So Cambodia. We landed at Phnom Penh and I pretty much just hopped off the boat instead of sticking around and coordinating a hotel with the other people from the trip, some of whom were pretty cool... I preferred to run solo at this point. Took a couple laps around the area by the river that seemed to be nicest before settling on renting a room that was upstairs from an irish pub. Wandered around the town for a while before running into this french dude who had been on the Mekhong boat, the guy had been living in Jakarta which sounded pretty cool. He had just finished eating a happy pizza, and that sounded alright to me. So we went to "Phnom Penh Happy Herb Pizza" and I asked the waitress for a happy pizza.
"So... you want a
happy pizza?"
"Yes please."
"And you want it....
extra happy?"
"Yes... yes i do."
So ate the pizza and drank some beer, and got going. We went down to one of the bar streets (street #51) and kind of got lost along the way. Saw a white guy and asked him which way to a good bar.
"Oh you want to go that way... go to this bar called the heart of darkness, its very good. But I'm not going there, I'm going here" and he turned off to go to a bar with about 5 gorgeous cambodian girls beckoning outside.
The bars here were pretty much all "hostess bars" where basically the girls who work there are constantly flirting with you and can presumably be brought home for a price. My understanding is that their way around prostitution laws is that you don't pay for sex, but pay the bar because you're leaving with one of their employees. At this point though, I'm starting to get super paranoid from the pizza. The sight of hot ass cambodian girls dancing with fat white guys is really creeping me out, and I start thinking "every one here is an actor" and pretty soon I'm sure that the french dude is somehow in on it. Other things, like forgetting how large the room I was in was, and then upon seeing it, thinking sliding doors were somehow involved.... it was not the best reaction to drugs I've ever had. At one point I was sure I saw the guy who'd directed us to heart of darkness, and that pretty much blew my mind. Stayed out for a bit but I was way too fucked up to get into anything good. The next day I was completely hungover, felt deathly terrible all day and it was the only wasted day of my whole trip.
The next day I did the tourist thing. First was the Sluol Teng S21 facility. Basic history lesson is that the Khmer Rouge regime, headed by Pol Pot who seemed to be a psychopath, turned this high school to a prison facility. Prisoners there were tortured to try to get them to admit to being secret CIA agents, and of the thousands that entered there were only a dozen survivors. Pretty harsh. After that went to the Chuong Ek "Killing Fields" which is where prisoners were shipped before they were executed. It was very bizarre, because the fields, which were by a lake, are now very peaceful and lovely. Very strange to have that up against a brazen genocide. The monument in the center is filled with shelves of human skulls.
After the fields I hopped on a bus that would take me, after 8 hours, to Siem Reap.
Siem Reap was a lot nicer than PP, more laid back, less aggressive locals selling shit. Basically the only reason the city existed was to be close to the angkor wat temples, so there were a lot of hotels and a lot of BARS. Tons of bars. I spent my first day there travelling the temples and it was actually really cool. I did that for a solid 8 hours, there are so many temples and the area is massive. The age and scale of the temples was certainly impressive but the great thing about it was how well the artifacts mesh with the nature and fauna there. Trees growing through the floors and ceilings of temples, roots wrapping around statues. Monkeys just chilling by the paths. I dug it very much. I have about 200 pictures just from the temples, here are a few highlights:
That night was the one I described already. The BBQ, the bar crawl, the lady of the night. One of the best nights of the entire trip. If you haven't seen it,
I'm in Spain
Next stop: Bangkok, Thailand. I will write that up tomorrow, my friends.