Hello to all at Breakspear,
 
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a super Christmas break and returned to school with fully charged batteries for the Spring Term! Apologies for not having written sooner - we've packed so much into the past few weeks!
 
After visiting Malaysia, our next stop was Cambodia, which was an amazing experience. Having heard lots of great things, I had been really looking forward to visiting and finding out more about its interesting but incredibly sad history.

Our visit started with a very early morning flight to Siem Reap airport. When we landed, we queued to complete our visa to enter the country and were faced with around 20 men all lined up behind a long desk. Each official checked or stamped something in our passport and passed our paperwork along down the line until finally it reached the end! It seemed that the job could have been done by just a couple of them! Having completed the process, we made our way outside where we were met by our very own tuk tuk and driver called Pheak. We hadn't been expecting to be picked up in a tuk tuk! It was a super drive to where we were staying, seeing bustling morning markets in full swing and confident drivers weaving all over the street on their motorbikes.

After settling into our hostel we spent the day in Siem Reap. My favourite part of the day was visiting a market in town. From the outside it looked just like other markets we had seen, selling the usual selection of scarves, wooden carvings, canvas paintings and jewellery, but as we walked through the narrow aisles towards the centre it opened up into a huge 'wet food' market. It was incredibly busy and very lively, with people shouting, bartering and exchanging money. Only women worked on the stalls and they were all crouched low next to the food they were selling. There were chickens, fish still flapping on stainless steel surfaces and huge piles of crispy cooked bugs for sale including cockroaches, beetles and grasshoppers! I can't say that I tried any of those delicacies I'm afraid!

We spent the following three days visiting the old Angkor temples around Siem Reap which were built between the 9th and 15th centuries. The atmosphere at the temples was incredibly peaceful and, despite the huge number of visitors to the main attractions, we could always find a quiet spot to sit or hidden stone passages to explore. One of my many highlights was watching the sunrise at 5am at the magnificent Angkor Wat temple. As you can see in the photo, the colours in the sky were spectacular!

We had a few funny moments along the way. At one point, as we were sitting in the back of our tuk tuk driving between the temples, we spotted a group of monkeys playing on the grass. As our driver pulled over, one of the monkeys leapt aboard the tuk tuk and quickly snatched a packet of crisps from our backpack! Luckily my friend Rachel had very quick reactions and managed to grab the packet before he could make off with them! He did leave a few muddy footprints behind on the packet though!
 
We had some lovely drives through interesting villages which gave us an opportunity to see the countryside outside of the touristy spots which is always lovely. We saw lots of children making a long journey to school in the morning, some by foot, some by bicycle and a few holding on tightly on the back of their parent's motorbike. Houses were all built in different styles, some were made from wood and dried leaves while others were more sturdy and made by stone or brick. Nearly all of the houses were built on stilts so that they wouldn't get flooded during the rainy season and many had hammocks hanging between the stilts with people resting, swinging gently from side to side.

There were lots of small roadside stalls selling fruit and other goods. Lots of the houses had cows tied up outside, some of which seemed very skinny despite the fact that there was grass around to eat.
 
On our third day we also visited a 'floating village' where all the houses were built on long stilts in the middle of a huge lake surrounded by reeds. The people in the village had everything they needed, all floating above the water. There were shops and even a floating school! We saw children making their way home from school by boat, a couple were swimming and one girl floated past us in a huge metal cooking pot! Some of the houses kept their animals in cages on stilts, attached to the outside of their house. If you look carefully, you can see pigs in a cage above the water in the photo below.

After Siem Reap, we visited the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penn. While we were there we found out a lot about the history of the country. Around 40 years ago the Government in Cambodia wanted to change the way that the country was run, so they killed nearly 4 million of their own people who may have disagreed with them or who seemed like a threat to them. Doctors, teachers, soldiers, people who lived in cities and many others were all brutally killed. It was a horrific time for the Cambodians and its effects are still felts strongly by everybody who lives there. In fact, the country is noticeably young, with few people from the older generation. We visited a place where many people died, walked around the gardens and visited memorials, all of which had been beautifully and thoughtfully laid out for people to visit to pay their respects and to learn more about what happened.

Despite the fact that the people in Cambodia have had such a traumatic time in recent years, people we met and spoke to were all so kind and welcoming and made our stay in Cambodia really fascinating. I would love to return to the country to spend longer exploring other parts.

That's all for now. Our next stop was Vietnam which had a completely different feel from Malaysia and Cambodia, which I'll tell you all about next time.

I hope you are all well,

Miss Boughen