Cambodia

The next time I plan a year-long, around-the-world trip I am going to do everything right! When we were in Europe we just spent WAY too much money. We got hammered by a bad exchange rate and everything was SO expensive, plus we weren't really into our "travel groove" yet and we just spent more money than we needed to on hotels, cabs, food...pretty much everything. By the time we finally got into the swing of the low budget life we got hit with a couple of flights we hadn't planned on (like the extra one to avoid violence in Cairo and the one in India because we didn't realize the Diwali holiday booked up the railroad for weeks!) So then our budget was blown for Egypt and India! Plus, in India I couldn't tolerate the lowest end of the accomodation scale so we had to spend a little more to stay in some decent places - I admit I was a wimp in India.

Now we are in a beautiful place that we really like that is pretty inexpensive, but our original plans include some big budget places. So, we are making some changes and deciding to return to Thailand and stay a little longer, skip Bali, and (here's the biggest cut that hurts the most...) skip the safari in Africa. I'm hoping that if we do this there will still be some tiny bit left for us to hit a couple of the places in South America that were at the top of my original wish list.

The people in the outlying villages here have figured out an ingenious use for overgrown railroad tracks that are seldom used. They have built these little bamboo platforms with engines and they zip along the tracks between villages. If they happen to encounter another car going the other way they just dismantle one so the other can get by. The cars are noisy and they clatter and rattle through some dense bushes, over some questionable looking bridges, and some jarring gaps in the track. It was like a long, flat roller coaster. Pretty fun!

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We really miss everyone back home right now. Baylie is already planning the amazing, over-the-top, "traditional" Christmas for next year. We had a wonderful dinner at a French restaurant here and got a little homesick thinking of all of you.

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We watched the movie "The Killing Fields" after spending a couple of days here. It is an excellent movie anyway, but it was even more meaningful to us watching it here. We had just taken a tour of the S21 prison which is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum. Our guide was a wonderful woman who had been thirteen at the time the Khmer Rouge forced everyone from the city of Phnom Penh and into the fields into forced labor. Her family was killed but she managed to survive the concentration camp conditions. We also met one of only seven men to survive the torture of S21 prison. It was a grim, but very moving day.

We also visited the royal palace and its Silver Pagoda, a lovely and peaceful place in this very hectic city.

We have now moved on to the town of Battambang, about six hours away. It seems more our speed!

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Arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday. It is quite a city! Beautiful river-front walkway, tons of restaurants and places to stay, great people. We walked along the water last night and there were big groups of people out doing aerobics and dancing/exercising. Each group had it's own personality - a bunch of older ladies with oldies music, some people with "traditional" sounding Cambodian music doing slow "martial arts" looking moves, some kids with some very well-organized hip hop moves - it was like the place was filled with competing flash mobs. I loved it!

Today we are headed to the Tuol Sleng Prison museum. It won't be cheerful, but I definitely want to see it. I still can't believe something so horrific happened to this country so recently and they have rebounded in every way to become this wonderful place.