Sihanoukville - Unexpected Party Town of Cambodia

We arrived at Sihanoukville, which we knew was going to be a beach town, but it wasn't what we expected at all for a place in Cambodia.  The beach was full of westerners and within half an hour of sitting on the beach, Jess, Katie and Charlotte from our group were getting roped into taking part in a Cilla Black Blind Date style game show at one of the beach bars.  They resisted the temptations, but we all decided to go watch - it was Valentines Day after all.

That evening, Steven and Marc had dinner on the beach with the rest of the group (with some amazing barbecued seafood!) and Gareth and Amy went off for a romantic Valentines Day meal!

After the meal, we stayed on the beach for drinks.  

We moved from the restaurant to a bar a few hundred yards up the beach.  After we'd been there a while, the sky decided to put on a lightning show for us!  It was strange though, because there was no thunder, no rain just lightning.  We all pulled up plastic chairs on the shore and sat watching the sky.  After we got bored, we headed back inside the bar, and almost immediately, the thunder and the rain caught up with the lightening and there was a torrential downpour.  Apparently it was the first time the locals had seen rain in months!  The bar obviously wasn't set up for the rain, as we were ankle deep in water!  As we were getting wet anyway, we moved the party outside!

 

At the end of the night, we headed off to find a tuk tuk to take us back to the hotel.  When we couldn't find one, we took the only other option - motorbike taxis!  These were soo much fun, but Steven lost his flip flops on the journey!

  

When we arrived back at the hotel, we had to wake up about six of the hotel staff who were sleeping on the floor in reception.  Very strange.

The next morning, we had to get up at 8am for a boat trip to some islands.  We were all quite hungover.  Steven started leaving the hotel room barefoot, and was like 'oh, I haven't got my flip flops on... wait, I HAVEN'T GOT ANY FLIP FLOPS!!' so spent the rest of the day barefoot.  Lucky we were just on a boat trip.

We did a bit of snorkeling, then headed to an island to relax on the beach and eat some more barbecue food.

Pnomh Penh

In the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, we learned a lot about the genocide that took place in Cambodia not so long ago. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power, led by Pol Pot.  Until 1979, they tortured and killed their own people with the aim of preventing any uprising. 4 million people were killed, meaning 50% of the population was wiped out.

Walking around Pnomh Penh, it's quite noticeable that there aren't many old people - this is because more than 50% of the population are now under 18, with such a massive proportion of the older generation having been killed.

We visited a prison called S-21, where people were either tortured to death, or tortured until they confessed to something they didn't do, before being sent to a killing field to be executed. 20,000 people were prisoners at S-21 during the Khmer Rouge regime, all of whom were killed apart from 12 people who survived by having a talent that made them useful to the Khmer Rouge.

At the prison, we met one of the survivors, Bou Meng, who was an artist and escaped death by painting portraits of Pol Pot. Despite the horrific memories that Bou Meng has of S-21, including the murder of his wife and his own torture, he returns to the prison every day in order to make a living. He even comes face to face with ex-prison guards who carried out torture and killings, as they also return to the prison for interviews with reporters.

Bou Meng

Our tour guide informed us that many members of the Khmer Rouge have not been punished and some are still even in government, but the Cambodian people have to accept this if they want peace.

After the prison, we visited a killing field, where the tour guide told us horrible stories of how men, women, children and even babies were executed.  There were mass graves where bones could be seen below the dirt.

In case you find this blog entry a bit depressing, here's a video of some monkeys playing outside our window in our Pnomh Penh hotel room!:

Siem Reap and Angkor Whaat?

We left Bangkok with the group and headed for the Cambodian boarder, which took about 4 hours. We'd heard that it can be a bit of a nightmare getting across without paying 'extras' to officials, but we had no problems getting through. After the formalities at the border we headed to Siem Reap.

In the evening we all went to a local Khmer village by tuk tuk for dinner- a five course meal cooked by a local family. Before we ate we had a tour around the village, which was very rural and so different to city life. The food was great (the best Amok we've had) and the people were friendly.

The following day we got up at 4.30am (!!) to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat (Wat = temple).
After a sleepy start, we headed to Angkor Wat in the dark and grabbed a coffee, served by a little boy called Spider Boy. In Cambodia, children only go to school for half a day, so a lot of them work the other half to earn money for the family.

Despite the mass crowds who were also there to catch the spectacle, the sunrise was awesome and just about worth getting up so early for! Once Marc had taken over 75 photos of the sunrise, we headed back to the hotel for breakfast (and a nap) and then went back to Angkor Wat to look around 3 different temples.

The first temple was called Ta Prohm (or Jungle temple), made famous by the Tomb Raider movie. It was built in the 12th and early 13th Century, so was pretty cool to look at and climb around. At one point we stopped for a group photo , only to be photo-bombed by a load of asian tourists who then proceeded to take loads of photos of us! They love westerners apparently.

We then headed to the main temple, Angkor Wat, for a look around it in the daylight.  It's the largest Hindu temple in the world, built in the early 12th century, so pretty old! We headed to one final temple, but by then we were all templed-out.

One of the streets in Siem Reap was called Pub Street, which sounded like our sort of place. There were quite a few bars to choose from, so we decided to sample a handful of them along with 4 girls from the tour group. One of the bars was called Angkor What? Genius.

We got back to the hotel at around 4.30am, and had  to check out at 11.15am the next day to get a 6 hour bus to Phnom Penh with a stinkin' hangover. Ugh.