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Daniel and I traveled through Cambodia for three weeks and during this whole time I was continuously being surprised by this country. Coming in, I thought it'd be similar to Laos- one of the poorer coutnries. But actually Cmabodia is more similar to Thailand than I would have imagined. In the cities, there's giant buildings, some of wich are quite fancy. It's not unusual to see fancy SUV's cruising the street. Perhaps it's becuase they use the US dollar as their currency, but you can definitely tell it's a 'wealthy' country when everywhere has the western toilets which you can actually flush the toilet paper into! Of course these insights I gained over my three weeks. My impressions on the first day were of a different kind.
Looking out the window of our bus, I noticed the different housing style here in Cambodia. In all of rural Laos and occasionally in Thailand the houses were elevated 1-2 meters off the ground and made of bamboo. Well here in Cambodia, wood planks were the chosen materials. And what struck me as odd was the construction. The planks on the side of the house ran vertically rather than horizontally. And from what
I could tell, most poeple didn't have a saw handy or just liked the unique design of the planks hanging past the floor line. It appeared that any board was chosen at random, nailed into place and whatever extra board remaining below the floorline was left as is. Some houses, despite being 1 meter off the ground, had a side wall extending into the dirt. But only a few boards extending to the dirt, not all of them. Very strange indeed! I also noticed the giant mounds of hay. At first I wasn't sure if it was a house of some sort with a heavily hayed roof. Not until I saw cows munching away was I certian it was just a hay bale. Bue enough about first impressions, I should start with the experiences.
We spent our first five days in Siem Reap, located in the northwestern area of Cambodia. It was an alright city, but both Daniel and I appreciated it much more after Phnom Penh. The first few days we spent wandering the city getting to know the area. On our first night, we enjoyed an all you can eat BBQ and watched some kids from a
local orphange perform a traditional dance to raise money. It was beautiful! We also got engulfed in the Dutch celebration of the Queen's birthday, being swarmed by dutchies in orange shirts partying the night away!
The next two days we got our fill of temples at Angkor Wat. Our $40 pass gave us access to the park for 3 days, but the tuk-tuk ride cost us $10-15 dollars per day, so 2 days was enough! The temples of Angkor Wat were unbelievable! Truly mindblowing. There were about 20 major temples all within a 15 mile radius. Most temples were built in the 12th century AD all from giant stone block, some structures reaching as high as 65 meters. All the temples had meticulous carvings with thousands of budha images. My favorite temples were the ones reclaimed by nature with massive trees growing over the walls, between stones, and through doorways. One of these temples was used in the film Tomb Raider, and it was even more amazing in real life!!!
After seeing the sights in Siem Reap, we caught a bus to Phnom Penh, a giant, dirty, traffic clogged city. Here we learned the interesting and depressing history
The Killing Fields Monument
Filled with bones of the dead of the Khmer Rouge. This communist party took over Cambodia from 1975-79 and believed in an agrarian-based society. Meaning they moved all the people from the cities into the countryside making them do forced labor. We visited one of their most severe prisons, S-21, which used to be a primary school located in the middle of Phnom Penh. At this prison they would brutally torture and starve the inmates, who were arrested because they were educated and therefore a threat to the agrarian society the Khmer rouge envisioned. Of the 17,000 inmates held there, only a dozen survived. The prison is now a museum with most of the original metal beds still in the rooms along with some torture devices. They've put up all the pictures of the prisoners, mug shots taken upon their arrival, some of which were small children and even monks. It was hard to walk through those rooms, knowing people died in them only 35 years ago. Leaving the prison walls, we caught a tuk-tuk 16 km out of town to the Killing Fields, where the prisoners were killed and dump into mass graves. At this site they've erected a Stupa, a buddhist monument, encased with
some of the human skulls and bones they dug up from this site. It is quite something to see. It shakes your soul. Even though the day was pretty depressing, I'm glad the Cambodian government is making such an effort for the people of Cambodia and tourists to understand what happened during this period. Instead of trying to cover the truth, they're openly showing the atrocities that were committed hoping it will never happen again.
After leaving the dark history of Phnom Penh behind, Daniel and I headed south to the beach! It was nice to be in a small town again where the main street was often free of traffic. We spent a week chilling on the white sand, enjoying the $3 beach bbq as the sun sets (which include your choice of meat or seafood, salad, garlic bread, baked potato and a free beer), and just being lazy backpackers, which we are both surprisingly good at!!! The whole time it was excruisiatingly hot with no relief from the ocean, since it was probably 80F as well. Overall, it was a nice way to end our Cambodian travels before catching a bus across the border into Vietnam.
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