Photos from Angkor

Chau Doc to Siem Reap

Some photos from our recent travels.

We travelled down to Chau Doc which is near the boarder of Viet Nam and Cambodia on the Mekong River. Travelling by road in the south of Viet Nam always seems to go on for ever, as if you have never left the outer suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. Houses and businesses hug the road for the majority of the journey, even when there are ferry crossings across giant rivers. The postcard lush green rice fields of the Mekong are not really there at this time of the year. The whole area was blanketed in a smoke haze from burning of the old rice tufts to prepare for the next planting.

From Chau Doc we caught a speed boat up to Phnom Penh. The water boarder crossing was a first experience for us. The Vietnamese side was fairly run down. We waited in a wooden shelter while the local kids tried to sell us drinks and snack or offer foriegn currency exchange. A few stamps and scanning of the luggage and we were back on the boat to travel 500 metres up stream to the Cambodian Boarder Control. More stamps and back in the boat.

Phnom Penh is an interesting place. Very hard to understand what is going on there. From what we saw, there are proportionately more wealthy and more extremely poor people than central HCMC, and from what we read it is a kind of perverse NGO dream town. Wandered around a little in the heat to Wat Phnom and through the market. We only had a short time there and look forward to going back (maybe to set up a NGO).

The next 4-5 days we spent in Siem Reap and looking at the Angkor temples. Amazing place. The number of tourist was also amazing, particularly the number of Cambodian visitors. Not much tto write about the temples, hopefully the pictures will explain.

Hello From Viet Nam

Hello,

I thought I might have a go at this blogging thing. Funny that the title has nothing to do with the photos.

We have just returned from Cambodia, having spent a few nights in Phnom Penh and then visiting Siem Reap and the Angkor ruins.


I will add more old photos from around Viet Nam and some of our other trips along with more words.