Finished with Cambodia

So my time in Cambodia has come and gone. Not including my travel time, I spent a little over a full day in Phnom Penh and 3 and a half days in Siem Reap. The most interesting part of the Phnom Penh was the Royal Palace. I take that back, the most interesting part of Phnom Penh was the fact that it had by far the hottest women I've yet to see on this trip, but after that it was the Royal Palace. The Killing Fields were interesting to see but not all that impactful. They weren't presented with any information that I didn't already know and I didn't have a decent guide to put things into context. It was still definitely worth the trip just to see, though.

All the Angkor temple ruins were pretty fascinating. I hired a private guide and a driver so I could cover as much as possible in the 3 days I had. Even then I thought the guide was holding me back. I can apparently hike a lot faster than he can. Still we got pretty far afield and were able to cover just about everything worth seeing within 50 Km of Siem Reap in the 3 days. I did get gouged a bit by the travel company I arranged this through. When I bought the guide and driver I was given the impression I could extensively customize the tour and wouldn't have to pay that much more to add in additional places. I ended up having to cough up another 70 bucks to see a couple of the things I wanted to that weren't on the standard tour, which pissed me off a bit. The other disadvantage to the private driver was all kids selling souvenirs and other crap converged on me like a swarm of bees when I got out of the car. I can't really blame them. They see a lone guy show up at a temple in a minivan with a driver and a private guide looking like a fucking Maharaja (or Tom Daschle??) and they probably figure (incorrectly) that he's got money to burn.

The Cambodian food is pretty good. It wasn't quite up to Vietnam's standards, but still quite tasty. You can definitely get some wackier stuff there. In the 6 days I was around, I ate some barbequed snake, crocodile, and frogs 3 different times. You can probably tell I liked the frogs. I particularly liked the ribbity soup I had that was filled up with little frog legs, frog bodies, and lemony broth. Yum! They've got tons of seafood. There's a massive lake in the middle of the country that is one of the most productive fresh-water fisheries in the world, so fish is a big part of the diet. It's a good thing, too, since the cows here are so damn skinny.

The one thing I'll be happy to get away from is the dirt. You get expectedly dirty going to the temples, but aside from the ritzy parts right on the river Siem Reap itself is a big dust bowl. And there is trash absolutely EVERYWHERE in Cambodia. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford proper waste disposal or if it's just a cultural thing, but there was litter all over the place. The people were great and I enjoyed my time, but it will be nice to get somewhere where I don't feel like I need to hose myself down after walking down the street for 20 minutes. I'm on the plane from Siem Reap to Vientiane as I write this, so we'll see if Laos is any better in that regard.