Cambodia continues!

Siem Reap

Siem Reap was in one word 'magnificent'. All the different temples of Angkor Wat are truly amazing. Yes, every temple is another mind blowing image of a creative architect, using different shapes, divers faces, local animals and worshipping ancient Kings and religious Gods and Buddhas. Bare in mind that most of the temples are build in the 12th century: Europe was still living in tiny castles and wooden houses at that time...

The most interesting temples, at least that's what I think, were the Bayon (Angkor Thom) with its amazing large heads on the temple which follow you wherever you walk: freaky but really cool. Secondly, the Kbal Spean: this is actually not a temple, but lingas carves IN a river which flows in the jungle. You have to walk for about 2 km to get there and when you stand there you're sort of looking 'and yes, what am I looking for'...After a minute or so you see the carvings and it is truly amazing: you wonder who ever thought of the idea of making them IN the river and secondly who ever found them again after so many years (because everything was covered up by the jungle...). Yes, Angkor Wat deserves to be a World Heritage. (I hope to add some pictures later on so you can judge yourself!)

Seeing the temples around Siem Reap were interesting, but our transportation for those 3 days was very divers as well. The first day we took a tuk-tuk with a young driver, Rin, who just could not stop talking to us. The second day, since we are still Dutch, we hired bikes and cycled around (30-40 km). The last day -and please show some respect- we had two motorbikes with two young drivers (one was the tuk-tuk driver from the first day). For those who do not know me that well: I hate motorbikes since I had a wee-little accident in Australia six years ago. I knew Guusje really wanted to go on one, and I reckoned I should not be a 'wooz' and just get over myself...The first hour I sat frozen on that damned thing...And after a while Rin told me (Guusje was on his bike) that his cousin who was driving my moto was actually still learning how to drive a moto....Cheers, Rin, good work. But I managed, Guusje was impressed with my guts (although she could see I was lying whenever I said I was fine...) and Guusje even had her go on the moto as the driver herself....

On top of that my diarrhoea got back, with renewed energy...Perfect, when you are on a moto...

Sihanoukville
After those cultural days we decided to do a cooling down at a beach and get some sun on our white bodies, catch up with our reading and relax. Enough said: we arranged a local bus to the South of Cambodia: Sihanoukville. A trip to remember... We took the bus early morning, packed with Khmer people, luggage, food, equipment and all the stuff you will not see on a bus back home. After one hours drive, there was a little fuzz on the road, people gathering and our bus slowed down. All the people in the bus looked to the right (with paparazzi Guusje on top of them!) and there we saw what the fuzz was about: there was a dead body lying next to the road...one police cop standing nervously next to the body keeping the crowd to a distance (say 2 meters...) Blood everywhere and obviously the blood poored out of his head. Absolutely horrifying. Guusje, as a true journalist, did some investigation and found out that the man was murdered the day before (seriously, leave a body for an entire day in the stinking heat!!) and that the murderer (or two) escape to the woods. Reason for the killing: unknown...
The bus continued and after a couple of hours we were driving along side some mountains, a lot of curves on the road, when a car drove directly at us with an enormous speed (Guusje and I sat in front so we saw it all...)...Our bus driver used his claxon, reduced speed and the car in front of us just changed direction in time to fly off the road...Big shock, but it turned out the be okay (-ish). Arriving in Sihanoukville was very pleasant, as you can imagine...

Relaxing on the beach was really nice: swim, read and talk to all the Khmer kids who are very nosy (and same for us, 'coz we are very nosy as well!!). My white skin (except my face and arms...) was as white as snow until then: after the first day it was flaming red even though we put sunscreen on it...Ah well, we learned it the hard way...My sister can have a blast peeling my old skin off...

Back to Bangkok (Thailand)
After those relaxing days we had to go back to Bangkok, because Guusje is flying home this Sunday and I am flying to Papua New Guinea. We had two options to go to the border: take a horrible 5 hour bus ride on a bumpy road or take the scenic 5 hour boat trip via beautiful little islands. Exactly, we did what every sane person would do: take the boat. This boat trip would have been fantastic, if not for (no, no dead bodies or bad traffic this time) the awful bad weather... I was the first to vomit, luckily in a bin thanks to Guusje's quick response, many followed including Guusje. I lost track after the 10th time, but I vomited non-stop. The old man who was taking care of the people on the boat came apologizing to us for the bad weather (as if he could help it...), kept rubbing 'tiger balm' on our neck and head and gave me the entire stack of his 'vomit-bags' when I asked him for the third time whether I could have more bags... 'again?' was his reply...
Guusje and I have never been so happy to get to our destination, Koh Kong...

The next day we crossed the border without any hiccups: it was a bigger bordercrossing than before and more possibilities afterwards. We got a reverse culture shock: everything went so smooth in Thailand...We did not have to think at all: people just arranged everything for us, roads were excellent, buses were luxurious with just people on it and before we knew it we were in Bangkok. Because we were still shaken up by the day before, we kind of liked it...

Finally, some peculiarities (it's becoming a theme!!):
- we had mais yoghurt with our muesli. Disgusting, they even put red beans with it.
- the diarrhoea came back for the third time in Sihanoukville and I had a craving for beans on toast...
- for all my former colleagues who were always worried about my drinking habits (no, people, not the alcohol, but my coffee addiction). I have had 6 cups of coffee in the last 6 weeks...No problems here!
- I have some living creatures in my body at the moment
- no I am not pregnant, but I have bacteria in my stomach. Due to that I am taking horrible pinkish pills and my stomach is a battlefield at the moment...

So far so good. Let's see about those pictures!