Cambodia

When last we left them, Stefan and Mina were tired of the cold and decided to head for Cambodia.



We finally got on a plane in Hanoi at 6pm after huge hassles from our hotel that I'm still dealing with, and arrived in Siem Riep which was a wonderful 30 degrees. We hopped into a taxi and headed for the main strip where we figured we would find a hotel easily. WRONG! It still being the Lunar New Year holiday, everyone was still on vacation in Cambodia and taking up all of the accommodations. We finally let our taxi driver go and started wandering around. A young guy offered to help us and grabbed a tuk-tuk driving us to all of the hotels he knew in the area. After more than an hour of riding around to completely full hotels, we finally stumbled across the Siem Reap Hostel which turned out to be incredible. It had a pool, pool table, free internet, brand new accommodations, book exchange, and everything else you could possibly want from a hostel. So after our really crappy day, we finally had a nice place to stay.

For the next two days we just went around Angkor Wat, which is a collection of temples that have slowly been reclaimed by the surrounding jungle. If you ever get a chance to go see it, I highly recommend it. All of the temples had something different to offer, and were all gorgeous.

On the second night we met up with Angela and Dawn, two of the girls I worked with at Suwon University, and then on the third day relaxed before heading to the floating village for sunset. The floating village itself was ok, but to get there we had to take a tuk-tuk through an area of the poorest people I have ever seen. Small naked children running around, and families of six living in what would generously be called a hut made mostly of corrugated iron and tarpaulin. Lots of children were also wearing "Be the Reds" t-shirts which is for the Korean Soccer team, which I assume couldn't be sold during the last world cup, so they just got sent to Cambodia as a donation. I also saw lots of old Korean buses which was amusing because they still had all of the old Korean directions on them. At the floating market, we were shown a fish farm and a "coconut" farm. We were wondering how hey could grow coconuts in the middle of the lake when we discovered that our guide had made a mistake and used the word "coconuts" instead of "CROCODILES" similar sounding I know, but not the same thing.

After Siem Reap, we headed to Sihanoukville with Dawn and Angela and just relaxed on the beach for a week. Nice sunsets, warm weather, fresh fruit and seafood, and just about everything else I wanted from the vacation. At the beach we also randomly ran into Jeff, who we knew was in the area, but could never get in touch with.

Dawn and Angela left a day before us, and we finally made our way to Phnom Penh for a couple of days. On our first night as we were going to dinner, we once again randomly ran into Dawn and Angela, and had a simultaneous "What the hell are you doing here?" We chatted with them until they had to leave for the airport, got up, walked around the corner, and ran into Frank, yet another person that we work with. We were tired, so we arranged to meet up the next day to do some stuff.

The next Day was depressing day. We got Frank from his hotel and went to Tuol Sleng which was the prison where over 7,000 people were imprisoned under the Khmer Rouge before being killed. It was really awful because they had pictures of a lot of the victims, and many of them were small children that had had the misfortune of being related to a person that knew had to do math or some other heresy. After that we hadn't been sufficiently depressed, so we went to the killing fields, where a lot of the prisoners from Tuol Sleng were actually executed. There you could see the piles of skulls of the victims, and as we were walking around we saw some human bones lying around that hadn't been collected yet. If you want creepy, this is the place to go. Thankfully it was a nice sunny day, and not a gloomy rainy evening.

After all of this death, we hadn't had enough destruction, so we headed to the range, which was actually on a special forces base. Frank chose to shoot an Uzi, and as he was setting up they asked "do you want to shoot a chicken?" Yes, that's right. Not only can you shoot fully automatic weapons, but you can shoot them at farm animals. frank politely declined and then enjoyed his Uzi time. We then looked back at the weapons menu to see that for a mere $200 we could shoot a bazooka, and for a mere $200 extra, we could shoot it at a cow. Ah, Cambodia, there's nowhere quite like it. I decided to simply toss a hand grenade, which was quite the experience. We got a nice explosion that everyone could enjoy, and I can now cross "Throw a hand grenade" off of my list of things to do.



I was only a little upset that they didn't offer me any livestock to throw it at. Maybe a goat or a duck? We left feeling great with the adrenaline rush that can only come with automatic weapons and high explosives. we spent the rest of the day relaxing and contemplating what we had done before separating.

The next morning, Mina and I headed back to Ho Chi Minh, where we just did a bit of shopping before heading to Taiwan.