Learning to ride

Back from the island we decided to stay in the local town for 1 night before driving to Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penn.

So what to do......hire motor bikes! A little bit of bartering later and we had two bikes for $5 each for 24 hours. That means we can have them for the afternoon at 4pm and drop them back the next day at 4pm!
But....we don't have motor bike licenses.... Who cares!

We went out to town and we had dinner on the beach with a beautiful sunset. On the way home on the motor bikes we got lost in the dark.

Sonny fruit shakes

Today we went to Sonny Fruit Shakes to have breakfast.  He makes anything to do with fresh fruit like shakes and fruit platters. I had a mango fruit platter, it was so good.
Sunny used to work in a restaurant for 10 years but stopped because he got frustrated with his boss not caring enough about providing great service to his customers so he started his own business a month ago.

In New Zealand our mangos are expensive but here he can buy three for a dollar on the mainland and then sell them for a dollar each out at the island and his stall is right on the beach... perfect!  He said he used to make 20 dollars a month to live so here he can make up to 20 dollars or more a day...amazing aye!

Later we had to catch the ferry back to Sihanoukville and on the way we met the two girls from Sweden and Switzerland again from yesterday and sat with them on the boat ride home - Briarley and I talked and laughed with them the whole way.

Here's a picture of the bungalows we stayed in of the beach...check out the shape of the bed!

Cambodian snorkeling trip

What do you think of this view from our boat - we went out on a snorkeling trip with a Cambodian captain and with our 12 year old guide Masa!

We loved hanging out in the water and learnt to dive down deep and even swim under the boat!

That night we met two other backpacker friends - Gabrielle from Sweden and Beks from Switzerland....they met while they were travelling and had been to lots of amazing places - like us they were going home to their countries soon

Sihanoukville - beach time!

 Today we arrived in Sihanoukville - a town on the coast.  We stayed in a small bungalow over the road from the beach.   You can see the view out of our window above


There were lots of kind of cafes by the beach with beanbags, deckchairs and umbrellas.

Outside it was 38 degrees and in the water it was 33 degrees!

We spent the day swimming, chatting to local people and booking our trip to the islands..

We caught the ferry to Ko Rong Sanloem island with lots of other people...we sat next to 2 two backpackers from Sweden - their names were Natalie and Peter.  They had been travelling for 3 months to Bali, Malaysia, Thailand, Phillipines and Vietnam.....what a life! Briarley and I talked with them the whole 45 min boat ride - they were super friendly!

Visiting the New Hope Project

Today we went to the new hope project. It is a school that is free to provide education to children from age 3 to 20 who cant afford school. They can help up to 300 kids and the money just comes from donation.
The girls on the right are 12 and 14 they
really wanted to get a picture with me.

We started at the school and watched their assembly, they can all count to one hundred in English.
Then we went to the village where most of the kids at the school live.  It was really dirty and their houses were very small.


Then we went to the old School where quite a few families live who have experienced family problem.....there were lots of kids around it was so cute.

The real temple run

Today we went to three famous Cambodian temples.

Our guide was called Chanada. We woke up at four in the morning to watch the sun rise at the second biggest temple in the world Angkor Wat!!!


We walked through the temple and up lots of stairs. There are lots of kids coming up to you trying to sell you stamps, recorders, magnets and stuff.


I learnt not to buy from them because it makes them think they don't need to be educated and go to school they think they can already make money. But they really only make up to five dollars a day at the most which is not enough for a family to survive.

The last two nights we went to the night markets - spot us having dinner in a roadside restaurant

Siem Reap - Cambodia

Yesterday we arrived in Cambodia. We went to this place called Angkor Artisans that helps people to learn handcrafts such as sewing, painting, woodwork and a lot of other stuff. They then sell all the crafts in a shop to put the money towards their families.

We also went to cafe called Sister Srey - there's not many cafes in Cambodia just stalls on the side of the road. When we were walking out of Sister Srey there was a man with no arms selling things on the side of the road. He said he lost them from the Khmer Rouge (the Cambodian fight where if you did have a good job or good education you got shot - they shot over 100,000 people).  He was selling books to help to afford him to get fake arms so we bought some books off him.

That night we went to the Cambodian circus...where young people are trained to be amazing acrobats. The story they told was about life before and during the Khmer Rouge - it was really sad but they were amazing - here's a video of them!!!