DIPS at the beach…
Sihanoukville is located only 185km south-west of Phnom Penh, but it still took over five hours by bus to reach. Just over half way we passed through the Cardamom Mountain range, shrouded in low cloud and rain mist and the weather markedly changed from hot and dry to cooler and moist. Now it felt like the rainy season! Having not had a chance to book any accommodation, we had a taxi stop at a few options while I ran in and checked them out. We decided on the Makara II Bungalows, a low style guesthouse in a U shape around the...
read morePearl of Asia?
We said goodbye to Siem Reap and headed for Phnom Penh, taking the same bus as Aline, Deborah and Kai. The ‘Giant Ibis’ bus was most expensive option for the six hour journey as it had seatbelts, air-con and wi-fi, and even a hostess who supplied refresher towels, bottled water for $13 per seat. In true backpacker style, Lara and Teddy opted for the cheaper Capitol bus at $6 per seat without these luxuries. If it were just Dave and I, we would have been right alongside Lara and Teddy – funny how having children changes your...
read moreSchools in …
Whilst having dinner at a local tapas restaurant, we made arrangements with Lara and Aline to go with them the next morning to a school in a remote village called Prasat Char, where ‘Helping Hands Cambodia’ has been assisting the locals for more than 6 years. ‘Helping Hands’ was founded in 2005 by Deborah Groves, a Sunshine Coast wedding photographer, who first came to Cambodia the year before on an Intrepid Travel tour, fell in love with the country and decided to move here the following year. Her vision for the grass roots aid...
read moreWhiling away the days in Siem Reap…
The guesthouse we are staying at for our ten days in Siem Reap is about 3km out of town and down a bumpy dirt track away from the main road. Our French friend Lara had stayed at the Bloom Garden guesthouse last year, so it was here that we had organised to meet up. The days when we weren’t out for any full days we spent the mornings doing school work on the top verandah after a superb breakfast of eggs, toast, tomato, pancakes and tea and coffee and milk which was included in the $25 nightly rate. It is low season and at times we...
read moreSame same but different…
We factored in a ‘slow day’ where we caught up on some school work and spent an afternoon riding bikes into town for dinner and back before tackling the temples again the next day. This time we left relatively early at 7.30am and had organised a guide to come with us in the tuk tuk as we were going to include the big one – Angkor Wat Temple. First though we stopped at Sras Srang a swimming pool built in the 10th century for the Kings two thousand concubines. This man-made lake measures 800x400metres, and these days it is still used...
read moreIt takes a village to raise a child…
Most of you may be aware that we have been hosts for Helpers Exchange for a number of years now. In a nutshell, we provide accommodation and meals in exchange for a set amount of hours work per day. This arrangement has proved to be a good experience for our girls to meet and interact with people from around the world, and of course a fantastic opportunity for those who are travelling (one that I wish had been around when I had been backpacking 15-20 years ago!) In late May, we met Lara, a 23 year old French girl who stayed with us for a...
read moreTemples aplenty
Naively, I thought Angkor Wat (the largest Hindu temple complex in the world), consisted of just the one large sprawling temple. I had no idea it was part of an extensive archaeological site stretching some 400km2 with temples of differing styles. One of the most important sites in south-East Asia, it contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer empire from the 9th to the 15th century. Although Angkor Wat itself is the one most commonly depicted for Cambodia we thought we would start our first day visit the area...
read moreIt’s the journey not the destination…
It was with a touch of trepidation we started out on our first land border crossing as we had read about many of the scams that exist with this particular Thai-Cambodian border. Even though the buses are faster we have always enjoyed train journeys so we set an early alarm for 4am for a 4.30am taxi ride to Bangkok’s main station Hua Lamphong, a beautiful building built in Italian Neo-Renaissance style for our 6am train to the border town of Aranyaprathet. In hindsight we could have left it easily another 30 minutes as driving across...
read moreA week in Bangkok …
Ok well it was 9 days to be exact. Although we hadn’t made any other plans other than booking the first few nights, we had thought after our first lot of needles we would head somewhere out of Bangkok. Alas it was not to be. I was feeling so ill from ‘flu that I couldn’t even entertain the thought of packing up and moving on so soon. So we stayed. Our guesthouse called U Place was in in Banglamphu area of Bangkok, not too far from ‘Khao San Road’ area but thankfully not amongst it . We were just...
read moreOuch!
Our long awaited visit to the Thai Travel Clinic to receive our vaccinations was the outing for our first full day in Bangkok. It is a special clinic of the Bangkok Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Faculty of Tropical Medicine at the Mahidol University. Some people were surprised to hear we were having our vaccinations in Thailand however visiting medical or optical specialists in Asia is not new to me. Buying antibiotics over the counter, getting eye tests and subsequent new glasses or contact lenses is something that I have done whenever...
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