Ah Kuhn Cambodia

Upon revising our travel plans and rerouting to Cambodia we arrived by bus to a country which we knew very little about. New countries are always uneasy since you are unfamiliar with language, currency or even where your hotel is but arriving blind and in haste is especially uneasy.

We arrived in Phnom Penh to a mass of Tuk-Tuks (motorbike taxis) and broken english, which is still much better than our broken Khmer. But once again after few short hours we felt quite comfortable in our new surroundings. Phnom Penh is a very modern city and demonstrates the huge social divide in prosperity between the urban and rural population here. Cambodia is another country in this area which has known very little peace in its time due to war and it's own horrific revolutionary history. In the decade of the 70s this population lost roughly 3,600,000 of 8,000,000 due to the Khmer Rouge and US carpet bombing during the Vietnam War. However, the Khmer people are resilient and are genuinely friendly and smile all the time.

Apart from being a very beautiful and modern style city, Phnom Penh and Cambodia have a horrifying past. Admittedly, I knew very little of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot or the genocide but we were all in for a shock. We hired a Tuk-Tuk for the day for $20 with our driver Jerry (we misunderstood his name for the most of the day and called him Jody...whoops but he still answered!) and he planned to take us to a killing field, S-21 and the Royal Palace.

For those that don't know as we didn't, a revolutionary government was formed in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge and headed by Pol Pot. His ideal was to form a classless society in which all people were farmers; so he evacuated the cities, closed all schools and hospitals, abandoned religions and relocated all to work farms. ALL foreigners, educated, those that appeared educated (if you wore glasses) and all that were related or associated with these types were classed as spies or against the revolution and were executed after months of torture and interrogation. In 3 years, 8 months and 20 days the Khmer Rouge destroyed roughly 3,000,000 people most of which were executed at designated killing fields. The killing field we visited is set up as a memorial and is one of 300 known execution sites within Cambodia. This particular field was the site of 17,000 executions of men, women, children and infants. The entire site is pock marked with large depressions from the mass graves and you can visibly see clothing remnants still working their way to the surface around areas which have not been exhumed. The site was very emotional and educational through a very good audio tour we all took part in. Elyssa became quite emotional and had to turn it off halfway through and was unable to continue to the monument which is a tower of skulls that have been exhumed. After, the killing fields we went to S-21 Genocide Museum (Tuol Sleng Prison) which was where many of the population were taken for "interrogation" before being sent to a killing field. All in all with it being very sad and disgusting, the kids had many questions which we could and could not answer but we all learned a lot. As Sir Winston Churchill said "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

From there we had a much lighter day and visited the Royal Palace and had Jerry tour us around throughout the city. The kids still get their pictures taken by strangers due to their blue eyes and they are starting to believe they are rock stars, it always makes for a comical moment with the locals. We went for dinner with Jerry and were able to grasp a bit about life in Cambodia or at least the bit that we could translate and understand anyways!

The following day we caught the bus to Siem Reap where is home to Angkor Wat, which many say is the 8th Wonder of The World. Siem Reap is a small city based upon tourism to the temples but is actually very relaxed and modern and hot...38 degrees!!! Much to our surprise, Angkor Wat is only one of many temples/ancient cities here and you could spend up to a week visiting them all to satisfy your inner Indiana Jones. We only had 2 days to throw at the area so us and our Tuk-Tuk driver, Song, set out for the days and still felt like Indy. The ruins are stunning dating back to 900AD with detailed stone carvings and architecture depicting Hindu and Buddhist religions, although the Khmer Rouge did deface many of ruins by decapitating all statues. The three highlights were Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm (where Lara Croft:Tomb Raider's first scene was filmed for the Angelina Jolie fans). We saw many similar things to what we learned at Machu Picchu which made it very interesting. We made our own tour without a guide so we missed out on a lot of the interpretive detail but between our black market Lonely Planet guidebook and Jake subtlely joining into organized french and english tours we were able to piece a lot of the info together (as you can tell we are becoming bad-asses with our black market finds and stealing free tours...lol). By the end of the days the combination of the heat and all the ruins, we were definitely templed out and treated ourselves to a fish massage. It is exactly as it sounds, you have fish exfoliate (eat) all the dead skin off your feet...needless to say some of us had way more fish than others working for us.

We then made it to the Cambodian Landmine Museum which is not only home to the museum but is home to an orphanage for kids that have been disabled by landmines from years of war and leftover bombs from the US Vietnam conflict. They estimate there is still millions of mines throughout the country and will take 300 years to clear all of them and each year hundreds of people are injured or killed during daily life. Also, fact...during the US's carpet bombing campaign to drive the Viet Cong back into Vietnam more bombs were dropped on Cambodia than all bombs dropped in WWII and approximately 600,000 Khmer civilians died as a result.

Although, Cambodia sounds like a depressing place it is actually the opposite. The country side is much different than Vietnam comprised of grass land and is quite pretty. Cost of living is still cheap but food is twice as much as Vietnam, it is definitely tough paying $25 for supper again. Surprisingly all ATMs dispense US cash which is definitely much easier to work with. Although we only got a snapshot of the country in one week we feel we saw what we wanted to see and it was great. Also, Elyssa is the first of us to get a "thai tattoo" which unfortunately happened when she laid her leg against the tailpipe of Song's motorbike (she is ok now and the scar will be her souvenir of Cambodia. We are now off to Laos for another whirlwind week.

Bye for now!