The tourist town of Siem Reap. Our last Cambodian stop.

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After a lazy morning we had a walk around the town. First impressions is that it's a nice town. Very different to the other places we had been to in Cambodia. You could see that tourism had been good for business. The buildings were much nicer and there were a lot of restaurants, bars and of course tuk tuks! The down side to having lots of tourists means there are also a lot of beggers, namely children carrying their baby brothers and sisters. There are also lots of limbless beggers. We have been told on a couple of occasions not to give money to these people because they are mostly on drugs. We have seen children maybe as young as 12 or so sniffing glue or something. VERY SAD. But they always seem to beg to the white person.

We had a walk around the market and to the other side of the river then we decided to get a tuk tuk to go to a mine museum just outside of town.
Kylie and Jon had been a couple of days before and said not to pay more than 2.50. So after trying a few tuk tuks we were chuffed with ourselves for getting one for $2! This was short lived.
We stopped at the War museum, we said that we had asked for the mine museum. His reply was "I said the war museum and you said yes.'
Ok, I (melissa) was not happy, I may have said yes to him but only becuase I couldn't understand him or assumed it was the same place. Now if we wanted to be taken to the mine museum of course it was going to be another $3. I said I would rather pay him the $2 and go back to town and get another tuk tuk to the museum, as I felt it had somehow been planned. Andy on the other hand wanted to just pay the extra and go, so we did.
The guy then obviously didn't have a clue where he was going, he took us down this painfully bumpy road to the zoo! where he asked for directions.
We eventually arrived at the mine museum. It was in a mans garden area. He had taken it upon himself to demine Cambodia by himself with his own tools. He had also taken in various children and teenagers who came from very poor families and who had lost limbs and eyes due to mines.
On a board there were the stories of the children he had taken in and they were so sad. Most of them their parents had asked for their child to come and live at the museum as they knew they would have a better chance at life. One little boy didn't know how old he was, where he was born and who his parents were. A few of them had lost arms and legs by a mine fro picking firewood that had also killed their brothers and friends.
They don't have a proper home to live in or bed, but they get the chance of having an education and they get fed. The children work at the museum and learn english from the tourists and volunteers.
Still hundreds of poeple in Cambodia are killed or injured by mines every month.

In and around this guys yard are thousands of mines varying in size that he has defused and collected, along with other military weapons and bombs.
After half and hour we had finished. We bought t-shirts for our donation to the museum and then headed back to our guest house.
We ventured out for a Khmer massage at 'Seeing Hands', where the massuers are blind.
We were given clothes to put on (they smelt nice and clean for a change so was thinking of keeping them!) and layed down on the table.
The massage was very nice and relaxing, but some parts were rather painful. It was different to the Thai massage as it was more about pressure points then bending you about.
You wouldn't think them being blind would be much of a problem, but when they can't see or speak english and we can't speak Khmer, paying was a tiny bit difficult, but we got round it.
Again it was raining, it rains so hard that the streets are flooded ankle deep within minutes!
We then went on the computer, had some dinner then bed.

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Photos

His diagram how he defuses mines!
A CONTROLLED explosion!! A bit of stick and string!!

Is that mine or yours??
Whatever I don't mind. HAHA