Phew. Now that my Dating, Marriage, and Family midterm has just finished I have more time to finish my blog.
So we woke up on the second morning and had breakfast at the hotel. It was buffet style but so fancy and SO good. A lifelong learner on our trip commented that it seemed to be more European. Well, whatever it was, was delicious and 100 times better than the ships breakfast which isn’t half bad.
After my life changing breakfast, we drove to the Toul Sleng Museum. This museum has a courtyard area and around it are buildings that would look similar to a motel of some sort with an outdoor balcony in the front. We were able to explore the entire place on our own but before we did that we had our tour guide give an explanation as to what happened in this area and how he was personally affected.
In this area and where the next area of our tour went roughly 4 million Cambodians were killed. A man, Pol Pot, had gained so much power (similar to Hitler) and wanted to kill off all of his own people for whatever reason and he succeeded. Though, just like the holocaust, the victims of these heinous killings were not just shot and killed. They were tortured. No one was left unharmed-men, women, any race present and even little children. It’s awful and its so unheard of in the United States-especially being how recent it is.
So, our tour guide explained to us that his mother, father, and brother were killed by Pol Pot. He gives these tours of the museum and the killing fields nearly every day. He went on to state sometimes he is unable to get off of the bus to explain further (like he did with us) because it is so hard for him to have to explain to tourists and almost relive what he had to go through. I guess you could say we were lucky because he fully explained to us what had happened and in great detail. Again we lucked out because we got more of a personal experience from him that the other group did.
This museum had all these empty rooms but in the middle of the room would be a metal bed frame in which I think the victims may have been tortured on or killed on. Some rooms had pictures of people laying in the beds from the time of when they were tortured and were so skinny you could see every bone in their body. Some of the “beds” had torture devices on them as what they used in the killings as well. There was another similar 2 story building (the other one was 3 stories) which contained hundreds and hundreds of pictures per room. Each picture was of a victim who was killed and each man had a number attached to them while the women and children did not. And yes they also had pictures of the women and children who were killed as well. In one of the last rooms they had pictures of some of the victims after they had been killed and pictures of them in the process of being tortured. There were also pictures and a glass box structure that were full of the victim’s clothes (or lack thereof). I also recall a picture of a lot of the skulls of the victims lined up along wall-including children’s skulls.
It was a sobering experience and I can see why people say the Cambodia trip is life changing. I had no idea any of this had even happened until I got there. And once I head about it I didn’t fully understand how largely this had affected the people there until I was there and in the flesh.
After being there for a while, we got back on the bus and drove off to the killing fields. This is where the victims were transported to on request of Pol Pot and killed off. It’s a pretty open grassy area with some shrubbery and trees as well. Though, in the middle of everything there’s a huge tower which is actually very gorgeous. Though, the inside of the tower is not. The tower is comprised of probably 15 shelved areas and each shelved area is about 3 feet tall and 5 or 6 feet wide. The entire tower minus the bottom shelved area is filled with skulls of the victims. Children’s skulls were at the entire top of the tower. It’s, once again, sobering thinking those are actual skulls of actual people who were tortured and killed for the sole reason of being Cambodian. Pretty horrific. I also stopped into a small museum area with a picture that talked about Pol Pot and others who led this awful genocide. There was also a giant tree that they would apparently hang a large speaker and play sounds or music on it while people were being exiled so that others would not hear them moaning of pain and agony.
After seeing such an awful area, we were transported to somewhere completely opposite. We next headed to the Silver Pagoda and the Royal Palace. This is seriously the most gorgeous sight I have seen since being in Cambodia. The colors of the palace are SO vibrant and the area around the palace is so clean and the plants and flowers are kept up so well. It felt like I was taking a temperature tour of hell at this point because it was so hot. Though, I powered through and drank my weight in water and the proceeded to sweat it out. I prompted over and over to myself and anyone who would ask if I was hot that I rather take that weather over snow ANY day, which is true. I have beautiful pictures of this area and apparently the “king” still lives in the area to this day. Not a bad humble abode in my eyes. The inside could use a little ac but other than that, it was absolutely gorgeous.
After this we got back to the bus, our new home away from home (which was also conveniently supplied with ice cold water when we got back on every time). Our next destination was the Sorya Local Restaurant. This was a huge one story area with lots of tables and we took over like half the place. Each table had a Lazy Susan (very popular in Asia) which housed all of the food they were later to bring us. The meat they brought was a little iffy ( I hate bones and fat in my meat-so that was a no go) but otherwise everything was delicious. I had like 4 or 5 helpings of rice. I could seriously win survivor cause I love rice just that much. After that we got like 2 hours to ourselves to freely shop in what is called the Central Market. It was like a 5 minute walk from the place we ate at. Except 5 minutes is how much time it would take if there were no cars on the road.
Driving in Cambodia isn’t like driving in the US. Even though they have rules of the road, no one abides by them. Green does not mean go, red does not mean stop, and peds do NOT have the right of way EVER. You seriously have to just cross while the cars and motorcycles are coming at you and DON’T stop. They dodge you, you don’t dodge them. I tried getting a video but I was absolutely terrified every time-to the point I had to hold someone’s arm or hand any time I crossed. Anyways it took about 10 minutes instead of 5 because of the whole crossing deal. God I will never get over that.
So we shopped in the market for lots of cheap stuff. And can I point out when I was looking for t-shirts (its an outdoor market but its covered by some sort of tarp) I spotted a RAT crawling around. That pretty much ruined my shopping time in there and I was ready to get in to the air conditioned mall. There wasn’t much in the mall except a DVD store with thousands $1.50 DVD’s and some of them aren’t even out in the States yet. I got 6 movies in there which was pretty sweet- and yes one of them is Fox and the Hound Emily J.
After our time shopping we needed to get back to the bus cause we needed to catch another flight to Siem Reap. We got to the airport and among my many contraband items they only took my bug spray this time-they didn’t find my water or my sun screen-phew. Our flight lasted a whopping 25minutes and I feel bad for like like 2 people who weren’t SASsholes on the flight because we had all just sweat out our weight the previous hours in the day. Oh well!
Once we arrived in Siem Reap we headed to our hotel and got like an hour to freshen up and get ready for dinner. To our surprise there was like 60 more SAS kids meeting us at the dinner we were going to as well. It was a GIANT buffet with food that was absolutely delicious. If you’ve never have a fried mini banana you should probably put that on your list of things to do before you die-so good. The place was called Kulen II and had a Cultural Dance show performance while we ate as well. It was of a Japanese tea ceremony and all this Japanese stuff which was funny cause I had just seen all that like 2 weeks ago in actual Japan. They also had onion rings at dinner that seriously hit the craving-American-fatty-greasy-food spot.
After dinner the driver of our bus said he’d drive us downtown so we could shop at the night market and go to the bars down there. And no dad, I didn’t go to any of the bars, so I won’t talk about that sort of night life-not this time anyways. So we got to the night market and the girls I was supposed to go with pretty much left me but its okay they’re kind of depressing people anyways. So I went to the ATM with these other girls and guy from my group and went shopping for a little bit with them. I saw two of my other friends I met from my group getting a foot massage in a shop and decided to hang with them the rest of the night. And I obviously decided to get a massage too. I got a foot back arm and leg massage for 30minutes for TWO dollars! Connected to the massage place (but they’re everywhere too) are these things they call fish doctors. It’s an inflatable pool filled with water and like tons of little fish that you’d keep as pets back in the states. You sit there and pay for like 20minutes and these fish like suck on to your feet and “massage” them. You also get a free drink which I think they give you to ease your tensions of getting into some gross fish foot pool. All the workers tried to convince me to get in but I just do not let things I eat give me foot massages. And lets get real, I hate taking my shoes off at DIA, you really think I’m going to put my feet in some pool where who knows how many gross feet have been in? (can you tell I hate feet?).
So after the fishy foot incident two friends and I decided to make our way down and start shopping and getting lots of good deals. I wish we bargained in the US. Most people here see it as a hassle but I kind of like it, you can get such good deals. It got to about 10:30 and we decided to call it a night because we had to wake up at 4:45 the next morning for our sunrise tour. Plus I needed to shower because I was gross from sweating gallons of water all day. So I went back to our hotel. Actually scratch that the place was called “Borei Angkor Resort and Spa”. Yeah, it was absolutely gorgeous and so clean. My roommate Linsday and I were joking that they gave all of us a honeymoon suite.
I woke up at the crack of dawn (well actually before that, thus why I was getting up at that time). And we drove the Angkor Wat. We were walking to the temple in complete dark and it was cool cause that would have been how they would do it back in the day. Once we got to the area in which we got the watch the sun rise behind Angkor Wat Temple I was sitting on an ancient library watching the sun rise behind another ancient temple. How awesome is that? I got some great shots even though I was beyond tired. After we watched the sun rise until like 6:30 we went back to the bus and ate breakfast at the hotel. Once again it was buffet style and the food was seriously amazing! They have such a variety of stuff and I feel like it is not processed and disgusting (as I’m learning in my anthro. Of food class) like back in the United States. Anyway we did that and had time to get ready for our afternoon temple tour.
Our first stop was Ta Prohm temple. This is where Angelina Jolie filmed tomb raider. Now I know why it was filmed here. It was absolutely gorgeous. The ruins mixed in with the arching trees which we had no idea how they were even able to still stand and be bent like that. I got a ton of great pictures and it was such a great experience.
Our next stop was the Angkor Wat temple but we had arrived on the opposite side from where we had previously gone for the sunrise. It was so gorgeous and so huge! There was so much detail put into it and walking through it was one of the most awesome experiences I’ve had while seeing temples in each country. I got amazing pictures and a video or two but it seriously doesn’t do it justice. We also saw monkeys while walking up to the entrance. There were like 10 of them and a little tiny baby too. I got literally inches from them and they took some of our sasers water bottles and were drinking out of them, it was too funny.
After we had toured Angkor Wat we went to one final temple, which I believe was called the Bayon temple and it was a temple with faces all over everywhere. It reminded me of legends of the hidden temple. You could either climb over and through the temple or walk around it. It decided to follow a couple of guys that were in my group and follow them up and through the temple. It was a steep stairway up and then more and more steps but we made it to the top and it was awesome. And then we proceeded to climb down to our groups meeting point. At this point I have never been hotter in my entire life. We waited for our whole group for like 20 minutes and our leader took us to another area of interest that we walked to in the scolding heat. It was cool though, it was this huge wall sculpted like elephants and we walked on top of it to meet a bus that would take us to our bus. On our way to the first bus I started getting really dehydrated and dizzy so I didn’t take too many pictures cause I was just trying to down my boiling water and keep focused. Once we got on the bus to our tour bus the ac wasn’t on and I was literally soaking wet with sweat. I have never been so hot in my life. I finally got to cool down once I was in our tour bus cause it had ac but wow what an experience. I have no idea how those people live in that heat outside everyday selling stuff and most of them are in pants or long sleeves!
After this we took our bus to the airport and our flight took us back to Saigon (ho chi min city). Our flight was an hour and a half I believe and we got in around 7pm. Once we got back to the ship I showered really well and got in some clean clothes. I met up with Lis who wasn’t feeling too well and got some dinner up on the 7th deck and decided to call it a night.
I got to spend one full day in Siagon and one night as well. Ill write those in a blog tomorrow. Im exhausted and have an 8am class tomorrow.
Not tomorrow but the next day ill be in Chennai, India. I’m traveling independently, this should be interesting. My friends make fun of me cause my idea of an India trip and sight seeing during the day and a Marriott hotel at night. But their idea of roughing it is no shower for 4 days and apparently staying in a tree house. Great.
xx
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