We ♥ Cambodia

After our last post we have spent several more days in Cambodia. We can officially say, we love Cambodia! This has a lot to do with the people here! We had such great time and hope to be back!

After the temples we decided to hang around the hotel for the next couple days and just relax. We got a Khmer massage, which we were kinda nervous about. The massage is a mixture of pressure points and passive streching along energy lines to relax the body. The therapist literally gets on top of you to gain leverage and digs in their elbows, hands, fingers to the pressure points. Sounds like it hurts? It doesn’t! We felt like new people coming out of there! Very happy we tried it! A few pics of our lazy days.

Cambodia has an awesome nightlife! It has something for everyone. Young partiers, families and ‘us’ old couple peeps. The main area is called Pub Street. This is where the main restaurants and bars are, but one block down you have the night market with lots of shopping :). Tuk Tuks are everywhere and you have no worries of how you are getting home! Every other person…. tuk tuk? You say ‘no thanks’ and they say ‘ how about tomorrow’? haha ( its common to rent a tuk tuk for the day to the temples, thats why they ask about tomorrow). It’s become quite comical and we choose the one with the best sense of humor. Its $2 to the hotel. If we really like them, which most of the time we do, we give them $4. Cambodians are super appreciative when you give them more. It makes you want to give them the world! If only we were rich! Money for all Cambodians $$$! Haha. No, but really. Below are a few pics of Pub Street area.

This boy was walking around with his 6 month old brother asking for food. You assume they want money so you have to say ‘sorry no money’. They then say, I don’t need money, need food. Then he shows his brothers empty baby bottle. Unfortunatly, it’s hard, but you have to say no. They do it to every tourist. Still sucks though. After we told him no, he wanted to see the games on my phone. That’s the picture above.

On our last day here we rented our good friend again!

He took us to a popular temple Banteay Srei about 40 mins out of Siem Reap. It is popular because of the intricate carvings. It’s know as the Lady Temple because they think only woman have such great detail. It was bulit in 967 A.D. and was very impressive!

The next stop was the Landmine Museum, very simple, yet quite amazing. The story of this museum is so wonderful that CNN named its founder one of the world’s top ten heroes in 2010. As a young boy, he was forced by the Khmer Rouge to plant landmines throughout Cambodia. After his release from the army, he realized the harm he was forced to do to his country. Therefore, he has spent all of his adult years disarming landmines that are prevalent throughout Cambodia. In the back of the museum, he has opened a school for kids who are victims of the landmines, and for kids whose parents were killed by the landmines. They still say there are 3 to 6 million live landmines in Cambodia. He is going to strive to help disarm as much as he can, while he can.

One of the last stops was another temple. Of course there were the children out there asking for you to buy things. Its quite comical. These girls got our names (very smart). We told them, maybe when we get out, we will buy something.

On our way out (about 40 mintues later), sure enough the girls remembered our name and started haggling away. They were selling little origami ornaments, so we figured good for the Christmas tree. Well as soon as you whip out the dollars…they all come flying out of nowhere! They are all selling the same thing and want you to buy from them! It was quite funny and nerveracking at the same time! We got some really good videos.