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2: Cambodia 17 February 2005
Hi Everyone! We got to Vietnam today after 2 weeks in Cambodia.. I think
the last time I wrote we had just got to Siem Reap. We spent 3 days at
Angkor Wat and the temples of Angkor Thom, hiring a tuk tuk driver each
day to take us around. We went for sunrise and stayed for sunset one
day, but we were so tired at the end that we didn't do that again. I had
had no food problems until then, but not he second day I had food
poisoning, I think from some pork I'd eaten the night before. I was fine
after a day though.
The 3 hour boat down the river to Battambang is meant to be the most
scenic journey in Cambodia so we decided to do that, but no one told us
that it's not a very easy trip. It's the dry season so after 5 very slow
hours (the engine broke down a few times) the river was too low for our
boat and we all got into 2 fishing boats instead. The engine in ours
kept stalling when it got caught in the river bed, and when the river
was almost completely dry, we got out and tried to squeeze 40 people and
our bags into 3 pickup trucks. Then we drove through fields along a dirt
track, getting stuck in an irrigation ditch once when we got out and
pushed. The 3 hour trip ended up taking just under 10 hours, quite good
for Cambodian
standards!
Battambang is the second biggest city in Cambodia but it took about 5
minutes to walk around the city centre. It wasn't nice at all, but when
we were having lunch a man asked us to celebrate Chinese New Year with
him. We sat around a big mat on the floor of his house with his family
and friends and had another lunch, and then that evening he took us out
for dinner, to see boxing, and then to a karaoke bar. The next day we
went to some killing caves where the Khmer Rouge buried lots of
the people they'd killed, and the walked up 365 steps to see a temple.
It might not sound like a lot but when it's 40 degrees and humid it
feels like it's taking forever.
We took a bus to Phnom Penh and went to the Khmer Rouge killing fields
and museums there. We also had pizza for the first time in a month!
Another bus took us to Sihanoukville on the south coast where we spent a
few days on the beaches and I decided to take out my bright pink braids
(they'd been in since Bangkok and were starting to unravel). I sat on
the beach undoing them and about 10 Cambodia girls came and sat aruond
me and helped, so it only took 3 hours to undo 121 braids!
The day before yesterday we went back to Phnom Penh and then this
morning we took a bus to the Mekong delta and crossed into Vietnam by
boat. We're in Chau Doc at the moment, which isn't a very exciting city,
and tomorrow we're starting a 2 day tour through the surrounding
villages and up to Ho Chi Minh City. More soon (I'll try and send some
photos next time but the internet here is so slow that it takes forever)
Love Emily xxxxxx
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