I travelled with Liz to Kampot by share minibus (four to three seats,
about 26 overall in a 15 seater) where we spent a night in an
unexciting but nice guesthouse. Oh yeh - the colour scheme in our
room was nice - fleecy deep purple bedcovers with satiny cerise pink
pillowcases and vibrant yellow towels folded on the end of the bed.
Nice. Kampot was a small town that has a regular but not too huge
tourist trade. Most tourists who pass through here are heading to
Bokor National park for either a day trip or an overnight. We were
offered this trip several times. It was a nice
place to wander and the river side road while different, was
reminiscent of Kratie. We had an Angkor beer in the one restautant
we could find across from the river and watched the blue river (not
brown like I have got used to seeing rivers) and the delicate but
stunning sunset that sank behind the blue horizon of the hills in the
National Park. This is quite a change for Cambodia where for t
he most part the landscape is unrelentingly flat and now well into
the dry season also evry arid. Brown dust is prevalent, not just
along the unsealed roads. The few fields that are irrigated and
planted with vibrant green rice or other vegetables stand out like an
oasis in the desert.

Kampot has a small busy market but we didn't really explore for long
as we wandered along relatively wide red dirt roads where simple but
nice houses lined the sides and a couple kids played with string and
rubber inner tubes and other wonderful creative toys. Back to the
river and then to our taxi which we had managed to get for $5 to Kep.
The town is only 25 km and half an hour away but there appear to be
no regular buses and the moto riders and taxi drivers have a monopoly
on the route. $5 was very good as the average on offer was $10 which
was just completely ridiculous. But it was a pleasant drive out
there. The roadside seemed like one long horizontal picture
interjected with vertical images...palm trees, poles, a house, a
bicycle with a lady cycling, a white cow some water buffalo....and
still the flat sealed road went on through the flat brown fields. We
arrived at our guesthouse and they had a room, upstairs with a
balcony. The place was about 3km before the '
town' though we never quite made it there and what we saw were a few
houses. A Norwegian man staying at our place said he had looked
around with his moto rider and there wasn't really a town, there were
not really any shops to speak of, no bank and the post office looked
as if it hadn't been used in about 20 years. Probably true. All
along the road there are burnt out homes that were part of the
colonial history of Kep where the rich used to come down to enjoy the
seaside. Apparently it was during the Khmer Rouge that the place was
destroyed, though whether the elite used it themselves, it was
symbolically destroyed or it was just looted by impoverished and
desperate locals during the famine under the Khmer Rouge in the late
70s is not completely certain. The guide book suggests that a
combination of factors is the most reasonable assumption.

Our 'Seaside Guesthouse' was literally by the sea. There was no
beach to speak of but the sea came up near the wall by the edge of
the guest house where there were about 5 thatched wooden platforms
where hammocks were strung. What a great place to chill out. We
stayed 2 nights but could easily have stayed longer! I had bought a
hammock in Phnom Penh so enjoyed getting the opportunity to use it
there! I also learnt a good way to tie it up. We went out to an
island the second day and I strung up my hammock between two palm
trees and relaxed! Very nice.

We got a taxi to Kampot and stayed in the same taxi as it became a
share taxi all the way to Sihanoukville. The drive was fine and we
ended up with only four in the car so it was really quite
comfortable! Though travelling in Cambodia is always a sticky
business! We arrived in Sihanoukville to find it heaving with
tourists - mostly Cambodians. We thought it was because it was the
weekend, but later found out that it was also 'International Women's
Day' so we were too overwhelmed with the numbers of people to try and
look for anywhere at the nice beach we wanted to stay at and instead
opted for heading up to the budget enclave at Victory Beach. It was
fine - but late that evening I got antsy and decided that if I could
get a ticket I would leave the next day to head to Thailand. I wasn't
in the mood for a beach day and would just be puttin gin time to get
to Thailand and sort out my massage and diving courses. So I got up
the next morning, arranged a ticket and left for
the boat at 11am after a short walk to the beach and a nice
breakfast with a very good mango shake - lots of good mango in it!
Liz decided that she would leave too and got a bus to Phnom Penh.

So I got the boat at 12 which took about 4 hours to get to the
border. A barrage of moto drivers and pick up drivers stand by the
pier and wait for custom. All at once just before the boat touches
the pier they all start shouting and jump on the boat and try to get
you to go with them. It was so absurd we started laughing! In the
end I got a pickup for 20 baht which I think turned out to be the
cheapest offer around. Not bad. I had met Arjon on the boat, a guy
from the crowd at Siem Reap. We joined 8 others in a nice minibus
just over the border that drove us all the way to Bangkok. Very
easy. We arrived about 10.30/11.00pm. We got a four person room to
share and headed out to KhaoSan road to get some Pad Thai (noodles).
I had missed them! It was funny and yet also very familiar to be
back in Bangkok. I did need to scroll back through a few languages
to find 'thankyou' though and it is taking a little time to readjust
to traffic driving on the left.

I went from Kratie by boat to Kampong Cham and then from there by share taxi to Siem Reap. It is the town at the Angkor temples and the base from where to explore them. It isn''t a cheap thing to do, as a 1 day pass costs $20 and I got a 3 day pass which was $40. However it was worth it and it would be stupid to go there and not pay the money to see one of the 7 man made wonders of the world!! I cycled around the mini tour the first day, motorbiked out to a far temple and round some of the grand tour on the second day and then hired a moto with driver for the third day and saw more of what I hadn't already seen, some about 14km away and then more in the main part. My moto driver also took me to visit the house of a friend who lived in a rural area in a wee wooden house. It was nice to see, though he wasn't there but his sister was.

The temples are really amazing. Any one of them would be very much visited anywhere else, and here there are so many you could run the risk of becoming blase about them. Angkor Wat is the main one and obviously stunning, however there are lots of smaller ones that are great- intricate stone carvings, majestic faces hewn in large rocks, ones where there is a beautiful tangle with nature and man's creations - the jungle's roots entwined with stone archways where the two have become one. A dance of destruction and support.

My firsty guesthouse was okay, but then I moved to the same guesthouse where Amir and Marte were staying. It was nice! The room was wooden (I was sharing with a German / Turkish Kurd girl Nurcan) and there was a communal area downstairs of a bamboo platform with hammocks and cushions on the ground. Very nice. There were quite a few single travellers and we had a nice time hanging out in the evenings. My last night there we sat up playing cards until 1.15am.

I am now back in Phnom Penh - this time staying at Number 10 (next door to number 9) and am sharing with an Australian girl called Liz. In the past month and a half I have had one night by myself! It is cheaper but quite funny when you think about it. I just phoned Nikki and we chatted for 38 minutes (to be exact) and she asked if I had been able to have sace to myself - I think I have had enough. I will soon be ready for some more, but that is more of the need to stop and process for a while. We shall see.

I am heading to the south tomorrow to Kampot and Kep then will head on to Sihanoukville and to Thailand via Koh Khong. About a week left here, or just under.

CAMBODIA

A new country for me. For its people too it is a new country or perhaps an old one, emerging from the ravages of too many years of a too brutal war. It is a poor country and the presence of many donor agencies and fancy AID vehicles brings reminders of other poor nations where there are the contrasting reminders of poverty and investment and help and potential harm. There is the daily struggle of facing poverty in the form of beggars and vicitms of the war with their prosthetic limbs - begging or tryin gto sell you the ever present packets of 10 bad postcards, or photocopied books - many about Cambodia. It is hard to say no, and yet you can't always say yes, and then after spending $4 on a book I feel in turmoil that I am not giving to the boy who runs along by me begging. So I go and eat in the 'Friends' restaurant supporting their wider street kids programme and training young street teenagers, and I buy a book from a man with one leg, and I donate to a childrens hospital who provide free quality healthcare to young Cambodians; and I continue to feel concerned and confused and impotent and passionate. I think what if it was me trying to get some money to feed my children from these people who spend on frivolities and fancies.

Phnom Penh is a small city compared with the major cities of its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. There are lots of motos and cyclos all keen for you to give them some business, but compared with Saigon the streets are over half empty. It's nice. Marte and I arrived and stayed at Number 9 Guest House by the lakeside. A basic room ($2 for a double with shared bathroom) but the plac3e had a nice wooden restaurant / deck/ chillout music and videa and cane armchairs and hammock area. Worth spending a couple nights longer than initially anticipated there.

Walked around a little to get the feel of the place. Visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, which would have been impressive if you could have seen more than a little bit of the silver tiled floor. Most of it was covered with red carpet for people to walk aorund on! It is hot here too - melting weather.

We also visited 'The Killing Fields' and the S21 museum. An old high school that was converted into the most notorious detention centre under Pol Pots Khmer Rouge. It is a sobering look at very recent history in this country where 2 million people were killed, many brutally, during the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. I just finished reading a book 'First they killed my Father' by a lady who was five at the time when the Khmer Rouge took over. If I had been born in Cambodia, 2 months after the takeover, it is very unlikely that I would be alive today. Personalising the inconceivable sometimes helps bring home the shockingness of it all.


I got a boat to Kratie (north /ne up the river from PP) and sat on the roof. It was a good trip and I met a nice S.African girl called Kim. We ended up sharing a room for the next three nights. It is a small town with a central market that was very interesting to walk around and also some nice fruit shale stalls along the top of the river bank at night. However the main reason tourists visit this spot is to go and see the Freshwater Irrawaddy Dolphins. Which we did - twice.

It was great being out on the boat with the engine cut off and floating in the middle of a deep pool in the Mekhong to suddenly hear a deep breath behind you and to turn and see the back of a dolphin. These dolphins don't jump out of the water like bottle nose dolphins but you can see their backs and sometimes a tail too. They are shy, but on the second day there were some only about 10 metres out from our boat. It was great.

We hired a motorbike and I rode us up the river through small villages that live along the roadside. People are very friendly and the kids waved and called out hello and goodbye - a variation on just the hello of other parts. It is always a good way to see a bit more of an area to get a bicycle or motorbike and ride around a little. The houses are mostly bamboo on stilts. Life is very open and shared and kids and adults sits under trees, by stalls in the shade and by the road. I also had a completely chilling out day - we moved to a hotel that was only $5 for a double room and it was new and nice and had satellite TV and a big terrace on the roof that was a great place to ry clothes and sit drinking an Angkor beer and watching the sunset!

I had written about the Mekhong but the computer lost it all. Frustrating but I will now just mention it briefly. I had a good three day tour (yes I went on a tour cause it wa going to be easier with only a couple days to actually see things and not just be figuring out the transport). The last day was crossing the border and finishing up in Phnom Penh (Cambodia).

Fruit market with baskets of pineapple, mangoes, bananas and dragon fruit. Women gathered around under the shade of their conical straw hats, buying, selling and socialising. The river was a km wide at one point with traffic ranging from large cargo boats laden down with building materials to small wooden rowing boats. We visited a small island that grew fruit in orchards and a rice noodle factory and coconut candy factory - both of which were actually quite interesting. We boated up canals under a 'monkey bridge' (narrow bamboo pole across the river) and house boats, stilt houses, flimsy and sturdy houses. We saw people swimming in the river; washing, bathing, cleaning vegetables and meat, boating, working and relaxing - life intertwined with the flow of the river and its seasons.