Beautiful Cambodia

Thought we’d repost one of our blogs from when we cycled across Cambodia last year, as it might brighten up someones day

We believe it’s always better to smile at people and shout out to them with a simple happy ‘hello’ – no matter how they are initially looking at you, it’s amazing to see the response, some of the angriest looking of people that you thought could give a not so pleasant response, will reply with the biggest of hello’s, and a beaming smile across their face, it’s always the best way to start your day, even when you’re not feeling too good yourself, a simple smile and hello will make a big difference, and make their day better too, and making other people happy has got to be the great feeling in the world.

In Southeast Asia this is all very easy, especially here in Cambodia, and when you think Cambodia is the poorest country in Southeast Asia, yet everyone, and I mean literally everyone shouts hello to you, it’s a place where everyone is smiling, they live in extremely poor conditions, but will always be friendly towards you, they will always offer to help you if you need anything, and this is what we fell in love with when we first came here 4 years ago.

Today we are now back cycling the mud tracks, which link all the small villages together, there’s no busy traffic, towns or cities in these parts, and even better no tourists! we cycle all day making plenty of stops talking to the local families and making photos and videos, many of these roads are not on the maps, or google maps etc, we have to navigate using the sun, as the tracks are like a spaghetti maze, so it takes a bit of thinking about or you can easily end up miles off course.

We buy food and drink from the families and show them photos and films of our travels, and at the end of the day we pitch our tent anywhere we want, there’s no need to try and hide from people here, it’s much more fun having the locals come and visit you, it would be difficult to hide anyway as people live all over the place from small wooden huts, and we don’t exactly blend in do we!

When in these parts of Cambodia its extremely cheap to live, would you believe we live off $10USD per day, that’s for the 2 of us, we camp so no accommodation costs, but that’s for 2 main meals each a day with many fresh fruit drinks, water and fresh fruit such as oranges, passion fruit, coconut, bananas etc (we’ve given up meat for now, much safer on the stomach)

We cycle much slower on these types of roads, due to the conditions, so it’s pretty tough going, today it’s been 42 degrees and rising! but the life experiences we are gaining is certainly worth it, not to mention all the film footage we are capturing.

Tonight we are camping somewhere in Cambodia with the sounds of temple prayers being chanted in the background, we are so thankful and privileged to be back in this amazing country with it’s beautiful happy people, there’s nowhere else we’d rather be. 🇰🇭❤️ 🙏😊

Watch today’s film’s here