Landed (eventually) and Merry Christmas

Depite Qatar Airways best efforts to have 15 of us stranded in Doha after missing our London connection, and despite the fog hampering air travel to London, I finally landed after midnight last night - coming via Zurich eventually. Well, it was a small price to pay after 11 great weeks.

Merry Christmas everyone and happy new year too.

James

Complete map and route taken

Now I'm back in Bangkok, in advance of flying home tomorrow. Here's the final map and complete route I took - I've also marked on it some of my favourite places:

Cambodia map and route

A map of my progress and route through Cambodia, starting from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam:

Sihanoukville by sea

Sihanoukville is Cambodia's only real seaside resort, and a good place for me to bring my trip towards a conclusion and ready myself for the cold British winter! The beaches and resorts are less developed than those in Thailand, but appear to be attracting an increasing package tourist trade. Nevertheless they certainly have their appeal, with shack style restaurant's, BBQs, and bars spilling over on to the beach itself. I'm alternating myself between these beach and the guesthouse pool - a nice way to relax and finish my book, and indeed the whole trip - from here its back to Phnom Penh and then to Bangkok for the flight home.

Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields

Phnom Penh, the capital city, is a microcosm of Cambodia as a whole - reflecting the contrasts of the remnants of the glorious ancient Khmer empire and the colonial beauty, which the French brought (wanting to make this the capital of their Indochina empire - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) against the horrors and tragedies of the relatively recent Pol Pot regime. I visited first the Tuol Sleng prison, where the enemies and 'traitors' of the 1975-79 regime were imprisoned and tortured in inhumane conditions and followed this with a trip out to the local Killing Fields, where 17,000 prisoners were subsequently executed and buried in mass graves - across Cambodia they estimate that nearly 2 million people perished during those 4 years of terror. Following the moving experience of those visits, I spent this afternoon learning more about Angkor and Khmer history at the National Museum and then visited the grand colonial style Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda......quite a contrast.

Battambang and beyond

From Siem Reap, yesterday, I took the boat down the Tonle Sap to Battambang, Cambodia's second city. The boat trip lasted seven and a half hours, but was pretty scenic and passed through a number of farming and fishing villages, picking up and dropping off locals on the way. Battambang itself is a fairly ordinary town, although there are some olf french style facaded houses by the riverfront. I'd heard and read that the country surrounding Battambang was more interesting than the city itself, so I hired a moto guide today and took off on a tour of some of the sites. This included a couple of remote temples, farming villages and some old Khmer Rouge cave prisons / torture chambers, which chillingly had a cage full of human bones and skulls on display. My moto driver was 50, so he had lived through the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge genocide regime, and shared with me his sad personal story - during Pol Pot's dictatorship he had lost both his parents and three siblings; some murdered, the others starved or died of malaria. An interesting day - learning about several aspects of Cambodia: past and present.

More from Angkor

Photos, that is -

1) Angkor Wat at sunrise 2) Angkor Wat early morning close up

2) Bayon faces

Angkor Wat

Cambodian then, and to Siem Reap or more importantly the nearby Temples of Angkor. Whilst Angkor Wat is the most celebrated of the temples, there are actually hundreds of them spread across a wide area, so I've bought a 3-day pass and hired a moto driver to do a bit of exploring. Today was my first day, so where else to start but Angkor Wat itself; - it really is immense and its incredible to believe that its nearly 1,000 years old, it would be an amazing feat of human construction today let alone then - surely a man made wonder of the world (it is shortlisted anyway)? After Angkor Wat I continued on and visited the ancient city of Angkor Thom, which houses the temples of Bayon and Baphuon, and the Terraces of the Elephants and the Leper King. Each one is unique and intricately built, with sculptures embedded in the stonework - Bayon for example has four different faces sculpted on each of many towers, whilst the Terrace of the Elephants has lots of large mammals with trunks on its facade!

Mekong Delta

For the last three days we've been touring around the Mekong Delta region. We were originally meant to set off on Tuesday, but Typhoon Durian put paid to that by wreaking havoc across the region. By contrast on Wednesday morning it was fine as we set off for My Tho and Ben Tre in the Delta. Once there we took a leisurely boat ride around the area visiting amongst other things a coconut candy workshop, local handicrafts and a rice noodle making kitchen! After a night in Can Tho, the largest city in the Delta it was off to the floating markets, where the locals trade food and produce from boat to boat, and then to listen to some traditional music and see some more handicraft. Today started with a visit to the fish farms at in the river Chau Doc, followed by a trip to a minority Cham tribe village, before heading back to Saigon. For Tracy it was straight to the airport, where we said our goodbyes.......just for 2 weeks though, as time is running out for me too - tomorrow I'm off to Cambodia for the final leg......

Updated Map

My route so far, including the Vietnam section with Tracy -

Photos of Vietnam

Just added some photos of Vietnam to the photo website:
http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jreeveitfc/album?.dir=8f84scd&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

In Saigon

or Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) as it is now known following the re-unification of Vietnam, after the end of the American war in 1975. We flew down from Hoi An yesterday afternoon and back into the noise of another large Asian city. However, I think I quite like Saigon - there's something about it - the people seem to be more friendly than those in Hanoi, and the streets are wider and actually have pavements, so its therefore easier to avoid getting mown down by a scooter! We've spent today looking around some of HCMC - a very large sprawling city, with most of the afternoon at the War Remnants Museum, which provided an interesting and enlightening viewpoint on the war, contrary to most of the historic western propaganda, and detailing the alleged and proven war crimes of the US during the decades of conflict. The displays also included many wartime photographs including the famous "girl in the picture".

Hoi An

From Hue we moved on to Hoi An for a few days. Hoi An is the original trading port in Vietnam, and was very important centuries ago in the spice trade. It therefore has a lot of history about it, and the old town is a charming collection of cobbled streets lined by fading yellow facaded houses. The first day we spent wandering about the old town, visiting old houses and temples, as well as having a browse through the trinkets, clothes and various items for sale. Unfortunately on our second day there, the back end of the Philippines typhoon caught up with us and scuppered plans for a day at the beach. The next day, even though the rain was still around we learnt how to cook Vietnamese style in a quiet location by the river...