Wow, there is A LOT to say... We've done so much in such a short amount of time. It feels like a lifetime since we last wrote. So last time I wrote, we had gone to church in Bangkok and eaten dinner at June's home. Well, the next morning, Grant and I went to the bus station and took an OFFICIAL bus to Cambodia. It's funny, the scam tourist buses were about 10 times the regular price and about 5 times as disgusting. This REAL public bus was NICE, even including a complimentary water, snack and hygiene pack. It was a very comfortable ride to the border. We got to the border town of Aranyaprathet where we wound our way through a big market looking for border control. We caught a yummy bit of fried rice from the street and sat down on a curb to eat. As we ate, we saw three 8 year old-ish boys digging in a dumpster. Grant had an "Alladin Moment" (you know the part where he steals the bread then sees the little orphan children digging in the garbage?) and gave them his rice. It was cute because the boy he gave it to was confused, pointed to himself and made the motion to eat, Grant nodded and the kid smiles as if to say "yum!" It was cute and heartbreaking.
One thing that we've learned on this trip is DON'T TRUST ANYONE. Even the "nice" people. ESPECIALLY the nice people. We finally found the border where Grant talked to some guy who said that to cross the border and get a visa to Cambodia it was 1600 Thai Baht (about $50). We had heard differently so we just headed down the little walkway toward passport control and the man said "Uh, actually, I had to tell you $50 because i was on the Thai side. But actually, I work for the Cambodian Government, and it's only $20." It WAS only $20, but this man kept pestering us under the guise of "assisting us" until we were out and officially on the Cambodia side. The man told us a very convincing story and took us to a bus station on a "free shuttle" to a "tourist bus terminal" so we could head to Siem Reap. Still feeling very suspicious, we remembered the Lonely plant book we had on my kindle and looked up info on border control. The book basically said "don't trust the government operated scam at such and such station, it will rip you off" and it was the exact place we were at. So we marched out of there as fast as we could before the man could chase after us and walked all the way back in the BLAZING heat, swarmed here and there by begging children and taxi drivers all the way back to the border. We found a kid who barely spoke English to drive us the 2 hours to Siem Reap in his car for $20. Grant road in the front, and I rode in the back with a huge load of mangoes. Haha. It was great.
Cambodia is MUCH different from Thailand. Cambodia is considerably poorer. From the border to Siem Reap it was mostly green countryside with fields, palm trees and shanties on stilts. Siem Reap was actually a pretty decent place though. Pretty small still but definitely cleaner, more modern and about as filled with tourists as Thailand. We found a little guesthouse that had a huge room for $8 a night. The room was full of tiny bugs of every variety and occasional quarter sized cricket, but after the mando spider it was do-able. We ate our first Cambodian meal, which tasted already but had a sort of wet cat aftertaste. Then we rented a couple bikes from a little shop (with adorable little girls with great English) for $1 a day.
The next morning we road our bikes to Angkor Wat. It was pretty darn cool, I'd say! Our favorite part of the whole district area was Angkor Wat itself, which was breath-taking. It's a huge Hindu/Buddhist temple thinger built around 1100-1300 AD. It was like walking into a strange, ancient civilization. On the grounds we looked down at a bush and saw a funny looking dog...but soon realized it was actually a monkey! We decided to follow the monkey down a little path until it just sat on a low tree branch, looking fat and lazy. I came about 3 feet from it but it didn't move or do anything. We thought it was kind of eery...wondering if he had lead us to some sort of monkey ambush. But we finally got bored waiting for more monkeys and moved on. The rest of the complex was pretty cool and swarming with pitiful children selling postcards. We went into one temple and were accosted by a tiny girl who looked about 6 and said "postcard, postcard. Please, just one dollar. You no buy, I cry." Haha. Good one little girl, good one. She was pretty angry at us when we didn't buy, but if we purchased from every one who asked, we'd be broke. At one point, Grant gave me the map and let me lead us out to another temple area. We decided to take a short cut on a smaller road...but the smaller road got smaller and smaller until we were basically biking down a bumpy, sandy jungle path. Some teenage boys who happened to rumble by on their own bikes pointed us down the correct path which was actually MORE jungle-y than before. It was blazing hot and we both took our opportunity for seclusion to pee in the jungle but eventually the trees parted to an big stone gate to another temple complex. This one was largely just piles of rubble, but still cool nonetheless. There were dancing somewhat-naked lady motifs etched all over the walls. There were also the coolest trees the had just taken over, their roots growing over and on top of the rubble. It's was way cool looking. We had a moment in one of the temples where a woman gave us incense to burn at the Buddha statue and gave us good luck bracelets. This lead us to an interesting question: Is it offending God to participate in religious ceremonies or "ordinances" of other religions to other gods? Even if we are only doing it to be polite? Hmmmm...food for thought. On our way out of Angkor Wat, which although everyone told us one day was not enough to see we were perfectly satisfied with, we saw a troop of the same monkey we'd seen earlier! Except there were about half a dozen baby monkeys the size of squirrels. They were so stinking cute and there was a small crowd around them feeding them lotus roots. We had a mango pit in a bicycle basket with us so I threw a couple chunks at the babies. I was trying to decide who to throw the big pit to, when a big FAT monkey, about twice the size of a Popple but just as round waddled over and started pawing my shorts. Then he started getting more and more desperate, nearly pulling my shorts OFF. Then he was climbing up my arm, which he scratched in the process. I finally gave him the stupid pit and started freaking out that I'd been scratched by a sick, rabid monkey. Grant said I was fine, but was very patient while I freaked out and biked to a couple pharmacies just to get an opinion on whether or not I'd die from a monkey scratch. The pharmacist said I'd be okay and I'm still living so I guess it didn't matter after all.
The next day we changed to a bug-less little inferno of a hostel. It was nice, although hot. We stopped by an internet cafe for a moment and ran into a chatty Canadian girl. We ended up reserving a tuk-tuk to a "killing field" site (which was really only a box of the bones of many Cambodians killed in Khmer Rouge prisons) and a war museum. The war museum was actually very stirring. Look up the Khmer Rouge when you can. I had thought it had ended in the late 70s, but apparently Cambodia had been fighting this violent war with the Communist party until 1999. The Khmer Rouge (Commies) was secretly supported by the Chinese. They fought some sort of jungle warfare and because of that there are over 5 million active landmines still hanging out through-out Cambodia. So therefore you still have many people missing limbs from landmine explosions. He said that before Pol Pot's regime there were 8 million Cambodians but now there were only 5. The tour guide was a volunteer who had fought the Khmer Rouge himself and had multiple scars on his face and was missing several fingers. He told his story about the war he experienced and was very intense about us understanding what kind of a war this was and how lucky we are. He joined the army when he was 16 because he needed food. He showed us many landmines, explained how they worked, and told us stories about how his friends had died from these landmines. Another tour guide was missing an arm. The man was said many things that were surprising to hear spoken so honestly. He said that the UN had given a ton of money to Cambodia to clear the landmines but the government had pocketed the money. He said the government was a democracy but "Communist and Chinese" at heart. In the end he asked for a tip so he could have surgery to remove some ball bearing still embedded in his shoulder from a landmine. It was a very haunting tour but the most incredible war museum tour I have ever experienced.
That night we bought some street food, which was a funny experience. Sometimes, you buy street food--the legit stuff that the locals eat--and it's delicious! But this was NOT. It was like fishy, bitter, ammonia flavored slop. Grant was more of a trooper than I was...I couldn't swallow much of it.
The next day took a bus back to Bangkok. It was full of Chinese people who were pretty hyper. At border control, one girl came up to me, speaking Chinese saying, in a strange secretive way, "are you Christian?" Strange thing to ask someone you've never met...but still kinda cool. They were from Beijing with their preacher and were all learning how to be missionaries in China. I told her I served a mission in Taiwan and she seemed somewhat disappointed by that. Haha. But it appeared the whole idea of them being missionaries was some sort of secret. Probably because it's illegal. Haha. When we got to Bangkok, there was some sort of argument with the taxi drivers and the little troop of Chinese tourist missionaries followed us for a little bit until they found their own way. That night we slept in a guesthouse close to the metro.
On July 21, we went to the airport to fly out to India! We rushed but barely got the airport less than an hour before take-off. But the check-in ladies couldn't find our tickets! "Your flight is tomorrow! Today is the 20th." They said. We felt pretty dumb that we didn't even know what day it was. But we were determined to leave so they got us on the next flight out. The flight was only hours long and then we were in Delhi!
Now, here is where everything began to blow our minds. India is almost like another planet. On the shuttle bus to the New Delhi train station we met a nice guy named Haj who told us "don't trust ANYONE. Only trust cops." When we got the the train station, we saw that we were in a very different world. There are SO MANY PEOPLE. The streets are full, all the time. We walked past delicious smelling (and tasting) food stands, garbage heaps, swarms of flies, beggars, tuk-tuk drivers, roadside urinals of the foulest stench in sweltering heat. The hostel we finally stumbled into and bargained down the price for is down a greasy, fly filled ally that would be terrifying were it not always full of foot traffic. After dumping off our stuff we decided to see a couple sites while we could. We shortly ran into some fascinating cultural oddities. At the metro station there was a line to go through the security detector thingy but I was shewed out of line because I was in the "men's line". They have separate lines for men and women, which I VERY much like, since the line for men can sometimes before 30 feet long but the women's has not a soul in line. This is because there are literally 30 men to every 1 woman out on the street. It's like this is a country of just men. It's crazy. The men where either button down dress shirts with tan slacks or traditional Muslim/Hindu garb consisting of various types of white robe. They also have many kinds of hats, from turbans, to stretchy black beanies with little knobs on the forehead, to Muslim Alladin-esque hats. The ladies look AWESOME! They where beautiful, colorful, sometimes jeweled and shimmery saris and shalvar kmeezes that look so enchanting. You very seldom see women in Western style clothes. Another cool thing about being a lady in India is that you can butt long lines (when they aren't separated by gender) and you get your very own 2 cars in the metro. We found THAT out when we stumbled into the metro and Grant found himself being glared at by dozens of beautiful red-dotted Indian women. He immediately realized the error and retreated to the male car, which is tanner, sweatier, and stinkier than the colorful, perfumey lady's car.
We are quite the oddity here...there really are hardly any tourists here. We went to the Red Fort which was an amazing red fort built many years ago. While there people took discreet and not so discreet pictures of us on their cell phones. We also went to a cool Jainist temple. Later we went to a bazaar where I chose fabric and was measured for a Shalvar Kmeez (I think that's how you say it). We picked it up tonight and it's gorgeous! I'm excited to dress like a real Indian lady. We ate a HUGE dinner for 90 cents a piece the consisted of 3 different kinds of curry, plus naan bread on the side. Apparently, you eat with you hands, using the naan bread as a utensil. And you can only use your right hand. Strange and difficult. The food is to DIE FOR. It is SOOO good. Every bite.
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