Siem Reap is a bit of a weird town. We got there following the brutal bus trip Mo described in the last entry. When you're driving in, both sides of the highway are lined with massive resort hotels with room rates up to $1900U per night. There were at least 15-20 of them, all catering primarily to wealthy tour groups from Korea and Japan. The draw for all this money to Siem Reap is a 30 square km group of temples from the 10th-13th centuries - with the Angkor Wat as the star attraction. Angkor is often included as one of the wonders of the world and it is the largest religious building in the world. While we didn't have the big money we were still able to enjoy our time there (although first Jisca, then Paul got sick). We spent two days in Siem Reap exploring the town and 1 day out exploring the temples - which were spectacular. There was one temple called Ta Prohm (if you've seen Tomb Raider or Two Brothers, they were both filmed there) that we liked the best. At its peak in the 11th century it had 80,000 servants within its walls, but today it is in ruins and the jungle has taken it over. In many places huge trees that are over 8 feet wide at their base have grown on top of, around, and over the walls and temple buildings. But enough about temples...there was this one place that served this amazing spaghetti bolognese......sigh....

Anyway, moving on...after getting royally abused on the bus ride, we got into Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city) on Monday, Jan 9. We spent three days there exploring the city, spending money in the markets, and playing cards at our guesthouse (we were staying on a lake with a patio over the water...pretty sweet). Phnom Penh was a beautiful city - lots of green parks, a great stretch along the Mekong River with flags from every country of the world (you can see the pic with the Canadian flag in the gallery). We also visited World Vision's headquarters for the country (45,000 Cambodian children are sponsored) and hung out at a really neat coffee shop called Jars of Clay that employed 'at-risk' women from the city's streets. What else...oh yeah, we were the guests of honour, along with Paul and Jisca, at the home of their taxi/scooter driver one evening - a great eye-opener to real life in Cambodia. And speaking of eye-openers, we spent a day walking through one of Cambodia's Killing Fields from the Khmer Rouge era where mass graves have been unearthed (over 8000 skulls are on display by age and sex). It was a sickening to walk through the grave sites and realize that the bumps on the path you're walking on are actually human bones and clothes poking through the dirt. Mo wrote more about that and our visit to S-21 in her own entry.

Lastly, we made it down to Sihanoukville - a beach town - to see the ocean for the first time since we arrived in SE Asia 7 weeks ago. Now we're paying the price...red and burnt. We stayed right on the beach for a couple nights and then today we took the ferry back to Thailand. The boat ride was a neat experience - Mo and I rode on the roof of the boat (about 9 feet wide and 80 feet long) with a few other passengers - however, we had been planning to spend a day out of the sun after getting burnt to a crisp on the beach...riding on the roof of the ferry for 4 hours only made matters worse and we both look like tomatoes (...and you all feel really sorry for us, I know)...

yikes...that's the longest entry I've written that was just full of info...does anybody even read these things?