Cambodia Review

Cambodia has been a lot like Peru back at the beginning of the trip; I didn't know very much about the place as I entered but I have loved it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the history of this country and I want to learn more about it when I get home. I have also enjoyed the food again and the people have been really friendly too. On a side note, Nads and I haven't spotted a single McDonalds anywhere, a first on the whole trip!

It's on to Vietnam tomorrow for the penultimate (Last but one) country of my trip. The only thing I am hoping changes is that the temperature drops a little bit, 35°c+ is a little to hot for me to handle.

In The Photo: 'Friends' is a great restaurant in Phnom Penh and not just because it serves amazing food. It is a non-profit business that puts it's money into training and paying young adults that used to live on the streets of the country. Once they have been fully trained they can stay on as teachers or go to work in other restaurants around the city. It is a great way to help some of the many youngsters in Cambodia who don't often get a chance to get off living on the streets.

One Direction Watch {Cambodia}

Those 1D boys were saved on the very last day from escaping an 'absolutely no trace' status for Cambodia!

Once again it has been a country where I have heard more Westlife than One Direction but on the way back to our hostel today I heard 'What Makes You Beautiful' playing in a restaurant I walked past. That has been the only sign of them though.

Road Travel

Ask most people what they know about transport in Asia and, generally, they will say that it's famous for being a little crazy. So far on this trip, Cambodia is staking a claim to be the craziest of the lot!

After a number of trips about the country I have to say that it's not exactly clear which side of the road people drive on. Obviously, there is an actual side but vehicles spend so much time overtaking one another that each journey is littered with vehicles driving head on towards one another resulting in braking or swerving by one or both drivers!

Then there are the horns, I just don't get the horns. To begin with I thought they were used as warnings but they get beeped when there is nothing to beep at and at other times I thought it might be a bit of road rage, but there are so many horns literally every few seconds on a busy road that they have no effect anyway, they just become background noise.

Ahh, road travel in Cambodia. I won't forget you.

Change of Plan

A change in the way India now does it's visas means that Nads and I won't be stopping there on the trip. It's a bit sad as we won't get to see the Taj Mahal but it also means that we get to see our friends and family a little bit earlier.

A visa's basically a piece of paper that lets you into a country. You don't need them for all countries, some you can get for free and others you must pay for. We couldn't get one before we left because it would have gone out of date before we needed it but it would have cost just over £40 each. Since we have been away, though, India have changed it to over £100 each. Ouch.

Our around-the-world tickets have an option where we can make a change to some flights for free and, considering we were only going to be in India for less than a week, nearly £250 is a lot of extra money to pay so we decided to make the change.

Cambodia's Darkest Hour

Today I visited the building in the photo below, it is a museum now but it has a famous past; starting life as a high school but being turned into a prison called S-21.

In 1975 Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge led by a man called Pol Pot. Within hours of taking over he started moving people from the cities to the countryside to live as farmers and within one week the cities were deserted. The Khmer Rouge bombed banks because they didn't want people to use money any more, they closed down schools because they didn't think people needed educating (This is when the building below became a prison) and they also shut down hospitals. Sadly many, many people didn't survive this because they simply didn't know how to farm properly to make enough food.

Pol Pot also didn't want any intellectuals (Educated, clever people) in his country so he arrested every teacher, doctor, lawyer and politician his soldiers could find and put them in prisons like S-21. The soldiers even arrested anyone wearing glasses or having soft hands as this was seen as a sign of intelligence! Those that were arrested also had their whole family captured too and had to stay in prison until they admitted they were spies. If they didn't admit to this (They rarely were spies) the soldiers found ways to force the prisoners to say they were. Once they had said they were they were killed with their family.

Unfortunately this lasted for nearly four years until other countries found out what was happening and in that time 3,000,000 people lost their lives. Cambodia is not the biggest country on the planet so that works out at more than 1 in every 4 people!

It may seem weird to think of turning places like S-21 (Or even the concentration camps in Germany) into museums about times like this but the Khmer Rouge is a big part of Cambodia's history and it is agreed that keeping these places open means that no one will ever forget those that died and it will help stop someone like Pol Pot ever being in control again. What do you think?

A Bit More About Cambodia

Apart from what happened here in the 1970's, which I will blog about in the coming days, I was aware that I didn't actually know too much about Cambodia. I thought that I'm probably not the only one so I had the idea of doing a bit of reading and writing a short history of the country for those that want to learn a bit more...

It's in the year 802AD where things kicked off as Jayavaraman II started calling himself 'Universal Monarch' (I have no idea what happened to Jayavaraman I!?) and built the first temples. All was going swimmingly until important people started falling out.

In the 10th century, Suryavarman I took charge and brought everyone back together and in the next century Suryavarman II reigned. He asked for Ankgor Wat to be built and started wars with his next door neighbours, Vietnam. Vietnam fought back though and killed him in the end, obviously annoying the Cambodian royal family a bit.

Years later one of the murdered kings cousins created an army that beat the Vietnamese. After winning he made himself King Jayavarman VII. This guy was a big fan of buildings and set about building loads more colossal structures near Angkor Wat (Including the Terrace of the Elephants in the photo). He got a bit carried away though and spent all the countries money on it! Eventually word got out there was no money left and the Angkorian Empire fell and 150 years of war with Thailand began.

Then, for nearly 300 years smaller kings (As in not very powerful. Not as in not very tall!) ruled Cambodia but had to do what Thailand or Vietnam said. Then France arrived and weren't very nice. They basically made the king sign things to say Cambodia was no longer it's own country but actually part of France (A colony). Cambodians weren't very happy with this so there were a couple of years of fights but after that it was all a bit quiet until the end of World War II.

In 1953, King Sihanouk began a royal mission to make Cambodia it's own country again and was successful later that year. In 1965 the same king fell out with America because he thought they were after him, this led to the Americans bombing Cambodia and killing thousands. 1970 saw the king visit France and while he was away two people took power from him, one of them being his cousin!

This led to the horrible things that happened to millions of Cambodian people in the 1970s. Since this period ended in 1999 things have been much quieter and the country has tried to get back to normal. Twenty-first century Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in Asia but is slowly getting back up again after being knocked off of it's feet a few times and the people that live here are looking to a better future.

There we have it; a brief history of Cambodia. I enjoyed learning all of this and I hope you did too.

Angkor Wat

Today I visited the world famous Angkor Wat site, it is so iconic that the building behind me features on the Cambodian flag! We got up super early (4:30am) to go and see the sunrise and then spent about 5hrs wandering around this and surrounding sites.

Angkor translates to 'Capital City' and Wat means 'Temple' meaning that this construction was the main religious building in the country when King Suryavarman II ordered it to be built around 800 years ago and it stands out because of it's 65m high towers that were built to look like lotus flowers.

There were so many buildings and temples to explore, many were still being rescued from the jungle that had swallowed them up after centuries of neglect (At Ta Phrom there are still many huge trees with roots as thick as tree trunks wrapped around the carved rocks) and at Angkor Thom there are massive faces carved in stone and a long construction called 'The Terrace of the Elephants' where huge images of elephants are carved into the walls and columns are made to look like trunks. It was fascinating to look around the ruins of a culture I know so little about and I definitely want to learn more about the Khmer.

Entering Cambodia

Today I travelled by bus from Bangkok in Thailand to Siem Reap in Cambodia, the 10th country of the trip. It was a bit weird crossing the border on a coach trip as everyone has to get off and go through one passport place to leave the country you started in and then wander a short distance to go through another passport place to enter the next country before getting back on the bus again!

My first impressions of Cambodia are that it's really flat! Fields strech as far as the eye can see and I haven't seen anything close to a hill yet. There are also loads of bicycles and motorbikes and not many cars on the roads.

Just like Chile, the money could give me brain ache here. There are roughly 6000 Cambodian Reils to just £1 and to make it even more confusing most places take US dollars but give you your change as a mix of dollars and reils. Ouch to the maths!

In the photo: You can see our rucksacks on a tuktuk ride to the guesthouse we're staying in. The first tuktuk ride of the trip so far.

One Direction Watch {Thailand}

Shocking news...in Thailand I heard more Westlife on the radio than 1D! In fact, I didn't hear a single snippet of the 1D boys in my entire 19 days while I heard Westlife 3 times!

I did spot one lonely T-shirt in the distance at a market but, to be fair, K-Pop (Music from South Korea, like Psy) is very popular here and listened to much more than western acts so that may explain it....still trying to work out the popularity of Westlife though :-S

Street Food

This is a photo of one of the most delicious streets in the world. The buildings aren't made from biscuit and the pavements aren't marshmallow but this road in Thong Lo (Pronounced "Tong-Low") is home to some of the best street food in Bangkok.

Anywhere you travel, street food is always worth checking out because it's always cheap and made fresh. The hostel I am staying in is on this street and I look forward to every dinner time with great excitement as I walk past each brightly-lit stall and choose something on offer as my stomach rumbles excitedly.

Tonight I had a delicious meal of crispy pork with rice (£1.00). The rice was steamed perfectly and covered with a delicious brown-coloured sauce while the many pieces of pork melted in my mouth while I crunched through the perfectly crisp crackling too. For pudding Nads and I tucked into some warm, sweet sticky-rice and mango (£1.20). The mango was so fresh and juicy and the thick coconut milk poured over the top added to the sweetness. I have read that this stall sells one of the best versions of this dish in the whole of Thailand, it's hard to disagree.

Some of the other mouth-watering dishes from this street include pieces of barbequed chicken sticks to dip in a peanut satay sauce from just 50p, gut busting fried dough balls topped with sesame seeds and served with condensed milk and Thai custard dips at only £1.00 for a bagful and traditional Pad Thai, a meal of yummy noodles mixed with fresh shrimp, herbs and fried egg priced at just at just under £1.50!

I might leave this street weighing a bit more than when I entered it but with so much amazing food to sample in such a short time who can blame me?

My Thailand Review

If New Zealand and Australia were about the wildlife then Thailand has most definitely been about the food. I went on my cooking course, ate a lot of different street food and while I certainly haven't been brave enough to try everything I have eaten insects (One thing I managed to avoid was durian fruit...it smells so much like vomit that it's banned on public transport!)!

It was also been great spending time with Reuben and Bex again. Meeting up in Sydney was fun but to experience a festival like Songkran with them over a good few days was fantastic. Thailand is also the first country on the trip where the first language doesn't use the same alphabet as the UK so it was great to have friends from home to experience this with.

I experienced a lot of Asian culture here too and as Buddhism plays a big part in many peoples lives there were so many temples. It was amazing to see how colourful each one was and the amount of time and effort that had gone in to decorating each one with colourful tiles, paint and precious materials like pearl and gold. It really has been a very colourful country and I would love to come back again one day.

For now though, next stop Cambodia!

In The Photo: This is quite literally one of the coolest ice-creams ever. In another food adventure I found a stall in a Bangkok mall that made ice-cream by taking the flavour liquid you want and adding liquid nitrogen! Liquid nitrogen is a chemical that is so cold it BOILS at -196°c and in the process freezes anything it touches! It was one of the smoothest ice-creams I've ever had.

Odd Yoghurt & The Lesser Spotted Knife

While waiting for our bus back to Bangkok, my friend Reuben purchased a yoghurt snack for his girlfriend, Bex. He bought it thinking it was tropical flavour but it turns out that although it could perhaps be described as 'exotic' it certainly wasn't tropical. What you can see below is the unusually flavoured... sweetcorn and kidney bean flavoured yoghurt!

In other, food related news Nads and I went out for a pizza and saw a knife next to a fork. You might not think this is very unusual at all (Pretty standard probably) but it was literally the first knife either of us had seen in Asia! We have seen plenty of chopsticks, plenty of spoons and plenty of forks but not one knife anywhere since Australia.

Songkran 2013

Songkran is easily the most fun I've ever had at a New Years celebration, the whole festival is a days long water fight on the streets of Thailand!

Absolutely everyone gets involved, armed with water pistols or a bucket, and the sole aim is to get as many people as wet as possible! I have soaked and been soaked by; businessmen, little children, police, backpackers and anybody else who's about. The most amazing thing is that nobody gets annoyed, everybody is smiling and laughing with one another (Even when it's ice cold water that takes your breath away!). It's a really happy celebration.

Did You Know?: Getting wet in Songkran symbolises washing away the previous year and welcoming in the new rainy season for Thailand.

Crunchy

Here's a photo of me tucking into a local delicacy, a cricket! I was a little bit nervous before trying it but it actually tasted ok and I ate a second. It had a crunch to it that was no different to a potato crisp and the vendor selling them dusted them with some chilli powder and sprayed on a bit of fish sauce so they were quite tasty, if a little bit too fishy for my own tastes.

They lady that sold them did have a good laugh at the group of us that had brought them though. We were all taking photos of us trying them but eating insects here is no more unusual than seeing someone eating a packet of crisps in the UK.

Did You Know?: They say that if the world's population keeps growing so quickly it won't be many years before we are all eating insects. This is because they take up much less room than cattle etc., there are so many of them and they are actually really good for you (They contain a lot of protein).

Happy New Year!

Tomorrow marks the official start of Thailand's New Year celebrations, or Songkran as it known here. Traditionally Thailand used a different calendar to what we use and the New Year according to the old calendar is still celebrated to this day.

To join in with the celebrations Nads and I are travelling up to Chaing Mai on a night bus tomorrow with our friends Reuben and Becky from uni. It should take 8-12hrs to make the journey but it is supposed to be the top place in Thailand to celebrate.

In Bangkok things have already started with places like family businesses and post offices closing until the 17th. We visited Wat Pho today and saw the world's largest reclining Buddha which is 45m long (You can see that it wouldn't all fit in one photo!) and has a smile that's 5m across! With Songkran approaching, the Wat Pho site was crammed full of stalls selling foods and souvenirs and there was even a traditional Thai band playing music, it feels very exciting to be in Thailand at this time of year.

Every Little Helps..

Look what I spotted on the way out of a train station! Since spotting this one I've seen a couple more plus some 'Boots' chemists and a 'Body Shop'. Could almost be like home.

Currently trying to decide whether to go up to Chaing Mai or down south to the beaches after sampling a bit of Songkram this weekend (Will blog about that in the coming days) but, first, off to visit some friends from home. They're travelling longer than Nads and I but our trips overlap slightly, we last saw them in Sydney so it will be good to catch up.

Thai Cooking

Today Nads and I delved into the world of Thai cooking by going on a cookery course with a Thai lady called Angsana. We started off visiting a market to pick up all the fresh ingredients and there was so much happening, lots of colours and smells.

After that, we went to Angsana's house to prepare our food. Before we got there we had to pick three different meals from her generations-old family cookbook and we went for a chicken massaman curry and two noodle meals; pat mii gatii and the famous pad thai. It was great learning to cook authentic Thai food with someone who was actually Thai and you can see me pounding chillies ready for the curry in the photo.

I learnt lots too and before today I didn't know that if you have phad thai outside Thailand and the noodles are a reddish colour it means they have used ketchup or too much chilli paste and that means it's not been done in the authentic Thai way (The noodles should be a brownish colour because of an ingredient called tamarind). Now I can look very knowledgable next time I'm out for a Thai at home and you can too!

Did You Know?: Most people think that they should use chopsticks when eating rice meals but in Thailand that isn't the case. Thai people only use chopsticks with noodles and actually use a spoon to eat rice. Angsana said it makes Thai people laugh to see tourists thinking they're doing the proper thing when they're struggling to pick up the rice with their chopsticks!

Golden Buddha

This is the largest, solid gold Buddha on the planet. It measures over 4 metres tall, more than 3 metres across and it weighs an impressive at 5.5 tonnes!

It's over 700 years old and it's said to be worth £28,500,000 but they only discovered it was made of solid gold in 1955! It turns out it was totally covered in plaster to hide it's value from those invading Thailand at the time and it was only after it was moved from it's original home to this newer one in Bangkok that the plaster cracked and the discovery was made.

Other Flavours

Ever since I was little I've always had a slight obsession with having to try flavours of brands from home that aren't actually available at home. I remember just having to buy a coke flavoured Calippo I saw for sale on my Y6 trip to Belgium, for example. I don't know why, maybe I just want to see if what we're missing out on is delicious or disgusting!

Here are two things I had for my lunch that I picked up from a supermarket; a fruity fizzy drink and some seaweed flavoured crisps. The drink, apart from being very green, was just 'alright'. It was pretty much a fizzy banana drink and it's no loss to you guys at home but the crisps were actually pretty tasty...possibly one for the British supermarket shelves.

Challenge: Even though they are written in Thai, can you work out what the brands are from their logos?

Tickets

Forget those boring paper train tickets you normally get, why not have plastic counters instead? These are what you're given when you pay your fare in the machines near our hostel in Bangkok (We got blue ones back in Kuala Lumpur too).

Tak Bart

Today I set an alarm and got up early to meet some Buddhist monks. The monks live a very peaceful and quiet life in monastries and don't do 'mortal' activities like cooking as they are trying to seek enlightenment. Each each morning they will walk around their village to be given food by the local people, this is called Tak Bart.

Around 95% of Thai people are Buddhist and believe that if you treat people nicely you will go to a better place when you die. As monks are very important and respected people, giving them food so they don't go hungry is a very good deed indeed.

To thank us for our offerings of curry, rice, fruit and water the monks blessed us in Thai and it was very humbling to see such respected people that seemed to be at so much peace.

(Normally it's not considered 'proper' to take a photo of Buddhist monks without their permission, but here they had given their permission to everyone at the resort making offerings)

Thai Massage

My feet got punched, my body got twisted and if I was pressed any harder I think my face would have popped through the other side of the pillow. That was my Thai massage experience and I chose the 'soft' option out of 'soft', 'medium' and 'hard'! I can only guess that the hardest option sees you getting put back together after being twisted into the shape of a human slinky.

However, I have to say that although it was firm, really firm, it wasn't ever painful. It was actually really good, it relaxed me and cured the bad back I've had for weeks too. Thai massage is supposed to be a 'must-do' while in the country and I have to say I agree.

Shark Fin Soup

Sadly, I saw a restaurant selling 'shark fin soup' while wandering through Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown. This meal is just what it sounds like, a soup with a shark fin in it. It's one meal I won't be trying and I am even going to avoid eating in places selling it whenever I can.

To get the fins thousands and thousands of wild sharks are captured each year and many have their fins cut off while they are still alive before being thrown back in to the sea. No other part of the shark is wanted or used. With no fins the sharks are unable to swim and then drown or starve to death in a lot of pain. Just for a soup! Would you cut the legs off of a live chicken and throw it back in the field to die just for your snack?

Not only is it an incredibly cruel way to make a meal but it's also one of the main reasons why so many shark species are becoming or have already become endangered. If you ever see it for sale please think twice about how it's made before deciding to try it.

One Direction Watch {Singapore & Malaysia)

It's official, there is evidence of One Direction on every continent I've visited!

To seal the deal in Asia I heard some of their songs on the hostel's common-room radio as well as spotting some books in a shop and then in Malaysia I spotted some 'I Love 1D' T-shirts in a market.

We know they are known in Europe (Because they're from there obviously) and we know they are known in North America. That just leaves Africa and Antarctica...if they are famous in those two places that means they are known on every continent on Earth!!! World domination would be complete.

Isn't it a bit of a scary thought that you might have someone that thinks they know you on every part of the planet but you have never met 99.9% of those people?!

My Malaysia Review

Just like Singapore I wasn't in Malaysia very long so there's not too much for me to put here really.

Unlike Singapore though, which is full of new and flash buildings, Malaysia seemed to be full of building sites that promised new and flash buildings. On one trip on the train I could spot a different building site bustling with machinery and workers in every block we travelled over.

I'm also starting to get used to the more humid weather when out and about but I have become a huge fan of air-conditioning. If the inventor is still alive I would like to find him and hug him!

In The Photo: This was taken on the train on the way back from The Petronas Towers, slap bang in the middle of Kuala Lumpur rush hour, talk about crammed in!

Would You Drink This?

Just spotted this in a shop. Amazing name!

Twins

Today I took a trip to central Kuala Lumpur to check out one of the most famous modern landmarks in Asia; The Petronas Towers. Both towers are linked together by a bridge and up until 2004 it was the tallest building in the world. It's 451.9 metres tall and has 88 floor plus FIVE basements!

Next Door Neighbours

This is the Sri Mahamariamman temple. It was built in the 1870s which makes it the oldest Hindu temple still being used in Malaysia and it is the centre for Hinduism in Malaysia. It is also right next door to my hostel in the heart of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown.

Did You Know?: The incredibly beautiful roof might look old but it was only added in the 1960s.