After deciding that Hampi was boring we spent our last day there doing the second site (it is made up of two different sites. You pay for entrance to all of them but can only do one in one day realistically). It was pretty impressive but we were bored with temples so did quite a quick tour of it all. We had been to the Mango Tree for dinner the night before and really liked it so went back for a long lunch. I had buff cashewnut curry. We tried to spin it out by reading there and playing cards but the annoying Indian children there started to stand right by us and watch us play cards then repeat everything we said. Grr. We killed time for the rest of the evening before getting an auto-rickshaw to Hospet and then attempted to get the bus to Panaji in Goa.

Hospet bus station is probably now my least favourite place in the world. We had been told that there was a bus at about 6 and one at about 8. When we arrived the consensus seemed to be that there was a bus at 6:45. There wasn't a bus. Then they decided it was 7. No bus. Then 7:30...still no bus. Charlotte and I were getting really frustrated with all the bus people by this point and then a group of Indian men came to try and talk to us. There were about 8 of them and they couldn't speak English properly but were being really intimidating and we weren't fans of it. Charlotte decided an idea to try and get them to go away was to set off her rape alarm but that just attracted more men so we got up with our 20million bags and walked around the bus station a bit so they couldn't stand by us and try and talk to us. After nearly giving up we finally found a bus to Panaji and the fun continued! We were all rammed in and I had a small child sitting on its' mother's lap next to me, groping me for half an hour. We then had a bit more room until some man came and sat next to us (we were on a 3 person seat) which they aren't supposed to do. In India, women can't sit next to men on buses and vice versa but men often feel it is fine for them to sit next to women. Go figure. It seems to be the Indian way. He kept trying to move furhter up the bench so in the end I shoved my bag inbetween me and him and kept elbowing him when he tried to move up with his shoulders. He finally got off and we had the bench to ourselves. Everyone else had their own 2 or 3 person bench to themselves by this point and were curled up trying to get to sleep but we didn't have enough room. I finally got a 2 person bench to myself after we'd been on the bus for 5 hours. We were told that the bus journey would take between 6 and 8 hours but more towards the 6 side. We got on at 8PM and got off at 5:30AM. I'd had a mighty 20minutes sleep and even that wasn't great because of Pervy McPerverson behind us who would sit and stare at us while we slept. It didn't make for good sleeping.

Worst bus journey ever.

We finally arrived in Goa on Saturday morning and it was raining. We went down to the beach - the one where the British girl got raped and murdered a few months ago, good times - to find there wasn't really a beach because the sea had taken over as there were massive waves due to the monsoon. We stumbled about getting wet and trying to buy 'it's better in Goa' tshirts before going on a trek to find a shop called Oxford Stores which sold western food. We eventually found brownies and tropical skittles and sat around playing cards and getting hysterical. We went for dinner and saw that the Czech Republic were playing Switzerland and went back to our room after dinner to watch it in bed while watching Hilary Clinton admit defeat and watching music videos.

Today we moved to Baga (we had been in Anjuna) as apparently there is more going on here. There is, but not by much and our room is smaller and has no TV. We went on a fun trip to find an ATM and found a Subway on the way so had that for lunch. That made us slighty happier. We're going back tomorrow. We went down to the beach and got soaked by the sea even though we just tried to get our feet wet. We also attempted to buy a tshirt again but it was too expensive and the man in the shop was muttering about why did we come to India as we walked out (yes of course Mr. Man, we came just to buy tacky crap from your shop. Well done) and now we're killing time until dinner!

Happy days. We're here until Wednesday evening and we only have Old Goa left to do! We're going to be well read by the time we're done...

I arrived in India on Saturday night after being one of 3 western people on a full plane which was a sign of things to come. I stayed in a hotel in Chennai before getting an 8hr train to Madurai and then a 2hr taxi to Sivikasi where I finally met up with Charlotte on Sunday night which was great as I hadn't seen her for nearly 3 months. That was the longest we'd been without seeing each other. We sat around, caught up, had chai and played cards on Sunday night before our big adventure began on Monday.

Monday was the day of hell of our holiday. It was planned this way and went as well as it could have done. We left the apartment at 7AM to get a bus from Sivikasi to Tirimungalum (1hr). From there, we got another bus from Tirimungalum to Madurai (1hr. Standing. Packed. With rucksacks. Argh). From Madurai, we got a bus to Coimbatore (6hrs) and then from Coimbatore we got a bus to Mysore (6hrs). After leaving at 7, we arrived at our hotel in Mysore at 10:30 which we thought was amazing timing. We thought we'd be doing well if we arrived at midnight. Even though we'd been sitting doing very little all day, we were absolutely shattered so just went to bed rather than going to find food in Mysore.

On Tuesday we got up and went for breakfast in our hotel which the guidebook recommended. Charlotte made me try various different Indian things for breakfast which were all either super stodgy or deep-fried. Lovely. We spent the morning climbing up a massive hill with a few temples on it which made us feel a bit better about our amazingly calorific breakfast. We climbed about 600 steps and saw a giant statue of a bull which we walked clockwise around and admired. We then walked about 400 steps up to a temple at the top of the hill. We queued with all the Hindus to get inside and then it was like a riot inside. Everyone was crushing and pushing each other out of the way to get to the statues of the deities so we left and just walked around the outside of the temple. We had a Hindu blessing and got cloth tied around our wrists and red dye put on our forehead. We climbed back down the hill in the delightful mid-day heat and went for lunch at Pizza Corner (always nice to see that we're making the most of our time in India). After lunch we went over to St. Philomena's church which was supposed to be one of the best in India. We were a little underwhelmed. Perhaps coming from a conitent where Christianity is the main religion had something to do with the standard of church we expect. After being taken around a silk weaving place and a sandlewood carving place, both specialities of Mysore, we headed over to the palace. It was pretty impressive but we were maxed out within about half an hour. We spent the evening playing more cards and eating Milk Bikis becuase we were still too full from lunch to have a decent meal.

Wednesday was dedicated to shopping and bumming around. We looked around a few shops and tried to find more but failed so we went to the zoo instead whcih was cool apart from the drugged up crocodiles. We bought some tourist crap in a shop opposite the zoo afterwards but we are now saving ourselves for Goa. We went to RRR for lunch where we had some of the south's best biriyani on platain leaves. It was really good and we were the only westerners in the restaurant. We had to battle for our seats but it was worth it. We attempted a little bit more shopping, failed again, and got ourselves on a bus to Banglaore. The guidebook kept telling us that Bangalore was an international city but the sign outside it said it was a garden city. When I had to look up outsourcing stuff for work I kept coming across Bangalore over and over again which leads me to believe that it is the Indian equivilent of Milton Keynes. Nice. The bus station was directly opposite the train station but there was a massive, uncrossable road inbetween them. It took us about half an hour to cross after joking about how it was going to take an hour when we were on the bus. We killed time by having naan and daal in a cafe in the trainstation before boarding our lovely sleeper train to Hospet.

We seemed to sleep pretty well on it (this was probably aided by my super ability to sleep nearly anywhere at any time) but it wasn't long enough or good enough sleep to make me feel good today. From Hospet we got a train to Hampi which is where we are now.

Hampi was the centre of an old empire which was around at the same time as the Khmer empire and a lot of the temples which are still complete are of a similar style to those of the Angkorian period (how much of an archaeological geek do i sound?!). The temples are no where near as good as Angkor but the setting is a squillion times better. We finished site 1 in around 2 hours today though so are now bumming about and are going to get CAKE this afternoon. We are excited.

Tomorrow, site 2 of Hampi, more bumming, probably more cake and then because we've run out of things to do here, we're leaing for Goa a day early. We're planning on lying on the beach, drinking cocktails, having western food and seafood curry (Charlotte), buying tourist crap and just relaxing. I can't wait.

Thursday involved spending most of the day on a bus coming back down from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. All we did in the morning was have breakfast and then we were back in the apartment by about 4:30. We watched our final bits of CSI with Hollie before she left to go home. She'd been here for 4 months. I don't know how she did it. It was also Nicola's birthday and last full day so we were going to go out for dinner at Tamarinds and then out afterwards. However, it was mine and Lia's last Thursday in Phnom Penh and Thursday night is quiz night at the Lazy Gecko! They do really good food so we went over there for food, the quiz, buckets and to spend time with the people who work there who are all awesome. We finally bought ourselves Lazy Gecko tshirts after spending too long trying to decide which ones to get. Lia got one by one the penguins are stealing my sanity (Phnom Penh-guins) and I got beer and loathing in Phnom Penh city which I thought summed up my time quite nicely. We stuck around Lakeside and headed over to the Magic Sponge as it was still too early to go to the Heart and we like it there. We sat upstairs on the inside balcony and played Trivial Persuit with some Dutch and British guys. One of them had a Nedved shirt on and I got overexcited and blinded him with my camera. They were all new to Phnom Penh so didn't know about the wonders of the Heart so we dragged them there after Nicola caught up with us. Jesse and Lia left pretty quickly but because it was Nicola's last night, she insisted on staying until it closed. Trevor, our favourite barmaid, kept giving us Trevor-measures and free shots so we were pretty merry by the time we left. She spent quite a while telling me about how her boyfriend says he is poor but then pays for sex with prostitutes which is very bad. She didn't seem to mind too much though because she has another boyfriend as well. I did a lot of smiling and nodding.

On Friday I slept in (amazing!) and then went for my delightful feedback meeting with Petro, the director of Projects Abroad Cambodia. I got really angry. We then spent a lot of the afternoon bumming about and trying to pack before heading out to Sorya and attempting to get to Russian market for the last time. We missed Russian market because the tuk-tuk driver we got seemed to be the only one on Phnom Penh who didn't know where it was. Instead, we got hold of the tattoo guy we'd heard about from the Lazy Gecko menu and headed over there. Lia spent about an hour and half getting inked up and I spent about 5 minutes. I don't know how she did it as it was way more painful than I thought it would be! We'd missed dinner at titanic by that point but headed over to Riverside to catch up with other people and find food and alcohol. A lot of people had gone home so it wasn't that great but it was still nice to have a final meal out in one of the good areas. We headed back to the apartment to drop stuff and people off before heading out to the Heart of Darkness for one last time. We were only there for a couple of hours because it was rammed and the music was pretty hit and miss. I'm not sure whether I'll miss the place. It's a hole but I have had some really good nights out there.

This morning I left at 8:30 to fly to Kuala Lumpur where I am now. I have killed 3 hours in the airport and have another 2 and a half to go before I fly out to Chennai. I have two more days of hellish travelling and then it should be all good from there.

It seems really weird that I've left Cambodia and it won't sink in that it's real for quite some time.

I still fail at updating but better late than never!

Last Friday evening I said my goodbyes to Clare and got on a plane from Hue back to Saigon. I went back to being on my own again there so just went for food and then a wonder around the night market before heading back and sleeping. I was also pretty cut up about leaving Clare and Vietnam.

On Saturday I had the morning to see my last bits of Vietnam and have my last Vietnamese coffee (best. thing. EVER.) and went to the market for the last time. I got myself another bag which is just small enough to fit onto the plane as hand luggage so I'm going to have less issues packing all my stuff up. I then had the lovely 6 hour bus journey back to Cambodge. I had 300 with me and hadn't seen it so the nice bus man let me put it on. The Vietnamese/Khmers weren't too impressed with all the boobs and violence.  Once I eventually arrived back in Phnom Penh I soon found out I wasn't going to be dropped where I thought I was so had to try and negotiate my way back to the apartment after living there for 2 nights and going back not quite sober both of those nights. It eventually worked out but then I was the only person in the apartment because no one else had arrived back from Sihanoukville. I'd been speaking to Vicky who was joining my project who lives in the other apartment and so got myself back over there to eat and to stay there. After talking for about 20 minutes we worked out that we have several mutual friends in common and have actually met each other back home before although we hadn't recognised each other. It is a very small world. She'd also met my best friend out in India and I had been informed that she was very nice, which she is. 

The next day we took ourselves around Russian Market so that we could buy tourist crap / clothes / have lunch at the scrummy Melting Pot. After exhausting the market and running out of energy we went over to Riverside to take a boat trip on the Mekong. We were told there was something masquerading as a 'floating village'that we would see which turned out to be about 3 huts leaning over the water. The trip wasn't that great but it was one of the Phnom Penh things that had to be done. In order to make up for it, we went to Art Pub afterwards to abuse Happy Hour. I stayed at the apartment again that night as I didn't fancy getting a moto back late on my own when not sober.

The next morning we trundled off to do our lovely copper moulding etc and so spent most of the day sat around doing very little. Daz, the love of Hollie's life who was no longer the love of her life, was staying in the apartment and it was his last night so we did the unusual thing and stayed in which was quite nice. I ended up getting the same amount of sleep as I would have done had I gone out but spent less.

Tuesday involved a lot of the same but in the evening Danny convinced us that it was a good idea to go to the Heart of Darkness at 11:30 when we were all falling asleep. We only lasted until 1 so it wasn't that heavy for a school night but we had had a few drinks and then didn't end up going to sleep until 3:30 before getting up at 7. I slept in Lia's bed because I couldn't be bothered going over to my apartment (next door) and we both managed to fall asleep with James and Rose sitting on the bed shouting at each other about Margaret Thatcher.

On Wedneday, Vicky and I had our Khmer cooking course. I was feeling fine in the morning but very peaky by the afternoon. We went to a local market to buy ingredients to start with and then set about cooking spring rolls, banana flower salad, amok (traditional Khmer curry) and sticky rice with mango which is one of my favourite things. Our spring rolls turned out pretty good although the guy teaching us told us to put roughly a bulb of garlic per person into it so that plus all the chili in it kind of drowned out all the flavours. The same dipping sauce was used for the salad so I ended up leaving most of mine because it was too hot for my weak tastebuds to handle. The amok turned out really good though. It is traditionally made with fish and with loads of fish sauce in it but I made mine without any fish sauce and with mushroom instead of fish. We also made banana leaf cups for it to get cooked it so it all looked pretty flash and was really tasty by the end. The sticky rice and mango was different to the Peppertree stuff I am used to but we made a coconutty caramel sauce to go with it which was super tasty. I was a massive fan of that although I felt like I was never going to move again afterwards. Vicky and I decided that seeing as we had worked so hard that day, we deserved cocktails so went to the Foreign Correspondents Club on Riverside to abuse their happy hour. After having WINE (aaasfhyaoifuais!!!auhI!) and a few cocktails and after happy hour had ended we decided we were drunk enough and went off to find food. After all the Khmer food and rice from the day we went in the opposite direction and had cheese toasties with chips for dinner. Aren''t we healthy?! That night I managed to get a nice 8hrs sleep to try and recover from the lack of it the few nights before which has managed to keep me going a suprisingly long time!

On Thursday, Vicky and I cooked for the people who were around in apartment 1. We burnt the spring rolls but they were tastier because our dipping sauce didn't have enough garlic to keep several vampires away for a year. I managed to burn my finger geting them out the oil though. The amok was a lot milder than the day before but was still good and the sticky rice and mango got my undivided attention so worked out well. Nyet was in charge of cooking the rice though so I didn't have to overcome that hurdle. Lia had come back for lunch so we spent the afternoon together going to the post-office and Sorya shopping centre. We were all planning on going out that evening (I now can't remember why...) but Lia and I were the only ones who wanted to go to the Lazy Ghecko (Lakeside) quiz. We didn't have enough time to get ready for going out before it started so we went in our lovely sweaty states over there. We got our way through 2 buckets while there and came 5th! This is an apartment best so we were very pleased. After that we headed back to get changed and then we went back to Lakeside to have a drink at the Magic Sponge. Neither of us had been before and we liked the sound of the name. We made our way to the Heart of Darkness after that. We had a couple more drinks so the evening was quite merry but nothing too bad. Nicola pulled the DJ much to our amusement. Hollie and Nicola left at 2 after we all got cheese chips but Lia and I stayed to dance some more. We went to Howie's bar before going back into the Heart and played Connect 4 for a while. We ended up leaving the Heart at 4:30ish and set our alarms for 7:30 to get up the next morning...

We managed to wake up the next morning before our alarms because the power had gone out in the apartment and so the air conditioning had gone off. Naturally we all felt like death and so didn't go to work that day. I didn't have anything planned for the day so had said I would go to Nicola and Lia's orphanage for the morning. It was a public holiday in Cambodia as it was the day of the Royal Ploughing festival so no one had to go to work anyway. We went to sunbathe on the roof for a bit before doing lots of little bits and peices and then heading for the Lazy Ghecko for dinner in the evening. I finally managed to get myself a veggie burger after craving one for 5 weeks. The food at Lazy Ghecko was really good - Hollie had the best macaroni I've tried so we're hopefully going back next Friday for my leaving. We (Lia, Amelia, Nicola, me. Hollie felt worse than the rest of us so went home) went over to Sorya to go to the roller disco afterwards. There was one other girl there who was about 10 and everyone in the place was Khmer. We felt pretty out of place but there was only 45 minutes left so we decided to do it. We all failed at it pretty epically but Nicola came off the worst out of all of us after landing on her bum pretty hard. After that it was obvious we were never going to kill enough time before the Heart got good so we went home and tried to recover.

On Saturday after sleeping for a sensible amount of time I confirmed my flight with Malaysia Airlines and went to buy a new camera. Either I or someone else had knocked it out of my hand while we were on the podium in the Heart on Thursday night and it had died. To start with only the flash wouldn't work but by Friday evening whenever it had batteries in it, it would overheat to the point where you couldn't hold it and it wouldn't switch on. Not good. I found another Samsung Camera which doesn't have as good a zoom but is a lot smaller which I am pleased about as my last one was a bit of a beast and wouldn't fit in my pocket / clutch bag / wallet on a night out. I found out I could have got it cheaper at home but I needed it for Siem Reap so I had to suck it up and do it. I went back home after that and lay on the roof in the sun a bit more before we went back to Russian Market. I spent a ridiculous amount of money but am now all set clothes-wise for India and found something to wear out that night. We went to the Flying Elephant for dinner which was tasty and really cheap before heading to a bar that Danny chose. The bar was called Chilis and we were the only people in there apart from the bar maids (who all looked like Khmer hookers which made us realise why Danny chose it) and one old man. After seeing a nice big rat run across the floor we decided that we weren't going to be staying there for that long and seeing as it was midnight, we went up the road to the Heart. Not long after getting there it was only Nicola, Lia and I left and then Lia went to sleep in the corner. Nicola and I made up for everyone else by dancing lots and staying until 4:30 again. The Nigerians were out in force that night and I had a lovely guy standing, not dancing, staring at me before telling Danny he was "checking that out". Delightful. He then told Nicola about his wife and children and about how he wanted something different. This meant that there was a new contender for worst chat up line ever (Ï'm thinking of trading my wife in for a younger model...") and we spent a lot of the night trying to avoid him. The DJ that night was the one from Lounge Bar who was pretty good and kept playing good songs for us. However, at about 3:30 he left and Nicola's DJ arrived and started playing country music and cheese. This is not what we go to the Heart for but we made the most of it and carried on. After some weird German guy who had been chatting up all the prostitutes kept trying to talk to us and explain how everyone from London was arrogant because he went travelling with one girl from London who was a bit of a princess, we left. We got back at about 5AM and as I was being picked up at 6:30AM and Nicola had to get up early to go to S-21 and the Killing Fields we decided to just not sleep. We put Hairspray on and then promptly fell asleep for a bit. I woke up after about half an hours sleep and went to finish packing as I was leaving for Siem Reap. I slept for most of the 6hr bus journey so didn't feel too deathly when I arrived. Sython, who has now been renamed Sitcom took us to the tourist office and to see some APSARA guy whose office we're supposed to be working in and then we met up with Lorraine and went for dinner.

On Monday we finally went to Angkor Archaeological Park. This was a massive deal for me so I was really excited. We started off not by doing Angkor Wat but by doing Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was really impressive and we saw Bayon (the temple with all the faces), the Terrace of Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper king. After a 2hour lunch which pissed me off as I wanted to see more we went to Preah Khan which was really chilled out and nice. That day we also did Phimeanakas and a couple of others before going to see sunset at Phnom Bakheng. Sunset wasn't as stunning as I thought it would be and you didn't see it going down behind the temples which was half the point but it was still nice to do. We had an early night that night as we had to get up uber early the next morning.

At 4AM we got up so that we could get to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. We were there by 4:50 and stayed until about 6:30. Sunrise at Angkor Wat was pretty amazing. You sit there watching it rise to the side of the main part of the temple and you can see both the sun and the temple reflected in this big lily pond. There were 20million Korean tourists there who were noisy and kept sitting in front of us which tainted it slightly but I was still really pleased to do it and it was definitely worth getting up early for. Sitcom wasn't feeling well so went to the restaurant where we have breakfast and left Vicky and I to watch the sunrise. We decided we didn't want our first experience of the inside of Angkor Wat to be with him so went inside to have a sneak preview before we did it properly after breakfast. The place is so much bigger than it looks like it's going to be. Sitcom pissed me off no end while we were there. He kept getting things wrong, telling us random facts yet nothing important and just generally being useless. I'm really quite upset about that because it's a once in a lifetime type thing and even if I see it again, it isn't going to be for a very long time and my first experience of it has been tainted. I would rather have gone round on my own with the Lonely Planet than have his half-baked tour. We spent the rest of the day doing Preah Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Preah Rup, Srah Srang, Banteay Kdei, Ta Prohm and Ta Keo. We saw one temple which had been 'restored' by the Chinese. They'd lumped loads of concrete into bits and carved it badly so it looked pretty bad. We then saw a massive green snake so turned around and left that one. Ta Prohm was one of my favourite temples in the whole park. I can't decide whether I prefered it to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. It used to be completely overgrown with jungle and now there are just several massive trees which have their roots growing over parts of the temple. It's party fallen down and is sort of atmospheric which makes it really cool. Tomb Raider was shot there. After getting templed-out we left Angkor at 3ish and had a bit of a rest and shared drunken stories before going to meet Lorraine for dinner as it was her last night in Cambodia! We went to a traditional Khmer place because we felt we should. it was pretty nice though. After that we went to the massively overrated Angkor What? We were planning to buy our two buckets of cocktails and earn our free Angkor What? tshirt but the buckets didn't sound that nice, the music was way too loud (I am always the last person to admit that something is too loud so it must have been really loud) and the tshirts were crap. We decided to have one drink and as we were sitting there Jesse who I went to school with came in with two guys I have met before from Dulwich College (Geordie, Tom).  We had one more drink and Jesse is now coming down to Phnom Penh with us and without the boys tomorrow. This means I have met 7 people I know in 6 weeks here. It's either a small world or I talk too much. We called it a night after that as we had been up for far too long by that point.

Today we went to observe archaeological work (as opposed to actually do it. I am too bitter to go into it) at Ta Prohm. We were there for about 10 minutes, watched some guy smash up some old parts of the temple so that they would fit better with the new bits they were building out of cement (?!?!) and take things apart in a way that the Cambodian's will never be able to get back together. Great stuff. I got actually quite upset! I am clearly a true archaeologist at heart. It was just ridiculous. We went to see another falling down temple afterwards which was being held up by big bits of bamboo. After that we went for a last run around Angkor Wat without Sitcom to see it properly and then left the Angkor site. On the way to lunch (it was only about 11AM) we went to an exhibition at a care home about life on Tonle Sap lake which was quite interesting and then to a wood and stone carving place. Sitcom was being ridiculous at lunchtime and then left us to our own devices so we're internetting, going shopping and getting a massage before food and lots of drinking tonight.

Tomorrow we're back to Phnom Penh and I get to say Happy Birthday to Nicola and goodbye to Hollie. Nicola then leaves on Friday and I leave on Saturday! It is the end of South East Asia for me then which is quite terrifiying.

Current Mood: hot

So not only do I suck at updating this but the internet is against me.
I wrote up everything I'd done and when I went to post, the internet
died in the café we were in so I lost it all and then was too pissed
off to re-write it then.

Last Wednesday we got a very bumpy and badly air-conditioned bus from
Dalat to Nha Trang. After the bus nearly left without Clare and we met
some people from Southampton, we arrived in beautiful Nha Trang. As we
only had the afternoon left (7hr journey by bus) we decided to poke
around the town center and then go and lie on the beach. The main
beach in Nha Trang was gorgeous - white sands and clear, blue,
unpolluted water. After overheating on the beach and getting too much
salt-water in our eyes we went for yummy Italian food in the evening
(very Vietnamese) because Clare was craving lasagna. It was the
weirdest lasagna I'd ever seen and looked a bit more like cheese on
toast but it kept her happy.

The next day we did the standard tourist/backpacker/Westerner thing
and took a boat trip around the islands just off the coast. There are
about 20 different boat trips that leave everyday so we were pretty
surprised to find that we'd managed to book ourselves (by chance) onto
the same boat as the people we were staying with in Dalat! This made
our day really because the trip turned out to be a bit touristy and
tacky. We went snorkeling in the sea with lots of nice fishies off one
island which wasn't as good as we were expecting it to be but was
still fun until two of the other girls and I got stung by jellyfish.
We then visited a fish farm that made me feel good about the fact I
don't eat fish as they didn't look like they had very happy lives
being cooped up in nets all their lives. After that there was a
seafood buffet (!) on the boat, so I had the veggies that were
decorating the plates with rice and noodles. In order to give our food
time to sink, our delightful guide tried to get some sort of karaoke
thing going on but it failed more than a little bit. Then it was time
for the floating bar! The only thing it served was rice wine, which is
pretty fucking vile, but it was fun to float around in the sea and
just chill out. The next stop was an island that you had to pay to get
onto so Clare and I decided to dive off the back of the boat and swim
onto the beach to avoid paying. I would have probably done that
regardless of money though. The beach was pretty nasty and although
the water was clearer, there was a lot of rubbish floating around in
it. We then all visited an aquarium which made me feel bad for the
fishes again as there were massive ones all squished into small tanks.
That evening we went to eat and then went drinking and dancing at the
Sailing Club, which was on the beach and once it got going, was really
good. We all miss it.

The 5 of us (me, Clare, Anna, Nicola and Doeces) all went to a water
park and theme park on an island called Vinpearl. The park was called
Vinpearland and was pretty much completely deserted but really really
good! I managed to get myself sunburnt but had a fantastic day due to
the insane rides that would never have been allowed past health and
safety back home. Doeces, Anna and Nicola all left that evening in two
different directions so Clare and I went for dinner at Good Morning
Vietnam and watched the Devil Wears Prada because we were too tired to
pay attention to anything decent..

In order to recover more, we went to the mud baths and got massages
the next morning. They were a lot more watery than we expected but it
was really relaxing and about a squillion times cheaper than it would
have been back home. We were going to visit the waterfalls 10kms
outside of Nha Trang that afternoon but the moto drivers wanted to
charge us too much and we decided that they were never going to be as
good as Dalat's Elephant waterfalls so we went to lie on the beach
some more!

That evening we got a sleeper bus to Hoi An. I am gutted I didn't take
any pictures on the sleeper bus because it was really bizarre but
luckily wasn't as horrific as I thought it was going to be! I managed
to sleep for at least 3hrs and stayed half asleep for another few hrs
on top of that. This meant that the 12hr bus journey went by quite
quickly.

Then came the overexcitedness in Hoi An! The city is based around a
traditional Vietnamese old-town center which we didn't see any of
until our 3rd day in Hoi An. This is because we were too busy spending
all our money and then some in the tailors. I have now had made (and
shipped home);
4 dresses
2 suits (one for my mum)
2 winter jackets
1 winter coat
2 pairs of knee high boots
4 shirts
1 pair of shorts
1 pair of trousers
1 pair of trainers
3 skirts
...and I have probably forgotten something on this list. I am now
trying to live cheaply in Vietnam and then spend less money when I get
back to Cambodia! To be fair, if I had bought all of that at home it
would have cost at least 10 times as much as I paid and I am so
pleased with some of the stuff.

Yesterday morning we removed ourselves and our bank cards from the tailors
and got the bus up to Hue. It's quite pretty here but quite quiet and
there isn't that much to do. We spent a couple of hours walking around
the ancient Imperial citadel and then went for dinner, drinks and pool with Laura
and Christie who we lived in Cambodia with. Some Vietnamese guys took a liking
to Clare and so let us all ride thier cyclos which was pretty nifty!

This morning we crashed their boat trip along the Perfume River which took us to
a pagoda and then to the King's tomb. It was all very pretty and very interesting but
I'm not that devastated to be moving on from Hue. I wish I was going up to Hanoi/Sapa/
Hallong Bay though.

I have had such a great time in Vietnam and definitely want to come
back at some point to do the north (Hanoi, Hallong Bay, Sapa). I am
not looking forward to going back to Cambodia...

On Monday morning I got a crazy moto driver to take me to Malaysai Airlines and I am now officially leaving Cambodia on May 31! They didn't charge me anything either. Score. After that, I sat on a bus for 8 hours, stopping at 20million tiny Vietnamese villages and ended up in Dalat. We went out for food and for coffee to the House of 100 Rooms/Roofs (I'm not sure which it is...) which was pretty cool and then watched DVDs in the hostel room because everyone was tired.

Today we got an easyrider tour (for my future reference; http://dalat-easyrider.com.vn) and went through the mountains around Dalat, the coffee and rose plantations, silk, mushroom and bamboo basket factories, the Elephant waterfalls, 2 temples each with their own giant buddha and the Dalat crazyhouse. The whole day was amazing but the waterfall was the best bit. We were on motorbikes for the whole day which was brilliant when we were up in the mountains but we also got to do a fair bit of walking plus some horseriding which made a really refreshing difference to what we usually do. Dalat is my favourite place that I've been to since coming out to SE Asia. It's so chilled out and green and lush. I think if I hadn't just spent a week and a half in Phnom Penh and Saigon I wouldn't appreciate it as much but it's so different to the craziness of most of Cambodia and Vietnam.

Tomorrow we're off to Nha Trang where we're going to lie on the beach and go snorkelling. It should be good. Very different to here, but good.

Pictures are coming soon once livejournal starts cooperating!

On Thursday night out we went out for Thai food because two of the girls I was living with are leaving this weekend. At the other table in the room we were in were two Khmer pop stars! Our cook from the appartment got very excited (she came too and told us all about the pop stars. Apparently one of them is gay!). Afterwards, we decided to class things up a bit and took vodka cruisers with us in our tuk-tuk to the Lazy Ghecko where they have a pup quiz every Thursday. 3/4 of the way through we were told that our team needn't have bothered turning up but then we aced the round about Ireland so came second from bottom rather than last! Score. The fact we knew nothing and were drinking cocktails out of buckets didn't help our performance - we blamed it on the fact we arrived late and they were all Australian though. On the way home, our tuktuk driver was more drunk than we were which made for a pretty hairy ride.

On Friday I sorted crap out with Projects Abroad and  now everything is all good! I have done 2 weeks work, I am into my 2 weeks off to do Vietnam in, then I go back to Phnom Penh for 1 week then to Siam Reap for 1 week before I go to India to backpack around the south for 2 weeks. I then teach for 2 months before coming home! I now should be back on the 10th of August which gives me a week and a bit to sort myself out before Reading (it looks so good right now! We went out in the evening and abused happy Hour at Elsewhere and proceeded to get trashed. I had to get up early the next morning to leave for Vietnam which was pretty painful.

After 6 hungover hours on a bus I arrived in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City but no one calls it that because it's a crap name). I did my lonely planet walking guide before going for a massage (1 hour for about 1.25pounds) and eating pho. Today I went to the Cu Chi tunnels which were insane but really really good and then to the war remmenants museum. I went into the tunnels which were scarily small but didn't take up the chance to fire machine guns. I took pictures of other people in the group doing it and just being near the guns going off was really disturbing. The museum really got under my skin - I got really angry about all the defoliants, massacres and Agent Orange victimes. I can't believe in this day and age countries like the United States are still allowed to get away with behaviour like that. It makes me want to do forensic anthropology but I know that I couldn't hack it. I walked back to my guesthouse through Saigon past Notre Dame, the Reunification palace and the People's Committee building which was great. In Phnom Penh I missed just walking around palces.  I just wen tto the night market with one of the girls in my room and then while trying to take my pictures off my camera to put on a memory stick, I might have deleted them. I'm currently waiting for a recovery programme to tell me whether they can be saved. If they can't, I am going to be so gutted. 

Tomorrow - Dalat!

On the way home from the internet cafe on Sunday, we got 3 of us (+ the driver) on a moto home. That is a personal best for all of us (possibly not the driver). We were very proud.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week have involved a lot of the same stuff as before. More research (/sending rant-filled e-mails to Projects Abroad), puppet making, Khmer lessons and watching children dance with the added bonus of starting to make a statue of buddha out of copper. I'm really excited about that bit. I start it properly tomorrow and I think it's going to look really good.

On Monday night we went to meditation at Wat Lanka temple which was interesting. We all enjoyed it and I'm going to go and try to do it again while I'm in Vietnam or after I get back. Last night, the Italian lady living with us cooked us pasta. I have never been so happy to see pasta and tomato sauce before. I saved half of mine to have for lunch today but it fell out of the fridge and all over the floor this morning. I nearly cried. I had to have stupid rice again.

2 of us have just moved apartments and I have, after moving, been kindly informed by other house members that my room was supposed to be being saved for a boy coming in mid-May as it's a single room and they always chuck boys in there because there are so many girls. Oh well. I'll be in Vietnam so won't be able to sort it out. It looks like I might only spend another week in Phnom Penh after I get back so if he wants my room, I won't be that fussed.

I have my bus ticket ($10 from Phnom Penh to Saigon!) for 6:30AM Saturday. I am doing a quick look round a lot of things in Saigon before joining Clare in Dalat on Monday. Should be good.

On Thursday I started the main part of my project out here which was a bit up and down. I started off doing research on Khmer traditional puppet making and dancing in the University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh but then when there weren't any books in English and I''d maxed out looking at the pictures that failed slightly. I started reading up on Angkor Wat which was more interesting (and more understandable because it was in English) but still not great. I''m not too sure what I''m supposed to be doing in it but I am going to start complaining again if it carries on. From there I went to my Khmer language lesson which was pretty good. It''s one-on-one lessons and the guy teaching me speaks really good English and has lived in Brno in the Czech Republic for a year. He has been teaching me essentail phrases like hello, how are you and I want a beer. I''m really enjoying that bit of it so that's one positive which has come out of this all. In the afternoon I started making my traditional Khmer puppet! It''s pretty bizarre but quite good fun. You get little blades which you dig into the leather and then hit with a hammer. I have only hit myself 3 times and I''ve done 2 hours worth so far which I think is quite an acheivement. However, on Friday when I went back to it I started cutting out the wrong colour (it''s a black and white template sellotaped over the leather) and so I''ve screwed up the eyes on it. I thought it was all going a bit too well. After the puppet making I went to watch traditional Khmer dancing and singing. There were a load of little Khmer girls who were aged from about 3 to 12 doing the dancing and then older girls + all the boys doing the singing. It was good and interesting but I''m not dying to go back there every day for an hour.

On Friday I went to the office of the company I''m here with to try and sort everything out and we have agreed that I am only spending 2 weeks in Siem Reap (I can see me getting up there, there being nothing to do and leaving after 2 days in reality but if there is something to do, I can stick it out on my own for that long). I am still trying to get hold of the UK people too though and trying to sort out the appartment mess but I think one of the girls I''m living in Apartment 2 with are just going to pack up and take all our stuff over on Wednesday because there will be 2 spare beds.

After we were all done on Friday we went out for dinner before meeting up with the guys from the other appartment. Dinner was really good (pizza, yes!) and then we tried to find a bar to go to while we waited for the others. Christie (one of the other girls I live with) and I saved two British guys from a crazed tuk-tuk driver who wasn''t leaving them alone and were clearly new to Phnom Penh. After that we could only find expensive places so decided to head in the direction that they went in in hopes of finding somewhere that British people go and walking along the street I bumped into one of the other Deloitte scholars. He was based in the Nottingham office but we had our final interview together. Cambodia clearly isn't the middle of nowhere. He was out there with the people being harassed so they all joined us and the people from the other appartment. We all went to Art Bar before going to Lounge which is a bar with a club upstairs and then we went onto the famous Heart of Darkness, Phnom Penh''s best club. A good evening was had by all and it was nice to get out. 

We all had a nice long lie in on Saturday morning and then went shopping in central Phnom Penh in the day. We started off in Russian Market where I got most of the touristy things I wanted (Heart of Darkness, Angkor Beer & TIn TIn Au Cambodge tshirts, a bag, plus some tops) before heading on to Central Market and Sorya which is a big shopping centre. Lorraine (another girl who is out here) bought a tarantua and everyone, except me, tried a bit of it. I was perfectly happy sticking with not eating meat and not breaking that to try a nasty, hairy spider. Apparently it tasted like fish. We also all got pop tarts for breakfast in the week and beer.

Because 2 of the people from the other appartment were leaving this week, we went out for dinner again last night and then back to Art Bar. Dinner was at a restaurant called Friends where they train street kids to be waiters + the food was really good. While we were in the tuk-tuk on the way to Friends we got caught in the middle of a massive thunderstorm which involved a lot of heavy rain. When we got into the restaurant there was about 6 inches of water on the street. When we left, it was about 2 and a half feet deep on the pavement and the people running the restaurant kindly informed us that people weren''t leaving because the sewers had leaked into the water on the street. Great. We were stranded in the restaurant and the water wasn't going anywhere anytime soon so we had to brave it. We had to cross the street in it and by that point it was knee deep. It was also dark and you couldn't see more than about 10cm into the water because it was so murky and dirty. Things also kept getting trapped around your ankles while you walked. It was so so horrible and not something any of us are going to forget any time soon. All the locals kept looking at us and pointing and laughing. We must have looked pretty pathetic - 20ish foreigners wading through the water and shouting and screaming. After that, Lorraine and I decided we weren''t in the mood for Heart of Darkness so headed home. On the way back in the tuk-tuk our driver, who was clearly off his face, drove through an area where the street was still flooded and nearly broke his motorbike doing so. We were in the middle of the road so it would have been about waist-deep walking through it on that road so we got a bit panicy. Luckily we got through and got lots of sleep last night while the others carried on + saw loads of the people we saw last night. They seemed to have a good time but there weren''t as many as the night before and they came back earlier so I don't think we missed too much.

Tonight we went to VIP Sports Club which is basically a pool and tennis courts. Naturally in this sort of weather we were not playing tennis. Instead, we spent the day lying by the pool/swimming which was really nice. I definitely have a tan now but I am also a bit burnt. Not so good. I am surprised I lasted this long without burning properly though and it''s the sort of burn that is going to go brown afterwards. Tonight we''re having dinner at home and then it''s back to our projects/orphanages etc tomorrow.

On Tuesday morning I got taken around the Royal Palace in the morning and then the National Museum and Wat Phnom in the afternoon. The Royal Palace was gorgeous. It was really pretty and chilled out although we were there on one of the hottest days so walking around outside inbetween pagodas was not fun! The national museum was pretty but they just seemed to have stolen a load of stuff from Angkor Wat and put it on display so I'm guessing it was like a poor, boxed up version, of Angkor which I'll be seeing a fair bit of later on.

Yesterday I went to Toul Sleng S-21 Genocide Museum and then the Killing Fields. That was pretty harrowing. The museum was a lot more graphic than anything at Auschwitz - there were paintings of people being tortured and pictures of the corpses the Vietnamese found when they invaded in '79. My subtle-as-a-brick guide kept laughing at stuff to start with and then explained the pictures in great (too much) detail to me which really annoyed me. My tuk-tuk driver left for the Killing Fields without him in the afternoon so I got to go round on my own which I prefered until he turned up at the end.  That was pretty gruesome. They had one stupa in the middle which is filled with shelves and shelves of skulls that they found in the mass graves. I'd heard about it from various tourist books etc but nothing really explained the scale of it. The shelves went up for about 5m and were about 2.5x2.5m plus were really full. It was harrowing stuff. Walking around it was also pretty gruesome. The pits which made up the mass graves are still there with little signs/monuments to the dead but as you walk along you can see bits of bone sticking out of the dirt on the pathway. I don't think that is something I am going to forget in a while.

Last night we went for dinner at Apartment 1. It was nice to meet everyone else but it pissed us off as their apartment is way nicer than ours and closer to the centre. Hopefully I'll be moving into it or the one next door soon. I am having a chat with the guy in charge here in Cambodia tomorrow and if he doesn't tell me I'm moving soon, there will be trouble. I also had my first link to home. There is a girl in A1 who lives in Lewisham, went to St. Dunstans and is going travelling with people I know. Janey - do you know Rose?

I am having to decide whether I want to give up on my third month out here with the company completely and just go travelling with other people (Charlotte might be finishing about that point and we could go traveling around India together which would be amazing!) or go to India early to start teaching.

Next weekend, I am going to go to Vietnam for 2 weeks. We spoke to some of the girls who have just come back from there and it sounds amazing. In our appartment, we are currently going through all our magazines ripping stuff out to get made for us in Hoi An where there are great, cheap tailors plus amazing beaches. Can't wait. It'll blatnatly fall through now but I'm excited about it at the moment.