Life isn't always beautiful.

As you just saw in my last video I tried to add humor in 20 children running around you trying to sell you goods, but honestly it takes its toll on you too...

So this may not be the most positive blog but it is alot of what i have been thinking over the last few days being in Cambodia.

It is just so depressing to be in this country and see some of the things that go on here. To think that we are only about 200 miles south of Thailand in a country that i loved and saw so much happiness and promise in. Having spent some time now in Cambodia I am truly starting to understand the meaning of a 3rd world country. We are still in Siem Reap which is the 2nd largest city in Cambodia. Having traveled down a dirt road for over 4 hours, there is no chance of it getting paved any time soon. The people we talked to about the road said that it has been that way for years. There is no such thing as gas stations. All gas is sold out of liter bottles. You see the most depressing road side stands with gas to be sold.

As you should know or will read an a blog soon, we spent most of our time at Angkor Wat. An amazing display of 100's and 100's of temples. Of the $20 dollar fee we paid to go see Angkor Wat, 70 percent of our ticket goes to the government. This country is overrun by corruption, you see it every step you take. Everyone is trying to one up each other, as to not get fucked over by the government. We see police harassing businessmen and cab drivers for money. We saw our own Tut-Tut driver get cornered by 2 policemen. The stalls that are set up outside the temples by locals to buy there goods must pay off the government and the police in order to keep there place. One man told me that the police make him pay 3 dollars a day to keep his stall or else it will get torn down.

I mean my heart just goes out to this horrible way of living and endless cycle of corruption. As you would have seen in the video i posted about the temple beggars, tons and tons of kids just rush up to you begging for money. Begging you to buy something from them, every single one of them try and claim it is to go to school. So somewhere you have to think rationally. Are they really selling goods to go to school, or do they just know you are more likely to buy if they say this? This picture is of 3 kids standing at a fence just begging for money. They positioned themselves in the best place to pull on your heart string because they are at a fence that borders the killing fields (which we will get into soon). But they didn't stop. "Give me money for my family" "Give me money so i can eat" "my family will starve to death" "give me money for school" "please mister, you have money, help out my family" Where do scams stop and love begins i ask you?

I tried to make friends with the kids, i tried to smile at them. One major difference between here and Thailand is happiness and bowing. No one smiles in this country, no one. So at the very least i try to smile alot and say "have a nice day". And surprisingly, I have gotten a few smiles in return. Sometimes just waving at someone or patting a kid on the head bringing a smile. As for bowing, in Thailand it is an art and tradition. In Cambodia it seems they do it only to fake something or mock you.

Below is a picture of 2 girls, normally running after you trying to sell you goods. When i approached and interrupted there game, they jumped up to sell me something. I just wanted to learn what game it was they were playing with only rocks and sand. But to them i am another white guy with lots of money.

We were walking through one of the temples and i came across 2 little kids, all alone. The girl couldn't have been older than 2 and the boy older than 4. Just sitting there all by themselves with a basket of bracelets. They were trying to sell 3 bracelets for 1 dollar. At first glance, i went up and took the moment to take a few photo's. It was a precious moment of a big brother looking after his sister. And then i think. "Where the fuck are there parents!" It is at this moment that i notice a problem. The girl is sobbing. I mean full eyes of tears, dripping all the way down her face, sobbing. What do you do? Why is the girl crying? DO you give them money out of pity? I tried to ask the boy what was wrong with his sister, why she was crying. And he paused. But wouldn't answer. He just kept saying, "3 for a dollar, 3 for a dollar". How do you think that plays on perspective? Frankly i could give away every possession i own, every dollar i have and still be better off than them.

And you wanna get into the dark side... Every hotel we go into claims that if you partake in the "sex trade" you will be ejected from the hotel. But really, there was a condom on my nightstand, so something has to be going wrong. The Lonely Planet travel book says that it is common for parents to sell there children for sex. That selling a girl for her virginity is common. When parents can't support themselves, when they are forced on hard times they stuup as low as selling there own children!!! I mean, WHAT THE FUCK. Do you even feel decent reading this anymore? Cause i don't even feel human writing this stuff. It is just outright depressing.

During the 70's and 80's Cambodia did what few people were willing to stop and what destroyed alot of there current history. Genocide became a way of life. The Khmer Rouge's main philosophy, "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." And honestly, i think most of Cambodia's society is just fighting to get away from this horrible history.

Finally, as you walk down the tourist streets of downtown Siem Reap, you pass random mothers with there kids just laying on the ground. And what are they doing, they are begging for money to take care of there children. And if i could scream from the top of my lungs.... I would tell them to pick up there children off the concrete and go home. And if i knew they would never lay there child on the ground again, i would pay them 1000 dollars. But there is no guarantee in life, this is how a mother has chosen to live her life and support her children.

Nagging little kids

Angkor Wat Video

Angkor Wat

So we are settled into Siem Reap and over yesterday's whole scam thing. Today we got up at 4am so that we could do the one main tourist thing everyone comes to Siem Reap to do. Angkor Wat. If you don't know anything about Angkor Wat go to wikipedia.com and spend 20 min looking into it. It is AMAZING!!! First off, it is one of the 7 man made wonders of the world built in the 700-800 AD. It was built then by a civilization of more than a million people, at a time when London had only 50,000 people. The largest of the temples was covered up by jungles for more than a 1000 years, and only excavated about 50 years ago. Siem Reap is home to 100's and 100's of temples and old stone villages. Even to this day they are still unearthing alot of the smaller ones.

This place is just breathtaking and for only 20 bucks you can see all the temples you could possibly imagine for a day. However, some people buy week passes to go and spend time in each one of them writing and doing paintings of different architectural marvels within the temples.

Enjoy the photo's This picture and the surrounding, if you could have been there, were worth every bit of the pain it was to get up at 4am to go on this adventure.
Looking back out of the entrance at Angkor Wat, onto the lawn.

Looking at the front of Angkor Wat.

Inside Angkor Wat in all of it's glory.

Um, HELLO!!! Indiana Jones anyone? Actually Tomb Raider 3 was filmed here. Which i may have to go watch now just to say that i was there.

This is one of 4 libraries surrounding Angkor Wat.
This picture is from the "face" temple where alot of faces are built out of stone into the structure.

HMMM? Which piece is next? 3D jig-saw puzzle anyone?
This structure is one of there most well known photo's, and these guys (about 100 per group) appear on each side of the bridge as you enter Angkor Wat. To me it explains what 1,000,000's of people working together as one can accomplish.

So though the stone temples have been around for almost 2500 years, the trees have not. They started to grow only about 300 years ago, but make for an awesome photo!!!
Leave it to me to act retarded in the middle of an ancient dynasty. So actually the reason all the heads are missing off of the statues is because during the genocide of the 1970's in Cambodia, the Pol Pot regime deemed Angkor Wat as "history" and "religion" and wanted it to be defaced.
The pure amazement at looking at all these stones placed so perfectly!

God, i loved this day!
More nature interfering with the stone structures. Pretty fucking cool!

Kingdom of Cambodia

Travelers Beware!!!

Well I just had possibly the shittiest travel days ever. So we catch a train at 555 am to go from Bangkok to Cambodia. The only good part was that this train was only 1.50 US for a 6 hour trip. Well the reason it was that cheap is because it was a sit down train and it was PACKED. So that really wasn't to bad, cause it was cheap.

We get to the border, spend about an hour getting a visa and so forth. And right as we are crossing, one of our friends runs into some man claiming he is with the "Cambodian Government". Well he had a pass and he was nice, i was still very weary. He puts us onto a bus, helps us get money out of the atm(which only comes in US dollars cause there currency is so fucked) then he takes us to an exchange place "sponsored by the government" and we exchange our money. "Exchange is 1 US to 3200 Cambodian Rael." He says. We get to the bus depot cause you have to take a 4 hour bus ride into town. It is at this point we are looking at the bus charge and something just isn't adding up. They tell us it is 60 per cab. BUT the Rael rate is more. OK. So we debate going else where to catch a cab. The guy tells us that we have to order a cab here and that there is an "inspection point" only these cabs can go through. So we pay the 60 and get in the cab.

Like i said, ANOTHER 4 hour ride into town. And the best part is that the road isn't paved. It's fucking dirt. So on top of having just gotten off of a 6 hour upright train ride, we are now slamming up and down in a cab across a dirt road.

And every time we passed a bridge being build, it just irritated us even more. You try sitting in a car bouncing up and down and passing partially built bridges along the way.
Finally we get into town and the cab will only go to the city limit. Great, another problem. We'll the cab just happens to drop us off at a tut-tut stall. "Oh the tut-tut is free". Um, alright. We take the tut-tut into town to our hotel. And when we get there we are asked by the driver "You want to try this hotel right? You want us to drive you around to all the sights right? You want to try this restaurant?" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Guess what, the tut-tut was only free if we used them for other reasons.

We told them to FUCK OFF, seriously to fuck off perhaps the first time in my life i have ever done that and it felt good, that we were told it was free. And the guy left.

To follow up on the story. Guess what we got scammed.

Rael exchange rate is 4200 to 1 US.
Normal cab rides into the city are around 8 US dollars.
And, there was never a check point.

That's it, as you can imagine, i am so pissed off i got scammed. Total it cost me to get into downtown was about 50 bucks. When it should have been 8. SO FUCKING PISSED.

So anyways my guard is up, so far this country has proven to be WAAAAAAAAAAAAy sketchy. Its weird, cause we aren't but 200 miles from Thailand were everyone is so wonderful and nice. The difference i think is that Thailand knows tourism. It is there number one way of making money. So they thrive in it. Things are cheap, there is a good mix of tourism vs people assisting the tourist.

In Cambodia, fewer people come as tourist. Therefore, there are like 20 scams to every genuine good deal. You walk down the streets and 50 people haggle you for money in one form or another. As an outsider looking in, it really is just sad.

Hell Train

So to get from Bangkok into Cambodia for a couple days, we looked into the cheapest way to do it. Well we sure found it, it cost 1.50 for a 5 hour train to get to the border of Cambodia. And man did it feel like forever. At first at 530 in the morning, it wasn't so bad. The train was half empty and the air was cool. But as the day went on we made periodic stops along the way and the train started to fill up rather quickly. Not only that but it just got hotter and hotter as the day went on.

So this is kinda what it looked like for the 5 hours we were on the train. We guarded our seats like pit bulls to make sure we didn't lose them.
As we approached the border, we were greeted by 5 and 6 year old kids that try there best to offer a hand to tired and exhausted foriegners. They run up to you with there umbrella's and walk right next to you for the 500 ft or so to the border. Even when you tell them to stop or go away, they stay right next to you. At the border they begin begging you for money, and it doesn't stop. They even try and come into the border security until they get kicked out of the building.

It is very similar to going down to Mexico, and crossing the bridges there where you are greeted by 100's of poverty kids tring to get you to buy chitlets. You know, the little pieces of gum. They try and get you to buy 1 piece of gum for a quarter, only in Cambodia they want you to use there umbrella so they can beg you for a quarter. It is very sad and you really want to give them something, but the problem is that you are only allowing the problem to continue.

JJ Mall

Here are some photo's from the famous night market in Bangkok. JJ's is the biggest market certainly in all of Thailand and most infamious for its fair share of black market goods. This place is so huge, that unless you knew where to go and what you were looking for you would never find the "black market" portion of the market. However, as you will see it is huge and selling knock-off American goods is quite popular.

All Hail The Queen

I just wanted to write a quick blog regarding the princess of Thailand, Princess Galyani Vadhana. She recently passed away in January and the entire country of Thailand is in mourning. I post this blog because you can't drive more than 10 miles without seeing memorials and shrines in tribute to her. It is interesting to see all the out crying support for her and all the money that is been spent to commemorate her death. I know that the government has put alot of money into the funeral. One reason why Sound of Music was not able to play Thailand was because all theatre's are holding out to host her funeral. Therefore, no one wants to sponsor our show. So anyways thought this was interesting.

Suk 11

So during this whole vacation we have tried our best to stay at inexpensive hotels/hostels. Well this place in Bangkok, Suk 11, about tops them all. Here is a photo montage of the backpackers hostel we stayed at. This place is just screaming eccentric and unique. As you walk in, it is like log cabin meets grandma's country home. Walking down the halls to your room is in the style of a back alley Mexican shanty. And having brought my suitcase to this place, it kinda sucked to carry it up 4 floors and down the 2 ft wide wood planks that you see in the pictures below. All the wiring of the hotel is run down the side of the hallway in a telephone pole line 5' in the air. Add in the outdoor shower, the random reading nooks, and the rooftop lounge. It was fun. oh and it was about 5 bucks a night.

One Night In Bangkok...

Having spent almost a week in rural Thailand, it was a little bit of a shock to come back into the city. And sure enough Bangkok is pretty much like any other city. We spent the day running around the city exploring the more tourist things to do.

We caught a subway to the downtown area and then a boat ride down the river to the Golden Palace and Jade Buddha.

Upon entry of the palace grounds we found out that you had to were "proper" dress to get into it. So i decided to try a new style here. We walked around the grounds of the palace for about 2 hours, taking in a visual feast of amazing architecture and more gold on buildings than i have ever seen. I found this next photo to be very entertaining. The guards in front of the palace were switching guards. And they go through about a 5 min process of turning the duties over from one guard to the other. Once the 2nd guard is in position, the previous one spends about 2 minutes primping and checking the new one for proper uniform placement and all. It was neat to catch this.

Yea. they pretty much carry huge automatic guns like it is no body's business.

After the palace, we traveled to the huge "ex-pat" community in Bangkok. This street alone had more European restaurants then probably all of China combined.