Holiday in Cambodia

Yes, I’ve been waiting all holiday (all one week of it) to use the title of a Dead Kennedys song as a blog title. So there.

OK, so our hotel here in Cambodia doesn’t have free internet. Not that we’ve spent a lot of time here wishing we could surf the googles, but it means our poor friends and family back home are left wondering about what sort of awesome adventures we’re having.

The short answer is: Lots. Cambodia rocks. Well, that may be a little pre-emptive as we’ve only seen Siem Reap and the surrounding Angkor Wat temples, but if that’s any indication then this country is a must for any travellers in this or an adjacent hemisphere.

Lots of photos in this post, because we’ve taken a ridiculous amount, and you haven’t heard from us for like two WHOLE days. Or three. I forget.

Firstly, it turns out that Cambodia is currently celebrating a combination of the Moon and the Water Festivals. Bam! You know what that means? Boat racing!

And lots of people.

So, once we finally made it here from Vietnam (note: the flight we had booked was cancelled, and no one had the common courtesy to let us know. Anyway, some free business class lounge invites and flight two hours later got us here) we pretty much hit the temples of Angkor Wat straight away. Apparently, Cambodia has over 3000 temples. Holy bananas. They range in age from the 9th century to about the 16th century and vary in size, architecture, god they’re dedicated to and condition. Anyway, they are all freakin rad! Most photos speak for themselves though.
We wont bore you with the details of the name of each of the individual temples (also, come here and see for yourself) but there were some wicked carvings of Budda, Vishnu, and Brahma, Shiva and other assorted Hindu and Buddhist deities. And, a bunch of awesome bas-relief carvings showing Hindu epics.
That was about it for the first day.
Day two involved around 317 photos. Yeah, happy snappy.
This particular temple is known to most tourists (according to our super rad guide Serey) as the “Tomb Raider temple”. Apparently they filmed the movie here, or something.
Big-ass trees grow out of big-ass temples. Heaps way rad.
See? Big.
Everything here is big. Even the stairs. I’d say something like “finally a temple built for a god like me!” but they were a bit narrow. I guess I’ll keep looking. Poor Emma, though.So here’s the big spaghettio. It’s not actually called that, but it’s like ‘the one’ (no, not Neo from The Matrix): Angkor Wat. Again, I’ll can the trash-talking and let the photos do the talking.

The main gate. Yes, that is lots of people on the causeway. Bloody tourists.
The temple.
More bas-relief. Epic!
Emmie-Lou and Serey. That dude rocks.
Now we’ve climbed some ridiculous mountain, and then the temple on top, to check out the view. Cambodia doesn’t seem to have any hills. It must be related to the Netherlands.
Today we saw some more outer temples. On the way back into Siem Reap, we stopped off at a local village to check out the wares. Talked about your mixed-business: here you can buy bananas and gasoline in Johnny Walker bottles. Uh-huh. Not advisable to consume both simultaneously.
Looks like it’s Serey’s turn to cook dinner.
Hey mister, you buy? 10 for one dollaaaar. 5 for one doooooollar. 3 for one dollaaaaaar. Everything here costs one dollar. It’s just the quantity that changes.
One last temple.
In the afternoon, Serey took us on a boat ride on Tounle Sap, south-east Asia’s biggest freshwater lake. It’s pretty massive. You can, if you’re particularly keen, boat (...or swim?) from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, then hook up to the Mekong Delta and float your way through the rest of Cambodia, into Vietnam, and out into the South China Sea. I think I’ll pass though, they got big ass crocodiles.
And a floating village. With pool tables.
Anyway, so far that’s our 2 and a half days in Cambodia. We’ve got a half day tomorrow and then its back to HCMC for some more craziness and a tour which will rock our worlds.

And my final thought for today: We give Cambodia, two thumbs up.
Catch you all in the play-offs.

t+e