We are at the Borei Ankor hotel in Siem Reap and is it ever plush, teak everywhere you can look. We took a Bangkok air flight from PhnomPhen and got here late so am posting for yesterday. They fly the same little airplanes the Horizon flies to Montana. Driving from the airport we were getting a little worried going through bad neighbor hoods, but the hotel is great.



The night we spent in Phnom Phen we swam and relaxed by the pool and then took a TukTuk (a motor scooter drawn buggy the only means of public transportation) down to the riverfront and found a great restaurant called Frizz. It is run by a Dutch expat and serves authentic Cambodian food. We had green chili curry that was better than Mali thai. After dinner we were going to walk a bit but the beggars got to us so we retreated to the hotel. In some ways Cambodia seems less poor the Vietnam because it is less crowded but there are far more people who have been injured by landmines and the war and children begging on the streets. We were talking to an English couple at the airport who travel in Asia a lot, and they said, "Give what you can but remember they were here before you came and will be here when you leave, you can't fix the problem." The hotel has a brochure about all of the programs the Cambodians have set up to get their people back on their feet which would be a better way to donate.



We started our tour yesterday visiting the grounds of the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. It is a large park like area where the king's lives and the public can visit parts of it. Lucky for us it was overcast as we spent a lot of time outdoors, and buckets of sweat were pouring off us. The present king was crowned in 2004 and the country is governed by a prime minister and Parliament. This is an election year for them. The present form of government was set up by the UN in 1990. The dollar is the preferred form of currency here, at least equal to the Cambodian real. Our guide said it was because their money was worthless after the revolution. Her parents had worked hard and saved and it was worth zero, so when democracy was restored people only trusted US dollars.



From there we went to the National Museum with many artifacts from Angkor Wat and other sites.



Lunch was at a very busy Chinese restaurant. I found something new coconut jelly is really good. After lunch we visited the "lady pagoda" which sits on a man made hill and is the oldest structure in the city. The steps and grounds were packed with beggars. Before we started Talee said not to give money until we were leaving and she changed our dollars into Cambodian real (4000/dollar) so that we had could give to more people. It was really awful seeing all of those suffering people.



Our next stop was two markets, the first especially for tourists and very expensive and the second the "Russian Market" for local people. Hot, crowded, interesting with great prices on the same stuff that was in the first market.



Out guide for the day was a 37 yr old lady named Talee who was very interesting. Her parents were teachers and she was 5 years old when PolPot's Khmer Rouge revolution took place. Her family was relocated far into the country and forced to do field labor. After 1979 when the Russians and Vietnamese threw the Khmer Rouge out they stayed in the village and taught at the schools there. She is the oldest of 8 children and attended school off and on, being taught at home part of the time. As a teenager she passed the entrance exams and was allowed to to to University in Phnom Phen. She asked how old we were and was astonished that we are older than her parents who she says are "very Old". An easy American life with good dental and health care really makes a difference in how people age.



Our last stop was the killing fields memorial Choung Ek, where they found thousands of bodies from victims of the genocide. There is a large building in the center serving as a grave for the skulls from the graves they exhumed. Many were left undisturbed.