Tuesday 23 September 2014

Happy Monday - Koh Kong, Cambodia to Koh Chang, Thailand

Morning everyone!

Our last few days in Koh Kong was spent exploring the surrounding countryside... Mangrove forests and waterfalls, such a beautiful place.
Tatai waterfall

Mangroves

After leaving Koh Kong last week it was time for our final border crossing, into Thailand! This was actually one of the easiest we've ever done and in a little under 4 hours a tuk tuk ride, one bus, two trucks and a ferry later, we were settling into island life in the second largest island in Thailand, Koh Chang.

Koh Chang from the ferry

The island is very big and split into lots of different small towns, on the ride from the ferry to our first hotel it all felt a bit touristy. For the first three nights we stayed in a hotel quite near the top of the island where it was quite a bit quieter so we had a very relaxing time on the beach and by the pool!!


Lovely beach 5min drive from our hotel

As you all know, Rachel celebrated her 30th birthday on Monday, and what a day we had!

First thing in the morning we transferred to a hotel on a different part of the island before being picked up and whisked off to a cooking course for the day.


As I'm sure you have all noticed, sampling local food has been a very important part of our trip and the cooking course with Blue Lagoon cooking school was absolutely amazing! Our teacher was lovely and very personable, and not only did she teach us how to make six different dishes she also taught us a lot about the culture and how the people of Thailand connect with food and why certain ingredients are so vital to their existence....I don't think either of us will look at a grain of rice in the same way again!


We both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, we did a cooking course whilst in Phnom Penh but this one was just incredible!!

After eating so much we wondered how we would fit dinner in, but, never fear after an hour or so sipping bubbles on the verandah of our beach villa, we were ready to go again!!!

Cake and bubbles on the veranda 

Birthday girl!

Suffice to say after a very food filled day and a couple of bottles of fizz later we felt extremely happy!

The next day we spent most of our time soothing our heads by sipping coconut water and....you guessed it....hanging out by the pool and beach!


 Great chill out views

We're just about to move on to our third and final hotel on the island for a few nights before trekking our way back to Bangkok ahead of our flight home on Monday...

We've had such an amazing 6 months and we really can't believe that we're almost at the end, so this is the last of our Love Mondays, but hopefully we'll
carry on the sentiment and Mondays will never be a dull day for us again!!

We hope you've enjoyed following us on our journey....see you very sooooon!!

The weeks highlights:

Best View: The view from our beach villa... Nice little treat from the places we have been staying at!

Best Food: I think that for sure the best food we've had this week, and in Thailand for that matter has to be the food we learnt to make at Blue Lagoon cooking school! Below are a couple of the dishes that we made... Looking forward to cooking them at home too!

Pad Thai 

Penang and green curry

Mango and sticky rice

Love Monday funday: Rachel is 30!! What better way to spend a love Monday funday than eating and drinking copious amounts of food and wine?! Finishing off our Love Monday fun days with a bang!! 

Number of hours on a bus: 1

Number of hours on a tuktuk: 3

Number of hours on the back of a truck: 1

Definitely taking a slower pace (less traveling!) as it's the end... Enjoying every last minute :-)

See you all shortly for some great catch ups,

Love Rach and Lisa xx


Colin's sad to be leaving the sun but super excited to see Morgan :-) x


Sunday 14 September 2014

Happy Monday - Kep to Koh Kong, Cambodia

Afternoon everyone,

After leaving Kep we travelled 4 hours along the coast to sunny Sihanoukville. Well, it was sunny, for the first two days...
We stayed in a little beach hut on Otres Beach and for the first couple of days we enjoyed white sand, cheap beers, dazzling sunsets and lots of cooling off in the sea....

Beach trade

View from our hut
Sunset

Catching fish 

but on our third morning, it all changed....

After being woken in the early hours to great claps of thunder, lashing rain and flashes of lightening, we began to understand more than ever the toils of traveling in rainy season. The rain poured for three days and on a washed out beach we had nothing to do but drink, eat and read which was actually really quite relaxing.

Finally the rain began to let up and the sunshine resumed so our last day on the beach was spent soaking up the sun pool side and planning our next move...


After a whole week in Sihanoukville we decided it was time to make a move, to Koh Kong.

Koh Kong is a small town about 10km from the Thai border and most people usually use it as a stop over into Thailand, but we decided to stay for a while and see what the town had to offer.

We stayed in the town for the first few days, getting our bearings and checking out the best places to eat, as usual we found that the best places were the cheap ones full of locals!
Riverside cafe

We then headed down river for two nights to experience life in the Cambodian jungle. 
Boat ride down the river Tatai

We stayed at a small eco resort run by a friendly german chap and rented one of his three basic but spacious bungalows set in the trees over looking the river.

Our Bungalow (no2)

Relaxing view

Panoramic of jungle and river view

It was so nice to be in the middle of nowhere with only the sound of the jungle and the river, with nothing to do but eat, kayak, swim in the river and enjoy the wonders of nature! (Even if this did include being scared half to death by a water snake falling out of the rafters and landing right in front of us!)

Morning coffee

Rainbow raft

The weeks highlights:

Best view:
Definitely watching the river go by at Neptune River Bungalows... So peaceful and so so green


Best food:
We've had loads of great noodle and curry dishes recently... Have clearly eaten them too quick to take pictures- sorry!

Love Monday Funday: As our Funday this week we decided to take a kayak down to one of the waterfalls recommended by our German friend Thomas......

Kayak selfie
Our pit stop for the waterfall
Blissfully quiet river surrounded by the lush green trees of the cardamom mountains

Seriously those people who see Koh Kong as just a border destination are missing out on so much! The Khmer Rouge and civil war here (as devastating as it was) has ensured that this is a serious biodiversity hotspot, retaining species that are scarce to non-existent in the rest of the world... So if any of you are going to Cambodia, make sure this province is on your 'to-do' list.

Number of hours on a bus: 9

Number of mosquito bites: 20 or so each!

Have a great Monday all, 

Love Rachel and Lisa xx
 
And Colin...

Only two weeks til we return home folks!!

Thursday 28 August 2014

Happy Monday - Phnom Penh to Kep, Cambodia

Hi guys,

Last Tuesday we had a very interesting but quite somber day. We took a trip to The Killing Fields just outside Phnom Penh followed by the genocide museum. The Killing Fields were quiet and peaceful and as we wandered around our audio guide gave us a really thorough outline of the horror that occurred there and the thousands of people who lost their homes, families and lives during the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. It's horrible to think that it was all so recent too, that this all occurred during our own parents lifetime, it really put into perspective just how lucky we are.

A lot of people were taking photos in The Killing Fields site and the museum, but we thought that this didn't really feel like the right thing to do, so no photos of this particular day trip I'm afraid... So here's a picture from Phnom Pehn instead...

And of the cool bar we found, it was once a grand mansion, that was prior to the Khmer Rouge.

The next day we took a short three hour bus journey to Kampot. A small, quiet and pretty town famed for its pepper production.
Riverside town with a French influence

We stayed in a really relaxing resort along the river, a short tuk tuk ride from town.
The view from the lounge-like bar
Our home for four nights 

While here we discovered a cafe with great food and for a great cause. It was set up to support deaf and disabled local Cambodians.
Their ethos painted on the wall

After a few days lounging around drinking beer and swimming in the river we decided we should probably get out and see some of the sights, so we booked a tuk tuk tour of the surrounding area.

The tour was, lets just say a bit of a whistle stop tour but all the same we got to see a but more of rural Cambodia. Our stop offs included a very wet salt field, a bat cave, small fishing village and the pepper plantation....

Fishing village

Into the bat cave...

Pepper plantation 

Dried pepper ready for sale

While in Kampot we found two great cafes, so mostly we just split our time between relaxing in front of the river and enjoying great coffee and food!

After four nights in Kampot, we took a short journey half an hour east to the small town of Kep, famous for its crabs! 

Kep used to be a boutique seaside resort until the Khmer Rouge moved everyone out and looters saw that everything else was taken. It is steadily climbing to it's feet again and has a great community spirit... On the Sunday when we arrived all the locals and visitors from Phnom Penh were sat in hammocks having family picnics of noodles and fried fish.

The weeks highlights: 

Best view:
This week has been all about relaxing and so the view which we've spent many a night watching the river go by is this one...
Samon Village, on Kampot river

Lesson learnt: 
Try and have a wet weather contingency in the rainy season... 

Love Monday Funday: There is a small island half an hour from Kep known as Rabbit Island. Having been inland for a couple of weeks we decided that it would be nice to spend some time at the beach, so a day trip to Rabbit Island sounded great... However it being in the middle of rainy season, the weather can be a little unpredictable so our ideal day of sunning ourselves on a secluded island didn't quite go to plan....lets just say we didn't need to venture into the sea to get wet! 
The fishing port
The beach

Still it was a pretty island and we spent most of the day eating noodle soup and chatting to travellers and locals so all was not lost! The boat journeys were also hilarious, seriously choppy water, boatmen steering in pants, jump starting the engine and a most ungraceful boat embarkment! 
One of the boatmen, pants on trousers very much off

Colin has been enjoying a rest-bite from the sun...


Number of hours on a bus: 3.5

Number of hours on a tuk-tuk: 2-3

Hope you all have a great week,

Rach and Lisa xx