Posts about: Cambodia


The Future of Cambodia?

by andris
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Cambodia, 13 Dec 2006 --

People like Chai are the key to the future of Cambodia.  Chai runs his own business, is an advisor to a tiny Swiss NGO that runs a free English school, started a program to teach sports to poor Cambodian children on his own initiative, and has sworn off lying completely (something he says comes as second nature to Cambodian men) since it almost cost him his Swiss girlfriend a few years ago.

I should back up, though.  When I first met Chai, I thought he was just a dirtbike driver.  I was looking for a way to reach the remote Preah Vihear temple on Cambodia’s northern border with Thailand.  The options I had found at the time were either too expensive:  The very pricy Hidden Cambodia company wanted to take three dirtbikes just to transport me to the temple; or were too unsafe:  Some backpackers make the 600+ km journey on dirt roads ravaged by the rainy season with local moped drivers who may speak little English and don’t have the tools to fix the bike (or their passengers) in case of emergency.

With prospects for my trip to Preah Vihear looking grim, I was lucky to see a sticker for “Chai offroad trip” on a Siam Reap telephone pole.  The fact that Chai has stickers, a website, and even large color advertisements on the back of ten of Siam Reap’s 3000+ tuk-tuks is impressive to say the least.  I later learned that Chai is president, administrator, graphic designer, and webmaster for “Chai offroad trip.” He taught himself FrontPage, Photoshop, and even Flash (something I have yet to master) to create his website.

So, one broken cell phone call and one brief meeting later, I found myself sitting on the back of a 250cc Baja XR dirtbike at 9 in the morning speeding northwards out of Siam Reap and wondering if heading into the Cambodian countryside with a local guy I just met was such a great idea.  Fortunately, though, after four days and three nights of exploring remote temples and experiencing true local culture, I found that Chai had become my new best friend in Cambodia.

Sitting behind Chai and clinging to the luggage rack of the dirtbike, I quickly came to greatly appreciate the fact that Chai is a very safe driver.  Chai has a helmet for himself _and_ his passenger, slows down for children, farm animals, and rocks, carries a first aid kit, and even turns on his lights when a passing truck kicks up enough dust to make us invisible to oncoming traffic.  While these may all seem like common sense safety precautions, the rarity of safe drivers in Cambodia is something that has to be seen to be believed.

The best thing about Chai, though, is that he’s really in this business to help Cambodians and to make friends.  After each bumpy day, Chai and I would sit and drink many, many cans of cheap Crown beer and discuss everything from the Khmer Rouge to relationship troubles.  From these conversations, I learned that Chai took his first trip through the region with his girlfriend a few years ago.

The same trip that now takes 5 days took them two weeks, because each time the bike broke down Chai and his girlfriend spent a few days in tiny villages waiting for spare parts to arrive.  It was during these long waits that Chai met the families we eat and sleep with on our trip, and as a result Chai has a strong commitment to only take tourists to Cambodian run businesses that he knows will really benefit from the income. I should note that the bike only broke down once on the trip, and Chai was able to fix the problem within minutes using the tools he carries.  Chai now has a contract with a local bike shop that guarantees they will bring a new bike by truck to anywhere Chai has a problem that he can’t fix on the road.

Chai also gives 3% of his income from the tours he leads to the Salariin Kampuchea (Schools in Cambodia) organization he works for, which is laudable in a country where most people either just want to get rich off the tourist boom, or are too poor to think about others.  It is through working with this free English school where Chai got the idea to start a sports and fitness program for the kids.  Once a week he runs, cycles, or plays basketball with the children as time and equipment availability allows.

Every week, Chai tells the kids to show up at a certain time, and every week they arrive half an hour early begging him to start even earlier.  Often, children of poor Cambodian families seem so starved for something to do that when we would pull up on the dirtbike we would find an ever growing group of children who just wanted to see what the crazy foreigner on the big bike was going to do next (granted, we probably looked like astronauts with the motorcycle helmets, but still…).

I realize I haven’t provided many details of the trip itself, which was nothing sort of perfect.  Chai showed me broad vistas at Anlung Veng and the spectacular Preah Vihear: an ancient Angkor temple at the top of a 600m cliff overlooking the Cambodian plains with an access road so steep and fractured that we had to ride specialy customized motor bikes to the top.  He took me to a variety of oddly non-judgmental monuments to the architects of the Khmer Rouge government in the 70s:  Pol Pot’s grave, Pol Pot’s house, Ta Mok’s grave, Ta Mok’s house and so on.  We sang kareoke songs in Khmer at the top of our lungs in villages where I have no doubt I was the only westerner for miles.  Chai and I spent several long lunches sitting with Cambodian families in their small shack houses at the side of dirt roads eating deliciously simple Khmer food and talking Cambodian politics as the chickens and cows meandered idly by.

Still, though, the real story here was Chai.  He was the best part of my month in Cambodia, and I consider myself lucky to count him as a friend.  As I said, people like Chai are the future of Cambodia…I just hope there are enough of them to go around.

You can plan your Cambodian dirtbike adventure with Chai at http://www.chaioffroadtrips.com

Categories Cambodia
 

Almost a real English teacher

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Cambodia, 2 Dec 2006 --

So at the end of week one, things have definitely gotten better here in Sihanouk Ville (that’s really how they spell it). I’ve done a few more field visits, but I only had two grueling 13 hour days before the program manager at CCBO gave me a reprieve, saying that I looked “very, very tired.”

I am very grateful that I had this opportunity, even though it has been pretty difficult so far and has put me outside of my comfort zone. Andris and I are always trying to “get off the beaten path” and to get to know the locals better, and I have definitely managed to be successful here on both counts. On Tuesday we took a very small boat to an island that is surrounded by a mangrove forest with only one small channel in and out. Only thirty families live there, and I got to meet their village chief and sit in on the class at the informal school CCBO and UNESCO pay for. I also have gotten to know the CCBO staffers (I even got asked out by one, which was awkward) and learned a tremendous amount about Cambodia and it’s many problems. CCBO does great work and I’m glad I’m able to contribute something to their organization.

Thanks to everyone for your great teaching suggestions! The most common suggestion was to teach them a song, which was brilliant, and on Friday I taught songs to the beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes I’ve been teaching. For the beginner class, I taught “10 little monkeys,” which I had ten of the smaller students reenact, “B-I-N-G-O”, and “Old MacDonald.” As it turns out, there is a Cambodian version of Old MacDonald but instead of Old MacDonald it is just “grandfather.” For the intermediate class, I brought in my MP3 player and some speakers I borrowed from a friend and we learned “All together now” by the Beatles. They loved this song, and by the end of class everyone (including me) was singing “One, Two, Three, Four, Can I have a little more…” There is one questionable line in this song (”Black, White, Green, Red, Can I take my friend to bed?”) that I just pretended was completely innocent and everyone seemed to believe that. For the last class I taught two songs: “Yellow Submarine” and “Don’t be Stupid (you know I love you)” by Shania Twain. Unfortunately, “Yellow Submarine” was too easy, and the Shania Twain song was too hard, which is evidence that I don’t quite know what I’m doing. Either way I had fun, despite the fact that I actually sang in front of people. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves as well, even though they didn’t so much sing as scream. “B!!! I!!!! N!!! G!!! O!!!!” Ha ha.

 

Categories Cambodia
 

“A State of Mind”

by andris
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Cambodia, 29 Nov 2006 --

Just a quick note to all you film people:  They screened a documentary called “A State of Mind” last night at the festival.  The UK team that made it was granted unprecedented access to North Korea to film the lives of two school girls as they trained to perform in the Mass Games: huge, patriotic dance/gymnastics spectacles performed on national holidays somewhat similar to those sometimes seen from China.

The documentary is certainly controversial in its portrayal of the state of things in North Korea, and I would agree with those who say that the government carefully controlled what the crew was and was not allowed to see (they had 24/7 government provided “minders,” and the families in the documentary live in some of the best housing in Pyongyang, the Disneyland of North Korea).

Still, the film is well produced and has some unbelievable footage from inside a country that we never get to see.  I can’t say that I know what it’s really like inside having seen the film, but if nothing else it’s a good reminder that the citizens of the “Axis of Evil” are really just people trying to get along like the rest of us who have been subjected to some really extensive ideological brainwashing.

Categories Cambodia
 

I’m an English teacher?

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Cambodia, 29 Nov 2006 --

The first time Andris and I came to Sihanoukville I saw a notice by the Catholic Children’s Bureau (CCBO - BICE in French) looking for native English speakers to work with their staff. Knowing only what was in the notice, which is that the organization helps children involved in child labor and sexual trafficking, I contacted the coordinator Pav Vannak and offered my services. Making arrangements was difficult and through one confused e-mail and another confused phone call we agreed that I would arrive back in Sihanoukville on the 26th. I arrived as planned, and in addition to teaching English Mr. Vannak wants me to better understand the problems facing Cambodia by following his staff into the field.

As briefly as possible, let me describe my first day, for which I was wholly unprepared:

At 7:30 AM I was picked up at my guesthouse by three CCBO staffers, two of whom spoke some English, on two motorbikes. I hopped on the back of one of the bikes and we rode for an hour on bumpy dirt roads into the countryside and to a small village where several village chiefs were meeting.

A plastic chair was placed in front of the classroom where the meeting was being held and I was asked to sit down. (Just a note on atmosphere: the classroom is in a small thatch building in a very poor, dusty village. Children wearing only over sized dirty t-shirts and scruffy dogs and chickens continually walked through the meeting) Next, all of the chiefs introduced themselves to me in Khmer and som pas (bow slightly with hands in a prayer). I had no idea what to do but clearly I should have som pas(ed) back, but I didn’t quite realize this at the time. Next, like a bad dream, I was asked to say something to the group. I had no idea what to say and what I did say I’m sure was inappropriate and disappointing (I said something about Cambodia being wonderful and how nice the people are and I want to learn about their problems). Once this awkwardness was over the chiefs explained their problems to the staffers, one of whom roughly translated them for me.

After the meeting the staffers took me to lunch, which was lovely except for the red bean dessert I had trouble finishing. During the afternoon we went to investigate the problems brought up by the village chiefs, and the staffers tried to refer them to the appropriate NGO. These problems included a fisherman with an untreated infection who is unable to support his family, a mother of 15 (with only 5 still living) whose left side of her body has mysteriously become paralyzed, a 15 year old girl who has been having seizures three times a day for three years and has never had medical treatment, several children who have to walk 2 hours to school everyday for whom the CCBO is trying to purchase bicycles, and a four year old girl who had been raped by a neighbor. The CCBO was trying to arrange a lawyer for the girl’s father so he could prosecute the rapist. Also, there are very few NGOs that help people with medical problems, so the untreated people will most likely remain untreated.

At 6 o’clock we returned to the classroom where the meeting had been held and it was decided that I would teach two English classes to the “poor” kids in that area on that day. Just like that I became an English teacher. I was handed a marker for the white board, briefly introduced by the English teacher (who is paid $30 a month, and speaks almost no English), and began my “lecture” to 45 Cambodian children. It actually went quite well, thanks in part to my ability to draw cats, pigs, dogs and stick figures. The kids were wonderful and extremely well behaved, but many just liked staring at me. After the class the kids offered me good wishes and asked if I could stay. I was told afterwards that I was the first Westerner to ever visit their classroom. Then I did that again for another class before we drove back.

I was finally returned to Sihanoukville around 8:30 PM, where I met up with some American friends for dinner and a beer. I went to bed at 10:00, and then woke up at 6:45 the next day to do it again. Needless to say, I’m wiped out and a bit depressed. Also, if anyone has tips for teaching English, please please please send them to me! In the mean time, I’ll do my best.

Categories Cambodia
 

The Angkor Photography Festival

by andris
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Cambodia, 28 Nov 2006 --

Attending this festival has certainly been an exercise in contradictions.  I spend every day in the swealtering heat, I sleep in my very basic but clean $3/night guest house, and from 6 to midnight or so I go to several fancy gallery show openings with gourmet hors d’oeuvres at some of the most expensive hotels in town.  I’m lucky I had my one respectable looking outfit, though at least the dress code is tolerant of the fact that this is Cambodia after all.

There’s definitely a bit of pretention in the air at these things.  I’ve never seen the pro camera as fashion accessory bit that goes on (think Nikon D2Xs, Canon EOS-1Ds, and the oh so expensive Leicas slung casually on shoulders while trendily dressed party-goers sip red wine and house music throbs in the background and you’ve got it about right), but I blame ze French contingent.  There also seem to be a fair number of people who came for the networking, not the photography as a lot of talking goes on while presenters are speaking.

Aside from all that, though, it’s been great.  I’ve managed to meet a few people who were able to offer excellent advice for the amateur hoping to turn pro, and seeing all the fantastic photography has made me think about what I want my own photography to be.  I’m really here for the photojournalistic stuff, and there’s plenty to be had.

The VII Agency did a spectacular retrospective of their last 5 years of war photography, I saw a great exhibition by John Vink on Khmer Boxing, and I learned the fascinating story of Taizo Ichinose, who lost his life trying to reach Angkor Wat to photograph it during the Khmer Rouge occupation.  As always, my lack of retention for names doesn’t do me any good here and I managed to meet a living legend of photojournalism: Philip Jones Griffiths without realizing it.  He was the one who convinced me it was worth sticking around for the show, though, so that’s a good thing.

So, I have a few more days of fancy living and gallery openings to attend, and then I’m off to try to reach the remote Phreah Vihear temple in Northern Cambodia via one mode of transport or another.

Categories Cambodia
 

Angkor, Angkor, Angkor

by andris
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Cambodia, 26 Nov 2006 --

The temples of Angkor Wat are nothing short of spectacular, and we spent three days crawling over, under, and through ancient stone ruins.  We managed to avoid the ever-present tuk-tuk drivers who really want you to hire them for the ride to the temples, and instead rented decent bikes.  This was a great way to see everything at our own pace, and every time we saw a tour group being dragged from place to place on a tour guide’s schedule we were glad to be on our own.

Cara and I have currently parted ways for a few weeks, with her going down to Sihianoukville to do some volunteer work and me sticking around in Siam Reap for the annual Angkor Photography Festival. There are some really big name photographers and photojournalists here, and it’s a bit intimidating to even get out my camera with them around.  You know you’re listening to someone worth listening to when they show a slide of a picture they took in Vietnam and mention that their agency had to sue Francis Ford Coppola for basing an entire scene of Apocalypse Now on the story behind the picture without permission.  Impressive.

Anyway, here are my pictures from Angkor Wat.  I have to say, I was a lot happier with them before I saw the pictures taken here by the pros:

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Categories Cambodia
 

First Pictures from Cambodia.

by andris
[3] Comments  

Cambodia, 18 Nov 2006 --

I finally got around to uploading some pictures from Cambodia.  You’ll notice a few things from the following galleries.  1)  Cambodia is brimming with ridiculously cute children.  2)  The philosophy in Cambodia appears to be that you can do anything with a moped that you can do with a 4×4 pickup truck (haul a trailer, tackle a rutted dirt road, carry 4 passengers, etc).  Surprisingly, they aren’t that far off.  3)  You can purchase gas for your moped in 2 liter bottles set up on card tables lining the side of most roads.  Enjoy!

Pictures from Kep and Kampot, near the south coast of Cambodia:

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Pictures from Phnom Penh, Cambodia:

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Categories Cambodia
 

Good things about Cambodia

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Cambodia, 18 Nov 2006 --

So we’ve written two downer posts about Cambodia, which is unfair to such a beautiful country, so I thought I’d make a list of stuff that I like about Cambodia:

  • They have baguettes here! Thanks to the French, good, freshly baked baguettes and even Laughing Cow cheese can be found everywhere. They are delicious.
  • They use US Dollars, which is good and bad. It is bad because it makes us go “It’s only $1…” all of the time, when in Thailand we might have gone “35 baht! That’s outrageous!” But it is cool because at the ATM you can get out US dollars and there is no exchange rate that devalues everything and the surcharge is only $2, which means it is just like taking money out at home. (There aren’t American coins, however. For that they use riel, of which there are 4,000 in one dollar)
  • The Internet is really, really cheap. Right now I’m paying 1,500 riel an hour, which is less than $.50.
  • The language isn’t tonal (as Andris mentioned). My Khmer vocabulary is already much larger than my Thai, and Cambodians understand me when I attempt my phrases. (I can now say in Khmer “Hello”, “How are you?”, “I am fine”, “Thank you”, Numbers 1-9, 100, 1000, “How much is it?”, “Yes”, “No”, “Where is the bathroom?”, “Please”, and “Excuse me”, and some food words)
  • It is really beautiful. The rice patties and the hills and the fields are all gorgeous.
  • Motorbikes are the primary mode of transportation, and they are fun and cheap. In small towns we can rent our own, or in big towns (like Phnom Penh) we can hire someone to drive us around for an absurdly small amount of money. Tuk-tuks are also cheaper than they have been anywhere else, and the guys who drive them don’t hound us as much as they do in some other places.
  • We have cable in our room. It’s lame to admit, but when we have only had TVs in 1 out of 10 rooms, and they have previously only had a maximum of 4 channels, none of which spoke English, having a TV is briefly wonderful. However, that was 4 days ago and now I’m over it.
  • They played a karaoke video on the bus our way from Kampot to Phnom Penh which contained the English language line “I love you, loving you, as the mouse does love the rice!” Now I can sing that to Andris when I feel like being annoying.
Categories Cambodia
 

Cambodia: Definitely not Thailand

by andris
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Cambodia, 16 Nov 2006 --

I’m not exactly sure what I expected to find in Cambodia…I mean, I think everyone has some preconceived notions about what Thailand is like (probably involving prostitutes and drugs) and ever since I saw the Reading Rainbow episode about Malaysia I’ve almost exclusively associated the country with rubber trees for some reason (thank you Levar Burton).  Close your eyes and try to picture Cambodia, though…what do you get?  Hungry children?  Angelina Jolie’s baby?

At any rate, I’ve been here far to short a time to come to any summary conclusions about what the country is like…but it’s definitely surprised me in more ways than one.  So far, I’m finding myself a little unsure of how to handle myself as a traveler in the face of all this poverty.

Haggling and dodging tourist scams have been part of daily life since we landed in Thailand three months ago…but it’s harder to haggle for a fair price on a motorcycle taxi ride across town when you know the guy is only trying to get a few thousand extra reil (4000 reil ~ 40 baht ~ 4 ringgit ~ 1 US dollar in case you were wondering) to feed his family.  I mean, you can’t go in willing to pay whatever the guy asks because that will just lead to people asking for higher and higher prices and pretty soon we’d be paying $10 for a motorcycle ride that should cost less than $1.  Usually I find myself turning down the original price (usually 3-4 times the real price) but then taking whatever more normal price he quotes next (something around 1.5-2 times the real price).  There was a very applicable quote in the book ‘The Kite Runner’ I just finished…something to the effect of: “Exploitation to finance a summer house in Miami Beach is one thing, but exploitation to feed one’s family is entirely another.”

Every time I bring my camera up to shoot an image, too, I find myself thinking a lot about how western tourists (myself included, of course) must be perceived by the people here.  I mean, I take a picture of something that strikes me as interesting or different (wow, look at that mini-bus with 20 people crammed inside and another 5 sitting on the roof going 40+ miles an hour, you don’t see that at home) and then I travel on and eventually return to the safe, clean, medical-care-provided world I live in.

For the people on the bus, though, that’s everyday life.  They suck in exhaust fumes on the roof, hope the van doesn’t crash, and know that if it does they may end up unable to earn a living for the rest of their lives because they can’t afford treatment for what may have been a very treatable injury elsewhere in the world. It doesn’t help that the cost of the equipment I use to take the picture probably costs enough to feed a family here for 6 months.

I read the story of a fisherman who broke his leg at work one day and sat completely untreated in the living room of his house for two years because his family didn’t have the money to travel to and pay for medical care.  Fortunately, his case ended well…a UK run charity organization called the Starfish Project heard about his situation and for $500 was able to get his leg amputated, find him a prosthetic (donated), repair the roof of his house, and buy him a new boat.

At any rate, it’s a learning experience here…it’s certainly made me think about why I’m taking pictures before I take them.  Sorry if this is a more downbeat post than usual.  Cambodia so far has been a really great place.  People are very friendly, the language is non-tonal (making it at least within the realm of learnability), and the food is exotic as in Thailand but without the fiery spices (putting them within the realm of eatability for me).

I intended to upload some pictures, but my portable DVD drive ran out of batteries before I could…I’ll have to recharge and stick them up later.

Categories Cambodia
 

Cambodia is…

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Cambodia, 13 Nov 2006 --

After our exciting trip to Borneo, we headed back to Bangkok to do some serious errand running and then spent an amazing four days in Koh Chang, my new favorite island paradise. In hindsight, it was a good thing that we had so much time to relax and regain some energy just in time for our next destination - Cambodia. Lonely Planet once used the analogy that if Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was your first stop in SE Asia, it is the kiddie pool of travel. Extending that analogy, Thailand is a little deeper (and probably pleasant with a sandy bottom and colorful fish), and Cambodia is where your toes don’t quite touch the bottom anymore.

From Koh Chang we took a ferry to a town in Thailand called Trat, where most guesthouses sell two day packages to get all the way to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Our guidebook said that it was possible to do the trip in one day, so at 5:45 AM we woke up in Trat and began a long, confusing day.

First, we tried to get a taxi to the bus station to catch the 6:30 bus to the border in Hat Lek. The taxi driver didn’t understand “bus station” but he knew “Hat Lek”so he agreed to take us there. Soon we were on the road in the back of a share taxi (pick up truck with benches in the back) with 8 other people, one of whom was a small boy with no pants. My guess he was Cambodian, because it seems small boys in Cambodia are not required to wear pants.

Once we got to Hat Lek, a bunch of young men offered to taxi us to the mini-bus to Sihanoukville. We vaguely agreed to go with them after we crossed the border.  Of course, the minibus leaves at 9:00 and it is 8:30, so we are in a bit of a rush and the boys with the taxi even filled out some of the forms for us. Our guide book said you could pay for the visa in American  dollars, but the guards demanded 1,200 Thai baht each, which we didn’t have. One of the taxi guys offered to “loan” us the money, which seemed extremely shady. Finally, after we looked despondent long enough, the guard went “Okay, $30 each,” which was actually quite a deal since one guide book said we should expect to have to pay “extra fines,” and that is less than they wanted us to pay in baht. With visas in hand, we got into the “taxi,” which is an unmarked Camry, which we were told by our tourist guide we should also expect to overpay for. On the way, we went over a bridge with a toll and one of the taxi boys said we needed to pay 4,800 Cambodian reil for. We didn’t have any, we said. It’s OK, I’ll loan it to you and we can stop by the money exchanger in town, he said. Right. Smells scammy. In no time we at the money exchanger, which is really a small stand that also sells juice. Andris tries to exchange just a few leftover baht, but the lady doesn’t seem interested. We’re running late, so we get back in the car. Once we get to the mini-bus we pay the cab driver, and try to repay the guy who paid the toll with more baht than the toll actually cost. The mini-bus people charged us 700 baht per ticket to Sihanoukville instead of the 550 it is supposed to be, despite our protests, but there wasn’t much we could do at this point. Our bags disappeared and were supposedly on top of the minibus under a tarp (which they were). Meanwhile, the guy who loaned us the money was dogging Andris for more money for “helping” us at the border, but  Andris stayed firm in that he already over-repaid him double.

We were ushered into a mini-bus full of grumpy looking tourists before I realized our tickets say “Phnom Phen.” We bolt out of the mini-bus to change tickets, but the guy at the ticket window just crossed it out and wrotes”Sihanoukville.” The other tourists confirmed that many of them were, in fact, going to Sihanoukville. A few moments later we were on an incredibly bumpy, dirt road. The trip was about 6 hours, and included four ferry trips across rivers. Also, by ferry I mean four rowboats with blanks across them that the minibus drives on to (we got out of the minibus for this, of course).

During the trip we compared notes with the other travelers, who confirmed that our experience was about as good as can be expected. We underpayed at the border, overpaid for the tickets, and no one knew what the deal with the money exchanging scam was. One French Canadian, who had been to Cambodia several times, said that one problem with Cambodia is that “they always want just a little bit more money, which makes it hard to trust people.”  So far, that has seemed to be true. Add on to that the run-down nature of everything, and Cambodia, so far, has been exhausting. I think we’ve been here four days, and in that time we’ve rented three broken motorbikes (they ran, just no odometer, speedometer, or gas gauge), had one dramatic argument with a cabdriver over inflated, mis-quoted fares, taken a tourist truck that broke down twice in Bokor National Park (where land-mines and tigers are “rare”so don’t go off trail), got invited to dinner that we were then asked to pay for, and ran out of gas once with the motor bike because the guy renting it swore that we would have enough for our destination. Luckily, children sell soda bottles full of gas on their front lawns, so this wasn’t much of a problem.  Whew, I’m exhausted just writing about it.

Oh, and Cambodia is beautiful and has a tragic history that is difficult and interesting. But more about that on another day.

Categories Cambodia