Cambodia

I wrote this a couple days ago but didn't have internet access to post it:

Cambodia is rich in life, culture and heat. I have sweat so much since being here and my clothes are soaking wet at the end of each day.  

We went to phnom penh for two nights and one day when we first arrived. cambodia is much more rugged and not as advanced as a culture. there are still alot of dirt roads among other things that might symbolize a modern society.  

phnom penh is the capital and the city where Pol Pot did most of his brutal and heinous torture of the Cambodian people from 1975-1979.  We went to see the main S-21 camp.  The Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot's regime) overtook most of the schools and used them as prison/torture chambers for the educated people of Cambodia. They kicked everyone out of the city, and killed anyone that was educated and foreign. Seeing the S.21 camp where they found the last 14 bodies after Khmer rouge was kicked out was intense to say the least.   in each of the rooms, they had pictures of the bodies that were found there, all of them unidentifiable because of the decomposition and torture that was inflicted upon them. 

In the afternoon, we went to the killing fields where thousands of people were taken to be murdered and buried, sometimes buried alive. During the time, they would play loud speakers with fun music so that the areas surrounding these killing fields would not hear the cries of those being murdered.  The number of people murdered are unknown, but its somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 million.

After Phnom Penh, we came to Siem Reap, where its most famous for the Ancient temple built by the Angkor people called Angkor Wat.  It took 37 years to build and it was all done by volunteers and people traveling through.  It is strictly a temple and not a place for anyone to reside.  It was absolutely magnificent. We arrived just in time for a Thai holiday so had to fight the thousands of tourists that also wanted to see the magnificence.  Words cannot describe how amazing it was, along with the several other temples we saw including that in the film "Tomb Raider."

All in all, Cambodia is a bit hot for my liking, especially when going around to temples all day.  They use the dollar here, so because you dont get a great exchange rate, its a bit more expensive than Thailand or Vietnam, which came as a surprise to me. 

Next, we are back to Bangkok again and my friend Erin arrives on Wednesday for a two week adventure around Thailand!