Kampuchea at last ..... Sua s'dei (Hello) from Cambodia

Whoever said "getting there is half the fun" never flew tranpacific on China Airlines, and then enterd Cambodia overland on two days of no sleep.  It seems that no matter how many hot girls there are on a flight it is pretty much guarenteed that none of them will sit beside you.  Yes, there are exceptions - once I was situated beside a talkative Miss America on her way to the Miss Earth contest in Singapore - but exceptions rarely happen.  On my flight I got pinned in the window seat sitting next to an extremely old, senile, drooling woman going back to her native Taiwan.  As her pathetic son was useless, too many of the tasks of babysitting her fell on me ... 14 hours of picking up her dropped items, helping her put her jacket on, buckle her seatbelt - when I get that old please shoot me.

Once in Thailand I finally got to my hotel at 3am (due to an unfortunate incident with the Thai cops and an asshole taxi driver).  Then I couldn't sleep and stared at the ceiling for four hours.  The next day I set out to the train station (in order to get train tickets for later in my trip) and then to the long distance bus station.  My original thought was that I would make it to my first Cambodia destination that day.  That didn't happen, and I had to spend the night in Aranyaprathet, on the Thai side of the border (as I was specifically told to avoid Poipet on the Cambodian side - the smelliest, dirtiest, most AIDS infested city in Cambodia, if not all of SE Asia.)
Typical Thai night market
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 Spending the night in a small town in Thailand means that at night for dinner you go to the night market (yeah!), a heavenly carnival of food occuring every night in Thai cities and towns.  Here you can see some photos of a typical night market.  On that particular night I found three young Americans (who were living in Khao Yai National Park doing research on gibbons) to hang out with and we tried several dishes.  I settled on some type of extremely spicy squid curry plate over rice.  For 30 Baht (about 75 cents) I was satisfied.  After, we all found the banana pancake stand, which is a treat that is extremely delicious but I have yet to find outside of Thailand.  A very pleasent city and nice evening.
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Then next day I was up early and got to the border early enough to cross fairly easily.  Don't get me wrong, it was still confusing and I had to argue about the price of the visa (people lying to you in order to scam you out of money is fairly universal to all of the places I have traveled, but they have a very annoying way about it in Asia) and I was swarmed on by beggars, and people trying to scam me, etc., but I was expecting it.  Once across I was in "Kampuchea" (what Cambodians call Cambodia) at last, but I was unfortunately in Poipet (mentioned above) and, yes, it was one of the shittiest places I have seen ... and I have seen many.  After much confusion about arranging transport I found two ditsy, half naked French girls to split a taxi to Sisophon.  Sometimes it is amazing how out of touch young women can be about what is alarmingly inappropriate dress in foreign countries.  In Sisophon, which was a little less crazy, the three of us got in the back of a truck and shared it with a few others and finally made it to Battambang.

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We shared the back of the truck with this friendly, charismatic guy.  Who knows, maybe he was one of the genocide perpetrators before?
Battambang, the second largest city in Kampuchea.  It has a small town feel with lots of bicycles and motorbikes.
I took an all day sightseeing tour which stopped as several great Buddhist temples.
The statues and other artwork was really nice.  Except for the fact that some of them had been defaced (literally - click here) by bandits.

Today I went for an all day tour in the countryside surrounding Battambang.  For 8 dollars, plus a couple bucks for entry fees, a nice guy named Jerry (or was it Gerri?) drove me to caves (with religious icons and also reminders of horrible genocide), temples, villages, farms (where I pigged out on fruit, and sampled rice wine), a bamboo railway, and a whole bunch of fruit bats.  It was a very good day and I learned many things.  See the additional photos below.


Inside one cave was a beautiful reclining Buddah.  But the real attraction to these caves was that they were used to dump dead bodies in the Khmer Rouge days.  There were many bones and skulls piled up to see.
Piles of skulls and bones were a reminder of the many (21 % of the population or 1.7 million) people that the Khmer Rouge communist regime murdered or caused to starve to death.
Here I even found some spare bones laying around the ground.  So I arranged a potpouppori of bones using my foot for scale.  Ccw from foot is: pelvis bone, rib, part of skull (ouch!), and hip socket.  Gruesome? ... yes!.
Outside of the caves were old war parafanalia, assumably from Khmer Rouge fighting the Vietnamese invaders (who took only 17 days to overrun the country and force the KR into hiding).  Then they (Vietnamese) stayed for the next 10 years, something the Cambodians are still sore about.  Cambodians call them "yuan", a very derogitory term, analogous to "nigger" in English.



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 I did get one nice photo (left).  It is of a monk throwing money and candies (which are, unfortunately obstructing the face in the photo) to a group of Cambodian kids.  I got a series of three shots (photo2, photo3) and then he dissappeared, never to be photo'd by me again (rats).  Great day.

I have a very nice hotel in Battambang - for four dollars I have a huge room with a big bathroom (cold water only but fine, since it is so hot here), giant clean bed, strong fan, and a nice desk   The room is so huge I as practicing some capoeira in it this morning for a workout.  On the roof of this building is a restaurant with hammocks and nice views of Battambang.  Next I am off to Phnom Penh, then to the coast, to Sihanoukville, which I am excited about.  As you can see by this webpage, having my laptop with me seems useful. 

Next email I will include more about food, some music, and hopefully more photos.  Wish me luck in my next few moves.