Cambodia

The border was a nightmare I was surprised to discover. I have had worse experiences with SE Asian people than any other place I’ve been so far. The focus on money goes beyond my understanding. People will lie to your face to try and squeeze money out of you. This sort of thing I find very testing. I don’t mind people trying to earn money but when they lie to make it I get angry. I survived the border without losing my temper but I was close. We got a taxi to Siem Riep (the driver had to bribe the police at the border just to take us). The temples of Angkor are impressive, the scale of what was built is immense. My pictures do not do the place justice

Ian is smiling here but the sellers that followed him everywhere were definitely getting to him, much to my amusement (I seemed not to interest them as much)

These trees are awesome

Cambodian people eat spiders, cheap protein I think. I am afraid of spiders but I ate one! It didn’t tast so great. Ian took a video of it so maybe I’ll link it if Ian puts it online. Somewhere else in Cambodia a little girl was trying to sell me(rip me off) some fruit at a bus rest stop, they were also selling these spiders to eat. The little girl I then noticed had one of the live spiders living on her neck, I screamed and got back on the bus. She came up to the window and tried to push the spider in the bus because I wouldn’t buy some fruit. I bought some fruit

Cambodia has a pretty brutal history. Many really bad things happened recently. If you care to read about it put 'Khmer rouge' into wikipedia

Torture room in an old school that was used as a prison by the Khmer rouge and presently used as a museum. Some of the photos in the museum are grim

"You want terrapin"

This newspaper article made me laugh. This guy is excited to be in Cambodia for the nice food and weather. I don’t really know what to make of sex tourism, it’s everywhere in SE Asia. She wants his money, he wants her body, what can you say. The women are so small though it definitely doesn’t look right/normal. I think Dale Parry wasn’t one although didn’t meet him to confirm

How many people on a scooter is too many? 4? There’s room for another one on the back here. Scooters are the family vehicle of SE Asia. At least they have helmets on

Ian and I went to a safari type zoo near Phnom Penh (Cambodian capital), this bird was about 5 feet tall, quite funny looking. They had some dancing elephants. Some daytripping monks asked me to contribute some money to make the elephants dance. I gave them a dollar and the zoo keepers got the music going. At this point Ian was so disgusted he got back in the tuk tuk (funny motorbike/car thing). The elephants dancing was seriously funny, they wobbled their heads side to side and did some kind of line dancing moves. I guess it’s cruel but in Asia there’s little use for elephants anymore in terms of how they were traditionally used (like a tractor or something) so dancing for a living doesn’t seem so bad to me. And I can’t get bad karma for this as the monks made me do it

I didn’t read the guide book very carefully and got stuck in this place for 4 days waiting for a Lao visa. The only border in Lao you cannot just turn up at happened to be the one I was heading towards. I read books