Sihanoukville

so ive just found out that in china, where we currently are, blogspot is blocked, but blogger is not. therefore, i will be able to post entries, but have to go through a proxy server to view it. since this blog isnt really for me to view in the first place, the entries will go on. as always, i am about 3 weeks late in writing this entry. not to worry, though. this is the point at which we decided to slow down our travels a bit, so each entry should be long, detailed, and ultimately should give you guys a good idea of the city or region it covers.

without further ado, sihanoukville, the crown jewel of the cambodian shoreline.

in the morning after our escapades at the heart of darkness bar, we awoke quite excited to finally go to a place where there is a beach. we had heard great things about the place from j-hizzle and could not wait to see these things for ourselves. the bus from phnom penh to sihanoukville was as advertised: weak AC, tons of locals, our bags stacked in the middle aisle, and a lot of mosquitoes. at this time, we had already decided to slather 95% deet all over ourselves and risk the skin cancer.

(SIDE NOTE: deet is the cute asian way for saying 'DDT', which is a chemical that is banned in the states. i dont necessarily think that deet is bad for you in the classical sense; i mean, it dries your skin up like a motherfucker and kinda makes your face burn if you put too much on, so it cant be good for you, but we chose to believe that that would be it. most western travelers are deadly afraid of using too much of it; we decided that the rewards (namely that you wouldnt become mosquito fodder) outweighed any perceived risks. for those of you that dont know, DDT was banned in the US in the 70's in response to a book written by a woman named rachel carson called 'silent spring' -- some of you may or may not have read about it in high school. basically, the book details the struggles of the american bald eagle, the symbol of our nation, and the effect of DDT on its ability to survive. because the bald eagle is at the very top of the food chain (save for us humans, of course), any chemical that affects lower portions of the food chain, like fish or worms or whatever, is magnified thousands of times upon the animals at the top. before the ban on DDT, farmers used to spray it indiscriminately over their crops to kill pesky insects that could damage their crops. DDT works to breakdown insect exoskeletons, essentially melting bugs to death like the wicked witch of the west. when this chemical washed away, it would enter the water supply and enter the bodies of lower animals like fish, other insects, worms, etc. by the process of biomagnification, the chemical would reside at higher levels in animals like the bald eagle. the effect of DDT on bald eagles was seemingly minor, but turned out to be devastating. it caused their eggs to have thin shells, meaning that once the mothers sat on the eggs to incubate them, their weight would cause these eggs to break. as we all know, you cant make a bird with a broken egg. DDT decimated the bald eagle population in a very short period of time; conventional wisdom dictates that if the chemical had not been banned, many birds like the bald eagle would now be extinct.

by the way, this is also the reason why we are warned against eating too much salmon, as mercury runoff in our streams, rivers and oceans have fixed in many fish like salmon. because we are much higher on the food chain than fish, if we eat too much of it, we can get mercury poisoning, which isnt a pretty sight -- it basically gives you MS. so, if you are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, do not even think about eating fish. ain't biomagnification a bitch?)

so we get on the bus and take another shocking ride through the impoverished parts of cambodia, where, as i have said, there is literally nothing but almost naked people sitting in makeshift huts, doing what they can to survive the harsh weather and dust storms that plague the region. anyone who complains about their way of life in america should really go out there and see it for themselves. the ride took about 5 hours.

we arrived at the bus station for sihanoukville and immediately were inundated by tuk-tuk drivers and moto drivers asking if we had accommodations or rides to our accommodations yet. after a bit of negotiation, we agreed upon the price of $3 for 4 moto rides to serendipity beach, the backpacker beach. our guidebook sold sihanoukville as an up-and-coming backpacker retreat, where you could drink and smoke to your heart's content without shelling out big bucks. skye mentioned when we got to the beach that he thought that it would be less built up; jason and i looked at him like he was insane. there was nothing there but a bit of construction, some shitty hotels, and beachfront bars that were not much more than grass huts with some chairs.

we checked into a nicer spot (mostly due to the fact that papa skee is 58 this year) that cost $16 a night for two people. jason and i shared a room and papa skee and little skee shared the other one. unfortunately for us, our room lacked one essential quality: AC. and sihanoukville is one hot and humid place! luckily for us, our place was right at the mouth of the only street leading down to serendipity beach, so going out and coming home were a breeze for us.

we arrived just at sunset and were able to kick off our shoes and enjoy the crimson sun setting over distant islands and fishing boats the first night we got there. we met these two british guys who had spent the last 6 months building houses in phnom penh. we thought that this was pretty hardcore by any accounts. then we found out that they didnt blaze and worked for some christian missionary program and we were a bit less impressed. they had a really shitty shuttlecock that we used to kick around with some local kids. (a shuttlecock is one of those chinese, weighted things with a big feather at the top. basically, you kick it around like a hacky sack and try to keep it up. in phnom penh, we saw tons of kids playing this game and believe me, its very difficult to do. but these kids were like whizzes with the shuttlecock; i guess thats what happens when it is the only thing you have to play with.) jason played for hours with this little girl; by the end of it, they were using their hands instead of their feet. skye and i broke out the frisbee and started hucking it around the beach. most of the locals had never seen such a thing and were enamored with our skills. even the brits sucked at frisbee.

for dinner, we all walked down the beach to one of the furthest spots, a bar that advertised 'happy food', which is a code word for weed food. unbelieving, we all ordered some happy pancakes and shakes as well as some not so grubby food. papa skee and skeelow were obviously floored by the happy food and got all smiley. papa skee even kissed skeelow a couple of times. he was having the time of his life. i didnt so much feel anything, but was happy nonetheless.

later that evening, we went out to the bar that was closest to us, the 'nap house'. we found out later that the place was owned by a french-cambodian guy named ya-ya whose father, edouard owned the place next door. the official beer of cambodia is called angkor (of course) and the brewery is in sihanoukville. as a result, all of the bars have angkor draft for $1 a glass, or less. jason and i drank some brews and played pool with some maybe-hookers on a nonlevel table at the nap house for several hours. in that time, we met many travelers who had gotten 'stuck' in sihanoukville. they told us that you could stay there almost for free, party all night, do whatever you wanted, and even find a place to work, if you can speak english or french. we also met this guy named ash who told us that he was a professional international party thrower, if that makes any sense at all. he told us that the nap house was his bar and introduced us to his hot fiancee (who may or may not have even known him at all). he then told us that he had a bunch of hot chicks waiting for him at this other bar off the beach called 'utopia' and that he needed a couple of wingmen to come with him. we thought he was hilarious, so we decided to go with him to utopia.

it was at utopia that jason and i discovered that we were perhaps 2 of 4 total americans in the whole city (with skeelow and papa skee being the other two). we were treated like local celebrities and met every hot chick in the place. we also met this cool kiwi guy named corbin and some other interesting fellows, including a half-black british guy we kept calling lewis hamilton. (lew hamilton kept uttering the phrase, "im really interested in what you blokes have to tell me, but i have to warn you: im massively messed right now!" this would be a rallying cry for us for the duration of our stay in sihanoukville.

utopia was off the hook. there were tons of western backpackers all around and the beer flowed like wine. ash turned out to be patently full of shit because he started getting butthurt when we started hitting on his chicks. douchebag. we found out that they would gather a bunch of 'hot chicks' at the bar and take them out on boat cruises every friday. jason and i, as studly americans, were invited, of course. after chilling for a few hours and meeting some cool peeps, we took off for our hotel.

the next day would be a big one for us. we woke up, went to the beach, got some more happy pancakes, got full massages for $5 apiece, and basically waded around in the water with local cambodians, playing frisbee and soccer until it got dark. papa skee wandered off and did his own thing for awhile and eventually, either the happy food or the runs got the better of skeelow and he retired as well. jason and i would be ready to go all night.

we went back to the nap house, hung around, and then started making our way down the beach, hitting up each bar, meeting the owner, and getting drinks. most of these guys were just young burnouts who had discovered the area, learned that they could put up a bar on the beach for $4000, and had saved up for half a year and come out to do it. a lot of them were gritty to the max. most of the people who owned shit on that beach were either british or french. most of the travelers who were there were also of the same ilk. (british birds are not all that great, as it turns out...but im sure you all already knew that.) we met this guy named 'jonny' who was a cambodian guy from phnom penh whose friend owned one of the bars. jonny had come out to run the bar for him and basically divided his time between promoting parties at his bar, lighting bigass bonfires, spinning poi (which is that firespinning shit the hippies do at raves in our country...you know what im talking about.... jonny spun the manly staff with fire at the ends. he and his friends were amazing, by the way), and fucking drunk english bitches. quite the life. we found out later from some other skeevy brits that jonny was actually the cambodian national champion in ahn bak, which is a very brutal form of fighting similar to muai thai -- lots of shins, elbows, and striking. we heard a story about how jonny's father, who was a previous champ, had trained him to the point where you could punch him anywhere on his body, and he wouldnt even feel it. they also told us about this time when some local khmer dudes tried to rob someone at his bar and he had chased all 8 of them down the beach, caught them, and had beaten all of them down at the same time -- to the point where he had broken his wrist and had just kept on punching and punching and punching, because he was in the ahn bak zone. needless to say, we didnt know any f this stuff when we met him. jason and i just basically decided that if jonny came back to the states with us, he'd pull a ton of chicks. go figure.

jason and i ended up spending the entire night out on the beach meeting people and getting shitfaced on drinks that we bought and were bought for us by our adoring fans. (like i said, we were kinda like celebs -- the only two guys from america, and california at that.) at sunrise, we saw lewis hamilton again and tried to explain to him why american football was better than rugby. (the brits have this big hangup about the action stopping all the time in american football, and how theyre all pussies because they wear protective gear. we told them that they were fucking insane and that if they didnt wear pads, you would probably see a fatality every couple of games. we also described to them the enormity of the people who play football and how they run faster than most soccer players. we told them that they would run full speed at each other -- sometimes 30 or more yards -- and then spear each other with their helmets. this has got to be more brutal than rugby, which to us is kind of homoerotic: a bunch of dudes in short shorts rolling around in the muck with each other. also, it's fucking boring, right?) in any case, this is when lewis hamilton uttered his famous phrase -- over and over and over again.

before going to bed, we each got the 'english breakfast' at one of the bars that was owned by this belgian guy. we got eggs, toast, bacon, and tea. it was a good way to end our evening. at this point, unbelievably, papa skee made his return. it was probably 5 or 6 in the morning and we saw him posted up at the nap house, drinking a beer. we told him that he was a legend and that we were heading down to beach to find some food. he told us that he was going to post up for awhile longer -- we didnt argue with him. he was basically blacked out. much to our surprise, about 30 minutes later, here comes papa skee stumbling into the belgian guy's bar, in high spirits. he ordered himself a long island iced tea, chased it with a beer and a bratwurst croissant, and proceeded to order himself another long island before jason and i even knew what was going on. about an hour later, we decided to call it a night and asked him if he wanted to come home with us. like the legend he is, he refused and ordered himself another drink. this is when jason and i decided that we had better make sure that papa skee did not pass away on this trip.

the funny thing is, after we left and had gone to bed, papa skee moved over to one of the comfy beach chairs and passed out. when he woke up (or rather, when one of the french guys woke him up), he learned that he had been robbed by a stranger in the night. they had taken the money out of his wallet, left him like $10, left all of his cards and IDs, and had returned his wallet back into his pocket. to borrow a phrase from lew hamilton: this guy was massively messed. this would not cause much of an issue for anyone other than skeelow, who was pretty pissed about it himself. papa skee rolled with the punches and basically decided that that was the cost of having fun. i think i love papa skee now.

theres not much more to say about sihanoukville. the rest of the time is pretty much a blur. i can only recount small snippets of stories that may suit your fancy.

here's one: skeelow was basically laid up with what we were calling 'sihanouk's revenge' for almost 3 days before he decided to call it quits and went back to phnom penh early to stay in a place where they had doctors and AC. for most of his time there, he would make frequent trips from his bed to the toilet to the shower back to the toilet. there was a point at which he couldnt even walk more than 50 meters from the hotel down the beach in either direction for fear of having an accident in his boardshorts. it was hilarious. he was a trooper about it and really tried to hang out, but as we all know, when you got the runs, youre basically peeing out of your ass every 15 minutes, so it was very difficult on him, and on us.

on one of these particular days, jason and i decided to hit up this weird looking, super out of place casino that was just a little way from our hotel. i forget what it was called, something lame. we had a bet going that we would find one dollar blackjack tables inside. we were also wondering who in their right mind would be gambling in cambodia. we ended up pleasantly surprised, but a bit weirded out as well. the entire place was empty save for a couple of japanese tourist dudes and a bunch of staff and dealers that kind of just milled around like cattle. jason and i each changed $10 apiece and got to gambling. we were wrong: the lowest table was $2-$50. we were pretty close though. we played for about an hour, going up mostly, doubling down when necessary and basically cleaned up. then, they brought in the killer dealer and she proceeded to wipe us out. but it was funny: we never actually went down to zero, so by the end of an hour, i bet the last $5 i had on one had and jason did the same. we ended up breaking even and walked out of there with $10 each. sorry, sihanoukville casino. we found out later that you can get free massages and drinks while you play; funny how they didnt offer them to us while we were cleaning up...

i have one more good story that i need to get down here before i forget it. this should be inspiring to you guys.

so skeelow and papa skee had to head back to phnom penh earlier than jason and i: skeelow because of the revenge, and papa skee to catch his flight back home. that evening, jason and i had gone extremely big and had stayed up until about 9 in the morning. again, before going to bed, we had eaten english breakfasts after drinking like fishes for about 10 hours. about two hours after retiring, jason woke up and proceeded to vomit uncontrollably for about 4 straight hours. the whole time, i was asking him if he would be ok to take the bus back to phnom penh. at some point, we decided that if we did go, we would have to take the 'luxury bus' that had a bathroom on it. i went out and tried to book the last bus, but it was too late and all the spots had been filled. dejected, i returned to the room to find the door locked and jason missing. for the next 6 hours or so, i hung around with my new friends and ate and drank and made merry.

(side note: our favorite place to go eat was this place run by a french chef named lionel called 'le petit gourmand', advertised as a french brasserie. the food was pretty gourmet and the dude was hilarious. on this particular evening, he had hired a bunch of local khmer musicians and had set up a bed across the street from his place for them to sit on and play. from what i could tell, he was paying them in angkor pitchers. anyhow, his food was great and he rolled spliffs all the time while he was behind the bar. this dude was probably around 50 and very very french. hilarious.)

so i was hanging out with the french guy and who shows up but jason, looking super refreshed. we exchanged pleasantries and he told me about his ordeal: not long after i had left to book the bus and use the internet, jason had crawled out of the room, commissioned a moto driver to take him to a doctor, and had been driven about 25 minutes out of town to this chinese guy who ran a hostel and did some medicine on the side. god knows how he kept his stomach in check for the moto ride. for the next 4-5 hours, he had laid on a bed with fans on him, drinking down IVs. every couple of minutes, one of three girls would rewet a towel he had on his face and stomach to keep it cold. this process went on for the entire duration of his stay. in all, for basically saving his life, jason gave the chinese doctor $50 and the moto driver $4. he appeared to be a new man and was even eating solid food.

the next morning, we woke up and it was raining. we decided to take a little hike around the other side of the beach to check out the other bars and bungalows there. we walked for a little bit and had to seek shelter from the rain at some other bars, which sucked by the way. when we got to the end of the beach, there was this little rock outcropping that blocked our path to the next beach. out of nowhere, this teenage cambodian kid shows up and offers (though body language) to take us over the rocks. as big americans, we were having a bit of difficulty negotiating the rocks, so we agreed to follow him. he grabbed our water bottles and bags and basically walked without his hands over treacherous terrain, always looking back to make sure we were still with him. at one point, it began to rain and he guided us under this tree that the locals use to hide from the rain. at this point, we asked him what his deal was. he told us that he was 15, went to school during the week, and liked to hike around on the weekends. whatever. we asked him to take us to the next beach, souka beach. he guided us over these rocks until we reached a steep staircase that led down to the next beach. we paid him a dollar and he asked for two. all business. we paid him and thanked him and headed down.

souka beach was one weird place. for one thing, the beach was for all intents and purposes deserted. all along the beachfront was this 5 star hotel by the same name. i guess souka is a large japanese company that had bought the beach outright from the cambodians and had put up this super opulent hotel in the middle of nowhere. as we walked up, we noticed that they had a outdoor pool with a bar. jason and i tried to play it off like we were hotel patrons, but even as obvious americans, we were called out. they wanted $6 apiece from us just to use the pool. they had a huge spread of a buffet there that cost $24. this was all too much for us, so we told them to beat it. we decided to walk the grounds of this hotel to see if they had a golf course or a ping pong table. the whole way, we were confronted by hotel staff in golf carts who asked us where we were going. we told them that we were looking for the ping pong table and they kept directing us in strange, often contradictory directions. to walk the grounds from one end to the other took almost 45 minutes. they had a well-maintained garden and a huge dragon statue. these were also very out of place, to say the least.

i am unhappy to report that we did not find a golf course or a ping pong table, but it was not for lack of effort. we got to the end of the beach and made the decision to push on a bit further towards a small fishing village in the distance. we decided that because anything goes in cambodia, we could perhaps ask one of the local fishermen to take us out on his boat to do some fishing. when we got to the village, we were shocked and appalled at our surroundings. all around there was garbage: in the water, on the sand, in the huts, everywhere. there were also chickens and ducks that roamed around freely like they were pets or something. clearly, whenever they needed to eat one of them, some person would simply go outside of their huts to the water, grab whichever bird they wanted, and killed it right there. we were a bit wary of bird flu. i dont know if you guys have seen that ad that they show late at night with that bearded white guy in a cambodian village... i think its the one dollar a day for one child thing. "an mei is a 5 year old girl who lives in this tiny fishing village in cambodia. all she wants is to go to school and learn, but she cant because there isnt any money. for just a dollar a day, you can make an mei's dreams come true. we can make a difference, one child at a time." this place looked EXACTLY like that.

all of the fishing boats were pretty much rickety old canoes that had been beaten down by the ocean. they were no more than 20 feet long and had a single outboard motor to guide them. we did not think that anyone here would be able to speak english and we almost gave up. just as we were turning around, the owner of the local restaurant (if you can call it that) came out and started talking to us in pretty good broken english. we asked him to consult with one of the fishermen who was going out to see if he would take us; they spoke and the fishermen quickly agreed to take us for $25. jason and i saw this as an opportunity to give money directly to the people, and god how these particular people needed it. we asked if the restaurant dude would come with us to translate and to cook the fish for us on the boat. he quickly agreed and scurried back into his hut to get a stove, a pot, some dishes, spoons, and sauces. he also sold us some ramen noodle packets, which, by the way, is basically the only thing these people eat on a regular basis. after this, we waded out to the fisherman's boat and we were off.

it was around dusk when we headed out and jason and i were worried about catching malaria after being eaten by mosquitoes on the water. to our surprise, there were no mosquitoes and the water was extremely still. the moon was out in full force and we had a peaceful, almost cathartic ride out to this special spot where the fisherman knew there would be fish. we dropped anchor and went to fishing. the operation was so simplistic that im sure they were doing to same thing a thousand years ago. instead of rods and reels, they had a wooden spool think with fishline wrapped around it. the hooks were all handmade from junk and the sinkers were old padlocks and pieces of metal. it took them awhile to set everything up, but we caught a lot of fish initially. the first one i got, i couldnt even reel in because, how the hell are you supposed to reel in a 3 foot fish with your hands? after we figured the operation out, we both caught some smaller fish and the restaurant dude and the fisherman killed and cleaned them right in front of us. the kicker to the whole thing was when, after the sun had gone down, the fisherman lit up this huge oil lantern and fastened it to the edge of our boat. the restauranteur told us that this would be to attract squid. apparently, they are drawn magnetically to bright lights, much like moths. as some points, the fisherman would take out this big net and literally pluck squid out of the water. he even got a pretty big one. everything we caught went into this big pot of soup and they grilled the fish over an open flame and handed the food back to us on plates, with a little fish dipping sauce. we ate to our hearts' content and gave the rest to the fisherman and the restaurant guy; they refused at first, but after we insisted, they ate voraciously.

we could have done this for a couple more hours, but the sky turned black and we were told a storm would be blowing in. they didnt want to take a chance with our lives, and we thanked them for it. we had agreed that they would drop us off at serendipity beach after we were done an on the ride back, we saw lightning in the distance over the ocean. it was pretty surreal. finally, we saw the bright lights of serendipity beach.

on our journey back, the restaurant guy told us of his sad story. he said that everyone in that shitty village had once lived on souka beach and once the japanese company had bought it, they were forced to clear out. now, they dont even let regular khmers walk on the beach at all, let alone hawk things or offer services. he said the hotel cost over $1000 a night to stay at and often, it would be full. (jason and i thought that this little part was bullshit because we barely saw a soul on our walk of the grounds.....but who knows, maybe people do pay over $1000 a night to stay at a 5 star hotel in the middle of a poverty wasteland. i'd rather go to hawaii or something, but who knows?) he told us that another japanese company had bought one of the small islands off of the more built up beach, victory beach, and was building a bridge from the beach to the island, with each room costing well over $2000 a night. all of these things, he said, were good because it meant that the locals could make more money. i wasnt so sure about this. we knew the beach on the other side of serendipity was owned by the russian mafia and that in order to get anything done in cambodia, you have to bribe the local police and the military. if you are a foreigner, they have to right to bulldoze your place at any time, without recourse. and now, cambodia was going corporate. if you guys want to live for cheap and have your own bar, this is the place for you, by the way.

we pulled up in our rickety fishing boat right in front of the nap house. we gave them $30 total and thanked them profusely. that amount of money could probably feed the entire village for a month. they told us that if we had any friends who wanted to do the same thing, theyd be happy to oblige us again. we told them that we would ask around. as we got out of the boat, all of the other travelers and backpackers were a bit amazed at our story. unfortunately, we didnt find them any more business.

one more point: the kids in cambodia are so intelligent and savvy and wise, you would not believe their ages. i spent a good 3 hours rapping with this local kid who sold bracelets and stuff on the beach. i told him that i didnt want to same shit everyone else had; he told me that i was in luck because he knew how to make bracelets himself. for the next 3 hours, he and his little buddy made me a cambo flag bracelet, two sweet bead geckos, a friendship bracelet, and another sweet, unique bracelet. during this time, the kid told me all about cambodia and answered a lot of questions i had about it. he pretty much spoke the best english of anyone i had met in cambodia to that point, save maybe for our friend joe yan the tuk-tuk driver. all these kids want to do is go to school and make better lives for themselves; that's it. and their government is corrupt and prone to infighting and civil unrest. the people are kept down and are given essentially no rights. i also learned all that stuff about the 'taxi girls' and voting from him. i wish i could have adopted him myself and taken him home with me. we parted with me telling him to go home, tear apart all of his shitty bracelets that he was selling for 50 cents apiece and to make those sweet cambo bracelets and geckos instead. he could sell them for 3 bucks apiece, if he wanted to. i told him that this would be the best way for him to stand out and make more money. he agreed with me wholeheartedly and i gave him $10 for his troubles. man, i hope he turns out ok.

and....we're done! thats pretty much all ive got to say about sihanoukville. it claimed skeelow early on and jason did a yeoman-like job of avoiding another pitfall. he rallied like a champ and ive got to commend him on that. i thought that he was going to die -- seriously. sihanoukville ended up being one of our favorite places on our journey. it taught us a lot about cambodia, the people, their spirit, and ourselves. for that, sihanoukville will always hold a special place in my heart.

more phnom penh in the next entry. (free tibet)

Phmon Penh (Day 2)

ok guys, this one really is going to be short and sweet. the internet cafe im at is a rip and i dont much feel like writing...but duty calls.

the next day after we partied at heart of darkness, we woke up around noon. we had agreed to make joe our own personal tuk-tuk driver for the duration of our stay in phnom penh. there were two things on our agenda for this day: visit the killing fields and shop at the russian market.

that morning, joe took kristen and kitty-corner to the airport so they could fly to phuket or crabbe or some other thai island. (it was kitty-corner's birthday that month and they had agreed to spend a month in the islands as a tribute...pretty precious, right?) we would find out that this is the route most backpackers take: take the bus from bangkok to siem reap, see angkor wat, and bounce to phnom penh for a day or two before flying the fuck out of there. this is probably why most travelers dont give cambodia its just due.

we woke up, got some stellar breakfast at the okay guesthouse while chatting it up with some other travelers. (at this point, we were still pretty much the only americans around, which was cool.) as we emerged into the hot afternoon, joe zoomed up on his tuk-tuk, fresh from taking the canadian girls to the airport, and screamed, "i'm here!" i swear, it was out of a movie or something. so me, skeelow, jason, papa skee, and some japanese chick that papa skee picked up that morning while eating breakfast at the guesthouse headed out to the killing fields.

at this point, we really didnt know what to expect; all we knew of the killing fields is what the lonely planet had told us (which wasnt much) and some hearsay from the canadians (who were overly emotional and a bit unreliable at that). what we would see would be far beyond what we were imagining.

now some history: pol pot and the khmer rouge came into power in 1976. at this time, the country was in ruin. previously, it had been a monarchy, with a king: king sihanouk. as the country grew more destabilized by the war in vietnam and fighting among warlords within the country itself, king sihanouk fled to china, leaving a huge power vacuum. this was immediately filled by the khmer rouge, which was a government backed by the maoists in china (and some say king sihanouk himself.) without missing a beat, the party instituted a program of slaughter that spared almost no one. if you were an intellectual in any way, you, along with every member of your family, was arrested, sent to torture camps, and eventually executed in the most painful and dehumanizing ways. what made this genocide so despicable was that it was cambodians killing cambodians. often, the young people who were committing these crimes were so swept up in communist fervor that they would turn their own parents or family members in, knowing full well that they would not survive the ordeal. there are stories of children killing their own parents. this went on for almost 4 years. as i said before, the international community stood aside and did nothing, pretending not to see. women and children were likewise tortured and murdered for doing nothing other than being associated with an accused person. by the end of the genocide, the khmer rouge was killing its own party members. the paranoia spread like a disease and permeated though the most basic parts of khmer society. no one trusted anyone else. it was very much "join us or be killed" and those who did not readily offer their services to the khmer rouge were executed like stray dogs, along with everyone they held dear.

so joe takes us about 15 km out of town to a place that looked pretty much like any other place in cambodia. it was barren and bereft of any noticeable buildings or architecture; the actual killing fields were nothing more than a couple of wooden shacks with steel roofs and a large, opulent pagoda-thing. as we drew closer, we could hear somber khmer music playing softly. it costs $2 to go through the gates and there really isnt that much to see. however, what you do see would shock even the most hardened person.

(side note: we found out that the killing fields and S-21, the prison where the accused were tortured and beaten before being executed, had been sold to the japanese government. that means that like angkor wat, when you go in to see these places, your $2 goes directly to a foreign government and not to cambodia. think about how sad that is for a minute....apparently, the cambodian people were outraged, but thats what you get with a corrupt government...
after the cambodians were liberated by the NVA in 1980, the country was not recognized by the united nations until 1991. in fact, the khmer rouge was the officially recognized government of cambodia for that entire time, even though they had been driven into the northern mountains. from 1980 to 1998, the country was embroiled in a vicious civil war that not only killed millions, but caused millions to starve to death. again, the international community stood aside and pretended that it wasnt happening. because the UN would not recognize the new government of cambodia, the country basically did not exist. no aid or relief or troops or anything was allowed in and no person was allowed out of the country. basically, if you are a cambodian who is alive today, you can consider yourself lucky to be alive.....if you can call it lucky to be cambodian at all, that is.)


inside that great pagoda, there are over 7,000 human skulls piled on top of each other. each one represents a person who was brutally murdered at the killing fields. in all, over 18,000 people were executed there, including many women and children. the skulls are placed haphazardly over perhaps 10 different levels. when you walk in, you are struck by just how many skulls 7,000 really is. each person was someone's mother, father, or child. some of the skulls were badly disfigured, as evidence of the horrible deaths these people suffered. underneath it all, there are great piles of clothes, seemingly freshly dug up from the mass graves that line the area. there is a sign that says that the clothes had been cleaned with detergents, but otherwise were left as the were. what strikes you most about the whole scene is the sheer number of people who were unearthed there.

as you walk around the grounds, there are big pits in the ground with signs marking the number of bodies found in each grave. each sign also details the kind of person who was buried in each grave. one of the graves held over 100 bodies of naked women; another had over 200 children in it. next to this particular grave, there was a pretty nondescript tree that had a sign on it reading "beating tree". this is where children were bound, beaten with sticks, and murdered. their bodies were tossed into the grave just next to it.

i overheard one of the guides telling a tour group about the method of the executions. he said that most of the people were forced to kneel over the pits and a thick piece of bamboo was put under their necks. the executioner would then proceed to bludgeon the backs of their necks until they fell into the pits. those who survived the initial beatings had their throats slit at the bottom of the pit; those who ran were shot in the back. there was no escape.

the most chilling thing about the mass graves was how immediate everything seemed. every time it rains, more bone fragments and pieces of clothing are unearthed. as i walked around, i could see these things for myself: teeth, flannel shirts, daisy-print dresses. they had displays of shattered bones that they had unearthed to show the brutality of the torture. in all, only about half of the mass graves had been unearthed. the rest were left alone.

all around, there are little cambodian kids begging for money. the scene is surreal. these kids are pros, and they all speak pretty damn good english. they ask you where you are from and when you tell them, they roll off whatever they know about your country. it's almost impossible not to give them something. in my mind, they earned it.

ok, enough about the killing fields. we were going to go the S-21 also, but papa skee vetoed that idea. we decided to do something more cheery so we had joe take us to the russian market, which is this big marketplace in this huge warehouse where you can find literally anything. there are pirated goods galore: north face bags, dvds, watches, t-shirts.....everything. they had all of that thailand souvenir shit: elephant pouches, carved figurines, jewelery, etc. we shopped til we dropped and got gifts everyone we knew. (if you're still reading this, you may be in line for a sweet, authentic, handmade cambodian souvenir....maybe.)

jason and i were intent on returning and buying a whole bunch of stuff to ship back home. the market closed at 5, so we decided to return home and shower.

that night, we had joe take us back to the heart of darkness bar. after this, the night gets hazy. jason and i lit it up against a bunch of khmer guys and girls on the pool table while papa skee worked the back of the room. we drank angkor beer and vodka-red bulls all night. at some point in the evening, skeelow got to talking with one of the hot cambodian ladies that was there. her friend told her that she thought "his korean friend", meaning me, was cute. i completely blew them off, but they were insistent and bought us several expensive drinks. by the end of the night, we were wasted. my girl kept trying to make out with me on the dance floor, but i was having none of it. finally, as we were ready to head home, these girls forced themselves onto joe's tuk-tuk and came back with us. (skeelow's chick bounced, so ladies, dont fret on that...) papa skee had two women gunning for his affection.

as we headed back to okay guesthouse, we asked joe if he trusted these women. he flatly told us that if they didnt have ID or a passport, they were probably whores and should not be trusted. we thanked him profusely and sent them away. my girl was having a rough time of it, but im sure she got over it. in the process of telling them to leave, she slapped the shit out of skeelow, which prompted me to tell her to beat it. all in all, it was an interesting end to our first foray into phnom penh. we would leave the next morning for sihanoukville.

i guess this entry did turn out to be quite lengthy. i hope you guys enjoyed it as i pretty much just hammered it out. i promise that the next entry on sihanoukville will be much more robust and entertaining. until next time.

Phnom Penh (Day 1)

a couple of notes: it seems that i made a few factual errors in my little history lesson on cambodia. first of all, angkor wat is not on the historians' ' wonders of the ancient world' list, but i still contend that it should be. the second thing is that it was the north vietnamese army, the NVA, who liberated the cambodian people, not the viet cong. i could write more about this, but if you care, you'd be better served reading elliott's comment on the previous post. he sums it up well.

i am going to bang through a couple of entries in the next few days. i am woefully behind on this blog, but the purpose of this is not to keep it updated to the minute, but rather to give you guys an idea of our experiences throughout our journey, and hopefully to inspire some of you to come out here and do the same things yourselves. believe me, there is a lot that will not be included in this blog that is mighty interesting, but you will have to get it in person from skeelow or myself when we get back.

we left off in siem reap. papa skee and i had decided to head to the ville after phnom penh and scrap our plans for heading south to the islands. we took a bus in the morning from siem reap to phnom penh. the trip lasted for about 5 hours, but wasn't nearly as hellish as our previous bus ride. the trip was uneventful; i slept for most of the way. on the bus, we got to know this guy named jason, from LA. he would be a major player in our next two weeks of travel. more on jason later.

we arrived in phnom penh with very few expectations; the only thing we had heard about the place was that it would be like bangkok in the 50's. from what we had seen of cambodia, this was not so hard to believe. on our way into the city, we witnessed more shocking poverty. most of the shacks by the river were literally nailed together and the rooves were simple sheets of metal, hammered down. god knows where these people went to the bathroom, or washed, or found food, for that matter. however, we were impressed that the streets were paved the whole way from siem reap to phnom penh. the lonely planet called the road "an airport runway", and claimed that the journey would be a breeze. this was hardly the case, but as we have found out, lonely planet is not the most reliable source when you get to third world countries.

phnom penh is a beautiful city. there are streetlights everywhere and the city hugs the mekong. all around the river, there are bars and guesthouses. there is also a huge wat (buddhist temple) in the center of the city where they keep elephants for the tourists to pet and ride and take pictures of. we decided to head over to this guesthouse called "number 9" (next to number 10 and number 11) that jason had heard was good. actually, the book told us that it was nice. when we got there, the place was all booked up and the rooms were supershitty. there were holes in the walls and mosquitoes galore. we decided right then and there that we should not stay by the river; it would be a very good decision.

almost at random, we picked another place in the lonely planet called "okay guesthouse" which was a ways away from the river. at this point, we were pretty desperate. the night was coming on and we hadnt found our accommodations yet. the last thing we wanted to do was to wander around the city with our bags; that would be like putting a big sign on your forehead saying "rob me."

okay guesthouse was more than ok. actually, it was probably the nicest place we could have stayed in cambodia. the way it works there is that you can go and get anything out of the fridge -- beer, water, coke -- and order anything on the menu, as long as you recorded it in this little log book with your room number on it. how's that for the honor system? we checked into rooms that had nice, personal bathrooms and AC. cambodia is hot and humid as fuck and the AC was a top priority for us.

luckily for us, our rooms were right next to these two blonde canadian chicks from saskatoon, saskachuan. (i am actually pretty unsure of the spelling here; the only thing i know about saskatoon is that we read a book about owls and owlets in 4th grade that was based in that city -- thats it. i asked the canadians about this book and whether they had an inordinate number of barn owls in their city. they looked at me like i was crazy.) one of the girls had never been outside of canada in her life. the other girl had traveled through thailand before with her boyfriend at 19 (whoop de doo). the second girl was hotter, in case you were wondering.

they told us that they would be heading out with their tuk-tuk driver to a bar called "heart of darkness". we had seen it in the book, so it was probably legit. they said that they had had one of the best days of their lives with joe, the tuk-tuk driver. he had taken them to an orphanage where they had played with HIV-infected orphans for several hours. we were pretty impressed at how hardcore these girls were. they told us that they had a flight to leave the next morning for the thai islands. we were quite disappointed.

the girls invited skye, jason, and i to come and meet them at the bar. without another clue of what to do, we agreed to go with them. this is where we met joe.

heart of darkness was pretty much what we expected: overpriced (yet still wildly affordable) drinks, tons of white travellers, and a good number of hookers.

(side note: i guess this is as good a time as any to tell you a little bit about cambodian hookers. we learned that it is very bad in their society to show off their bodies in any way. their television and media is censored by the government and it is a mandate that cambodians do not wear sexy clothes. the consequences are severe. however, being a high-class whore is far and away the most lucrative job you can get as a cambodian woman. they can charge upwards of 20 dollars for the night; this is in a place where the average waitress in a restaurant makes 60 dollars a month, working everyday with no breaks or holidays. you do the math.

another thing we would learn later that emphasized this point to us was that cambodians, regular cambodians that is, wear all of their clothes when they go swimming in the ocean. im not talking about the fat kid at the pool who doesnt want everyone to make fun of his man-tits when he goes off the high dive -- this was different. they wear EVERYTHING in the water -- the only thing they do is roll up their pants a little. it is a very poor move in cambodian society to decide to be a prostitute, and these women (some of which are SMOKING HOT, by the way) are pariahs in society. everyone knows who they are because they are the only girls dressed in western whore-wear -- short skirts, halter tops, high heels, etc. so, if you are in cambodia, and you see a chick wearing anything but pajama bottoms or maybe jeans, she is a whore -- 100 percent. i also learned later that they call these women "taxi girls". i'm sure you can figure out the reference.)

where were we? oh yes, the heart of darkness. what a name. we ended up hanging out with the canadian chicks and joe, their tuk-tuk driver. at some point in the evening, we asked him if it was easy to find weed in phnom penh. the shit we had seen in siem reap was the worst stuff i had ever seen in my life -- all seeds and stems; no sticky-icky-icky. he seemed overjoyed that we wanted to smoke, but he was pretty faded because the second canadian -- lets call her kristen, to be safe -- kept buying him drinks. she was adament that he not pay a single riel for anything out there. i found this to be pretty noble and i have to admit that it made me a bit more attracted to her. she told us that he was no longer just a normal tuk-tuk driver to them; he had entered the "friend zone". this was also pretty impressive to us.

after we got sloshed at the bar on seemingly endless angkor drafts and red bull-vodkas, we headed back towards the guesthouse with the canadian girls and a drunk as a skunk joe as our driver. joe made a pitstop in a dark alley so we could pick up some weed. this was pretty sketchy, to say the least. before we knew it, there were about 10 dudes buzzing around us on motorcycles, offering us every type of drug known to man. and they would just hand the stuff into the tuk-tuk, like it was free candy or something. i saw crystal meth, heroin, opium, shitty weed, really shitty looking E, and god knows what else. at this point, we told joe to book it and he complied, until we got to a dead end and he had to swing the tuk-tuk around. because he was plastered, he pitched the bike a couple of times, but we finally go going. one of the dudes chased us down on his motorcycle and we decided to spend the 5 bucks to get him out of our hair.

joe told us that there really werent any laws against smoking weed in public, but he said that it would be much more chill if we went to a traditional khmer restaurant, which was basically just a setup on the street, so we could get some beer and roll some spliffs. joe is a spliff rolling machine, by the way. now we were talking! we went to this place where they served pretty delicious steak and we got this big pot of soup, where you put your own veggies and meat in -- kinda like a hot pot deal. the food was delicious and, as is with cambodian tradition, we had a chick continually come around to refill our beer glasses with beer and ice cubes.

(side note: why dont we put ice in beer at home? what could possibly be bad about this? i want to lead a movement to introduce ice cubes into beer. it keeps the beer ice-cold and doesnt really affect the taste of the beer at all. try it; i promise you'll like it.)

at this point, we found out some funny stuff about the canadians. jason and i were discussing the aforementioned chengus (the chinese-australian). jason had hung out with chengus and had shared a room with him in siem reap. they had gone to angkor wat together. it turns out that chengus was kind of a weird bird. he would never speak unless spoken to, and would only offer single sentence answers to any question. the thing that tripped jason out the most about him was a simple thing: whenever they would sit down to eat together, say at a 4-top at a restaurant, chengus would always sit kitty-corner to him. so, imagine you are hanging out with someone, and you go to denny's or chili's or something, and you are sat in a booth. where would you sit? i contend that in america, if you are with a girl or on a date or something, you sit right next to her. if you are just friends, you sit across from each other -- but never kitty-corner. skye and i decided that this was very strange.

the first canadian girl, lets call her suzie, really went off on us then. she said that if she were at a restaurant with even a good friend, she would always sit kitty-corner. (actually, lets call her kitty-corner). this was a shocking development for us. we asked joe what khmers do, and he agreed that sitting across from the other person was the proper thing to do. but this chick was adament that unless she were seriously dating the other person, even sitting across from him or her was out of the question. this was just too much to handle; kristen neither confirmed nor denied that this was a normal canadian custom. i had always thought that canadians were socially less uptight than we were; now, im not so sure. what do you guys think?

so after our meal, we had joe take us back to the okay guesthouse. at this point, we decided that joe would be our own personal driver for the duration of our stay. he spoke the best english of any human being we had met in cambodia and we was down to party with us. he kept giving us hugs in the bar, so we knew that he wasnt shy. we were pretty sure that he wasnt shady. this would also turn out to be a good decision for us. we agreed that after he took kristen and kitty-corner to the airport for their flight, we would meet him in front of okay guesthouse so we could do our obligitory duty to see the killing fields. we were not too excited to do this, but we knew that we had to.

we went back up to our rooms and kristen and kitty-corner fed us pringles that they had found at 7-11. apparently, they had been craving pringles for days and hadnt been able to find them. after this, we bid them adieu and went to bed. this would be the end of our first day in phnom penh. skeelow and i retired to the honeymoon suite and slept on sheets that had little hearts on them. classy to the max.

im pretty over writing right now. mosquitoes are biting my feet and i have to go get some dinner. i will finish this entry up later. i have to drop some more history on you and give the killing fields their proper time and respect. adios.

Siem Reap -- Part II (Angkor Wat)

hey everyone, sorry for the lag in the posts.... ive been waiting for skeelow to sack up and write an entry or two, but i realize now what a pipedream that really is. so, from this point on, this is my travel blog; there are many like it, but this one is mine.

where did we leave off? the first night in siem reap, right?

so the next morning after our harrowing journey, we were none too pleased to be in the kingdom of cambodia. from what we could tell, the country was full of scam artists and prostitutes. the night before, there had been several tuk-tuk drivers clamoring for our american money. we didnt know this at the time, but the way it works in cambodia when you hire a driver is that he stays with you for the whole day, no matter what. of course, you can pay a guy a dollar to take you pretty much anywhere, and the drivers are very good at haggling, but in the end, a dollar per roundtrip journey is about the going rate for anything. if the dude waits for like 4 hours for you to shop or get a massage or whatever, you might toss him another buck or two.

(side note: i'm just now realizing that you guys may not know what a tuk-tuk is. a tuk-tuk is an open air carriage type thing that is towed behind a motorcycle. they come in basically two flavors: big tuk-tuks, which seat upwards of 6 people, and small tuk-tuks, which can handle about 4 people (uncomfortably). the ones in thailand and pretty posh: enclosed and clean, basically. the ones in cambodia and a bit more ghetto. each tuk-tuk driver buys his tuk-tuk and is responsible for gasoline and maintenance. we found out from our friend joe, the tuk-tuk driver in phnom penh, that you can buy a small tuk-tuk for about $400 and a big one for about $700. these prices include the moto as well. there is no better way to travel the streets than in your own personal tuk-tuk. you can tell the driver to go anywhere you want to go, and stop wherever you want. you can also ask him for more abstract things, like "take us to the best local spot around" or "roll us a spliff", and those requests are usually fulfilled, and then some. more on this when we get to phnom penh.)

so this dude named roza gave us a ride from the one guesthouse where the bus dropped us off to the one we eventually decided to stay at. he then wanted to know when we were going to wake up because he wanted to be the guy to take us to see the magnificent temples of angkor wat. we basically told him to beat it.

the next morning, after sleeping until about noon, who do we see having a beer with papa skee? none other than our friend roza parks. he had just come by and had somehow convinced papa skee that we had asked him to take us around for the day. by the time we got downstairs, we had no choice but to go with him. i mean, papa skee had already invested several beers into him, and we figured that he was as good a driver as any we would find off the street.

after a solid breakfast (the khmers do a damn good western breakfast, by the way), we headed off in roza's tuk-tuk to angkor wat.

a little about angkor wat: this place is the crown jewel of khmer culture. it is basically the only thing they have to hold onto and be proud of. it was built in the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries under the rule of a stable buddhist regime that dominated the region in that time. successive kings added and altered the carvings and monuments throughout the site to their own whimsy. as a result, there are both buddhist and hindu symbols that exist together in the temple.

angkor wat is among the seven ancient wonders of the world and, along with the pyramids in egypt, are among the only ones that still exist today. in the late 1970's the temples fell into ruin when, after an unsuccessful campaign in vietnam, the united states pursued the viet cong into the neighboring regions of laos and cambodia, carpetbombed indiscriminately, and subsequently pulled out without a thought to the safety of the citizens. as a result, both countries remain on
the united nations' least developed country list and should be there for a long time, regardless of what happens.

what's sad about the whole thing is that when america pulled out of vietnam in 1975, they left a trail of ruin in that country and the neighboring states. this instability allowed warlords and faux maoists to run amok. this is how the khmer rouge rose to power. pol pot and his cronies, backed by the maoists in china, instituted a systematic "cleansing" of the khmer people similar to the cultural revolution that occured in china just a decade before. in china, intellectuals and high-ranking officials were rounded up by fervent young people, bitten by the bug of communism, and sent to labor camps where they were "reeducated" into becoming good comrades. the mission of all of this was to create a generation of citizens who resembled thoughtless peasants, proletariat that could not resist the will of the government.

mao failed in his attempt to reeducate the chinese people, but this did not stop him from backing a similar campaign in cambodia. what the khmer rouge did to control the masses was to lie to them: they told them that the americans were done with vietnam and were headed to cambodia. they told the citizens to flee the cities into the mountains. those who would not go were executed. by the time the cambodian people figured out that they had been lied to, it was too late. the government was already committing genocide. women, children and the elderly were not spared. the executions were the most brutal imaginable. to save bullets, oftentimes, they would bludgeon the victims to death. by the end of this horrific 4 year period, the khmer rouge was indiscriminately killing people who spoke a foreign language, wore glasses, could read and write, and anyone who opposed their actions. the citizens were rounded up into torture camps, similar to what the nazis did in Auschwitz and Dachau. they tortured everyone and then they executed them. most of the victims were buried in mass graves. in this time, symbols of khmer culture, angkor wat being the most famous, were desecrated and even destroyed.

the international community, including the US, the UN, and every other governing body stood by and watched the slaughter, doing nothing. it was the viet cong, our sworn enemies, that finally overthrew the khmer rouge and liberated the cambodian people. the great irony of angkor wat is that the vietnamese forced the cambodians to lease the property to them for 90 years in payment for their rescue. so now, when you go to angkor wat and pay your $20, that money goes directly to the vietnamese. this will be the case until 2070.

i know that was a lot to digest, but i thought that it would be important for you all to know this information as we delve further into cambodia. it is essential to understanding the psyche of the people in the country today. i have more history to drop on you, but i will save it for a more relevant topic -- probably the killing fields entry when we move onto phnom penh.

and now, angkor wat. really, if you guys dont know what the temples look like, please look them up. we really dont have the ability to post any photos because i lost my camera and skeelow is averse to taking pictures. as a result, this will be a wall of text. i will try to be as descriptive as possible.

when you get to angkor wat, you can tell that they really jazzed it up in recent years for international tourists. all around the entrance, there are adorable little kids who speak perfect english who try to sell you bracelets and books and all sorts of other shit you dont need. but these kids are pros; they have mastered the art of haggling. almost inevitably, you buy something from them.....unless you're skeelow. papa skee was really taken by these kids. their spirit was uplifting to us and even though they were probably orphans who lived in open-air huts, like most of the cambodian people, they were laughing and playing, just like normal american kids.

after clearing this minor obstacle, we were free to wander among the magnificent temples. as you walk in, there is a river with an ancient bridge over it that you have to cross to get to the main ruins. off in the distance, you see the main angkor wat temple. it looks just like it does in the pictures: four equal spires surrounding a much larger, central spire. if you look at the cambodian flag, you can see a cartoony version of the temple directly in the center, in white.

as you approach the larger temple, you begin to make out the intricate carvings that adorn the entire facade of the building. the whole temple is carved out of this soft sandstone and the carvings are of great skill and precision. it is almost unbelievable that these carvings and even the temples themselves have been standing as is for nearly a millennium.

most of the carvings are of hindu or buddhist gods. some of them depict the great angkor kings, riding war elephants, leading their people to victory. there are statues of buddha throughout the site. visitors are expected to pay their respects to these statues by lighting up some incense, bowing their heads 3 times, and donating a little bit of money to the temple. it's really a beautiful experience and it makes you realize just how proud the culture is. there are khmer people that make great pilgrimages to angkor wat. some of these people are very old and very poor. there are also buddhist monks in their traditional orange saris all around. the monks are extremely peaceful and seem to be very at peace with themselves, if that makes any sense. they walk at their own pace, pray at their own pace, and basically live their lives as buddha would. it's truly amazing to watch them. they are like a little oasis of good among a sea of evil: they take in orphans and teach them english (this is why those little kids were so good at haggling, by the way). without the monks, cambodia would be a very different place.

after taking numerous pictures and soaking in to majesty of the whole place, we ventured out beyond the main temple. there was this path that ran along a wooded area that was filled with friendly monkeys. this was trippy: the monkeys would rummage for food together in the forest and you could see and hear them moving among the leaves. great droves of them ran right by us without even noticing us. as we moved on, we got to this run down temple with a small buddha inside. by this point, we were the only people around. as we went in, the monkeys followed us. they climbed all over the temple walls and seemed to be extremely fascinated with the buddha statue. it was here that we had several close encounters with the simian kind. basically, we had to defer to the monkeys because some of them seemed to be offering to scratch our eyes out. again, this was a great photo op for us.

after we were done seeing the main temple, roza took us to two other ones before we decided to call it a day. one of them was called bayon temple. it was shaped completely differently from angkor wat, but it was no less cool. it is known as the temple of 1000 faces, i think. all along the spires, there were giant, distinct faces of great buddhist figures. it kind of reminded me of those big figurines that they have on easter island, except that these ones were bigger and built right into the temple walls. there were a lot of japanese tourists here.

the second place we went to was this aztec-style pyramid thing that was much smaller than the other temples. what was cool about this one was that there was a sign that read, 'climb at your own risk', which basically, for skeelow and i, was an invitation to climb to the top. the stairs were super-steep. we had to use our hands and basically free climb to the top. halfway up, i looked down and decided that if i fell, i would probably die. no sweat; we made it to the top and took some photos. below, papa skee was being swarmed by kids. god knows how much shit he bought. at the top of this temple, there was a little place to pray with incense and a lighter. what was cool about it was that we could tell that not a lot of people had made the long climb to the top, as we had. we lit us some incense, did our little routine, drank some beer that we toted up with us, and called it a day.

after the temples, roza took us to a traditional khmer barbeque spot. we drank pitchers of tiger beer and ate some damn good steak (and tripe, which i made skeelow eat, by the way ... told him it tasted good and that i would tell him what i was after he had tried it... needless to say, it kinda tastes like crap and skeelow was none too pleased after he found out what it was. for those of you who dont know, tripe is a fancy shmancy way to say "cow intestines".) roza told us that he was from a poor village near the thai border and that he sent all of his money home to his family so they could eat. this made us feel like a bunch of assholes for telling him to beat it the night before.

roza told us that he knew about a sweet spot for us to go to party. we decided to get traditional khmer massages first. he took us to several spots that we super shady until we got to this one spot with this german guy sitting outside of it. he said that it was the bomb, so we decided to go in.

(mini side note: the way it works in cambodia and most of southeast asia is when you ask your driver to take you somewhere, he takes you to his buddy's spot where he gets a cut of the action. oftentimes, these places are sketchy. you need to be assertive to protect yourself.)

the massage was interesting. as snooty americans, we refused to be massaged in the same room with each other. in retrospect, this was stupid. i mean, who the fuck cares, right? but i guess some of us were harboring thoughts of extra perks after the massage. i'll leave the rest to your imagination.

the first thing they do when you sit down is give you some tea. the next thing that happens is that the girl breaks out a wash basin and washes your feet with soap. after this, you are led into a different room where the masseuse is. mine was an old khmer woman who didnt speak a lick of english. im assuming skeelow and papa skee had better looking masseuses, but i cant be sure. the massage was interesting. a lot of knees and cracking. they work each limb thoroughly but seem to neglect the back and neck, which is weird. they also dont really use a lot of oil. we were asked to strip down to our chonies and there were no shenanigans afterwards.

after our massages, we headed to roza's bar. it turned out to be exactly what we were not looking for: a strip club full of cambodian hookers and nasty white expats. needless to say, it was a bit out of place in a country where there is literally nothing -- not farms, not rubble, nothing -- outside of the cities. this time, we told roza to beat it for real and had him take us to the main drag by the river. we paid him $15 and sent him along on his merry way. he seemed to be a bit disappointed, but we had had enough by this point and just wanted to chill and have a beer.

the bar district in siem reap was pretty western and developed. there were white people everywhere. this one bar had perhaps the worst cover band that ive ever seen in my life bleeting out tracy chapman covers. it seemed that anyone was allowed to go up and take the mic. papa skee sat and had some beers while skeelow hunted for cheaper drinks and the local 24-7 (a 7-11 rip). he ended up buying a disgusting pint of thai whiskey for about $2 and actually drank some of it out of a glass at the bar before abandoning the bottle behind the tire of a car. (when we went back to get it so we could give it to our tuk-tuk driver, it was gone.)

it was over these beers that papa skee and i decided that we were going to alter our plans for the trip. originally, we were going to spend a week in the thai islands before he left. these plans were somewhat set in stone because of his schedule. he told me that he was smitten by cambodia, that he had had no idea what to expect, but now that he was here, it was like he was seeing life for the first time. he loved the culture, the people, and the affordability of everything. it was here that we decided that we were going to forgo the islands for sihanoukville, the lone beach city in cambodia. we had heard wonderful things about the place from jae lee, who is totally a very cereal guy (so cereal, he's cheerios), so we knew that the place would be legit. papa skee was all for the idea of scaling back our plans and right then and there, i knew that he had become a backpacker, just like us. he was curious and he wanted to see more. we would not be disappointed by this decision at all.

we agreed that we would head over to phnom penh, the capitol city, for a couple of days and then we would go to the cambodian coast to sihanoukville (what a fucking name, by the way....we were already calling it "the ville"). we could hardly wait. siem reap was cool and angkor wat was amazing, but we would be going off the beaten path, into parts unknown. by the end of our conversation, we were quivering with anticipation of what was to come next.