angkor wat & phnom penh

*note: you should be able to magnify any of these photos by clicking on them.

Hi all,

First of all, hooray! We made it to Vietnam without one single scam, and found a nice three-bed room for $5 each per night right near the center of town. Definitely liking Vietnam so far (although I'm excited to get out of the city tomorrow-- we're planning on doing a day trip to the Mekong Delta.)

Which, of course, means that we've left Cambodia, which on the whole I liked a lot more than I expected to. Lonely Planet made it out to seem like a pretty scary place, and it wasn't, really-- I actually felt quite safe, from the people at least (the traffic is more dangerous.) The main issue was the possibility of bag snatchers in Phnom Penh, so we just had to be careful not to take our purses out at night. not so bad:-)

As I alluded to in my last entry, we spent Saturday visiting the temples at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is about twenty minutes from Siem Reap, and traditionally hires moto (motorcycle) or tuk-tuk (basically a motorcycle pulled golf-cart type thing) for the day, since the Angkor Wat area is way too big to see on foot. The guesthouse tuk-tuk driver offered us a decent rate ($15 total to drive us for the day), so we accepted and arrived at Angkor Wat at about 6:30 a.m., and spent the morning seeing Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, some smaller temples, and Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is pretty much the coolest because it's all covered with trees growing on it-- Lonely Planet describes it as being caught up in a "dynamic wrestling match with nature." We spent lots of time walking and climbing, so despite the cool ruins we were actually quite exhausted by about noon. We decided to go back to our guesthouse in Siem Reap (about 20 minutes away by tuk-tuk) for lunch and a nap, and return for sunset.



Our tuk-tuk driver and a few other people had told us that the best place to see sunset was the best place to see the sunset was Phnom Bakheng, so up the mountain we went. As Lonely Planet had warned us, it was a bit of a circus for sunset. Also, once we reached the temple, we discovered that climbing it meant going up a very, very steep set of stairs with steps about wide enough to fit the balls of our feet. But, when in RomeCambodia...




Angkor Wat closes around 6 p.m., so we got back to the guesthouse and decided to go swimming before dinner. We ended up meeting several other backpackers and going out to dinner with them, and during dinner it finally rained for the first time this trip! Even at 8 p.m., it was a great relief from the heat. After dinner we headed back (well, us girls did...the group of guys we met stayed out to watch the soccer game on TV) and watched the thunder and lightning from the balcony. Pretty cool.

We had pretty much wrapped things up in Siem Reap, so on Sunday we made our way to Phnom Penh. The day was pretty uneventful, save for some highly entertaining Cambodian karaoke during the bus ride. The music videos were basically daytime soap operas were turned into music videos that looked like 7th grade glamour shots with delicate macarena-type dancing and Khmer writing lighting up across the bottom so that the Cambodians on the bus could sing along (which they did.) Pretty amazing, even if it did loop the same 30 minutes of video about ten times. We finally made it to Phnom Penh around 7 p.m. in the rain, so we quickly found a tuk-tuk driver to take us to our guesthouse and were perfectly content to spend the night in.

Monday was our only day in Phnom Penh, so it was busy but went smoothly. We left early to get our visas for Vietnam at the embassy (a pleasantly simple process, as it turns out) and then walked to the Tuol Sleng Museum to learn about the massacre in the 1970s under Khmer Rouge. The building had been a schoolhouse before the war, but the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture prison.

After seeing the museum, we picked up our visas from the embassy and had lunch (veggies and noodles for about 75 cents) before taking a tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields, which were about as uplifting as they sound. I find I never seem to have words after seeing places like Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. We watched a documentary that interviewed a woman whose son and daughter had both been killed under Khmer Rouge, and she said, "I'm seventy years old so I should understand some things. I don't understand this. I understand how a husband and a wife love each other, or how a mother and a child love each other. I don't understand this." I'm not sure there's anything more that can be said.

Finally, today, we boarded a direct bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon.) There was a little bit more Cambodian karaoke, and then there were about five hours of Mr. Bean so I opted for gazing out the window (the Cambodian countryside is much more fascinating than one might expect) and listening to my ipod. We just got into Saigon a couple hours ago, but we wasted no time tracking down yummy pho... although it was a bit on the theoretically expensive end at about 90 cents. We'll have to do some better searching in the alleyways in the next couple days.

until next time, much love:-)
-sara