London arrival

We arrived in London at about 6am London time. We were fairly tired and not in the mood for the dickhead Kiwi customs officer who berrated us at customs. He basically insulted us by saying that Australians were a drain on British society, we contribute nothing, get a British passport and then go home. THen to top it off he banged on about how apparently there were a lot of problems with foreign teachers not being at the same standard as British teachers. What a nobwanker. I'm still not over it. The strangest part was that he himself came over on an Ancestory Visa!

Once I put on my pair of jeans and one lame jacket I had I was mustering some excitement. This quickly dissipated when we got outside at Kensington Tube station and walked to our hotel in the freezing minus 2 degrees temp of 7am London. After 2 months of tropical weather this was a shock to the system. I was so cold I thought my butt was wet! Anyway we spent the day trying to stay awake.

We have now been in England for 3 weeks and are starting to settle in. We moved into the first place we found- boarding at a house owned by a woman in her 30s. She is lovely but hardly ever home so we have free reign which is great.

My first week of school was extremely interesting and I will write more details when my brain is functioning better. Its 1.30 am right now.

We had a lovely Christmas with Tim's Grandparents although we both felt a bit homesick throughout the day missing everyone.

Belated updates. Leaving South East asia

So on the 5th of December finally we were to say goodbye to Cambodia. So the night before we decided a goodbye night at the Angkor What? Bar was in order. We thought a couple of beers and back to our hostel for a good nights sleep before our early bus trip the next day. It didn't quite work out that way. As we were onto our second and what we thought would be our last beer we were joined by a Welsh guy and an Aussie girl with a bucket of redbull and vodka and a bucket of scotch and coke complete with sharing straws. We thought it would be impolite to decline their offer. So long story short we got fairly wasted, at some point Tim helped the Welsh guy climb up to the cieling to write their names and then we stumbled home at about 2.30 or so in the morning leaving our new friends behind. Gareth the Welsh guy was going to Bangkok on the bus the next morning as well. Upon waking up early the next morning feeling like complete shite we vowed never to drink from a bucket again. We were picked up from our hotel and taken to the bus. The bus was tiny, and there were only 2 seats left- so TIm and I were split up for the journey. Bags were in the aisles and there was no air con so all windows were left open for breeze. It was stinking hot and Cambodian roads are all dirt and incredibly dusty. With a hangover I tried to sleep but kept waking to find my mouth full of dirt and my neck sore from the potholy road. It took us about 6 hours or so to get to the Poipet border crossing. By this stage we were buggered and cursing the Welsh guy's buckets and wondering where he was because he wasn't on the bus. We lined up at the border to cross into Ayathua Prathet on the Thailand side. It was hot and smelly and we were all dirty. Crossing the border was fairly simple and quick except for the bus drivers strange systems. We were all given different coloured stickers and not told why but that we had to wear them on our shirts. Once on the other side we were all congregated together (still no understanding of coloured stickers) and told to wait. After about 30 mins we saw our old mate Gary wander over with a coloured sticker on. He then told us that he had actaully partied until 5.30am and slept for an hour then got up and got on another bus that was travelling behind us. So we hung at the border with him commiserating on our shared hungover miseries. after another hour we were led to a bus and then given more coloured stickers with numbers. By the time Tim and I got to the bag are it was full and so the guys said "Just leave it on the ground"- we weren't so sure what would happen to them but were so hot we didn't care and boarded the bus. this bus was much nicer than the last but had been sitting in the sun and was excruciatingly hot. We sat here another 20 mins before actually leaving and no one could figure out why. Things were becoming quite tense as no one knew what was happening. When we did finally leave there was a communal sigh of relief- but we hadn't gotten further than about ten mins down the road when the bus stopped for a half hour break! They make money off commissions so it was no great surprise. So we all sat around eating icecreams and looking more like we were eating frozen poo from Coogee bay hotel we were all so sour at our long journey. while we were there the driver got a call saying someone had been left back at the border so they had to go back and get him. It never ended. Then it took us about 5 hours to drive to Bangkok. When we did get there we realised it was the King's birthday and it took us about 2 hours to get through the traffic to Khao Shan Road where we were being dropped off. The lights of the city for the King were incredibly beautiful- I've never seen anything like it but we were so tired it was hard to care. We eventually found a hostel and ran into old Gary again. So we went and had a great Indian meal with him but this time decided not to involve any buckets!

It was sometime the next day while we were hanging around Kha San Road that we think we must have lost our camera! Damn it!

Anyway we got on our flight to London at about 1am Bangkok time.

Banteay Srei

These shots where taken with the video camera.




In these carvings there are always nagas vomiting some creature or another, often out of all five of their mouths.


Lots of the ancient temples have the logo for chang beer on them

Banteay Srei & Kbal Spean

Kbal Spean plus gecko

The lingas at Kbal Spean




One of the geckos hanging out in our room





I think this is some sort of locally made bio-diesel, you see kids selling it on the side of the highway.

Nature shots

Cock River and other less phallic adventures

So again we started out fairly late. We secured a tuk tuk driver as we wanted to check out this weird temple river bed and another temple that are 50km from Siem Reip but still covered by our three day temple pass. It took about an hour and a half to drive to Kbal Spean or in translation "River of a thousand doodles". Actually the term traditionally used is "linga"which is basically a carved phallic shape symbolising fertility. The trip there was really dusty partly along a dry dirt road. But we observed some interesting country life along the way. Its weird here there are some petrol stations but you can also buy fuel for your motorbike basically anywhere along the road in old pepsi and jack daniels red labels bottles. We watched as this little boy no older than 4 ran out with the bottle and started to fill up the tank. Weird. But I digress again- back to the penis river. We had to walk 1.5 km's through the jungle and up a bit of a mountain to get to the river. The river bed is carved with 1000 of these phallic linga shapes. There are also some carvings of different deities both under the water and on rocks around.It was pretty cool and the jungle walk was beautiful. Tim got to check out some more fungus and interesting insects along the way and used all our camera battery photographing tree trunks.

After this we drove back towards Siem Riep and stopped at a temple called Banteay Srei or the "citadel of Women"". This is a temple dedicated to Shiva and although the temple itself is much smaller than most we have seen the carvings are by far the best. They are incredibly detailed and beautiful.

Now we have one day left in Siem Riep and we intend to chill out. Maybe some beers at a pub followed by fish foot massage! Then off to Bangkok on Friday and hopefully London here we come!

Angkor Wat photos pt3

Angkor Wat photos pt2

The naga statues had a very 'little shop of horrors' look to them


One of the best of the 300 or so monkey photos we have taken

Angkor Wat photos pt1

The Bayon at sunset


The ruins are a sacred site, the 'eighth wonder of the world' and has lots of sign prohibiting flower picking, yelling and wearing sleeveless tops but they also have people wandering around letting their cattle graze, burning rubbish on the side of the road and playing R'nB pop songs at full volume.


Personally I(Tim) found the some trees growing amongst the temples even more fascinating than the ruins. This tree looked so eerily like a Zdzislaw Beksinski painting. I'm pretty sure it was a strangler fig that had been chopped down, had fallen on a pile of stone blocks and then had re-established itself.




We didn't ride any of the elephant/cow/naga statues or take photos of the beheaded budhas with our heads in place, so I think we can get away with this one.

Dead Fish Tower

A bad photo of the Dead fish tower, it is hard to tell form this photo but the place has about 7 levels, with ladders all over the place.


Warning signs near the crocs




We watched someone fork up the 50c to feed them. They were so please with the spectacle that they payed for another 2 lots of fish. The crocs were clambering over each other to get the fish.


The place had a lot of FAQs on the walls, one of them read:
snakehead fish bite?
yes, the biggest one bited us three times.
I'm pretty sure this is the one they were talking about

The temples of Angkor Wat again plus some other ruminations

Today Tim and I have been chasing Thai airlines to see if we can indeed leave next saturday night for London. After calling about 4 different Thai numbers, the Cambodian number and the Australian number for the airline we have been told we have to keep trying this one number for Thailand (that we never get through on) and there is no other way of rescheduling our flight. So we have been in and out of next cafes making calls and getting nowhere! Its getting a little frustrating. If we have to spend Christmas in Phuket that's not so bad but I would like to know about it soon seeing as I'm due to start my new job in a week and a half. Because we have been doing this its made us think more about our arrival in London. I think we are expecting to be shocked by the cold after tropical heat but I think we will also suffer a little culture shock. Its weird how easily we have become accustomed to these very different places. For one ridinng bikes through the crazy traffic of all three countries we've visited is no longer traumatic and I have stopped thinking in road rules and now follow the way of South East Asian roads which appears to be keep riding no matter what, don't give way, don't stop, just keep inching through the hordes of motorbikes, trucks, cars and buses and don't even worry if you're on the wrong side of the road- you are allowed to make your own personal lanes here going in any direction. Going back to the structured control of a road system like that in the UK will trouble us greatly. As will the blandness of bangers, mash and baked beans! Oh well its all an adventure!

So today we took the morning easy (which we have been doing rather stupidly as when we do start the 6km ride to the temples its very hot!). Then we headed out to see the Angkhor Thom temples. Again amazing and there is no point describing them- we will just post some pics.

We rode nearly 30km again and have returned to Siem Riep very sweaty and dirty. Feeling less than clean has become second nature as well. In both Vietnam and Cambodia we haven't been able to get our clothes washed in a machine but instead have been hand washed. There's something a bit weird about letting perfect strangers handwash your undergarments and its even weirder that they will do it for US$1 per kilo! But there isn't mkuch choice- today we got some clothes back that smelt like old tea. I suppose its better for the environment than washing powder but it doesn't make you feel that fresh!

Tarantulas and crickets.

Closest to the camera: fried spiders, on the ground: fried crickets, in the bucket live spiders.


me unable to keep my eyes open in any photo as usual.


You can see one of the street peddlers coming in with another tarantula in this one.





Steph samples a cricket

Angkor Wat

Last night we were tuk tuked out to one of the temples near Angkor Wat to climb up and watch the sunset. Unfortunately it was fairly cloudy and the sunset was less than spectacular. Even worse was the look on our drivers face when we told him we wouldn't need him to drive us the next day as we wanted to hire bikes instead. Oh well can't please them all.

So today we eventually (after a leisurely breakfast and coffee at a bakery that would impress my Dad) set out on our rather dodgy bikes to the entrance to the temple complex. Its about 6 km to the starting point and then about 3 km to Angkor Wat after that. We went the wrong way around the route and approached Angkor Wat from behind which made it seem less impressive but it was also cool because there were less tourists and a whole heap of monkeys. We got some good footage of a couple of monkeys grooming each other.

Angkor Wat was pretty cool- the carved images along all the walls were pretty amazing. After this we biked around (about another 3 or 4 km) to the next temple called (insert name here when I have map with me and can remember). It was more ruins and in many ways more interesting- full of jungle vines and little kids playing amongst the old stones. A little girl tried to sell Tim and bag and when he said no she quickly moved onto her next mission which was to extract lollies in any form from us. We remembered that we had some weird coconut lollies in our bag we bought somewhere in Vietnam and so we emtied a pile into her hands and then attracted a few more kids like bees to the honey pot (is that the right expression?). With handfulls of sugar to rot their teeth even quicker they thought it was Christmas. By this stage of the day the sun was getting low and we wanted to bike back into town before it got really dark. We have a three day pass to the temples so we are taking it fairly slowly and just biking around as we feel like it.

We have tried called Thai airways but no answer. We heard that some planes were leaving the airport and heading to other airports to mvoe poeple out. We aren't sure what that means exactly and will wait until tomorrow to try calling again. Hopefully we will know if we are stuck here or not very soon. At the very least I probably have to inform my new employers that I might not make the start date!