We visited the killing fields of Choeung Ek, which are outside Phnom Penh. It was an ordinary farming area until the Khmer Rouge used it as a place to systemically destroy about 20,000 of its real and imagined enemies. Anyone educated or skilled was a major target: doctors, teachers, engineers, lawyers, artists. Pol Pot decimated the Cambodian intelligentsia, and there is still a shortage of skilled workers to this day. You can still see pieces of clothing and bones sticking out of the ground. In order to save bullets, most victims were bludgeoned to death. I tried not to walk on the bones or graves, but there were so many, it was pretty much impossible. Some of the graves have been excavated, though many have not, mainly due to lack of funds. Cambodia is a predominently ... read more

We spent a couple of days visiting the wats (temples) in Ayuthaya, which was the capital of Thailand before Bangkok and a major port and trading center in Southeast Asia. Most of the wats and palaces are in ruins due to the Siamese wars with Burma, particularly in the mid to late 1700s. We rode bikes around the city to visit the various wats. It was hard to find some of them because many are only marked in Thai and our map was not very good. It's really hot and the sites are spread out pretty far, so we could only see a couple a day. We also took a boat trip, stopping at some of the wats that are farther away, and visited an interesting museum about the history of the area. A couple of ... read more

Red je da se i ja oglasim na maternjem jeziku. Tajland je veoma zanimljiva zemlja koju vredi videti. Do sada je bilo nekoliko lepih dozivljaja ali i puno spavanja. Spavao sam na brodu, na plazi, na trajektu u autobusu ali nije bilo sanse da spavam na recimo tuk-tuku ili na zadjem delu pikap-a jer to bi bilo kao da spavas u kolima dok te vozi neki lokalni domorodac u CG koji misli da dokaz njegove muskosti lezi u sto ludjem secenju krivine starog puta ka Kotoru. U svakom slucaju treba skupiti snagu za putovanja koja dolaze jer Kambodza, Laos i Vijetnam nisu bas tako laki za obilazak kao Tajland. Ne znam sta da ocekujem pa se i ne brinem mnogo ali znajuci sebe naci cu se negde u sred dzungle i reci sebi sta ja uopste ... read more

After a very long and exhausting trip, we arrived in Bangkok and are having a fabulous time so far. Bangkok is chaotic, crowded, and terribly polluted, but I adore it. The city has such an energetic pace and the food is great. Thai food here is very similar to what you get in the US, but at 1/10th of the price. The vendors sell every kind of food you could imagine: fruit (including pineapple, papaya and mango, my absolute favs), stir fries, pad thai, soups, noodles, curries, etc, all cooked up fresh to order. This makes it very easy to engage in the main Thai national pasttime: eating. The other national pasttime seems to be listening to cheesy love ballads. If I hear Toni Braxton and that atrocious Celine Dion song from Titanic again, I'm going ... read more