Here a wat, there a wat, everywhere a wat wat.

The last two weeks have been quite interesting. We arrived in Phnom Phen and were whisked off to our guesthouse... a trendy little place with loads of nice people and good food. We only spent the night in the city, and the next morning we were off to Shianoukville to catch up with our Swedish friends at the beach. We stayed in a guesthouse that was literally just a large cushion on a floor to serve as a mattress and a fan for each room. The roof was thatched, the bathrooms were a trek to get to, and we locked the "room" with a padlock. Sadly, a flock of jellyfish (or a school, group, gaggle... whatever the proper word is for a lot of floating, stinging, jello-like blobs) attacked the beach the day we arrived, making the water hazardous. We lounged around for three days with our friends, then took the bus back to Phnom Phen.
In the city we visited (in one day) the Killing Fields, S-21 (the largest Khamer Rouge prison and interrogation center), the Russian market, the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, and Wat Phnom. The Killing Fields and S-21 were the most interesting of the day... there wasn't much to see at the Killing Fields other than large pits in the ground that were once the mass graves of over 8,000 people... but it was very strange to be there. I expected it to be huge and sterile like a German concentration camp but it was a very small area that resembled more of an overgrown fairground. S-21 was a very different story. The compound was a high school before the Khamer Rouge took over, and it really looks like my high school on Guam: cement buildings with open air hallways and stairwells with rectangular holes cut through the cement for ventilation. Before interrogating people the Khamer Rouge took photographs and also made prisoners write a "biography"... some of them several hundred pages long. Then they were chained up, beaten, and eventually taken to the Killing Fields to be executed. Hundred of prisoner's photographs were on display, as well as photos taken by the Vietnamese "liberators". It was a very sobering experience.
After a few nights in Phnom Phen we took a bus to Siem Reap, the town outside of the temples of Angkor. In Cambodian (and Thai) "wat" means temple. We spent three days touring the wats of Angkor. The first temples were built in 900AD... the last around 1400AD. The most famous is Angkor Wat... the king's private (and HUGE) temple. We were up two mornings in a row to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat, and we sat on the steps of the temple every evening to watch the sun go down. During the day we were driven around by our tuk-tuk drivers (Paris and Chiang... the greatest guys) to various temples throughout the 200km temple area. We weren't able to seem them all (we'd need two weeks for that... maybe more), but we did manage to see quite a bit. I can't say too much about them other than that it was the best experience on this trip so far and as an art/architecture nut one of the best in my life. Unlike ruins in Europe, you can climb all over the temples and your experience is only limited by the number of stairs you are willing to climb and ledges you are willing to ease yourself along. Absolutely fantastic.
Today we took three different buses to get to Bangkok. The difference between Thailand and the rest of South Asia is immediately noticeable... paved roads with signs, tall buildings, houses with different architectural styles and BILLBOARDS. The advertisement on the highway from the Cambodia side to Bangkok was just choked with billboards. It feels like the US. We are currently staying just outside of the Kho San Road area... once the "backpacker's ghetto" but now more of a bustling tourist center. The dollar isn't as strong as it was two years ago, so things are drastically more expensive here that we thought they would be. I'll have to limit my shopping... sadly. We are traveling in the company of a Norwegian couple (Aina and Andre) and a Swedish couple (Hedvig and Thomas)... Aina and Andre we met way back in China and Hedvig and Thomas in Vietnam. We've spent most of our time in Cambodia as a happy little group of six, but now in Bangkok we will all be going different ways. Justin and I aren't sure where we are headed just this minute... tomorrow we'll have to do some research and see how difficult it is to get to Laos... and if we'd rather go to Burma and get off the tour circuit that we've been on since Beijing.
Asia's reputation of always being on the bring of technology isn't holding up as neither Vietnam or Cambodia had connections that were not run by a hamster and a wheel. Hopefully, I'll be able to upload some photos tomorrow on this connection... which doesn't seem too poor.
Tomorrow calls for Padthai and some (limited) shopping. Hurrah for Bangkok!