Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Cambodia

Mopeds:
A stack of hay on the back. 
A few more pigs. 
A few more gas containers. 
A motorbike with 3 people. Not unusual in itself, but the last person was pulling a cart along behind them! 
Ten or twelve bicycle tyres stacked on the back. 


Gonna add in a bit here about some odd mispellings we have noticed on menus!
A boy egg. (Whats wrong with a girl egg? I think this was meant to be boiled egg)
Special plea with shrimp. 
Mixed with duck. (Mixed what with duck?)
Fish and ship. 




I feel terrible writing one blog post as if it covers the whole country. We only had four days here, and it's not enough. Even though the country is right beside Thailand it is different in many ways. The people are poorer, and everywhere is much less commercialised. There are less "proper" shops, and more stalls by the roadside, fronts of houses and markets. However, safety standards seem better. More people wear helmets (the majority wear them, while in Thailand the majority don't), and scaffolding is much more secure looking. It looks the same to me as what we have at home. In Thailand it looked like scrap wood tied onto some metal bars. Scary stuff! 


Anywho, what we did there:
We spent Friday getting from Bangkok to Siam Reap - bus journey and border crossing. On Saturday and Sunday we visited the temples around Siem Reap. There are many many temples, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. We had a tuk tuk driver bring us round, and they were quite interesting to see. The temples themselves are very detailed, and some of them have some quite impressive restoration work going on. (Looks like the worlds biggest jigsaw puzzle to me!) At every temple there are Cambodian people screaming at you, trying to convince you to buy whatever they are selling. "LADY! You wanna buy bracelet??? three for one dolla!" "LADY, you have no guide, you need book, only one dolla!" (In Cambodia you get US dollars from ATMs, and only really use Cambodian Real for anything less than one dollar.) Turns out they will not sell you the book for one dollar,  but you can pay one dollar to look at it. They crowd around trying to sell everything that they can - local crafts, silk scarves, water, postcards, books and anything else they can think of. I ended up buying postcards from the cutest child. She must have been about five. She came up and said "You want postcard? Ten for one dolla. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Uno,dos, tres, quatro, cinqo, sies, siete ocho, nueve, dies. Ein, zwei, drei, fier, funf, sechs,seiben, acht, nein, zehn." She was too cute, and I couldn't resist. I'm not sure if I did the right thing by buying from her - was I providing her with money for food, or encouraging people to send the kids to work. (This was on Sunday, so she wouldn't have been in school anyway, but there were kids there on Saturday too, and kids in school on Saturday). We visited the night market, where I got a fish massage/pedicure. This involves putting your feet into a tank of of fish and letting them nibble the hard skin on your feet. It's not in any way painful, but it is a very weird, tickly feeling. This is available in a few places in Ireland, but as far as I know its very expensive. I found it quite good, and my feet were a bit softer afterwards. 


On Monday we got a six hour bus journey to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. I am ashamed to say that I knew nothing of Cambodian history, and nothing of the Khmer Rouge regime. We watched a film based on an American journalist who was in Cambodia at that time, and on Tuesday we did a tour of the city. The tour included a visit to the killing fields, and to S-21, a school that was turned into a prison during hte regime. It is shocking how much happened between 1975 and 1979, and how little was done by other nations to stop it. Between 1 and 3 million died during this time. Many of these were tortured and then killed, and many more died of starvation in the forced labour rice fields. Those who were killed and tortured were the intellectuals - doctors, professors and teachers, and their families. The Killing Fields were quite shocking, with human bones still in the ground. (They are broken to pieces, and buried. During the rainy season flooding can force them up to the surface.) The stories of what occurred during that time are absolutely horrific. In spite of this history, the Cambodian people remain wonderfully friendly, and seem like happy, smiley people - while on a bus through a town today I was looking out the window, and made eye contact with a man. His response was to give me a big wave and a smile! 
We also went to see the palace, but it was closed as the king was due. There was a marching band, and loads of school children with flowers on the street awaiting his arrival. We, however, decided not to hang around! We visited a few markets, and saw the Independance Monument. 
Last night we met a couple of girls, Sarah and Linsey, from Navan, the first Irish people we have met in Cmabodia. They were lovely girls and we ended up sitting up chatting until one or two. Before that we went in search of food. We were not succesful. We left one restaurant because we couldn't understand the menu. In the next I ordered a duck salad. I'm not sure what part of the duck I got, but it wasn't what I was expecting. 
Today, Wednesday, we got a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. We are here for the next week or so. We met a friend of John's from college this evening, and had dinner with him. Apparently Facebook is banned here, so we won't be logging on there for a while!


Heaps and heaps of pics today!

We made a friend!

























counted over 25 people in this Songthaew. 








Too cute! 









One of the people driving around with big parcels on the back of their bike!


Not very clear - but the tuk tuk here has about 15 people on it. All you can see here are the ones hanging out the side because there was nowhere else for them!






You can see a guy here with 3 gas tanks strapped to his bike. 

PS. Cambodia is the cutest country ever! Between heaps of lovely children, baby monkeys, puppies, ducklings and chicks John is sick of hearing me saying "Awww how cute is that!"