Good morning Vietnam!

Ho Chi Minh City

After a fifteen hour busride which included stomach cramps (food poisoning finally hit the both of us), a very weird border crossing and a serious lack of food we found ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City. The plan was to stay one night and then take a bus to Mui Ne on the coast but the long busride left us pretty traumatized, especially with the stomach cramps and everything. The decision to stay another night turned out to be a very good idea, we've completely fallen in love with the city!

There are beautiful parks pretty much everywhere and big flowerpots are put randomly along the streets. Everything is so green and leafy and the Vietnamese people are all lovely and extremely helpful, even the MAD traffic has its charm (at least after you've crossed the street!). The former French colonialism is sometimes very obvious in the shape of boulangeries, small squares where plenty of cafes and coffee shops are situated side by side, there is even a Notre Dame Cathedral here!

Soon we're heading out for some proper Vietnamese food. I'm having a good feeling about this, it's probably going to be very hard to get used to Shoreditch's Vietnamese restaurants again when we get back to London.

The temples of Angkor Wat

Finally in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) after spending two days in Siem Reap, to see the reputable temples of Angkor Wat. We stayed at a lovely guesthouse in the centre of Siem Reap, cheap and outstanding service from the Cambodian family running it. They took great interest in helping us with every enquiry we had and also arranged for a  tuk-tuk to drive us around the temple area (that turned out to be HUGE!). The first day we spent about 8 hours exploring the main part of the temples. We took millions of photos, climbed the steepest stairscases ever seen and was mainly just fascinated about the ages of it all, being about 1000 years old.

The second day started early with watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat, something that everybody seem to recommend and that everybody seemed to do. Together with a few houndred other tourists we watched the sun come up over Angkor, beautiful is not enough to explain it. The rest of the day was spent with our tuk tuk driver Chu and we visited even more of the temples. 

If it wasn't for the stiffling heat and lack of whiffs (and the fact that due to religious reasons, women had to wear long-sleeved shirts and something covering the knees, stockings in our case...) we could have enjoyed a few more days walking around the Angkor Wat. But for now, we are satisfied temple wise and left Siem Reap happy to move on to the next stop.

One thing worth mentioning about Cambodia and especially Siem Reap is the merchants that seemed to be appearing from nowhere trying to sell all kinds of unnessesary gadgets. A normal conversation that occured about 20 times daily could sound like this:
"Lady, you buy bracelet"
"No, thank you"
"Lady, you want to buy bracelet"
"No, Thank you"
"Lady, You can buy bracelet"
"No, Thank you"
"Lady, 10 for 1 dollar"
"No, Thanks I'm good"
"Lady, one, two, three, four, five six seven, eight, nine, ten for 1 dollar"
"No"
"Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, for 1 dollar"
"No"
"Okey, but you buy later, yeah?"
"No"
"Lady, when you buy later you come to me right?"
"NO!!!"

Not exaggerating. 

Pictures from Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville

Suvarnabhumi Airport (from which we were allowed to bring ALL our electronic devices).

My first Khmer food experience, the earlier mentioned salad which set my mouth on fire.

The local beer Angkor enjoyed at the beach. Together they were 64 pence.

The view from our guest house.

Otres beach, our favourite.

Waiting for breakfast.

I made a new friend who ended up stealing my baguette!

We went on a boat trip to uninhabited islands our last day in Sihanoukville. Rumours about Cambodia not having as pretty and dramatic reefs as Thailand proved to be true and neither of us were too impressed by the snorkling.

Pictures from Bangkok

Unfortunately I seem to be unable to put Mia's pictures onto this computer and my camera gave up on its already poor existence a few days into our stay in Bangkok. So well, this is a tiny part of our Bangkok!

Mr Mihan, our very first tuk tuk driver!

Mia giving a kiss to the Golden Buddah

Grand Palace

A few minutes after this photo was taken my camera died. Pretty good most things are cheap in Thailand so I could buy a new one there.

Incredible photo skills

Mia is showing proof of her incredible photo skills and Diana is happy to see all the amazing temples (more photos are coming, hopefully)

Night bus to Siem Reap

Just arrived to Siem Reap after a 10,5 hour bus ride. The standard of the roads here in Cambodia is very bad, and on top of that bus drivers drive like maniacs. The combination of this turned out to be a rather shaky experience.. Well, luckily nobody got sick (like last time when half of the passengers were sick during the 5 hour bus ride, will never forget the smell..) Soon of to explore the temples of Angkor Wat!