From: Bexxoliver@hotmail.com

Sent: 3 December 2004

Subject: Email 15, Cambodia & Hong Kong, THE END

Hi everyone

As most of you already know we are back in freezing cold England, we arrived on Monday at about 4.30am. We would like to tell you about our last few weeks away so you can catch up with our final travels.

Cambodia

Our first day after crossing the Vietnam border was spent traveling on a bus to Phnom Penh. During this trip we had to board a ferry to cross a river, which resulted in our first confrontation with the Khmer people, many of which had missing limbs and were begging for simple things like food and water!

We spent the following day in Phnom Penh on a full day city tour. We visited one of the biggest killing fields in Cambodia which were used by the evil regime between 1975-1978 to execute and burry about 17,000 innocent people. We even saw the remains of the victims as human bone and torn clothes were seeping through the soil. A memorial in the center of the field displayed 8000 skulls. These were unearthed in 1988 and displayed inside a tall pagoda in memory of those that lost their lives. For us it was quite disturbing! From here we visited the Toul Sleng Museum, a high school turned into a prison, detention and torture center. The people who were executed here were taken to the mass graves at the killing fields. This site sent a chill down our spine as we walked through the cells! We spent the rest of the day visiting some temples, markets and the Royal Palace.

We traveled to Cambodia's best beach at Sihanoukville for a few days soaking up the sun. Andrew even built a small f1 car out of sand.

Our last town we visited in Cambodia was Siem Reap, famous for its abundance of ancient temples in the same league as Stonehenge and the Pyramids as a world heritage site! We spent a whole day visiting some of the temples; the most impressive site was some ruin’s with trees growing on and around them, literally strangling the stone with their huge roots!

We left Cambodia for our return to Bangkok, Thailand. This journey was our most uncomfortable journey to date, even worse than our last! We traveled on a dirt track for 5 bumpy, uncomfortable hours. To top that the air conditioning was faulty so we had the windows open, resulting in lots of dust! The roads after the border to Thailand were more comfortable and we finally arrived in Bangkok. We spent a few days in Bangkok buying our last souvenirs before our flight to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong

Our last few days left and we have spent them in Hong Kong, a diverse country, as there are beaches, mountains, plenty of shops and many tall buildings. We stayed on Lantau Island, an hour away by ferry to Hong Kong Island. This was the cheapest place to stay in Hong Kong.

We explored the City of Hong Kong Island. We took a bus to Stanley Market, a scenic route cutting through mountains and passing some beaches. We brought yet more last minute souvenirs. We returned back to the city to catch a tram to the peak tower (high mountain above the city) before sunset.

We spent a couple of hours on the peak taking photos of the skyscrapers. While we were snapping away a man approached us, asking where we were from. When we told him we were from Reading he couldn't believe his luck. The man said he was from Meridian news (Reading's local news) and he wanted to take some video of us reenacting the photo taking before a quick interview about our views of Hong Kong. The interview is supposed to be going out around the 9th December on the evening news. Before returning to Lantau Island we visited the Xmas attraction 'Winter Feast' and had our photo taken with Santa!

We spent our second day on Kowloon Island, which is directly opposite Hong Kong Island and only a 5min journey on the Star Ferry. We visited the space museum and spent the rest of the day shopping for a laptop computer. In the evening we walked down 'The Avenue Of Stars' a long path with handprints in the ground of film stars, such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee among many we have never heard of! At 8pm we watched a laser light and fireworks projected from the roofs of the skyscrapers on Hong Kong's skyline opposite.

Today (28th Nov) is our last day of our travels, we stayed on Lantau Island and visited the worlds largest sitting, outdoor Buddha. We returned to our hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach while chatting about our concluding thoughts of our travels. We got a bus to the airport for our 12.5hr flight back to England.

THE END

Hope we haven't bored you with our emails, if we haven't, thank you for taking the time to read them.

We have had a great time over the seven and a half months, lots of memories, photos (6000 of them!), and some video and plenty of souvenirs to look back on over time.

Traveling the world has been the best thing we have ever done and now its back to reality!

Love
Andrew & Kath
xx