We took the bus over the dancing road to Battambang yesterday morning. I did a moto tour when we arrived. We drove into the rural areas of Battambang and saw rice paper being made as well as rice noodles. Battambang is a very typical Cambodian city. There’s very little tourism and a lot of poverty. So this is “real” Cambodia. The women who make the rice papers to sell to restaurants make about $3 a day. In Siem Reap, the street children all sell postcards and bracelets. A little girl who looked about 3 years old, tawdled up to me Read more…

This morning we woke up at 4am to go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat (the main Angkor temple). What an amazing experience. We bought coffee from one of the little entrepreneurial Cambodian boys who arrived shortly after us. After the sun came up, we toured the temple, before getting breakfast at a nearby cafe. By 11am I was templed out. I was beginning to feel like I did in Kyoto, except it was sticky hot out. The last temple was the Ta Prohm temple, otherwise known as the Tomb Raider Temple from Laura Croft Tomb Raider movie. This was Read more…

Yesterday morning we flew to Siem Reap. We’ll be here for a few days to tour the Temples of Angkor. Siem Reap and the temples is the main tourist attraction in Cambodia, so there are tourists everywhere! I haven’t seen this many Westerners since I was on Khao San Road in Bangkok. In the afternoon, I had lunch at the Blue Pumpkin, got a massage, and then swam at the hotel pool. We toured the Angkor temples all morning and part of this afternoon. The temples are amazing. It’s hard to describe. They’re huge and have been there for centuries! Read more…

We took a public bus to the Cambodia border yesterday morning. We arrived in Phnom Penh (pronounced ‘panom pen’ ‘p’ as in ‘pup’ and then ‘pen’) in the afternoon. As soon as we crossed the border, the poverty of Cambodia versus Vietnam was very apparent. There are beggars everywhere. After arriving, we went to a cafe by the river and people watched, until an elephant walked by. Yes, Nelly the Elephant was just walking down the street, past cars and motorbikes, it was the weirdest thing. Hilarious! Today was probably the most depressing day of the trip. We toured S-21, Read more…