Cambodia

Well its been about a month and a half since I've last made a post on this thing. Internet throughout the south of Laos was pretty sparse so I'm finally just getting around to all of this now.
After leaving Vientiane, I traveled further south through Laos taking some time to rent a motorbike and spend a couple of days driving through the Bloven Plateau which is a large area in south-central Laos which is a huge coffee growing region. Mostly for the higher altitude, but also the climate in general, it is great there for growing coffee. It was pretty cool talking with some of the coffee farmers out there and seeing the coffee plantations. The area in general is beautiful with a number of huge waterfalls and really green valleys.
Continuing south, I ended up out in Si Phan Don which translates as "the 4000 islands". Its an area in the very south of Laos on the Mekong river where there are quite literally 4000 islands spread out throughout the middle of the river. Many of them are really small but others have people living on them, farming and living the Mekong river lifestyle. I spent about 10 days staying with a family on one of the islands and learning about their way of life. We spent the days fishing, diving for snails and river muscles, trapping parrots and catching loads of huge bugs, all for eating. In one day I can proudly say that I ate parrot soup, some kind of stir fried snails and muscles dish, and had some salsa type thing which only consisted of crickets and very hot spices.
After leaving the Si Phan Don area it was time for me to continue going south and move into Cambodia. I went straight to Phenom Phen, the capital city to see what was going on there. The city is actually really great and is just starting to awaken from its Khmer Rouge days. Business in the city is starting to flourish which is bringing a lot of new blood to an already beautiful place. Cambodia is not nearly as commercialized as Thailand...yet. Most likely it will begin to move towards being just as touristy as Thailand because it is a country that does have a lot to offer. Quite a few of the small business owners have said that with the rising middle class in China, the Chinese are starting to vacation more and Cambodia will be like Mexico is for Americans.
Phenom Phen has a lot of history behind it, sadly it is mostly about the reign of the Khmer Rouge. I went to S-21, the interrogation prison in the middle of the city that was used to house prisoners before sending them out to the killing fields. Its now turned into a pretty sobering museum which allows you to walk through the cells and interrogation/torture facilities and has pictures of all of the victims that were murdered. After this I went out to the Killing Fields site where over 2-3 million people were put to death. It was really interesting to see all of this but extremely sad at the same time.
Phenom Phen is also pretty cool because there is such a large ex-pat community. Most of them are UN/NGO workers as well as numerous people teaching English. All over the place are signs asking for help at schools and orphanages across the city and country and I decided to check one of them out. I ended up finding a school/orphanage that is just about ten minutes outside of the city and spent almost two weeks there just playing around with the kids and helping to teach some English classes during the day. There was about 40 kids that stayed at the school all the time and then about another 20-30 that got bussed in for just the school day. Its pretty hard to not get attached to the kids when you're hanging out with them all the time like that. I really could have spent much more time then that at the school but there was still a lot of Cambodia that I wanted to see before having to move on.
Shortly after the school stint in Phenom Phen I headed out to Siem Reap, about six hours northwest of Phenom Pehn. It is here that the mighty Angkor Temples are located and I spent about a week up there exploring them. These temples which were built during the first half of the 12th century can only be described as simply amazing. They are massive temples, palaces and royal houses that spread out over a very large area throughout the jungle. There are huge trees and their roots which wind they're way through the temples almost as if they are reclaiming them back to themselves. The entire time you can hear and see monkeys howling and swinging around as if its just a playground for them, and thats pretty much what it is now.
On the last night that I was out exploring the temples I decided that it would be cool to sneak into the complex after dark and try to spend the night inside on of them. So I did. Trekking through the dark jungle for an hour got me to one of the more secluded temples. That night there was a massive thunder and lightening storm which was really eerie sitting in the doorway of this abandoned temple as the lightening lit up the huge towers and walls of the temple. Really good sunrise the next day and I made it out without detection.
After the temples I went back to the capital for another two days and then went south to the ocean. Sihnoukville is located down in the southwest corner of the country, really pretty close to Thailand. Being right on the Gulf of Thailand causes it to have very mellow, very warm bright blue water. Starting tomorrow is the beginning of the Khmer (Cambodian) New Year. They celebrate for about three days straight which basically means the country is more or less shut down. You can't travel anywhere so I decided if I was going to be stuck anywhere it would be good to be stuck at the beach. So here I am, back to the bungalow lifestyle, living on the beach.
Right now I'm sitting at a computer shop, on the beach, no more then 20 feet from the water. Pretty swell and I hope that anyone that reads this feels huge twinges of jealously. The plan after the New Year is to probably head for Vietnam. I'll let you know...