The Kingdom

The faces in Cambodia are darker, the exchange rate is 3800 riel to 1 USD, women balance massive bowls filled with fried tarantulas on their heads... Cambodia is definitely different than anywhere we've encountered so far. Yet, our expectation that this place would be less intense than our experience in Vietnam was way off, at least historically speaking. Cambodia's history may not be quite so personal as learning about our impact on Vietnam, but their memory is still fresh & the details gruesome.

We spent our first days in Phnom Penh visiting S-21 Prison, a now eery genocide museum where makeshift brick cells are still intact, rooms are lined in black & white mugshots, & torture rooms still house their sole wire beds. A high school until 1976 & formerly known as "Tuol Sleng," this prison was designed for the interrogation of anyone accused of being "anti-Angkar."1,500 Cambodians at a time were imprisoned at S-21 for supposedly being against the Khmer Rouge regime. Their photos were taken, biographies recorded, & then they were beyond brutally tortured into writing absurd often lengthy confessions of betrayal before being executed. Their families, including children, were also round-up & killed for clean measure. Of the 20, 000 total brought to Tuol Sleng, only 7 survived. We also ventured to one of the “Killing Fields”, Choeung Ek, a former tree farm slightly outside the city where the prisoners were shipped, killed, & tossed into mass graves. The ground is covered in holes where the bones were fairly recently excavated & a tall haunting memorial holds piles upon piles of anonymous skulls. 343 mass burial sites have been found throughout the country. At these, the Khmer Rouge is estimated to have killed nearly 2 million before being removed from power in only 1979 as the result of an invasion by Vietnam. The organization was not formerly dissolved until 1996 & Pol Pot, the KR’s infamous leader, died soon after in 1998 having never been put on trial.

Our nights in Phnom Penh were spent unwinding. The strip of the city along the riverside is truly beautiful, the food delicious, & the young children constantly hawking souvenirs with their sing-songy sales pitches undeniably adorable. The main market is set up inside a massive warehouse- a seemingly endless maze of stuff. You’ll be standing in an area surrounded by black market dvds, walk too far in one direction, & find yourself smack dab in the middle of motorcycle parts. We often seemed to be the only tourists in sight & the weather was just right for wandering.

For the past several days we’ve been in Siem Reap, a cozy little town with something for everyone. We spent a full three 3 days exploring the lost city of Angkor with the help of a hired tuk-tuk driver. On our second day we watched the sun rise & set behind Angkor Wat; the once principal temple of this region & currently one of the seven wonders of the world. Starting in the 9^th century the Khmer empire built Angkor including numerous stone temples that today are the crumbling evidence of the great city. Each temple was different from the next, some slightly restored & others in the midst of being swallowed up by twisty trees.

Early Risers

Last night we went out on the town in celebration of both a break from temples & not leaving SE Asia as planned (we would be home by now!) Cheers to another 4 weeks! Next we take on the 12 hour bus route back to Bangkok that Lonely Planet refers to as “the Boulevard of Broken Backsides.” Worse than the endless up, down, zig-zag in Laos? We’ll see about that.

2 months deep in our great Asian adventure

In Bangkok we're picking up two of our girlfriends from home before heading North. Should we be warning them about the constant sweating, repulsive bathrooms, or cockroach in my dinner last night? Nahhh half the fun of SE Asia is figuring all that out for yourself :)