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Back in Bangkok!

After a little detour to the American Embassy in Phnom Penh, Ashley was able to get pages added to her passport. It only cost around 82 dollars- pretty steep right! The irony of it is  that this service was free as of July!
Anyways, after we went and grabbed some lunch and then headed to the central market for dessert. After we loaded up on sweets, we headed to the airport ($5.00 via tuk-tuk from central market to the airport).
The flight was fantastic, at only an hour it completely beat alternative- an overnight bus. From the Suvarnabhumi airport (the international one) we hopped on the city-link rail, taking us straight into Bangkok and a short cab ride later we were once again in Banglamphu.
 If you are ever fly into Bangkok, their city-link sky train is the way to go- it's super cheap (3$ for two people), clean, easy to use, and bypasses traffic!
We had trouble finding the hostel we wanted to go to so we settled on The Orchid House. Its almost midnight and I can tell you right now, don't stay here unless you want to hear really bad cover songs being played all night! Its horrible! Every song, from Bob Marley to the Beatles is being butchered.
We ate at an outside food place and it was amazing! The flavors of Thailand are beyond words -we learned you add vinegar, spice, lime, and sugar to bring out the full Thai-food experience!
We ended up sitting next to two guys from the states, one from Portland, Oregon and the other from Boston, Massachusetts. The guy from Boston had such crazy stories! He rode his bike all over the world, including across China and across the United States. He was in the Peace Core and lived in Thailand for 2 1/2 years, 20 years ago and is still fluent in Thai. He visits every year and next year he is planning to canoe the longest river in Thailand, which he estimated to take him 3 months- pretty insane!
Tomorrow we will hopefully we will head to the falls outside of town. Here are some photos from Phnom Penh...

 This looks like a disaster waiting to happen!

Phnom Penh

We left Sihanoukville this morning at about 7:45 and arrived in Phnom Penh around noon. We didn't really know what to expect but we can say now, after wandering the city for half a day, that we would really like to stay more than one night. Cambodia is a country deeply entrenched in history- the people have literally been to hell and back and the country we are seeing now is and forever will be shaped by the tragedies that they endured during Pol Pot's vicious 4 year reign that left 20% of the country dead, and the rest dying from starvation. We feel there is a lot more to see and do here in order to understand Cambodia, and how it has bounced back from a breaking point.

 

Our Last Day in Sihanoukville

It is our last day in Sihanoukville, so we decided to do a little venturing off of the beach and walked into town to find Starfish bakery/NGO. Starfish's profits go back into community development specifically aimed at helping the disabled. Breakfast was D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S- I had french toast on huge slices of homemade wheat bread and Brian had heart shaped waffles, although it was the juices that stole the show. Cinnamon + pear, watermelon + vanilla, and orange + carrot + ginger. After breakfast we decided we were full enough to lounge on the beach and wait to digest- so that's what we did- all day! Then after some happy hour and not-so great pizza, we headed over to a little concert/ fair just down the road and tried some excellent local desserts- although nothing can compare yet to the deep fried banana and coconut fritters, and the steamed banana in coconut milk that we had earlier on Otres Beach.  Tomorrow we're leaving at 7:45 am to Phnom Penh so that I can head to the embassy A.S.A.P!

 Orange + carrot + ginger vs asian pear + cinnamon. Asian pear + cinnamon won.

 This was in the middle of a roundabout in town and looks to me like one lion is mounting the other!

 

We saw this sign a lot around the city!

I don't think anyone really reads those signs though! Cambodia is a beautiful place but I have never seen so much garbage and litter in my life!

Dinner with our friend!

This evening Ashley and I went down to the beach and had happy hour drinks in the sand and watched the sunset (draft beer $0.50 and cocktails $1.50). Afterward, we walked to the night market for dinner and our little friend, Sovan, that we had dinner with the night before joined us again for another meal. After we finished Sovan attempted to teach Ashley and I Cambodian. Definitely not an easy language! However, he caught onto English very well! Tomorrow is our last full day in Sihanoukville and then we head to Phnom Penh.

Serendipity Beach

So we left Otres Beach this morning and headed back to civilization for a couple days before we head out to Phnom Penh. We are staying across the street from the beach, which is nice, however we do have to put up with a lot more hawkers and we miss our little friends that we met at Otres. This evening we walked down to a little street market and got a taste of real Cambodian food for $2 a plate. Two kids were walking through begging for food, I'd say about 10 years old, so I dished up a plate and one of them came and sat with us and had dinner. He didn't speak English but when he finished he said thank you and was on his way. I wish we had pictures to share but we didn't have our cameras with us, maybe tomorrow.

A trip to the falls

Today we headed out with our new beach buddies to a waterfall just outside of Sihanoukville. Each day these kids (our beach buddies) ages 11-17 walk the beach selling bracelets or fruit or what have you and since we've been on the beach day in day out, we've become friends. We buy fruit each day from Oun, a 17 year old girl who saves the money to pay for school- but today Oun became our tour guide.

Here we all are loaded up in the tuk-tuk

 

Oun, Ashley, and Sky

 Crossing the bridge to go to the waterfall

 

Not the biggest waterfall ever but still refreshing

 

Chan and Hoy relaxing

 

Chan came to the beach today with his police shirt on so we had to give him some aviators and take a photo!

 

Brian imitation...

 

 Chan sold me a supreme hat and gave me a good deal!

 So Brian gave them all Direstreets T-shirts and took a photo with them for the Direstreets website

 Direstreets team Sihanoukville, Cambodia

 After T-shirts they all wanted tattoos

 Brian trying to teach Sky how to play Cribbage. It didn't go so well...

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

We got to Sihanoukville last Friday around sevenish and caught a tuk-tuk to the most popular beach, Serendipity beach.   Since it's high season the place we wanted to stay was full, so we clambered around the beach in search of another accommodation. We were lucky enough to find a not-so-cheap bungalow for the night. I mean, floors aren't really that important to a room, right? Well, we had been on a bus for around ten hours, so we were ready for some alcohol on the beach but little did we know, we showed up during the full moon party!  Well we had enough of fire dancers, body-glo paint, and drunk backpackers, so we decided to get out of that beach and quick! We left the tourist crowd behind and headed to Otres beach. Otres is quite a ways out of town on a red-dirt potholed filled (though not filled-potholes) road. The beach has around ten little beach accommodations, so we wandered around to each little place before we settled on a place across from the beach for ten dollars a night and we’ve been here ever since. Otres beach has quite a sordid past- It is scheduled to be totally renovated to make room for the big boys in the hotel world. There used to be a bunch for shacks and beach bars lining the beach, but the Cambodian developers have ripped those out so the one’s remaining are doing so on a month-to-month basis, and could be torn down at any moment. We feel lucky to have experienced this little hippie haven while it’s still alive.

 

Here are our bungalows

The not so Unusuals!

Its not unusual to:

1. see a family of four riding on a vespa with 2 on their cell phones
2. see a 12 year old (male or female) riding a motorcycle around town
3. see a guy riding a motorcycle down the street while texting - usually in shorts, no shirt, and flip -flops  (most often it's your tuk-tuk driver)
4. see a VIP bus packed all the way full with plastic makeshift chairs in the aisle to seat the rest of the people- and usually its on an overnight bus
5. see signs for dog on the menu (that would be Laos)
6. see three school girls on a moto riding side saddle to school while their friends are on a vespa two inches from them- deep in conversation
7. see a person walking blocks away to their community shower, located alongside of the highway
8. see more littered plastic bags than people and trees combined
9. see ten shops lining the road all selling the same thing
10. have your to-go drinks put in a plastic bag filled with ice
11. be forced to use U.S. dollars in Cambodia and receive a mix of dollar and reil as change

Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

This is a little belated because we got to accustomed to beach life and slowweeeeedddd way down- anyways here's our thoughts on both Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.

Well, Siem Reap is located about two to three hours from the border of Thailand and is the lifeblood of Angkor Wat. So unfortunately one is stuck staying in Siem Reap in order to see the Angkor ruins. Siem Reap left a not so good impression on us, to say the least- it was full of hawkers and we could not walk for two seconds without someone pushing a tuk-tuk or sunglasses or massages on us. I'd say it was one-hundred times worse than Bangkok and we wanted to get the hell out of there. As for Angkor Wat- it was phenomenal. We rented bikes for the day, which was one of our better decisions- we biked in and were able to stop whenever we wanted to check out a passing monkey or a forgotten ruin. We accidentally forgot to buy a map or look up any information before hand so we kind of winged it and didn't really know that we were exploring Angkor Wat (the most iconic of the ruins) when we were there. But looking back on it, Angkor Wat's size alone is stunning. I (Ashley) have seen tons of Mexican ruins, and the famous Chichen Itza, but they seem minuscule compared to the scope of Angkor Wat and the surrounding ruins. We felt a little bit like we were extras in Tomb Raider while exploring the farther out ruins that are barely still standing. I'm thinking about pulling an Angelina Jolie and bringing back a Cambodian child (Brian's not so keen on the idea).