Voyage , Voyage

Anyone who knows me a bit knows that I am
(1) not exactly a long-term planner
(2) travelling on the cheap
This means many subsequent days of sharing cheap hotelrooms, sleeping in noisy dormitories, walking a mile through town to save tuk-tuk costs, bargaining for everything you intend to buy, many hello's, many goodbye's, going to the bus terminal first and deciding where to go next, and scanning the internet for cheap flights to other interesting places. I was a bit tired after my Indonesia-rush, found a AirAsia cheapie to Cambodia on the net, and had to stay some days in Malaysia's Melaka and Kuala Lumpur - for me there are worse places to get stuck. Every traveller I met seemed to have just come from Cambodia and some of them were setting off to Indonesia so there were many stories to tell and beers to drink. I also had some time to read about Cambodia's amazing history and couldn't wait to go.

On the day of my flight I woke up in KL's 'Number 8 Guesthouse' and thought it would be humour to bed down in Phnom Penh's 'Number 9 Guesthouse'. And humour it was. A beautiful spot on the lakeside, some good bars to keep you entertained and many relaxed travellers. Anything goes in Phnom Penh and anything is on offer in Phnom Penh, varying from interesting (kids selling books) to outright disgusting (shooting ranges where you can shoot living animals). Official Cambodian tourist brochure: "Since alcohol and guns are a great mix there are of course cold beers on offer." Cheers.

Since I didn't feel the urge to shoot a chicken or blow up a cow I had some time to actually see Phnom Penh.
Day 1 - strolling the cheap markets, admiring the awesome Royal Palace and National Museum and feasting on the Khmer food - vive la Cambodge!
Day 2 - we went to the Tuol Sleng museum and the Killing Fields of Choeng Ek and were speechless.

After Phnom Penh everyone seemed to be heading south for the beach of Sihanoukville but I couldn't wait: the Temples of Angkor were calling! I had heard a lot of superlatives about them and they were indeed the most impressive sights I'd ever seen. With our 3-day passes we tuk-tukked and cycled through the amazing complex, getting completely temple-tired at the end of each day. We even managed to turn the only drawback - zillions of tour busses - into our favour by holding the Japanese photo contest - picturing as many Japanese tourists as possible, close-ups count double. In the aptly named Bar Street the winner was determined after a lot of Angkor beers.

We went for the scenic boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang. Sitting on the roof we enjoyed the views on the 'floating villages'. Battambang itself was a rather uneventful place - although we were in the second-largest city of Cambodia during weekend the only piece of the action seemed to be the fierce moto driver war. We preferred to link up with some local drivers instead of the pushy hotel drivers and were declared enemies of the state.

We had our Christmas dinner back in Phnom Penh and it consisted of, amongst other Cambodian specialities, raw beef and fried cockroaches. The next day we seemed to have kind of survived this experience. Good thing 'cause I had bigger fish to fry. Laos is waiting!