Back in Singapore - almost home

Glad we got to come back to singapore for a few more days to catch our plane home. I felt like we were missing out on the "real" sinagopre since we spent a lot of our short time in little india. We ventured out to a few mega malls. One had a professional video gaming room, with big screens and a place for fans to watch. We walked by the famous Raffels hotel at night. It looks like something out of a wes anderson movie all the way down to the costumes the bellmen wear. It is mystifying how exspensive this place is. Except for indian food, everything is soul crushingly pricy. A bottle of water is 2 bucks, a meal aproaches 20 and don't even think about beer. A can of the cheapest beer is 4 bucks (the same beer was 50 cents in cambodia). All of the skyscrapers have a night club on the top floor, but I can't fathom how pricy that would be (and I have been wearing the same shirt for 30 days, so I doubt I'd meet the dress code).

I found the  contemporary art museum and an old military barracks that has been turned to into an art hub, filled with galleries and studios. I have been itching to see some real art and i wasn't disapointed. The national museaum showed 2001 a space odessey on amassive screen for free our last night. There were fireworks on the water front that synced up almost perfectly with the opening "dawn of man" scene. We almost got into a fight in our hostel the first night because some crazy old guy turned off the fan and wouldn't turn it back on. Getting arested for fighting or disturbing the peace in one of the strictest countries in the world seemed like a bad idea... so I sucked up my manhood and avoided the fight. On the plus side, the hostel is filled with young french college girls who have been running around in their pajamas. This was not a feature that was advertised on hostelworld, but is certanly a nice perk. Our flight doesn't leave until 11,  so we had shabu shabu and watched a round of the magic pro tour qualifiers.  Off the air port to kill the rest of the day.... 

Pol pot and the killing fields

The main reason I wanted to take the trip to Phnom Penh was to see the killing feilds. I have always had a fascination with mans ability to be horrible.  We went to the old school in town first.  It was turned into a prison/interrogation camp after Pol Pot sent everyone to the country side to work in forced farming communes.  Everyone was brutally tortured and sent off to the killing fields.  When they liberated the prison only 7 people survived.  We bought a book from one of the survivors,  but he didn't speak any English.  He did show me where his finger was broken while trying to avoid being whipped. We had to take a Tuk Tuk to get to the killing fields, a crazy driver followed us from our hostel and was hugging me and trying to pull me into his Tuk Tuk to take us. He wanted our business so bad that he waited over an hour while we were in the museum.  He ended up being a great driver.  One the way there it is polluted and under construction,  so it didn't make a pleasant ride.  The grounds of the death camp are beautiful.  They offer an excellent audio tour that really answers any questions you could possibly have.  There are bones,  teeth, and clothes that come to the surface during the rainy season.  The spots where they excavated the mass graves are now just huge green indents in the earth.  They built a huge stupa in the center of the ground filled with thousands of the recovered bones.  Unlike in other cases of genocide there are still many mass graves uncovered due to landmines and lack of public support.  Very much worth the trip and just as emotional as going to Auchwitz (there were a few locals crying who had clearly lost loved ones to Pol Pots regime).

Phnom Penh

I was a little worried that Phnom Penh would be too seedy for us to enjoy.  The warnings online are pretty severe.  After a good bus ride through  the country side it's nice to be proven wrong again.  It is surely the busiest of all the city's so far,  but it doesn't feel at all unsafe.  All the hostels in hostelworld were cheap with terrible reviews,  so we splurged on a super cute boutique hotel.  They treat us like kings for only 30 bucks a night (which is really pricy here) and we can walk everywhere we need to go. Crossing the road is pretty crazy and the pollution and daily storms keep us on our toes.  We found a hip German run gallery/theater that shows documentaries and has live music. We saw a great live ambient tech band and on another night watched  a bunch of films on issues in SE Asia. We learned a lot: mostly that a huge portion of the places we have been are rife with meth abuse.  Which explains the behavior of most of the tuk-tuk drivers we encounter every day.

 It took us a whole day to figure out that this is home made motorbike fuel.  Every little shop sells it.

Way too polluted for a long tuk tuk trip. Masks are essential.

Tuk Tuk Tally

The tuk Tuk drivers are so aggressive in Cambodia.  They want your business!  They will wait for hours outside a restaurant for you,  and ask every person that passes them by if they need a ride.  They were even asking us while we were riding our bikes. We tried to count how many times we were asked in a single day.  Our counts would have been way higher if we had not gotten rained into the bar for a few hours each day we were keeping score.  We have given up keeping count anymore,  but we still laugh every time are asked (which is literaly 50+ times a day).

Agnkor wat

Agnkor wat is all my childhood Indiana Jones dreams come true.  We rode our bikes in early in the morning and visited the first few temples before the sky opened up.  You think rain would ruin the experience,  but it only enhanced it.  The place seems magical: giant heads with 6 legs,  dangerous climbs,  mysterious carvings,  and tree roots that look like dragons tails. My favorite temple was Ta Prom : overrun with giant trees and flooded up past my ankles.  I felt like I was in a fantasy novel.  Unfortunately all of the pictures are terrible due to an extremely overcast sky and pouring rain.  Even good pictures wouldn't do this place justice. Add it to your bucket list! You have to go here.