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Published: January 7th 2008
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Downtown
French colonization gave Siem Reap a New Orleans/Middle Eastern feel. Were are in Siem Reap!
Flying into Cambodia felt like you were flying into a remote area in the middle of the jungle - we felt so adventurous! We had heard that most people take US dollars in Cambodia, but we had no idea that Cambodian money was barely even used. We were shocked to find out that the Cambodian government only accepted payment for our travel visas in dollars or Thai baht. We had to go to the ATM in the airport to pay and it turns out every ATM in Cambodia gives out US dollars....I guess that demonstrates the poor econimic condition of the country.
Siem Reap, Cambodia has been cool (it is Allison's favorite place so far). We start every morning by waking up and covering ourselves in bug repellant and sunblock. Then, we go down for breakfast and a malaria pill. Our guest house is great. They assign you your own driver that is meant only for you. He stays with you the entire trip and helps you with everything. The first day we got our driver, a tour guide, and went to see the temples. The Angkor temples were built between 800 and 1000
years ago and there are 29+ of them to see. They are a UNESCO world heritage site and one of the original 7 wonders of the world. These ones are so different than the ones in Thailand. These temples are long deserted and covered in moss and ancient looking trees that sprout out from the middle of the walls. The temples were deserted during the wars, when the people were forced to move the capital to Pnom Penh to get further away from the invading Thai and Vietnamese. Many of the temples are close to decimated because they were mortered and the enemy would hide land mines in them.
We have moved from temple to temple seeing the different influences and in many parts of the temple complexes there are elephants walking around and monkeys playing and walking right up to the tourists. We were in back of a temple yesterday evening and we walked past a pond that was surrounded by trees. We heard someone thowing rocks in it and looked past the trees. The noise was actualy 6 or 7 young monkeys jumping out of the trees into the water and pushing each other in.
The
city is really cool. Apparently the French colonized here for awhile to do research and excavation on the local temples. The downtown took a French influence and it looks like a weird blend of New Orleans and the Middle East. The town's salesmen range in age from 3 yrs old all the way up to 10 yrs old. They try to keep your attention by telling you the capitol of the state you live in and the population, etc. A typical sales pitch goes like this: "You want buy bracelet? One dollar?" No thank you. "Where are you from? England?" No. "America?" Yes. "California?" Yes. "Los Angeles? San Francisco? San Diego?" Yes. "The capital of California is Sacramento and your governor is Arnold Schwarzennager. USA has 300 million people. You buy? 2 for 1 dollar." Etc. They are very persistent and very cute. Because the local monetary unit is so devalued, they don't seem to want to take their own money as payment and almost everything is listed in American dolars, and most things are $1.00
Today we are going to see our last temple and then taking an elephant ride up some mountain area to see the sun
set. In the morning we will be back at the airport again on our way to Krabi back in Thailand.
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Anthony
non-member comment
Hey! Part 2
What's up dude. Hope you guys are having a great time out there. I here there are alot of assasins that live there so be careful. By the way Bequi's pregnant were having a baby!