{"id":3258,"date":"2015-02-18T22:42:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T22:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=3258"},"modified":"2015-02-21T22:42:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T22:42:38","slug":"cambodia-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=3258","title":{"rendered":"Cambodia 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cambodia, specifically Siem Reap, was amazing. Truly, one of the greatest visits for us on this trip. We were only in Cambodia for four days which ended up being far too short.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat and a bunch of other temple complexes; it\u2019s the ancient capitol of Cambodia. We aren\u2019t really \u2018ruins\u2019 people and don\u2019t much care to see historical buildings so we had pretty low expectations going in to the visit. To help us along, we hired a tuk-tuk driver \/ guide, Sopheap, to bring us around to the sites because everything is spread pretty far apart. The places we visited were spectacular. So much so, we took about 2,800 photos – a new personal record in photos \/ day for me.<\/p>\n

First thing off the plane we realized most everything is priced in US Dollars. That, in itself, isn\u2019t all that weird and we\u2019ve seen it a lot. The difference was that we could use USD to buy everything and ATMs even dispensed USD! We haven\u2019t seen $5s, $10s, $20s or many $100s since leaving the US so it was pretty weird to see everyone, including Europeans and Cambodians, using USD all over the place. When we used USD to make a purchase we would get Cambodian Riel for anything less than $1 in change. Very quickly I had a huge wad of dollars and Riel. I felt like a high roller with the wad but it really amounted to about $8.77. Not high roller status, not even in a country like Cambodia.<\/p>\n

The next really odd thing happened when we went to find dinner the first night. We wandered around the super touristy area called Pub Street and quickly stumbled across multiple, yes multiple, Mexican restaurants and bars. We love Mexican food, we haven\u2019t had Mexican food since we left the US, why not have some food we love? We find a decent table, get some margaritas to wash down our chips & salsa, and ask each other \u2013 are we in bizzaro world? Like, is this real life? The food and drinks weren\u2019t exact but they were close enough given Mexico and Cambodia are 9,677 miles apart . We ended up having quite a bit of local, Khmer, food and really loved it. Khmer food was like the food we had in Thailand but deliciously different.<\/p>\n

Cambodia had a terrible tragedy with the rise of the Pol Pot\u2019s Khmer Rouge and the subsequent genocide of its populace. I didn\u2019t learn a whole lot about South East Asia in school, especially the history of the area. I knew that the US bombed Cambodia during the Vietnam War but I didn\u2019t know that the carpet bombing of Cambodia by the US during the Vietnam War was the catalyst for Pol Pot and his regime. It was quite surreal to tour the landmine museum and see massive amounts of ordinance from the US that never exploded or was dug up. Even today, many Cambodians are killed or injured from landmines left over during the Vietnam War. Very sad.<\/p>\n

Sopheap did a lot for us and we are very thankful. On top of driving us around everywhere, he took us to his friend\u2019s wedding, he brought us out to dinner on our last night, and he shared his stories of growing up and what life is like for the people living in Cambodia. Without him, the experience would not have been nearly as rich. He helped make our visit around Siem Reap the best on our entire trip.<\/p>\n

Overall, this visit was a 10\/10. We would absolutely go back.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the photos!<\/p>\n

Chris W.<\/p>\n

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