In Pursuit of Sunshine

Cambodia

I think Cambodia should be called The Land of Smiles, as opposed to Thailand, everyone wants to help you, show you where to go and be your new best friend. 

In Siem Reap I had my first:

“Dr Fish” the fish foot massaging thing.
Tuktuk ride (followed by manymany more)
Foot and Leg massage whlist Joe was getting his ear ‘candled’ hilarious.

I went to see the Angkor Wat Temples which were incredible and ‘Chai’ gave us very very detailed explanations about it. very long day but beautiful sites.

I ate a lot a lot of amazing food ridiculously cheap, one particular restaurant which stands out was ‘Haven’ an NGO set up to give orphans the opportunity to be trained in hospitality, as well as learning English.

In Sihanoukville (where I took my first SE Asian night bus, interesting…)

I shared a 3x4m dorm room with 8 people, well luckily there were only 4 of us in there at the time.
They served 25c beer after 9pm, very very dangerous. Spent the days at the Beach and the nights at the Beach…..

In Phom Penh I got very very very lost, coming from the small town I’d forgotten about city life, just one night to chill and have breakfast with a very friendly Malaysian lady. 

Cambodia is an amazing country and I could spend hours describing the beauty of the people and the place itself but I think you should go and visit yourself because you can only fully comprehend the secrets behind the smiles of these people when you visit a place that has so recentley been struck with such tragedy.

For you it’s just a game.

This is a travel blog right? Well I know my Dad won’t log into facebook and maybe sometimes doesn’t check his emails but I know he checks my blog every day. 

To a Dad that drove his three daughters from aged between 5-7 for many many years to Maine Road, picnics before the game, pies at half time.  Did i try my first beer at that stadium?

Three girls in France in the neon yellow shirts (wish I had the picture right now)

Amazing. xxxx

Crossing the Border; Thailand to Cambodia

I’d  heard that crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia can be a bit of a travellers nightmare but nothing had prepared me for the actual crossing.  Thankfully I met two guys from LANDAN, who were going to Siem Reap so I decided to tag along with them as they seemed pretty screwed on and had checked out all the bus times/visa costs and knew exactly where to go.  We hopped on my first tuktuk from KaoSan road to the bus terminal and bought our tickets which cost around $8 for a 3 hour journey.  This particular bus is run my the government, so unlike the buses you can book through our guides which stop along the way picking up random passengers, taking you to random shops where the drivers get commission if you buy anything and generally take twice as long and cost twice the price; which is probably one of the buses I would have booked on if I hadn’t met Joe & Jamie. 

3 hours later and freezing cold (a/c) we arrived at the bus terminal near the border, got my second tuktuk to take us to the crossing which cost us $1 each for a minutes driving to, which turned out to be probably the drivers mates wee office tucked in some dodgey corner where they tried to make us fill out paper work and pay 1400THB which is around $50.  As J&J had already checked out visa prices they knew the visa only costs $20 and to be honest the people trying to make us fill out these forms looked like dodgey sales men so we politely declined and left as fast as we could, trekking through the mass of people who all seemed to be transporting wood/steel/boxes in one direction, assumably the border. 

Finally found the offical visa application office where they charged me $20 plus an extra 100THB about $3 for nothing and another 100THB because I didn’t have a photograph so they needed to scan my passport ?!  You can’t argue with these people so the best thing to do is smile, give them the small dollars they want, get your visa and move on, fast.  Waved our visas at the immigration and finally made if over the Friendship Bridge (not actually a bridge at all) into The Kingdom Of Cambodia. 

Next step was finding our way to Siem Reap which is around 2 hours by car, again J & J had done their research and worked out that the cab drivers will charge you $40 standard rate for this journey because they have to give a certain percentage of it to the government, the owner of the car and then they get to keep whatever is left.  The public bus costs just $9 per person but takes between 3-4 hours so considering there was 3 of us, we hopped in a cab which again, thankfully I had these two with me as there’s no way I would have got in a car with any of these people on my own. 

Driving through the countryside of Cambodia was remarkable, just like nothing I’ve really seen before, children everywhere (the average age in Cambodia is 22!!)  Mud fields, unidentifiable litter and a stench filling the air that I can’t even describe.  In the taxi we drove through a massive thunderstorm, I’ve seen a lot of torrential rain and i’m not sure if it was a combination of both the rain and the dodgey windscreen wipers but at points the driver could no way see out of the windscreen, but not only that he was watching a dvd and using his telephone for a large part of the journey. A lightening bolt hit an elecrticty line in front of us, we didn’t see it fall but we followed the rest of the traffic just driving over the Telegraph pole as if nothing highly dangerous was lying in the middle of the road.

We arrived in Siem Reap and also had to take a tuktuk for the final 5 minutes of the journey which was questionably free.  J & J knew of course: The reason they do this is because again the government have banned taxis from entering the main cities to benefit the trade of the tuk tuk drivers, they hope that a) you’ll tip them and b) book them for a tour of the Angkor Wat.

Alive safe and sound in Siem Reap and a huge thanks to J & J because I probably couldn’t have done it without them.

One Night in Bangkok.

So I’ve left Australia, first stop in Singapore for a few hours with my wonderful friend Hughie, a couple of beers, quick catch up and some hugs later I was back on the plane to Bangkok.  Surprisingly my transit went smoothly and I had no problems at all despite my trek across Singapore in the middle of the night, still 28 degrees of course. 

On arrival in Bangkok I was warned of the following:

Bangkok is HUGE.
It smells bad
There are Cars/buses/tuk tuks and Motorbikes everywhere.
Everyone is trying to scam you
It’s really cheap
There’s a lot of fake goods sold at markets.

Common conceptions people have of Bangkok; well the first three I’ll admit are very true.  “Everyone is trying to scam you,” is not true, I met some nice people 1. gave me 10% off my room rate; “the Hub KoaSan Road - go and stay there” 2. gave me free juice because he was having a good day and 3. a random man paid for my chocolate in 7/11.  Bangkok is cheap, don’t get me wrong, but not as cheap in my opinion as Eastern Europe for example, a hostel in Bangkok was still costing me $9 a night and not the $3 backpackers expect when they arrive.  Also, you can get a Pad Thai on the street for $1 - amazingly cheap but of course when you go to a restuarant it will cost you between $4-8 for a main meal but having said, the food I had was delicious and worth every penny.  The final conception “there’s a lot of fake goods…” again; very true but every market stall will sell you the same on the KoaSan road of course, take a wee trip away from the tourist track and you will find original goods, a lot of which looked like it was from someones back yard/attic but nonetheless, original and away from the tourist trail.

5 Observations in 5 days: Darwin.

1. Darwin is expensive; this is driven by the fact they have two opposing seasons, Dry vs. Wet.  With a massive decrease in Tourists during the Wet season because a lot of the national Parks are closed they hike up the prices between May-November when it’s dry.  I was paying $25 a night (which is expensive anyway) and 1st May it went up to $30 for one night!

2.  Because Darwin is so hot and you can’t swim in the sea for fear of crocs, they have a free waterpark just ouside of the city which I think is an amazing government incentive.  They also have a lagoon by the port which is actually part of the sea dammed off from the crocs next to their infamous wave pool which you can $8 for a day pass and you can surf like you’re in Bondi… kind of.

3.  “Going out in Darwin is like going out in Spain.” claimed one Irish girl.  Well I was expecting a one outback pub kind of town but Darwin is bustling wih up and coming restaurants and bars, but yeah it is a bit like Spain, largely due to the growing numbers of English/Scottish, mainly Irish people heading up there for work. 

4.  There are a lot of jobs for male backpackers, a lot of labour, construction, gardening work which will also get you your 2nd year visa for many places in the Northern territory.  However for girls, the bar/restaurant jobs are snapped up instanly and a handful of “construction” (basically girls being paid to make sandwiches for the workers, and sometimes paid more.) jobs for the girls, alongside traffic controlling which pays $22 an hour so stand in the middle of nowhere and turn around the GO/STOP stick all day.

5. There’s a lot of Aboriginals in Darwin, like Cairns but they seem to be a lot more integrated into the society in Darwin, a lot of them working and going about their general day instead of the stereotypical, lying on the streets, drinking goon.  Of course, these kind still exist in Darwin but in general I much preferred Darwin to Cairns, it was a lot cleaner and more up to date than Cairns so despite being expensive I’m glad I stumbled across Darwin on my travels and would definitely reccommend it over Cairns anyday - especially if you’re Irish as you’ll have 25 new friends in your first day ;)