Cambodia

Yes i realise its' been over a month since my last e-mail but when you have the choice of laying around in a hammock on a remote beach sipping pineapple shakes and watching out for falling coconuts or sitting in doors infront of a computer screen the coconuts win every time. But needless to say i am trying my utmost to drag myself into these internet cafe's, i don't really need a tan so i can't use the beach thing as an excuse.

Anyway where was I?????????? oh yeah, after our little hill walking experience we decided that some R&R was required to recover before hitting the temples of Ankor in cambodia, so we set off down the coast of Vietnam to find the beaches. There were a few that we tried out in Nha Thrang and Hoi An, Hoi An was particularly beneficial for me as the place was inundated with "Cloth" shops. Now a cloth shop was basically a shop that sold various types of cloths (as the name suggests) but the difference being that the guys that worked in the shops were able to fashion you with any type of garment you desired in any style, to your exact measurements for a very good price. All you had to do was sit down and sift through magazines to find out what style of clothing you liked and they would make it for you in a couple of days. Needless to say i could have spent a small fortune in the place but i refrained from doing so on the grounds that the quality may not have been the best but more importantly i was rapidly running out of space in my now overloaded rack sack......bummer! Infact i had to buy another one to accomodate my newly acquired wardrobe. We met a few people there who had spent a hundreds of dollars on new clothing and i have to say the girls were the worst at that, god knows how some of them were going to get the stuff home.

We decide not to stay there for too long and instead headed down to a remote peninsular on the east coast called jungle beach. It was a secluded all inclusive resort run by a very "happy" and "chilled out" french canadian with its own stretch of beach and a waterfall just round the corner. The place was gorgeous. We spent about 4 days chilling out and unwinding (if anyone is thinking of coming to Vietnam, i seriously recommend it) before heading down south as we were running out of Visa time. Unfortunately because of this we only managed to stay in Saigon for a day so we missed out on seeing some of it's major sites.....never mind!!!

Next stop Combodge (that's how the french call it) the temples were by far the highlight of Cambodia they were just amazing, architecturally they are a feat of engineering. But i'm not going to bore you with that you can go over and see it for yourselves. Instead i'd like to bring to light another interesting fact about Cambodia. I don't know if anyone knows this or has heard of it but there are a lot of things you can get and do in cambodia that most other countries would not even contemplate. One in particular is that pretty much anywhere you go you will get touts coming up to you asking if you want to fire a gun and it would cost around 15 dollars for a round, worst still for an extra 5 or so dollars you can acquire yourself and Oozy and blow up a cow. That's right BLOW UP A COW. Now i don't know whether this is true or not because i didn't actually partake in the senseless destruction of a poor cow while it munched on its afternoon lunch, but there we numerous stories floating around and we did get offered the chance to fire a gun........so who knows!!! It did seem a little bit sick blowing up a cow, it's not like they are a even a challenging target they just stand there, i personally thing they should be using meerkats or a sausage dogs or possibly even fluffy bunnies...........what can you do!!!!! For those of you in shock at the moment i'd like to reiterate that there may not be any truth in it, like i said it's only what we heard on the grapevine so before all you cow loving females start getting the wrong idea i would just like to remind you that I DID NOT PARTAKE in the burger making process!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moving swiftly on our stay in Cambodge was short and sweet a week in total, after which we hit our next destination, Thailand (the land of the lady boys). We descended on Bangkok for one last night with Ollie who was heading back to the sunny climes of Basingstoke, then Dan and i carried on to Koh Tao to do our Open Water Scuba Diving course. It lasted 5 days, the last three days of which we spent in the water. If you have never done scuba before and you haven't swam in about 4 years going underwater in the sea for the first time surrounded by fish intent on eating you alive is quite a scary and daunting task. But after that initial shock and once we had learned the basics it truly was an experience, the feeling of breathing under water while being completely weightless can not be described, needles to say we had a good time. The only bummer was our instructor told us that the area had a lot of whale sharks but it was touch and go on whether you would see one, unfortunately we didn't, which may be a good thing as i don't know how i would have reacted to such a sight.

Anyway we are now in Koh Phannang, which is full of 18 year old british holiday makers gathering for the full moon party in 5 days. We are still contemplating whether to go to it or not, however i don't know if manage 5 days of the ibiza style atmosphere, Dans having real problems handling it. Apparently the build up is better so we may stick around for tha instead. Although i have to say Koh Tao pretty much covered our partying requirements, (buckets on the beach mmmmmmmm) so we'll play it by ear.

On that note i have to bid you all a farewell again as i owe Dan a game of Badminton and i'm getting cramp. So take care all until next time.

Phil

P.S I have no idea whether these e-mails are getting to the london Aedas Possy so will one of you drop me a line to let me know. You know who are Grahame!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Adios