Phnom Penh Royal Palace

The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh was not on our list of must-see places because no one comes from Cambodia gushing about it, but like the Everest that must be climbed "because it's there," we paid the fee and went in anyway, hoping to be surprised.

This was after having a nice but expensive breakfast at a restaurant halfway to the palace. We stayed at the restaurant a bit longer than expected, but it was perfectly timed after all because we found out we were just in time for the palace gates to open. We didn't have to wait outside like other early birds.

Scary flower that casts a sweet smell.

Phnom Penh

Going against "tradition", we took a tourist bus from Siem Reap to the capital, Phnom Penh. We couldn't find the local bus stand and the locals discouraged us from taking the ferry because the water level is too low to arrive via the Tonlé Sap. 

It was extremely hot in the morning, but it rained hard after lunch and the remaining four hours were cold and wet. The landscape was extremely flat and lovely lotus ponds trimmed the edges of rice fields. The houses on stilts reminded me of rural houses in the Philippines, and if I didn't know any better I could have sworn I was already home.

We had some ideas about where to stay, but early confusion led us to the new backpacker haunts a few streets away from the quay. We read on the guide that the old backpacker area near the big lake is a relaxing place with a nice view of the sunset to boot; but not one tuktuk guy suggested the lake so we wondered what had happened to it. More on this later.

Our room was oddly designed, it must have been an ordinary room before but the owner retrofitted a bathroom inside so they can rent it for a dollar or two more. The strangest thing about the guest house though, was this sign just on top of the stairs:

Angkor, the Final Encore

The Small Circuit Encore

The Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom temples are so photogenic that we couldn't stop snapping pictures. The ones below are just a fraction of the ruins we explored, climbed, ran over, jumped off from... some of these you might recognize from the Tomb Raider movie!

Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat and the Small Circuit

We were having breakfast at a café when we noticed people running in the street. An American who went out told us there was a fire, and Henri couldn't resist investigating. Go Tintin!

The next day, we woke up early, at 5 am exactly, and found a remorque (Cambodian tuktuk) driver sleeping near the river willing to take us to the Small Circuit.

The first time we went there our still camera went kaput, this morning we could guess better where the tourist trafic would be so we had a plan to avoid the tourist bus crowds.

We started at Bayon, where we planned to catch the first rays of sunlight. Unlike our first visit, there were only 2 other people at Bayon. Everyone was at Angkor Wat, watching the sunrise and going around the different levels of the temple with their loud guides. Here, it was quiet, it was peaceful -- it seemed like we had stumbled into a quiet, undiscovered ruin.

Angkor Big Circuit Part 2 (and then some)

The bad news is, Henri has a bit of a fever. Today we are in Chiang Mai, and I'm half watching over Henri and half watching Star Trek on Syfy... The good new is that I have some time to upload pictures of our Angkor Wat visit, BUT it's still Henri's entry to write, so I'm just here to give you a backstory.

These are the last pictures from our first day on the site. The "Big Circuit" includes the wats (temples) east of Angkor Wat. These are the less touristic temples, so we crossed paths with less tourists in some areas, and sometimes there wasn't a soul at all.

Angkor Big Circuit (May 18)

Sorry this has taken so long, but we've been jumping in and out of buses and guest houses so much recently that we never had much energy left at the end of the day to update.

Henri will write over all this once he regains full panda strength, and tell you all about our adventures on our first visit to the Angkor ruins.

Siem Reap

We decided to rest on our first two days in Siem Reap. After a day like the last (the border crossing), we badly needed to recharge. Wandering around, we tried to acquaint ourselves with Cambodian life, away from the tourist center. The weather wasn't so great when we arrived, but it was sunny enough in the morning, but it rained in the afternoons.

Dried fish in the market. Sophia of the guest house said
this is the food Cambodians like most.

Various spices. They can give India a run for their spicy money!

Went to the other side of the river to see if we can find another place to stay in.

Sitting at the fountain in front of the Raffles.
After some debate, we decided to stay put at the center,
where all the pubs and restos are, and save ourselves a bit of a walk.

Henri took the crappy sunglasses I bought in Khao San the day before.
The woman said it's "not made in China, made in Thailand, made in Thailand better!"
Well one side broke no more than 24 hours later...

DAY 240 - Cheers to Cambodia!

It's not because we've been lazy...

We've been in Cambodia for almost a month and we haven't written one entry about the country
since we got here. But we told ourselves we'll take this leg slowly, "shanti-shanti" 

like our friend Manuel in Langtang would often say; 

and as is often the case when you take things "shanti-shanti", we hardly noticed the days pass.

We read our pocket books, updated the journal, observed people in the street

(people really wear their pyjamas outdoors in the middle of the day!),

Henri ate some bugs, I had a couple of "you look Cambodians"

and we beheld the good, the bad and the ugly of this wonderful country.

So that's where we are today. It's day two hundred and forty. 

3 days before we leave Cambodia for the next stop 

on the Magical Mystery Tour. 

And we can't wait to fill you in on everything!

The Kingdom of Scamalot (a.k.a. The Thai-Cambodia Border)

We've been in Cambodia for 3 weeks, and it's been a really great (almost) month even though it started on a bad note. I felt like going home straight after our experience at the border of Thailand and Cambodia (we crossed via Poipet, the most notorious boder crossing of them all), but I'll give Henri the floor to explain what happened. He can tell it best :)

Ok, en gros on a subi plusieurs tentatives d'arnaques à la frontière entre la Thailande et le Cambodge et nous avons eu le sentiment que si tout était comme si ici aussi, on rentrerait plus tôt à la maison. 

Nous voilà à Bangkok le 14 Mai, un jour avant la fin de notre visa de 30 jours, il est 5h quand nous arrivons et nous trouvons refuge au Mac Do, un des seuls endroits ouvert 24h/24h. Nous avons attendu 1h30 environ avant de regagner la même guest-house où nous étions restés en arrivant un mois avant.

Après quelques heures de dodo, nous faisons le tour des agences de voyage autour de Khao San pour s’apercevoir que tous vendent des tickets "combinés" de Bangkok à Siem Reap direct, pour 250 à 450 Bhats. Nous nous fixons sur une agende qui a l'air d'être là depuis un moment et qui nous fait le ticket à 300Bhats par personne, soit 10 dollars ou 8 euros.
Sachant que le ticket de bus était autour de 200Bahts, on se couche en se demandant comment ils peuvent faire pour vendre des tickets si peu chers.

Take me to "The Beach"

Krabi was our base to go to Sofitel in Klong Muang, and after 3 days of "vacation" from our "jobs" (discovering the world) we went back to Krabi, halfway via Sofitel's luxury tuk-tuk. It was an ordinary tuk-tuk, but it had a bitchin' sound system.

So we were back in Krabi, dropped off at the main street, with its stautes of traffic light-bearing neanderthals, sabre-tooth tigers and wooly mammoths. There was a giant prehistoric crab at the end of the quay, but we failed to take a picture of it. Talk about crabby!

The next day, we went back to Klong Muang for a speed boat to the Phi Phi islands on the Andaman Coast. One of them was the setting for the fictitious island in the movie adaptation of "The Beach" (although it was supposed to be around the national park area around Koh Phangan). Can you guess which island it was from these pictures?

3 Nights of Luxury

As mentioned before, we spent three nights at the Sofitel in Krabi. Just a tiny break from the tiring world of backpacking. It was difficult to find a cheap way to get there, even the tuk-tuk was expensive! But here we were, arriving the only way possible, travelling ten kilometers on a 400 baht tuk-tuk.

We were surrounded by forest in the back...

While in the front we were face-to-face with the stunning Andaman Sea.

We had free cocktails every night because we were given VIP status, and you bet we never missed one day of cocktail hour!

Koh Phangan on a Full Moon

Koh Pha-ngan is notorious for its full moon parties, so even though we only planned to stay there for just a few days, we ended up staying for a week because the full moon was due in 5 days. Then we added a buffer day in case of hangovers and after-parties. 

With 5 days to kill, we hired a bike and went all around the island, discovering secrets very few tourists see because most of them stay on the beach. With just a map and the sun to guide us (the Thais were not so helpful, with a few exceptions, most of them are kind of snobby) we felt like we were on the Amazing Race / Pekin Express. I thought our trekking days where behind us, but with roads as bad as in Koh Tao, we had no choice sometimes. A tiring, but great adventure :)