Just when I thought that I had seen it all!

Hi Guys!

We are currently back in Bangkok and surprisingly happy about it.

On the 4th on July we had worked out a deal with a lady from Bangkok (BKK) to take us by bus (for 500Baht about 14 USD)to the border of Cambodia and then we would be picked up by another bus (in a big air conditioned bus) and then taken to Siem Reap where we were going to see Angkor Wat. Sounds simple huh... yah no...

So we were picked up as scheduled from BKK and then coasted over nice paved roads for about 2 hours. We stopped about 25km from the Cambodia border to "have lunch" This ended up being a scam. They told us that they had to get our visas for us at the low low price of 1200 Baht (36USD) We were under the impression that the visas were 20USD. After we had paid, a very smart American girl asked if we could just pay at the border. "Oh yes," he said "but very very long line 2hours." We later learned that we had ended up on the scam bus.

So, I want to paint a small picture here before telling you about Cambodia. Bkk very urban lots of cars... all the roads paved...very easy to travel around... I am not sure what happened after we got into Cambodia.

We got into Cambodia and we went from urban status to 3rd world status... It was mind numbing. The roads all were dirt roads with big pot holes in them. As we were walking over to customs a 6year old girl had a naked baby in sling in front of her. The children were following us and had there hands out.. with the most awful of sad faces. Truely, something I will never forget.

They loaded us into a bus with the expectation of taking us to the bus station to the air conditioned bus. The bus station was calf high in water. They pulled the bus up to another bus and loaded us off. The bus I am afraid to say was not air conditioned or big by any stretch of the imagination.. it was small and no aircon at all. our bags ended up on our lap. Now the bus ride was only 140km away which on a paved road should of only taken 2hours max... but due to the roads it took us 9 hours over the bumpiest dirt roads I have ever been on. Weirdly enough, I am happy that I did it. I saw things that I never would of seen in Siam Reap.

There was a child playing in a big puddle and next to it was a gas station. Now, a gas station consists of 1liter recycled liquor bottles filled with gas or giant gas containers filled with gas. We pulled over to fill up the bus. I watched a man take water out of a bucket and clean off the ground that had gas on it... it unfortunately was running into the puddle the child was playing in.

Just 9 hours of nothing to do but sweat and look out our dust covered window - too bumpy to read! The scam continued with the bus driver when we finally arrived in Siam Reap, they conveniently pulled into their guesthouse at 10pm. They know, of course, that it is to late to hire a driver to take you to your hotel and are forced to rely on them for a ride. OR if you didn't have accommodations they were happy to provide that as well.

Siam Reap was poor but regular western standards, but the hotels were very impressive. They all had a grandeur to them. It is almost like they wanted you to forget that you were in a poor nation. But a five minute tuk tuk drive out of town, it looked like this:

The next day we went to Angkor Wat. Left our hotel room and was greeted by Mr. Say, our new tuk tuk driver (for those of you who don't know it is an open carriage in the back with a motorbike on the front). For 10USD, he would take us around for the day to all the Angkor temples. Here I am in Mr. Say's tuk tuk.

On a quick side note: their currency is called a real... for about 1000 real yields .28cents----10,000real yields about 2.85 USD dollars... terribly confusing.. we changed 50 dollars and got 175,000 real. We found this very hard to use, but that's OK they turn their noses up at you when you want to use their local currency. They want to use USD only. How sad that their currency is so weak that they don't even want it, and when you do use it they hike up the exchange rate so you will be deterred to use it. This bites me in the ass later...

We spent the day in Angkor Wat. The biggest temple in the group very pretty. Amazing stone carvings on the walls of battles and gods.. all telling a story. One nearby temple, Bayon, has hundreds of these giant faces on it.

It was oppressively hot that day and upon leaving decided to get a bottle of water. Now, when you leave you are attacked (attacked is the only way to describe it) all wanting you to buy something. A girl asked if I wanted water... asked her how much and she said one dollar. (you can buy 1liter of water for about .35cents) I was so tired I said how much in real. I had a 10,000 bill in my hands and obviously sensing I had no idea what I was doing proudly said 10,000 real (2.85USD). Took it out of my hands quickly and handed me the water. Nothing like 100% profit. Gotta love the sucker! Have to say that I think it is almost a game. You haggle with them to get the lowest price and they haggle with you to get you to screw up. The thing is you don't want to haggle to much because we are talking about a matter of a dollar. A dollar to them means a whole lot more to them then it does to me, but you don't want to get screwed either.

The next two days were spent with Mr. Say traveling around seeing different temples. The temples were something out of Raiders Of the Lost Ark. Lots of little tunnels to explore and hand done carvings at every turn. Amazing that people built these structures by hand. Some of the temples were restored and some left to nature and the ones left alone took on the entire ecosystem. Trees made there way up the temples and embedded themselves into the buildings to create the most beautiful, peaceful sanctuary. Vines covered the sides of the walls and animals made homes there. Both Bob and I fell in love with the ones left to the elements. They possessed a beauty that the restored ones lacked. Here's a photo from the one described in the guidebook as "an Indiana Jones experience":

The last day we went to the floating village. This is a village were all of the buildings float on the water. They need to float because the river level is so variable - it can be bone dry or under 10 meters of water. They move their houses accordingly, and all can float, so if the river rises the whole town goes with it. This is all the buildings: houses, schools, churches, markets, even basketball and soccer courts. The down side is there is very poor water quality. Most people have to buy their water from the local water pump... there is no hygiene facility so most are forced to urinate into the water. This is the same water that they fish from and bathe from. Some houses had a generator so that TV was possible. The main purpose for the floating village was for fishing. Catfish is a big industry there and can give you a good profit if the season is right. They are forced to fish when profitable and hope to save the return for later in the season when the fish are fewer. Surprisingly, we found that there were a lot of immigrants there from Vietnam.

On the boat trip down the canal. Boats would come over to us trying to sell us cold drinks. This was not the uncommon because that had been happening to us for the last few days, but they also had on the boat very poorly dressed children with the saddest faces ever with their hands out saying "one dollar" "one dollar" Heart breaking. I can see now how Angelina Jolie adopts so many children from there. They are really cute and its very sad.

Ended the night back in Siam Reap, with a great meal. (Thailand and Cambodia have fantastic food) Took a tuk tuk to the airport today (11th) and have arrived here safely in Bkk. I felt bad that I was happy to leave. It was hard to travel around, and you felt on guard most of the time and had to watch out constantly for any scam. The irony was we didn't fear theft or other crime, because Cambodia is a very, very safe country. The bulk of the people that we encountered were lovely. They were friendly and always willing to help whenever possible. The children when you drove by them would wave and when you waved back they would light up. Put a smile on my face every time, so much so that I would go out of my way to wave at them to get that reaction. We are off to China, a little bit wiser for the experience.

The blog might be tougher to do, if at all, while we are in China. If you don't hear from us for a few weeks that is why. We will keep in touch as best we can by email and phone. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

Love to you all,

Gina