thought all that sounds morbid, our second day in Phnom Penh was even worse and more emotionally exhausting than the first!! We went to the Killing Fields and S-21 prison where thousands and thousands of people were killed by the Khmer rouge. Basically this was a political party that came to power under Pol Pot, an absolute mad man with insane goals! He wanted to completely cut Cambodia off from the rest of the world. He wanted everybody to move out of cities and farm and live off the land, basically he tried bringing Cambodia back to the stone age, killing hundreds of thousands along the way! A total of 2.5 million people died either directly or through disease during khmer roughe reign. The weirdest thing is, all this only happened in the late 70's!! Thats such a short time ago. I could babble on about it for hours but i wont. After al this we felt pretty  shit and to make things worse Liverpool lost to Chelsea that night. Bloody Chelsea!! 

Next day was another bright and early start. A small mini van pulled up outside nomads to take us to the bus which would bring us to Ho chi minh city (Saigon). What happened next was one of the funniest things ever!! The bus was like a 7 seater taxi (if even that big!) and when it pulled up infront of us there was already about 12 people in it as well as rucksacks bulging out the windows!! Ruth squeezed in the back beside an american girl, i was pretty much sittin on this aussie blokes knee and will was sprawled on the floor of the van with about 3 bags on top of him. At this stage there is still 2 lads trying to stuff the last few bags into the van. I start thinking to myself, ''Theres no way both of them are fitting in here. Next thing i know one of them jumps in the driver seat........and then the next guy jumps in the driver seat as well!! Yes, the driver was sitting on the other guys lap driving the feckin car! The whole bus went from shocked silence to hysterics at the sight of it! So off we went, 14 people, about 25 bags and 2 drivers! Mental. That was our last experience in Cambodia and we headed for Vietnam!

SAIGON                                                                                                                                          When we arrived and got off the bus we had another lovely taxi man experience! Mum & Dad im sorry to say it but taxi drivers are assholes the whole world over!! We showed him the address of our hostel and asked him to take us there not having a clue where we were. He started driving and after a few minutes Will and i started to notice the driver was taking an aweful lot of left turns!! The chancer took us around in a massive circle and literally dropped us off on the exact same road he picked us up from. Ruth and Will started shoutin there heads off at him and we told him where to go!! Cheeky Bastad! he was lookin for 100,000 dong which is about 10 dollars - he was lucky to get 1 out of us. We were fuming - Get so pissed off with people constantly trying to rip you off!! Turns out our hostel was a 2 second walk from where the bus dropped us off which was handy!

First thing you notice about Vietnam is the amount of mopeds on the streets! Well in Saigon anyway it was unbelievable!! And crossing the road was as good as any rollercoaster - your sweating afterwards and your heart is racing! You just have to start walking and hope for the best!! We had 3 days in Saigon and then we were flying back to Thailand.. First night there, Will hadnt been feeling well so he took it easy in the hostel and me and Ruth went out for dinner - an indian! We both never ate indians before in our lives and now we are mad for them!! Had about 10 since weve been here. Second day we went to the chu chi tunnels! These were underground tunnels and chambers that  VC used to fight the americans to great affect! Got to see al the various tunnels and traps they used to use and we also got to go down into the tunnels and crawl for 100 meters to the other side........it was absolute torture! my legs were killing me for days! I dont know how they did it and they even made the tunnels wider for tourists! Vietnam won that war because there all so small and can fit in them bloody tunnels! Our tour guide was called mr bean! and he was a vietnam veteran and loved to talk about it! At first it was really interesting hearing his stories but jesus he loved the sound of his own voice! 

That night we went for few drinks but will stayed in again - poor lad, luckily he started to fell better the next day. On our last day in Vietnam we went to the War remnants museum which was all about the history of the vietnam going back about 100 years. After that we went to the Reunification palace. This is the place where a north vietnamese tank famously broke through the palace gates in dramatic fashion symbolising the end of the vietnam war. The palace itself is cool - it has been kept exactly how it was when it was built and lived in last - so all the rooms and furniture, everything is 60's style. We had good crack running around the palace - messin!

Thats about it for that trip flew in to Bangkok the next day and made our way to Koh Phangan for the half moon partay!! Unfortunately i dont have photos of vietnam up because they are on Wills flash key and he is gone!! But, you can see them all on Ruths facebook page. Laters!! ;)

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