Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Cambodia - Siem Reap



We flew to Cambodia to avoid the road trip and border crossing which we'd heard was an absolute horror and arrived in Siem Reap to find our airport pick-up driver Roj holding a sign for Mrs England. We followed Roj towards some lovely new cars that were all stylish and probably highly airconditioned but went right on past them to our personal mode of transport which can only be described as a motor scooter with a cart attached to the back. I can only describe it this way as that's exactly what it was. The scooter bit was missing all the dials and had no horn. The 4km journey to our hotel was our first literal taste of Cambodia, it tastes of dust. Hot dust.
The Cambodian government have obviously recently proposed an initiative that states that under no circumstances should any shop have a functioning pavement immediately outside of it. Seriously, the place is like Dresden. There's practically no pavement at all, anywhere. It's all been lovingly replaced by rubble, loose earth and vast trenches of water. A stroll through the town can be life threatening, either tripping over rubble, falling down big holes or being mowed down by Tuk-Tuk drivers.

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