Temples, Touts and Tears

Cambodia...a mixed bag. The ultimate bitter-sweet. This has been a very emotional week filled with awe, anger, sadness, frustration and excitment. Cambodia is not an easy place to be in. It takes a lot of energy to be here and i have definitly lost my cool for the first time on this trip. I can't even put into words all of the things that have happened, so I'll just write about what we did for now.

So I wrote about Phnom Penh. When we were leaving we actually realized we missed some really cool parts of the city...but no worries cause we keep having to spend time there to get to other places. We took a very pleasant 6 hour bus ride to Siem Reap, it was great to see the countryside and the bus was very comfortable. We spent 3 days there, the temples were really amazing. On the last day we woke up to watch the sunrise at one of the wats, we went to something like 10 sites in all. It was really peaceful to be there in the morning, and peace is a hard thing to accomplish in Cambodia. The reliefs were unbelievable and the scale was greater than i could have imagined. I even got to have a nice conversation with a monk...they're so cute!

Siem Reap as a town was a different story. The dust was killer, we both took 3 showers a day. The food was really good since its a tourist town, but the begging was out of control. It made us not want to go outside. We ended up giving a lot of money away, which is okay, they needed it. But it's really hard to enjoy anything (including certain temples) when you are constantly surrounded by people begging you to buy stuff or for money.

So yesterday we went back to Phnom Penh and to our surprise there was a huge festival going on. It's the boat race festival and it's the biggest one all year. We ended up getting a room overlooking the river from the 3rd floor and the 2 million people below, it was really great. We walked around just checking out the masses of Cambodians everywhere...then got stuck in a crazy crowd and Lauren had to push me out. We ended up seeking refuge in a restaurant and got some drinks. We watched the fireworks from there and ended up hanging out with some supernice Australians at a couple places. All in all it was a great day.

Now, after a long, sweaty, dirty bus ride we arrived at the beach. It's alright here, but we'll stay for a day and then make our way back to go to Vietnam. To be honest I'm done with Cambodia. I haven't met a single altruistic Cambodian, just people that seem to be and then end up trying to get money out of me. The thing is, is that there is no assimilation here...it seems to me at least. It's us and them, which of coarse is because this country is so poor. I think it's important for everyone to see how other's live, but it's just so hard. The sadness i can handle, it's the harassing that really gets to me. There is little time for peace here, and the worst part is that most of the the people harassing us are children. But really it's a constant part of being here, when we had the temples to ourselves that morning it felt so peaceful and perfect. A quiet moment to take it all in. Cambodia is an interesting place and absolutely an interesting culture, it's just hard. I have some crazy stories but if you've read this far and care to hear more you'll just have to hang out with me when i get home...cause I don't think i'll ever forget this place.