Viet Nam - Cambodia

Sorry its been a while. Believe it life does get very busy and internet connections are sometime too slow to deal with.

We are currently in Sihanoukville in Cambodia. A great seaside place, small but on the verge of becoming a town with millions of modern resorts. We have beautiful beaches and seas, weather around 32C, lots of beach bars & BBQs and islands to hand for great snorkeling and swimming. We have decided to stay until 10th to stop and relax. Yes, relax because life does get busy when traveling and moving through cities that you don't know.

What happened in Viet Nam - it rained for about 1.5 weeks which really put a dampener on everything and everything we had got wet. We moved from Da Nang to Nha Thrang [Viet Nam's beach resort with lots of American's looking for the sun] and then an overnight train to Ho Chi Minh City [Saigon]. We booked ourselves onto a trip into the Mekong Delta and the Mekong across the border to Cambodia - Phnom Penh. We did a homestay on the edges of the Mekong river which was fun before Cambodia.

Central and South Viet Nam has such a history with the US during their occupation and we did a couple of visits that will stay with us forever -My Lai site, Agent Orange and the War Remanents Museum in Saigon. Believe us, the government used these places as propaganda but the human tragedy is indescribable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

Although the weather sorted itself out we only stayed in Saigon for a couple days. It is a great city - the traffic is mad worse than Han Oi and much much more. It is very French - wide boulevards and colonial architecture everywhere. Its does get more seedier with a number of western tourists there looking for obvious and of course its there if you have the wallet.

The Mekong Delta trip was disappointing. Its a region that is difficult to travel by yourselves so a trip was the easiest particular with the journey onto Cambodia.

Our arrival in Phomh Penh Cambodia was a real culture shock. It is so different to Viet Nam in terms of the people, culture and landscape. Cambodia is a developing country - it has poviety that we find extremely difficult to deal with because its on the streets in front of you.

Like all developing counties around the world it also has a huge number of wealthy and the travelers bring a lot of money into the country. Phnom Penh has a huge number of french expats and they are building an amazing playground for themselves. Reading the Whats On mags I would be pleased if a percentage of activity was happening in West Brom - BLOODY good restaurants, museums, bars, things to do.

We have been in Cambodia for 5 days and I still find it difficult to understand and explain what I have experienced here. The main shock'' was visiting the genocide museum Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. What we experienced that day will remain with us forever as something that has changed us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields

We always planned to move onto Sihanoukville straight away and stop for a while. We are heading back next week and then onto Angkor Wat and other Wats in that region.

I hope its not too a depressing post after such a long gap because we are having a good time, this country is beautiful and the people are really generous and have a good sense of humor.