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.

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