6 Days in Cambodia

By arriving over land, we were granted a 2 week visa for Thailand only. That was a shame, but an opportunity at the same time. A good opportunity to visit Cambodia for 6 days!

The minibus from Bangkok to the border at Poipet took 4 hours, so far so good. Clearing customs and buying a visa for Cambodia took us a bit longer… the official charges for a visa are USD 20.00 per person, unless you run into the visa-agent trap… that increases the costs to USD 40.00 per person…

After some nasty words to the agent we made it to the border and got through for 20 dollars each.

Our first stop was the capital Phnom Penh, the city is nice, the people are great and the food is really great.
The RECENT history of the city and the whole country is however so sad!

We decided to find out more about it and visited the S-21, before 1975 a school, between 75 and 79 a terrible place where people were tortured and killed. Too intelligent, not agreeing with the Pol Pot regime, or even just wearing glasses, reason enough be killed.

It is quite difficult to explain but standing in a room with just this bed, no knowing what happened exactly but knowing for sure that many victims stayed in this room and were "interrogated" until they admitted whatever they were asked to admit...

A site photograper had to take pictures of all people brought to S-21, the biggest prison of its kind in the whole country.  Any age, even small children!

 Protection, to avoid people would commit suicide...

It is very difficult to describe how we felt, but all the pictures, infos and objects we looked at in the 4 buildings, which now serves as a museum, have given us plenty to think of.

We decided not to visit the killing field. A mass grave "cemetery"
Want to know more, check out YouTube for Pol Pot or Khmer Rouge.

We went to the palace instead. Very pretty buildings in the middle of the city:

Close to the palace and the national museum, a remarkable man started 2 NGOs. Too much money, bad feelings, no trust in big organizations? Check this out. No money, no interest in aid, still have a look and see how creative these people are!

http://www.friends-international.org/ -- a remarkable initiative, too much to explain, just have a look.
http://www.childsafe-international.org/  -- have a look at this if you don't know what to do when you see begging children on the street... Childsafe is part of friends international.

Many people wear the Childsafe shirts. For example our tuk-tuk driver.  

Phnom Penh's people are partly very poor, but partly the ideas and initiatives are great. Sometimes maybe a big too good....  A copied book, published in 2012...  na ja....

Markets are always good to go to, to look at the local life,

 Feel a bit bad looking at the meat hanging in the sun, flies everywhere...

 same for the chicken...

 But the fruit is soooooo delicious...

 At the far end of the market work was done, or maybe only women work.... and men and kids watch tv....

We would have like to stay longer in Phnom Penh, but time was up and we had to move on to Siem Reap, to have a look at the world famous Angkor Wat.

Accomodation is really good (and cheap) in Cambodia. Both in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap we had internet in our room!!  Such a poor country, but people know what is important for visitors...

Coming from Singapore... not so long ago, it was quite different... unacceptable room, no internet, anyway, that is another story.. Chapeau for Cambodia!

The busride was good and after a good rest, we took a tuk-tuk for the day. Our first stop and the HIGHLY popular Angkor Wat was the landmine museum. http://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/menu.html

Quite a man! Quite a life, once recruited as child soldier... whereby recruited is a big word... forced to join is better. Aki Ra is now a major player in cleaning his country from the very many landmines which are still making the countryside a dangerous place to be.

All mines, bombs and other explosives cleared and brought back by Aki Ra.
The facility houses and teaches children who were hurt by landmines. We saw a few kids missing both legs and learning to build up their lives again. Excellent man that Aki Ra!

And on to a lighter subject, and scene for various movies: the different temples in the huge temple area. Especially the tree overgrown buildings were a lot of fun to look at.

 Kind of unreal to stand there and look at it!

Also here, showing the tree from the top of the door... just don't think of ALL the  tourists standing in front of us... sad really, it would have been so nice to walk through a deserted place, but never mind...

One wonders how these fantastic places were made, and by whom. How did they live. It must have been difficult. For us it was tough already, just to walk around and look at it... it was COOKING HOT!!  

Cambodia, we were there so short, but there is a whole lot more to do and see, so who knows, we might be back. It is really nice there...

We took a bus back to the border, did an easy clearance, got a stamp for another 2 week stay in Thailand.

Look for our update some time soon :-)