Cambodia

        Phew. Really sorry about the lateness, but it has been a tired couple of days over here. Heather, Elisse, and I left for Cambodia on the 27th, and got back late on Sunday the 1st. We just got home to go to bed, and since we're in the middle of summer intensive, (I'll explain summer intensive a bit later for those who don't know what I'm talking about) basically all I've been doing is working and sleeping. When we combined all our pictures of the trip together we had about 850, and it was hell narrowing all of them down to what to add here. In the end I decided to put only a few pictures up here, and give y'all a link to a facebook album with more of them. I'm going to do a day by day here, to keep things organized better. 

The first day we got there around midnight, just in time to be picked up by a tuk-tuk (think a motorcycle towing a cart with the three of us in it) which is the main source of public transportation there. He held up a sign for us at the airport and took us to our hostel (room pictured above.) You can find tuk-tuks anywhere on the street, and barter them down to $2-3 dollars for a ride. They'll take you anywhere, stay and wait there for hours, and then drive you back for that price.


Speaking of prices, everything was insanely cheap there. Good meals for $4, most beer was $0.60. Because Americans used Cambodia to station troops as close to Viet Nam as possible during the war, the US dollar is still really prevalent there, and everything was listed in USD. I brought $300 with me, and lived like a king while I was there. The whole country, from what we saw of it, seemed like a giant resort. The fresh coconut was delicious.

On day two we went to Ankgor Wat for sunrise, at 6:30 AM (Had to wake up at 4:30 to get there in time) Then we went back to the hostel and slept, and then got up and went to Ankgor Wat again, which may actually turn out to be the coolest place I'll ever be in my life. We shall see, but it was nothing short of amazing. I'm not going to put any pictures up here, because there is a ridiculous amount of them in the facebook album, (and way too many pictures of the sunrise) and it'll be much better to see it all at once.

One of the things I really wanted to do that we couldn't is to ride an elephant, but theres some pictures of the wildlife, as well as pictures of our hostel just above here. The third day we went to the 'floating village,' an entire town of people living in floating houses on a river and a giant lake. When we got out onto the lake you couldn't see the other side. It was amazing how much it looked like the ocean...except dirt brown. We all used the bathroom at someone's house while we were there, which was a square room with a curtain as a door and two floorboards to stand on (and a hole to the water.) The same water that they get their drinking water from (they boil it) swim in, and fish from.  

The three of us were on a boat big enough for 15, and halfway through the ride they let me; and then Elisse take the wheel. Pretty exciting.

We went to the 'Killing Fields' which I won't get too much into, lets just say there was genocide in the 70's, and millions (accent on the s) of native cambodians were killed by an army called the Khmer.


The night life was great, and pretty much all contained in one street, called bar street. We didn't do as much clubbing as we could've (should've?) but we were out most nights having some cheap tropical drinks.


It occurs to me there just too much that happened for this to be any kind of effective forum to talk about it, and I'm going to stop now and let you guys take a gander at the pictures on facebook, and go to bed. I'll be chatting to you on the phone at some point, and that will be a much better venue to discuss the trip.
Though we did feed crocodiles. (When I asked for crocodile food I really wasn't thinking about what that meant. A little gross. I survived. Click here for 122 pictures of the trip. I'm really sorry I don't have the energy to write more, but if you have any questions, we'll be talking. It was lovely. I miss you all. Goodbye.

P.S. Tylor is coming early-mid September. That's not enough time for him to work out going to Viet Nam, so I'm cancelling that plane ticket and me and him and my friend Brendan will (probably) go to one of the tropical islands on the southern coast of Korea, a much cheaper journey. I'll post again this weekend to discuss my daily life a bit more, still too tired.