Cruising Cambodia

Cambodia is the One Dollar country. Here everything costs one dollar: a tuk-tuk, a bananacluster, bracelets, postcards etc. The salesmen come running after you, saying: "Lady, three bracelets - only one dolla'". If you kindly say no and walk away, they follow you, saying: "Five bracelets - one dolla'". You almost have to be angry for them to go away...

The Cambodians who speak English, leave out the endings in some words. Like this for example: "You wan' fis' massa'?" "We go now and have lun' (lunch)." And the word "fried rice" which you can find in all menues, is made to: "Fry rie".

Siem Reap

Minevictims in a band to earn money. These are all over the place, because Cambodia has many landmines in the ground that are left from the Khmer Rouge time (1975-1979). You can get a fish massage on almost every corner in Siem Reap. They want to eat your dead skin. I thought it was too scary to be able to relax.Cambodian Tuk Tuk, the motorcycle taxi. One dollar, of course.


Angkor
One day we went to see the famous temples in Siem Reap. The most important one was Angkor Wat, a very old temple that was in the old town Angkor. One of the opportunities to get inside was on the back of an elephant.


Angkor Wat - the largest religious building in the World (Angkor = "town",Wat = "temple")meeting traffic together at the tempelThe famous bricks in Bayon with smiling faces on all four sidesOur guide telling us what the carvings on the wall areTogether on the bridge by the Elephant Terrace, where a king watched elephants fighting each other.Maria playing with sweet children in Angkor Wat.Climbing the steep stairs.The boys have bought themselves a mouth harpe each. Probably one dollar!Helga with a bunch of saleswomen.
Preben with a bunch of saleschildren.Sunset

The Floating Village
The Viatnamese people living in Cambodia had to move to the Tonle sap lake in 1997, where they had to build their houses. Today there is a large village on this lake, and all the houses float on water! The people there are poor and live on selling things to tourists.The floating church.A man and his daughter wanting to sell beer and coke to us.A man and his sons wanting us to hold a snake for "one dollar"On the boat we took to get there.Floating houses

Phnom Penh
When we came to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, we got to see a completely different side of the country. As I briefly mentioned in my last post, the country experienced a genocide between 1975-1979, under the regime of the communist party The Khmer Rouge. We visited one of the torture prisons that were used by the Khmer Rouge. Around 14-16000 people were imprisoned there - believed to be spies or CIA-agents, and only 7 people got out alive. I met one of them outside the prison and bought his book.



Prisoners waiting to be killed.Strict rules for the prisoners.
After a long time of torture the prisoners where sent to a killing field to be killed. We visited this too, and saw sculls that had been dug up from the massgraves. Still there are corpses buried under the paths, and we stepped on their clothes that stuck up from the ground. This was terrible.




I will end this post with a happier experience. I turned 23 the 8th of March and got to celebrate my birthday with the whole class. My fantastic boyfriend gave me tons of presents and I had a blast! I also got an unexpected card from mamma and daddy. :)