Hello again and greetings from Cambodia >: )

A fair bit has happened since my last posting, but I'll try my best to only include the interesting sections of this trip and drop the boring parts.

As mentioned in the last posting, we went to the island of Ko Samet which turned out to have a lovely beach (Above), but was otherwise an absolute dump. It really was dirty with rubbish all over the place and the island was more expensive than any of the other places we've been to since. As you said Bruv, I would have liked a contamination suit for that place. We then went to the island of Ko Chang, which was a hell of a lot better although we had to drive through some pretty serious flooding on the way to get there. The picture shown has a couple of cars with the water line near the roof. The toilet on the double decker coach we were on overflowed due to the flooding and stunk the place out quite badly!



From Ko Chang we headed for Siem Reap in Cambodia which is where the Ankor ruins are - one of the 7 wonders of the world along with the Pyramids and Great Wall of China etc. We were up at 6:30am and expected to arrive in Siem Reap at 6:00pm, but didn't get there until 11:00pm - the journey to the border only took 3 hours. After the 3 hours we then sorted out the crossing of the border, but the roads were dirt tracks once you get into Cambodia. This is a road similer in importance to the M4 perhaps in England but it was a bumpy, muddy (when raining) joke of a road. We were lucky enough to do this 6 hour journey during a nutty storm where the whole sky would light up every 10 seconds for hours.

6 hours on a bumpy road is no laughing matter, especially when you have a 14 stone French dude falling asleep on you - I quickly realised however that when I moved my shoulder forward a little he'd headbutt the handle on the seat infront. This really did make the journey more fun - watching this guy rub his forehead every 30 seconds >: )

The Ankor ruins in Siem Reap are absolutely unbelievable as I hope my photo shows. They are spread over a hundreds of square miles although thankfully the famous temples are in close proximity.



After a couple of days there we headed for the capital, Phenom Penh by way of boat across the lake and river. This was impressive - there are so many little huts on stilts in the middle of nowhere on this lake as shown below.



We've been on a tour of the city where we saw the Royal Palace, but also the genocide museam and the Killing fields. The people of Cambodia really have been through some awful times and the whole experience was a sobering one.

We have also been to a shooting range where Beth fired an old school hand gun and I fired a magazine from an AK47 - the picture given is very similar to the one some of you may have seen that Reilly had when he was at the same place. I'll have to show you the video footage of it when I get back >: )



This part of the world (Thailand, Cambodia (we asume Vietnam and Laos also) is a fasinating one, but it does get quite tiring at times in the tourist hot spots with beggers everywhere and people asking if we want a taxi etc. The worst we get in England is some guy at Dixons asking if we need any help. And he takes 'no thanks' for an answer. Cambodia also has the unfortunate tag of having the most amount of land mines per square mile in the world (we were told), so there are a noticable amount of beggers with a leg missing or no hands which is extremely sad to see.

We are now in south west Cambodia enjoying some stunning beaches and a rest in Sihanoukville. The picture of the pool at the place we're staying gives you an idea of what $5 each per night can give you over here (£2.50). The picture of the beach also gives justice to this lovely place.





Hope you are all well and are not missing me too much >; )

Take care,

Burns

Soooooooooooo!

I've left England and the comfort of my special Alphabet pillow, but I'm just about getting by.

We've been in Bangkok since Tuesday evening and it's now Friday night. We leave first thing in the morning for an island called Ko Samet, which is East of Bangkok.

I'll try and keep this short and as interesting as possible.

Bangkok and a couple of observations:

This place smells. Badly.

The traffic is like London, but the road behaviour is ridiculous. Everyone cuts up everyone else. If you leave Bangkok without being in a car crash, you are EXTREMELY lucky. We consider ourselves lucky we were only in one (crash).




The fresh orange juice tastes like cordial. It probably is cordial.





Seriously though guys, this place is unlike anywhere we've ever been to before and for that we are grateful. It really is an fascinating place, that indicates a huge gulf in quality of life for the various Thai people here. A lot of cars on the road are pretty new and really quite nice. The rest are pretty crap.

We went to the floating market today, which is crazy, but we wish we could show you the video we did of this Cobra show. It was stupid and would be band in 2 seconds back home. This guy slaps a Cobra on the head to 'make him angry'. Then this guy catches 2 deadly snakes in each arm. There is one snake left to catch however. How? With his teeth of course. Idiots. It wasn't an area protected behind bullet proof glass. Those snakes could and wanted to kill us.








In Thailand it seems (rightly), that the man is the best. Rather than giving the menu to Beth first at a meal etc, I always get first dibs. It was raining yesterday during a tour and this guy followed me and Beth to the car with a huge umbrella. We were getting into different sides of the car though, so he followed me! Ha! One of the many reasons I love this place.

So I'll stop boring you all now.

Hope you like the pictures.

Keep in touch,

Burns