I had a great Christmas Day in Cambodia. I got up early and had a nice big breakfast in preparation for my ride to Bokor Hill.

It was quite a long ride taking about 90 minutes with about an hour of weird the amount of development happening in a national park. There is a load of Chinese money being spent and they have built a massive hotel and casino and by the looks of it hundreds of people will be able to stay there. Apparently the end result will wipe out most of the top of the hill where they are building.

We finally got to our main destination which is an abandoned hotel, it as been derelict since the 60's, but now looks like they are trying to restore it a little. It is still pretty cool to walk through. We then went to the abandoned church which is nearby.

After that we drove off to the "secret waterfall" which is not really a secret and isn't that big. It is cool because the water disappears into the rockes and then comes out as a waterfall further down. I think it would be more impressive in the wet season when there was more water flowing.

I then did the big drive back to the guest house for Xmas lunch which was a big BBQ of fish and chicken and loads of salad. We then just did the normal Xmas activities, sat around drank beer and played cards.

Today I am off the see the "secret lake" which is also not a secret and then check out some of the peppers farms around here. That is table pepper which apparently Cambodia is famous for and is exported all over the world and used in some of the best restaurants in the world. Who knew there was so many different peppers.

The final decision for tomorrow is to go back to Phnom Penh a day early to do the markets and the S21 prison museum.

The bus trip from HCMC to Phnom Penh was a very long trip, we leave at midnight which is so we are basically at the front of the queue at the border for the 6am opening. We are arrived at around 3am and just slept on the bus until the border opened. Getting through was pretty straight forward and we were quickly on our way again.

We had a river crossing we need to make on a barge (a bridge is being built at the moment), when we got off the other side we got stuck and had to stuff around for about 30 minutes before we could get moving again. We finally made to Phnom Penh about 3pm that day. I found a really nice hostel there that had only opened a few weeks earlier, very social place with a pooll out the front.

I met two Kiwis on the bus who came with me to the hostel. They were going out to the shooting range, so I went along to watched. The were going all out with a bazooka and M60 machine gun. The guy taking us out asked if they wanted to blow up LPG takes which they jumped out. We stopped off and they bought one each and then we were on our way out to the mountains where you have to go to shoot the bigger stuff.

The noise was unbelievable and after they spent an hour shooting stuff and spending $1000 we headed back to town.

A group of us then went out for some "happy" pizza which apparently very popular all over Cambodia, but it was a lot happier than anyone expected and it was a real adventure getting home. Luckily one of the people has not had one and that helped all of us get home.

The next day we went out to the Killing Fields which is a pretty depressing place to walk around, I still need to go to the S21 Jail which is now a museum. This is where people were held before being taking out to the killing fields. Apparently is has even more impact than the fields. I will be going there when I go back through to get to Siem Reap.

My last day in Phnom Penh and I just went down to check out the palace and walk around the city center. I packed early and had a quiet night as I had to get up at 6am to be picked up for the bus to Kampot. The bus company picked me up and then went to pick up some other poeple, but he seemed to get it wrong what hotel he had to go to and after about 30 minutes of extra driving we finally got to the bus station and the guy there just point to a bus two blocks down the road and said Kampot. So we jumped back in the van and chased after it. Luckily being peak hour we had caught within 5 blocks.

After an hour of driving people started to smell smoke and burning, so we pulled over to be informed by one of the english speaking Cambodians on the bus that it could not go any further and they were sending another bus. 90 minutes later the bus finally turned up and we were on out way again.

I finally got here around 3pm with a four hour bus trip being seven hours. It was well worth the trip though as the place I am staying is great, it is about a 15 minute walk into town, but it is right on the river and am writing this in the bar/restaurant with a nice cool breeze looking over the river.

We had a power outage last night, so we spent half the night sitting around candles at the bar and it was really peacful. The internet has not been working since I got here, so I am about to head into town to find some free wifi. I am here for three more nights, today I am just checking out the town. For Xmas moring I am going out of ride to the Bokor National Park, I am breaking my rule about never driving a motor bike in these coutries because it is the only way I can get out there. It is pretty quiet out here so it should be safe especially since most of what I am doing will be off road.

I have a day after here that I still haven't decided what I am going to do, I was going to go further down the coast to sihanoukville, but can't decide if I am going there or not.

So it has been a busy couple of days and between all the activities and trying to find time to get electronic equipment charged I have not been on the computer much.

My last to days in Vietnam (going back at the end of the trip) was spent in a tour of the Mekong Delta. We started of a bus trip down to towards the south. In the tour I did the day before I had seen all these rest spots on the side of the road. It looked they sold drinks, had tables and chairs. The best bit was they also had loads of hammocks setup to use. So on this trip we finally got to stop at one. Basically if you buy a drink you can use a hammock as long as you want, the locals will use it as a stayover of the night on long trips.

After a bit of relaxing in the hammock we continued on to our first stop which was a little restaurant by the side of a small arm of the Mekong back waters. There we got to try some of the local friuts and got to listen to traditional music. We then head to the water and got in small row boats to another place about 15 minutes down the river.

Here we saw how coconut candy was made, got to taste their honey tea - the honey supposedly can cure anything by the look of the list they showed us. We then got to hold this huge snake, the first time I had ever done so - it was pretty cool. From here we all got of one big boat and went down the Mekong Proper to Turtle Island, one of the four main islands in the Mekong. Here we had some lunch before moving on.

Then we went on to see a large Buddist temple which have some of the biggest statues I have ever seen. From here we split into two groups, those who were spending the night in town and those at a home stay. At the home stay we help the family prepare dinner and then sat down for dinner and a few drinks before heading to be early as the power goes off at 9:30.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast before getting on a boat to meet up with the other part of the tour. We ended up do a boat transfer over the the other group in the middle of the Mekong and once all together we went down to check out the Floating Markets. Though mainly for normal large volume trading there was also small boats cruising around offering food and drinks.

After this we wend to a restaurant that sell "exotic" food where i got to try snake and rat. The snake was a bit chewy, but the rat was quite nice, it had a very similar texture to chicken but tasted a bit more meaty. That was pretty much the end of the tour, we stopped in town for lunch but I was still quite full from my rat and then we had the 5 hour bus trip back to HCMC where I waited for my night bus to Cambodia.

The internet is a bit erratic here, so it might take a while before I get any photos up on the site.

So far I have done all my touristy stuff by myself, but have had some really cool room mate. Hopefully I will be as lucky for the rest of my tirp.

Yesterday was a long day on the bus for what felt like not much achieved. Outside of stopping for lunch there were two places we went too over a 10 hour bus trip.

First stip was the town of Tay nigh where the head temple of a religion call Cao Dai religion, which is a mix of three religions all worshipping in the on temple. It was interesting, but I would hardly say it was worth the time spent to see it.

The second stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels which are only a couple of hours out of HCMC. There is a lot of propaganda around this visit as well and you have to sit through a movie to see the tunnels. Luckily we were able to watch this while of the bus and did not have to sit in the hot huts to watch. It was an interesting tour and only a short bit of it is spent underground which is quite lucky, as even though the short bit we go through has been enlarged it was still quite hard to get through having to crouch in a awkward position.

So I am off to the Mekong Delta for two days, I am leaving most of my stuff here and just taking a small bag, so there will be no technology until Thursday night.

So a new trip has begun, I left Melbourne at lunch time on Monday and go into HCMC at about 10:00pm (with the 4 hour time difference, that is about 2am Melbourne time). I was a bit concerned about the transfer to my second flight as I did not know how long it would take to get through Singapore customs to get to my checkin counter. As it turns out it was quite quick and I was at the counter within 45 minutes of landing and could have made the earlier flight, unfortunately there were no seats left so had to hang out at the airport for an extra 2 hours.

My first day at HCMC started early which was helped by the excitement of my new trip and the sudden time change. It turns out not only to a get two free beers a night for my $US8 but they also include breakfast - what a bargain this place it. I have not complaints about the place at all, they have a nice rooftop, air conditioning in the bedrooms and the beds are very comfortable.

So after breakfast I laid out my plan for my first big walk for the day, this started of worse then normal when after 10 minutes I walking in completely the wrong direction. After turning my map around I was flying.

I deliberately selected the non-direct path to get to where I was going so I could walk through some of the city parks. It was pretty cool with a lot of people practicing different form of martial arts and exercising. They exercise stations setup all over the park.

First stop was the War Remnants Museum to get my propaganda fix, though it was very interesting it was definitely one side. A lot of the photos could have been interpreted differently with a different caption under them. However there is no denying the impact agent orange and the other chemicals dumped on this county have had.

It was then off to Reunification Palace which was once the Presidential Palace, but is now open to the public and is a real time warp of a place as if feels like it has not been touched since it was built in the 60's. Then it was off to Notre Dame Cathedral which I must say I was not really expecting to see this kind of religious temple on this trip. It was then off to the Jade Temple which is more like was I was expecting when it came to religious buildings.

I decided to finish of the day with a walk through the botanical gardens which was not as nice as I had hoped. Turns out is the zoo/national gardens and I will not be putting it as the best zoo I have ever seen, but the gardens were nice. I have never seen so many unhappy and bored animals in my life. I swear the way way the big cats looked they were just waiting to die so they could be free.

After that depressing little trip I then walked back to my hostel along the riverfront and then dropped into a couple of tailors just to see costs and how long they need to make a suit.

Anyway, big day today - up early and breakfast is done.