Cambodia

Hi there!

I haven't been able to access the blog in Cambodia but we've just arrived in Singapore so now I can write to you all :)

During our first week in Cambodia we went to a place called Sihanoukville which had a lovely beach. All day there are children walking up and down the beach selling fruit, sunglasses and bracelets. They go to school from 7-11am and then they work on the beach until 5 followed by 2 more hours at school, what a busy day! They work because their families are very poor but I talked to lots of them and they were all very happy and friendly. Every night we ate at a BBQ on the beach-they BBQ chicken, beef, squid and prawns!

After that we went to the capital, Phnom Penh, where we stayed along the river. We went around lots of big markets selling everything you can imagine! On one of our days there we went quad biking which was really fun. We went through lots of little villages and all the children came running out to high five us :)
The man who owned the bikes gave us a huge coconut with a straw in so that we could drink the coconut milk.

We then took a bus to a place called Siem Reap. The bus was supposed to take 6 hours but it took 9 because we broke down! The driver had a really loud horn that he beeped every few minutes, it gave me a headache! When we finally arrived we got a tuk tuk to our hotel. A tuk tuk is a motorbike with a little carriage attached to the back for you to sit in. The same tuk tuk driver took us around the next day to see the famous temples called Angkor Wat. They are temple ruins from the 12th century, can you find a picture of them? They were so interesting, you had to climb lots of steps to explore them. One of the temples has trees growing all over it and the roots go all over the temple and it looks like it's eating the temple!
In the evening we climbed to the top of a hill to watch the sunset, it was beautiful-the sun was a glowing red ball.

Today we have explored Singapore, we've walked around for 10 hours! It is a super city with soooo many shopping malls. It is mega clean because it is against the law to drop litter or to eat on the trains, you get fined $5,000 if you do! This is the first place we've been to that has Christmas decorations, there are huge Christmas trees and loads of lights everywhere so I'm so excited about coming home for Christmas now. Tonight we went to see the new Twilight film, I loved it :)

I'll be home in 3 weeks and I'm looking forward to seeing you all.

I hear you have recorded a Christmas songs cd, how exciting! I can't wait to hear it. Good luck with your Christmas play practising.
Xx

Hanoi

I hope you all enjoyed half term and it wasn't too cold! I think I'm going to freeze when I get back because the temperature here dropped to about 20 degrees and I felt cold!! :s

We've just spent a week in the north of Vietnam, around Hanoi which is the capital. Hanoi was so busy,such a crazy city. There are 7 million motorbikes! Everytime you cross the road you have to dodge them all and they constantly beep their horns.

The city has an old quarter where the buildings look like French buildings, they are all super narrow and look funny-they're narrow because in the past you had to pay more tax money if your house was wide. There's also a huge lake in the middle of the city which is pretty. There are sooo many shops and they have streets for each item so there is a shoe street, camera street, bag street etc!

After a few days in Hanoi we went to Halong Bay. You sail around the area and it has huge limestone rocks all over, it looks magical! We slept on the boat for two nights and also went kayaking which was fun. We saw a floating village which was lots of houses floating in the middle of the bay-the children have to get a boat to school! Imagine that instead of walking and always being in a house surrounded by water.

We have now travelled to the centre of Vietnam and arrived in Hoi An today. It looks really really lovely so I think it will be a good few days.

Hope you all had fun on Halloween! Xx