Camrybodia, Pt. II

Random samplings of Cambodian life:

Camrys everywhere.
My Camry's twin! The plastic hubcaps are even the exact same as the hubcaps I bought from Pep Boys a year ago. Weird.

Some more ruins of Angkor:

Little girls come up to you at every temple begging and pleading you to buy their flutes, postcards, bracelets, and t-shirts.

They're extremely cute and very, very persistent. I bought a t-shirt for $4 and a little wooden Asian harp thing for $1. They give you a really sad face if you say no and tell you that you "promised" to buy from them earlier. Definitely gets annoying and their cuteness wears off fast, but you try to keep in mind that they're just doing what their parents ask them to.

A little red dragonfly...

Japanese tourists always come in groups, large groups. I usually end up waiting about 10 minutes for them to all clear so I can get an unobstructed shot. Todd, you've lived in Japan--why do they do that?Our tuk-tuk driver Pheap (peep), who showed us around the ruins for two days.

He was really cool and took us around both days. In fact, on our last night, he took us to a local place to eat (we paid of course) and then to a discoteque with his friend (we paid for all drinks). Though we paid for everything, it was only about $17 for the whole night, and I had a fun time dancing Khmer style and seeing what Khmer people do at clubs. Khmer is what Cambodians call themselves. Oh, and like Thailand, they put ice in their beer sometimes...because of the warm climate I suppose.

Most Khmer homes we saw from the bus were bamboo/wood shacks like this:

Many were far worse looking, with the best one looking about like this:

Pheap took us to a home of his friends and we looked around. They had pigs, chickens, an ox, and rice paddies in the backyard. They were extremely friendly, as are all Khmer people.

Slightly different backyard than the average American family:

Drying rice:

After Siem Reap, we took a much smoother bus ride to Phnom Penh, the capital. Here's a lady eating a large fried cricket at a bus stop. She's picking off the legs before she puts it in her mouth. They sell them by the kilo. I can bring some home for you Mom. Mmmm.

Upon arriving at PP, we were immediately hounded by guys wanting to take us to their guesthouse. We got out of there, taking the first cab we saw to the guesthouse mentioned in "Lonely Planet." Unfortunately, the cab driver rigged his meter and we got charged $20 for the short ride. Being our only cab ride in Cambodia, we didn't know for sure we were being ripped off at the time. Grr. I think I already mentioned this, but one thing I won't miss about traveling out here is being a constant target.

Below is Tuol Sleng Prison. This was a school that was converted to a concentration camp by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Thousands and thousands of people were sent here for storage, interrogation, and torture from 1975 until 1979, when the Vietnamese kicked them out. This is one converted building, unchanged since 1980:

Imagine Phil Lewis (my elementary school) being converted into a concentration camp. One of the survivors made many paintings depicting the torture and conditions. Here are two:

If they weren't in a tiny cell, they were chained in a classroom to the floor like below and beaten if they moved without permission.

I have more pictures of torture devices they have there. Very eery and sad and similar to the Holocaust. Even 4-year olds were interrogated and tortured to see if they were CIA. They took pictures of everyone who came through.

The estimates are that from 700,000 to 2,000,000 people were killed by the KR. Queue up "The Killing Fields" in your Netflix to get a small taste of what was going on just 30 years ago.

Speaking of which, here are the pictures from The Killing Fields. It's a large field of pits where close to 9,000 bodies were found bludgeoned, shot, and beheaded. People were taken here from death camps like Tuol Sleng to be slaughtered with mostly hoes, axes, and other blunt objects to save bullets. Only about 80 of the 120 pits have been dug up. You can still find teeth, bone fragments, and close in the ground. Eery, eery, eery. Sad, sad, sad.

We walked around the field. We found a bullet shell (on the right) and some teeth on the ground:

I found this small piece of clothing sticking out of the dirt.

On a much lighter note, we stayed in a popular area right on beautiful lake for $5/night (that's $2.50/person). Note: three currencies are accepted in Cambodia--US Dollars, Thai Baht, and Cambodian Riel. Most menus and prices are listed in US Dollars.

Our kinda gross, non-flushing toilet (like many toilets in SE Asia, you scoop water into it from a bucket until your excrement naturally sinks down the hole) and shower pipe (like many bathrooms in SE Asia, your shower and toilet co-exist in the same room--makes for easy bathroom cleaning I guess).While in Phnom Penh, we met up with a British friend of Aaron's who has been living in the city for two months, helping polio victims and teaching English. She showed us around for two days and even hosted a game of poker with M&Ms instead of chips for us with her roommates. It was really fun and a good finish to Cambodia.

We then crossed over to Vietnam by bus. We stayed in Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City, for 3 days and met up with Emily, another of Aaron's friends. She'll be with us for the remainder of the trip. We are traveling up the coast of Vietnam pretty quickly since we have to be up in Hanoi by the 9th, 10th at the latest. We're in Nha Trang now, about 1/3 of the way up. It's nice so far and much more developed than Cambodia, maybe just a little behind Thailand, but not much. I'll post pictures in my next blog.

Oh, and here's me in Cambodia firing an AK-47 and throwing a grenade. Notice I'm making the same face in each picture:

Bye!