Siem Reap - Cambodia

We spent a week in Siem Reap to check out the famous temples of Angkor Wat. The first step was crossing the Thai - Cambodia border which in itself was an adventure The BBC reports it more eloquently than I ever could. This all makes for interesting land border crossing!. Anyway once safely across into Siem Reap Cambodia we were both left in awe of one of the ancient wonders of the world -Angkor Wat and the various other ruined temples from the Khmer Civilisation dating as early as the 10th century. Finally how could I forget we did a cooking course giving us the opportunity to cook and sample some of Cambodian cuisine ...Yummy(and yes that's why I was wearing the ridiculous chefs outfit it wasn't just for fun).

HONG KONG

Hong Kong - colourful, clean, crowded, tidy and a bit expensive. We had a really nice time here even with the smallest hotel room ever with toilet not much bigger than you would find in an aircraft (which is actually quiet appropriate as space is at a premium here). Food was amazing, Adam loved the delicious dumplings and both of us enjoyed some nice cocktails in the night life area SOHO...

The Philippines

The Philippines were our first stop in South East Asia, a good spot for a warming up....as here most of the really nice Filipinos have good English and it is nearly scamfree :) we only paid twice too much taxi fees and that was it. Apart from the really easy to travel features we loved the Philippines above and under the sea. The snorkling and scuba diving were superb, so many different corals and fish, turtles, scorpion fish, manta rays...amazing for us. Hopefully fishermen stop the so called dynamite fishing, as a lot of this fascinating under water world is already destroyed....Our highlights were Pandan Island and Apo Island. Although running water and electricity was - in parts - missing and we had some sleepless nights the overwhelming beauty of these two little gems was more than a compensation.