Retraction of Previous Statement from Jan 27

This was a draft and I never finished it, I think because I knew that there was worse to come....

So I think I may have been a little tired and emotional when I wrote the last blog, because although I may not love it in the way that I loved Laos, I have so so much respect and admiration for Cambodia and the people in it. Everything got better after I wrote that tirade, I think God must read my blog. The one heeding I would give is to go to Angkor Wat on a tues or weds when there aren't bus loads of Korean and Japanese tourists (however much I did love them for their perms and visors and gloves and masks - they looked like Michael Jackson impersonators, and his and hers outfits and the fact that they get their picture taken with every random rock and then also kindly posed with us) and go early in the morning - or lunch time, like a ghost town!!

The only time go to the Lara Croft temple, Ta Prohm is at lunchtime and it is amazing, they left it just as they found all of the temples, with lots of overgrown roots entwined and twisted in between askew bricks, and all the trees have taken on a slightly metallic silver look as if they are slowly turning into stone too. There are lots of fallen boulders and twists and turns and in the middle of rubble there are little ancient buddhist nuns with shaved heads praying with tiny little shrines, it makes you think they must be quite nimble even though they are so old to weave in between the broken pillars.

The most complete and best temple we saw was about 20 km from the Angkor Wat site, it was when we went to this one that everything became better, to get there you drive past actual villages where real life goes on, not the tourist sprawl of Siem Reap. We got stuck in the lunch time rush, when hundreds of little children came out of school holding up their own little lollipop lady stop signs. Most were running, but there were lots of 3 or 4 children to a bike, hanging on whichever way they could and lots of 5 and 6 year olds with adult bikes so they had to sit on the lower frame and not the seat to reach the pedals. It was just business as usual, people transporting massive bundles of firewood on the back of motos, lots of make shift hairdressers and sowing stalls made out of ply wood with corrigated iron rooves.

There were also tons of NGOs - red cross, landmine, unicef, so it was good to see that relief and aid was there - does that in some way make up for no one doing anything during the khmer rouge? I feel like there is a bombardment of help now, but the damage has already been done.

Anyway so there's a miniature Angkor Wat all made of sandstone with all the designs complete - lots of naga - the many headed serpent, aspara - the dancing girls and garudas - bird headed men, there were originally lots of linges - penises, representations of shiva, because they were hindus, but the vietnamese came and cut them all and took them home, it's so sad if you go to the field of a thousand linges and you just see stumps. The Vietnamese after they forced the Khmer Rouge out, pillaged Angkor Wat and the whole of the country, taking whatever they wanted. A lesser of two evils - during the Khmer Rouge reign 2 million (although our tour guide, well not ours because we didn't pay for him, we just tagged along at the tail end of someone elses group, said 3million) died - were murdered or starved or fell victim to disease, this is out of a population of 7 million. And this was happening a year before I was born, of course the cambodians went to the Vietnamese for help, it was that or face complete decimation. All of the crops they were growing were being shipped off to russia to pay for guns. Oh look it, I'm not going to preach because it will be very dull.

As soon as I saw a life outside of tourist trade in local villages and then got to Phnom Penh, where there is hustle and bustle and industry, I liked Cambodia so much more. Everyone is out for a scam but they do it to each other too. You can see it in the way they drive, everyone's trying to overtake everyone else, so you have 3 lanes of overtaking tuk tuk after bike after van and no one will back down. Our tuk tuk driver sent a moto with 3 old ladies on the back flying into a ditch and didn't even look back. I think because the corruption is so visible from the top - where vietnamese can stay without passports or citizenship and vote in elections, and roads don't get finished because enough palms weren't oiled, everyone's just trying to get their piece.

But Phnom Penh is fun, there are tons of cyclone rickshaws - old turn of the century bikes - one big back and smaller front wheel transporting king sized matresses, sheep and goats rummaging through garbage, the russian market where you can buy anything and everything and I did!!!, clubs, restaurants, cinemas, not just for tourists but all this for locals.

Anyway so since the Khmer people went through genocide, extermination of culture and free thought, foreign occupation, isolation, distrust, corruption in the past 30 years, I think they're doing pretty well. They seem to be happy friendly busy people for the most part, they just need a little tweaking with customer relations.

Best bits of cambodia - Aki Ra landmine museum - former Khmer Rouge child soldier who layed landmines and now deactivates them with a stick, the museum funds his home for children who are landmine victims

S21 and the Killing fields, S21 especially, just the types of torture people were put through, the people who are still missing believed dead, testimonials by families, so so sad and it makes you angry that no one did anything

RUSSIAN MARKET - I now have all of the oscar nominated films for this year on dvd, my weekends when I get back will be fun filled in front of the television.

Mum - the tuk tuk driver we eventually found in siem reap who was so reliable and said what he meant and meant what he said instead of hiking the price up a bit and then standing in silence until eventually you give in as all the others do - the most annoying passive agressive technique.