Battambang

Finally we arrived in Battambang! It was time to say goodbye to Sa Em ( our guide ). We all think he was the best guide so far!

Next day...

We did homework ALL day today before going out to a disco.... While we were in there three men came over and asked Dad if Riona could dance with them! I could see Riona going bright red with embarrassment! Dad made Riona go up and dance with them! She felt very self conscious and sat back down again. The men came over AGAIN and asked how old Riona was. Dad said 13 years old and one of the men walked away but the rest stayed and sat next to Riona! It was a cambodian dance rather than a disco. They love enjoying themselves and just dancing. Finally we left!

Next day...

We did more homework before going to the Bamboo train. The Bamboo train is a three metres long and two metres wide bamboo platform on four wheels with a lawn mower engine on the back. It all runs on one track, so if you met another bamboo train you'd have to take your train off the track and wait for the other train to go past. We arrived at the place where the trains turn around so we had to get off and wait for fifteen minutes to get back on the train.

While we were waiting, we started talking to a family from Brighton. All the local children were making things out of palm leaves and giving it to you! Halfway through the ride we stopped to watch the sunset. 

We saw a French family from our hotel and they were doing Gangnam style! We're doing that right round the world! So we decided to join in with them. We said to the family from France and Brighton to meet them at The riverside balcony bar. We stayed at the bar until 11:30PM! It's a really cool made of wood run by an Australian guy.

Phnom Penh

We finally arrived at the Plantation hotel. As soon as we came into the lobby, a member of staff came and gave us passion fruit punch. 

We went swimming while mum and dad had a drink. Afterwards, we had a six course Christmas eve dinner. One of the courses was foie gras, which is the liver of a goose that has been force-fed corn. 

Also, I had sparkling wine! It felt weird having a fancy dinner on Christmas eve instead of Christmas day. 

Our beds had mosquito nets around them. It looked like the beds that princesses sleep on!

Next day…

Merry Christmas! We woke up and saw we had presents. Aoife was really excited that Santa had found her. 

Riona, Aoife and I went for a swim before going to the Russian market. It was hot and sticky in there, it was very close together inside so I got claustrophobic. Oh.... and it stunk! Apart from that, it was a great experience! Riona bought LOADS of things. For example, she had six pairs of shoes when we started the holiday, and now she has eight! Travelling light? 

We came back to our hotel and started talking to a family from San Francisco. We had dinner with them. The parents were called April and Chris. Afterwards, we went swimming with their daughter Serena and her cousin Daniel. We were in the pool until 11:30PM! Every girl's perfect Christmas day - shopping then swimming.

Next day...

We went to S-21 with the family from San Francisco. S-21 was a 're-education' centre that was part of the khmer rouge regime. Re-education to the Khmer rouge meant torture for what innocent people 'did wrong'. Doing wrong meaning you were educated, from the city and a threat to orders.

Before I went to S-21 I thought torture was like abuse, but what the Khmer rouge did was beyond comprehension. 

Here's what these mass killers did: slap people with plugged in electric wire; hang people upside down until they went unconscious then dip them in ammonia to wake them up; disembowel them whilst alive, pull their nails off; drown people by forcing their head into a barrel, and once people had wounds they'd hit them with bamboo. These killing machines would do much more....

While we were in S-21, I saw the beds that people would be tortured on, pictures of people when they got there and when they died, and two extraordinary  people who survived one of the worst cases of genocide EVER. If you were wondering, genocide is basically mass killing.

It was a horrible feeling standing in a room where people were beaten to death slowly - sometimes over months.

Imagine growing up and knowing that your parents were either beaten to death, sent to a killing field or had died of either starvation or exhaustion. 

Chum Mey

Bou Meng

Two of the survivors from S21 who were in the prison when we visited. Until this day they retain their dignity and are calm and relaxed despite what happened to them.

What does khmer rouge mean? Khmer means Cambodian and rouge means red in French, which stands for communism. Communism in simple terms means that everyone has to be equal and be treated equally. 

The leader of the Khmer rouge was Pol Pot short for Political Potential. His real name is Saloth Sar. Kratie was the first province to be captured by the Khmer rouge. People died from starvation, exhaustion and killings. 

Next, we went to the Choeung Ek killing fields. This is where the Khmer rouge would bring their victims from S-21 to kill them. 

While we were there, we saw a tree called ' The killing tree '. 

This is where the Khmer rouge would grab babies by their legs and smash them against the tree, before throwing their bodies into a mass grave. 

Sometimes, they'd kill the babies in front of their mothers or the babies might still be alive when they were thrown in the pit. They would then pour a chemical into the pit to kill off the smell and also to kill off anyone else who wasn't fully dead.

Every year, we give a minute of silence to soldiers who lost their lives fighting, but who does that for the 2 - 3 million innocent people that lost their lives in the Khmer rouge reign? 

Riona, Aoife, Serena, Daniel and I went back to the hotel while our parents went out to have a drink. We went swimming again, it was really fun! 

We went out to a charity restaurant called Friends. It's like Makphet in Vientiane and Jamie Oliver's in the uk. I had a really nice bowl of pasta. Serena heard music in the background and started dancing! The waiters thought she was crazy! We found out that Serena and her family will be in Siem Reap for new years eve and so will we!

Next day…

Today Aoife and I spent nearly all day in the pool. The only time I got out was to have lunch at the pool side bar, which was chicken Caesar salad. It was really tasty! 

Afterwards, we went out to a rooftop bar called Amanjaya to watch the sun set over the city. We then went to a restaurant called the Titanic. I had a Chicken Caesar salad (again!) with chocolate milkshake.

Today we left Phnom Penh to go to Battambang.

 On the way we stopped at a small village and a silver craft shop where Dad bought everyone a bangle for Xmas. I bought my bangle for $20, but at home it would cost £200!! 

We went to the old capital of Cambodia called Oudong. There is a HUGE temple there that was built to cover the old Chinese buddha .The Chinese Buddha wasn't built towards the east and every monumental Buddha has to be built facing that way. 

Toilets.....! Every toilet is different. In many toilets so far there was no automatic flush. Instead, you had to use a bucket inside the rest room which you dunk into a well they have made inside the toilet. You then pour this down the basin to flush.

We walked on and came up to some temples where an old Cambodian woman was selling bracelets. If you bought one she'd bless you, so Riona, Aoife and I bought one each.

Aoife wondered why there was a load of birds in a cage. We asked our guide and he said you can buy them. He said if you give the bird freedom they will give you something back. Aoife and I bought one each. We stood in the shade of the huge temple. The ground was so hot you couldn't bear the heat (we all had to take our shoes off as a mark of respect). We lifted our hands up and let the birds go and we watched them fly off, (hopefully not to get caught again).

Our last stop was to a floating village where a lot of Vietnamese people live. We took a boat all the way through the village and lots of people waved at us. We went out into the bay and saw ten year old boys on their own boat doing front flips off the back.

Journey to Phnom Penh

First encounter with a tarantula

We stopped at a market where people were selling fried spider (tarantula) beetles and crickets. 

Mum and Dad tried some! Mum said the spider leg was ok, but she didn't like the crickets because of the crunchy shells. 

My sister Aoife had a tarantula six inches long on her T-shirt. She wasn't over the moon!

Crossing over the border into Cambodia...

We drove to the Cambodian border. First, we walked to the Lao checkout where the man asked for £1 each to leave. Then we walked to the border to go through the 'health quarantine', where the officer was going to charge Riona $2 as an adult. When we told him she was 13 his face looked like he had seen a ghost! 


The health screen is simply a way of getting money out of you as they don't really check your health at all. We then went to sign out our visa forms for staying in the country. Finally, we had to pay $125 dollars to get into Cambodia. 

Kratie

While we were driving to Kratie, we stopped at a place beside the Mekong river to see the sunset. We were lucky because we saw some MORE Irrawaddy dolphins as they came right up to the shoreline. Our guide was shocked as he had never seen that before. 

Already I can tell that the Cambodian people are VERY kind and caring.

4000 islands - Dhone Khone island

Today we left Vientiane at 4:45AM to get a flight to Pakse. Once we landed in Pakse our guide picked us up to take us to a dock where we boarded our thin boat to the 4000 islands.

The island we're staying on is Don Khone island. We arrived at the reception of our hotel called the Sala Dhone Khone. 

Next to our reception was a cage with a gibbon in it. I felt sorry for it because it was in a cage about 3 metres long and 2 metres high.

Aoife made friends with it and called it  'Bob'. 

We gave Bob some watermelon from breakfast. If the watermelon didn't have
enough flesh on it, he'd throw it back at you! 

Today we rode bikes round the dirt tracks and up to the Errawaddy dolphin viewing point. Errawaddy dolphins are only found in the Mekong river. By the time we got up there we'd missed the dolphins. My bike chain kept on breaking. It was so annoying!

Mum and Riona gave two school girls a lift on the back of their bikes. While they were waiting for Dad to fix my Chain, the girls were picking up frogs and pulling their legs to make them jump! 

Today we got up early to see the Errawaddy dolphins. We cycled to the viewing point and took a boat out to see the dolphins. We were about 50 feet away which was too far away to see them, but when the dolphins came really close, he would either put the engine on or start turning the rudder at the back of the boat.

I don't think that it was worth it to get up early and see the dolphins.

After we left the boat, we cycled back to our hotel and Aoife and Dad went off to find out about a swimming pool. 

Riona, mum and I waited for an hour wondering where they were. They had cycled right past the turning and travelled for ages in the burning heat! 

It's our last day and we found out our hotel had a pool! They hadn't even mentioned it and it wasn't obviously attached to our resort. 

We'd sat sweating the day before doing our work too! So we all went for a well deserved swim.

While we were in the swimming pool, an Aussie couple came and started speaking to Dad.

They were called Jason and Jess. We went to the bar with Jason and Jess and said we'd go to dinner with them. When we went to the restaurant mum went home immediatley because she didn't feel well. Jess and Jason gave us a load of tips to do in Cambodia.

We had a great night, and at the end of the evening we did gangnam style with Jason ( just so you know, he was probably drunk!! ).

Vientiane

Today we left Vang vieng to go to Vientiane (the capital of Lao) for dinner. We went to a little restaurant where I had fried pork with chips... mmm. We went to the night market where there were loads of stalls! There were shops that had TV's playing gangnam style and someone was selling 2 puppies!

Today we spent all day doing homework in the place we had breakfast.

Later in the afternoon we hired bikes from the hotel and cycled up along the Mekong river.
Aoife rode on the back of Rionas' bike. We rode up past our hotel, going over rubble which was there because they were building a new road which was supposed to be finished in 2009! At the other side of the river was Thailand.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant called Makphet. It is a charity restaurant built to help street kids get a qualification in cooking and hospitality. Even though it was quite expensive in comparison to many places in Lao, it felt better because it was going to a good cause.

The food was delicious.

Vang Vieng

We left Luang phrabang today by van and travelled over the mountain.

On the way to Vang vieng we saw lots of boys and girls playing a game where there would be a line of girls and a line of boys.

The girls would have a ball and they'd throw it to the boy, he'd catch it and so on. This is a way to eventually meet your future partner as the boys and girls get to talk to each other and eventually they'd play it with the partner they want to be with for the rest of their lives.

They play this game in traditional dress. For girls it would be a bright coloured dress with black thick stripes across, with bells on it. 

We went to a café for lunch in the mountains where we had sticky rice with fried morning glory (like spinach). 

Nearly everyone felt sick because of the poor road quality.

At one point we were above the clouds!

Our temporary classroom

We arrived at the Silver Naga hotel in delight to see they had a pool.

After doing homework, we were allowed to go into the swimming pool. It was freezing! 

Today we did homework beside the pool. Well, there's worse places to be doing homework!

While Dad was having his hair cut, he bumped into two Irish men from Donegal.


We decided to go tubing with them.

Tubing is riding down a river in the inner tube of a truck tire. We got a tuk-tuk to the riverside where we got our rubber rings off the roof and went down to the river where one of the men said to mum and dad " do you want a beer?"

First of all I was quite nervous because some of the river was quite fast flowing. We floated down the river for ages and we finally got off and it was nearly dark!

It was great fun and I needn't have been nervous.We walked back to our hotel soaked!

Once we changed we went out to the Irish bar to have dinner and meet the two Irish guys Darren and Martin. We went back to the hotel with Mum because we were tired.

What an amazing experience.

Luang Prabang AGAIN!!

Today we went to Tad Sae waterfalls where we rode elephants through the Jungle. It was really cool! 

Also, I rode an elephant in the water but it dived and completely submerged under water! 

To cap it all my elephant did a HUGE poo and it floated past my foot! 



I fed the Elephants bananas and I fed one with my mouth! All the elephants were really cute. 

We took a boat back and transferred to a tuk tuk back to Luang phrabang. 

We went for a walk through the night market to look for Christmas presents for each other, but we didn't find any. 

We went to dinner instead and I had water buffalo steak with mushroom sauce. 

Afterwards, we went to Utopia again and Riona made cocktails behind the bar with the owner Rob from Canada! It is a really cool and relaxed place.

Nong Kiau

Today we're going on a trek into the mountains to a village called Nong Kiau.

As we were travelling up the mountains in a van the road was really bumpy and I was bouncing up in the air!!

We arrived at our hotel, put our bags in our rooms and went out for a walk with our guide.

After we walked for a long time in the heat, my sisters and I walked across a bridge, but Aoife fell in! It wasn't high but Riona and I were laughing our heads off!!

Afterwards we went for a traditional Laos massage which was really relaxing! We had to wear these REALLY weird PJ clothes....

Today we sailed up the river ou on a thin boat to three tribal villages all from either Mong or Kamu Tribes.








We went into a school in one of the villages and gave the children sweets and books while all the villagers were watching.

After I gave the children sweets, I felt I wanted to give them more. But thats just me in the west thinking my way and believing people here need what we need to be happy. These people are happier with little than most people I know are with everything.

On the way back our boat started taking in water! Riona was going crazy and as soon as we got to the beach, she jumped out off the side of the boat! 

For lunch we had rice wrapped in banana leaves with chicken and vegetables. Our boat driver managed to bail out the water, but Riona still thought our boat was going to sink and spent the whole time checking.

We're left Nong Kiau today and took a boat down the river to Luang Prabang.

On the way down, we went through rapids and stopped at a Buddhist cave.

When we were going through the rapids, our boat driver threw a long metal stick with food attached to the end into the water for the spirits. People believe in traumatic places there are spirits you need to respect. And so the gift, or offering of food will help them through that dangerous place.

Laos - Luang Phrabang

Yesterday we arrived in Luang Prabang. It's so hot here right now. It's 29 degrees!

We went for breakfast down the road and I had fried egg and baguette on the street corner whilst watching the tuk-tuks, trucks and motorbikes go by.

We're chilling out today because we're really tired. I've seen lots of children about 7 years old helping their families carry wood and sitting holding things at the back of trucks. Children in the East do so much to help their families.

Dad made us work out how much $50 is in kip. Kip is the laos currency. He asked us to go  over to an exchange hut to exchange $50 into kip after explaining what a good price would be. We beat his price!

Aoife and Dad were sick today. It may be the water, the malaria tablets or the heat.

I face-timed Amy (one of my best friends) and that reminded me how much I miss them.

We went out for dinner to a little restaurant next to the Mekong river. Altogether it cost just£19.26. I worked it out by multiplying 0.0000782982 (the exchange rate) by 246,000 kip and that equals £19.26.

My summary of China

Altogether, China was a great experience.

My first impression was that the Chinese people were a bit pushy, but afterwards when I understood them I felt that they were very kind and caring. 

When we arrived in China, I felt like an outsider because everyone just ignored us. I realised they were just going on with their daily jobs, and it was a big city after all.

They did everything to help us when they could, if we asked for help.

My last impressions were that china was electric and the Chinese were always calm, cared about others and never lost their temper.

I'd go back to china, but instead of going to the cities I'd go to the countryside. 

Farewell China, we will definitely be back!

Chengdu

We arrived at our hotel and it was very traditional but basic. My bed was as hard as a rock!! It was quite cool because there was a football table. The staff were really kind, helpful and caring, because they helped my Dad work out where to go while we were there. The street we were staying on was lit up with fairy lights and had big dragon statues outside their doors and the pavements were all engraved with Chinese art. It was magical.

We went out for dinner at a restaurant the hotel recommended. My Dad said it was the worst meal he ever had! They serve the chicken on the bone and there was no chicken on it! I didn't like it because the noodles I had were way too spicy! But..... We were in the Sichuan province! 

Chengdu panda research centre

Today we went to a Giant Panda research centre where we saw Baby giant Pandas and Adult giant Pandas. They were very cute and funny.

Three month old Pandas

They just ate and slept! We saw a panda that inspired the 2008 Olympic mascot and 2 pandas that shared the same birthday as my little sister Aoife! At the end we went to the best toilets I've ever seen and they had a whole keypad full of controls from a bum warmer to a bum dryer!!

Today we went on a 210mph bullet train to Chongqing, which is a very big city. I felt really claustrophobic because all the buildings were built really close together on a steep slope. We went off on one of our normal adventures down backstreets and markets to a mad area like a crammed warehouse where they sold all the zips and buttons which are sent to clothes makers.

Cable car over the Yangtse

It was great to adventure there but it is the first time we all felt uncomfortable as we were also being stalked by hawkers who followed us for nearly an hour trying to sell us a boat trip. There was three of them. Dad just kept us close and kept repeating we were not interested.

We went on a huge cable car across the river Yangtze, I saw very poor houses. I wouldn't want to go back there as it was quite unfriendly.

For dinner we went to a place a bit like UU cook but a bit less hectic and the food quality was higher. They gave us a book written by the owner.

The restaurant serve some pots in the middle of the table and you then decide how long to cook your fish, prawns, meet and vegetables. You decide your own base sauce and then make your own dipping sauce by mixing all the different seeds and sauces on the buffet table. It is a very sociable way to have dinner.

Xi'an

Today we went to get a bullet train to a Buddha, but we were too late and we needed our passports to get the train. Instead we went on top of a wall that surrounds Xi'an and hired tandem bikes to cycle around on. For once I wasn't freezing to death! We cycled on tandems. I was with Dad and Riona was with Aoife. All Dad and I could hear was Aoife screaming while we were going over bumps!

Afterwards, we went for a walk and found a restaurant called UU cook. We went in and everyone was looking at us because they were curious. UU cook is a restaurant where you choose your sauce base, make your own dipping sauce, and cook your own food in a pot in front of you!! We cooked lamb, beef, shrimp, mushroom, potato, Broccoli and noodles. The staff were really helpful and caring. A customer saw we didn't know what we were doing and brought dad some sauce and he started eating it like it was his dinner! It was great fun! I made my dipping sauce out of peanut sauce, Garlic, Spring onion and Coriander.

Today we left Xi'an and boarded a China Southern plane to Chengdu. We had breakfast on the plane and it was horrible! It was a sausage roll with some funny cheese sauce underneath. eew!