Síle & Bruce’s Travel Blog

So the last time we wrote we were in Vientiane, having visited the Buddha Park and the Beerlao Factory. We spent a few days long than expected there just because it was so relaxed. We were staying in the most disgusting guest house. It needed a chemical clean! One guy got bitten so badly by bedbugs that it looked like he has awful sunburn!We then took on the challenge of getting into Cambodia. It consisted of 3 Countries in 21 hours, 2 buses and a rally taxi!

We left Vientiane at 5pm in the evening to cross the Thai - Laos boarder, and arrived in Bangkok at 5:08 the next morning, we were exhausted but looked for a bus to take us to the Thai - Cambodian boarder. We found out the next bus was leaving at 5:30am so we were very lucky AND managed to get seats near to the front of the bus (always a bonus as we never know what the road are going to be like!)

On the bus they gave us a ‘Breakfast Pack’. It consisted of half a Jam sandwich, coffee, sugar and a stirer … but no hot water! (There is a photo of it!)

Anyway, we get the off the bus ata bout 10am and get taken to the boarder by a tuk-tuk driver that was trying to be Captain Jack Sparrow … but on speed! Totally crazy.
Once we had crossed the boarder we shared a taxi with a Canadian couple down to Siam Reap. The road was EXTREME, Bruce says it was like a motorcross track, with ocassional pieces of tarmac thrown in to the mix… Bruce needed his sports bra!

In Siam Reap we went to the Temples of Angkor. It was amazing. SO much bigger than I imagined it to be, the weather was very hot though, made walking around all day a little difficult but so worth it. We also went to the Landmine Museum. It was set up by a man who de-activates mines and bombs by himself, they also run a children’s home for kids hurt by mines or who have lost their family. It was very sad and made us both realise just how recent Cambodian horrific history was.

We then made our way down the the capital city - Phnom Phen. It was crazy, so many people wanting you money, we just had to avoid eye contact and walk pretty fast! We only spent 2 nights there, and during our full dat went to the Tuol Sleng Museum, it was a school before the Khmer Rouge took over the country and turned it into a ”Re-education Centre”. A torture camp more like. It wasn’t somewhere we wanted to hang around in, cells with blood stains on the celling and pictures of tortured people can only be taken in small quantities! We also visited the Killing Fields which too was very sad, seeing clothing sticking up from the earth is never meant to be ‘enjoyed’.

Anyway, we are now by the coast in Sihanokville, and even though the beaches are not as nice as we’d like them to be it’s still nice to take a few days to catch our breath and relax again for a while!

We are in the process of uploading all our photos (Paul, your advice of little and often seems to have fallen on deaf ears!).

I hope all is well back home (apart from the nasty storms we heard about this morning) Keep in touch and we both look forward to hearing from you all very soon

Love to all

xx