Vietnam and Cambodia love their Eric Clapton

No seriously, they really do! I heard it on the airplanes in Cambodia, most restaurants, along with several books on him in the bookstore. Still Cambodia and Vietnam were really interesting and I had an amazing time. The first day I caught a flight via my SAS trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia which was possibly the shortest flight I have ever taken at around 13 minutes in the air. Once we had arrived we headed straight to the National Museum which was a former temple and is now loaded with tons of religious artifacts from Hinduism and Buddhism. They also had some cultural items and photographs, but a lot of it was stone sculptures of different gods. A lot of this information was related to the French occupation in Indochina, but we were not allowed to take pictures inside so you will just have to trust my descriptions. After that we went down to the Mekong River for a sunset cruise in a double decker boat which was really pretty. We also got to see a floating village where the entire house was built on the water, pretty neat! The last stop that night was the Palm Tree Orphanage which is actually set up through semester at sea. These kids were a lot older than the ones I played with in Thailand, and it was more on a one on one basis. I hung out with a 14 year old girl named Srim who is in the 6th grade there. She was very sweet and her little brother was there as well. She drew me a picture and showed me a lot of her favorite places, especially the garden near the entrance. She was really sweet, but we were shocked to find out that people really don't adopt the children that go there. In Thailand, those children were normally ending up in Europe or the U.S. but apparently there are some major issues with adoption from Cambodia, who knows but I'm sure Angelina Jolie's done it before! She stopped at this really swank restaurant, exactly what you want to do after leaving an orphanage (cough cough sarcasm cough cough good planning SAS), and the food was actually not that good. It was a lot of fish which I tried but it just was not my style so I ate a lot of fruit and spring rolls. Our hotel was equally as fancy, obviously set up through SAS because I would not be the one planning to stay in places like that, and we finished off the long day of driving around with the ice cream in the restaurant downstairs.

The second day was really emotional but one of the most important for the whole trip. Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng Museum which used to be a high school in Phnom Penh before the Khmer Rouge took over. Once they had they turned it into a detention center and torture chamber for the upper classes along with all of the intellectuals in the society. This part is kind of depressing for some so if you don't want to read it please skip ahead. We walked into 2 of the buildings and saw torture chambers where the floor was still stained with blood and they had pictures of how the people died on them. In addition, they had photos on the wall of one building of the people that were held there along with some torture photos. They had these gallows things where they hung people by their hands before sticking their heads in water, a trick they apparently picked up from the KGB agents. Upstairs in one of the buildings they had a lot of history of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot among other things. They posted the national anthem during those 4 years and other scary things. This was incredibly intense and then we headed to Choeungek Genocidal Center or the Killing Fields where they would bus the people from places like Tuol Sleng to me massacred and thrown into the mass graves there. There were mass graves everywhere in back of this giant stupa where they had placed a lot of the skulls inside with ordered by age. The crazy part was that on the path around the mass graves there were actually still clothes and bones still sticking out because a lot of people still haven't been excavated yet. There are just so many people buried there that it is almost impossible. In addition, there were a lot of signs up explaining what each part of what happened in each place. This included how they put DDT on the bodies so they didn't smell and so the people around the Killing Fields wouldn't know what was going on. This was really shocking to a lot of us and the crazy part was really our guide, who told us to call him Kim. His father, sister and uncle were all killed because his father was a professor and a member of the upper and intellectual class in Phnom Penh. As part of being a tour guide in these areas it must be really painful but he said it was worth it to have people know what really happened. He said it actually made him feel better that people wanted to know and also that his life is so much better now that he doesn't have to worry about his life being threatened anymore. It isn't that Cambodia doesn't have any more issues, it has more than its fair share of corruption and is considered by many a "third world nation", but his life is so much more peaceful now that anything seems better than what he experienced in his childhood. Kim was really sweet and I have yet to have a tour guide that can stand up to his standards.

Back to the more upbeat stuff now! We then headed to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh which was absolutely beautiful and reminded us a great deal of the Grand Palace in Thailand. There were so many Buddha representations in the Silver Pagoda I didn't know where to face, and they had my favorite story on the walls, the Ramayana from Indian culture or the Reamker in Cambodian. Our lunch was definitely better that day but Kim told us that it was really more Chinese than Cambodian. We had a little bit of time to hang out and do some shopping around the Russian Market which was fun, I have collected more than my fair share of fake purses among other things so far. We then flew from Phnom Penh to Seim Riep where we got to see Angkor Wat at sunset. We actually didn't get to go into the complex at that point but it was still neat to see the sun set on the other side. We had a huge buffet dinner with a bunch of other tour groups from around the world. As part of dinner we got a Cambodian dance show which was absolutely beautiful. This was really special because this is a form that was almost killed off because of the Khmer Rouge but it alive and well now. The women looked so beautiful in the outfits they wore and the men were very silly in their monkey suits among other things. Once we were at our next swank hotel, thanks to SAS, we got a tuk-tuk to the night market and did some shopping there. They actually had this fish massage thing there which I didn't do but it involves sticking your feet in a pool of water and having fish eat the dead skin off your feet. Sounds crazy but a couple of my friends did it.

The third day we woke up incredibly early to view Angkor Wat at sunrise which was beautiful but we were definitely tired for the rest of the day after that. We got to run in to view a little bit of the inside for about 5 minutes before we had to leave. We had a good buffet breakfast at the hotel before heading to the Ta Prohm temple. This was really neat because it was almost a jungle temple with trees growing the the ruins that were taller than any I think I've seen before. We then headed to Angkor Wat to explore more thoroughly which was really interesting especially because many of the relief sculptures inside were never finished because Cambodia was being invaded at the time. Unfortunately, we couldn't climb the huge stupas on the crazy steep stairs. We were there for quite a bit before heading back to our hotel for lunch. In the afternoon we went to the South gate of Angkor Wat with the faces on it, followed by going to the Bayon temple. This was really neat because they had the same faces all over the place similar to the ones on the South gate. There were a great deal of monkeys on the way to that temple which was kind of cute too. Apparently they aren't actually natural to the area because the fruit they eat isn't there, they just came because of the tourists feeding them. After that we wandered around to some temples and saw the Elephant terrace, and the Royal Palace along with the Leper king terraces. Finally we found some neat temples that were pretty cool, I'm talking about temperature, inside. It definitely over 100 and I believe 2 girls got heat stroke on our trip. We then went to the airport where I managed to get some Dairy Queen along with a foot massage to make up for all the immense walking and sweating I had done. I'm pretty sure none of us have any toxins left in our systems anymore. Once we were back in Ho Chi Minh City we went to a pizza shop to hang out for a bit and explored a little bit.

The fourth day I woke up early to go get a dress tailor made, which actually turned out fantastic for only $27 US. MY friend who took me to this specific shop also led me to a DVD store where I did a little bit of damage as well, I'm hoping those get through customs on the way back! We then went around the Ben Thanh market for a bit and found more than our fair share of fake purses among other strange items. We got some juice before heading back to the ship to drop our stuff off. We hung out for a little while eating pizza and seeing one of the new movies before I met up with my roommate Megan and our friend Scott. We walked around Ho Chi Ming for a bit before deciding to go to this jazz club called Sax 'n Art which was really neat. They actually played a lot of old school songs that we recognized which was neat and it was fun to just hang out there for a bit. After we got back we watched some "Meet Joe Black" before bed because we knew we should be up early the next day.

The last day I went shopping with a friend, Patricia, for decorations for the Ambassador's Ball which was are both on the committee for. We walked around the market I went to the day before and also some shops around it to find some office supplies along with paper to do some of the decorations. After that I'm sorry to tell ya Dad but I caught a motorbike ride to the War Remnants Museum. I swear they use them as a form of taxi all over the place here and it was actually a ton of fun! We got lunch at this chain called Pho 24 which had the traditional Pho soup in huge bowls, which was awesome, along with some spring rolls. Once at the Museum we ran into a lot of other SASers so we could talk about a lot of what we saw. They had a lot of photos, mainly from LIFE magazine along with some others from the Vietnam War which was really crazy. I found that it really scary but also confused because a lot of the info was different from what I had learned in school, at least from the little bit of info we did get about that. It was definitely presented in a pro-Vietnam fashion, but big surprise we were there! They had a lot of other photos that were pretty disturbing about the Agent Orange and other things. The most interesting part were these drawings they had up from the children in Vietnam about their impressions of warfare or how the world should be. Some were really touching but others were incredibly gruesome. After that Patricia and I grabbed a smoothie before heading back to the ship on the back of a motorbike again. Once back I went out again with Megan and Scott to do a little grocery shopping before on ship time. We also got these great waffle wafer thing from this street vendor which were SO delicious. Once I had picked up my dress with my friend we headed up to the barbecue that SAS set up for us on the ship which was awesome just to have a good hot dog and burger. At that point I have started to work on this blog and we started a lot of our movies once Cassie got back from her Cambodia trip. Overall Cambodia was my favorite trip I have been on so far because it was so interesting and emotional in general. Vietnam was interesting but I do wish I had enough time to do the Cu Chi tunnels or something like that, but I'm definitely still happy. In 3 days I will arrive in Hong Kong which is pretty exciting and it kind of feels like we are winding everything down, although we still have around 6 weeks left. Oh well!