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Published: January 11th 2007
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The bridge keepers
Along the edge of the bridges spanning the moats around the ruins, these mythical beings are holding a huge snake... Quite the railing! So after going to evey place in Thailand twice, it was time for a change of scenery. After my short stay in the luxurious hospital we bussed to Siem Reap. The doctors told me that I just had some kind of virus which caused the high fever. I think I got the bug on the Similan island tour where there was a family of Sweds who all were sick with high fevers and such.
The bus ride to the boarder was as expected. The smooth paved Thailand road made the cruse easy. Once we crossed the boarder it was a different story though. Before we left the boarder, Jordan and I exchanged some money. Our bus driver sugested we buy some Cambodian Riet because apparently it was cheeper to pay in local currency. We soon found out that this was total bullshit when we arrived at our guest house. The entire food menue was in American dollars and the exchange rate given at all places was much worse than what we exchanged at. Jordan took the bigest hit and figured he lost around 100 dollars Canadian. The road to Siem Reap was the worst excuse for a highway I have
The many faces
On all sides of all peaks of these ruins were carved faces in the stone. ever seen. It was littered with potholes and the best stretches of the road were unpaved. From the boarder to Siem Reap was only 150 km but because of the poor road conditions it took us five hours to get there.
The bus stoped at a guest house in Siem Reap and Jordan and I contimplated looking else where just out of principle. The prices at the hostel were fair and we decided on staying where they droped us off. After a long day of bussing, we ate then crashed early.
The next day we rented a scooter pulled tuk tuk and a driver to take us around to all the ruins. It is sugested that it takes two days to see all the ruins but Jordan and I were confident we could do it all in one.
The ruins were amazing! Huge stone sculpted stuctures stood on the near by grounds of the city just like the ones in Tomb Raider. It was really cool how they tied the structures together with narrow passageways and steep staircases. There were all kinds of stone statues from lions garding the buildings to other mythical creatures holding huge snake
Keeping guard
I asked if he wanted to be relieved for a while but the lion was having none of it. railings on bridges that spaned the moats around the cities. Anyone who tried to attach the ruins back in the day would have had much troubble in actually getting into the city grounds. Huge moats, the largest around Siem Reap that was around 60 meters across, would have funneled attacking troops onto open bridges where they would have been slottered. Even if they get across the bridge and into the grounds, there were consentric barriors radiating inward toward the central structure making it easy to fall back. The engineering of the ruins were and still are a marvel in my mind.
After a full day of hopping from ruin to ruin, we went to the ruins of Siem Reap where we watched the sun set from the highest point of the central structure. It was neet to see and the setting sun made for some great late day pictures.
After seeing all we needed to see in Siem Reap, we took a local bus to the city of Phnom-Penh where we took a short ride to a cheep guest house. We talked to a taxi driver who worked for the guest house and booked him for the next
Tree top ruins
When the ruins were unearthed, the tree stood stubern and tall. Once, both the tree roots and wall were under dirt. day. This was the day I have been looking most forward to about this trip. It is called "Gun Day!" As the story goes, there are shooting ranges in Cambodia where you can choose to shoot anything from small handguns all the way up to an RPG rocket launcher if you can afford it. After warming up with a Colt 45 handgun, I shot off a clip of an AK 47. I couldn't believe how powerfull it was. After that, Jordand and I contimplated shooting and M16 or even and M60 but they were a little out of our price range. Insted we both purchesed a hand grenade and tossed it into a pond. The shock wave was extremly powerful and shook the ground vilently. After dinting our wallets, Jordan and I left the range victorious in upholding the hype of "Gun Day."
For a change of scenery, we got our driver to take us to the killing fields. The Cambodian history in the time from the early 70's to the early 80's is some of the most brutal and sensless I have ever herd about. Around that time a group called the Kemher Rouge took power. They had
Gun Day
On the way to the shooting range, Jordan and I can't hide our excitement! some extremly werid ideals and wanted to put Cambodia back into the stone age. They started by slatering everyone with a hint of education and basically inslaved the cambodian people to work for them. They also trained and tainted the minds of their youth at a tender age. They were tought to hate and rebel against everything of normal social value such as family and were turned into regretless killing machines. Learning all this history was more than a little depressing. These lavled killing fields were a place where Cambodians were taked to be executed and put in mass graves. The methods of killing were brutal and the ammount of executed was astonishing. There was a central monument where all of the uncovered sculls of the executed were kept. The sight was chilling.
After the killing fields we went to S21. This was a coumpound where the Kamher Rouge kept, tortured and executed prisoners. Sadly, before its conversion to a prisin, it was a secondary school. Most class rooms were turned into a series of tiny cells through interior brick and wood work while some were left as is for mass cells. S21 was an erie place that left
S21 picture
Quite a disturbing picture from the once school turned prison turned museum called S21. a bad taste in my mouth.
Unfortunitly, the killing fields and S21 put a little taint on Gun Day but I'm glad I lurned about the Cambodian history. The next day Jord and I were supposed to go to Vietnam but ran into a little trouble.
We had talked to many sourses in Cambodia about crossing into Vietnam and all told us we didn't need to get a visa to cross. We were convinced by a group of Sweds who crossed into Vietnam through Laos without visa's that we would be fine with out them. Man were we wrong. After a not so enjoyable bus ride to the boarder, Jordan and I got denied at the Cambodian stamp out because we didn't have our visa's... Stupid us! In a fit of shame, we returned to the bus, headed back to Phnom-Penh, got our visa's and left two days later. We experienced no problems this time a crossed smoothly over the boarder where we took a bus to Sigon Vietnam.
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