20 Questions

During the course of our travels so far we have been asked a number of questions about our experiences by friends and family, local people who stop to speak to us as well as many Brits, Americans and Aussies that we have met while on the road. So here is our top 10 of the questions that we are most frequently asked, and of course their corresponding answers!

What has been the highlight of your trip so far?
Dan: That's a really tough question as I could change my answer on an almost hourly basis! All of the wonderful things we have seen appeal to me for different reasons, and so it can be difficult to judge them directly against each other. Right now I think I would say that experiencing life in Iran was pretty awesome and I loved it there, but the one off experiences of washing elephants and the Formula 1 push it close!

Vicky: I think I'm going to have to have a top country and a top activity as it is too difficult to chose. My favourite country has been Iran, for me it was a once in a lifetime experience finding a country that was so different from my expectations. Everybody was just so welcoming. For my favourite activity I think I could name about 5 that would tie for top position, but if you had to push me for one it would be my freediving in Koh Tao as it is something that I will do again and again. Obviously we're not finished yet, so something else could come along and knock it off top spot!

What has been the worst experience that you have had?
Dan: Without a second thought it is being ill in India. It was so difficult to recover from such a serious bout of illness without all of the home comforts and "safe foods" that we are used to back home. Even the most spectacular sight in the world will feel like nothing to you when you feel like we did there. 

Vicky: The combination of the heat with being ill in India. We haven't written off India completely, but this experience will take some forgetting!

Wow 7 months! That's a long time to be travelling, how have you found being on the road for such a long time? 
7 months is a long time, especially when you don't stay in the same place for more than 3 days at a time. It can actually be pretty tiring and it takes more out of you than you would think! On the flip side there is no way you could do it any quicker if you want to take in as many places and experiences as we have. 

So you are all travelling together for the whole journey. What is it like travelling as a large group and does everybody get on?
At it's largest our group was made up of 22 people. Most of the time people are able to get along well, but there are naturally some personality clashes within the group. It's impossible to have that number of people living in each other pockets without there being some disagreements. Most of the time it's not a problem, and fortunately I think we both get on with everybody in the group quite well. 

Did you all know each other before you left the UK?
Obviously with the exception of those that were already couples, none of us knew each other before we started. We had a facebook page set up by the company where we could all chat and compare notes, but it's not the same as actually knowing somebody. I think that has added to the excitement of the whole experience though.

Are you British or Australian?
Naturally this was mostly asked by locals in various countries, I would hope that friends and family would all know! I can confirm that we are both 100% British :)

Would you like a cup of tea? (I could also list would you like to buy this? here as this question would quite often follow the former!)
Generally yes. I love tea and even Vicky is now beginning to appreciate it. (Generally no. I'm not interested in what you are trying to sell me.) Iran was a great exception because generally people offered you a drink just because they wanted to talk to you.

Are there a lot of nasty bugs or animals?
We have been quite lucky so far and haven't really come across anything too bad. We have seen one poisonous snake and one or two larger than normal spiders, but nothing that has caused us any harm. Generally we have got used to seeing cockroaches and rats by now, and sharing your hotel room with lizards and geckos is also commonplace (they eat mosquitoes though so we don't mind them!)

So you finish the trip in Sydney on the 20th October, but you are not flying home until Christmas eve. What are you going to do with all that time?
We are going to spend the first 2 weeks travelling around the South East corner of Australia taking in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane if at all possible. The next 2 weeks we will be going to help out on a "work exchange" project with a family who have veg plots and make garden furniture out of recycled timber, which will help us keep the cost of our travelling down as they will provide us with food and accommodation. Following that we will be making our way across to New Zealand, and although we haven't set an itinerary for the country yet we will be looking to spend around 2 weeks on the north island and 3 weeks on the south island. Once that is all done...Bob's your uncle it's the 23rd of December and we are on our way home!

Would you travel overland for this amount of time again?
No. We are both really glad that we have done this, and we have seen some brilliant things and met some great people along the way and we wouldn't have changed our experience for anything. If we were to overland again it would probably be for only 6-8 weeks in one go. Another alternative is that we would travel for this length of time again, but visit fewer places and therefore spend much longer in the places that we did go. If we did it this way we would probably plan our own route rather than go with an organised tour, so that we could ensure we went to the countries we wanted, and during the most appropriate season for each country (no more 50C heat in India thank you!). One thing that we have certainly taken out of the experience is that we have found a number of great places that we will come back to for individual holidays in the future, as in so many places we haven't had time to do everything that we have wanted. 

Since I started writing this post, I had the brainwave that we should include the 10 questions that we have asked most since we left. So here they are!

Is that your best price?

Is that really your best price? I don't think it is!

Have you got wifi? (If yes, usually followed by what is the password?)

Is there any toilet roll? (Upon a member of the group coming out of a previously unvisited toilet!)

Where can we buy stamps? (frantically pointing at the top right hand corner of our postcards!)

How do you say thank you again? I know you told us half an hour ago, but we have since had a beer.

Are you sure this is vegetarian? That looks an awful lot like bacon.

Have you got any ketchup?

How much longer are we on this (insert current form of transport here)?

This is the last petrol station before we cross the border and I still have 50 (insert appropriate currency here) what do you think I can buy with that? (The ultimate result from this question is a Magnum ice cream. Never fails to disappoint!)

F1 Special: Formula 1 comes to Singapore!

Rather excited and full of beans we arrived in Singapore around lunchtime on Saturday via bus from Malaysia. After drawing out some Singapore Dollars from the cash machine the first main task that we had to undertake was finding our way to the hotel where we were to pick up our tickets from. With that task accomplished we made our way to entrance gate number 3 where our Formula 1 adventure began!

Our tickets gave us reserved seats in the Bay Grandstand with a view overlooking the Marina. The track ran along in front of the grandstand and into a tunnel underneath the left hand end of it. However for the first action of the day, a GP2 race, we decided to wander round some of the other areas of the circuit we were allowed into to see what else we could see.

A GP2 car rounding the corner onto one of the main straights

Apart from the 3 days of the year that Formula 1 comes here, these are just normal roads in an incredibly busy city. But with Formula 1 fever gripping the city the organizers have done a spectacular job of crafting an incredible street circuit for the cars to race around. The track is incredibly narrow and boasts 23 turns, a number of which are very tight making overtaking very tough.

After the GP2 cars had finished their race we started to walk in the direction of our seats when our attention was taken by the start of the final F1 practice session. The cars are so much louder than their GP2 counterparts (which are loud enough as they are), and in a number of places here you can be as close as 5-6 meters away from the cars as they are going flat out. Much closer than you will get at any purpose made racing track.

Michael Schumacher's Mercedes flies past us just on the other side of the safety fence. Chased down in the background by one of the Lotus cars.

After finally finding our way to our seats during the practice session, it was time for the Porsche Carrera Cup Qualifying to begin. It was now getting dark around the circuit, and the combination of dark surroundings and a brightly lit track made it more difficult to get decent photos from this point onward, but we still managed to get a few.

A Porsche rounds the bend under the floodlights where the day to day street signs are still evident

Following a couple of crashes the Porsche cars had only a few laps at full speed due to the appearance of the safety car, and so we turned our attention to making our way across to the entertainment areas where we had a choice between 2 bands; Bananarama or The Pretenders. The Pretenders won hands down!

Concerts finished it was time to head back to the stands for the main event of the day, the F1 Qualifying Session where we were very happy as McLaren fans to see Lewis Hamilton take pole position!

The final track action of the day was a qualifying session for the Ferrari Challenge race that would take place on Sunday, with the grid being made up of a combination of professional drivers alongside private owners who were invited to take part in the race. The qualifying went without any real drama, and we made our way to the main stage for the evenings finale; Maroon 5 :)

After many failed attempts I finally got a good Ferrari shot at speed from the grandstand

We arrived back at the hotel just after 12.30pm and after what felt like a tiny sleep we were up again and ready for race day! We made our way to the circuit in time to see the first race of the day; the Ferraris that had qualified late the night before. The race had one rather expensive looking accident which was then compounded by a mistake from the marshalls. While hooking the car up to be towed away they forgot to close the driver's door, and as the tow truck pulled away the door of the £170,000 super car was ripped off by the nearby wall!!!

The safety car leads a number of the Ferraris down the straight after the crash

Up next was a sprint race for the GP2 cars that had already raced the day before, and it was another chance to get a few photos of the Formula 1 stars of tomorrow.

A whole host of GP2 cars backed up behind (yes you guessed it) the safety car

While the Porsche cars we competing in their race we decided to walk around the circuit and check out some of the other entertainment that was on offer. You certainly could not find yourself being bored while you were at the circuit as there were constantly bands, dancers and other exhibitions taking place. 

This fire dancer caught my attention!

8pm struck, and a deathly silence hung over the crowd as the start lights lit up for the final time, and as the lights were extinguished the scream of the engines and the roars of the crowd brought the track to life as Lewis Hamilton lead the pack through the opening series of turns.

All seemed to be going well, Lewis had the pace and the measure of the demanding track with Vettel slowly slipping back behind him until disaster struck. A huge gasp came from the stands as Lewis' gearbox failed as he was changing up to 7th gear, with a faint stream of smoke trailing from the rear of his McLaren. I sat with my head in my hands as I watched his car coast to a halt, my dream finish as broken as his gearbox.

The race went on with Button our only hope for Victory now. But despite several safety cars bunching up the pack he never really had the pace to trouble Vettel who was able to cruise home to victory without too much trouble. The other main talking point was a crash between Michael Schumacher and Jean Erik Verne, which saw car parts scattered across the track. 

Fireworks go off above the marina after the race

So with the racing over there was only one thing left to do to cap off our Singapore adventure; back to the main stage to watch Katy Perry!!

This morning (our final in Singapore) we walked back down to the marina area to watch them deconstruct the track and return the city to it's normal state. While we were there we noticed that a certain amount of the track did not have too much happening on it, and was still largely intact. Without anybody there to stop us we decided that an impromptu track walk was in order. We managed to walk past the front of our grandstand and through the tunnel, following the track for around a third of it's distance before we broke off as workmen were busy deconstructing the safety fences. It was a great walk as we could admire all of the tyre marks on the circuit (including Schumachers incredibly long slide into his crash), the marks on the walls where crashes happened, as well as finding many discarded rubber "marbles" that had escaped the sweeping up process.

On the track in front of our grandstand. We were in the bright blue seats

So that was that and our stay in Singapore has come to an end. On to Indonesia tomorrow morning, and the second to last scheduled country on our UK to OZ adventure!

Our first stop in the Malaysian leg of our journey was Georgetown in the Penang district of Malaysia. Being that we were only staying in Georgetown for one night it was rather unfortunate that we arrived shortly after 4pm on a Sunday. Aside from a number of restaurants and a few antique shops there was very little open, and so after dinner we mainly confined ourselves to the hotel to waste away the evening.

The following morning we had an early start to catch the ferry and bus required to get to Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. As our bus journey was coming to an end it was becoming increasingly apparent that we would be spending our next 3 nights in a modern metropolis, with skyscrapers dominating the landscape whichever way you turned. 

Our first choice of activities was to visit the famous Petronas Towers that dominate the skyline here. While the towers are the tallest in the city, you are only able to climb them as far as the sky bridge which runs between the two towers around half way up. At the equivalent of £16 per head for the privilage of going up to the sky bridge we decided to give it a miss and take photos from the bottom (you'll understand why a bit later).

In front of the Petronas Towers

We began our second day in the capital by visiting the Chinatown area of the city which is right next to the central market. The Chinatown area is largely full of stalls selling fake items, and you can find fake copies of just about anything you want. I came away with an "official" Manchester United shirt, and a new "Oakleys" wallet for about £10 for the pair. The shirt looks identical in every way to the real ones, so much so that you would never know!

In the evening we decided to check out a rather original idea...a theme park inside a shopping centre! The top 3 floors of the shopping centre are filled with rides and stalls, and for an entrance fee of around £8 you are able to go on the rides as many times as you like. They have everything from dodgems to a full blown rollercoaster! The evening was to celebrate Chris' last night with us, as he has decided to carry on his travels directly to New Zealand. I'm sure the whole group will miss you Chris, and we wish you (and your large collection of white shirts) all the best for the future.

Our final day in Kuala Lumpur was a very busy one, and began with the task of sending all of our souvenirs and items that Australia will not let us bring in home. The fortunate upside of this is that we are now carrying 6kg less around in our backpacks which makes them feel so much lighter!!

From the post office we made our way out to the Royal Selengor Factory and Visitor Centre out on the outskirts of the city. For those of you who have never heard of them, they are a fairly well known Pewter company that make all sorts of things from tankards to trophies. I used to sell a lot of their items when I worked in the jewellers and so there was a natural interest for me.

Vicky with the world's largest pewter drinking tankard. It is in the Guinness Book of Records as being able to hold 3,000 litres of beer!

The factory was fascinating, and we got to observe several of the processes that go into making a tankard. The organisation only have this one factory, employing just over 300 people and they supply over 20 countires worldwide. All of the items are crafted by hand with no robotic machinery. Watching one lady put the pattern on a tankard using a just a hammer, you would have believed that some fancy piece of equipment was behind the end result. We found out that it takes around a years training to be good enough to strike a pattern by hand in this factory. 

Coincidentally while we were there the factory workers were putting the finishing touches to the Formula 1 trophies for the Singapore Grand Prix that we will bee seeing in a few days time! 

With both Vicky and myself sharing a love of the look of pewter, we decided to have a go at making our own pewter bowls to bring back home with us (yes I know we had only posted things home that morning, but this was too good to turn down!). Under the watchful eye of our instructor John, we carefully used metal letter stamps to strike our names into a round disc of pewter before beating the metal into half spherical moulds with a wooden mallet to let the bowl take it's form. Even with a wooden mould it is still tricky to get the bowl to come out smooth without any unwanted creases or kinks, but half an hour later we emerged with our finished products and a certificate of our workmanship.

In the "School of Hard Knocks" where we made our pewter bowls. You can see part of the factory in the background

Next on the agenda was a trip to the butterfly park on the other side of the city. The park is a giant netted enclosure where loads of different species of butterfly are able to fly freely while you walk among them. It is amazing how close you can get to the butterflies, and in some cases (such as the picture below) how close they can get to you!

It's very hard to smile while a butterfly is trying to eat your eyeball!

We could have easily stayed in the enclosure for a lot longer than we did, as the butterflies are so incredibly elegant and graceful to watch. It was also quite quiet in the park as we seemed to be one of only a few visitors there at the time, and it was incredibly relaxing just to wander about and take everything in.

Some of the butterflies are HUGE!

We did however have one final thing to do before the day was out though, and that thing was largely the reason for us not going up the Petronas Towers. The KL Tower is slightly shorter than the Petronas Towers in total height, however it does allow you to go right to the top giving you a higher view than you would have from the sky bridge of the twin towers. The view was fairly impressive looking out across the illuminated city at 9pm, although having less lights on inside the observation deck would have been even better as they caused reflections on the glass windows that you were trying to look through!

View across the city from the KL Tower

We left late the next morning to make our way over to the final stop on the Malaysia leg of our tour; Malacca. Malacca is a much smaller area than Kuala Lumpur, and is the kind of area that you might either love or hate. There are a lot of heritage museums and temples in the area, but many of us are "templed out" after seeing so many of them and unable to summon the enthusiasm for the heritage museums. We have mainly used our time here to catch up on the less glamorous but practical jobs like washing clothes, calculating finances and catching up on our diaries. We did find an incredibly nice local restaurant to eat at in the evenings though, and their food has probably been the highlight of our stay in Malacca.

The Geographer; our favourite restaurant in Malacca

Tomorrow we head off into Singapore where the large majority of our time will be spent watching the formula 1 qualifying and race. Check back soon for the Singapore F1 special!

Thailand: Sun, Sea, Sand and Football Golf!

The decision to travel to Koh Tao had turned out to be a good one. Vicky was enjoying her free diving course, and subsequently went on to pass her qualification completing a 20 metre dive in the process.

Descending into the depths...

I was enjoying exploring the island and taking in all it had to offer, including a bit of sunbathing, some good walking and relaxing in the bars and cafes with a good book. The evenings provided a chance to try out a few of the many restaurants the island had to offer, and to share our stories of the day.

The view from our little bungalow right by the beach

We decided to extend our stay on the island by an extra day than originally planned when we came across a very reasonably priced snorkeling trip that circumnavigated the island. One of the sites that we were to snorkel at is named "shark bay", where it is supposed to be very easy to see black tipped reef sharks. However during our 25 minute stay in the water none of the 23 people who were on the boat had managed to see a shark! On my part I couldn't work out whether relief or disappoinement was the overriding emotion! A few of the group including Vicky swam further away from the boat in a second attempt to see them, and were rewarded with a fleeting glimpse of a pair of sharks.

Getting up close and personal with the marine life

Although the day was quite long, with there being 5 snorkel sites in total, it was actually really good fun and some of the fish we saw were very interesting. Among the fish that we saw were; Long Tailed Bannerfish, Titan Trigger Fish, various Parrot Fish, Butterfly Fish, Baracuda, Needle Fish, Christmas Tree Worms, Clams and many more.

A large clam down on the sea bed

The journey back to Koh Samui wasn't as pleasant as it could be, with the ferry being fairly small and the waves being fairly large. Eventually though we were back on the island in time for a game of "football golf" in the evening. Football golf is basically what it say on the tin; a golf course wth oversized holes that you play with your feet and a football. It is a lot more challenging than you think it would be, but myself, Toby, Jay and Chris enjoyed our round none the less. 

Check out a video of the 4 of us playing at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eZBaqdMQsU&feature=plcp 

After 18 holes I emerged as the winner, with Jay in second, Chris in third and Toby in fourth place. As a prize I was given a commemerative T-shirt and got to have my photo taken with their fake World Cup trophy. All in all it was a good laugh. 

Jay, myself and Chris in the victory photo

Our final day in Thailand was spent mostly on the road as we made our way toward the Malaysian border. The Thai sleeper trains are a lot comfier than their regular trains, and some of us actually managed a half decent night's sleep on them despite the air conditioning being set to about 10 degrees lower than what we are used to now! Our stay in Malaysia will be fairly short, but check back soon to see what we have got up to :)

Thailand: The weird and not so weird

We arrived in Bangkok quite late into the evening on the day of entrance into Thailand. The border crossing had been straightforward despite a few long queues at the border gates, and now in front of us stood the busy and hectic city centres of one of the tourism capitals of the world. Bright and noisy cafes and bars lined the streets on both sides of the road, interspaced between fast food chains and convenience stores. A stark contrast to many of the countries that we have visited on this journey so far. The street sellers that we have been famliar with in South East Asia so far remained, but of course sex shows were added to the usual list of sunglasses, bracelets and books that you are usually bombarded with. It is amazing yet alarming to realise that your automatic response to somebody saying "hello" is now to say "no thank you" even before you know what they want!

During the morning of our first full day in Bangkok, a number of the group decided to take a tour to see some of the floating markets that are around 90 minutes outside of the city. To an extent the markets both were and weren't what we expected at the same time. As we had expected there was plenty of food and the usual tacky souvenirs for sale (Nothing irritates me more than seeing a beautiful wooden carving ruined by somebody sticking the word "Thailand" on it in plastic lettering. I'm sure people are perfectly capable of remembering where it came from!), but a lot of the local culture was missing. There were barely any local people shopping at the market, but mainly boat loads of tourists (like ourselves I concede) being ferried around with the expectation that you will part with your money on some useless tat. By the accounts of people who had visited the market around 10 years ago, it never used to be like this with there being both more traders as well as the local people using it for their day to day living. That is really what we hoped we would see.

View down onto the floating markets just outside Bangkok

That evening we decided to embrace Bangkok's reputation as the sex capital of the world, and a group of us all went further into the city to see what we could find. A few hours later we made our way home having performed in a kareoke bar, been shot by some ping pong balls fired by a lady who wasn't using a gun or her hands (yep you guessed what), and me being groped by a guy up on stage at a drag show. Good job we'd had a few beers before hand!

The next day was a fairly quiet one for me as I woke up being sick in the morning (before you say it; not from the alcohol!) Vicky went out with some of the girls to see a few more of the sights around the city, while I stayed back at the hotel to recover. By mid-afternoon I was much improved, and by the evening  I was able to go out to a vegetarian restaurant with Vicky and my vegetarian partner in crime Tim.

The next morning we waved farewell to Bangkok, although I think there was very little left to get out of the city anyway, and we made our way on the train down to Kanchanaburi where we would spend the next 3 nights in a flaoting hotel on the River Kwai. 
The next morning 6 of the group including Vicky and I took a tour to see some of the highlights of the area, including learning about World War II and the construction of the Thailand to Burma railway and the Bridge Over the River Kwai. We were able to walk through the Hellfire Pass, where the rail system was dug into the hillside by prisoners of war and slaves using only manual tools and explosives. In some places the hillside had to be excavated as deep as 25 metres to reach the correct level for the track to be laid.

A tree grows in the "Hellfire Pass" where the track used to run

The brigde itself was actually in the itinerary of the tour later in the day, and we were able to take a train ride across it before walking back across it after the train had gone (walking on the train tracks here is perfectly legal and is actually required to get to a number of places. They do not use electric rails and you just have to know roughly when to expect a train!).

A monk riding the train on the bridge over the River Kwai

The next morning was Chris' birthday, and we decided to surprise him with a 15 person wake up call at 6am (the time where it would be turning midnight back in the UK). After making him drink a beer and open his presents we let him go back to sleep to prepare for the rest of the day. After a late breakfast, we all decided to hire a couple of long tail boats to race down the river which turned out to be excellent fun. We took a few drinks on board and had a race from the hotel to the Bridge over the Kwai. Following that we went for an early dinner, before Polly and Jaymo hosted a quiz they had made specially for Chris' birthday which was a good laugh. 

Speeding down the River Kwai in a long tail boat

The following day we were on the move yet again, with us catching the sleeper train in the direction of the ferry port for Koh Samui. After arriving on the island however, Vicky and I decided that we would like to go and explore one of the other islands; Koh Tao, where Vicky is able to do a freediving course (diving without tanks of oxygen, but instead using yoga style techniques to hold your breath).

The beautiful coastline of Koh Tao

And so that is where we are now. Vicky is off diving and I am sat in a bamboo structured bar, writing this blog while looking out across the golden sands and the deep blue sea with a beer in my hand. Relaxing?....I think so!

Cambodia: A whistle-stop tour

Compared to most of the other countries we have visited recently our stay in Cambodia was short and sweet, lasting only 6 days and consisting of only 2 cities stayed in.

Having crossed the border from Vietnam, our first stop was in the city of Phnom Peng the capital of Cambodia. The city is of a reasonable size and is laid out in a grid formation. As well as having names all of the roads also have a number, with the horizontal roads in the grid having odd numbers and the vertical roads having even numbers, which made navigation around the city very easy.

Our hostel (named Nomads) consisted of fairly basic but perfectly usable dorm rooms and was approximately 5 minutes walk from the river’s edge. After taking the afternoon of our arrival to acquaint ourselves with our surroundings, we decided to spend the following day visiting the famous “Killing Fields” and the associated S-21 museum.

The day that we had was very comparable emotionally to the day we spent learning about the Vietnam war only a few days earlier, and it is still difficult to work out which had a greater effect on us. For those of you who are unaware, Cambodia suffered a mass genocide between the years of 1975-1979 that saw somewhere between 25-30% (over 3 million people) of the country’s population murdered by the country’s controlling party at the time; Pol Pot’s Khemer Rouge Party. The party itself came into power under a false name, claiming to have a very different ideology to the one that they would actually preach while in control of the country.

The S-21 genocide museum was in it’s original life a primary school, but within days of the Khemer Rouge taking power all schools along with many other types of buildings were closed and many were converted into prisons. People were driven out of the cities and forced to take part in manual labour out in rural areas, while any high ranking officials, intellectuals or professionals were arrested and taken to the newly formed prisons. Once inside a prison, prisoners would be brutally tortured and frequently made to confess to crimes that they had never committed so that the government could “justify” their captivity. On average 50 or so people would be loaded into a truck once a week (although this increased to once a day later in the Khemer Rouge reign) and driven away from the prison, never to return. They were of course taken to our second destination; The Killing Fields.

Building B at the S-21 museum: Once classrooms before becoming prison cells

The Killing Fields are in a rural area outside of the main city, and were originally used as an everyday cemetery for Cambodian people. Under the Khemer Rouge however the area would be converted into mass graves (in some cases 600 odd people to a grave) to dispose of all the bodies of the prisoners. The prisoners would arrive by the trucks, be bound and gagged before being savagely beaten to death using anything and anything to hand. Bullets were too expensive to consider using on the scale of people that were to be killed.

The memorial building at the Killing Fields, built in the early 80's

I could go on telling you all about the hideous details of what occurred during those 4 years, but it would take up a lot of time and space in this entry and I’m sure that you all want to hear about something a little happier.

The following day was Vicky’s Birthday, and compared to the previous day we had a relatively quiet one. We went and explored one of the temples which was quite close to the hotel, before making our way out to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. We would have seen a lot more of these had they actually been open, as it turns out they are shut for a few hours during the middle of the day when we tried to visit!! In the afternoon we headed out to the Russian Market (although nobody can work out what is Russian about it!) with Jay and Laura, where we took part in our regular activity of souvenir shopping. On our way back we stopped off at a little ice cream parlour by the riverside for Birthday ice cream, before we headed off for a group dinner to celebrate Vicky’s Birthday (a few cocktails involved naturally!)

Our third day was spent travelling on the bus down to our second and final stop for Cambodia; Siem Reap. 

Vicky tries a spot of meditation in front of the temple

Siem Reap is well known for it’s proximity to the temples of Angkor Wat, amongst other groups of temples in the nearby area, and it is visiting these temples that we spent our first full day in the city.

We set off from the hotel at 5am in an attempt to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, and although we arrived in time (along with far too many other tourists) the sun did not keep it’s half of the bargain as night turned into day behind a veil of grey cloud. The temples were impressive enough, but I can imagine a sunny day would have given them a little more in terms of the wow factor as opposed to looking at them against the grey sky.

Angkor Wat

Fortunately during the day we did get a few patches of sunshine amongst the grey, and we saw some  of that sun while visiting the Angkor Thom temples a short distance down the road. This site is 3-4 times the size of Angkor Wat, and you could certainly feel the heat of the sun taking it’s toll on you while you took the time to explore it all.

See if you can spot the faces in the temples at Angkor Thom?

The final set of temples we visited that day actually turned out to be my favourite, and they were the jungle temples at Ta Prohm. Although once again there was a large contingent of tourists visiting the site, the layout was so maze like that it was actually possible to lose them for a short while by picking a different route to the large tour groups running round like a daisy chain of sheep. Jay, Laura, Vicky and I picked a route that went around the edge of the temples at first and were delighted to find that everybody else had gone straight through the middle. Despite the crowds being technically not all that far away, you really couldn’t hear them which gave you the wonderful feeling of being alone with nature and a bunch of temple ruins; fantastic!

A bit of peace and quiet away from the dreaded tour groups!

Our second day in Siem Reap (and final full day in Cambodia) was spent relaxing and preparing ourselves for the bus journey the following day. We had a wander round one of the markets during the day, and then went to a local bar in the evening for dinner along with some local cultural dancing which was put on free of charge.

So that was about it for Cambodia, short and sweet as I said. On now to Thailand for 2 weeks to see what we can get up to there! But we will leave you with our companion Walter the Bear's (and Vicky's) favourite piece of advice from Cambodia: