I know it seems like all I wrote should be put into a few months of travel in Cambodia so that should tell you how much time we spend jumping from one place to the next to make the trip be as all encompassing at possible. Well after prey chore it was time to vist the Disney world of Cambodia seim reap (Ankor Wat Temple) the things most tourist come for and the place I get asked about the most by Cambodians. Well I wanted to take a taxi their and I asked around and was told this place skun had them however when we arrived I was told no such luck then we had all these motto dops and tuk tuk drivers annoying us and trying to rip us off however now im in a place I have never been when something life altering happens okay well maybe not that big but its this next story that is the one that will stick with me for the rest of my life. So we start to walk to a bus station that I guess is far away and then a young Khmer women stops and seems to know English however very little so I speak to her in Khmer and she ends up helping us get a bus but while waiting for the bus we have this long out conversation about her. She goes into how she has this adopted daughter who is hit by the teachers so much she is scared to go to school and how she pity’s her child and then tells me about her family etc she runs inside and gets this photo of pictures of this orphan the whole thing is just very sad this poor women sells and makes no money lives in a tin house and then proceeds to give me a picture to keep telling me how she wants me to be a god mother to her child now what do I do except give her my Cambodian phone number and say yes maybe I will see you again. Well the story doest end their then she gives me one of her kormas (a Khmer scruff with checkers) so I will always remembered her and how we can be friends. Things like this never leave me because someone who has nothing can give so much and while im a volunteer and really don’t have money etc she still could have looked at me and deiced that I am a rich American and asked for money like most Khmer people do but instead all she wanted out of this all was my friendship. Things like this help me put my life back into perspective I have mention I have read a lot of Ram Dass and one of the things he always talks about is how in life you meet people who are teachers while its important not to let the ego hold on to them to much you should take what they give and utilize it I could not help but feel after that conversation with her that it was one of my life lesson to help me on my path to enlightenment. Well semi reap was paved rds like in Europe little back allys full of 5 star places to eat with more tuk tuk drivers per capita then people we meet up with another pcv had some Italian dinner which was nice break. Well the next day we headed for the temples however with a devious plan in mind that went like this so everyone kept tell Luis how Khmer he looked and that’s when we deiced why not test this theory out to save 20 bucks… well I first had to get him a Khmer tight collard shirt and a pair of tight jeans made him take off his glasses and watch I thought humm seems passable to me. I know your all thinking well what’s going to happen when they ask him question and he cant speak khmer well we were on that to so the story went like this I am a volunteer and this is my older host brother who has a soar throat so he can not speak I know genus well not so much. Sigh so we get stopped with our tickets and they are like well can we see your passport to him I respond for him no bc he does not have one he is Khmer and poor this makes the guard laugh then he is like okay can I see his identity card which I think might be like a drivers license and I did not think of this so I still try to play it off that he did not bring it. Now the guard is telling me he does not believe he is Khmer because not even lying about this he is to beautiful that his skin is more beautiful then Khmer person and his nose well I did not want to just let it drop so I try to tell the guard he is just as beautiful as the guard is and I say see the same color skin and he just is like okay go get a ticket the gig is up. For the record if he went with all Khmer people I think it would have worked but bc it was just me and him that’s why it was an epic fail. Inside the grounds was really pretty worth the trip and best part is its not like all uptight like in America you can touch things and climb on things its not all glass incased like it would be in America. After making 1000’s of year old stone building my playground we spend the rest of r time just exploring around eat some western food and enjoying the sites and sounds of Cambodia Disney world as I like to call it. That night we went to the night market where I kid you not they had perfume spraying so it smelled like you were walking past Hollister in the mall or something it was crazy I was like why don’t I smell fish something is up with all of this haha while no one else seemed to notice. Next on are list was where to go next and we had a hard time deciding bc our original plans were to go to Thailand but we just got caught up with seeing things in Cambodia it ment we would have been on a pretty big time crunch so instead we thought we would head down south and go to the boarder of Thailand to a place called kok kong first we had are usual stop over in the city trying to figure out taxi’s etc because on the way back from semi reap we had no choice but to take a bus and that thing broke down on us so many times the ac broke and the bus windows don’t open so at this point Luis had his fill of buses. When we got to kok kong it was not this tropical beach I imagined you cant really swim in the water near the main part of town you have to take a bridge or boat ride sort of far out for the prettier tropical water which was not so easy with it being rainy season. It was not as nice as kp som but it was a different place to see went to the zoo saw some monkeys box each other went to the biggest man grove tree in all of south East Asia. I guess my end thoughts of this trip would be similar to Luis in that this place is for the person who seeks adventure wants to live on the edge and do stuff that 95 percent of other people will not get to do in a life time! Lucky for me I get to live it everyday and have not grown tired of it yet. Nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." Chris McCandless With this quote in mind I know some of you are looking to escape from the secure life you thought you created and wanted to something un like anything else if so Cambodia just might be the place for you. Till next time peace out from the other side of the world!
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