Cambodia

We flew into the capital city of Phnom Penh via Vietnam airlines. Again the flight was great, short but with a meal, and the service was fantastic. We went through the slow process of customs and visas and finally made it out of the airport. We took two motos into the city center. The "moto" is basically a scooter, the driver put one of our backpacks between his legs and we carried the other on our backs. Scooters are the way to go here in SE Asia. They were prevalent in the large cities in Europe but here they are full family mini vans. We have seen up to 5 people on one scooter, 2 kids and 3 adults, or four adults on one scooter. It is also crazy the amount of stuff we have seen some of them hauling, like 2 queen size mattresses, for example. Back to our moto experience. The drivers were nice and spoke English well. They tried to talk us into being our guides for the rest of the afternoon and told us that the major sites were closed the next day and then tried to talk us into going to expensive hotels, saying that they were a great value and less of a threat of having our stuff stolen. Well, we have been through this, they all tout for their own profit and that of others but we weren't having any of it. My driver kept telling me he was going to take us to this certain hotel and then he would tell Mike's driver which hotel in Cambodian. Finally, I told the guy to pull over and show me where we were on the map, where he was taking us, and that even if he took us to his "great-deal $15 hotel" we were going to turn around and walk out. He did seem slightly fazed by this outburst and pretty much shut up after this and showed me what I asked for on the map. They did take us to a specific, expensive hotel but we paid them and walked away. They followed us, with their scooters up onto the sidewalk telling us they would take us somewhere else. We said no and kept walking. We had to walk another 25 minutes but we did find a great hotel for $5 a night. Welcome to the life of a backpacker in SE Asia. Great times, but most things can be this difficult with touts to buy everything and anything and constant questions of, "tuk-tuk, moto"? We took a bit of a siesta and then we were off to see the Royal palace with its silver pagoda floor, life-size solid gold 90kg Buddha, and smaller emerald Buddha. Afterwards, we crossed the street to a bunch of street vendors selling everything from fried silk worms to fried tarantulas to grasshoppers and the fermented birds. Mike grew adventurous and decided he wanted to try some of these fried delicacies. We pondered over which disgusting fried pestulance to buy and finally settled on grasshoppers and a tarantula. I agreed only to photograph and I did a fabulous job but Mike deserves all the credit because he ate these things and didn't even vomit. After this, we tried and enjoyed some traditional Khmer food for dinner. On the walk back to the hotel, we received about a thousand offers for a moto ride; aren't these people so nice? They don't even think that tourists should have to walk more than 2 feet!

The next morning, we rented bikes (much to the dismay of the moto drivers who still persisted even as they watched us rent them) and rode to Tuol Sleng. This used to be a high school until 1975 when Pol Pot turned it into a security prison that turned out to be a place of torture and extermination for his genocide. There are horrific images of prisoners chained to the walls or beds, dead and lying in their own blood. There are pictures of everyone who was sent here, photos taken as they entered, some of the women with children and babies. All but about a dozen of the 17,000 people sent here were executed. After this, we rode out to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, which is where they would bring the prisoners for execution after blindfolding and handcuffing them and then loading them into trucks. They would be unloaded and led into the fields where they were forced to kneel and then had shovels smashed into the back of their heads and were then shoved into a mass grave. There is a tree where they killed the babies and small children, presumbly by grabbing them by the legs and smashing their heads into the tree. The murderers then sprinkled chemicals into the graves to reduce the smell, speed up decay of the bodies, and kill the ones who would be buried alive. Now there is a monument set up to honor these people. It is a tall building with windows on all four sides and shelves every three feet up to the ceiling. These shelves are piled 3-4 high with the skulls of these victems killed by their own people. It is shocking to think that something like this could have happened so recently in history, shocking that it is currently going on in Africa, and piercing that there are there are so many bones of these people. Undeniable, living, in-your-face proof. For me, the thousands of skulls, some with notable bullet holes or blunt force trauma, are what set this apart from Auschwitz.

We then rode back to the city. The traffic is amazing, people constantly riding down the wrong side of the street, on the sidewalks, and the incessant honking. Ironically, as we are riding through this, I remind myself that I didn't want to rent bicycles in Amsterdam because of the traffic but that traffic is nothing compared to that of SE Asia. To top it off, Mike's front brake gave out as well and flopped around uselessly the last 15 minutes of the ride. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted from the sheer effort it took to ride through this mess and the overwhelming heat and humidity. Tonight, hooray for cold showers in cheap hotels.
For dinner, we found a great BBQ place. This was not your traditional BBQ, however. First off, they brought us our own personal BBQ with a rounded, domed top with holes in it and a groove all the way round the bottom with hot oil in it. There were coals in the bottom keeping it hot. They then brought us a plate of fresh veggies and a plate of raw beef and raw seafood. With no instructions, we jumped in attempting to cook up a feast. We put some butter all over the cooking surface of the grill, which then slid down through one of the holes into the fire. We tried to cook the food without the butter and everything stuck so that it had to be scraped off. Our last resort was to dip things in the oil and then slide them up onto the flatter surface of the grill to cook. We did this all with chopsticks and everything kept sliding off the domed surface to try and deep fry itself in the grease at the bottom. Grease then splashed everywhere, getting all over both of us as we scrambled to get the food out and back onto the grill part. It was still very hot and humid and we were sweating to death trying to deal with this damn grill. And last but not least, they gave us a raw egg which we supposed we were to cook on the grill as well. How? We had no idea but we gave a go anyway and got some small bits of scrambled egg that didn't fall through. All in all, it was a good experience but even more work than cracking and peeling crab legs.

Photos from Phnom Penh

The next morning we took a 6 hour bus ride up to Siem Reap to see the ruins of Ankgor. Angkor was the seat of the Khmer emire from around the 12th century, an empire extending from present-day Myanmar to Vietnam. It was a city of 1 million people at a time when London was about 40,000. When we stepped off the bus, we were literally attacked by all the touts trying to get us to go to their hotel. They kept grabbing our arms and shouting at both of us. I finally started screaming at them and we grabbed each other just to push through to get our bags. And, of course, they all followed us still grabbing and yelling. We just kept pushing them out of the way with our bags and finally went with the guy with the sign who just stood back and didn't hassle us at all. He took us to a hotel but we decided to stay because it was $4 a night. We then had him take us out to Ankgor Wat for our first glimpse. It really is amazing and quite large. We walked around it a bit and then went to another temple on a hill to watch the sun set. There were so many people, it was equally entertaining to stand back and watch them all clamor up this temple to get a good view. Our guide was very disappointed when he found out that we planned to rent bikes and ride the 15km back out to Ankgor Wat the next day. He actually tried to dissuade us by telling us that we would be too tired and we should just go with him.

The next morning we did rent bikes but they were the oldest, crappiest bikes ever! The tuk-tuk driver must have put a curse on us. Of course, as we are riding out, it starts to rain. Not rain like you see in the U.S. but rain like you see in movies. Heavy, drenched-in-2-minutes type of rain. Thank goodness we decided to bring the kayaking dry bag (one of our wiser purchases). Some people got off their bikes to wait out the rain but we just kept on going and just like that the basket on the front of my bike fell off and we had to go back to pick it up off the side of the road. Oh, the adventures of Mike and Em... We did finally make it back out to Angkor Wat and the sun shined for a while, our wet clothes keeping us cool. And of course, as luck would have it, the rain poured down and soaked us yet again as we rode to Ankgor Thom. It was worth it to see the many faces of Baphon and the Temple of the Leper King. Such grandeur, these temples are truly amazing! We rode back to town, seeing elephants and monkeys along the way. There were monkeys everywhere! And little Cambodian ladies ready to sell bananas to all the tourists to feed them. They were pretty cute and very bold, taking food right from people's hands. And there were quite a few babies from ones that were too little to leave their moms to the ones who were just venturing out. They were right off the sides of the road and sometimes they would cross the road if there was food on the other side. This was interesting to watch because it really did seem like they looked both ways on this busy road before they crossed. Back in town, we celebrated with buy one get one free happy hour and then had some delicious Khmer food for dinner. Back at our super cheap hotel room, we found that there were two Cambodian kids who slept outside of our room. This wasn't a problem until the one had a broken alarm that rang for 5 minutes at a time periodically throughout the night. Grrrr........!!!!!!!!

We rented bikes again the next day and rode out to see some of the smaller and less touristy temples. These temples were neat because the jungle had taken over parts of them with tree roots lifting and moving the stones and walls that were knocked over or appeared to be ready to fall at any moment. Of course, outside and sometimes inside, too, there were touts to buy water, mangoes, pineapple! The women would literally be yelling and running at us while we were still 40 feet away from them. And then there were the kids who would try and sell us post cards, bracelets, or just ask for money. Sometimes, they would gather and sing as a group but most of the time, they would come up to us and just start walking or jump on the backs of the bikes. Their English was very good from having grown up with tourists all around. Always the same questions, do you want to buy something and where are you from? Once they knew where we were from, they would recite facts about the country such as the capital and number of people, etc. Oftentimes, we said we were from Canada and they told us more about Canada than we knew put together. Annoying, but the kids are cute and we are eating lots of fresh fruit.
We decided that the next day, we were going to relax and read and hang around with no specific plans. We unofficially named the day "dick-off day". We slept in, had a fantastic breakfast, and then went to another cafe for a couple of beers in the sun. I then decided I would take in a 2 hour massage and Mike decided to hang out. The massage was great and only $10.00. We napped the rest of the afternoon away and then had Amok for dinner, the national Cambodian dish. It was so good. One of the best dishes we've had in SE Asia, a curry with coconut milk and lemongrass in the sauce. Next morning, we were up at 5:30 for an 11 hour bus ride into Vietnam.

Photos from Siem Reap