Camb

Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful place!! We just love it here. it feels just like Thailand.
This is gonna be a big one!

Entering Cambodia: We get to the border, the guy on the bus goes around and collects everyones passport and $20 american dollars to pay for your Tourist Visa (one thing i didnt like about Vietnam, was everyone took your passport like Hotels and Guesthouses, and you got it back when you check out ...i guess to guarantee payment)
He tells us to get off the bus and put our bags through customs and wait for our names to be called.
2 more busses show up at the border doing the same thing.
So theres men running around with handfuls of passports walking around and then they go up to the front and then the customs officers just start putting Visa stamps in everyones passport and calling out their names un-organized-ly. ??
People are smoking inside the area, and its just total chaos. People from the back of the crowd are pushing their way through when they hear their name and people's bags are getting bumped over and everyone that doesn't speak Khmer is wondering where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to do.... but it worked. everyone made it through in less then half an hour. hehe

We continue on and then 3 mins later the bus pulls over near a river and drives onto a flat boat with a dump truck full of sandbags or saltbags and theres a little boy following the bus looking up at us begging for money. He just keeps putting his hands out and putting his hands in the praying position and then putting his hands out for money and follows the bus ONTO the boat. Theres about 4 feet in between the bus and the boat's wall and I look down to see how close we are and the little boy is in between the bus and the boat's wall still looking up into the windows. I I go get jess to come look but by the time she gets there he's already gone.

The boat drives across the river (total time: approx 30 seconds) ...so they could've just built a small bridge but thats ok, and then we drive off onto the road. We drive for about 5 mins and then the bus pulls off on the side of the road for us to eat. Jess and I run over to the bank because both of us have about the eqivalent to $1 in Vietnamese money and no American or Cambodian money. We come back and are starving so grab a baguette and then the bus guy comes running into the place where we are buying our bread and urges us to follow him, because the bus is backing out of the parking lot slowly. he opens the door, we get in and then he starts to drive off.

We arrive in Phnom Penh (The Capitol City) which is really nice. They have neat feilds that look as though they are flooded. We still aren't sure if they are flooded fields or if the farmers harvest some sort of plant in the water, because the greenery was evenly rowed and a woman on a small boat was rowing in between the rows of greens.
As we drive through the city we see many parks, where women are doing aerobics in groups and guys are sitting on their motorbikes, checking their hair in the mirror and cellphone in hand (very Thai-like) and every child under the age of 6 is running around naked. Running by the busy roads, chasing chickens, playing in the dirt, riding bikes, playing in water together...etc.
Same as Thailand. Nobody wears helmets....5 people to a motorbike, etc...etc.. and the intersections are just people swirving around each other and coming to complete stops in the middle of the intersection to wait to go around bigger vehicles.

Along the sides of the city streets there are fenced in housing or hotels. On the fence every so often you can find a small square mirror nailed to the fence with a chair sitting in front of it and a man sitting in the chair getting a shave or his hair cut. They are the local barbershops, we are to assume, and unfortunartely neither of us got a picture. [which i'm very dissapointed about! ;( ]

We arrive at a place called "Okay Guesthouse".....it was alright I guess :P
We paid $4 a night and had 2 beds and a private bathroom and a fan. No airconditioning for us!! Gives us stuffy noses and sore throats which ALWAYS end up in colds!!

We drop off our stuff (but take our important stuff with us, not to worry!) and grab a tuktuk to take us to the Killing fields. We asked him how much to get there and he said $15 american each.
PFTTT no way were we paying that. Thats how much it's going to cost us to get back to Thailand! So we talked him down to $2 each, there and back, and he also stopped at the Khmer Rouge Genocide Prison (which is now a museum with all the original beds and cells still inside) and he waited for us while we explored both attractions. Not Bad eh?

The killing fields was very sad. It's all outdoors and we walked through a gate and apprached what looked like a tall narrow temple. Inside the temple were thousands and thousands of human skulls that were remains of the Khmer Rouge and they were piled on shelves that went so high that we could'nt see after about 5 or 6 rows. They had signs beside some of them saying the age of the skull and wether it was a male or a female. Surprised to see how many 10-16 year old female skulls there were compared to the rest. We were told that the higher up the tower you go, you can see skulls of babies. There was no way to go up and look, not that we would have wanted to see that, but it was something that I guess neither of us had ever thought we would even come close to seeing in our lives. It made us realize how lucky we are to grow up in a country like Canada. Also in the Killing fields it showed us where the bodies were piled and sprayed with DDT (the pesticide) We learned that the bodies were sprayed with DDT to 1. Remove the smell of decaying bodies so that locals wouldn't become suspicious and 2. to kill any of the bodies that happened to still be alive. [i feel really weird typing this by the way...it so sickening to me]

Near the back of the killing fields there was a small river, that was atleast something plesent to look at. We walked back towards it and there were 5 small children on the other side of the fence. They call us over saying "this way lady, this way!" in English. We walk over thinking that theres a whole new piece of the fields that we haven't seen. The kids reach through the fence to shake our hands. talking in (very good) English saying things like "where do you come from? what is your name? etc..." We answer their questions and they see the camera in my hand and ask if I can take a picture of them. The huddle up and smile for a picture and then immediately press themselves to the fence to see how the picture turned out. Something about 5 kids with no shoes standing in the killing fields behind a fence made both of us think that maybe i should strap my camera to my wrist (i know that sounds really bad....but we have to always be careful in foreign countries) and the oldest kid grabs the camera to get a closer look. When i try to take it away he holds onto it really tight and then looks up and me and lets go of the camera and says "can you please give me one dollar?" Then the other kids pitch in saying "not just for one person, we will share" and then go on to tell us that they need to to buy pencils and books for school. They are all saying it in unicen, which lead us to believe that they were all taught this. Because we know how the Thai kids are with learning English and if theres any english that they know its getting to know you conversation and "am/is/are grammer". They knew too much English for their age. So we concluded that it was their job.
We started to walk away and they followed us around the fence saying the chant over and over "Please give me money, i go to school, i need to buy books, buy pencil, buy uniform, i don't have money"
we started to feel bad for them, but knew that this was going to happen a lot, seeing as Cambodia is a poor country and that we can't give our money away to everyone who asks. We walked for a while and two bare-footed children followed us along the fence for a good 15 mins saying the same things over and over again. Then the little girl started asking for my bottle of water because she was thirsty.... it got to be too much so we ended up not seeing that side of the fields because we didn't want to see the children begging anymore.

**this doesn't sound like positive feedback about Cambodia, but it happened, so I will write them in here**

We went to the Genocide Prison after that where it showed what life was like for the Khmer people who were put through interrogation. Yet again, not the greatest thing, but its something that both of us needed to see. I had a headache so i skipped the last building and went outside for some fresh air. I was talking with some tuktuk drivers and they were practicing their English and Thai with me. Jess came out and we went back to the "okay guesthouse" we wanted to watch the sunset at the river but then we decided we were too hungry so we went and found a little local restaurant where they had home-made ice cream for really cheap. They didn't have anything vegetarian but we had already sat down and poured a glass of water so we settled for an icecream. Jess got chocolate (which tasted like coffee) and I got coconut (which tasted like coconut milk) they were awesome!!!
Then we made our way back to Okay and found a Korean restuarant. Neither of us had eaten Korean food and wanted to try it so we ordered fried mixed vegetables. The waiter brings over complimenty Kimchi spicy vegetables compliments of the chef. We (naturally) thought DOH cause that ususally means expensive.... but the bill only came to $2 and I got a pot of tea instead of a cup of tea!

We booked our bus ticket for Sihanouk ville (beachy area of Cambodia) which left at 6am. Both overslept but somehow (Jess always manages to do this....but...) woke up at 5:50. We rushed to get ready and rushed out, grabbed a baguette at the front desk to scarf down as we were loading our bags onto the bus. We arrived in Sihanouk ville about 5 hours later and it was really pretty. Small town....not a lot going on....just a lot of beaches. We find a place on the beach for $5 a night. Same kinda place like the one we stayed in in Phnom Penh. We go to check out the beaches... we're walking along the big one [starts with an "o", can't rememeber the name] and we are walking down the beach and a little boy , about 7 years old, walks over to us asking if he can make us a friendship bracelet. Jess says no and I say nothing. He follows us down the beach. Asks where we are from. We say Canada. He starts saying the Capitol City, Prime Minister, Population, etc... Very impressive I must say. He didn't learn it in school because it was 1pm on a Wednesday afternoon....meaning he doesn't go to school.
He follows us for a while and all the while is making a red and white friendship bracelet (Canadian colors...this kids GOOD!)
We keep telling him we don't want one , because we know we will have to buy it, and he doesn't give up. We find a place to park and sit on the beach and he sits down and opens up his fanny pack and pulls out some plain thread. Then he wraps it around his fingers, asking us if we want a pedicure because our nail polish is not beautiful anymore. Watching his fingers twirl the thread we realize what hes doing. he's preparing to do "threading" on us....which is (i believe) an Indian tradition for hair removal. He rests the thread on Jessica's shin and starts ripping hairs out with the thread thats woven between his fingers. Jessica reacts in pain by pulling her leg away and he moves closer and starts taking more and more hairs out. Jessica tells him she doesn't want it but he persists, saying that she will have no hair on her legs for 3 months and it's better than shaving.
All the while he keeps telling me to be careful of my bag because there are many thieves on the beach.
We decide we might as well be nice to the kid, and tell him we don't want to buy anything but we will play in the water with him. And he doesn't have to make us a friendship bracelet if he wants to be our friend. He packs up his stuff , i think because he realized we werent going to budge anymore, and then he walks away saying goodbye. He was nice about everything and then he runs over to me and grabs my bug repellent from the side watter bottle section of my bag and runs off with it. I tell him to come back and he runs back laughing saying "i told you, watch your bag" and hands me my bug repellent. grrrrr hehehe

It started to rain so we went back to the guesthouse and watched a movie about a book club. It was really good.

The next day we go to another beach, we tell the tuktuk driver we want to go to a beach that doesn't have a lot of people. We wanted to just enjoy the day and not have to deal with people selling things. After agreeing on a price he drops us off on a very quiet beach. As we are getting out he tells us that its very dangerous on this beach and that we should go to "Victory Beach" which is 10km away. Not so cool. But we stayed because we could see that there were many people if we walked along the beach for a bit.
A few kids found us, threw mud at us, we played with them in the water for a bit.We found a good place to relax and we stayed there for a few hours then walked back to the guesthouse.



Last stop: Siem Reap
We paid for a direct bus to Siem Reap, but apparantly direct means that you have to drive all the way back to Phnom Penh (first place we were) and then drive to the other side of the country to Siem Reap. Oh well, we both had a book and it wasn't an expensive bus.
We stopped along the way and I took a picture of the sunset, and this family asked me to take a picture of their little boy...who was REALLY cute. He'll be in my pictures on facebook when we put them up. And then we arrived late last night. I think it was about 9 or 10 or so....which we were a little uncomfortable about because we don't like to arrive places at night because we don't know what to expect. But it was ok, a tuktuk driver named "Rak" was waiting outside the bus. He drove us to a guesthouse called "Number10 Guesthouse" (love that they try to make their places sound good eh??? Okay, Number 10....hehehe) and thats where we are now. We asked Rak how we can go about seeing the Angkor Wat temples at sunrise and he said that we can hire him to take us. So we arranged for him to come to the gueshouse at 5:15am and take us there for the day, drive us around and bring us back. Unfortunately we could only get him to settle for 10$. But it was worth it. We made it just in time for sunrise and got to see one of the most beautiful sights so far!! Angkor Wat is a series of many many ancient temples and it is one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world. I think we took over 200 pictures today! They will be up within the next week or so.
We were going to go to the floating village but decided we will save it for next time. Didn't quite get to do all the things on the itinerary, but we are so happy with all that we saw and had so much fun that it doesn't matter!
Tonight we went to the night market and we bought our friend Scott a bottle of some sort of liquor with a snake inside, which he obviously wont drink, it will be for decoration, and jessica bought some cool sweatpant shorts. We also got our feet "massaged" by tiny fish that looked like minnows. Basically they eat the dead skin off your feet but it tickles so much it feels like they are massaging you. They are called "Dr. Fish" and it was a lot of fun!We walked back but then got lost, but then found our way. I think we will stay in cambodia a few more days before heading back to Thailand. maybe just walk around and see the way of life, more so than the tourist attractions. Thats what always amazes us the most. I would like to get some more pictures and the people are so friendly and welcoming that we will have fun just doing that.
Ok mosquitoes are getting me.
I hope I didn't make Cambodia seem like a dreadful place, its actually so amazing to see how the people can live off so little and how they make the most of everything and day-to-day are constantly smiling and waving and having fun. Making the most of life. and helping each other and helping visitors as well.

cambodia is awesome. we would come back for sure.