Cambodia

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Day 32 – 38 Cambodia.

We decided to bus the whole journey from Chiang Mai to Siem Reap, Cambodia. If anyone ever decides to do this journey – I strongly suggest you fly, even though it costs a fortune. The bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok was great, and the journey from Bangkok to the border was ok – they said we were in 1^st class – it felt more like 3^rd class. Anyway, from the border the whole journey deteriarated quickly, all the way to Siem Reap. This was the second nightmare bus journey and we got conned again. We were sold a bus ticket that was supposed to take us from the Cambodian border all the way to Siem Reap. We got to the other side and ended up waiting 6 hours at the bus station for the supposedly luxury AC bus. It arrived and it was a dump – I almost ended up in tears. There was no AC, the seats had no leg room and people were practically sitting on the luggage – which was piled up at the rear of the bus. 10 mins into the journey the bus said it's filling up. After 15mins we still hadn't moved people started getting off to see what was going on and apparently we had broken down. We sat there for around an 1 ½ , now I was in tears! We finally got going on the bumpiest roads ever and dust was flying up from the roads into the bus – it was horrible. Anyway the outcome of the journey was we all ended up at one guest house at around 11 at night – nobody could really find anywhere else as this guest house wasn't in the centre. I was slightly pissed as you can imagine, but too tired to argue as we had been traveling for over 27 hours by now.

This was the second nightmare bus journey and we got conned again.

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Sorry for the epic tale of our journey here. OK so we decided to get a 3 day pass to see the temples of Angkor. Some of the temples we saw dated back to the 9^th century. The most memorable was Angkor Wat, the Bayon and a few others but I can't remember their names. The temple complexes were awe-inspiring. It was amazing to see these marvels and how much of a mammoth challenge it must have been to construct them. We really felt we were back in time as we wandered around the temples. After the temples we visited the Tonle Sap lake. Here we observed the people of the floating village. They basically live in houses that float on bamboos or boats. There were kids using big bowls as a means of transportation – see the pics.

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We left Siem Reap and headed to the capital – Phom Phen. Have to say it wasn't all that. Just a city with too much traffic and pollution. Maybe we didn't give it a chance – but it didn't appeal to us.