Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We are officially templed-out after exploring the temples of Angkor Wat and Vietnam is lingering in our sights.

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15^th, 16^th & 17^th Feb

We apologise for the time between posts, but it is purely due to the few days after our last post not warranting any real report. Unfortunately, we had our first run in with suspected food poisoning. We were too fearful to leave the room in Siem Reap and were living off a bare trickle of food, including tiny croissants, cheese biscuits and wagon wheel like biscuits called “choco pies”. This resulted in the Choco pie incident of 2013…… Even so, we were still in pretty high spirits and did enjoy the time relaxing (if you can call it that) even though the guilt of being so close yet so far to the temples was occasionally evident. In a way, we were lucky that we were both impeded by this illness at the same time. Sharing such a small room with a bathroom that seemed to amplify everything, has definitely cemented our friendship pretty solidly, unlike our bowel movements. Needing a reason to test our health, we felt it was necessary to visit “Pub Street” for a few drinks.

18^th Feb

After feeling up to the challenge, Casey decided to ride west of Siem Reap to visit some small temples that are older then the temples at Angkor, yet due to their size, don’t receive the same level of relevance of the larger, newer temples. Unfortunately for Casey, the tickets to the temples were not sold in this general direction, so the ride towards the temples was partially in vain even though he did get to enjoy an introduction to the Cambodian countryside. I, however, still not feeling up to the task of endeavouring too far from the safety of the room/bathroom, stayed behind.

19^th Feb

We both seemed to have recovered and decided to venture out towards the north-eastern temples, and following the suggestions of the Lonely Planet guide, would see the older, smaller temples first and leave the awe inspiring Angkor temples for the final day. After jumping on bikes and enthusiastically stopping off at every temple around the circuit and enjoying the individuality of each, the temples slowly started to morph into one, signaling an end to the day. After agreeing to meet a friend that we had made in Battambang on “Pub Street” that night, we again ventured out in to Siem Reap for a well-deserved Angkor beer.

20^th Feb

The day had finally arrived! We were going to visit the Lonely Planet acclaimed eight wonder of the world! Angkor Wat definitely deserved this title. The sheer size of the moat that surrounded the temple of Angkor Wat was mesmerizing, as was the land bridge that was in place allowing tourists to cross the threshold. Obviously weathered through age, it was incredible to think about what these temples had been through on both a cultural and political level, and you couldn’t help wondering what the marvelous structures would say about the folly of man. Unfortunately, restorations were occurring at the entrance to Angkor Wat, which played a very spoiling role in the majority of the photos that were taken. However, we continued to traverse the highly preserved temples admiring the intricacies of even the smallest detail. We, unknowingly, had worn singlets and shorts that did not cover our shoulders or knees. This almost obvious point now, was the reason we were not allowed into the main temple. This prompted us to leave Angkor Wat at this point vowing that we would return to complete this pilgrimage we had charged upon ourselves. With a slight loss of spirit we continued onto the Bayon temple complex, which was a wonder in it’s own right. After watching sunset from this temple, we rode our bikes back to our hotel past the monkey-laden grounds and ruins that speckled the heavy foliage along our route. Looking forward to a dish I had seen in a menu the night before, a Khmer curry, Casey and I decided to spend a little more on dinner ($3.50 each) and try this dish that proved to be the most enjoyable we’d had in Cambodia thus far. Finding out that the bus to Kampong Cham City (Our next destination, designated the “Gateway to the North” by Lonely Planet) left at 7.15am the next morning, we decided to spend an additional night (taking us to the morning of the 22nd) so we could go back to Angkor Wat at sunrise and finish what we’d started.

21^st Feb

After hearing Casey’s alarm go off at both 5am and 5.30am and observing Casey consider getting up both times and then returning to the fetal position, I was provoked to wake him up knowing I wouldn’t hear the end of his disappointment if we had missed his big opportunity for a photo shoot. We again hired bikes and raced to Angkor Wat, where we both got briefly separated as I took a slightly different turn, however, we both got there and got to enjoy a rather overcast sunrise. Of course we now had our shoulders and knees covered, determined to enter the temple that we had been denied entry the day before. The temple didn’t open until 7.40am so we decided to source ourselves some breakfast. Seeing a man selling bread, we decided to buy two incredibly fresh bread rolls and two coconut buns. Not such an interesting fact, but the comments we got from two locals must have been one of the highlights of our trip thus far. The first man said, “Hello sir, you want water, another bread?” (It was yet to occur to us that this man did not sell bread) and then a woman that shouted, “Hello Mr big bread!” before entering into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. This made our day and definitely gave us something to raise our spirits even though we were both exhausted from the early wake up. We finally had an opportunity to see the temple, which definitely reinforced the beauty of this almost mythical site.

One thing had crossed my mind over the last few days was where was the tree that Angelina Jolie was in front of in Tomb Raider. Unbeknown to us both, we had missed one temple! Ta Prohm was the temple that we had been imagining this whole time, a temple that had almost been lost in forest. This temple was beautiful and it was obvious why it was so iconic. Obviously this fact was known by about half of the tourist in Siem Reap, who were there in droves. Otherwise this place was truly magical, it was incredible to see the roots of trees intertwined with the temple structure, which had been so physically altered that each seemed symbiotic of the other. Feeling like we had finally seen every temple in the Siem Reap area, we called it a day and triumphantly returned to the hotel where we recuperated from our early morning and prepared for the journey we would undertake the following day. It would be sad to leave the hotel we had grown so accustom to, yet it was time to leave the room that hadn’t been cleaned since our arrival and was harbouring our filth. We’d also left a lasting impression with the hotel staff……

22^nd Feb

Again, sleeping past the alarm, we were late to leave our hotel and reached the bus with a comment from the bus driver saying, “Come on, the party’s over!” Feeling a little guilty, we said our goodbyes to Siem Reap and prepared for our arrival in Kampong Cham City. After about a 7 hour journey we arrived in a town that was our first destination by the Mekong. It was completely empty and without much attraction, which was reflected by the single paragraph dedicated to the town in the Lonely Planet. We decided to go north the next day, which we were told left at noon.

23^rd Feb

Waking up leisurely at 9.30am and leaving the hotel room at 10.20am, we decided to go and book our bus trip and then have a quiet breakfast before we boarded the bus for 8 hours. When we arrived at the bus company we were quite shocked to realize that the bus arrived at 10.30, which was, at the time, two minutes away. Running back to the hotel, paying and then running fully loaded with our packs and other items, which we lacked time to pack, we arrived at the bus stop and waited for a bus that was luckily 10 minutes late. The bus was very nice, enjoying the Cambodian countryside as we headed northeast to Ban Lung. Exiting the bus at a very bizarre bus stop a few kilometres from town, we, with some friends we had made, continued to walk down the main street until we eventually approached the centre where we found accommodation in a nice guesthouse.

24^th Feb

Finding out there really wasn’t much to do in Ban Lung either, except to see a large volcanic crater lake called Boeng Yeak Laom. We set out to this lake with the two friends we had made the night before by foot (it was about 6km). It felt quite rewarding when we reached the lake and were able to enter the beautifully clean and refreshing water whilst marveling at the incredible formation of this crater. Casey decided to run back to the hotel from the lake as I returned with our evidently unfit friends, who really struggled with the elevated slopes returning us to the main road that returned us to town. We then organised a 6am bus to Phnom Penh, which is going to be our final destination of Cambodia before we progress into Vietnam.

25^th Feb

The bus to Phnom Penh must have been the most enduring so far. Not only was the bus not properly air-conditioned, but we both felt that they were employing some form of torture in the form of a Cambodian comical singing duo or Cambodian soap operas that involve someone either getting run over every few minutes or love triangles. We have, however, arrived in Phnom Penh in high spirits. It is completely different to any other Cambodian town we have visited and definitely has a high degree of western influence. We were elated to know that the room we booked actually included an air conditioner, a luxury usually declined due to the high price mark up of the room. And that brings us up to now. We officially feel we have seen enough temples to do us for a while and we are ready to leave Cambodia and experience a slightly different country. In saying that, we still have found the Cambodian people incredibly friendly and have definitely enjoyed our time here. We will spend the next day exploring Phnom Penh and seeing what it has to offer in contrast with the other Cambodian towns.

We’ll be in touch soon. Our love goes out to our family and friends, please let us know how new jobs and moves are going via Facebook, you’re all never far from our thoughts.

Keep posted.

Koh Samet to Siem Reap, Cambodia - Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

We have finally left the beach and are in our second country, Cambodia.

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9^th Feb

After waking up relatively late due to a long night of celebrations for Casey’s birthday, we had decided to stay in Koh Samet for two more nights. We found out that our current room has been previously booked, so we had to find some new accommodation. We walked around for about an hour in the rain trying to find a hotel, until we eventually found one just around the corner. Fortunately for us, the hotel was much nicer then the first and at the same price of 500 baht, or approximately A$16 for us both, was a steal. We inevitably spent the day relaxing by the beach reading, before Casey enjoyed a run on the beach. The day was then finished off by having dinner with some friends we’d made the day before, by the beach of course.

10^th Feb

As our final day on Koh Samet, we decided to make it count with some serious beach work. I, unfortunately for me, was roomridden due to a very mild bout of the runs, the first victim of what I’m sure will inevitably reoccur during our trip. Luckily that passed within a few hours and I was able to join Casey on the beach where he had accrued additional sunburn whilst reading his book and taking photos as you have probably seen in the tabs above (if not, check them out!). We enjoyed a bit of a workout session on the beach before a light run and enjoyed our final night by having another dinner on the beach at a place we’d frequented every night bar one.

11^th Feb

We were keen to go to Cambodia, and utilising the liberated Lonely Planet guide we had an extremely rough idea about how we intended to get there. We got off the island much later the expected and luckily were ushered to a minivan company, which did visa runs to Cambodia. They suggested we headed to the city Pailin, just across the border and then make our way to Battambang. We had no idea where Pailin was as it was not listed in the lonely planet, so we spent the next few hours on a bus that dropped us in a Thai city just near the border that we still have no real idea about. After waiting at an outdoor restaurant for an hour, we were both forced to learn our first real words in Thai, the words for “public toilet”. This was mainly due to Casey’s failed attempt of a hand rubbing gesture, which made a lady gesture towards a tap….. We caught another minivan to the Cambodian-Thai border, which was typical of a Thai town, happy people, colourful, graveled roads and buildings that I still would have considered pretty rudimentary, until we crossed the border and saw the ultimate contrast.

The border crossing was relatively painless, but as we crossed, we were hounded by men pulling up on motorbikes for lifts and taxi rides on the now dirt road. We ended up acquiring the help of an English speaking tourist advisor (who obviously would get commission out of any sale he assisted in) we reluctantly paid for a taxi to Battambang as the suggested alternative was to stay in a hotel that looked like it would be robbed the second we fell asleep. The roads we travelled down were mostly ungraded as we avoided potholes after pothole as we passed houses that were now made of wood and straw in the most part, we could visually see the difference between Thailand and Cambodia, and the harsh history of the country really did start to become highly evident. The taxi driver was in fact one of the men that had been stalking us down the street earlier, yet through his limited English, we could tell that he was actually a really nice guy as he stopped off at picturesque locations so we could take photos. After working out the debacle of paying the driver in Thai Baht and American dollars, which we have now learnt is interchangeable with Cambodian currency, the Riel (1 to approx. 4000), we found a nice hotel. Battambang was obviously quite a touristy town, but it was a nice place to start in Cambodia.

12^th Feb

The night before we had organised a Tuk Tuk with three other people to go around and see the local sights of Battambang for the day. We first ventured to the Bamboo train, which is just a rectangle formed by pieces of bamboo to utilise abandoned French train tracks. This was great to get a few pictures of the Cambodian countryside. We then went to a very old yet beautiful temple that was reached via a rather steep set of stairs at Phnom Banan. We then went to the only winery in Cambodia and had a wine tasting.  There is a reason there is only a single winery in Cambodia. I have a feeling we were drinking gasoline infused with grape juice…. Our final and most confronting destination so far was to a set of temples; bat infested caves and “The Killing Caves” at Phnom Sampeau. Visiting the latter definitely put things into perspective for us, as we learnt about the bloody atrocities committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge during their relatively recent reign. This did not completely hinder the enjoyment of seeing the temples in the area, visiting a monastery where monks were living and accidently disturbing numerous classes of students in a school as they all wanted to wave and say hello as we passed. We then watched a consistent stream of bats leave their cave for roughly 20 minutes. It was truly incredible to see them uniformly weave into the distance and even more interesting to watch from a platform next to the head of a 30 metre Buddha being carved into a cliff face. We then went back to town and enjoyed a traditional Cambodian dinner with our friends from the Tuk Tuk.

13^th Feb

We decided to set out towards Siem Reap, which is the town that is within reach of Ankor Wat. We boarded a relatively small boat that uncomfortably took roughly 9 hours to reach Siem Reap port, passing by floating villages and the friendliest people, always waving and smiling. We then caught a Tuk Tuk into town finding out that most accommodation was full at this point, spending an hour with our packs trying to find a place to stay. We had to break the accommodation budget for the first night, yet we had a pretty nice air conditioned room. We ventured out into Siem Reap to discover how expectedly touristy it really was. There’s a street called “Pub street”, enough said. We visited the night markets, which is really just stall after stall of relatively similar merchandise such as the Khmer scarf.

14^th Feb – Valentine’s Day!

That brings us to today, a day we have decided to relax and try to recover from the sunburn and peeling that has been inflicted on us whilst on Koh Samet and the boat ride from Battambang yesterday. We had a nice scrambled egg breakfast with the most amazing bread either of us was expecting in Asia (probably due to the French influence on Cambodia). We are preparing our next few nights here and our trip to Ankor Wat and the surrounding temples, which is one of the main reasons we really decided to come to South East Asia, hopefully it’ll live up to the hype. Unfortunately for the day, we are each other’s Valentines....

We are loving the people we are meeting and the unexpected and different experiences we are already having. We can’t believe it’s only been 9 days. Hopefully it keeps up and you’ll keep reading about our adventures. Hope all is well back home, we both send our love.

Make sure you check out the photos on the Cambodia page and add your e-mail address to the subscription box on the left to keep updated.

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Bangkok to Koh Samet

We arrived in Thailand safely!

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5th Feb:

We arrived at about 8.00pm into Bangkok airport and as soon as we left the airport terminal we really realised how hot and humid Bangkok was, and the climate we would have to get use to for the next 3 months! We caught a cab to our hostel (which we later discovered was overpriced) passed pristine roads and billboards setting an almost facade for the Bangkok we were still to meet. When we arrived at our hostel we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the accommodation. The place was clean and seemed quite nice. We went for our first walk in Bangkok to get something to eat in this foreign city that was evidently no stranger to westerners. We finally settled on Fish Ball soup from a street vendor as our first meal, wondering if food poisoning would follow (It did not), we actually quite enjoyed it. We then bought a few beers, Chang being the beer of choice in Thailand, and headed back to the hostel. It was there that we met three French Canadian girls who had done a bit of traveling around India and Nepal, and were just arriving in Bangkok themselves. We worked out that we would travel around Bangkok with them the next day and then end up at Khao Sarn road (the tourist street). We then enjoyed a very humid night.

6th Feb:

We woke in the morning and left the hostel with the three girls heading for the river to catch the ferry to Old Bangkok. We slowly made our way to Khao Sarn road where we enjoyed a beer dispensing devise I've never seen, called a Tower. We had a pretty good night, discussing the possibility of leaving Bangkok, having no real idea where else we could go.

7th Feb:

Casey asked the question "Are we still leaving today" and I agreed. We would go south towards the beach. We found an abandoned old Lonely Planet book and Casey picked an island, Koh Samet. We then took the skytrain, a minivan and then a ferry to the island (It wasn't as easy as it seems). We walked around Koh Samet until we found accommodation, just paying for a room with a fan because you had to pay more for airconditioning. We then enjoyed a beer and dinner on the beach before falling asleep early.

8th Feb:
Casey's birthday! Casey went to the police gym, at the invitation of a policeman. We then enjoyed swimming before we decided to hire scooters to travel to the other side of the island. We traveled on what we later discovered to be a walking track, which was worse then many dirt roads I've seen back home, always hard for scooters. We decided to turn back and enjoyed a nice relaxation session on the beach, which we are currently paying for with extreme sunburn, which is giving us both grieve right now. We are going out to celebrate Casey's birthday tonight, and hopefully meet some people we've been seeing around.

Make sure you check out the photos on the Thailand page and add your e-mail address to the subscription box on the left to keep updated.

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Take Off! @ Melbourne Airport

Hey guys! Welcome to our first proper post and podcast!

We are at Melbourne Airport waiting for the plane to start boarding so we can begin this epic adventure. The first stop is Bangkok and then we are heading into Cambodia. We will definitely check in when we arrive in Thailand, but until then, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and then have a listen. Make sure you keep a track of us as we travel to every possible location that will have us!

To listen to the first podcast, click here!

Over and out.