OffTheTrack

We crashed into the "Same Same But Defferent" guesthouse with a nice view over a lake in the middle of the city. That is what you get for only one dollar each.

There is not much to see here. We went to a special shooting range from the army. Here you can shoot everything from gun (12 US$) to rocket launcher (300 US$). It's sick that you can buy chickens (20 US$) to have an alive target. Our choice was a handgun and a pump gun which we shot on a wooden target.

After that we visited the Killingfields a part of the horrible past of Cambodia. It is a memorial for the thousands Cambodian victims who were killed here.

This building is filled with human skulls.

The next was a shopping day, because everyone had a long list of wishes. The best place to go is definitely the "Central Market". We got a bit of a buying binge and bought hammocks, Lonely Plantes (the cheapest place where you can get them), shoes, game boy, card reader and a new guitar.

Later on we visited the Vietnamese embassy to make sure that there are no problems to drive the car into Vietnam. Then a shock. It will take a long time to get the permission ( if you can get it ) and there were only 2 days left with our visa. We had an emergency session. 2 options:

a) don't care about Vietnam and drive straight to Laos or
b) travel Vietnam on foot

We decided unanimously to go there on foot, because it is to nice to miss it and we already paid for the visas.

Quickly we made up a new plan. We could ask Dan, a nice swiss guy in Kep, to park the car at his place. He owns a really nice Resort Kep Lodge there, next to the boarder of National Park.

So we drove to Kep and spoke to Dan about our plan. It was no problem to park our car on his place for one month. He even organized one of his employees as a translator to talk to the custom officers at the Vietnamese border. That was our last try to cross the boarder with our car. As we predicted it was impossible. Spending the night on the beach was really good after that stressful day.

There were only two days left and we spend the time to explore the pretty area and it was easy with Dans drawing.

We met two locals who enjoyed it to lead us around. There was a lot to see. A cave wherein you can swim, a storage lake with a lot of small islands on it and some pepper plantations. On the way to his uncle, where we harvested and ate a few fresh coconuts, a few curious children surrounded us. They were staggered about our western look (colour of the skin, hairs, piercings) and our car.

Then he invited us to eat with his family. As our car passed a school 15 children stormed out to have a look on us strange looking humans.

His mother cooked us a traditional Cambodian dish while he showed us the classroom where he teaches English to the local kids. Andy took action and explained Moritz how it works with the irregular verbs.

The last stop was at a cave where we saw how they crush stones to make gravel. Not even the prisoners at home have to work like this anymore. This woman earns around 4000 Riel = 0,66 Euro a "DAY". No one at home should complain about his job anymore.

On the next day we handled the car (our house) over to Dan, the latchkey included . A Tuk Tuk drove us, packed with the most important stuff, to Vietnam.

See you in one month Cambodia...