The Adventures of Morris: Cambodia

Sorry, Nick forgot to add the latest installment of Morris. Here he is chilling at Bayon, the temple of faces.

People having wedding photos at the same time as Morris

Thailand: Katchanaburi & Erawan National Park

We escaped the hustle and bustle of Bangkok to the more countryside town of Katchanaburi, which is famous not only for its fantastic waterfalls but also for its bridge on the river Kwai, in which during its construction approximately 13,000 prisoners of war reportedly died through forced labour.

We stayed a little out of town in the countryside with an old hippy who had some amazing stories of his travels and building various hotel resorts around the world.

The next day we caught the local bus to the 7 tier waterfall at Erawan.  This was to be our second encounter of mass Russian tourism, they were everywhere in the most unflattering attire, I mean it was hideous....  Then to top it all off they would insist of doing the most provocative of poses for photos as though they were taken part in a photo shoot for mens (or womens) magazine.  It was haunting, but once you looked past that (which was pretty hard) we enjoyed some of the most best waterfalls we had ever seen.  Oh and I forgot to mention the skin-eating fish which would wait in a shoal for you to enter the pools, then go to town on your feet and there were some big ones in there.

The foot-muncher caught on camera (small) 

This was not the last time we would encounter the Russians!!!

Thailand: Bangkok

Border crossing  into Thailand was super simple and then we endured the worst minibus driving ever on the road to Bangkok, it was mental.  I think we spent most of our journey on the wrong side of the road or swerving around the smallest holes.

We were glad to get to the biggest city so far in one piece.  We checked into our hotel and planned the next couple of days in Bangkok.

The next day was probably the biggest shopping day I have ever experienced in my life!  We headed out to the biggest market I have ever seen which sold a variety of things including animals. Unfortunately we were pretty disappointed with the quality of most of the products but we did buy some of our best smoothies yet, which were gigantic!  Afterwards we headed to another crazy indoor market, which all the fakes you could get your hands on (but poor quality again), then were amazed at the craziness of the Christmas decorations/festivities around the main shopping centres.

The best egg wrapped pad thai 

The following day we headed into the old town to check out Wat Pho's huge golden reclining Buddha. We then headed back towards the skytrain where we got hopelessly lost in Chinatown.  After wandering around in the heat of Bangkok for hours we decided to spend the evening watching The Hobbit in probably the best cinema we'd ever been too.  The seats were reclining and they even had sofas at the back.



I'll also add here that we returned to Bangkok 3 times before heading up north for the next stage of our journey.  One of nights we spent here I took Rosie to Flowhouse, which we also have in England but a lot more expensive.  The best way to describe it would be a sort of artificial wave generated by jetting 2 or 3 inches of water really fast over a soft matted small hill (a picture might be better...).  Rosie loved it and we spent a few hours surfing, listening to music, drinking cocktails, watching the pro riders and enjoying the atmosphere.

Cambodia: Siem Reap

After yet another bus journey we arrived in Siem Reap, which is probably the unofficial capital of Cambodia and our favourite destination so far.  We splashed out and bought the expensive (for us) 3 day Angkor Archaeological Park ticket (400Km squared) and I think we made the most of it.  It's a fantastic place which encompasses remains of past Khmer capitals from the 9th-15th centuries, so lots of varied architecture.

Day one, Rosie was suffering from a case of "bus air-conditioning cold" so we chilled out at our lovely hostel, played some chess and drank smoothies (which by the way, we have almost every day, because they are so cheap and gewd).


Day two I managed to drag Rosie out of bed at around 4:30am and venture out to Angkor park on our rented bikes.  We decided to spend sunrise at Ta Prohm (a smaller temple made famous in the Tomb Raider film) rather than at the tourist jammed Angkor Wat.  This was a great decision as we had the place to ourselves for about an hour with the eery presence of the tree covered temples.

After this we headed towards the larger temple complex of Bayon whilst stopping at a few other amazing temples onroute.  We then headed North and rode around some of the smaller temples (but no less impressive) before heading back to Angkor Wat to finish.  We were worried at this point the main attraction may seem underwhelming considering all the temples we had seen that day.  Nothing to worry about here, as we turned the corner we were presented with a breath-taking image of one of the world's most famous temples.

Day three was my turn to suffer from the dreaded cold but headed out (admittedly later and by tuk tuk) to Kbal Spean 50km north of Siem Reap.  Then came a rocky climb (which almost finished me for the day) up a dried up river to check out the glyphs and runes underneath the crystal clear river.  Once we got back down I thought it best to collapse in a hammock and sleep for an hour while Rosie chatted to our tuk tuk driver.  We stopped at some other temples on the way back and our driver bought us some sticky rice balls with a sugar centre covered in coconut shavings, which were amazing.

Next day was another rest day, but the day after we headed out into the countryside to look at a few more temples (crumbly ones) and the stilt houses built to deal with the yearly floods.  Lots of drying fish in the sun here, which smelt awful.  Our tuk tuk driver bought us another food gift of sticky rice and black in a char-grilled bamboo stalk, yummy.

Then it was off to Thailand!!!

Cambodia: Kampong Cham

We were recommended to stop off in Kampong Cham on the way to Siem Reap by a "famous" Dutch journalist who we encountered many times in Cambodia.

To be honest there wasn't lot happening in the town.  We rented bikes and cycled to another island across a cool bamboo bridge, which the Cambodians rebuild every year after the monsoon season.  It was pretty weird to ride on as it flexed underneath us, but it capability to support cars reassured us.  Again we ended up saying our "Hellos" loads more times and watched some kids playing a strange game with a chicken... Don't really know what was going on...

We then spent a lovely evening in, ordered some Pizza (our first western food in ages) and watched Harry Potter...  Thank you HBO!

Cambodia: Kratie

Lets try and keep this one a little shorter...

Originally we had planned to head to Battambang before Siem Reap, but instead decided that we needed a dose of countryside and wildlife after the city, so we headed to Kratie.  Kratie is a small town on the Mekong famous for its countryside but most the elusive Irrawaddy river dolphin, which wasn't really that shy.

The only picture of a dolphin we got.

First we hired bicycles and took a ferry over to a nearby island in the Mekong.  We cycled round it which provided an insight into the workings of rural Cambodia and showcased the friendliness of the Cambodian.  We must have said "Hello" and waved to over a hundred kids that day.

The VERY friendly boat driver.

Afterwards we cycled up the river 16km to where the river dolphins resided.  We were a little worried about the sustainability of the tourism practices, but it turned out that there were only a couple of boats out on the water viewing the dolphins so we decided to join them.  We then tied up at a stanchion of a previous bridge and sat and watched the dolphins (which looked more like porpoise), some even came pretty close.


We then spent the evening fighting off the swarms of insects which occupy Kratie's guesthouses.

Bat Update

Turned out the pool had more perks than we thought as we found ourselves accompanied by bats, gleaning the surface around us during an evening swim. Pretty wild experience for the middle of a capital city...