Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and on to Sapa

Arranged with a friend of Nin's to drive us from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (6 hour journey) in the north of Cambodia. On the way we passed through many interesting villages and towns - and had some interesting 'traffic related' moments. Being in a car which passes a truck, while it's passing a motorbike which is passing a bullock train when there's another oncoming truck is not something we're used to! All this - and on a two lane road... But we made it...!

Spent our first afternoon in Siem Reap visiting (via tuk-tuk) Angkor Wat at sunset - beautiful.

Arranged with our tuk-tuk driver to meet us at 5am the next day for a sunrise visit to Angkor Wat. What an experience.

Continued on and spent the next 10 hours visiting the temples immediately around Siem Reap. We climbed to the top of temples wherever possible, explored dark, beautifully carved corridors, walked around walls overgrown with vines and trees, burned incense with Buddhists and generally drank in the atmosphere. A wonderful day.

The next day we arranged with a tuk-tuk driver we met on the street to help us achieve a few goals:

1. Visit a village school
2. Visit a monastery
3. Visit the floating village on the Tonle Sap lake.

We achieved all three and weren't disappointed.

The school visit was really enlightening. So many poor students ride their bikes (often a very long way) from surrounding villages to attend. Yet for every one of those there are many more who do not attend. Instead, they wait outside the temples to sell trinkets, postcards, books, food and drinks to tourists. And so it goes on...

The floating village was an eye-opener. Entire families live on floating houses on the Tonle Sap (a huge inland lake) because they can't afford to build on land. There is a floating police station, floating school, and a new floating hospital is being built. On the edge of the lake are houses which are made for dry land, but when the rains come and the lake rises the owners have to move the houses to even drier land... All in all, Siem Reap was a real experience.

The next day we flew from Siem Reap, via Laos, and back into Vietnam (Hanoi). We had just enought time to cross Hanoi in a taxi and make it to the train station for our overnight train to Lao Cai - in the north-west of Vietnam 2km from the Chinese border. We had booked a very comfortable sleeping cabin, so we were quite refreshed by the time we arrive in Lao Cai (5.30am next morning).

Took a mini-bus the remaining 40km to our next destination - the hill town of Sapa.

Spent the day trekking from the heights of Sapa down into the valley, with a fantastic guide (Su) visiting the H'mong hill tribe people. We slid down mountains, walked across many corn terraces - beautifully carved into the hillside - and across rice paddies. We walked through villages, sharing the road with pigs, water buffalo, chickens and ducks. We had lunch with the locals in a H'mong village. Vietnam is such a diverse country - around every corner there's an adventure. We're really enjoying our time in the north-west!