Off to see the wizard

Did our last run at the temples today before coming home early.
We are all worn out:
Raychel stayed at home and listened to music(It's all the Devils Kar for the first time in a month - I feel her pain on that.
Smeels came, although she has a flu at the mo, exhausted from everything brought that baby on I'd say
- all who care for Smeels, she is fine, just a bit weak and achey, nothing new there. Hehe! Ah no, she's just a bit under the weather.
And I'm fecked 2, but we're all in agreement in that we did so much before we crashed.

We'll be travelling tomorrow on dire roads for the day. Then getting on the auld plane the day after, so I won't be at this for a wee while I'd say.
I like travelling, and wallowing in the nostalgic melancholy that comes with leaving each time.

Southeast Asia deep fried Bean curd signing off.
God bless Ireland
Cue the music....


P.S. Don't forget to scribble a new box for Donna and Joe, and tick it, when voting for our new president.
Everyone who's cool is gonna do it,.
It's the new Dustin.

It's a mixed feeling when a trans' hands you your meal.

Went ta Ta Prohm today, 'tis part of the Angkor temples that has been left to the jungle, and in my opinion, way better than Angkor Wat.
Just waiting for din-dins now, it's hard to believe we're alomst finished our month here. Twas hard work, but we gave it our best and felt like we "Lived like Kings among men" as Smeels said, I disagree at times but Smeels is usually right, I'm just too stubborn to admit it! hehe!

Nine out of ten cars are Toyota Camrys

6.55 AM I'm up awful early today, gonna have some tea and pancakes (Oh yeah)
Went to Angkor Wat for the sunset yesterday, gorgeous, what a beauitful place, I don't know how they all abandoned it 600years ago, for Phnom Penh.
Afterwards we went to a free concert our tuk-tuk driver recommended.

Word of advice: Never, ever do anything a tuk-tuk driver recommends, or even says, he's not a tub of Ronseal.

I still don't understand why we keep doing it.
The concert:
I t was a doctor who set up three kids hospitals (Fair play ta him) and in between the six short pieces he did, he asked for our money, he asked for our blood, he urged the younger ones to give both, he showed us videos of sick children he was treating, he bombarded us with stats on what he's doing, and worst of all, he tried to make us feel guilty for what happened here in the late seventies.
Granted the US did provoke things, that's nothing new though. But to blame it on them, that's preposterous ( Note to self: come back to that word) and not only that, he tried to say the entire western civilisation was responsible.

So myself and Smeels have been putting certain words in our conversations, not on purpose as such, but if they come out once, they stay.
Here's the list of them, check it out:
1 surreptitiously
2 feasible
3 plausible
4 frivolous
5 thwarted
6 imperative
7 amalgamate
8 generic
9 ream
10 unhand
11 pedantic
12 noble
13 esoteric
14 impervious
15 scrupulous
16 insolence
17 preposterous (as seen in this post)


So it's back to Angkor at some stage when the kids get up

Phnom Penh. 1 Bangkok. 0

11.00 AM Boat again at the mo, up to Siam Reap ( Beside Angkor Wat)
Phnom Penh was cool, beats Bangkok, as capitals go, anyday. Not as plastic.

4.00PM We.re all settled in here and fed now. Going to Angkor Wat for sunset at five, should be good. Yesterday was great, we went to a shooting range and got an AK47. On the menu were many many guns, but by far the best was the rocket launcher, 200US dollars (AK was 30 with a magazine) for one shot. They used to give you a cow to aim at, now it's a minkey or a pig! I don't agree with it at all of course, but isn't it gas!
Afterwards we went to the killing fileds and onto the Tuol Sleng museum.
An experience.
I won't go into it really, lets just say Tuol Sleng, a converted school to prison, was where they were housed/tortured before being brought to Choeung Ek, i.e. the mass graves there.
After our morbid morning we ran to the royal palace, which was shut off as the King was out for a stroll. The nonto the national museum, which was closing early, ( Guards like gettin home for the spuds and cabbage) so we didn't go in.
Chillaxed for the night, ate ,drank, played guitar (Which I havn't been doing enough of) and had some beers and pool in a cool french restaurant.
Speaking of beers, I need a fresh one...

Eggshells

This is gas, I sat down to breakfast and ordered from the menu:
Pancake, scrambled eggs and bacon.
I pictured them all laided out neatly in the appropriate positions on the place, maybe even singing a song to me before I devour them. What I got was a crispy Crepe, with an omlette inside speckled with boil-in-the-bag ham.
To tell you the truth, twas gorgeous.

B&B's

After one of the longest bus jouirneys I will ever take (24 hours of driving time in 30) we stayed in Koh Kong last night, a coastal town near the southwest border of Cambodia. We got so many bites from ants and spiders and what not on our last night in Chiang Khong, that all our legs are swollen, mine and Raychels feet lost our ankles and arches under some sort of fluid filled shroud of doom.
At the moment I'm on a boat having an auld argument with the owner, we got a deal which included this boat, but maybe we got shafted, the boat from Koh Kongto Sihanoukville was included in it, but he says it's not.
Wait a sec.....
OK now we've paid again for this boat, we asked for a receipt tho, so we can birng it back to the place we got the deal from in Bangkok. If only they'd stop trying to rip tourists off...

12.50 PM Still on the boat, should be there very soon. Phnom Penh is the destination when we arrive, should be about 4-5hours to there. I'd love if we had three months instead of one, I feel we're rushing past things we'd all love to stop and explore, what harm, next time!

10.30PM Phnom Penh - tis cool enough here, the bus ride was great, we wern't expecting tarmac - so thatwas a plus. Chillin'for this evniong, so tired from the travellin, a few beers later now and we've let down the auld hair. We'll be back doing tourist-type stuff tomorrow no doubt
God bless Ireland

Reprise

Deciding against about four years in the back of a truck to Cambodia, through Laos, we've decided to backtrack a bit. We're back in Chiang Khong in Thailand. The boat ride was so great, I felt like a Neo-Huckleberry Finn. The sun shone for the two days as we went downstream.
Oh yeah we got up to go out to the outhouse and there was a massive spider on the door, legs the size of a finger, and laomst the size of a hand! So that put the shits up me for awhile, sleeping on the ground beside it. We were in bed by 8! The no lights thing lays a blanket over the village as soon as it's dark.
Anywhoo it was cool to be there, it's exactly what I was looking for, coming ot this part of the world.
It's gas, I'm here on our balcony, overlooking the Mekong, and just across there is Laos.
Oh there's talk of breakfast here so I better wrap this up!
We're going to be travelling alot until we leave for Oz I think.









1.05PM
We checked out beofre 11.00AM, we paid for the bus to Bangkok, that leaves at 3.00PM.
We went to the Teepee bar agin, for a few beers, while we wait, and they've somehow convinvced us not to go! (I love this place)
We aint gettin no bus no more.

Drifting down the auld river

This is great.
I'm currently staying in a Lao family home, after finishing din-dins. I can't really see what I'm writing, as the village here has no electricity.
We are travelling in a lake boat, of sorts,( or maybe you'd call it a tree trunk hollowed out, somewhere betwix the two.) down the length of the Namtha river. We've stopped here for the night as it's a two day drift. The river winds through the jungle and we've got two cool French friends I met to share the boat we hired.
This is the life.
I cant' see anymore, the candle we have is almost gone.

I've never seen so many stars, you can see the milky way.