We're in Cambodia!
Cambodia.
The place where it's really hot now.
Can you see my sweat?
Yeah.
It's good. We cannot complain, especially after
cold weeks in,
in Scotland.
This is exactly what we,
what we need, what we want, what we were dreaming about!
But it's really hot.
So we flew from
Hong Kong to Siem Reap
and we're gonna spend, well, we've already spent one night
but we're spending five nights
in Siem Reap.
Yesterday we went to the kind of official
Angkor Wat ticket office to buy
our tickets for
all of the temples around here, and the ticket office is
the only place that you can
buy the tickets
because they take your photo and they print it out and then
at each temple entrance point, they check your tickets.
Yeah. This is the reason
why you have to be in person.
There is no name or surname -
your picture.
That's the most important.
Before
I don't know, where the, before you're going to
all these areas, all the
place where the temples are, they're checking your tickets
before you get to the temple,
most of the temples, they're
- checking the tickets as well. - We've seen a lot of
little, smaller temples
so far.
They're really impressive anyway.
We're kind of going backwards,
so we're gonna see Angkor Wat
at the end.
We're just listening to our
tuk tuk driver, who's
Mr Champion,
really nice guy.
We have to trust him because he knows
how to avoid the crowds, which places are the nicest,
the best to see
and how to get there, so he recommended the other
direction, in the other way, than most of the tourists
doing, so everyone, most of the people will
start with Angkor Wat temple,
the most famous, the biggest, I think.
We did so far a few
small temples, which were really nice as well, really impressive.
Now we're going to the second biggest,
with the palace which is behind us,
and we're going to end up at Angkor Wat hoping
there'll be less people there.
So when we were searching for our accommodation,
I mean, for us, kind of, "Westerners",
it's easy for us when we come to
a
poorer country like Cambodia to stay at a
four or five star hotel with, you know,
a swimming pool and all the
amenities.
All this stuff is available here.
And it's so cheap.
We could probably stay at a four or five star hotel for
less than 350 US dollars for 5 nights.
Then I came across
a homestay that we're actually staying at
now, that's...
It appealed to us more
because of the, I guess,
local
Cambodian experience that we would get
as opposed to staying in a four or five star hotel with a swimming pool.
The deeper we started to research,
we went into the reviews
about this place,
the more we wanted to go there.
And now to go into details. We paid
121.50 US dollars
for 5 nights
including breakfast and dinner,
and you eat with
his, Bun, the owner,
his family
and other guests that are staying. He also has a garden
so he grows
a lot of his own vegetables
and it's organic.
He makes Ecobricks as well, they probably
don't call them that, I don't know
if they call them Ecobricks here, but
so he's got all these plastic bottles and they
stuff plastic
inside until it's full, and it seems like he's making
a wall right now.
He's making a wall. He's building a
- gym. - So Mr Bun
has
a school where he's taken in
I think twelve
students, and he and
a few others teach them English and computer
classes as well, like learning Microsoft Office
and all of that.
Some are like primary school kids
and some are more high school.
No charge for,
for the kids, so everything he's doing is
for free for them just to
educate them. He believes that
education is the most important and, you know, if they
know English and computer skills, then they can go on and
- get a proper job. - Yeah. If you know English, you can
work in all hospitality,
you can work in a hotel,
you can be a tour guide.
You can do
a job
which won't be as physically hard as
it might be without these skills, like
working in a field
in this temperature, it's not easy.
Basically, the income from his homestay, you know, obviously
he keeps a portion for himself and his family, healthcare, and all of that
but he wants to give
a lot back to his community.
So the easiest way to get around
Cambodia is by tuk tuk.
So we arranged for an airport transfer, and we've got
our tuk tuk driver, Mr Champion, with us
kind of this whole time that we're exploring. One tip that
we have
if you're gonna be riding a tuk tuk
is
to get some sort of face mask!
Because when we went from the airport to our homestay,
we hadn't taken these out yet, and we were like *yuck*
and we noticed a big difference when we started wearing them.
So it's really helpful to use the masks
or if you're coming,
it's difficult to buy them in Europe
but you can get like a scarf or
something to cover your face because on the, not in the temples, but in the city centre
in
Siem Reap
it's quite dusty.
So also sunglasses will help.
Tonight we're going to a Cambodian wedding!
Today is a big wedding
and Mr Bun was
invited. This is his friend's wedding
and obviously
he invited us.
This is really normal for
this part of the world and for Cambodian people to
invite
- everyone! - a lot of people, so
I think we're gonna blend in,
in the crowd as
there might be around 700 people at the wedding
so
it's quite big! But it'll be
really good food,
and music, and
- drinking! - and a lot of alcohol!