bye bye Asia (for a while!!) - Katy

Sat in Brisbane airport, waiting for our connnection to cairns, so thought I would do a last post from our Asian leg. We spent our last day in Phnom Penh mainly by the pool- it was too hot really to do much else. So the girls did their literacy and gymnastics (!!) lessons in an outdoor classroom!!

Late in the afternoon, we went to see the royal palace and grounds. The buildings are very impressive, and the grounds are beautiful, but we were glad we didn't allocate a full day to look round as there wasn't much to see. I was very disappointed with the 'silver pagoda' which has a floor entirely made of silver tiles. The tiles are all tarnished, held together with tape and mainly covered with rugs; could do with a bit of TLC.

So, we are now four weeks in (can't believe how it is flying), and have had an amazing time so far. We already have some wonderful memories, and have had some incredible experiences. We have just spent a day in Hong Kong (stopover at our friend Avinash's near the airport), and initially we were saying it was a shame that we couldn't go straight to Australia, however we had a lovely day walking along the water, and being treated to some authentic Indian cuisine. It was a bit like a limbo day; reflecting on our fantastic time in Asia and looking forward to our next step. The girls have been brilliant so far; are getting on really well and throwing themselves into every day.

Phnom Penh by Emma

We finally arrived in Phnom Penh (Sunday), after a 5 hour taxi ride. When we got to our new hotel, it didn't take long to unpack, then we walked down to the riverside.

There were millions of boats and people fishing. As we walked along the riverside, I spotted some men playing 'lightning'
You wont have heard of the game; I've never seen it played in the UK. We bought one of the pieces of equipment you need to play the game. If you are in Oxspring school, or are members of my family or friends, I will show you it when I get back. We had a go at it, but it is very hard to master.

We had a walk round in front of the royal palace. There were lots of little children playing with bubbles and balloons.

As we were walking to dinner, we saw a man selling hard boiled eggs from the side of his motorbike!!  On the main road we also saw a lorry stacked with loads of chairs and men sitting on top!!

When we got back to the hotel, we were allowed to have a late swim, as our pool doesn't close until 9pm.

The horrors of s21

Yesterday we went to the National museum. It had lots of ancient artefacts, but to Emma and I, it was pants! As we were walking through, we got very hot and sweaty, so Emma asked if we could sit down and watch a short film about the museum. I ended up getting very bored as it was in FRENCH!!
When we had finished  walking round, we went into the museum gardens. It had four ponds filled with thousands of fish. We looked around the ponds, and Emma spotted a small fish in the corner , surrounded  by water weeds, eating a tiny ball of fish food. My dad spotted some on a leaf , so Emma and I spent the next ten minutes finding fish food and feeding the fish.

After we had finished at the national museum , we went out for some lunch, and then got on a tuk tuk to take us to the s21 genocide museum which was a Khmer Rouge prison. At the gate there was an old man who was begging for money. His face had been burnt in some way, but he could still talk okay. We have been advised not to give any money to beggars as it makes them think its working so they keep doing it, and the people who live here think it rewards laziness. The s21 is a museum in the actual prison  where thousands of people were held and tortured, including 20,000 kids, during the time of Pol Pot! Some harmful objects had been brought down so nobody got hurt, such as barbed wire surrounding the buildings to stop the prisoners from escaping or committing suicide. The building used to be a high school before it was a prison,  and all the classrooms had been turned into cells. Tiny cells!

We went into one prison and it was filled with photos of the prisoners and profiles of some others. In each cell there was a photo of some dead bodies on the bed. The prisoners got shackled to the bed so they couldn't get out. If you fell off the bed, you couldn't get back on until you got tortured  and then got put back in your prison. Pol Pot wanted people to live equally so he made everyone move and live in fields even if they did not know how to farm. If you refused, then you were killed and so were all your family. They were communists. On the way back we saw a motorbike with loads of live chickens strapped to it and they were trying to lift their heads up. Further on, there was a motorbike with three pigs on with their guts hanging out. YUK!!!

Templed Out! By Emma

Today we went to the Grand Temple circuit which included a temple from the film Tomb Raider. To get there we got a tuk tuk and when we got there we had to show our tickets. Then we were in! First we went to the temple with tree roots all around it. Here is a picture of it:

We took a tour around the different temples with the tuk tuk. At the last one the driver stopped for us to look at some more wild MONKEYS!!!!! One of them jumped on the tuk tuk beside Daddy. Megan and I screamed in shock thinking it would bite Daddy but then we realised it was fine and it was just looking for food.

Today was our third and last day at the temples. I have enjoyed learning the facts about the temples especially about the French stealing the heads of the statues. I also enjoyed seeing all the different wildlife. I found the temples very interesting. I have also met a nice friend from Fiji in our hotel. Her name is Kamarner. Here we are in the pool.

Short note from Dad - tomorrow we book our car to take us to the capital Pnhom Penh. We have one more day left in Siem Reap and less than one week left in Asia but we have loved every minute. It is crazy but we like it it!

Angkor Thom by Megan

Today we went to see some more temples in the Angkor Thom area. The first one was the biggest, and was called 'Bayon'. It was very impressive, and would be ideal for an epic game of 'Dobbie'.

Everywhere you looked, you saw huge faces made of rock.

When we were trying to take photographs, Japanese tourists were being very ignorant, and kept walking (dawdling) in front. One of them even hit my mum to get her to move out of the way for her photograph, even though we were trying to take one first!! After that, our tuk tuk driver took us to the next, smaller temple. Emma and I found lots of little frogs in the damp ground next to the temple walls. One of them hit my knee as it attempted to jump onto a rock.

The temple was very high; over three levels, and as we went to enter, a guard stopped us and said that you had to be over 12.

We started to walk round the side, and discovered some more steps at the back. Emma didn't want to break the rules, so she stayed at the bottom with my dad, and my mum and I climbed up. It was a very long way up, and the steps were extremely steep; we started to understand why it wasn't for under 12's.

we saw a couple more temples, but my favourite was the 'elephant terrace' with its 3d elephant trunks.

Once again we came home before lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day at the pool.

Ancient Cambodia by Megan and emma

We are now in Siem Reap in Cambodia. We had a nice welcome at the airport and the hotel. We really like our hotel room here, it is the size of an apartment with a kitchen, two bedrooms,two bathrooms and a living room so big you could use it as a dance floor (which we have done).

Siem Reap has lots of shops selling real crocodile products. They breed the crocodiles at a farm, kill them and dye the skin to make things like handbags and belts.

That makes us feel really sad and annoyed. It is nearly as bad as the place in Laos that farmed Monkeys to sell them to China and Vietnam, to enable people to eat their brains straight out of their bodies. The guide told us about this the other day. We also saw a street seller selling fried frog, snake and crab! We are in Siem Reap to discover the temples of Angkor. Today we went to Angkor Wat, which is the main temple and is the biggest one.

They used 6000 elephants to drag all the stones to make the temple. This is after the stones were floated down the river on bamboo rafts. It took 37 years just to build the temple, and then all the carvings were completed. We saw some carvings that were not finished. There were lots of carvings of women with boobies. As the tourists had touched the boobies, they have become really shiny!

We noticed a lot of the statues were headless. This is because some were taken to sell by Thai people because the stone was valuable and they believed the head brought good luck. Also the French took some to their museums in Paris to show the world. The people are hoping they will be brought back, as some people are trying to make that happen.

When we went behind the temple to get a picture we spotted lots of wild monkeys (so cute). A guide came past with a bunch of bananas and fed them to the monkeys. We were so close we could have touched them, but did not want to because they could have rabies. The monkeys liked things that were dangling, and jumped up at a lady with a dangling camera.

As we walked back to the exit we passed some stalls, and people kept crowding round and asking us to buy things.One lady said Daddy was the bank but Daddy said the bank was CLOSED! Also loads of little kids tried to sell us postcards and bracelets for one Dollar. The kids are very poor and have to work with their Mummies and Daddies instead of going to school. As it was very hot, we only planned to spend the morning at the temples. So we walked back to our tuk tuk and came back to our hotel. We spent the rest of the day at the pool. (Which is what we have been doing for the last two days!!)