Day 4 - Pub Street

Day 4 - Angkor Wat

Day 3 - Cambodia and New Hope school

Day 4 - Angkor Wat

Possibly the best day so far, started with a 4.30 start to try to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, unfortunately was cloudy so didn't get to see it but Angker Wat, Angkor Thom and the Jungle Temple were amazing.

Tried the Cambodian dish Amok which is amazing, also beef and red ants which is equally as good.

Our group which had been a bit quiet so far went out tonight to have dinner and a few drinks to get to know each other a bit better which was interesting to say the least. The 2 Japanese girls (Aiya and Yuni) got a little bit too drunk which was good because it brought them out of the shells for the first time. We ended up on Pub Street at a night club which was cool, all Western music and had buckets, which is basically a bucket full of vodka and red bull (very dangerous), the girls were a little worse for wear. Fiona stole some pizza from someone eating at a restaurant on the way back, the evening ended with swimming in the pool (in our underwear) at 1am!

Not too much of a late night as we got a bit concerned for some of the girls (falling asleep and Aiya kept head butting everything including the table and my chest)! and also we have a 7 hour public bus ride to Phnom Penh ahead of us tomorrow and no one particularly wants to take that with a hangover.

Best day so far!

Day 3

Today was a long very ingesting day. Started off at 6.30 with a 4 hour bus to the Cambodian border. It's amazing the difference between the 100m walk across, Cambodia is noticeably poorer. Then a 2 hour bus ride to Siem Reap to our hotel for the next 2 nights (it has a pool so I'm happy).

Tonight we went to a school called New Hope in a village which was built in 2011 to replace the "shack" they previously learnt in. It is quite scary how they live but they are all so happy! We were thrown into a classroom at the new school to talk to the kids so they could practice their English (which is amazing by the way). Unfortunately the teacher decided to make us sing which was interesting. 2 of the girls I spoke to, 1 wants to be an English teacher and the other an engineer which I thought was amazing. And for some reason they want to visit Camden market!

This was followed by an awesome meal at the restaurant at the school. Some very interesting foods including cricket, which I thought were epic.

Then back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool and an early night as we've got a 4.30 start to try and catch the sunrise at Ankor Wat.

Day 2

Today started with haggling with a tuktuk driver. Saw a few military en route to the Grand Palace but nowhere near as many as I thought there would be.

Got to the Palace and immediately greeted by locals trying to con me that it wasn't open and offering to take me elsewhere, this happened 4 times even outside the gate when I could see people walking in.

Eventually worked my way in and had to wear pajama bottoms to cover up my legs (nice), didn't realise they were that pale ;-).

The palace was amazing, I don't think my pictures can do it justice. Met a nice bloke from tup North (Liam), who's been here a month and said you never get used to the heat (great)! Had to go barefoot a couple of times, not sure how the soles of my feet didn't burst into flames walking on the red hot ground.

Got back to the hotel and met my roommate for the night, Mike from Canada who works as a geologist for an oil company in Calgari and only works 3 months a year! Seems like a nice bloke.

Great start to my trip!

Day 2 - Grand Palace

First day

A fairly uneventful first day, just a long day of travelling. 6 hours to Dubai then another 6 hours to Bangkok. Emirates are awesome though, can't get bored with all the films to watch and got to see the plane take off and land from a camera mounted on the nose, pretty cool!

Dubai airport is pretty amazing, had to get a train between gates in the same terminal it's so big.

Walked out the airport in Bangkok and started sweating immediately, can't believe how hot and humid it is. 35 degrees when we landed, felt about 45 though.

Hopefully go and see some sites tomorrow before the tour meeting. But for today I'm just going to crash as didn't sleep much on the plane and the curfew starts in an hour.

Woohoo

Start of my trip must commence with a beer.

Thank you to everyone for your help and advice getting to this point. I'll miss you all very much but will be coming back with some amazing experiences and stories!

Today's the day

Hi all, today's the day i leave. Got to say, I'm a little nervous, more so about being away from everyone for so long.

I'll try my best to keep this blog upto date but can't guarantee as not sure how often I'll have access to wifi.

See you all in October!