Okay, it may have been wrong of me...

...to brand Phnom Penh a sh!thole after being here for thirty minutes (note I didn't say I was wrong, I said it may have been wrong of me...)

But having spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the place... well, it's basic at best... which is what I expected but I was in a bad mood getting off the bus from Siem Reap, which I caught this morning, and which was packed full and uncomforable... a Cambodian man fell asleep on me... he didn't even take me dancing first...

Siem Reap on the other hand was a "nice town", I hate to admit but despite it's blatant commercialism (over one million visitors a year go to see the Angkor temple area) it has retained something of itself and its people. And the residents are nice and hospitable and even funny and good to get to know.. they aren't dead in the eyes like I have to say I think the Thais are... they haven't yet sold their souls for the dollars, and I hope, and I think, that the Cambodian government may have caught it in time... The place is gloriously free of the diseases that infect Thailand... McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Starbucks and a 7/11 convenience store on every street. The Cambodians enjoy their visitors, they don't yet resent them, they still see them as people, and it is reciprocated.

Anyway, yesterday I went and saw Angkor Wat, the vast complex of temples and palaces etc dating back hundreds of years from various dynasties and kingdoms... it is impressive indeed, despite obviously being inundated with tour buses of every nationality. There were thousands of people but the enormity of the park is such you can occasionally find a quiet spot, if only briefly, and maybe snap a photo that doesn't feature a fat pasty old couple dabbing their faces and staring in disbelief as their guide tells them they should climb the stairs of whatever attractoin you are at. I hired a tuktuk early in the morning and my driver and I did the rounds at warp speed, the initial tour we did was supposed to take a full day and we knocked it out in four hours, he cutting the traffic queues and weaving in and out of pasty old people to the temple, telling me what the name was, me jumping off and powerwalking up, down, around and through it, camera snapping away, then back on the tuktuk waiting on the other side and Warp 9 to the next pile of rocks... so we got around a goodly number of places in the burning hot sun and after about six hours I was drenched in sweat and ready to pass out, and we had seen all the major sights, so I let 3502 (for that was his number and that is what we shall call him, for I forget his name) knock off early and I retired to a pub for a couple of recovery beers. While fascinating and vast I fail to understand how some people do three day tours of the place... I mean after half a day all the piles of rocks looked the same...

Anyway, worth doing to sa you have and I will be spending months sorting photos when I get home. Today I sorted my Vietnamese visa which has been a bit of a saga (various reports said it took anything from two days to ten) but in the end just involved me walking to the embassy (a LOT further than I thought) after a fairly devastating rainstorm and submitting some details, and obviously they liked me because while they sent all the Brits and various others away and told them to come back tomorrow, they told me to sit and I was handed a nice shiny visa about 30 minutes later. I was planning on a couple of nights here but with time ticking and really precious little more to actually see in this town I may look at a country change tomorrow, if I can find something with wheels going in the right direction... phew... anyway, that's the situation folks... I am going back to my scungy hotel for a cold beverage...