Heading Home

I had to take a photo of the beautiful ceiling at the Bangkok airport...

We went home today. It was a surprise and I’ll tell you why; my Dad turned 70 years old today. Last year on his birthday he told the family that the only thing he wanted for his 70th birthday was for all his kids to be together (previous marriage and current). So about a month ago, I emailed all 7 of my siblings and asked them if they were planning on being there (the half-siblings all live in CA). I was really surprised when everyone said yes. Then I found out that my Dad was having a huge catered party where his band was going to play and everything. So I knew I couldn’t be the only child not there. I let my Mom in on the secret so she could meet us at the airport. She told my Dad they were picking up her sister and met us at the security gate. We were waiving at my Dad and yelling, and he didn’t even realize it was us! We started yelling Happy Birthday and the recognition crossed his face. It was a happy reunion. It felt good to be home, kind of.

To be honest, we aren’t that stoked about being home. We already miss traveling and I am constantly thinking about going back. But, I have to admit, it’s great to be in a soft bed with clean sheets and a clean bathroom that has toilet paper and hot water! Wow, we are spoiled here!

Of course, our trip home wouldn't be complete until this; we found a hairball in our airplane blanket. Did we still use the blanket? You betcha, we've grown a lot over the last 10 months!

Bangkok

We spent a couple days back in Bangkok enjoying ourselves and relaxing. I got my hair permanently straightened, which only cost $35, compared to $400 at home. I can’t even explain the joy of letting my hair dry naturally and not having to do anything to it. It doesn’t even get frizzy. No more scrunching for straggly/waivy hair and no more straightening for non-frizzy hair. A dream come true.

Back to Bangkok

Today we headed back to Bangkok. Our ride to the border was bumpy and a little scary. We were able to find a guy to take us in his car and we shared the cost with 2 other travelers. According to The Lonely Planet guide, the government is paid by a certain airline to not fix this road. This is also the only airline that services Siem Reap – Bangkok. This road is terrible.

We made a pit stop on the way so he could put a spare tire in the trunk. That didn’t do much to calm our nerves. We passed several cars stuck on the side of the road, and I guess one of them was a friend of his, because he stopped and tied his car behind ours and proceeded to tow him for an hour! By towing him, we were driving at less than half the speed than normal. We were about to lose our minds because we had a bus to catch at the border! We finally (over 3 hours later) made it safely.

A really lucky thing happened. I realized after we were well on our way that I never got my change from the guesthouse we stayed at. When we got to the border, our driver let me use his cell phone to call and I explained the situation to the new person working there. They told me to get the change from our driver and they would pay him back. So they talked to the driver, who gave me the change!

Almost tricked.

I am a sucker. We were forewarned in multiple ways of the terrible begging that goes on in Cambodia. Children are sent out at very young ages to beg. An average adult makes 3x as much money begging than working, so tourists are strongly encouraged not to give any money. But there is a particularly sneaky scam out there that pull on many tourists heartstrings (including mine, and I even knew about it beforehand!).

Dave and I were walking along when the sweetest looking little boy came jogging up beside us. When he caught up to us he started saying a single word. I thought he was saying “meal” but I couldn’t tell. I tried to figure out what he was saying, when he grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards a convenience store. I looked at Dave, and he just kind of rolled his eyes at me and followed us in. The boy immediately grabbed a can of powdered formula for babies. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Well, it’s also really expensive, about $6 a can! I told him no and bought him a little single serving container of actual milk for him to drink. He was pouting like crazy as he left the store, jamming his straw in his boxed drink.

Here’s the trick: the unsuspecting tourist buys the milk, which the child takes home to mom who turns around and sells it. There is no “baby brother or sister” as the children will often say.

Cooking Class

Today we decided to take a cooking class. We have really fallen in love with Cambodian dishes. A lot of it is very similar to Thai food, but richer and sweeter. We had the sweetest instructor. We made spring rolls and two main dishes. Delicious! We wrote all the steps and ingredients down so we can be sure to attempt it at home.

Angkor Wat

Here is an aerial shot that I found online. Huge moat, right?

Today our driver drove us out to the famous Cambodian temples. Angkor Wat is the most famous, and most revered of all. It is even on their flag. It is of extraordinary architecture and remained in use as a religious center for many years by being used first as Hindu and then Buddhist. It was built in the 12th century.

Angkor Wat - Cambodia

Today we went on a daytrip to Angkor Wat. It is an old, beautiful temple. But there are actually a lot of temples in the vicinity, this just happens to be the largest and most famous. It’s even on the Cambodian flag. For $9, we had a driver and our own tuk-tuk for the entire day. But the entrance fee to the temples is a little steep, $20 each.

We had a wonderful, but exhausting day.

Siem Reap

The view from our hotel room.


We took a bus up to Siem Reap. It was a pretty uneventful ride. When we got to our destination, the place was packed with guys wanting to "sell us" on their hotel. Dave and I couldn't even hear ourselves think, we were constantly being shouted out, tugged and pulled, it was a nightmare for me but Dave found it amusing. We finally chose a guy to take us to our hotel because that particular hotel had a great review in our LP book. But, of course, wouldn't you know that hotel is actually sold out and our driver wants to take us to a different one. He spoke pretty good English and I got him to admit that he lied to from the beginning and was holding up the sold-out hotel's picture because he knew it was a popular one. Oh well, the hotel he took us to was good too. And he was a pretty charming fellow, so we hired him to take us to Angkor Wat tomorrow.

Our sick bathroom, see the hose on the floor? It's the shower head.

After getting settled we hung out on the town. It's a small, quaint town and completely different than Phnom Penh. We immediately fell in love. We had a delicious meal, looked in some shops, Dave got a massage and then we called it a night.

Why does an elephant cross the road?

To get to the other side, of course!

This HUGE elephant literally stopped traffic when it decided to cross the street. Me and one other foreigner stood gawking, but none of the locals seemed to notice. Except for the motorists!

Guess who we ran into?

As hard as it might be to believe, when we were hanging at our hotel, Dave went next door to use the internet and saw the brother of his friend, Jake. Dave asked about Jake and what do you know? He LIVES in Cambodia too. So he called Jake up and Jake and Dave got to hang out for the night.

The next day, after visiting the museums and doing some more sightseeing, we hung out with Jake and his wife. We went to their beautiful house and visited the nearby market. The market was overflowing with brand name clothes at dirt cheap prices. But these were the actual brand name clothes which either got stolen from, or discarded by the sweatshops.

Jake's family made us a delicious lunch and then we made a mad dash for the bus to Siem Reap.

It was so good to see you and your family Jake!! Thanks for taking the time to show us another side of Cambodia.

The Killing Fields - Choeung Ek

After spending hours at the museum, we were taken to the Killing Fields. Where many people were taken and killed and then thrown in mass graves. The Killing Fields were found by it's stench.

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people (estimates range from 850,000 to 3 million) under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society—a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.5 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century. One of their mottos, in reference to the New People, was: "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." (Wikipedia)

In Choeng Ek, there are believed to be about 8,895 people that were buried there. As we walked around the area, we could see the pits where the mass graves were dug up. There was also a memorial where you could see piles and piles of skulls and bones. Looking closely at the skulls, we could see where their head was bashed in. The Khmer Rouge wanted to save ammunition, so instead of shooting their prisoners, they usually bashed their skulls in with machetes, sharpened bamboo sticks, or any assortment of homemade weapon.


After four years of rule, the Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power in 1979 as a result of an invasion by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It survived into the 1990s as a resistance movement operating in western Cambodia from bases in Thailand. In 1996, following a peace agreement, their leader Pol Pot formally dissolved the organization. Pol Pot died April 15, 1998, never having been put on trial. (Wikipedia)

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Today we had a sobering visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. But before that...

We were riding through the streets of downtown Phnom Penh in a tuk-tuk and a passing motorist spat on us! And let me tell you, it was a lot, and it was green. Too much information? Now imagine me realizing what happened and dry-heaving like crazy while my too-good-to-be-true husband cleaned me up. LUCKILY it did not get on my skin. Eck!

After that disgusting incident, we arrived at the museum. Have you heard of the Khmer Rouge? Pol Pot? That's what this museum was all about.

The museum is housed in a former high schoool turned Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge. The classrooms were converted into tiny prison cells and some rooms were left bare so that inmates could be chained body to body without any room to turn over. 17,00-20,000 prisoners were held here from 1975-1979. Although the Khmer Rouge took meticulous records as to the identity, photograph, and history of each prisoner as well as what their crime was and their sentence, it is unknown the exact number that stayed here.

One of the tiny cells. Dave is in there to show the perspective of the size.

The average length of stay was 2-3 months, if they could last that long. The prisoners here were badly tortured. There are even detailed photographs showing this torture, and the result.

There are only 12 known survivors of this prison.

When a person entered the prison, they were presented with the following 10 rules.

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

One of the classrooms turned torture room.

A photo of a man tortured to death.

"In 1979 Ho Van Tay, a Vietnamese combat photographer, was the first media person to document Tuol Sleng to the world. Van Tay and his colleagues followed the stench of rotting corpses to the gates of Tuol Sleng. The photos of Van Tay documenting what he saw when he entered the site are exhibited in Tuol Sleng today.
The Khmer Rouge required the prison's staff to make a detailed dossier of all the prisoners. Included in the documentation was a photograph. Since the original negatives and photographs were separated from the dossiers in the 1979-1980 period, most of the photographs remain anonymous today."(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum)

Exhibit of the prisoners.

Cambodia!

After spending our last day in Saigon checking out Ho Chi Minh, we got up early the next day to catch a bus to Phnom Penh. It was a long day, and going through the border was stressful, but it survived. At the border there were women exchanging money. We ignored them at first, but after they insisted on telling us their rates, we thought it sounded pretty good. We were very careful watching them count it out, then we re-counted, and exchanged the old or worn bills for newer ones. When we got to Phnom Penh we realized we got a really good deal on our exchange. Yes!

On our bus ride to Cambodia, we had to board a ferry. This was the car in front of us!

In the 2 days we spent in Phnom Penh, we saw a guy pull a huge knife on another guy, a security guard club another guy down, got spat on (more later), and witnessed 2 motorbike accidents (more later). This city is fast-paced, dangerous, and fun! Although we were a little overwhelmed by everything that was constantly going on around us, we felt an air of happy-go-lucky that wasn't present in Vietnam. It was a relief.


Look at our bathroom!! Fancy!

We spent our first night eating dinner at a restaurant that specializes in traditional Cambodian fare. What did we eat? Some kind of meat thing. Dave didn't like his, but I thought mine was pretty good. After we went for a stroll through the park outside the Palace. Since it was Sunday, the place was swarming with families, couples, and singles all mingling together and relaxing. It was some great people-watching!

A vendor selling food.

Later that night we roamed the streets and saw some interesting street food.

We are really happy to be in Cambodia and out of Vietnam!