Phonm Penh is a very interesting city.  It has a cool vibe about it with all of the old French-style buildings, nice cafes etc.  But you also come face to face with poverty every minute of every day.  When you are walking down the street or sitting in a sidewalk cafe, streetkids and beggers are constantly asking for a “yum yum” or a dollar.  Then there is the constant asking of “Tuk Tuk Lady?” “Madame, Moto?” by the men sitting on the side of the road trying to make a dollar by taking you around town on their scooters.  It can be very overwhelming and hard to deal with, but it’s all part of being in Cambodia.

This was my third time visiting Phonm Penh, so I’d already seen all of the sites (palace, museums, killing fields etc).  So this time around I visited a bunch of NGO’s that are trying to help out around the city.  My first stop was the blood bank.  They are really short on blood in Cambodia, and have tons of billboards begging people to donate, so I did.  (It was very sterile, so don’t worry.)  And it wasn’t as scary as I would have thought.  After donating, they gave me a Coke, a t-shirt, some vitamins, and a big bag of food (3 cup noodles, a bag of cookies, a can of condensed milk, and a lb of sugar).  I didn’t want need the food, so I was able to give that to people on the street.  It was a cool experience. 

The next day I found this great restraunt called “Friends” (located right next to the museum, if anyone every goes to Phonm Pehn).  They are helping street kids by giving them an education and a place to go.  Some of the older kids are being trained to work in a Western style restraunt, so that they will have some job skills.  There were 15 students being trained as waiters and about 20 students being trained as cooks, when I was there.  (It’s a small cafe, so the place was overflowing with smiling staff trying to help you all the time.)  The food was amazing and the presentation was gorgeous.  I went back a second time, because it was such a cool place.

I also visited an orphange that is run by a former monk.  After the whole Khmer Rogue thing, there were tons of orphanes, so he gathered them up and bought a small piece of land.  He is slowly building a place for them to live and a school.  It is the most bizarre looking building I’ve ever been in.  Every time he gets a few hundred dollars donated he buys some wood, and builds small little rooms.  It all looks like it’s about to collapse, but you can tell his heart is in the right place.  He just needs to plan things out a bit better.  The kids were very sweet too.  I brought them 50 kilos of rice (about 110 lbs of rice).  But that is only about 1 days worth of food, since there are more than 120 kids and all they seem to eat is rice.  It was heartbreaking, but an important thing to see.  (This is a picture of the girl’s dorm at the orphange.)

I spent the rest of my time hanging out with some people staying in my guesthouse, 2 girls from Austrailia and a guy from Isreal.  It’s so cool to be able to get to know people from all over the world!  I also bought a small MP3 player at the market, and the shop owner let me choose some songs from his collection to put on it.  (My Ipod broke the minute I got to Thailand, but hopefully my travellers insurance will cover it.)  The Cambodian man had a strange mix of dance/hip hop music and love songs, so now I have some pretty wierd songs on my MP3, but oh well it’s better than nothing. 

I’m back in Bangkok, and will be flying to Malaysia on the 4th of March to start my training for work.  I am really excited to start working!

I got a mysterious out break of bug bites.  It turns out that I was sharing my bed with bed bugs sometime in the last few days.  (I think it was the bungalow on Bamboo Island.)  I had about 50+ bites on each of my elbows, and tons of bites all over my feet and calfs.  Yuck!  (You can tell they are bed bugs, because they bite in straight lines, and follow your veins. )  How annoying!   I bought a huge can of Raid and sprayed down all of my stuff, especially my sleep sheet.  And I haven’t had any more bites since. 

I’m in Phonm Penh now.  (The capital of Cambodia.)  I’m here mostly just to get my Thai visa, which is a pain in the butt!  But I went on a shopping spree yesterday at the Russian Market.  In my opinion it is the best place to shop in South East Asia!  It’s huge, super cheap, and they have really nice stuff.  (Thailand and Malaysia are cheap, but the Russian market is about 1/2 the price of those places.)  I only had $40 in my wallet, so I couldn’t do too much damage to my budget, but I managed to come back to my guesthouse this tons of bags filled with goodies.  (My favorite buys are my new “Birekenstock” sandals, “levis”shorts and these really cool traditional style Cambodian pants.  They are basically a silky material that is one big piece.  You tie it around your waist in the back and then around your waist in the front too. It’ll be impossible to go to the bathroom with them on, but I love them anyways.) 

Well, gotta make my second trip back to the Thai Embassy.

A nice beach break was exactly what I needed! I feel so much more relaxed now, and am really getting excited about starting my job in 8 days. 

I meet a girl named Cat (from England) in my dorm the other day.  We decided to do a snorkeling day trip out to Bamboo Island.  The snorkeling was not very good.  The water was really cloudy and at one spot they dropped us off in super shallow water basically right on top of the coral.  But Bamboo Island is fantastic!  There is basically nothing on it but 15 little rustic bungalows (basically just a thatched huts with beds inside and hammocks outside) and 2 little bar/restraunts. 

Cat and I were really wishing that we would have booked one of the bungalows, so we could stay out there.  As we were sitting down to lunch, Cat saw some girls she had meet the night before.  It turned out that they had a bungalow there for the night and it had 2 double beds inside, so they offered to share it with us.  Perfect! (Except all I had with me was a book, sunscreen, a sarong, a t-shirt, and my bikini.  Whatever, you don’t really need more than that on the island.) 

Here’s a picture of our bungalow:

So we got to stay there after all the day trippers left, and basically had the island to ourselves.  We made friends with a few guys that were staying there too, and basically had a little beach party after the electricty went out at 10:00. The ocean had phosflourecsent (sp?) in it.  So we went out swimming and the water glowed all around us.  It was so cool and the first time I’ve ever seen that. 

The next day we went to get breakfast but they were out of basically everything (no eggs, no fruit, no yogurt, no cereal…) So we walked to the other side of the island where some of the bungalows are and ate at the second restraunt.  They just spent the rest of the day hanging out and caught a boat back to the mainland in the afternoon.  I spoiled myself and had another massage at Seeing Hands.  But then my stomache started to go a bit funny, so I had a low key night, and am just planning on laying on the beach all day today. 

I’m going to head to Phonm Pehn in 2 days, and see if I can get my Thai working visa sorted out, and then it’s back to Bangkok. 

It took 3 buses, 3 taxis, 2 songthaews, 2 mini buses, and 4 barges, and 48 hours, but I made it to Shiakoville, Cambodia! 

It all started with an overnight bus from Phuket to Bangkok, which went quite smoothly.  Then I took a taxi to Koh San Road, land of the backpackers and the backpacker’s best friend the travel agent.  I ran around with my huge pack on asking all of the 100’s of tour guides/travel agents to help me get to Shiokville.  All of them said they could get me to Seim Reap (where Ankgor Wat is), but I’m on my own getting to Shiokville.  So I took another taxi back to the bus station.  Turns out it was the wrong bus station, so after talking to a bunch of Thai people there, I found one who would write the name of the station I needed in Thai.  She did, so I jumped on a local bus and drove around Bangkok for an hour until I got the the East Bus Station.

Then it was more crazy running around that HUGE complex (the biggest bus station I’ve ever seen) with probably 400+ buses there at a time.  I found one that would take me near the border (to Trat, Thailand) and jumped one.  The 6 hour bus ride went pretty good, and soon I found myself in the tiny town of Trat.  Luckily there was a man there trying to get some business for his guesthouse, so I jumped in his songthaew and headed off.  That one was really expensive, so I found a different one for only 100 baht a night (about $2.30).  Fell into an exhausted sleep and was woken up at 5:00 am by someone pounding on my door. 

Time for the next phase of my journey!  I jumped back in a songthaew, then switched to a mini bus to take me to the border Hat Sai/Koh Kong.  Getting out of Thailand was a breeze, but getting into Cambodia was more of a challenge.  I didn’t have a visa, so I had to buy one at the border.  Easy right?!  Wrong!  The border officials are all corrupt and try to extort a ton of money from you.  They were making everyone pay 1200 baht (about $33) and the visa only costs $20.  I wasn’t putting up with their shit, so while most other people paid the higher rate, I stared down the offical.  I stood up for myself and didn’t take any of his shit or silent treatment.  Finally, he admitted that it only cost $20, but since I’m American I should have to pay an extra fee.  I ended up paying $25, but was happy that I hadn’t backed down from the bully!  (An Austrian guy with me kept saying how I played it so cool, and that he was really impressed.  I think I got this skill from watching my mom.  Thanks Mom!)  So after the border guard showdown, me and the Austrian guy jumped in a taxi to go to the ferry. 

For some reason I let the Cambodia guys talk me into taking the bus instead.  It’s cheaper and they said it was just as fast as the boat(which takes 4 hours).  They lied!  I got on the minibus at 9:00 am.  The nice asphlat road ended at about 9:10 am, and we were in for a day of bumpy dusty roads.  Plus they haven’t built any bridges, so all 4 times we had to cross rivers, we had to get out of the mini bus and take a barge across (which took at least 30-45 minutes each time).  After trying to help a broken down minibus and witnessing a drunk drive roll his car into the ditch, we finally made it to Shioakville.  

I took a room in the first guest house I saw, and quickly headed down to Seeing Hands to get an amazing Shiatsu massage from a sweet bling, Khmer dude.  It was heavenly!  And for only $4 a time I think I might just go back everyday!

I switched from the guest house in town, to this really funky little hippy backpacker place near the beach.  It’s called Utopia, and is a totally bohemian commune type place.  The best part is the dorm in FREE (they make there money off of selling food and drinks, but they are really reasonable too) and there are tons of cool backapcker types there.  I’ve already chatted with a few and I know it will be a fun place to hang out tonight after a day at the beach.   I’m ready for a week straight of nothing but relaxing!

We left the beach pretty early in the morning.  (By now I’m used to early mornings.  It’s a luxury to sleep in until 7:00.)  After breakfast, we had our last ride in the mini-bus. Yeah!! (It was really just a van with 4 bench seats crammed in.  There was no leg room and it had bad suspension, so we were always glad to get out of it.  We had been riding in it almost everyday for the past 10 days.)

Anyways, we got back to Phnom Penh in the early afternoon, so I had a little time to find an Internet cafe, do some shopping at the Central Market, and have lunch.  Then we set off on our half day tour of Phnom Pehn. 

First we went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda (the pagoda is on the palace grounds).  It was pretty cool to look around, but they wouldn’t let us take any pictures so we were all a bit annoyed.  (You couldn’t even take a picture of the gardens or the outside of the buildings.)  The Silver Pagoda was pretty neat.  The entire floor is made out of pure silver tiles and the pagoda houses about 1,000 buddha statues.  Some of the statutes were really crazy.  One was made out of 200 lbs of gold and had huge diamonds all over it.  The biggest diamond was about 40+ carats! 

After the palace, we made a brief stop at the National Museum.  (It closed at 5:00, so we were all sad that we couldn’t spend more time there.)  The museum mainly has Hindu and Buddhist statues inside it.  (Cambodia’s national religion is sort of a mix of the 2.) The statues mainly came from around Angkor Wat, so it was really cool to see!

After taking a sort break at the hotel, we took tuk tuks to the FCC for dinner.  It was in a great location, right on the edge of the river.  They had great food, but it was really expensive.  ($10.00 for dinner and a drink in Cambodia, is crazy!) 

After dinner I had another mini adventure- I was kidnapped by a tuk-tuk driver!  We had hired drivers to take us on the day trip, drive us to dinner, and then drive us back to the hotel.  As we were walking out of the restraunt, I asked Nak (our leader) which tuk-tuk was ours.  He pointed to one, so me and 3 other people climbed in.  After we were sitting there he told us it was the wrong one, so we tried to climb out.  The driver didn’t like that, so he took off.  Carly and Prue jumped out while he was still going slow, but Tom and I were stuck inside.  We kept yelling at him to stop, but he wouldn’t.  Then Tom asked him where he was taking us, since we hadn’t told him which hotel we were at.  It turned out that he knew where we were staying and took us straight back to the hotel.  But we were a bit freaked out at first! 

Traveling is never dull!

Since we were staying on a farm for the night, we all woke up bright and early (the roosters made sure of that).  We had a breakfast of french bread and tea.  (Because France used to have control over Cambodia, they have french bread everywhere.  We have had big loaves of french bread almost every day we’ve been here.)  After breakfast, we gave the host family some gifts that we had bought them (chopsticks, plates, and some toys for the kids).  And then we set off for the beach.

It was sunny and hot all morning long, but as soon as we pulled up to our hotel near the beach it started to rain.  So we hung out and used the Internet.  Then for dinner we went to a place that had Sri Lankian food (sort of bizarre) but it was really yummy. 

The next day we woke up bright and early and set off for our boat tour (that we had booked the night before).  Tom, Prue, Rianna, Kay, Sky, Hannah, Jen, Kim, Carly, and Me went out into the ocean in a tiny little wooden boat that didn’t even have any seats.  It was a pretty calm ride out to our first snorkeling spot.  Unfortunately, it was low tide, so we couldn’t really see anything and the water was really cloudy.

After our breif snorkeling stop, we went to Bamboo Island.  (There are 100’s of islands around Cambodia and Bamboo Island is the only one with any buildings or accomadtions on it.)  We spent a relaxing morning floating around in the ocean, while our crew members were busy cooking lunch for us.  We had grilled baracuda, salad, and of course french bread for lunch.  The fish was so fresh, that even I liked it! (Normally I hate fish, so it was quite a surprise that I liked baracuda.) 

After our little picnic on the beach, we walked to the other side of the island.  There we did some more swimming and had a few beers at the cute little bar.  (The island was almost empty, since it is low-season.  So it felt like we basically had the whole ocean to ourselves.) 

But since it is rainy season, the dark clouds rolled in at around 1:00 and we set off in our boat to get back to shore.  Fortunately, it didn’t rain hard just a little sprinkle. But it was a much rougher ride back to shore.  The waves were crashing on our boat, and it felt like our tiny boat was going to be capsized.  (Actually after we got used to it, it was a fun ride.  Sort of felt like we were on a ride at an amusement park or something.)  Because of the waves and the rain, we had to cancel our second snorkeling stop.  But it was still a really fun day on the ocean.

Later that afternoon, I decided to go back to Seeing Hands Massage (where the blind people give you massages) and have another fabulous shiatsu massage.  (They have 3 locations for Seeing Hands: Seim Reap, Phnom Phen, and Sihanoukville.  I might have to try out all 3!)  It was a terrific massage!  Then I had dinner at Holy Cow restraunt.  It was very delicious. I love how all of the food is so fresh.  It tastes like they just picked all of the vegtables and herbs that day.

Since I was exploring on my own for the evening, I thought it would be fun to see a movie at the open air movie theater.  (It is like a drive-in movie, but without the cars.)  The only way to get around Sihanokville is to flag down a moped taxi.  (Which is basically a guy driving a moped and wearing a baseball cap.  The hat distinguishes him as a taxi, sort of strange!) Anyways, I was on the back of this guys moped, and he started drive down a dark deserted road.  (That’s when I freaked out, and realzied that this probably wasn’t a good idea. But don’t worry nothing happened.)  Anyways, the driver got very lost and I ended up getting a tour all around Sihanoukville.  We finally found the movie theater, but it turned out that it was closed down.  So he had to take me all the way back to my hotel.  It was my mini adventure for the night! 

Today was a very depressing, but interesting day.  We did a half day tour of the killing fields and S-21 (a prison where they tortured and questioned people from 1975 to 1979 under the Khmer Rouge).  It is pretty easy to forget that Cambodia has had so much tragedy in it’s very recent past, because the people all smile and seem so happy.  But today we heard all about how horrible the genocide and Khmer Rouge was.  (From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge killed about 30% of the entire Cambodian population, 2,000,000 people.) 

The first stop was the killing field, which was just 10 kms outside of Phnom Penh.  At this site more than 20,000 people were murdered.  They have unearthed a lot of the mass graves and have made a monument for the people.  (It was really distrubing and graphic, they had 8,000 skulls of the victims inside the monument.)  We saw the land that used to hold the mass graves and the lake where there are still about 12,000 bodies that they haven’t recovered yet.  The guide was very informative and he told us all of the grusome detail about the killing fields.  (We were all in tears by the end of the tour.)

Then we went to S-21.  Which is a school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison.  (They tortured and killed anyone that was educated, worked in an office, spoke a foreign language, worked for the past government etc. They also killed those people’s entire families (including babies) so they wouldn’t have to fear retribution.)  Again, it was extremely sad.  At S-21 they had taken pictures of all the prisoners, so you could see the face of everyone that was killed in that building (or at the killing field). 

After our very depressing morning, we did a little bit of shopping at the Russian Market and then went to our homestay, in Takeo.  The family that we stayed with is rice farmers and they live in a typical farming community.  (I’m sure they were wealthier than most farmers, because most of thier children were going to university and then had a few comforts, like running water, and electricity.)  The family was very nice and their children (who were about 17-24) were great at English.  Jen and I spent quite a few hours talking to them. 

We went for a walk to the local buddhist temple, and we had a great dinner.  Then we had a little party.  Nak bought a ton of beer and Tom brought out his Ipod.  By the end of the night, everyone was up dancing with the family and we were all in a much happier mood than we had been that morning. 

We left Kratie early and drove 4 hours to the Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.  It was quite a change from the small country towns that we had been staying in. 

We stayed at the New York Hotel in Phnom Penh.  It was the nicest hotel that we have stayed in so far on this trip.  (And we get to stay there again in a few days, so I’m really happy!)  Hannah, Sky, Jen, Colly, and I decided to take a tuk tuk ride around, to get a feel for the city.  It was fun to see the city and the street life that was going on. 

Then Kate, Jen, and I decided to grab some lunch and check out the Central Market.  The market was pretty crazy, and they were selling everything there, at prices much cheaper than Thailand.  I bought a Northface daypack, but I’ve been pretty good and not shopping too much (I only have a little bit of space left in my backpack). 

That evening, I basically just hung out and relaxed.  All of this traveling gets pretty tiring!

I forgot that I haven’t said who’s in my new group yet:

-Hannah: She is from Finland, and she is really sweet.

- Colly: She’s 26 from Melbourne, Austraila and she is taking about 2 years to travel and work around the world.  She is the one always cracking jokes.

- Kate, Kim, and Kim: They are all from Chicago.  Kate and Kim 1 are sisters, and Kate and Kim2 have been friends since elementary school.

- Tom and Pru: They are brother and sister from England.  They’re traveling for a while and then they will work in Austraila for a year.

- Rianna and Kay: Sisters from England.  They are really nice.

-Sky: She is 25 year old nurse from Austraila, and she is my roommate for the trip.  She is traveling for a while and then she will work in England.

-Jen: She is from England, and she has been traveling for the past 6 months around New Zealand, Fiji, Austraila, and South East Asia.  She’ll go to law school when she gets home.

Finally our tour leaders name in Nak. It is a nice guy and he’s very knowledgable.  He was born in Seim Reap, Cambodia and lived in Thailand for a while. 

All throughout the night it rained alot in Kompong Chan, which normally wouldn’t be a problem.  But today we were driving on rural dirt roads all the way to Kratie.  The roads were all mud, and we were fishtailing and bumping the whole 3 hour drive there.  So it was quite an exciting ride. 

We stayed at a different hotel but it was called the Mekong Hotel again.  (I think everything around the Mekong River is named Mekong ________.)   The hotel was fine, but Kate and Kim found a bunch of cockroaches in their room, so we were all a bit pernoid during the night. 

In the afternoon, we went about 15 kms out of the city to see the Irawaddy dolphins.  (They are freshwater dolphins that live in the Mekong river.  Supposedly there are only 4 places in the world with freshwater dolphins, so it was cool to see them.)  We took to longtail boats out into the river and sat and watched the dolphins.  We saw them quite a few times.  They just stick their heads out and then go back under.  (They weren’t jumping around or anything, but it was still great to see them.)  After the dolphin watching, we went for a swim in the Mekong.  (It was in a shallow rapids area.)  So we had a fun time splashing around.  (The only annoying thing was that for the past week it has been about 100 degrees and we had all been dying to go swimming, but when we finally got the chance the weather had really cooled down.  Oh well, we still had a fun time.) 

For dinner that night, we were all craving some Western food.  (I know, but I had been eating local for 28 days.)  So we went to a little backpacker hangout place and indulged in hamburgers, mashed potatoes, pizza, etc.  It was a nice treat! 

We had a 4 hour bus ride from Seim Reap to Kompong Chan.  We took the public bus, and it was pretty nice (except the ac was way too weak to cool down the whole bus).  It was really funny, along the way the bus pulled over to the side of the road.  We were all wondering what was going on, and then all the passengers got off to go pee in the bushes. (About 20 minutes after that we stopped at a proper rest stop.  Who knows why they didn’t want to wait?!)

Kompong Chan is a pretty small, non-touristy city.  Our hotel, “Mekong Hotel” was located right on the banks of the Mekong River.  (It is one of the biggest rivers in SE Asia.  It starts in Tibet and ends in Vietnam.)  So we had a great view from our window.

After lunch, we did a bike trip.  It was only 14 kms round trip, so I thought it would be really easy.  Boy, was I wrong.  We rode around town and bought some pens and notebooks to take to the children we were visiting, and then continued our ride.  We had to cross the Mekong on a very interesting bridge.  It was made of bamboo and was basically a big pile of sticks tied together speradically with wire.  In some places there were holes where you could see the massive river under you.  It was pretty crazy!  And a lot bumpier then I had expected.

We ended up at an elementary school on a island in the Mekong River.  It was a cool experience giving the kids our little gifts, and seeing how grateful they were just to get a notebook and pen.  Then we played soccer with the kids after they finished their classes.  The kids were so sweet!

We finished off the evening with a huge dinner.  Our table had a lazy susan on it and we ordered tons of different Khmer dishes, so we could try them all.  (We had a lot of leftovers, and our guide was very nice and had them boxed up so he could give them to hungry people on the street.)