holiday in cambodia!

well, it`s been awhile...
we stayed in sihanoukville till boxing day (26th of december) and took a shared taxi to kampot. a 2 hour drive east with 7 (the more they put in, the more mony they earn) people cramped in a cab. Sometimes they fill it up with 9! so we didn`t complain. we booked ourselves a tour to bokorhill national park for the next day. it one of the countries largest protected areas, only open a couple of years due to khmer rouge guerillas. there used to be some wildlife (tigers, elephants) but the most is hunted out or residential in the remote parts of the park.we went up the mountain in a pick up with two bench seats in the back tray and with a big bar running across the middle to hang onto! We climbed aboard and made our way to Bokor Hill, and as the roads got rougher and rougher we just had to hang on for our lives as we bounced around all over the place. the french build a nice road up there in the 20`s, but that is long gone. nowadays it takes more then 2 hours the cover de 30 km. only rocks and holes. We finally made it to the top without anyone falling off or doing themselves serious damage (surprisingly) and wandered around the abandoned buildings. the biggest attraction is an old french hill station build in the 1910`s. it was twice abandoned, last time in `75. . the bokor hill station has a genuine ghost town feeling The casino was most impressive with huge balconies and rooms. the view over the dense jungle and phu qouc island is absolutely breathtaking. we finished the day with a evening meal with the great people we met on the trip. hopefully we`re gonna see them back somewhere in thailand and hong kong

the next day we went back to Phnom penh and arranged ourselves a bus for the next day to battambang, a city in the northwest of the country. We made plans with 2 local motor drivers to drive us around the next day. For the rest of the day we walked around and visited some wats (temples) with attached monasteries. The monks there are really happy to practice their English with foreigners as they get taught by Cambodian teachers. It was really interesting to hear about their studies and beliefs. One monk ( 20 years old) asked me to teach his class the next evening.
We toured around the beautiful countryside on the back of the motor and visited some places, wat Phnom sampeau, a hilltop temple. Especially the surroundings were beautiful. On the walk up we stopped at a killing cave, were the khmer rouge pushed people of a cliff. 10000s died here. The motor guide knew a lot of the history and as almost all Cambodians he too lost several family members during that period. Wat banan was a smaller version of Angkor wat based up a hill and after that we drove around some small villages and watched every day life on the countryside. in the evening I went back to the wat to help the monk with his English and we had some serious fun with them, especially when laura came and there testosterone went up… funny thing was, they`re not allowed to touch women

On the last day of the year we took the boat to siem reap, is supposed to be one of the most spectacular in the country but we saw nothing we hadn’t seen in Vietnam. so we weren`t that thrilled. Arriving near siem reap our boat came under attack by tuktuk drivers who all wanted to take us to the city for free. We are job opportunities for the next days. We spend New Years Eve on the main street, uninspiring called barstreet. Every bar had dj`s playing and drinking stands outside. The whole street was packed! But there lot of beggars with missing body parts constantly asking for money. Some of them even had aggressive tactics, hanging around one legs wasn’t uncommon. I didn’t feel right to party. And after to women beggars started a serious bitchfight right in front of us we decide it as time to leave. They had their babies strapped on their backs and rolling on the ground. Horrible.

We started the new year in grandeur, 3 days to visit the world known temples of Angkor! `m not gonna bore you with stories about the temples, just watch the pics or come over here and see for yourselfves. The temples of Angkor were built in the Angkorian period spanning from AD 802 - 1432, They are all made out of stone and have beautiful carvings and with such intricate details, they are just amazing. I know I won't be able to do the temples justice in this mail, I won't even try. There are simply no words to describe the sheer enormity of them, and the feeling that you get as you wander through them...amazing!!
We hired a tuktuk driver to drive us around the area ( the temples are scattered around a huge domain). First day we did the biggest and most famous ones: Angkor wat (the mother of all temples, the biggest religious building in the world), Angkor thom area, equally impressive and ta prohm, our favorite. It`s the most atmospheric in the area, the jungle is cut down but the largest (and I mean huge!!) are still there. It`s where they shot tomb raider with Angelina jolie . the next day we visited the other temples in the main area and the third day we went to the more further away, banteay srei (small but what it lacks in seize it makes up for in stature, the 3dimensional carvings are from another world) and the rolous group, 20-25 km from siem reap. After some serious bargaining we got a tuk tuk driver to take us to beng mealea, 80km away. It`s one of the most mysterios temples at Angkor. Exploring it is an Indiana jones experience. The temple has been utterly subsumed by jungle, and standing just a few meters away from the trees, it`s hard to tell what lies beneath. You have to climb over trees, broken walls, … and the ride there was nice too. There are some really cool temples far up north, but we had enough temples after 4 days. And those are really difficult to reach. It takes days, and a 1 month visa keeps running… So something for next time maybe.
our camera got stolen In siem reap, so we had to go back to Phnom penh as it is the only place to buy a proper camera. Laura felt bad about it for days, but I was glad we didn’t lose a single pic (we just burned a cd). So we did some shopping there and ended up buying the same one.
This is where i was when the power went out in Phnom penh. It `s not uncommon that (parts of) the city ran out of power for a while but that one came very inconvenient. I cursed like hell cause i lost everything after nearly 2 hours of storytelling!!!! So I forgot most of the things I wanted to tell back then…. ;-( but at least now you know what we were up to

The 7th we took a bus to Kratie, the eastern side of the country. We stopped in skuon where locals eat spiders for lunch, breakfast and diner. They look like giant tarantulas, hairy legs and all. It still weird for us to see that they eat everything, and I mean everything. Every insect imaginable, chickens embryos, rats,… you name it they put it on a stick, fry it and eat it. You just don’t get used to it.
The next day we rented a bicycle and teamed up with a Englishman, mark, to watch the freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin, it`s an endangered specie and can only be watched in stretches of the Mekong in laos and Cambodia. The bike ride their was beautiful. There only 60 left. We rented a boat with driver and spotted some. Dolphins are great!

More about the eastern part of the country… after diner!!!