Siem Reap, Cambodia

Well, we did a weekend trip from Cambodia and it was quite a departure from our usual beach, sand and sun excursion.

It was actually one of our better trips because it was so different and unexpected.

We arrived early Friday morning and went straight to our hotel, dropped off our bags and headed out to see the temples.

The temples were built centuries ago; it's amazing they let tourist climb all over them...it's unbelievable actually. Considering these structures are over 1000 years old and considering the amount of tourist traffic they receive, they are in surprisingly great shape still with so much detail carved in stone. Depending on rule of the country, some temples started as worship to Hindu, then changed to Buddhism and carvings were altered to look like Buddha.

Our hotel was situated near the center of town, called "Old Market". There are many restaurants and pubs here and it's very touristy. We enjoyed it and had really nice exotic food like pizza, shrimp and nachos!

The 2nd (last) day, we took a bumpy ride out to the river. Transportation was a carriage hooked up to a little motorcycle. At one point we had to stop at a gas station, which we discovered was just a shelf on the side of the road with old glass bottles full of petrol.

We went out to the river to view the "floating village", which is a town on water. This was only supposed to cost us $10 per person, but once we got there, we were charged $20 per person! Sadly, we know the people will never see this money - everything goes straight to the government.

We got on the boat and our guide was really informative. His wage was only $20 per MONTH. He actually lived in the floating village with his 9 siblings - this was something out of a movie! They live on the water because the area floods during the rainy season. These 'houses' are shards of sticks formed around rafts and the water is only a meter deep. Surprisingly...some have tv and internet! They don't have electricity or running water, so tv's are battery powered.

The whole experience was kind of an eye-opener for us. We have never seen poverty like this in our lives. Despite the conditions they live in, they seemed to be very happy. We saw many smiles and most went out of their way to welcome us. Even though the children have nothing, they still seemed good-natured and laughed and played with each other. Of course there were beggars and land-mine victims and people trying to sell you crap you don't want, but you kind of cut them some slack since most live on a $1 a day. Anyway, we really enjoyed the trip, Siem Reap is becoming a popular tourist destinations so 5-star hotels are moving in along with nice places to go. It was very good for us to go there.