… is really the message that we want to send with this journey.

That no matter what your chronic condition, you can take heart in knowing that it is possible to follow your dreams, just like I’m doing with my diabetes and our travels.

Part of our Take Heart Campaign is finding handmade hearts in each of the countries we visit, which we’ll auction off to raise funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, who are searching for a cure for diabetes.

Here’s our Cambodian heart, isn’t it lovely?

… For you to take a look at!
I promise.

First off, for those of you who’ve been asking for more photos so that you can actually see what we’ve been talking about – check out Mark’s Visual Journey of images here. Most of the photos up at the moment are of Thailand, but he’ll have Cambodia pics up in the next week or so.

If you’re interested in living the high life vicariously, be sure to read our Just the Planet luxury reviews (of all the incredible places we’ve been lucky enough to stay at so far). These are also constantly updated, so check back often if you’re keen to plan a luxury South-East Asian journey.

And lastly, be sure to watch our latest video diary, of Week 6&7… We’ve figured out the Cambodia conundrum a little more, and are somewhat in love with the place we’re staying in at the moment – the tiny town of Kampot, on the Mekong River. It’s full of delicious baked goods, river sunsets and charming French colonial architecture. What’s not to love?

And lastly, how cool is Just the Planet, the online travel magazine we work for?
Here’s a quote from the home page of their website:

“We support a global consciousness that recognises the importance of sustainable travel and the responsibility we bear to explore the opportunities it presents for every community a traveller visits. We believe that luxury travel should have and can have a conscience.”

I have to say, although Cambodia started off a little rough and hectic, we are really loving it these days – it makes such a difference to be in the South, where all is ocean and beauty (apart from the thousands of beach shacks selling beer and the kids trying to get you to buy bracelets wherever you walk).

This weekend, our Celebration Weekend (not only Mark’s birthday but also our 3 year anniversary – what an accomplishment!) we were lucky enough to go on a scuba diving weekend. I haven’t dived since I was certified in Lake Malawi, nearly two years ago, so I was a tad nervous… When you first learn how to scuba dive there are so many things to remember that I was worried I’d forget something crucial and panic underwater. Needless to say, I was worrying for nothing.

We set off really early on Saturday morning and took a two-hour boat ride to Koh Roh Samleng, where Eco Sea Dive have their wooden bungalows. We spent that day snorkeling around the coral reef and rocks right outside our bungalow (and seeing all kinds of beautiful tropical fish) and swimming in the clear turquoise sea, off the totally unspoilt beach… Magical! There’s a small village on the island, and the villagers were lovely – nobody tried to sell us anything and the kids called out ‘Hello hello!’ everywhere we went. The bungalows were really rustic – basically like camping on the beach – and in the space of an hour (just before bed) we saw a giant spider (the biggest I’ve ever seen) and a mammoth gecko, seriously, this thing looked like a small crocodile! Okay, well, not that big, but it was just hanging out next to the bed. Not the most soothing sight before sleep.

That night it poured with torrential rain, so we didn’t get much sleep anyway (tin roofs make a lot of noise), but luckily we had to be up at 5am anyway, so sleep wasn’t a top priority (I never seem to sleep properly on nights when I have an early wake-up call).

We set off on a big boat to the mystical island of Koh Tang – it’s too far from the Cambodian and the Vietnamese shores for most people to get there, so it’s only visited by the three dive schools in Cambodia, and then only on special occassions.

It. was. incredible. As I said, I was really nervous going in, but as soon as I was underwater I felt like I’d stepped into a National Geographic movie, or a fairytale. The most astounding coral in bright colours and crazy shapes, all populated by an abundance of tropical fish, sting rays, eels and of course an amazing array of anemones and flora. Words can’t really describe how extraordinary it was… A completely unspoilt reef, and our group were the only people there.

I’d forgotten how peaceful scuba diving is, too. When you’re under the water, time seems to stop. It’s just you and nature, and the steady sound of your breathing. It’s the most amazing feeling… I’m hooked!

We had two dives yesterday, and lunch on the boat, and then headed back to Sihanoukville – a five hour boat ride (phew) that left us totally exhausted, but happy. Today we arrived in Kampot, a charming French colonial riverside town, and found a most delightful guesthouse where we’ll be for the next few days, so we’re decidedly settled and cheerful. AND we found some birthday cake for Mark this afternoon! Bitter chocolate and espresso…yum.

Of course, the other reason I was nervous about scuba diving was because of my diabetes. Any exercise will cause your blood sugar to drop, but scuba diving – which seems like such mild exercise (really just paddling with fins) – is pretty intense. I decided, seeing as we were doing two dives one after the other, that I would take less insulin with breakfast and purposefully go high, and then I could always take more insulin after the dives. I didn’t want to risk going low underwater. Going low while you’re diving is really dangerous – it impairs your decision-making skills and your fine motor skills and makes you all fuzzy headed, which is the last thing you need underwater. My plan worked pretty well, after both dives I was still in an acceptable range, and it didn’t have any lasting low blood sugar effects. The other option is to come straight out of the water and have something sweet, to counteract the low, but I didn’t want to risk the low coming earlier – I’m not that scuba savvy yet.

All in all, a great success! We’ll be doing much more diving in the future. I can’t wait!

(Here’s our Best Moment from yesterday – on the boat. Check it out:)

We’ve had a very productive week – working, catching up on admin, figuring out onward plans, getting our Vietnam visas, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and trying to dye my hair (which resulted in this disaster – carrot orange. Today I attempted a fix-up with dark mahogany, which turned it extremely dark brown. Luckily I’m not too precious about my hair colour!)

So we decided to reward ourselves for working so hard by going on a day trip yesterday – a snorkeling day trip to three islands, with a barbecue fish lunch on the beach thrown in. It’s a popular tour around these parts, every second hotel seems to be advertising it, so I didn’t really have very high hopes… But it was wonderful! A really great day.

The minibus picked us up first thing in the morning, and took us for a simple breakfast (baguettes and jam) before dropping us off at the boat. We went on a 20 minute-or-so boat ride to the first snorkeling spot (lots of fun, I love boat rides) and then snorkeled amongst the coral and fish there for about half an hour… Next we were taken to Bamboo Island, where there’s a long beach and the clearest warmest water you ever did see. We swam there for a while, and ate our freshly barbecued baracuda (yum!) then walked through a coastal forest to the other side of the island, where an even more pristine beach was waiting for us. Like something straight off a postcard… Quite incredible.

There were loads of other tour boats around, it’s obviously a popular route, but for once it was kind of nice to be around other tourists. Everyone was loving the perfect weather and beautiful ocean, and we met a few really interesting travelers and had some great conversations. The boat took us to one more snorkeling spot on the way home, and then we landed back on the beach – exhausted, happy, sandy and, regrettably, sunburnt. I mean crazy sunburnt – bright red lobster sunburnt. Which is odd, seeing as we applied sunblock at least three times during the day.

Still, it was a wonder-full day, not only for the overdose of natural beauty (I take it all back about Cambodia not being beautiful – these beaches were extraordinary) but for a day of fun and playfulness and nothing on our To Do Lists. We’ve had to start thinking of ways to make money as we travel (travelling is a lot more expensive than we’d hoped), so it’s been a week of planning and thinking and figuring out. Fun, in its own way, we really enjoy using our brains, but such a treat to have a day of total silliness.

Mark and I had a lengthy handstand contest. I like to think I won.

Best of all, it was a completely stable diabetes day. I was a bit concerned, because we were out and about all day, exercising a lot (swimming, snorkeling and walking) and eating whatever we were given, but I balanced the exercise and food well, and I felt fantastic all day. Love it when that happens!

This weekend we’re off for an even more exciting trip – a weekend away on an island with a company called Eco Sea Dive, where we’ll visit (and scuba dive!) at two remote islands. I am EXCITED! And a little nervous… Scuba requires a lot of forward planning so you don’t go low, because it takes up so much energy, so I’ll have to have juice and biscuits on me all the time. But mainly excited!
The reason for our weekend trip is because it’s a Celebration Weekend. It’s Mark’s birthday tomorrow, and our 3 year anniversary on Sunday, so we wanted to do something special.

(Note the screech-orange hair!)

I’ll tell you all about it next week! For now, we’re off to pop (imaginary) champers and eat (imaginary) cake. Will have to find a replacement somewhere!

I realised, yesterday, one major way in which this trip is different from a holiday.

It’s different in a lot of smaller ways, of course – we’re working as we go, we’re doing it for a cause, I have to be a lot more aware of my health, we have to document everything along the way – but there was one main difference that I hadn’t really come to grips with:

We have to create a home as we go.

I think that’s part of the reason we haven’t become travel weary up to this point, is because we made a decision right in the beginning that we would spend slightly more on accommodation, and get something that was comfortable and clean and nice, rather than a cheap dingy hole. But even when things are comfortable and nice, they don’t always feel like a home. And when you’re camping out instead of living in a room, that’ll get you down…

I think that’s part of what was getting me down yesterday. We were staying in this beautiful location, with amazing views out over the ocean, but the actual room we were in was a little wooden thatched bungalow, with a creaky fan and a creaky bed, and not much else. The bathroom was tiny with only cold water and one of those toilets where you can’t flush the loo paper (you have to put it in a bucket next to the toilet, which I hate!) There was no fridge, no TV, no desk, no space for anything. And although it was clean enough (the cleaner came in every day and sprayed everything down with bug spray), there were mysterious droppings in the bathroom, and we didn’t want to buy any food and leave it in the room in case it attracted mice (our bungalow was right next to the forest).

Today, however, we’re staying in a lovely sterile room in a hotel just around the corner. It’s really big, and it has lots of light, and aircon, and a TV and a fridge and a large desk and chair. The bathroom not only has a hot shower, but a bathtub (hooray!) and everything is brand-new because the hotel just opened (I mean: brand-new – we pulled the sticker off the basin, and took the sticky tape off the fridge. It’s the newest place I’ve ever stayed in!) And I immediately feel happier. We can unpack, we’ve bought supplies of snacks and fresh fruit and yoghurt (which we can put in our fridge) and I feel like I can settle in here for a few days.

So that’s something to remember for the next many months… In order to make small homes along the way, we have to find places that make us feel comfortable. A worthy travelling lesson, I think.

I’ve just loaded a whole bouquet of Best Moments of the Day on to YouTube, and thought I’d share them with you here…

In Phnom Penh, the capital, my day was made when we discovered a beautifully clean and sterile supermarket! It’s the simple things in life that make me the happiest…

We also discovered some Irish Stew, a not at all simple pleasure to find in Cambodia!

And hung out at the famous FCC – the Foreign Correspondent’s Club. Very ladida!

When we arrived in Sihanoukville, we were greeted with this amazing view:

We headed straight for the beach (be warned, you might be jealous of this!)

And decided to build a sandcastle!

So there you have it… A bunch of Best Moments, just as if you were right here with us!

So we’ve finally found the beauty we’ve been searching for in Cambodia!

Sihanoukville, a small beach town in the South, is lovely. Really lovely – white sandy beaches, clear turquoise seas and long vistas stretching out to horizons dotted with small islands… Really beautiful.

It’s been somewhat ravaged by the recent typhoon – parts of the beach were washed away terribly, and the structure of the beaches has changed completely, apparently – but it’s still by far the prettiest place we’ve seen in Cambodia.

We’ve spent the last couple of days swimming, snorkeling, eating barbeque on the beach, and lying in the hammock of our beach bungalow… It’s a hard life, I tell you! (Check out our Best Moments of the Day to share in it with us). But now it is Monday morning and, believe it or not, Monday mornings still mean something when you’re traveling the world and next to the Cambodian beach. We have a whole pile of work to do today, and we’re moving to a more work-conducive place to do it in (aircon, desk, not right next to the sea!)

I know I promised to speak more about the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum, and to try and unpick how they made me feel, but I’m not too sure that I can, to be honest. I will say that I’m feeling a little down. I’m not sure if it’s hormonal, or the 5am low blood sugar I had this morning (which woke me up with my heart pounding, and which I can’t quite figure out) or if it’s the weight of this Cambodian conundrum that is still chasing our steps, or if it’s just a bit of travel fatigue. I’m not going to question it too much, I’m just going to go with it, and have an easy day of feeling a little less-than-chipper. Everyone has them.

I haven’t stopped thinking about the whole Cambodian situation, though. It’s impossible to, really, when you’re surrounded by evidence of it on all sides. And we’ve been talking about it a lot, to people who live and work here, to try and get to the bottom of it. I think I might be too empathetic for hectic political situations – I immediately go for the emotional response. For example, in my head (and heart) it makes complete sense that the reason we haven’t seen too many Cambodian success stories and the reason people don’t seem to take too much care with their properties and public spaces, is because a mere 30 years ago, anyone who was refined and looked after themselves and their properties, anyone who strove for something higher and better and more than they were given, was punished, in the worst possible way. They were executed. Now surely that must have a significant, lasting impression on the lives and minds of a country’s people?

Heavy thoughts for a Monday morning, I know! It’s interesting, though. From home I thought traveling was all one happy holiday – but when you’re really trying to connect with a country, it’s often a lot deeper and more troublesome than that.

I’ve been a bit slack on the blogging front lately, sorry…

We’ve been in the small riverside town of Kratie, on the Mekong River, and we had to pay a small fortune to go online so I didn’t want to blog till I didn’t have any time pressures. Now we’re back in Phnom Penh, the capital city, and I have some time to reflect on the past week or so.

It’s been a pretty heavy couple of days.

When we left Bangkok to go up to the North of Thailand, we discovered a magical land of trees, forest and mountains, a world away from the chaos of the city… So we were hoping something similar would happen when we left the chaos of Phnom Penh (an ugly, dirty, smelly city if ever there was one). But Kratie was just as dirty as the city, just as unkempt, and unfortunately without a whole lot of beauty. It was right on the Mekong River, which was cool, and there were parts of it that were really quite charming in a colonial kind of way, but it was violently run down and with piles of rubbish everywhere. It was quite troubling, actually, this attitude that many Cambodians seem to have about keeping their surroundings clean and habitable. Mark and I both remarked on it in this week’s video diary, which you can watch here.

Kratie was pretty wonderful for two reasons, though:

1. We got to watch the rare Irrawaddy dolphins playing in the Mekong River. There are only about 70 of them left in the world, and we were able to take a boat out into their habitat and sit quietly to one side as they frolicked around… Pretty incredible.
See how happy I look?

2. We found a kettle!! Oh happy day. It’s been such a mission getting hold of a cup of decent tea in Cambodia, I can’t even tell you. They serve hot tea either black or with condensed milk (yeeuch) and sometimes they don’t even have black tea, only green (I know it’s much better for you, but I simply don’t like it, sorry!) On the rare occassions I managed to get hold of a cup of tea, it was overpriced and tiny. I was not a happy tea drinker.
And then we found this beauty:

We spent four days in Kratie, catching up on work (writing and photography), sleeping in and learning a little about the local culture, which still largely confuses us. There was a big boat race on Sunday, our last day there, and honestly it just looked like a whole lot of people hanging out in the sun, playing screechingly loud discordant music, and watching a couple of boats ride up and down the river every half an hour or so. Not too dissimilar from a rugby match, I suppose!

On Monday morning we had booked our tickets back to Phnom Penh – a six hour ride in a 3rd class bus, which wasn’t toooo bad on the way up. Except that on Sunday night Mark felt a little funny, and on Monday morning I woke up with a screaming headache and nausea. I had hardly slept the night before and I had a whole rash of curious little red bites on my neck (could they have been bed bugs?) All of which resulted in me being sick on the bus in the first hour of a six hour ride with no air con, plenty of filth, and lots of people spitting food in the aisles, spitting out of the bus, hocking up phlegm into their hands and blowing their noses into their hands. It was truly disgusting. An interesting look at a different culture, but not too good for my tender stomach, especially when we were screaming around corners at high speed and dodging potholes, cows and water buffalos. I felt like a prissy Westernized princess. I suppose in many ways I still am…

We arrived in our lovely CLEAN guest house last night, and then first thing this morning we caught a tuktuk (check out a ride on one of these treasures here!) to the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. Phew.
I actually think I need a day or two to gather my thoughts about what we saw this morning. It depressed me so deeply that I felt as if someone was pushing down on my shoulders and weighing down my heart. So so heavy. I’ll write down some reflections on it soon, I promise…

Tell me, though, what are your perceptions of Cambodia? When you think of it, what springs to mind? I wonder if the perception and the reality fit together at all.

So we’ve been in Cambodia a little over a week now, and have spent time in three places already – Siem Reap (where the temples of Angkor Wat are), Phnom Penh (the capital) and Kratie (a small riverside town, we arrived here yesterday).
Here are some things we’ve noticed so far….

* The people we’ve stayed with have been really lovely – warm, friendly, well spoken and so helpful.

* The people on the street are infuriating, especially tuk-tuk drivers. They’re really desperate and grabby, and they don’t leave you alone, no matter how many times you politely refuse.

* I love the food – Cambodia is famous for its pepper, and they serve this delicious sauce of fresh lime juice, coarse salt and black pepper with most dishes. Yum!

* I also love that there is bread everywhere – baguettes are sold on the side of the street (with a weird pate or delicious cream cheese and cucumber) and there are bakeries here and there, and bread sold in the supermarkets.

* The violence of the past is very much a part of people’s lives – they reference the Khmer Rouge frequently, as a time marker or an explanation for why things are a certain way.

* Mark pointed out that there aren’t all that many middle-aged people (because of the Khmer Rouge). There are lots of youths and old people, but not so many in the 40 to 60 age range.

* There’s definitely more of a scammer edge here. You have to be sussed and know how much things should cost, and even when you do there’s a good chance you’ll be ripped off. It seems there’s a ‘get it while you can’ attitude, and not a whole lot of space for bartering. Understandable, given where the country has been, but really annoying if you’re used to things being fair.

* Phnom Penh is a rip-off – expensive food, expensive transport, pricey accommodation. It’s a city city too, like Bangkok. We preferred Siem Reap.

* The foot massages here are AMAZING. Hour-long reflexology and massage treatments that are intense but wonderful.

* The kids are adorable, and really friendly. Every child we pass calls out ‘Hello!’ and occasionally, ‘Where are you from?’

* The traffic here is the craziest we’ve ever seen – it doesn’t seem like there are any rules at all. None whatsoever, not even which side of the road you should drive on. We approached a 4 way stop in a tuktuk yesterday, and nobody even PAUSED, never mind stopped! Terrifying stuff – best to just look away, I find!

That’s all for now, no doubt I’ll have a few more impressions once we’ve found our way around Kratie… We spent the morning exploring the side streets and market, and it feels a lot more authentic Cambodia than anywhere else we’ve been, we only saw two other tourists! Kratie is famous for their rare Irrawaddy dolphins (there are only 70 left in the world) so we’ll be going to see those soon…

I’m curious – for anyone who’s been to Cambodia before. Does this sound like your first impressions of  the country?

Here’s our latest video diary (a Week 3&4 combo, seeing as we were away for almost a week of the last two)… Thought you might like to see snippets of all we’ve seen in the last few weeks, as well as hear what we have to say about it (in real life, not just written words!)

Here’s the embedded video, or you can watch it on YouTube here.