Enter hcmc! scooter slalom begins. checked into nice triple room (with large window-very important for the view of the wall) as we have decided we can’t live without Gordon for the time being and visa versa.

Explored the city at night for a while and decided it is crazy but cool. Had a relatively ropey dinner (our fault for ordering western food, will stick to Vietnamese in future). Couple of beers and retreated back to our cozy room for some bedtime reading.

Woke up pretty bleary eyed, checked out and went to the same guest house as Gordon. After negotiating with reception about room price they changed Gordons $3 room to a $4 one and so Victoria babbled on about being a lonely planet editor and we left laughing at how drunk she still must be.

Checked in next door and had breakfast with Rob and Andy (the two guys we met yesterday). It all got too much for Victoria at breakfast and she had to go and be sick.

Hired a tuktuk for the day and went to pick up our visas before heading to S21, the school that under the Pol Pot Regieme was turned into a prison/torture centre. Was really quiet disturbing, 20,000 people were heald tortured and exterminated from 1975-79, this included women children and infants…… pretty sick. There is lots of really interesting and complicated history here that is worth hearing about but I won’t write it as it will take forever, but I would recommend wikipedia-ing it. (one man responsible has only just been sentenced today).

Next we headed to ‘The Killing Fields’, this is where people were taken after S-21 and other places to be exterminated. It is basically a mass grave site (2.5 hecters of mass graves). People were rarely killed by bullets as this was too expensive. Instead hammers, bambo sticks, spades and axes were used to club victims to death. If you were a baby and you got to be smashed against a tree. Mass graves included, 100 naked women and children, 166 headless victims and the biggest grave of 400. Victims would often be clubbed to within inches of their lives and thrown into the hole to be buried alive with DDT (fertiliser). This was all done to party music to stop the next victim from realising his fate and also made sure no one else heard re scream. 2.5 million people out of the 7 million population died during the Pol Pot regeime. Not sure how this happened in this day and age.

Didn’t really do anything else that day. Had some food and a few drinks with everyone and called it a day.

Sat on wifi for a while and talked to Anne on Skype about Christmas. (possibly got a pot of marmite and some coco pops coming! Best Christmas present ever?!?)

Headed to get a visa and having run out of passport photos stopped in a shop to get some more done. It was brilliant, forget the booth, the dude had all the gear and took a professional photo of us, (shame we still looked retarded).

The embassy was shut when we got there and two very, very, very stoned gaurds told us it reopened at 2 o’clock. Well actually one of then managed to tell us the other one could only manage to giggle.

Had a nice long drawn out lunch in a Chinese restaurant and avoided the pig intestie and went for something slight safer.

Met two guys also getting visas and going to killing field tomorrow so arranged to team up with them.

Went over to their guest house later on for some beers with them and met Gordon again! The three are reunited. We got hammered drunk to celibrate and Gordon ended up back at our hotel for some more snuggling.

The driver was a complete lunatic, apparently he didn’t care much for scooters and insisted on running them off the road. Much like Mr. Bean does with the three wheeler (this happened to be playing).

We stopped for a quick lunch and watched a Cambodian dude chow down on a whole lot of crispy cocroaches, yum!

Back on the bus the aircon broke and we all got off to sit under the shade of a tree AGAIN. 30 mins later we were back on the bus with the aircon still not working! But it was ok because we could open our windows……. NOT! Real hot in these rhinoes! The only air flow we got was from the conductor walking past.

1 hour later we were thoroughly cooked, dripping wet and in Phnom Penh. Sitting in the travel companies office we let our body temperature return to normal. Jeremy had now started to feel quite sick, not sure if it was from the heat or the lunch but an offer from a tuktuk man to take us around until we found our guesthouse seemed like a good idea.

Finally found one that was not too bad and checked in (with our tuktuk man taking $2 commission).

Went out to eat but we got 10 metres down the street when Jeremy caught sight of a man eating some pork and started to gag. Back to the room and laid in bed.

Victoria attempted to meet adam and anna at the restaurant as per our arrangemet. Her lack of orienteering skills let her down once again.

Still hungry she stopped and had a very nice expensive spag bol ($5) and facebooked adam to tell them she was lost. She returned to the hotel to a very poorly jeremy. Early night then.

Temple time was at stupid o’clock and we sat and watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat, which was actually not as spectacular as we hoped due to cloud cover.

We attempted to get a guide to show us what this Wat was all about but you have to pre-arrange them from town so we continued to walk around aimlessly, occasionally pretending to be Angelina Jolie.

Checked out the other temples in the surrounding area. Jeremy missed seeing one as his poopy alarm sounded and he instead took a 1k sprint in the heat to the nearest toilet.

In our opinion the Lara Croft temple was the best as it was still in ruins and overrun with trees which made it some how much more interesting to explore.

Back to town for lunch before going in search of a swimming pool. Swam, read books and chatted for the afternoon.

Dinner was considerably better this time as we splashed the cash on a $6 steak that was the size of my fist and pretty damn tasty. Definately sent us to our happy place. Today was an expensive day!

p.s. where are all the tampons?

Went for a walk around town and some lunch with Anna and Adam. Lunch revealed that Adam and Jeremy not only own the same clothes but the same mannerisms and interests, apart from football. In other words he loves ‘mac’ and bounces his knee a lot (Jeremy thinks they are soul mates, bless him).

Organised tuktuk man for Angkor Wat tomorrow. Then more recovering and relaxing followed in preparation for dinner (both not feeling so hot so was nice to take it easy). Dinner was another ropey dish from a street stall. Went for a beer on the way back before bed, ready for the 4:30 am start.

Early doors we got up and took the market boat back to the main land. Shared our boat with a man and his escaping rooster.

Sat underneath someones house, next to their tractor in their “office” waiting to buy a ticket to Siem Reap. We waited for a while then a man came down in his towel, asked where we were going then went for a shower. Love Laos, no hurry to make money. Eventually got a ticket and changed our remaining money into dollars. It just so happened that everything we had left, including the 500 we argued for for ages in the bank, came to an exact amount of dollars. So it was worth the fight.

Got to the border where we had to fork out the dollars to bribe the officials to take our temperature, give us a visa and get a departure card. Welcome to Cambodia! We did manage to barter the price down to stamp us out of laos though (from $2 to $1 each) which was a triumph as there were a lot of people on our bus. Peaceful protests attended=1.

Our next bus to Siem Reap was nice and comfortable but featured some Cambodians doing Karaoke at the front.

We are quick to admit that most British people can’t sing, but this was something else. Thankfully we stopped for lunch before Victoria found the medical kit and shoved needles into her eardrums. The place smelled a little funky and the food was pretty ropey but it did the job.

Back on the bus we broke down. Emotionally due to karaoke and physically due to burst tyres. While they changed it everyone huddled round the shade of a nearby tree.

Back on the bus we broke down again. Same situation, tree shade while the driver climbed underneath with a knife and a piece of spare rubber to fix what ever it was that was wrong. We all had complete faith in his DIY skills and got back on the bus.

Stopped for dinner and swapped buses. We took the last two seats that were separated and less than desirable. Victoria couldn’t handle it anymore and wept to herself at the front of the bus. So tired and couldn’t sleep. Arrived at 1:30am and was whisked off to a guesthouse by a very rude tuk tuk driver who had learned the word ‘fuck’ and seemed to enjoy saying it, a lot.

Attempted to find a guesthouse with Adam and anna, a couple we met on the bus. First guesthouse, everyone was asleep and second guest house was a similar story but enough banging on the door from the tuktuk driver managed to wake someone.

We took the room. Victoria lay awake, eyes twitching, listening to the dogs barking, while Jeremy lay awake listening to Victoria weeping at the sound of the dogs barking.