We've Come Full Circle

Our last day in Cambodia was spent exploring the wonders of the Angkor temples. There is simply much to much to describe and realy words wont do it justice. Just quickly, we went up the night before for a free sun set view of Angkor Wat (the big one) from a near by temple. In the morning we were there at 5:30am to watch the sun rise from inside Angkor Wat. We were lucky to be some of only a handful of tourist that went inside to see this and we sat at the top floor on the edge of some very steep steps and watched the sunrise in peaceful surroundings. That's about all I'll say about that except... yes we did go to the tomb raider temple and there was a lot a CG effects added, but it was still fun anyway.

We have arrived back in Bangkok and can't believe how different it is here having come from Cambodia which was by far the poorest of the countries we went to. Although officially Vietnam had the lowest income per capita, it is very clear that only the few rich and corrupt people have the money and are not sharing it around. They seem to be in a much more desperate state than the people in their surrounding countries. Everything is expensive for tourists (by South East Asian standards) simply because they need every dollar. The difference can be summed up in our bus trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok. The bus on the Cambodian side was the sort of thing that would have been sent to the wreckers five year ago in Australia. It had a cracked windscreen, broken seats, windows that slowly rattled themselves open and a tyre that had to be pumped up every half hour or so. The road, if you haven't heard is unsealed (left on purpose so you'll pay for the most expensive flight in the region to avoid it) and it took six hours to travel 140km. By this stage everyone was completely covered, inside and out, with dust. It took two hours to get through customs at the border, most of which was on the Cambodian side, and then got on the best bus of our whole trip. It was a fairly new double-decker bus with A/C, T.V. and plenty of leg room. They even cleaned the dust off the bags not wanting to dirty their pristine vehicle. We eventually got in at 9pm very exhausted, but met up with Neil and Alexis and had drinks until 2am.

This is our last post. We we'll see you all soon.

PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVIA (i meant to put that up yesterday but it wouldn't work!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT'S MUM!!!

Hi Mum,

This is just a quick message to wish you a happy birthday. I tried calling you but nobody answered the phone. I was going to call back but I don't think I'll be able to because we are heading out in an hour to catch Angkor Wat for sunset and it will be too late when we get back.

As you've probably gathered we are in Cambodia. We spent two days in Phnom Penh seeing the sights (both good and bad) and eating and drinking lots. Jackie has now taken over typing to elaborate a little more. Seeing the sights - The first stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum which was very overwhelming and tragic. I wont say too much about it but you can ask us when we get back if you like. Then it was a tuk tuk ride out to the Killing Fields. Thankfully they have left this very simple and it didn't have a nasty touristy feel. It was sort of understated, it was simply just a whole lot of excavated ditches with a memorial stupa in front housing the skulls of the victims of the Pol Pot regime. The height of this building is almost too much to take in. After returning to city we went to the National Museum which was full of early Angkor sculpture. That afternoon we took a break, perhaps to recover ourselves a little, and relaxed in the gardens of an old French villa. There is a stark contrast between the grandeur of the Palace, the happy smiling faces and these charming colonial buildings, and the horrifying past, the war torn beggars and the despate shoe shine boys on the street. This is a place which I think we wont forget. The next day we did a quick trip to the palace and a long walking tour past markets and shopping malls (there's that strange contrast again) and finally returned to our french villa for cocktails and wedges.

Today it was an early morning and a not so bad bus trip to Siem Reap. On arriving here we found our last hotel had sold our name to another hotel and there was someone waiting for us with Brett's name on a sign. We craftily dodged him and got a free ride to the hotel we wanted. It has the not very ironic name of Popular. Now as Brett said we are making an evening stop at Ankor Wat so we must be going.

And by the way - our flight is scheduled to land at 9:20PM on Sunday evening at Tullamarine Airport. - Thanks Mum. (Says Brett)