Cambodia part one: SANTA CAME EARLY....and he brought spiders

Hey all, here's part one of our Cambodian Adventure complete with pic's and a video. Please be warned that some of what we did involved touring Khmer Rouge genocidal sites so there are some unpleasant, but I think important, pictures and descriptions. Please also be warned that we took like 5billion pic's of Angkor Wat and I found it difficult to edit them down because the place was so amazing so get ready for lots of pic's of fancy old rocks. I'm writing now from the central highlands of Sri Lanka and will update ya'll on this totally amazing and completely different leg of our journey after I wrap up Cambo with part 2 in a few days. We love and miss you all and hope that your new years wishes have come true.

 

Love Tash and Sean

 

PS: We just cracked 5000 hits here at 2deiters, so thank you so much for staying interested and coming along for the ride.

 

 

 

 

 

After a night in a dorm room we awoke like kids on Christmas to the knowledge that DUNF would be arriving that night. We went into Deiter DEFCON 1 to ensure that everything was perfect for our guest and toured the city to get a game plan of what we would do the next day. We are well aware of what a sacrifice it is to be away from friends and family (especially on Christmas) and we wanted to honor Kerry’s effort to spend the holiday with us by making it the best Cambodian Christmas EVER! That afternoon we had a pretty good fried noodle dish in the central market before picking up a string of Christmas lights, 3 “I love Cambodia” T-shirts, and 3 Santa hats (or everything you need for your very own Cambodian Christmas) and headed back to the ranch to wait for Dunfey. We got to talk to our families and are still laughing about how excited our nephew Jack was for Christmas. He was literally BURSTING and his exclamation that UNCLE SEAN, SANTA CAME EARLY! SANTA CAME EARLY became an instant catch phrase for us in Cambodia. Anytime anything even remotely good happened it was SANTA CAME EARLY!!! That evening we strapped on our shirts and hats and our homemade “DUNF” napkin sign and went to scoop up Dunfey. An hour later we were beaming in the back of a tuk tuk, and bombarding her with conversation like two 5 year olds on espresso. We took it easy that night in light of her journey and retired after a few cocktails on our balcony. The next day was Christmas and the gloves were off. To her credit DUNF dove right into the deep end without flinching and was all like “I’m unflappable” This led to a strange Deiter-Dunfey arms race to see who was more cool with doing what, which ultimately ended up with all of us eating tarantula’s (there’s a lesson here kids). The day began with what I thought was a Christmas Parade but turned out to be a protest march by striking garment workers who were fighting to increase the $95 a month minimum wage (more on them later). After breakfast we headed to Wat Phnom which is a Buddhist temple about 20 minutes from our hostel that featured several rooms with large golden Buddha’s and with well-preserved murals and carvings. Then we tried to head to the royal palace but were told that it was closed till the afternoon because “the king has a problem” so we headed out to a market instead. After walking around a bit we opted for a cold beer instead of grub because the place looked like a 1920’s Chicago meat packing plant only less sanitary. It was still a cool experience though as it provided Kerry with some local flavor and it was hilarious (and somehow unsettling) to see how unfazed she was, she was all “oh yeah, live trout swimming in a baby pool….yawn, chickens getting their heads lopped off…totally normal” It made me wonder where she shops at home. By this time it was afternoon and we figured that the palace might be open but after we arrived we discovered that the king had a new problem…two super skanky American girls with knee caps and shoulders hangin’ out all over the palace and driving the boys wild. After paying an entrance fee we hoped in line to go inside and made it about 2 steps before a guard looked at my traveling companions with a stern face and said “NO, too short!” thus ending our trip to the palace. We went looking for “firsts” on this trip and I have to say that asking for a refund because my wife is too slutty (on Christmas) totally qualifies. Tremendous. Next, we went looking for a place with a looser dress code and headed off to get a massage. Things were progressing smoothly all the way until the end when they brought 2 basins of water to clean the oil off the 3 of us. Santa had my back and I got my own tub but Tish and DUNF were treated to a 5 minute rub down with each others oily bath water.  Perfect... From here we rushed back to our hostel so that we could be on time for THE BEST CHRISTMAS PRESAENT EVER!! Free Beer from 5-7. When we saw the sign that morning were all like “no way” and then DUNF was like (rather menacingly) “you better not be messing with me” and so it was with eager anticipation that we bellied up to the bar at 4:59 and ordered a round. Sure enough the beers kept coming and the bill never did and if that’s not a Christmas miracle than I don’t know what is. Now fully loaded…with Christmas spirit….we headed off to dinner at a place that uses some of its proceeds to teach street kids how to cook and specializes in traditional Cambodian fare, up to and including tarantulas. The ride to dinner featured maybe the best moment of the whole trip when haggling with the driver over the price of the tuk tuk led to a paper, rock, scissors showdown to determine the final price. Little did he know that we had a ringer in from the states and Dunfey smoked him three to nothing thereby securing the lower fare (Please check out the video below) At dinner I thought we would order one spider (which is plenty) and chew on a leg or something before tossing it under the table when the waiter wasn’t looking. Also it’s clear that no Cambodian’s eat tarantulas based on the “are you kidding me dude, I eat KFC” look the waiter gave me when I asked if he ate them. Unfortunately for us Christmas is a time of Bounty and they brought out a plate with two tiny baby spiders and one morbidly obese sumo spider. Like a moron I suggested that we rock, paper, scissors it for who has to eat the big guy and I came out on the bottom. As you may have seen in the video I was still trying to heave that big boy onto my plate while the girls were already knee deep in thorax. DUNF’s play by play is hilarious to watch now but was agonizing at the time because it reminded me of how much grosser it was going to get before it was over. “is that the brains? No, that’s the belly. I think this one has babies in it” Horrible. We all gutted it out and ended up in the clean plate club putting an exclamation on one of the strangest and best Christmases ever. The next day brought a trip to “the killing fields” and the notorious “S21 prison” where the Khmer Rouge conducted their genocide from 1975 to 1979. For the record, the Khmer Rouge were ultra hard line communists who wanted to create a socialist utopia in Cambodia. To accomplish this they felt that they had to start from scratch and essentially rebuild society from the ground up. Unfortunately for Cambodians this meant torture and death for anyone with any education, or ties to the previous government, or who wore glasses, or had “soft hands”, or was in any way related to someone in the above groups. The result was four years of absolute terror with over 2 million killed or one out of every four Cambodians (imagine 25% of our population being wiped out). It shocks your conscious to think that something like this could happen so recently and It blew my mind that any Cambodian I saw over the age of 40 had been around to experience this. It is also a great credit to the Cambodian people that they have come so far and remain so positive as a people after experiencing a tragedy of this magnitude. The Killing Fields were one of many mass graves found in the country after the Vietnamese invaded and put an end to the horror. The site features a beautiful memorial “stoopa” or tower that is hauntingly filled with hundreds of skulls found at the site. The audio tour essentially pleads with you to remember that this can and did happen in the hopes that it will not happen again. It also alerts you to the fact that the victim’s were hacked or beat to death with whatever was handy as “bullets were too expensive.” I promise I’ll stop but the worst of the worst was a tree where babies were bashed against before being tossed in mass graves because the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to leave children around who would grow up to take revenge. There were also stories of heroism like the man who lost his life for berating the guards into releasing a 12 year old boy because he was just a child. It was a chilling and solemn site that was extremely well presented and it produced memories that will stick with us forever. S21 was a detention facility in a school in Phnom Phen where people were taken to be tortured into false confessions. It was strangely important for the Khmer Rouge to get people to admit that they worked for the CIA of KGB or had committed some crime even though it was clear that these “confessions” were meaningless. It sent chills down my spine to walk through the tiny detention areas with chains on the floor and the black and white photos that the KR took of every incoming prisoner gave you a taste of the fear and sadness and anger and terror that these poor people must have felt. I’ll stop now, cause this is a happy blog about a happy trip, but this was a powerful experience that none of us will soon forget. That night things got back to normal with sunset drinks on a rooftop bar overlooking the river and then a hilarious dinner where Kerry sent her dinner back 3 times before they finally got it right. The poor waiter was so nervous bringing out round three and I thought for sure that they were going to invite her back into the kitchen to prepare it herself. That night ended with relaxation on our balcony and prep for our trip up North to Siem Reap and Ankor wat. If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this trip so far it’s that the travel gods will make you suffer a bit before any truly amazing experience. In this case they extracted their pound of flesh by shoe horning us into the back row of a van where we went 4.5 people deep (the .5 is the sick Cambodian child who coughed like a sprinkler on Kerry and I until switching up her game and vomiting in a bag) The situation culminated in mom dropping a soaking wet tissue, slow motion style, onto my left foot (flip flops just don’t provide the protection you need in some cases). Additionally, the driver must have been able to sense how badly we wanted to get DUNF to Ankor Wat because he chose to use his horn instead of the brake and we shot like a bullet in the direction of the ancient ruins. Upon arrival in Siem Reap we said a prayer of thanks for our safe arrivalto any and all gods, travel and otherwise (it had to be a team effort) and settled in for an amazing few days. The guest house was great and featured a normal adult bed with grown up sheets for us and a tiny bed with a care bear style child’s comforter for Kerry. It also had a channel that played the Karate Kid Trilogy in a constant loop so that any time we were in the room, we had the comforting voice of Mr Miyagi dishing out life lessons in the background (I learned more in these three days, than in my first three years of college…Arigato Sensi). In addition to this the temples were simply incredible and will be a highlight of the trip for sure. Over the course of a day we worked our way through a number of temple complexes including the famous Angkor Wat itself. You could spend weeks touring all of the ruins that are laid out over a number of kilometers but we made due with the time we had and covered a ton of ground in one day.  Built in the 1100’s (a full 300 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue) the temples are massive stone structures with intricate carvings on just about every inch that have survived to varying degrees to this day. The size and scale makes you marvel at the power of a civilization that could produce them (in the middle of the jungle no less) and simultaneously the fragile nature of civilizations in general. One particularly awesome complex featured huge trees growing on the stone itself that gave it an eerie look as the jungle reclaimed the space.  The actual Angkor Wat temple is surrounded by a huge man-made lake and has hundreds of yards of well-preserved carvings that told stories of ancient battles and wrapped around an inner area that led to three giant (probably 4 or 5 story) circular towers. It was a can’t miss experience and on that certainly lived up to (and exceeded) the hype. By far it was the coolest historical site I’ve ever seen and is reason enough to make the trip to Cambodia on its own. That night featured a super fun (and delicious/spider free) dinner on “pub street” where the staff cooked everything right at our table. Flush with excitement from the temples (or the beer tower) we decided to go on an impromptu pub crawl after dinner and we danced and drank our way down the street and long into the night. It was super fun and well worth feeling like I had been Crane kicked by Daniel San the next day. We grabbed another massage to help shake off the cobwebs and had some delicious Cambodian Tascos (just consistently mispronounced Taco’s) before hopping on a night bus to the beaches in the south. The bus had almost fully reclined sleeping berths and Dunf and tish bunked in together while I got to spoon (literally at points) with a pleasant, but broad shouldered Englishman. The bus was “non-stop” which naturally means it stops like 30 times and the advertisement for it had a picture of a western toilet off to the side next to the bus. Being dumb I assumed that this meant it has a bathroom on board, but Cambodians it turns out are a very literal people as it seems that they wanted to be sure you knew that the toilet was not on the bus (it’s right there in the picture) I can’t complain however as I slept the whole way and before I knew it we were on a ferry to the Island of Koh Rong were we would ring in the new year.

 

Dunfey's arrival

I love Cambodia shirts and santa hats on the balcony

The overly sexy outfits that got us tossed from the palace

I love santa

Just sooo gross

Finally a magazine with a focus on Sean

A stoopa

The rules for prisoners at S21

Drinks at sunset

A wedding across the street from our hotel

a noodle Christmas tree

Why go to the bathroom and then shower when you can go to the bathroom while you shower

Angkor Wat (first of many)

3 amigos at a temple

Check out that tree

Same

me and tish at the tree temple

Tish and Dunf- note the matching "traveling pants"

Offerings to Buddha in the temple

DUNF with a coconut curry.....in a coconut

I was inspired so I recreated Angkor Wat

a stone face

What used to be a lion statue

Recreated lion statue

A well preserved carving

That's the actual "Angkor wat" temple complex in the background

Safety first

The beer tower

Dinner being cooked at our table

Staying hydrated

Our little angel

This guy loves Cambodia too

why is he stroking and stretching my head

Totally sober blogging

ICE CREAM

Dunfey's first Cambodian ATM

MMMMMM Tasco's

 

 

We laid out the welcome mat for DUNF

 

Cheeeeeeeessseee

 

I picked up a side job in Cambodia

 

Totally normal thing to carry on a moped

Murals in Wat Phnom

Big golden Buddha

A mural in wat Phnom

Smoke and light in the Russian Market

Dunf and tish in a tuk tuk

Christmas cheers

 

Skulls from the killing fields

Live fish at the Russian market

From the killing fields

from S21 prision

a colorful market stall

A chicken dinner that ended up looking like a face...the capers are the eyes.

Pub Street

Angkor wat temple carvings, this stuff was literally everywhere

More from the tree temple

Mural on the back of a door

More of the ceiling

Same

Its sort of like a Christmas tree

Sunlight on the Stoopa

Artsy fartsy through the trees

A big incense pot

A big ole Buddah

Another stoopa shot

A small golden statue at Wat Phnom

This was just on the end of a normal bridge

Hilarious melon headed baby who was 7 months old but would do the "cheese" face on command

Bracelets at the market

This is someone randomly burning counterfeit $100 bills 

Official name of the killing fields

Bracelets are left as tribute for the dead

They keep finding clothes that the ground spits up over time, periodically they collect and display them. This pair of children's shorts really struck me 

Just horrible

This is a "home" for lost souls at the killing fields

clothes coming out of the earth

all those depressions are mass graves

The memorial stoopa at the killing fields

some tools used to execute prisinors

S21 on the day it was liberated in 1979

this is that bed

Can't believe they did this to children,

Same

So people didn't kill themselves by jumping out the window in S21

Chains in a cell

Cells in S21

Temple carvings

Same

More from Angkor wat

same

same



A well preserved face

A tunnel with face carvings

well preserved carvings

On of the main Angkor Wat towers

Now without the glare

Angkor Wat

Live ducks in the market

Tish and Kerry with Dorian or "stinky" fruit

Angkor beer in the market

Delicious noodles

Our Christmas tree

Oh hello Sir, this guy just jumped up behind DUNF and made himself at home

You read that right

We love Cambodia

Wat Phnom with reclining Buddhas

A 7 headed serpent on the end of a bridge 

Tish eating a pineapple, she didn't want me to put this in but editing the blog has its privlages

Normal stuff, just eatin chicken in the back of a tuk tuk

from the stoopa



 

A gallows with buckets that they would dunk people in

Just Loving on my Tish

a great sunset

with me and dunf

Sunset at the river

DUNF and the tuk tuk driver she defeated in Paper rock scissors

Dunfey's care bear comforter

PUB STREET!

More of Wat you want

a face over an arch



a monk. Taking a picture of us it would seem

More from the tree temple





Same



Same

another face, I sure those tiny ropes will hold those heavy stones...right?

Feet of what was once a statue

This is called Amok is like the Cambodian cheese steak

Me under a tree

a tuk tuk driving under the face arch for scale

the side of the face arch

more carvings

and more faces

from a place called the "elephant wall"

Steepest stairs EVER

This kid didn't have a problem with them

Some elephants we saw

the man made lake in front of Angkor wat

Me and tish

some carvings

so much detail

from the battle murals



a tish statue

one of the main Angkor Wat towers

Carvings from like 900 years ago

on the walkway to Angkor Wat

Tash pretending to be nervous about the beer tower

From the Angkor What bar



Now tash is an angel

Tish and dunf in a tuk tuk

What can I say...I love Cambodia


 

Below is DUNF dishing out a beating in Paper, rock, scissors