I’m late to start this thing, but I’ll go ahead right now!
So I arrived in Dubai on the 6th July, but unfortunately I only had a short trip there, just 13 hours. I’ve never really been outside of Dubai Airport up until now, so when I left the airport I went straight to Dubai Mall/Burj Khalifa via the metro directly from Dubai Airport.
(Burj Khalifa) This is the only picture in my camera roll, but I will upload more of Dubai as soon as I can!
From there, I had a short layover in Myanmar, which wasn’t too spectacular but it was amazing to see the huge difference in culture AND cost from Dubai, just 7 hours away yet the difference between a pint of beer means in Myanmar it’s just $1!
From Myanmar, I got on a flight to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
From there, I have just been chilling, ended up going to a province called Sihanoukville, 5 hours to the Southwest of Phnom Penh, but I couldn’t take any pictures because of the storm that had came over from Taiwan and China, so I made my way back to Phnom Penh!
While I have been here, I met a good friend called Sarath, who is Khmer (Cambodian), usually we chill and drink a lot, end up partying and then the closer we got, the better it has become; I got to visit his home town and his family in a small province called Kampong Speu. The difference between Phnom Penh and a rural place such Chhbar Mon (Kampong Speu) is incredible, but I prefer the latter over anywhere due to it’s deep cultural influence and the beauty of the nature that surrounds it.
Definitely the most beautiful place that I have been to, it was the best experience to be able to live with Sarath’s family for a while and eat all the crazy things I never thought I’d eat, from delicious giant red ants to dog, all while practicing my Khmer!
Sarath actually lives in Phnom Penh and doesn’t visit his family much due to him trying to find work, so it was an honor to experience this with him.
In a village like this, the average yearly salary is just $300, more than I spend each week here! It’s extremely humbling to see what they must endure each day just to be able to survive and provide for the family, I gave them $100 so they could live the dream for a week!
These next few days I will be just chilling in Phnom Penh and then I’ll be heading back to Sihanoukville.
I was here last year for 3 months and didn’t share any pictures, so here we go:
These images are from the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Not many people know about the genocide that happened here just 40 years ago, so I will provide some back story for ya:
There was a really crazy guy called Pol Pot, he wanted Cambodia to go back to a traditional country without electronics, tractors and wanted to rid the country of anybody that was smart or could speak English, anybody that was a doctor, lawyer, spoke English were murderered in cold blood, hundreds of thousands of whole families taken here and killed in the fields, buried in huge mass graves – nobody knew about this until Pol Pot and his army, the Khmer Rouge were removed.
Pol Pot was put on trial in 1990 but died just a few days later of “natural causes” yet it is believed widely that he killed himself to avoid paying the cost of his crimes.
This is Angkor Wat in Siem Reap province, one of MY wonders of the world thats for sure. Khmer Rouge also tried to destroy this as they wanted a land without religion. It’s thousands of years old and the intricate art work is just... unbeatable. I’ll try and upload pictures of the detail as soon as I can.
It was only rediscovered in the early 1900s by a French adventurer, being hidden by hundreds of feet of grass and vegetation!
You may notice that Angkor Wat featured in Tomb Raider!
Well, that’s all for now. Will be in Sihanoukville in the next few days so will try to update as soon as possible!
Cheeeers
How do you get to travel to many places? Work or Business?
Just leisure, if I feel like I’m bored at home then I’ll save money for a few weeks and travel again!