Ancient temples and starving children

Well the past two weeks have been fascinating. After a 17 hour bus ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia on a scam bus, that was cheap but then overcharged you for visa's and took the longest route possible on the worst road possible and dropped you straight at a hotel so you couldn't be bothered finding another one! Haha the hotel was quite cheap and nice but the next day we moved to another one closer to town with nicer staff and that didn't get people by scams.

Of course the thing you do in Siem Reap is explore the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. I felt a bit stupid for not knowing about the temples of Angkor before this trip as they are so amazing! they are about a thousand years old and just phenomenal in size, and so grand! The first day Owen and i rented a tuk-tuk and he took us round to quite a few temples,all different and yet all so interesting. part of what makes them so amazing is that they were all commissioned by kings and built in the kings lifetime,and considering people didn't live that long back then they all had to be built in 40 years maximum, probably 20.

one thing i didn't expect was the hordes of children waiting to pounce on you the minute you are out of the temple(fortunately they're not allowed into the temples). Children as young as 4 years old come up to you selling you bracelets,scarves, postcards, magnets.. and water. you couldn't leave the temple with out hearing 'hey lady you wanna buy water' at least once, and usually you heard '3 bracelet one dolla, scarf $2, of 2 scarf $3, of 4 bracelet one dolla' many, many times over. after spending 2 months pretty much not buying anything as i couldn't find things i liked i went nuts in Siem Reap as there was so much i loved! got 8 scarves haha (some are presents!) along with way too many bracelets and post cards that children talked me into and a few paintings and more.. expensive postage home! unfortunately you also get lots of children begging for money.someseem to do it for fun to see if they can make money out of tourists but there are many more who need to live. Tried to buy/give them food as much as possible but there is no safety net in Cambodia so there's not much chances for them.

Anyways the next two days i hired a bike and went to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, the main areas, which was great as i got to take it slow and explore things at my own pace, taking a ton of photos! on the 3rd and final day of my ticket i got up early and biked out to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. unfortunately it had been raining all night and it was completely clouded over so all that happened was it got light! us and several hundred others feel a little bit stupid. Later that day i went to see Ta Phrom which was the temple Tomb Raider was filmed in (though i wanted it last night and cant see the similarity really). Ta Phrom was amazing as it was left to the forest for several hundred years so while its been cleared out there are still massive trees growing all through the building. YOu wonder how the building still stands as the trees are the only thing holding it up in many places!

the next day a few of us took a tuk-tuk out to the mine museum, which is set up to teach people about mines in Cambodia. the guy who set up the museum was a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge setting up mines, he later ended up getting rid of them. he still works to demine Cambodia but a massive part of the country is still covered in mines and many people die every year from stepping on them. everywhere you go in Cambodia there are people maimed by mines with limbs missing, obviously having no way of working. at the temples of Angkor there are quite a few musical groups of mine victims who sell Cds to try to earn a living so they don't have to beg.

the next morning we were up early and took the bus ride to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. stayed at a nice guest house right on the river (built over the river) with water area right in the middle, a TV with DVD player,hommocks pool table and plenty of places to lounge around and drink.would have been a bit prettier if the water wasn't filled with garbage and you didn't feel like you were staying on a floating rubbish tip!

I went to see the Killing Fields, which is where many people died by the Pol Pot regime,and were buried in mass graves. there was a tower filled with skulls of people they had taken from the graves. I also went to see S-21, which is a school that was changed into a torture place/prisonduring the Pol Pot regime. they still had the cells people were put into, and photos of many of the people who died there.scary stuff. What i found more heart breaking though was on the bike ride home there was a little boy about 4 years old standing in the middle of a busy intersection in the rain holding a little brother, about 2 years old, in his arms. they were going up to cars and begging for money from the brand new lexus's etc. driving past and were ignored most of the time so i pulled into a petrol station and bought some food and milk for them. There are so many starving children on the street and yet you drive along and see brand new ornate temples being built with yet another giant golden buddha statue inside. built by donations from the community who walk past the starving children...

Anyway this morning i was up and caught a bus to Sihanoukville , a beach in southern Cambodia. thus far it has rained the entire time! hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow as i would like to lie on the beach and do some snorkeling.

anyway i think i have written enough for now.my plans nextare to getmy visa for Vietnam and head over that way. I have uploaded quite a few photos to www.bebo.com/ingridjones so check them out if you want.

hope all is well with everyone,

Ingrid