Magnificent Cambodia

We were still glowing the next morning from our family visit, at least emotionally. Physically I didn't feel so hot as I didn't get much sleep and I had probably drank 5 or 6 beers the day before. Nevertheless, we ate breakfast and walked across the street to catch our bus for the Mekong Delta. We had booked a two day tour of the Mekong Delta, then boat ride to Phnom Penh. The bus took us to a boat which took us around a floating market and into some villages along the Mekong Delta. We watched folks make coconut candies, rice paper, rice crispy treats, sweet popped corn, and other tasty delights. We then stopped for lunch and watched a music concert given by locals. The banks of the delta are lined with houses on stilts and there are numerous houseboats that reside on the waters of the delta. After lunch we took the bus north to Chau Doc near the Cambodian border and slept.

We woke up early the next morning and took a boat from Chau Doc up the Mekong River towards Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The border crossing took some time as we had to go through both

Vietnamese passport control, then go up river 10 minutes to the Cambodian passport control. We eventually made it though. After a grand total of about 8 hours on various boats and a bus, we finally made it to our final destination...Phnom Penh. It was late so we found a hotel, ate dinner and went to bed.

The next morning we set out to see the sights of Phnom Penh. We only had one full day so we wanted to see as much as possible. We started with a tour of the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. Traumatic and sickening are the best words to describe the Pol Pot era in Cambodia. Pol Pot wanted to return the country to its glory days of rice production by forcing everyone out of the cities and into the rice fields to work. Anyone who slacked or disobeyed was killed. His attempt at a utopian agrarian society wound up with nearly 2 millions people dead by either murder, starvation, or disease. Many of the country's educated were specifically targeted. It was a rough morning for sure.

After touring these atrocious sites, we went to the Royal Palace, which is all glitz and gold, quite a difference from the rest of the city. We checked out some markets around town and got some food. It was a long day and we slept well. I was particularly excited about our next destination...Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor. We arrived in Siem Reap by bus and had a hotel tuk tuk driver waiting to pick us up at the bus station. We unloaded our things at the hotel and walked into town for dinner.

The next morning we rented 2 bicycles for our first day exploring the temples. Only cost $1/day and we had the freedom to go where we wanted. We bought a 3-day Temple pass and were determined to get our money's worth. We started off big and went straight to Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure in the world. It is amazingly impressive. Huge moat followed by another long walkway across grass until finally reaching the structure. Angkor Wat was built after the mythical Mt. Meru of the Hindu religion. It is stunning. Next we rode on to Angkor Thom which has numerous interesting structures including the outer wall, which impresses as you enter, and the Bayon, with its over 200 faces peacefully staring at you. We stopped several times for cold drinks and CJ bought a t-shirt and I bought a traditional Cambodian khrama scarf. We spent the afternoon touring several more temples on our bicycles. The bicycles worked out great as we were able to ride around several of the temples. By the afternoon though, our asses were paying the price! Those $1/day bikes had no cushion on the seat! From our last temple at Ta Som back to Siem Reap was about 16km of sore bum bike riding! We were beat when we arrived and went straight to dinner. After a nice big Khmer meal, we rode back to the hotel and crashed.

The second day we had a nice big breakfast (as we had the first day) then proceeded to rent cushier $4/day electric bicycles! These were even better than the regular bikes. The only drawback was ensuring the charge didn't get too low. There were many electric bike stations around the temples to swap out batteries, you just needed to make sure you got a good battery! We toured many of the same temples again on

Day 2 and several that we missed the day before. A couple of times we nearly ran out of juice, but made it to a station, until the end of the day. At the end of the day CJ had to pull me along to make the last station where we got fresh batteries and made it the rest of the way to town. We had visited Ta Prohm where scenes from Tomb Raider were filmed.

The last day we hired a Tuk Tuk to take us to Banteay Srei Temple because it was too far to ride a bike to. Banteay Srei is a pretty small temple, but the detail in the carvings is spectacular. We also saw some tiny, tiny frogs jumping around, pretty cool. Our driver then took us back to town where we bought a couple t-shirts, got cleaned up, and made our way to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. Thoroughly enjoyed Cambodia and hope it rises from its dark recent history. Next stop Thailand!