belated reflections on Cambodia

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first of all, merry christmas. I'm in Laos at the moment and just had a fantastic christmas in Luang Prabang. The internet is really bad here which has been really nice actually because I've hardly spent anytime online I've been able just to get away from everything. I'm afriad I have no photos to put up, I'll tell you about that later, but i just wanted to copy and paste quickly, some stuff I had written down in my diary on Cambodia:

''Now I'll tell you about Cambodia. I spent 2 weeks there. I got the bus from Saigon up to Phnom- Penh which is the capital., a beautiful city in the centre with the royal palace and stuff but outside of that it is just so poor. It's the poorest country I've ever been to by a long way. Although it was actually quite expensive because their own currency is just about worthless so everything is paid for in dollars. I went to the Killing Fields and to the Genocide Museum and it is staggering just what happened only a few decades ago. It is almost as bad as Hitlers genocide against the jews. You should watch the film the killing fields it really is incredible. The leader Pol Pott a communist wanted to take what he called the great leap by overtaking other communist countries by completely eliminating the educated and wealthy. He killed 2 million of his own people, mostly those who were doctors, lawyers, spoke another language etc. I had no idea how bad the situation was. So Cambodia has many orphans and it was really great after seeing that, to meet Son Soubert and to help out at the orphanage just south of Phnom Penh. I spent 5 days at the orphanage, helping with teaching english,. i painted a few of the houses.. and helped out with the planting of sugar cane and did some weeding. Played football with the kids and because most of them were keen to practice their english I got to chat to loads of the kids! it was a fantastic experience.
After the orphanage I spent the rest of my time in Siam Reap where the famous Angkor Wat temples are. They were incredible I loved the temples,. spent 3 days wandering around.. the scale of them is just amazing. The pictures will be more interesting than my description so il try and get them to you asap.'' (reading that last bit is quite funny, I will probably have the pictures uploaded once I get to NZ!!!)

and i also wrote this down as well:

''In the NorthWest of Cambodia I travelled through some totally random places on a moto taxi. The roads were so bad that after the 40km ride to the thai border (took nearly 3 hours!) I had to throw out my trousers and t-shirt cos they were that badly covered with dust. I stayed in Anlong Veng which was a former Khmer Rouge stronghold. When I was there it was a small town which lined a very dusty red road. I was the only foreigner there and by the looks of curiosity, probably one of the few that has passed through here. It was a very strange night, the power only comes on between 6pm and 12pm., so the first guesthouse i checked i said,. no thanks as I thought the light wasn't working and it was pitched black (the room had no windows!). Crossing the border in Thailand the difference is incredible. There are huge big highways, everyones driving big jeeps and theirs advertisements everywhere.''

-- Cambodia seems like a long time ago now, its crazy how that happens when your travelling. You cram so much into your day that in 2 or 3 weeks it can feel like a month. It's funny aswell how time flies in certain places, you end up spending longer than you thought and you end up thinking,.. wow this is my 5th day here!

I'm sorry for the really dull read,. once I get some pictures up (Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh, photos of the kids at the orphanage - it will be better).

Actually I have one photo I can put up though. On my final day at the Angkor temples I was watching the sunset from Thom Bakcheng which was incredible (I also have loads of pictures from the sunset),. but anyway I was sitting next to this woman on the steps of the temple, and she said: ''Ah I recognise you, I think your in one of my photos from earlier today.''

true enough she showed me a photo she took of the Bayon temple just as I happened to cycle by (ruining the photo of course) but anyway I thought it was a cool coincidence.




EDIT: - Phew, I found my photos, theres some more from Cambodia on my flickr page.

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