Phnom Pehn

We left the touristy town of Siem Reap that was surrounded by country side and ancient ruins and headed to Phnom Pehn, the capital of Cambodia. Like any capital city, Phnom Pehn was busy, bustling, and crowded. Our tour of the city began by visiting the royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The entire complex was stunning and my favorite part of the city. Later that evening, we took a sunset cruise out to the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. The sunset was beautiful and we enjoyed our first glimpse into life on the Mekong.

The next day, we toured the Genocide Museum which you can see at the end of the slide show. A former school, this building had been converted into a prison where the Khmer Rouge could torture their prisoners. The exhibits were very hard to walk through. One room had walls of "mug shot" style photos of a couple hundred of the 2 million that were killed while another room showed horrific paintings of torture. I didn't include any photos of the exhibits, just the building itself. Towards the end of their civil war, the Khmer Rouge gained control. The Khmer Rouge forced the people from the cities into the rural areas to become farmers. Their attempt at agricultural reform ironically lead to a famine. The most horrific part of the Khmer Rough was how they selected their victims. They would gather people and tell them they were rebuilding Cambodia and wanted the educated to be the new leaders. The educated were asked to step forward and once identified were later executed. It is easier to control the un-educated than educated. Combined with the genocide of the educated and other deaths under the Khmer Rouge during the 1970's, nearly 2 million people lost their lives, almost 1/3 of the population.

Siem Reap

Although centered heavily around tourism, we were able to gain some perspective into life in Siem Reap and Cambodia. Over 90% of Cambodians are Khmer, the main ethic group and 95% are Buddhist. When walking through the temples of Angkor, we would often see the local Khmer people making offerings of fruit or incense to the various Buddha statues.

Cambodians make, on average, slightly less than $2,500 a year. As we drove past the many small creeks, we would see the men and children out casting nets trying to catch fish or leading the cattle around. We also saw some rice fields and got to try rice right off the rice plant! After farming and the textile industry, tourism is the next biggest market. Almost all of the people that we have come in contact with were in the tourism industry. At each temple there were groups of children selling various trinkets and women selling scarves that would swarm around you trying to get you to buy whatever they could. It would have been nice to escape the touristy areas, but we just didn’t have time for that during this trip.

The pictures below are from around town and of a traditional Khmer music and dance show.

Tom's Favorites: Ta Prahm and Ta Som

This is our final post of the Angkor Temples! Ta Som and Ta Prahm were two of Tom's favorite temples. Over the centuries, the jungle had reclaimed the temples and trees began to grow over and on top of the temple ruins. Seeing such tall trees with large intertwining tangled roots growing on the temples was so neat! The trees seemed to be holding together the ruins, however, when the trees die or fall, they will likely take the ruins with them.

Cambodia is hot!

Cambodia is hot! And when I say hot, I mean that type of relentless heat and humidity that makes you retreat indoors during the hottest hours of the day. Cambodia has two seasons: wet and dry. We were there in November which is the first month of the dry season which runs through March. During the dry season, temperatures can reach up to 104 °F, but when we were there, it was in the mid to upper 90s and humid!

Having just arrived after the end of the rainy season, we could still see the effects of the heavy rains, mainly though the size of the main lake in Cambodia, Lake Tonle Sap. During the dry season, the lake is about 1,000 sq mi, but can reach 9,500 sq mi during the rainy season. As we flew into Siem Reap, we could see that much of the land was still flooded.

For those of you not familiar with Cambodia, it is sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam with Laos to the north. Parts of Cambodia are a part of the Mekong Delta which extends down through Vietnam.

As I mentioned before, the Angkor Wat complex is huge! Here are pictures of Banteay Kdei, Banteay Samre, Banteay Srei, Prasat Kravan, Pre Rup, and Preah Khan. The pictures really can't do the temples justice. Hopefully we will have the chance to explain the meaning behind the individual pictures. Some of the temples started out a Buddhist, but when the Hindus took over, all the Buddha carvings were removed or changed into Hindu carvings, often ones of dancers. If you have any questions about specific pictures, please do not hesitate to ask!