Welcome To Cambodia!

One of mine and Barry's more scenic drives

After a easy boarder cross me and Barry were finally across and in Cambodia, en route to Phenom Penn.I didn't know very much about Cambodia before I came here other than it's expensive and I can see everything in two weeks and most people prefer Thailand or Vietnam to the middleman. All of the above turned out to be very untrue*.

First impressions, lots of litter, but welcome to Asia. But some beautiful statues and things are very modern. Apparently very different from even ten years ago. Then the roads- which I go onto in another post coming. Not as modern as Vietnam, lots more rocks and slopes. But so far so good. Got checked into my hostel, which at $2 was the cheapest Booking.com could offer me in the city...maybe becuase the hostel was right in the middle of the Red Light District. But hey- $1.50 for a cocktail aint bad. I can afford a few mango daiquiris.

During the daytime did all the touristy bits to give me a bit of an insight into the country and I genuinely had no idea about Pol Pot or the ever-so-recent genocide in the country. The Killing Fields and Toule Slang were a tough visit. That evening I decided to try to be a bit social, was feeling a bit low after the days visits. So I'm sitting at the bar with my passion fruit mojito and people finally arrived. Shit- I need to shower. So introduced myself and announced I'd be right back for a bevvie and game of foosball. There was a sign at the top of the stairs saying;

"Danger. Steep. Take care when walking downst-"

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD. And with that I found myself sore, with a broken phone in a heap at the bottom. Later, I would lose my toe nails because of this. Nice one, Becca.

Not having a choice if I want to wake up at sunrise

Home sweet home for 12 days

 Kampot was my next stop! I liked it so much here that I ended up being there for about 12 days. Sleeping in a little hammock for $1  night at the river. I fully embraced the Taco Tuesdays, Riverboat crusies, and the expat community.

There was this one party where me and this Liverpudlian decided to swim the entire river and back- great idea at 2am. Didn't get eaten by any catfish- although did swim back to the wrong place which resulted in a walk of shame along the road to find my clothes...

Inside the abandoned church at the top of Bokor Hills

There's a massive national park called Bokor Hills Station and I imagine a few years ago (before it was brought by the Chinese (a massive problem for Cambodia but that's too political for this blog)) it would've been amazing for exploring but now lots of it had been (badly) redeveloped. But still made amazing for exploring and nice to be up in the cool mountain air again.  They have a casino there too and being the only people (just the three of us) to about 40 staff we felt a bit of pressure to make A bet so I put $1 on lucky number 32 and WE HAVE A WINNER! $28 richer.

Kerfuffle - home to the world's sketchiest ferris wheel

Future me's job goals

Charlotte- my Crawley gal!

A bit different by sunrise

Made a whole bunch of friends here, we took a 2 hour journey to neighboring Otres Beach for the big Kerfuffle party. Then there was a time when I hit someone in the face with a flip flop- but that's a story you'll have to ask me for haha.

Kep - A place with more crabs than me

So basically- Kampot was great. But I needed to see somewhere new so I went very far away- to Kep 30 minutes down the road. Spent a lot of time doing some Urban Exploring here. During the Khmer Rouge era all the holiday villas were abandoned back in the 70's and to this day many haven't been demolised or redeveloped which makes a great visit!

So next I got the speedboat to Koh Rong Island after being invited for a big party by my new friend Stella- and I'd heard a few things about this place before I got here. One- there's work and lots of it. Two- it boasts the biggest bar crawl in Australia.

And as seen on my last post I've been having a blast! And more to come for a post on all that but right now they say home is where the heart is- and mine can be found at the top of some trees in the jungle on a tropical island...or in the bottom of a few joss shots. But hey- got nothing to lose!


*Apart from it being expensive- give me back my 30p Bunh Mi! Can't be affording these $4 sandwiches!