Hi Guys (Phil Here)

We have finally returned to Bangkok and are now frantically shopping and generally making the most of this lovely warm (if some what polluted) City.

When we last wrote I think we were in Vietnam HCMC.

In our final week of Vietnam we travelled overland through the Mekong delta and got a boat out to a gorgeous island, Phu Quoc. This is the only part of our trip where we felt we managed to escape from the general tourist trail. The island itself was very chilled and not so developed, with gorgeous white sand beaches and very few tourists, relative to the rest of Vietnam.

Here we met Bec and Sander who we hung out with for most of the week and then they went ahead of us all the way to Siam Reap in Cambodia.

After finally making it to the Cambodian border and escaping from the tedious beuracracy of the Vietnamese border contols, we immediately entered an area resembling the far less populated Mekong regions in Laos. The lack of people was truly relaxing after the hustle and bustle of Vietnam.

In Phnom Penh we had a massive input of information relating to the horrific conditions people experienced under the rule of the Khimer Rouge. The degree of suffering was summarised very efficently by visiting the Killing Fields just outside the city and a school where thousands were tourtured before dying out of town. We did not feel like doing much for the next few days.

When we arrived in Siam Reap, we met up with our friends Bec and Sander again and the following day visited the temples of Ankor Wat. It was so much larger than we expected and we visited many of the major temples that day. We also came across a troupe of monkies which we jump off our transport to photograph, they looked pretty dangerous up close and Sander had to donate some of his fruit so that we could board our carriage and escape.

Despite insisting that we would never bother to get up for another sunset EVER again, we were persuaded to get up for sunset on the second day (who needs sleep anyway?). This was well worth it and gave the locals another product to flog to the tourists (You want coffee? Buy from me!)


On returning to Phnom Penh, we had a quick tour of the main part of town and discovered that it really is a great place and although it is easily as basic as Vientiane in Laos, it still has a lot to offer (apart from fake watches and sunglasses!). We hurried on the next day to Sihanoukville (cambodia's 'premiere' beach resort). After one night in a basic hotel we discovered that we could stay in a really great hotel with pool and breakfast for hardly any more cash, so we promptly moved and had 7 days of beach, buffet breakfasts, pool and barracuda or prawns for dinner every night.

After a 250 Km journey to the border (7hours) we re-entered Thailand, and due to the time constraints were forced to spend a night in Trat, before moving on to our final beach destination, Koh Chang. The weather was changeable, but in some ways the cloud was welcome. We spent the days sun bathing, Kayaking and snorkeling off small reefs. A fantastic place to visit, but it is going the way of package holidays.

Somehow time has flown and next week we'll be flying back to sunny London (please no more weather reports...)

There are a few more pics we'd like to put on the site, but this will be in a few days time as we need to get off the internet and sight see while we are still tourists!

See you all very soon!