awwww dammit, I`ve got so far behind again, i`m actualy sat on thee `angkor wat temple` with a beer at the moment trying to get back to "now".... i realize according to the blog i`ve been in Dalat for quite a while now, but the truth is we set off to Laos tommorrow with Cambodia done and dusted.
I won`t spend any time talking about Ho Chi Minh. It`s a nice enough city for sure but it lacked any desernable feature. It was only really meant as a stop over to Cambodia anyway, i`d only just realized my visa was about to run out (again) so there was no time to hang around. The rest of the group still had a few days spare and had decided to explore the Mekong delta for a few days before arriving to Phnom Penh by slow boat. I on the other hand jumped on the next availible bus and got out of the country before breaking the law. I`d planned to meet back up with everyone anyway so it was a nice chance to have some time to myself and save a few bucks in the process.
Lauren who i`d last left in hong kong had also just finished Thailand so it was by chance that she was arriving into Cambodia the day before i did as well, so it meant i had a friend waiting anyway, yay!
The border crossing was slow and uneventful, everyone tells you how corrupt and drawn out it is, but in reality the sign says $40, i paid $40, and i walked out with a 30 day Cambodia visa. Maybe the next one will be troublesome, but Vietnam > Cambodia is/was incredibly easy.
First impressions of Phnom Penh was that it`s ridiculously hot, very very busy, and to be honest very similar to Ho Chi Minh in a lot of ways, if maybe a little more deprived. I met with Lauren who`d booked us a room at a near-by hotel and after a happy catch up of the prior four weeks, found ourselves on a tuc tuc heading to the S21 prison camp, and with it about as big of a mood killer as the world could of summoned, it`s not like i expected anything else but it was a little more powerful than i first had expected it to be. The place which had seen so much death and torture was made all the more creepier given the fact it had once been a primary school, add this with some of the unmovable stains and markings and the place really gave me the creeps, and to be fair i was happy to leave the place when we did.
Our next stop was the far more happy sounding and uplifting "killing fields" this was where they believe over 17`000 men, woman and children who had been detained at S21 had been sent to for extermination.
Lauren who`d spent the previous night chatting to travellers who`d been through Cambodia already had heard from one couple of a place 150k away from here in Kampong Chnang, near the river, where they`d biked to and had said it was a pretty amazing experience with the chance to go somewhere not many people go and the chance to live real non touristy life for a few days, just the fact we had to bike it there sold it to me instantly. The morning after we headed off for the 3 hour drive north west to Kampong Chnang and after checking into an enormous hotel for the night, which was absolutely deserted bar the 2 of us, we headed off down to the river banks and ended up befriending the local kids. It was nice to be around local people, the kids where really fun and happy to just climb over abandoned shacks, and laugh as we showed them pictures of themselves. Even the family we bought our coconuts from ended up coming out with photo albums of their wedding and pictures of people they`d met before. We just hung out with all of them till sunset then headed back for the night.
The day after and on our way to obtain food from somewhere we bumped into another couple who told us we should head over to the floating village a couple of K`s away from where we where staying. We had time to kill before going back seeing as the schools we`d planned to visit aren`t open on Sunday. (a slight mis-judgment, but to be fair i didn`t even know what month it was never mind the day) so we decided to head onwards and check out what it was like.
We`d jumped on a boat with what i think was the smallest, youngest and most inexperienced of boat guides and went exploring the village. It was a bit like Venice if Venice replaced all it`s buildings with tiny wooden shacks, lost all it`s money, got a lot smaller and made its population far more welcoming and friendly. It was a really nice day, as was the day before it, we had to head back to the capital shortly after that, but it was nice to be back travelling with Lauren again, as was the travelling without a hangover (a novel idea that i think i lost somewhere in Vietnam)
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