good bye snow...

adventures with jamie and jav... (cambodia)

Alright,

As I mentioned in my last real post in May, Jamie and Javier came to Thailand, and we were on a whirlwind tour of South East Asia. It was wonderful, and we had a blast... but unfortunately I'm now thinking that Jamie and I might kill each other before making it to the finish line of the Amazing Race! (Ha ha - just kidding jame!)

Anyway, I was literally on my first day of holidays and we were already on a plane to Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. I was really excited because I had never been there before, and I had such a wonderful love for Siem Reap since going with dad.

Anyway, it was beautiful, heart breaking, tragic, inspiring... I loved it so much! This city is much more war ravaged than Siem Reap, and you can see the effects of the war much more obviously here. I learned a lot more about the Pol Pot regime. We immediately went to the Silver Pagoda, which was stunning... and Jav took this very brilliant photo.


From there we went to an amazing restaurant recommended by some friends, convieniently called, Friends. It was an wonderfully fabulous restaurant which was run by orphaned children. It was a good cause and the food was delicious, you really can't go wrong.

After that we went to a place called the Genocide Museum. This was an old high school that had been converted into a prison, and now serves as a memorial to the many, many people who suffered as a result of the war. We walked into prison cells that still had all the torture devices on the beds. Then there were walls and walls of children and adults who were murdered.




That night we watched a movie on the history of Cambodia, which resulted in me catching up on a bit of sleep. Oooops.

The next morning we woke up and headed to the Killing Fields, which are exactly as grim as they sound. The tour began with a 15 foot encasement of skulls. Then we walked through the fields, and our guide showed us remains of peoples teeth, and plants that they used to decapitate people. This man had lost his family to the war, and had lived through it. We were really priveledged to have him as a guide.

That afternoon we hopped on a 5 hour bus on route to Siem Reap. We arrived pretty late at night. So we booked our tuk tuk and caught some sleep. Bright and early we headed to Ankor Wat. We didn't realize that you couldn't book a guide from inside the gates, you had to book one in town, so luckily our tuk tuk driver had connections and found us an amazing tour guide! I'm not gonna go into to much detail about the temples, because you know how I raved about them in my last Cambodia post. They were just as spectacular the second time round.

That night, Jamie insisted that we go to a traditional Cambodian dance show. While the intention was good, the event was kinda a bust. So we concluded our evening on bar street where Jamie bullied me into drinking Mohitos and taking an obscene amount of pictures.



Morning came - and we drove to the airport to BALI!!!!

posted by Crystal @ 2:04 AM