Hello all!
I would just like to start by saying that I have just realized that I have TWO followers who I don’t know…..TWO COMPLETE STRANGERS!!!! How cool is that? Mum, dad I’m Famous! 😉

Ok so I am currently in Bali, land of blond, dreaded, tattooed people all walking around with no shirts on…..some of which I would prefer them to put back on…but hey its a free world…

But as usual I’m backlogged….and I will have to start with my night bus leaving Ho Chi Min city! Remember how my last blog ended off with me being mildly ashamed with my behaviour…well then…..I would love to say that it all ended there….but noooooo apparently not….it got worse!

For future reference for anyone planning on travelling to Vietnam:
DO NOT: I repeat, DO NOT buy an open bus ticket! Basically, you prepay all your bus tickets to the various places you are planning on going to, and they then come to you in a lovely little book. You are then ‘supposedly’ just meant to ask the hotel to call and reserve your place on the bus, whenever you would like to travel.  

It all sounds so clean cut, so simply and so easy…until you discover that nooooo,
– the hotel can’t phone for you and you actually have to trapes around the city trying to find the travel agent in question…
– which wouldn’t be so bad if all the travel agent ticket addresses in your little book were actually correct…..
– which also wouldn’t be so bad if all the travel agents actually spoke English.
-If you are ‘really lucky’ the bus will be completely full for the next 2 days so you are either stuck in that particular city or have to repurchase another ticket.
-OR you end up getting some crazy women who confiscates your WHOLE open bus pass, (still with tickets in it) and refuses to give it back to you, adamant that she will re-issue you another one on the bus the next day…………(trying to explain to her that SHE now had the only proof that I had actually even bought the pass seemed to completely elude her! 

And finally, you arrive for your final journey out of the country to discover that your pre-paid sleeper bus is NON existent and yes you will be sitting all the way to Cambodia, AND no you will not be refunded the extra money that you paid for the sleeper bus, because apparently, you didn’t buy the ticket from them.

So yes…..Open bus ticket…NOT a good idea! I ended up having to simply rebuy at least 3 of the tickets just so that I could keep moving! So braced for our 6-hour ride to Cambodia (on our non-sleeper bus) Nia and I set off at 12 pm. At about 2 am I was aware that we had stopped driving….but thanks to my new sleeping pills…(For the record I do not advocate the use of sleeping pills….UNLESS you are travelling in UNCOMFORTABLE Vietnamese buses!! Don’t worry mum I will check into rehab first thing when I am home!:-) ….I didn’t wake up until 6 am. Only to discover that we were still standing still. We were meant to be arriving in Cambodia at 6 am….and we had been sitting on the side of the road for the last 4 hours? I went to investigate and couldn’t find the bus driver, the guide or their little helper anywhere!

Eventually, someone pointed down to the luggage section……and low and behold …there they all were fast asleep on top of our luggage snoring their heads off!!! Now far be it for me to ever make a scene…..(hhmmm;-) but it was at this point in time that my patience and frustration with this country seemed to just snap! I only had one week in Cambodia and these idiots had wasted 4 hours of my Cambodian time. Needless to say, I mildly lost it and started shouting at them to wake up, demanded to know WHY we had only driven for 2 hours before they had all decided to take a FOUR HOUR NAP?……I wasn’t the only disgruntled customer….but I was definitely that most vocal. 5 minutes later we were on the road again…..with me still mumbling under my breathe for at least another 10 min. (Yes Harvey it is at this point I should have been reading your favourite book, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff! – BUT YOU FORGOT TO GIVE ME A COPY IN MY TRAVEL SURVIVAL KIT!;-)

At about 11.30am Nia and I finally arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia……and there standing outside the bus was the sweetest little man, with the biggest smile ever holding up a sign for us: Nia and Gayle!! Escaped, at last, 5.5 hours late but we were finally in Cambodia!

And the best thing ever….this lovely little man called Peter OFFERED to carry our bags. Nia and I were both in shock. Not once in the entire time I was in Vietnam (or Laos, for that matter) did anyone offer to carry our bags As far as I’m concerned feminism is dead and I was in heaven!

Ok, I realize that I have only spent one week in Cambodia…..so its not really enough time to make an overall judgment of the entire country’s population. (but I’m going to do it anyway) … I absolutely loved all the people we have met there. 98% of the time you are guaranteed to always get a smile. They are just such lovely, kind, friendly, sweet people….still so untainted by the tourist industry. Again men on bikes all over the place (Asking you for rides but there is never any pressure and they usually just end up making some sort of joke when you say no.)
Bike ride?
Aeroplane?
Helicopter?

Very cute!

So Nia and I decided to just spend 1 day in Phnom Penh and then move onto Siem Riep…as all I have ever heard about Cambodia is how amazing Siem Riep is!! Our lovely driver, Peter then spent the rest of the day driving us around. I was amazed at how good his English was, compared to so many of the Vietnamese we met, not to mention his hospitality….he was an absolute legend!

(Now Midget I know you don’t like the historical parts of my blog…but, unfortunately, there are cultural people reading this as well so have kindly starred all the next section for you so that you can quite easily tune out and then back in at your leisure! This is also a little Gruesome…..so Irina babe….you might want to skip this too;-)

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OK so I personally had never heard of The Khmer Rouge before coming to Cambodia, but I picked up a book by called ‘Stay Alive my Son’ by Pin Yathay, while I was in Vietnam, which was absolutely amazing. It’s basically about this man and his family that got forced out of their homes along with the 18 members of his family, and the rest of the entire city of Phnom Penh. He was the only one to survive. Its so mind boggling how many worldwide atrocities there are that just never seem to be heard of. (well not by me anyway;-) Basically, the Khmer Rough where an extreme communist guerrilla party led by Pol Pot that took over Cambodia from 1975- 1979. Pol Pots genocidal plans included arresting, torturing and eventually executing anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed “enemies”:
-Ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and other minorities
-Cambodian Christians, Muslims and the Buddhist monks
– Professionals and intellectuals, (almost everyone with an education), or even people wearing glasses (which, according to the regime, meant that they were literate.)
– Anyone with connections to the former government or with foreign governments.

He basically turned Khmer Rouge into efficient and ruthless killing machines, and Cambodia into the “Killing Fields”.

In his book Pin doesn’t talk about witnessing any murders or atrocities….but simply talks about how people were loaded onto trucks and taken away for “Re-education” or how people simply just disappeared in the night. What he did have to endure though was watching all his family members die from malnutrition and disease.

In Phnom Penh, Nia and I visited two places the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (also known as S-21)and the Choeung Ek killing field, I still can’t decide which one was more heartbreaking.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum occupies the former grounds of a high school, turned into a prison camp. Classroom upon, a classroom filled with a single metal bed, no mattress and chains. On each wall is a blown-up black and white photo of the prisoners that were kept in there. Literally, all you can see is mangled bodies covered in blood, chained to these beds. It seemed like each photo was more gruesome than the next. Some 17,000 people passed through this centre to be tortured, including woman and children and of those only 12 have been known to survive!…..the Khmer Rouge was meticulous at photographing each and ever victim….so you have a whole ground floor of the school filled with photos of their victims. Also included in the museums was the the various methods of torture that they used.

After their time at S-21 was up to the prisoners were then taken to sites outside Phnom Penh(also known as The Killing Fields), where they were executed (mainly by pickaxes to save bullets) and buried in mass graves.

At the Choeung Ek killing Field that we went to, there is a monument that has been built called the Memorial Stupa that contains the skulls and bones of 8985 of the victims they found in the mass graves. Although the graves have all been dug up, and most of the remains exhumed, incoming rains always wash up clothes, pieces of bone and even teeth. I think the worst thing there was “The killing tree” The Khmer Rouge executioners would hold babies by their legs and then beat them to death on it.

It is just absolutely horrific what human beings can do to each other.

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So Nia and I returned back to our hostel pretty exhausted and mildly revolted only to discover that we then had the pleasure of sharing a room with the most INsaNE man (boy) on earth. Neither of us could remember his name afterwards, which in hindsight is probably a good thing. He came across just like a normal, friendly American and lulled into a safe sense of security so we invited him for dinner. How to explain this lunatic of a man?

The best I can do is give you a brief outline of his general beliefs.

He had just got back from spending time in South Africa and made the point of mentioning a couple of times how very “afraid” so many people living there were. When asked to elaborate, he simply stated that he can see it in our eyes, the eyes, of course, being the window of our souls…….blah, blah, blah…
But no that wasn’t the REAL reason. You see on the further discussion we learnt how the entire universe is wrapped up in the cryptic meanings hidden in words. (English words mind you…because according to him English is the most spoken language in the world……HA …even I knew that wasn’t true (its Mandarin Chinese)…..AND IM BLOND!!!! Anyway…I’m digressing…

FOR EXAMPLE:
– South Africans come from South Africa, therefore, they are very AFRaid.
– Nia comes from Whales…..so Welsh people, as a nation, wail a lot.
– For some reason, American means “love I” taken from the word Amour? we couldn’t quite follow that one…..
– We should never beLIEve in anything because of its all a LIE
and then my all time favourite….his BeLIEf in Reincarnation ( Isn’t he contradicting himself there????)…..its all in the word reincarNATION. People are reincarnated into different Nations according to how good you are. On inquiring what Nation would then be deemed so unlucky as to be on the lowest rung of the ladder…his answer was the SoMALians…..because MAL comes from the word MALicious! Thereby making all Somalians Malicious!

OOOOOOH and let’s not forget that the world is going to end in 2012 ….(for those of you that don’t already know.) (Kelly babe, we better get married quick!) Because there is going to be a NEW CLEAR war!
Honest to God that man had, without a shadow of a doubt, the Weirdest, most deluded theories that I have heard…..a couple of times he tried to goad me into a debate on religion, challenging my beLIEf in God, which I simply was not interested in…..as far as I am concerned God speaks for himself and he doesn’t need me arguing his existence! Never the less Nia and I had loads of fun laughing at his website the next day….which is as insane as he is. 

So happy to say goodbye to him the next morning (and cheekily promising to send him an email in 2013;-) Nia and I left for Siem Riep, where we have been for the last 4 days. I have to admit we didn’t really do much here except go to the temples of Angkor Wat. Ever since I have been in South East Asia all I have heard about is Angkor Wat! How amazing, How beautiful, how breathtaking! Lonely Planet suggests doing these temples over 3 days, and actually says: “If you only have 1 day to do it in, what a shame!” So Nia and I were toying with the idea of 1 or 2 days….until of course, we heard the price, $20 a day, and the decision was very quickly made for us… we would cram it all into one whole day.
It would be tiring
It would be tough….but we could do it!

So 5 am we set off with our trusty new driver, Same (a friend of Peters ) all ready to catch this breathtaking Angkor Wat Sunrise. We stood around for about an hour with all the other sunrise junkies….waiting…um…..(im)patiently. We took a zillion pictures and then went for a much-deserved breakfast. At about 7 am we set off to see the various temples that are spread over a 17 km area. (Same driving us to each site of course)

3.5 hours later Nia and I were finished the entire lot! (Yes Aunty Stella its true! -apparently, Nia is a ‘scanner’ too:-) Honestly though, how people spend 3 DAYS there is beyond me……yes, it’s beautiful, but everything just seemed to be exactly the same. In our defence, I wasn’t feeling too well, and Nia was still wounded from her near death /bike mugging experience, AND we couldn’t afford a guide (another $25) But yes we were pretty pitiful….hell we were passed by old men with walking sticks and a women in a wheelchair! Maybe its the fact that everyone had bigged it up so much, but I just didn’t feel that overwhelmed by the sights. I mean I remember going to Tikal, the ancient Mayan sights in Guatemala and been absolutely ‘blown away’ by that.
Of course, Nia and I still had an absolutely great time, it kind of felt like the more time we spent together the funnier we became. (Now I know that’s hard to believe, cause I’m already pretty funny…but its the truth!) Ironically enough we always seemed to wake up in the mornings at pretty much exactly the same time…open our eyes look at each other and just pack out laughing. Its pretty great when you meet someone who just finds the same things as you funny, so much so that you don’t even have to verbalize it. So yes my ‘BIG Quarter Pounder double mac with cheese’ travel mate and I had loads of fun at the temples. I swear people must have thought we were drunk the entire time with the amount of giggling and falling over ourselves we were doing. (Very mature I know….but so much fun!)

Take it from Nia’s and Gayle’s Lazy Travel book…..you only need 3.5 hours for Angkor Wat!

I have to say something about the street children in Siem Riep. I had heard that they could be pretty full on, but I figured, if I could survive India and Vietnam kids then I sure as hell could cope with Cambodia’s……once again I was soooo wrong. Most of the stuff being sold on the street here, are sold by children. Pretty much most of our Angkor Wat experience was marred with children from as young as 4 years old holding up bangles, postcards all shouting! ONE DOLLAR! ONE DOLLAR! ONE Dollar!! (in ever so cute American Accents) Apparently, there are as many as 1500 street children in Siem Riep alone. Those that are selling stuff are absolutely relentless, often demanding to know ‘why’ you won’t buy their stuff?’ Their faces are also absolutely heartbreaking as they plead with you to buy something…but as soon as they realise it isn’t going to work they walk away furious muttering and swearing under their breath. We had one boy that continuously came up to us during dinner and at times would just stand there watching us eat. When we firmly asked him to go he walked away pulling a zap sign at us. The sad thing is that most of these children who sell stuff have actually been sold by their parents to pay off gambling debts, or because they simply can’t afford to keep them.
We found that the absolute worst time with these children was when we came out of a clubs. (Ummm yeah the other thing we did in Siem Riep) 2 am, 3 am…these kids are always there. They simply run up to you and jump into your arms, clinging onto you for dear life. The hugging I didn’t mind but then the begging for food starts. One night Nia and I had 13 children around us aged from 3-11 including two babies being held by 5/6-year-olds. We each had a child in our arms, while all the others were clinging onto various body parts, all begging for food. Its just heartbreaking……(even Nia, who is less of a sap with the kids than I am seemed to wane) We planned to sit down and eat at our regular little stall and we decided to just buy a couple of fried rice for the children to eat…..but no sooner had we said we would get them something did the children start pulling us towards another stall insisting we buy from there.
At that point we both came to our senses and realized that we were just being scammed. We watched as a couple of another tourist came out of the shop and handed out some bread to the children, only to overhear one of the older boys snap: “We don’t want bread!”

The next night, ( one would think I would have wised up by now), the exact same thing happened, except this time it was just a 6-year-old girl, holding a screaming baby and an empty bottle begging for milk. Being wise on this ‘milk scam’ I went into the shop to buy the ‘milk’ and not the $20 formula that she wanted. I bought her some fresh milk and some bread…and she was absolutely fuming….quite clearly that was not what she had wanted and she wouldn’t even let me put the milk in the bottle for the baby! She could barely bring her self to even look at me as she mumbled thanks and stormed out of the shop.

Once again I realize that giving in to their begging and demanding only makes matters worse……I thought I had learnt that lesson in India already? Clearly not!

On arriving in Siem Riep, Nia and I soon discovered that there was going to be a Halloween Party… and needless to say, we were both determined to put in the effort. Trying to decide what we wanted to go as was most debatably the hardest part due to the fact that Siem Riep had a limited number of fancy dress shops. i.e NONE!
So we had a quest….we set yourself a budget of $20 for both of our costumes (everything is dollars here) and began rummaging through the markets for ANYTHING that vaguely represented blood or anything else that might be deemed ‘mildly’ scary! Eventually, we decided to go as ‘Suicide Brides’ – Grooms MIA (of course!)…..due to the fact that I wanted to wear a bloody wedding dress and Nia…well being the Goth that she already is just wanted to wear black!!!
I can’t imagine what the women in the market must have thought as she watched us measure and size up black bin bags against our bodies, but if she was confused she certainly didn’t show it…..us foreigners are a weird bunch you know.
So armed with our black bags and 7 meters of black lace netting that we bought for $12 we set about designing our wedding dresses. Mum, I think you would have been proud!

The night before our ‘big day’ we met some friends that we had shared a hostel within Ho Chi Minh and they decided to join us the next night, subsequently becoming our bodyguards.

Now sad as it is for me to admit this …I think October 31st 2010 is probably the closest I will ever get to being famous. As it turns out this Halloween party is quite the event in Siem Riep with the locals turning out in hoards to take photographs, and some of them even in costumes themselves. The party starts as a pub crawl going through the town, stopping at various bars for about 30min. So many of the costumes were amazing…which makes me think some travellers actually put some thought into this ‘before’ they left home. (sad, sad people;-) Anyway every time we stepped out of a pub there were people everywhere waiting to take our photo’s! It was like having our very own Paparazzi!!!
The whole night was just so much fun ……..and yes….it was at this point that I realized that yes, indeed, I was born to be the centre of attention…..unfortunately God with all his wisdom (and humour) forgot to give my ‘attention seeking soul’ a single talent worthy of the adoration of millions. ….I plan on having words with him in 70 years or so!

And so all in all a great end to a wonderful time with my Gorgeous Nia (AKA K.K ). 11 whole days with the same person and I never once wanted to kill her….there is hope for me yet!
I have been in Indonesia for 5 days now…and I miss her like crazy….but I think that’s for the next blog!

I can’t believe I only have a month and a half left…but I am so excited about seeing family and friends again, that it hardly seems to matter!

Lots of love

x

The morning after photo’s and the first words out of Nia’s mouth was:
“Where our grooms?”

Where indeed? Where indeed? 😉