Cambodia!

I'm now writing from a small town in Thailand, called Buriram. So small it's not even in our lonely planet guidebook! I think that's a first -- we crossed the border from Cambodia today, checking out a few towns on our way into Laos. We'll return to northern Thailand as the last stop of our trip. Our time in Cambodia felt like it went by so fast. After our first couple days in Phnom Penh, which I mentioned in our last post, we got on to the real sightseeing. We rented a motorbike and made our way to the Killing Fields at Choung Ek. This was our first in depth look into what really happened during the Khmer Rouge period. You are given headphones and embark on an audio tour explaining the history, and all the gruesome events that took place right where you stand. There are still small shards of bone and pieces of ripped cloth all embedded in the ground. There are mass graves everywhere, huge depressions in the earth once filled with bodies. In the middle of the grounds stands the Memorial Stupa, filled with the skulls and bones of the thousands of men, women and children who were meaninglessly killed. It is one of the most powerful places I have been, there is really no reaction you can really have but to take it all in. The next day we headed to the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as S-21. This was a school right in Phnom Penh city that was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and turned into a prison camp. People were held and tortured here before being sent to the Killing Fields. Of all the people unfortunate to be sent there, today there are only 7 survivors. Walking through the old school, pictures of all the victims are displayed. The KR were meticulous in their record keeping, and everyone was documented. It was haunting staring at all the mug shot type photos of the people tortured. There were many young children, and the hatred in their eyes was heartbreaking to see. Once we were already overwhelmed by the place we walked into the last building, this was where the actual cells were built. Instead of walking into a empty classroom like the other buildings, you walked into a room segmented into tiny cells by either walls built of brick or stone. The spaces were extremely small, with one tiny hole that the guards could look into for observing their prisoners. It was horrible to see and imagine, it made it seem so real. Of course, this was the reality for the country not too long ago. The openness and friendliness of the people today is just incredible. From Phnom Penh we headed south to the small town of Kep. Our guesthouse owner almat convinced us to skip it, and I'm so glad we didn't listen to him. Kep was probably my favorite place in Cambodia. It is still very small, but it's one of those places that you just know tourism is going to hit soon. It's beautiful there, jungles and beaches, and they are famous for their crabs. We had meal after meal if fresh amazing crab, not to mention shrimp and squid, prepared with their equally delicious local pepper. We had our own traditional Khmer style bungalow to stay in, managed by the sweetest guesthouse owner ever -- she was always bringing us fresh fruit and snacks from the land. We had an amazing view of the town and ocean from the guesthouse lounge and just soaked up all the town had to offer. From there we headed about 40 minutes up the road to this town of Kampot. Unlike Kep, Kampot sits on the river rather than the coast. It looks a little underwhelming at first, but it's also a pleasant town to relax and enjoy your time in. We rented bicycles and explored, and rented a motorbike to take an hour drive up to their national park complete with temples and old ruins up in the clouds. A very cool place, somewhat of an eerie ghost town. In Kampot, we also discovered the delicious western food Cambodia has to offer. There's a lot of little cafés, a lot of them benefitting local charities/youth which offer great food. After months and months of Asian food we found ourselves taking advantage of the eggs benedicts, cinnamon rolls and milkshakes they had to offer! After Kampot we had to return to Phnom Penh before making our way to the north of Cambodia. The bus ride back to PP was horrible for me. I found myself feeling super sick and nauseous. All I wanted to do was get off the bus, I didn't care that we were in the middle of nowhere. Somehow I managed through my cold sweat and nausea and we made it. This was after a few tough days in Kampot, somehow while on our motorbike a bee managed to fly right into my hand and sting me while we were driving. The pain was so intense and quick and before I knew it my whole hand was swelling up. It stated big and poofy for a few days and just got itchier and itchier. Anyways, swollen hand abs nausea aside we made or back to the city and spent a few days there -- Paul got to check out some more boxing, I recovered a bit and then we headed up to Siem Reap. The first few days in Siem Reap we laid low, I was feeling a bit low energy still and had no appetite. In reading up on it a bit, I think I may have a slight msg intolerance, as it seems to be especially common in Khmer food -- lots of times you see people with bags of it sprinkling it onto their food! Finally, we got ourselves motivated enough to rent bicycles and make our way to Angkor Wat. We had debated about going or not - it's quite expensive comparatively and we tend to get 'templed out' - but I'm so glad we decided to go. We caught sunset the first day and found ourselves in the middle of a powerful rainstorm while caught in the middle of angkor wat temple, we were soaked and had to cycle back still, but it was absolutely beautiful. The sheer scale of the thing is so amazing, and on top of that every surface is so detailed. I don't know that I've ever seen a place quite like it. The next day we got up bright and early to see the sunrise. From there we continued on, exploring the other temples in the complex. Angkor Thom houses many more structures, my favorite there being Bayon. This temple had huge faces carved into it almost everywhere you look, apparently the faces share a striking similarity to the king at the time of construction. From angkor Thom we jumped back on our bikes and headed to Ta Phrom, this temple is famous for the trees surrounding it, whose roots have grown in and around the temple structure -- it's also famous for having scenes of Tomb Raider filmed there. The trees there are amazing, in many cases there are just massive trees sitting right on top if the temple with their roots spiraling down, I'm still not sure quite how they grow. Ta prohm was cool in general because it's a little more in ruins than angkor wat (which has more or less been in constant use since it was built), you can see the ruins in piles and piles of pure rock in many places in the temple grounds. It was a long day of exploring, temple fatigue does set in, but we saw some really amazing sights. We unwound that day at an awesome tapas bar (more delicious western food) -- with all dishes and cocktails at $1 we had a great feast. From Siem Reap, we headed to our last destination in Cambodia, Battambang. I think Cambodia has a lot to offer, but is still really building up its tourism. We were there in slow season, and Battambang didn't really have much to offer. There is supposedly and interesting art scene abs lots of local galleries, but they all seemed to be closed. We did our best exploring the city and countryside for a few days and then made our way to the border .... And after a whole day of traveling we find ourselves in this small thai town. Only two countries left on this expedition of ours!