Crocs in Cambodia

Before we left Phnom Penh we had asked our hotel staff about their other hotel in Siem Reap. They said that they would have a tuk-tuk driver from the hotel pick us up at bus stop when we arrived later that night and take us to their hotel. That sounded pretty easy, so we gave the hotel Keiran's name and went out to catch our ride to the bus station. At the bus station, our tuk-tuk driver took Laura's name and said a friend of his would pick us up in Siem Riep at the bus station and take us anywhere we wanted to go. Ok, two tuk-tuks had our names, but how many would really show up?

The ride to Siem Reap was beautiful. Lots of great views of the country side, the homes, and the farms. I believe the distance between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was about 200km, but it took 5 hours to cover that distance. I guess the windy roads and random stops for cows on the road didn't help. The bus arrived an hour earlier than we were expecting, so we thought there would be no way the tuk-tuk drivers would be waiting. Wrong. Pulling into the station we saw one sign for Mr. Keiran and one for Miss Laura. We decided to go with Laura's name and made sure not to say Keiran's until we were driving away. The driver asked us where we wanted to go and we said - "a place with a pool?" He repiled - "how about a crocodile farm?" Why not? So off we went to our hotel.

We dropped off our stuff and had our drivers take us to a restaurant we had heard a lot about called "Dead Fish". Dead Fish Restaurant was pretty amazing. From the outside it just looked like any other restaurant, but inside it was like a treehouse. They used the bare necessities to create many platforms on 4 different levels in the place. To get to the levels you would climb by stairs or ladders. Since getting to the levels was a little dangerous they used a pulley system to transport food and drinks from the main floor kitchen... sooooo cool!

The place had a great live band playing, so we stayed until they were finished. Quite a few pitchers of Ankor beer later we decided it was time to check out the crocodile pit. Yes, that's right, there was a crocodile pit right in the restaurant. We payed a couple bucks and got some fish to feed to the crocs. Check out the video ....

After dinner we went with the band members to another bar called Angkor What? We didn't stay too long since we had a very early morning the next day. Back at our hotel we set the alarm for 5am to give us time to get ready before meeting our drivers at 5:30 for a full day at the temples of Angkor.

S-21 and The Killing Fields

The Khmer Rouge were the ruling political party between 1975 and 1979. Under it's regime, an estimated 1.5 million people, or 1/5th of the Cambodian population, were killed. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, was trying to turn Cambodia into a classless society by forcing everyone into agricultural work, slaving away on farms in labour camps. They targeted, tortured and then eventually executed people in the following categories: intellectuals and professionals (really anyone with an education or who wore glasses), anyone with connections to the former government, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist monks and homosexuals. All of these people were eventually brought to the S-21 prison and then to The Killing Fields to be killed and buried in mass graves.

On our second day in Phnom Penh we decided to take a morning trip to Choeung Ek, the most well known Killing Field site. The site is a memorial now, marked by a Buddhist stupa filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Many of the mass graves have been excavated, but some still remain untouched. We spent about an hour at the site and then decided that we had enough time to visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum to learn some more before we had to catch our bus out of the city.


The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a former High School that was turned into Security Prison-21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge. To transform the High School, electrified barbed wire was put up to enclose all of the buldings, classrooms were converted into tiny prison and torture chambers and all the windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire.

The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved as they were left in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were driven out. Some of the most eerie rooms were the ones with black and white photographs of prisoners from floor to ceiling. As soon as a prisoner arrived they were photographed and questioned. When looking at the photographs you can see the range of emotions that were going through these peoples' minds and bodies. Some had eyes wide, frightened for what lay ahead, while others looked tough and mean, maybe trying to intimidate the interrogators.

After being photographed the prisoners were taken to their cells and shackled to the walls and floors. The rules were very strict and anyone who disobeyed were beaten. Prisoners wer tortured by various techniques until they confessed their crimes. Most confessions included imaginary stories to satisfy the interrogator and end the torture. For a while, prisoners were killed at S-21, but once the burial spaces were taken up the prisoners were then taken to The Killing Fields.

We spent a couple hours making our way through all of the rooms of the museum. We just barely missed the S-21 documentary, which would have been interesting to see. All-in-all it was a pretty intense day.

The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh

After getting our beach time and spending one more day in Saigon, we caught another early morning bus out of Vietnam and into Cambodia. To get to Cambodia we had to pass through Vietnam customs and then go through Cambodian immigration to drop off our paperwork for our travel visas. After about an hour wait our visas were ready and off we went to Phnom Penh.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we realized that upon changing countries we also changed modes of transportation. Instead of motorbike taxis we were now in the land of the tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is still powered by a motorbike, but they have a carriage attached to the back for a more comfortable ride. We found some friendly drivers and asked them to take us to a hotel. We checked into a cheap hotel and had a room with one double bed, 3 singles and even a perfect table for playing cards. What a score!

Since we did quite a bit of relaxing in Vietnam, we decided Cambodia would be the place to be tourists and do a lot of sight seeing. The first day we went for a walk around the city and also checked out the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is a complex of buildings that were built in 1866. Some modifications have been made to the buildings and others have been destroyed completely. Two of the three compounds of the Palace are open for visitors to tour, but the Khemarian compound is off limits as this is where the present King of Cambodia currently resides.

The Chan Chhaya Pavilion:

At the Throne Hall with the Silver Pagoda in the background:

A monk looking at the wall of continuous murals:

When we were finished at the Palace we took a walk down to the river bank where you could see both the Sap and the Mekong rivers. We found a really great restaurant to have a couple of beers and then found our way to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The area that we were in was very touristy with tons of nice and classy restaurants. Definitely not what we expected of Cambodia. That night we got a tuk-tuk to take us the the bar "Heart of Darkness" as we had to visit the bar named after Conrad's book. It was an ok place, but we really got a good look at the prevelence of prostitution in this country. There were many many underage girls at this bar who could only have been prostitutes. The government here is really trying to crack down on this illegal activity by putting up signs and handing out information about this growing problem.

Mui in Three

When planning this trip we all agreed that we wanted to spend some quality relaxing time at the beach. After finding out that the most popular beach, Na Trang, was pretty far from Saigon, we decided to check out the less traveled Mui Ne. After a very comfortable six hour ride on a sleeper bus we arrived at the beach town. Upon stepping out of the bus we were greeted by many motorbike taxi drivers wanting to take us anywhere we wanted to go. We started chatting to one, told him the kind of motel we wanted, and off we went... 4 motor bikes with the four of us riding on the back of each... what a great way to get taxi'd around!

Our accomodations were awesome!! Our own little cabin with air con and beach access for only $16 US a night (split between 4 people!) After dropping off our stuff we took a walk down to the beach and had our first swims in the ocean since being in Korea, and Laura's first ocean exprience ever. The water was sooooo warm and the waves were great. After the swim we took a walk down the beach, saw many nice resorts and ran into a few cows hanging out. That night we decided to go for a walk to find a nice restaurant and a place to have a few drinks. When we got back to our hotel we were greeted by the night guard who let us in through the front gates. The next morning we woke up to read the hotel rules saying that we had a 12pm curfew! Ooops!

The second day in Mui Ne we had our mid-day swim and then headed back to the hotel to get picked up for our Jeep tour to the white and red sand dunes. The weather called for rain but we were hoping for the best. After about 20 min into our ride the rain started coming down. We arrived at the white sand dune area and jumped out of the Jeep to join a handful of others under a tin roof concession stand. We all grabbed a beer and waited it out. Thirty minutes later we decided give it a go and head out on the trail. We didn't make it too far before the cold rain started to pour again and we found ourselves back under the roof pretty quickly. We called it quits on the white dunes, jumped back in the Jeep and headed for the red ones. The weather cooperated and we got a chance to take a walk around the dunes. It felt like being in the desert, the dunes were huge. Kids were even using crazy carpets to toboggan down them. What a great place!

That night we decided to observe the curfew, buy some booze and drink at the motel. We met up with a bunch of other travelers at our hotel, had dinner and played drinking games. We did have to do a late night run for more booze, waking the owners of some local convenience stores. Three people seperated, heading in different directions on the search - all came back with bottles. Mission - success. Good times had by all.

Our last day was another relaxing day before our trip back to Saigon and the continuation of our trip into Cambodia. We hopped on a late night sleeper bus to make it the 6 hours back to the city. This sleeper bus looked more luxurious than the first, but we were stuck with the four back bottom seats.... death trap!!! Luckily we were all tired, didn't think about it too much and fell asleep for the trip.