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Published: January 14th 2007
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The Fellas
Thanks to Erin for this one... a nice shot of us three overlooking the Angkor ruins at sunset. After reading my last blog entry and realizing swiftly that it made little sense at all, I decided to do a sequel write-up on Cambodia. So, after our time in Siem Reap (which as I mentioned in my prior blog was not all that great due to my food poisoning) we bought bus tickets and headed east to the capital of Cambodia: Phnom Penh. The trip was nice, cheap and there was a lot of rural area between the two cities, homes on stilts, rice fields and roaming animals. My highlight of the ride was seeing a dead cow on the side of a riverbank, while it's mate (or so I presumed) stood almost motionless nearby while local children climbed all over the tender (but long dead) bovine corpse and essentially turned the animal into a trampoline. A silent cheer erupted and my eyes widened in amazement and awe from my fast cruising bus on its way by.
Once we arrived in the capital, the friends we met from Edmonton had actually taken the next step and both booked us into a nice room and met us at the bus station. While we raced across town on the backs of
Protecting the Wat
Not sure why this didn't make it up on my last entry, but here we are holding back the hordes of tourists and keeping the temples safe and sound. motorbikes (which isn't easy with a huge backpack) I managed to capture my first glances at the interesting city. We stayed at a guesthouse on the river Tonle Sap (sp?) which was a little piece of heaven in the busy, dusty,(and surprisingly unpolluted) sprawl of Phnom Penh. While I wouldn't dare even dream of swimming in the river, it created an excellent view, with a breeze across the calm waters all covered in a blanket of plants that framed the sunset in a most superb way. Our first night there after hitting the road early was really relaxed; we had some drinks and enjoyed our new place. The little neighborhood that houses all the guesthouses is a really great place, not like Kho San Road where there are just too many people, but smaller places to visit and hang out. We made good use of a Sri Lankan hookah bar for one afternoon, James and I had some awesome Masala at an Indian place and nearby all kinds of little shops and cafe's were scattered about in the area. Our plan to visit the shooting range, the genocide memorial (S-21) and the killing fields had to be put on hold
Soldier of Fortune
When later interviewed, he simply claimed that both guns were needed so that he could watch his own back. for a day due to extreme laziness. In likely one of the strangest coincidences of the trip, I arrived at this guesthouse in Phnom Penh to see a familiar face (though I was unsure of it's origin) and discovered my mate Dave (though I forgot his name), far from his island kingdom and land of the queen, who I hung out with in Zimbabwe back in June was also a guest at this particular establishment. Though we were both very confused we managed to identify the connection and finally explain it to Ryan (he didn't look familiar to Ryan at all). To his surprise I was still on the same trip after he went home to work, and to my surprise it was in fact, the same guy though HIS mate Dave (also from England and with us in Zimbabwe) didn't make it on this trip. The chances of something like this happening I can't even try to calculate but for some reason didn't surprise me all that much. Then again, who runs into somebody both in Zimbabwe and Cambodia within 7 months and totally unplanned?
When we finally did head out to see more of the capital it
Cambodian Countryside
I was angry I didn't capture the dead cow on film and in an attempt to rectify that I photographed this random building. was again of course on the motorbikes, and again of course a lot of fun. I can see why Ryan enjoyed these trips as much as he did in Uganda because racing across town on these things is really awesome. I wasn't as excited about the shooting range as I should have been. Something about it didn't seem to grab at me, but at the same time I knew I'd never be able to fire off an AK-47 ever again and had to do it. The good news is that once we got there I realized I had only brought enough money for one gun. Had that not been the case I could have stayed out there all day blowing away targets with an exciting array of automatic weapons. There was a menu there where you simply order your weapon and then proceeded into a dark brick building where the young assistant prepares you weapon and coaches you on its use. I was actually surprised that the kickback wasn't stronger, probably because I was conscious about it and then when switching the gun to automatic the guy actually leaned into me with his arms straightened from behind to make sure
Oiler Fans
They're so nice... but well, at least we can all hate Calgary together. Cheers to Ryan for travelling with me for so long and finally deciding to take my last name. I wouldn't fall over. I guess I had all the help I would need. We took several videos and photos of the experience, and watching them later it appeared exactly like a marketing video you'd see of the latest FPS off IGN. It was all very cool and with bullets flying everywhere, we systematically destroyed our paper targets (somehow James was the best shot -by far), stood around staring at the other guns for probably 30 minutes or so before finally pulling ourselves away and wanting more, More MORE!
Our plan was to fire off the guns before we visited the killing fields and the genocide memorial. I was as prepared as I could have been for the killing fields, and while there isn't anything to say about them that isn't both shocking, sad and disturbing, I'll say in the end I'm glad I visited. Awareness. Although I don't have any tourist statistics for Cambodia, I'd say that it's fairly certain that far more tourists visit the ruins of Angkor Wat and probably skip over the newer sights of Cambodia like the memorials from the Khmer Rouge regime, even though those events happened within most visitors’ lifetimes. While I
S-21
A random "cell" in the ex-High school uesed for both distrubing and foul deeds (note the used car batteries on the rusty bed). Interesting enough I read that prior to the 50's Cambodia had one high school and zero universities. would have liked to gain insight on all this from a local, it seems the Cambodians (especially the guys at our guest house) were more excited to take us to the firing range joking with us and trying to learn English swear words, than they were to take us to any of the other places, and after dropping us off they seemed to just disappear. It's hard for me anyways, to understand and grasp just how past events have touched average people.
I don't think I was in Cambodia for long enough, but two blogs should be enough to cover it and I figured I'd post a few more photos on here for people to enjoy. Though the first leg of the trip was horrible into Cambodia, our way to Vietnam and out of Cambodia was far better indeed. I later learned (though through rumors) that the road between the Thai border and Siem Reap Cambodia is purposely neglected in order to encourage all the tourists to fly there from Bangkok. Though I was hesitant to believe this at first it became quite clear that the road there is in fact neglected (obviously so compared to the rest of
When Tourists Fight Back
I'm not sure what I'm fighting back against, but it's going to die! NOBODY WILL EVER TOUCH MY MONEY BELT EVER AGAIN!!! the country) but whether purposefully or not, I don’t know.
The people in Cambodia were all really nice, they seem really grateful to the tourists and don't seem to rely on them at all, looking at the money and business they bring as more of a flattering bonus than something they need to get by. Once we got our Vietnam Visa's and bus tickets arranged we spent 5 hours on a bus heading to Vietnam. We're currently in Ho Chi Min City (HCMC AKA Saigon) and haven't done much yet, though I'll update you as soon as we do!
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