The Kingdom of Cambodia

Day 1:

On August 31st Andrew and I boarded a bus in Ho Chi Min city at 7:30am. Our destination, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was a six hour bus ride and I'm pretty sure we got stuck with the worst bus driver in all of southeast Asia. He basically screamed when talking on the phone and found it necessary to honk his horn at least twice a minute. Sometimes he would honk his horn just for the hell of it and there would be NOTHING in the road. He had a bad case of "Alpha Male Syndrome" and he wanted people to know that he was coming. It was terrible, forget sleeping during the ride because off all the honking and phone screaming...not a great start to Cambodia.

When we made it to the boarder, we had to carry our luggage inside a small office for "inspection." I use quotes because I'm pretty sure you could take anything into Cambodia. The X-ray machine was a joke. Then we had to wait for them to call our names. We got our visas and then we were on on way. After about twenty minutes of driving we pulled off the road to a large tent. The driver said we would stop for a twenty minute lunch break. The food looked real sketchy so we bough some chips and called it good. The remainder of the bus ride consisted of more shouting and honking...we could not get the fast enough.

As we were driving in Cambodia Andrew and I exchanged worried glances. It was not quite what we had expected. The scenery itself was beautiful and lush, however the houses looked like unstable shacks on high stilts which makes me think it floods a lot. There were water buffalo all over the places and trash everywhere. It was nothing but poverty until every few miles there would be a beautiful Buddhist temple. Very strange.

Once we arrived in Phnom Penh, we began to get a little more comfortable because it looked more like a city. We got off the bus to a heard of tuk tuk drivers wanting our business and we were happy when we spotted our hotel driver. He took us to the Billabong hotel where we went to settle in. We then decided to walk a short distance to check out the Central Market. Pretty much a tourist trap of all sorts of souvenirs. We found a pizza restaurant and waited out the down pouring rain that we were in. Well, the rain didn't let up for the rest of the evening so we ran back to the hotel and rested up for a full day of touring tomorrow.

Day 2:

Our taxi driver from yesterday offered to take us around to the sites, for a small fee of course. We agreed for two reasons: 1) It was an air conditioned car, 2) He spoke some English. Our first stop on the tour was The Killing Fields. A named coined after the 1987 movie of the same name. Immediately following the end of the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge regime took over the country from 1975-1979. These fields were all over Cambodia, but we went to the one at Choeung Ek where 129 mass graves were found. Our driver said that during this time there were about seven million people living in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge killed about half of them. What I understood was the the Khmer Rouge arrested and eventually killed anyone they thought had connections with the former government or foreign governments. I had researched this site before we went and i had prepared myself physically for what I was going to see. However mentally, it was very hard for me to handle. Because it's rainy season here, after heavy rainfalls (like the day before) sometimes teeth, bones and clothes of the victims surface. As we were walking, we could see bones and clothing and it was just horrible. It's one thing to visit a memorial or museum, but it's a completely different experience to be literally walking over innocent peoples bones and clothing. It was very disturbing and difficult to take in.

Some of the mass graves had several hundred people in them, and some graves were full of headless bodies. Some were just of women and children and some were just of babies. The regime killed the babies by hitting them against a tree. They feared of a later revenge from the youth which is why they justified killing everyone, even the children. Of the 129 mass graves at this site, 89 have been excavated. The monument at the entrance is 62 meters high and contains 17 tiers of skulls, bones, and clothing of the victims. You could take pictures inside the monument but I felt that it wasn't right, so I only have one from the outside. This was really such an emotional experience and I'm ashamed to have never even heard about this horrible genocide that took place only about 35 years ago.

After visiting the killing field, we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This was formally a high school, but during the regime it was transformed into an "office" known as S-21 which was designed for detention, interrogation, inhumane torture and killing. The prisoners would be brought here to be photographed and documented. Some would stay here in private rooms, known as VIP rooms. The VIPs were those that were considered knowledgeable like doctors, teachers, and police officers. Their condition wasn't any better as they were still tortured and killed. These are the actual rooms and the victims blood is still stained on the floor. Again, this place was very creepy and filled with nothing but torture weapons, brick cells and tons and tons of barbed wire. If the prisoners weren't killed in here, they were taken by tuck to the killing fields where they were tortured, blindfolded and then killed.

After leaving the museum, our driver told us a story about his experience during this time. He was only six years old. He said he went to the rice fields to collect crickets and dry them in the sun for food. He stuffed his pockets with them to take them back to his family. However, he was stopped by a member of the regime and his pockets were checked. They took him to a prison where he had to stay for three days without food or water as punishment. After three days he was set free and told to go home. However he was too weak to walk to the dropped him off in a grassy area on the side of the road. He was found by some of his neighbors where he was taken back home.

After these two gut wrenching experience, our driver took us to the center of town where the was a beautiful Temple and surrounding area. We walked around and took some photos before getting back in the air conditioned car. Our final stop was the National Museum. Here were artifacts dating back thousands of years. But what I couldn't get over was the beautiful building that it was in the the beautiful garden that was in the center.

After this museum our driver dropped us back off to hotel where we relaxed for a bit and just tried to digest what all we had just seen and heard. Later that evening we went to the riverside by tuk tuk and enjoyed a nice dinner.

Day 3:

We left for Siem Reap at about 12:30pm...we said nuts on the early morning bus. Again, it was a six hour ride. We had much better driver this time, hardly any honking. The downside was that the seats were much close together and less comfortable than the last one...I guess you have to take the good with the bad. The drive was long and there wasn't really a whole lot to see. It looked a lot like the flat pastures of Kansas...swap corn fields for rice fields and sprinkle in a few palm trees and wahlah....the Cambodian country side.

We arrived to find that Siem Reap was much calmer and better kept than Phnom Penh. And to be honest, after only 2 days in Phnom Penh I was ready to leave. We piled all of our stuff into a tuk tuk and about ten minutes later we were at the Tara Angkor Hotel...not to shabby at all :)

Day 4:

Wahoooo Angkor Wat! Again we took a tuk tuk, paid our $20 each and were off to Angkor Wat to experience something that truly took our breath away. A 12th century temple built for King Suryavarman II is the main temple and was our first stop. It is a pyramid covering an area of 4,250 by 5,000 feet surrounded by a 600ft wide moat, it's absolutely amazing! (I do have to say that I was super bummed out. You are allowed to climbed up a very steep staircase into the middle tower but since I was wearing shorts they wouldn't let me in. An Asian man came over to me and said that I could borrow his wife's sarong when she came down. So there was a glimmer of hope!! But sadly, when his wife came down the stairs I noticed that she was all of five foot nothing and the sarong that was covering her knees would not come close to covering mine. Not to get discouraged, I tried tying that thing every which way I could so that my knees were covered. I went back to the "guard" three different times with a new 'skirt' but he wasn't buying it and every dang time he turned me away. I'm sure it was quite amusing for them and you can't blame girl for trying. So Andrew got to go up and take pictures for me.) There is WAY too much detail and history to write in this blog and frankly I don't have time for it. But if you have roughly 52 min and 21 sec, I highly suggest you make some popcorn and type in "Angkor Wat BBC Documentary" into youtube, it should be the first link. It's a great snap shot of the main temples that we visited and it gives you some really interesting history about it.

The next temple we visited was Bayon and my favorite. There is only one word to describe it....awesome. It's not nearly as big as Angkor Wat, but the detail was amazing. You instantly notice all the faces kind of looking at you. They all have this smirk about them that just makes you smile. There are 54 towers on the upper level of the temple and each one has for large faces carved in it facing in cardinal directions, totaling about 200 faces in all. The sad thing about this temple was before the Khmer Rouge took power in the 70s, a group or archaeologists began restoring this temple and took it apart keeping a detailed log of where each stone brick went. The Khmer Rouge ended up killing all who were restoring this building and destroyed their record books. So sadly, the world largest jigsaw puzzle remains incomplete and there are thousands of stones just sprinkled around the temple with no place to go.

The next 'main temple' we visited was Ta Prohm, the famous site in the Tomb Raider movie. This was was so unique in that it really is "a jewel in the jungle" as they call it. Trees and other vegetation have literally grown around the structures. Some of the largest trees I have ever seen decided to take residence literally on top and around some of the buildings. It was such a site to see. However they have problems restoring some parts and some parts are off limits and deemed unsafe. My guess is that the trees are uprooting the structures and they could collapse anytime. That's part of the reason it's so hard to restore. They are torn between destroying the trees, (which are part of the attraction) and fixing the falling structures.

We visited several other temples sprinkled in between. It was a lot to take in, not to mention hot as heck and exhausting walking around all day. Overall it was an amazing experience and something everyone should witness for themselves to get the full effect of the enormity of these structures.

We went back to the hotel relaxed a bit and then went to the central market for a traditional Khmer dinner, some people watching and some shopping!

Day 5:

Andrew and I woke up with a little pep in our step and decided to see some of the sites via bicycle. So we borrowed two very athletic looking bikes and putzed around in the heat. Our first stop was the Angkor National Museum. $12 bucks and eight galleries later, we had about all the Angkor history we could handle. I have never seen so many headless statues in all of my life! We we left the museum we rode around a little more and then stopped for a small bite to eat. After riding through the rain we decided to call it a day on the cycling. All in all, Cambodia was a very interesting and historical place to be. Out of the two cities we preferred Siem Reap but we were very glad we made time to see the sites in both places!

Next stop....Thailand :)