So, I thought it would make sense to explain what I've been doing the past few months mainly b/c I don't see everyone as much anymore, and if you wanted to hear the stories I'll eventually put them on the blog.
On February 9th, Alex and I took off from JFK and flew about 20hours to Bangkok. We basically just used the time in Thailand's Capitol to recoup from the flight, but we both did end up getting pretty sick (advice: don't eat Egg's Benedict in Tropical Countries). After recoverying we took a short flight to Phnom Phen in Cambodia to stay with Alex's High School Friend and his GF.
Cambodia:
This was our second time in Cambodia, and I had forgotten just how relaxed and reckless the country is. By that I mean the people there are very friendly and laid back, but the stuff they think is normal or safe definatly isn't and wouldvery illegal in any western country.
Just loading as much as possible is very common.
When we arrived they had lost my luggage, quite an ominous start, but we headed to Alex's friend Dave new apartment, 2 bedroom 2 bath 15 ft ceilings a view of a school playground, which waking up to playing students is a lot better than thousands of horns honking in Korea. It was a good start to the trip hanging out wtih people who know the area. It was great if we wanted to go visit places b/c they had tuk-tuk (mini taxi) drivers who just serviced there block (it was almost like gangs) that were very nice to us and didn't rip us off.
This is Alex's friend and girlfriend (Ill get a better picture of her later), and he is actually doing the tuk-tuk call. If he had his hands close together that would be the motor bike call, which is cheaper and a lot more fun! They also took us to the sunday night fights. There was 5 fights and 3 ended in KO's. I've been to Muy Thai in Thailand. I've been to a title fight in Atlantic City. I have to say this was the most entertaining fight I've ever been too. The beers were 50 cents, you could get right up to the ring. The only thing you had to worry about was thieves (a pretty big downside), butDavid knew how to spot them. If they weren't watching the fights you knew they were there for no good. We did have one sketchy person come sort of close to us, but Dave called him right out and he didn't stay around for long.
When were in Cambodia last summer we were on serious vacation mode and the only touristy thing we did was go to Angkor Wat, which is where a lot of Tomb Raider was shot and where trees have grown over doorways (one of the coolest places I've ever been, and if you want to go should hurry up because you can still walk all over it). So this time we made a desicsion to do all that we missed. The biggest ones were going to the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng prison. For those who don't know basically a third or a quarter of the population was murdered by Pol Pot's regime, and nearly everyone with a college or high school education was killed. Their dogma was to return to an agriculture economy. Yet they were so corrupt that they took all the rice and sold them to the Thai or Chinese for money to buy weapons that a lot of people died of starvation (the movie "The Killing Fields" with John Malcovich is a good and entertaining acount). This is a picture of the monument at the Killing fields.
I didn't take many pictures there because it was kind of erie, but that building is full of skeletons and there lots of open graves dug up. They estimated that 1.2 million people were killed at this site. I touched on the corruption from the 70's there and our friends told us that it is still prevelent. It's so bad that you pretty much just pay for your job. I think they said that if you want to be a cop it cost 2000$, an engineer 5000$, or a doctor like 8000$ (they use the US Dollar there). And the cops just pull people over at random and give them tickets (I think I saw this in every country we visited, so its not just the Cambodians, but most of Asia is very corrupt).
This is another picture I have gotten a lot of questions about:
YES, take the sign literally. You can purchase an old Rocket Launcher and shoot a cow, or you can get an AK-47 and shoot up a chicken. I've even heard rumors that if you paid enough you could shoot a person. I don't know what kind of person would want to do that, but I hope its not true.
Those are some of the more interesting antedotes and adventures we had there. It's a beautiful country and nice city with some amazing shopping in the Russian Market. After getting our tourist visas for Vietnam we took an 6 hour bus sans AC, which would be reoccuring nightmare throughout our trip.
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