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!