Stuff happens in Cambodia

Plans went a little wayward from what I mentioned in the last entry. We figured we'd spend a week in the south, a week in the east and a week in the west allowing days here and there and head to Thailand at the end of the month. It changed from that to arriving in Bangkok yesterday, 12th July. All I can say is that things change and stuff happens, and stuff changes and things happen. Arriving in Kampot at the south of Cambodia we found out that Alice had been robbed on the bus, losing her camera, phone and some money. (I am now the only person who still has a camera). Basically our plans changed a bit and we decided to stick together instead of spending more time in Cambodia. Unfortunetly this meant that me and Andy didn't really see or do anything in the south and had to miss out the east entirely.

Anyway, first night in Kampot, I had a little accident involving a push bike, a broken chain and some tarmac, all with a little help from our friend gravity. I started picking up some speed on this rubbish bike and the chain completely snapped, throwing me and the bike to the ground and skidding along a little way. I tore up some of my arm, bashed in my knee, and took off a chunk of a big toe! The bike was in worse condition than I was. I bent it back into shape and walked back to the guest house. I forgot how much antiseptic wipes hurt as well. So there's me dancing around the room looking like I'd just had a fight with an electric sander. I was fine though, just walked like a cripple for a few days. Also I realised after that I had my camera in my pocket, of which the screen is now completely bust. (Now I'm the only person who has a camera... and that camera is broken!). Plus for some unknown reason my first aid kit Debbie made for me has completely dissapeared! Very frustrating, I was looking forward to finally using my Mr. Bump antiseptic wipes.

So we stayed with the girls as I mentioned before, relaxing for a couple of days in Sihanoukville. It was a cool place, though it doesn't really have much more to it than a nice beach and unfortunetly being as we're in the middle of wet season, it was a bit wet. We caught the bus back to Phnom Penh and being as we were now all together for Alices birthday we went for a nice meal, and even found a cake and a candle to sing happy birthday with. We were staying in a nicer area than last time too, right near the central market and the Royal Palace. The next day the girls left for Siem Riep whilst me and Andy stayed behind since we needed to get Thai visas and they take a few days to process. Not that I minded since it gave us some time in Phnom Penh to do what we missed out on before. We walked around the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, which were absolutely stunning. The buildings looked incredible. We also had a walk around the art streets and went over to the market. The weather was really good as well. We also worked out what the difference between Phnom Penh and other capital cities is (other than it's a small city): it's very green and not very built up. I really like Phnom Penh.

When we got our visas we jumped on a bus to Siem Riep to catch up with the girls. We didn't have the Lonely Planet and therefore couldn't research what we were going to do there. All we knew was that we wanted to see Angkor Wat and some of the other temples around. So the following day we got a guide from the guest house (I think he was called Suret) to take us round the temples. It was a fantastic day. We got up at 4am so we could get to Angkor Wat in time to see the sun rise. We got our spot by a small lake in the main complex and got some excellent pictures (at least I hope they're excellent. I can't actually tell now on my camera!). We got somer breakfast and spent a while walking around and inside the biggest religious building in the world and the mother of all temples. It was spectacular. A really unbelievable place. Next stop was Bayon. Bayon was quite run down, which was what I liked about it. There was no real temple feel to it. It is quite hard to explain. It's a sort of big building with steps going up to the top with loads of faces carved into the rock. There's tons of them and some are absolutely huge. We saw some more temples that were outside Bayon that were pretty cool but I can't remember their names.

We had enough time to go around the 'Tomb Raider' temple. I think it's real name is Ta Phrom or something. It's the place where they filmed part of the first Tomb Raider film. It's surrounded by jungle and is a really run down place with huge tree's literally growing through the remains of this temple. At the end of the day we got a sight of the last temple, which was also mostly in ruins. We had a guide for this one though not by choice. He just sort of jumped us and we couldn't stop him talking. It was good that we did though because we learnt a lot about this one. For instance it is filled with phallic symbols, that we would have otherwise not noticed, or noticed and thought it childishly funny and not knowing what they were actually there for. Also we found out it was built in the late 12th century, one fo the oldest temples in the Angkor area and in the 13th century the king there was Hundu and ordered all the Buddha symbols and statues to be removed. We paid the guy $2, which I think he was a little pissed about, but we didn't actually have any money on us. Mostly because we just bought more artwork that we'll struggle to carry around.

It was a really cool day but we came back absolutely knackered. We got some food and fell pretty much straight to sleep! We left for Bangkok the following day (yesterday) and once we'd sorted out a room we went out for food and a beer. A beer quickly turned into many beers and we stumbled back into our room around 2am, good night! So I'm feeling pretty hungover today. The girls went off to Koh Samui last night and we were going to head off tonight to catch them up but we kind of slept in too late. So we're gonna head off tomorrow instead. We have about a month in Thailand now, which should be great fun!!