Cambodia

After breakfast in Bangkok we left for the Cambodian border. Final destination: Siem Reap. Crossing borders by land in Asia is not the same as crossing the border from f.eks. Norway to Sweeden back home. It involves a lot of walking, standing in line and waiting for the guy behind the counter to give you a stamp in your passport to validate your visa. When you are cleared to cross the border you enter a whole new world. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and you can clearly see it through how the people live.

It is hard to explain Siem Reap because it has so many contrasts. For example, on the first night we arrived we went to a small village consisting of 36 families. Their houses were on land that they didn't own, and the govenrment was trying to remove them. These people have nothing. Thanks to a volenteer none-profit organisation "New Hope" they have clean water and the kids have clothes. The organisation also supports some of the families by providing 5USD and 5kg rice every month and it was this organisation who took us to the village. Afterwards they showed us the english-school they run, and we ate food (and crickets) at a resturant they have just opened to try to create some revenue for the school.

As I said before, Siem Reap has many stark contrasts. After the dinner at the english school we went to a street called "Pub Street". I don't think I need to explain what we did there, but it was like coming back to Thailand. Completely different from what we had seen earlier that day.

Just outside Siem Reap is the famous tempel Angkor Wat. It took 37 years to build, and they used aprox 10,000 workers. The temple is one of the 7 wonders of the world. It's very impresive to look at, and I took about 200 pictures there and hopefully I will share them here or on facebook later. After Angkor Wat we went to visit a couple of other temples before we went to a floating village. Some of the people in the floating village never put their feet on dry land, and most of the people there get land sickness if they do. In the village we looked at the market, crokodile farm and we tasted snake, which is suprisingly good!

Phnom Penh was the next destination on the scedule. This is the current capital of Cambodia, and there are more middle-class people living there than any other city in Cambodia. The bus trip took most of the day, and we didn't do much when we arrived. However, when we were going for dinner, Bo (our C.E.O. on the tour) took us to his aunt's place and she had cooked dinner for us. The food was definitely top 3 on the list of meals I have had so far on my journey.

Cambodia has a rather bloody history if you look at the last 50 years. And we learned a lot about it in Phnom Penh. Under the regime of Pol Pot 1975 - 1979, aprox 3,000,000 cambodians were killed. The people who were targeted were primarily educated people or who had also worked for the previous goverment. Also if you had glasses you were considerated smart and would get imprisonated and killed. We went to a genocide museum which used to be a school, but under Pol Pot is was a prison. 20,000 prisoners passed through this prison but only 7 survived. After the Genocide Museum we went to the killing fields. This is where the prisoners were brought for execution. Most of the mass graves have been dug up, but you can still see pieces of skelleton and old clothes on the ground. There was one tall building on the feild that had been built after they started digging up the graves. The building exhibited over 8,000 human sculls that had all been dug up at this field. It's kind of hard to explain what you are thinking when you walk through the building or on the field. This happened only 32 years ago, and I had heard almost nothing about it before I went there.

We spent one more day in Phnom Penh before we went to Shanoukville. Shanoukville is basically a big beach with bars all the way down the beach side. There is not much else to do than swim in the ocean or lie on the beach, and in the night time you are supposed to be in a bar. I usually do as I'm told... I spent my days on the beach and my nights in the bars.
Oh, beer in Cambodia: 3kr (0.50USD)