Hello!
The past 10 days have gone by incredibly quickly, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface here in Cambodia. There has been one surprise (and oddity) after another. In flipping through the brief description of the country in the guidebook on my way to the Thailand/Cambodia border, I studied a few important phrases. How odd that right next to the standard translations of "hello", "goodbye", and "thank you", was, to my surprise, "excuse me, but are there any land mines in this area?" Hmmmm... Needless to say, I didn't venture off the beaten path in this part of the world, but I did see some pretty cool stuff.
From Kathmandu, I flew to Bangkok, stayed a night, and then was off on a bus to the border where I payed for my Cambodian visa and for the compulsory racketeering fees the corrupt border officials demanded. Great start. After a little encouragement, I did manage to get one of them to write me an unofficial receipt, not that it would do any good monetarily, but it sure made me feel better to win one battle (but obviously not the war).
Twelve hours after leaving Bangkok, I was in Siem Reap and feeling surprisingly alert and rested. I did find, as I expected, that Cambodians (aside from the ones at the border) are incredibly friendly, hospitable people. Everyone smiles genuinely, says hello in English, and smiles some more.
Siem Reap is about 10 km away from Angkor Wat, which is, by far Cambodia's largest tourist draw. The city itself is tons of fun, too. While in the city, I spent most of my time eating...and sweating. It's oppressively hot and humid here, but instead of letting that stop me, I venture outside, sweat profusely and drink copious amounts of water. I'm slowly adjusting, although the weather here still feels very different from Nepal.
Wanting to utilize all the extra red blood cells my body had produced at high altitude, I elected to bicycle to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples...twice. I'd say I covered a good 30 miles on a rickety 1970s single speed over the course of two days and sweated at least 30,000 gallons. But not once was I out of breath! The 1000 year old temples around Angkor are stunning; many say they knock the pyramids' socks off.
After Siem Reap, I headed to the nation's capital Phnom Phen, and that's where I'm writing from now. This city is surprisingly modern, almost like a mini-Bangkok, but still a decade or so behind. I guess that after Nepal, any place with paved road feels pretty damn fancy pants. As I alluded to at the beginning of the email with the story about the land mines, this country hasn't been all that nice to it's citizens in the recent past. The Killing Fields of Choeng Ek are here, as well as S-21, a prison used to interrogate prisoners of the Khmer Rouge Regime under Pol Pot back in the '70s. There is some pretty gruesome stuff, although I'm glad that Cambodia has made these places memorials to those who were killed and is educating its citizens about what happened (the government-sanctioned genocide of about 1/4 of Cambodia's population). On the way back from seeing these places, my slightly absent-minded (or desensitized) moped driver asked me if I wanted to do something else tourists usually do...go to the shooting range. Considering the timing, and my disinterest in shooting things, I declined.
I spent today strolling around the city and sampling the food at the myriad markets. There's so much good food to eat here. On more than one occasion, I've eaten two dinners, back to back, at different places. At $2-$4 per delicious meal, it's very easy to ask myself "Why not?" and very difficult to come up with a good answer to the question.
