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Published: February 11th 2010
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So after successfully seeing the lads off on their trip we decide after 6 days in the capital of Cambodia of not really doing much, to get out and seesomething. The guesthouse we found to stay in "The Drunken Frog" has a great family and it has been too easy to just spend the days relaxing with them and all the great people we met there. Most of them left on the same day though so we decide to jump on the back of LG and Charlie's bikes to go out to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and then on to S21 the prison Back in Phnom Pehn
We visit the killing fields at Choeung Ek first, by the end of the day I'm glad we did. The photo's and stories at S21 would've made it near on impossible to walk the grounds at Choeung Ek. The start of Choeung Ek was the Buddhist Stupa which housed thousands of recovered skulls from the fields, these are a small portion of the millions Killed during the Reign of Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge. I'm not going into detail about these things because at this time i don't have the
Knowledge of what happened and would not want to get things wrong and say things which are incorrect. The only thing i can say for sure is that the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek was a very difficult place to walk, for me personally and i don't have the knowledge or full story of what happened, so for the Cambodian people i can't and wouldn't want to even begin to imagine how hard the place must be.
The following day we jump on a bus to Siem Reap to visit the 8th wonder of the world "Angkor Wat". A place built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th. It is a short way from Siem Reap town so we decide to rent a couple of bikes to ride out there and are glad we did. All in all we covered around 40km that day but the scenery was stunning and apart from going the wrong way there we didn't get lost once. The temples here are a very interesting place to visit and some are in fantastic condition. One of the first Western visitors to the temple was Antonio da Magdalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in
1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen. I agree. It has to be seen with your own eyes to truly appreciate what must've gone into the construction of the temples. Angkor Wat itself has an outer wall making the area of this particular temple 820,000 square meters and just up the road is Bayon, another fantastic site there are so many here to visit and too many to list.
Next on the list to do is The Happy Ranch horse riding center where we go to have a look around and speak to the owners. This place is the only place to ride a proper sized horse, which we don't do, but it was nice for a visit. We follow that by going shopping at the local market, where we buy some clothes and then go for a drink at the Angkor Wat? Bar. The next thing i remember is waking up the next day as for the price of 2 "buckets" you get a free t-shirt, we did this, and by the end of the night forgot to take the bag of shopping home
with us which had our free t-shirts in!
Now with only a short time left for my travels I've made the decision to not go to Vietnam this trip so we head back to Phnom Pehn for Anne-Sophie to extend her Cambodian visa and then plan to move on to a beach for a few days. First though whilst we're in Phnom Pehn and as I've never had the chance before to do so we visit the local shooting range, where in exchange for some cash you can fire a magazine off from an AK47 or Tommy gun or a variety of other weapons. Choice of target is the target board, coke can or as i aimed the AK at the target the owner said to me..... you want chicken??? I didn't accept. There is also the choice for a reported $350 you can buy a cow and a bazooka!! Cambodia- anything goes! It's all about the Benjamins.
bye for now.....
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captian
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i see, you found the tommy gun ;-)