Leon's World: Travel Log 13

The Angkor temples are truly amazing. There are about … um … lots of temples in the Angkor Archaeology site and most people hire tuk tuks to cart then from temple to temple but being a loan traveller this was a little too expensive for me so I hired a bicycle for $1 and biked around the park. There are lots of kids that hassle you at every temple and they always sell the same stuff, postcards, bracelets, water etc. They also always ask the same questions – like “where are you from?” and then when you reply England they say “Capital London, population 65 million people”. Its nice that they know this but its a shame they all say exactly the same thing. It is however quite nice talking to them about their school, their English is very good and they understand almost everything you say to them. In fact Cambodians have the best English out of any of the countries I have been to so far.

After spending 3 days wandering the temple sites and a few more days resting I headed off to the capital - Phnom Penh. Although quite nice Phnom Penh doesn’t really have many attractions – there is the Prison where the Khmer Rouge killed prisoners which is quite horrific. I decided to take a trip to the coast to hire a bike and ride up a mountain there to see a deserted French casino resort. Unfortunately when I got to Kampot I found out that a rich businessman has decided to build a modern super casino resort at the top of the mountain and is building a new road up the mountain. This meant that the only way to to get to the top was to take a tour for $17. This included a trek for 2 hours and a 40 minute ride in the un-cushioned bed of a truck. On the trek there were some really whiney German girls who moaned that they didn’t expect the trek up to the top of a mountain to be uphill!

The old French casino was interesting and had an amazing view over the surrounding valley over a high cliff edge.