Greetings,
We hope that you are all staying warm and dry. The news we are getting is that you have been experiencing a lot of precipitation, which California can always use. We are sad we are missing the great skiing though. We have experienced many of the same inconveniences as you do when your power goes out; no hot water, no water out of the faucet to drink, eating strange things heated with wood that have been in the cupboard for 5 years....stuff like that. It makes me feel closer to home.
We have just checked another "must see" off of our list. The Ankor Temples being one of the top architectural wonders of the world and ranks right up there with Machu Pichu and the Pyramids of Egypt. The surrounding jungle and people make this an especially interesting location to explore. You might remember scenes from Tomb Raiders that were filmed here?
Southeast Asia is a great destination as many interesting and beautiful places exist within close proximity to each other and flights are cheap. You can pack a lot of diversity in within a short period of time and traveling here is pretty laid back and easy to do.
Don and I have not quite figure out how to describe the town of Siem Reap in just a few words. I guess I would have to say that it is a typical mid sized, developing 3rd world Asian city, but then you have to throw in least 30 huge modern hotels (we were told a new one opens every month), hundreds of tour buses, thousands of European and Asian tourists, and a few trendy French style street cafes and art galleries. The surrounding country side is exactly what you might picture, small farms with rice fields, small huts, and people working. Maybe we should call it a Southeasteurasian City?
Most of the tourists here come from Japan, Korea, and Thailand. The hotels are all the same and cater to their tastes, which is a lot of marble and red and gold paint. Each one has hundreds of rooms. The second biggest group seem to be made up of German and French.
Don and I have really enjoyed hearing the life stories of some of the people that we have met along the way. You could never imagine the fascinating twists and turns peoples lives take and why they end up in certain places doing certain things. The young couple from Los Angeles that own the B&B where we are staying are your typical 30 something, handsome and upwardly mobile couple who decided to take a break and travel a little.They lived in London for a while but got cold there and remembered that they really liked Cambodia and it's people while they were traveling, so went back to LA, sold their home and bought a big house here to start a business. They partnered up with a tuk tuk driver they met, who told them that he had a degree in business, and now they are building more bungalows and even have started a fish farm. They love it here and are able to do things they could never afford in L.A. I imagine that there is a high degree of risk to running a business here with Cambodia's fairly unstable government, but they enjoy helping the local people by giving them jobs and working to improve the local school. We learned a lot about the people, customs, and history of the area from them, so it made our stay much more interesting.
Someone had told us that it was great to rent bikes to explore Ankor. After doing that in Sukhothai we were all jazzed to do it again. We arrived late the night before, so really didn't have any concept of the traffic, distances, or orientation. We soon we realized that we had become a couple of little fish swimming, in a rushing Cambodian river of bikes, tuk tuks, motos (motorcycles), and cars. A whole series of new skills, and skills long forgotten were learned in a flash as we dodged, weaved, balanced, and braked. Don was in front of me, was worried, and kept turning around to see if I was still there, which scared me to death thinking he would turn around just as a big pot hole would jump up and bite his tire.
Once we got a little more comfortable and started looking around us it became really neat to see the mass of humanity from that perspective. There is unexpected order to the chaos I think. It is fun trying to figure it out, but Don says, don't try there is no way you can figure it out. There seems to be different rules for cars, bikes, and tuk tuks. Cars drive on the right like we do and drive like all cars in all third world countries, crazy. Bikes pretty much follow the rules that pedestrians follow and can cross at any time but usually stay at the far right of the road in the Cambodian bike lane. Tuk tuks and motos don't follow any rules, drive on the shoulder, the wrong side, the wrong way, or where ever will get them to where they want to go. They seem to be the most hazardous to bikers. The other thing that is very distracting are the little kids riding bikes on the highway. I have to fight the urge to go find their mom and tell her not to let them do that! We were really proud of ourselves that we did so well and complimented each other for our surprising coordination.
Another surprise was the distance to everything, so we really got our exercise and were dragging back that night, but loved seeing the people, monkeys, and jungle as we cruised past. Don had another one of his moments when a large group of workers all dressed in grey uniforms and baseball caps or cone shaped hats, with machetes and saws tied to their bikes surrounded us on their way to the park to work. Some smiled and said hello as they passed.
We spent two days visiting the temples. Our favorites were Ankor Wat, Banteay Srey, and by far the very best Ta Prom which had fantastic giant trees with roots that slithered around the haunted rock ruins like giant snakes.
The Khmer Empire covered the area from the Yunnan Province in China to the Southern tip of Vietnam, and from the Bay of Bengal to the Eastern border of Vietnam. The administrative and religious center consisted of around 100 temples and was built between the 9th and 14th centuries. Only the art in Egypt can compare with the detailed and beautiful rock carvings that depict their elaborate Buddhist and Hindu mystical tales. This is another one of those places that you know your pictures will never convey the experience so I guess you'll all have to come and see it for yourselves.
A great diversion from temple immersion was the floating village of Chong Kneas. It is a bustling town including, floating restaurants, hardware and grocery stores, schools, fast food and just about anything else you might need. Some are full sized stores that you might see in any town, and some are just dug out canoes. Nothing touches land.
The people in this area are extremely poor and mainly subsist on the fish that they catch and rice. Those living on shore hardly own more than a 6x8 foot lean-to and a few pots for cooking. Most don't have furniture of any kind. Some of the children float around by the tourist boats in rubber tubs and beg. It's the worst we've seen and it breaks your heart.
The people here are so friendly, although are pretty street wise and some look a little hardened. We are sure that their survival skills here have been well honed over the years of incredible hardship. It is amazing how happy and friendly most of them are in spite of the suffering that their families experienced during the American blanket bombing here and during the Pol Pot era when hundreds of thousands of people died at their hands. They still have a lot of land mines in the countryside, and we saw many people with arms, legs, and eyes missing, in addition to a lot of birth defects which we wondered might be caused by agent orange. Both Laos and Cambodia were innocent by-standers and got sucked into the Vietnam war which had a devistating domino effect for their people. They have only been at peace for about 10 years, and only until after other governments quit funding the Khmer Rouge so they finally faded away. It is evident and sad that wars, violence, and government corruption can have a huge detrimental effect on the progression of a society and a countries economy.
NGOs here are plentiful and have made many significant contributions for the benefit of the people here. We saw a lot of evidence of canals, irrigation systems, and job education programs. Sadly enough we were told that some of the NGOs are also very corrupt and hardly do anything.
There are many entrepreneurs here, and if you are interested here's an idea. Get a bright blue light, place it behind a clear plastic sheet that cascades down into a tub of water. When the bugs hit the plastic going for the light, they fall in the water and drown. It's low overhead and there is a huge demand for roasted bugs of all kinds. They even export them to Thailand because apparently they have bigger bugs in Cambodia.
Sorry, I know that this was a long one, but Cambodia is such and interesting place. Even though we didn't stay long, we feel like we had a few adventurous and educational days.
Take care and love to all,
Don and Jo Ann
20 votes 
This is a top pick!
