At first Cambodia appeared to be just another country in southeast Asia and since we’d spent so much time here, our expectations weren’t high.  We’d of course be seeing the famous temples of Angkor, including the namesake Angkor Wat, but that would all happen on our last stop in the country.  We still had a few cities to see first.  The temples are what this country is on the map for.  What other secrets would lie in wait for us?  Well, the first thing we would discover is that you cannot pull $86,000 U.S. out of the ATM’s here.

We looked at the map in our guidebook and tried to pick a spot that wouldn’t require us to do another overnight bus.  The answer would be a little town called Kracheh, known for it’s white bottle nosed dolphins that swim in the Mekong.  We spent two nights here and saw no bottle nosed dolphins, white or otherwise.  When our minivan dropped us off at a hotel, a man came out and tried to get us to book a room there, which was not unheard of at this point in our trip.  We thanked him but we had already made reservations down the street at a hotel that also acted as a school for the local teens to learn the business of hospitality.

While we walked the few short blocks to our hotel, we passed an ATM.  We thought it would be a good idea to get some of the local currency before we checked in.  I have a currency converter app on my phone that became invaluable during our trip but unfortunately it did not have Cambodia as an option to convert U.S. dollars.  Luckily, Mandy had also downloaded different converter app, which contained Cambodia.  The app did the math for us and presto, bango, we need to get $86,000 of the local currency here if we want to have around $200 on us, which was the normal amount we would get when entering a new country.  The ATM wizzed and beeped and then popped up a message on the screen that there wasn’t enough bills in the machine to process our request, which seemed odd to us so we tried a different amount.  Still, nothing.  At this point, we thought we were only attempting to withdraw about $50 U.S. but the machine still was not happy with our request.

It finally dawned on me that we were in another one of those countries that, for one reason or another use, as their currency, the United States Dollar.  MERICA!

So we requested a hundred bucks from the machine and received five crisp twenty dollar genuine American money bills.  Hmm…Hope the bank doesn’t freak out about our attempt to withdraw almost a hundred thousand dollars (which we didn’t have) from our account…..from Cambodia.

We didn’t do much in Kracheh, except drink $1 beers and eat pizza.  I don’t even have any pictures of our time there.  You can go see the white nosed dolphins if you want, but we heard from a few people who went that it was just a boring boat ride and no one saw any dolphins.  So just imagine a white dolphin in a chocolate brown river in Cambodia.  Got that?  Yup, just saved you some money.

So we booked a bus to get us into the capital, Phnom Penh.  Phnom Penh was another one of those cities where, when the bus pulled up, tuk tuk drivers were eager to take you to your destination.  It’s a bit overwhelming so we just grabbed our bags and stood off to the side while we took in our new surroundings.  The capital city of Cambodia is complete chaos, and our maps weren’t working on our phones to get directions to where we wanted to go.  A tuk tuk driver sheepishly approached us, smiled and asked if we needed a ride.  So we said sure….showed him our travel reservation and he helped us with our bags and took us directly to our hotel.  We kept waiting for the other hammer to drop.  Surely he’d want more money that he told us it would cost, or long haul us around the city, maybe even stop off and show us a great store where we could buy a brand new custom tailored suit.  But no, he just took us to our hotel, thanked us, helped us with our bags again at the hotel, smiled and left.

It was weird.

Phnom Penh, and much of Cambodia has a dark and horrific background.  The Khmer Rouge regime, ran by the dictator Pol Pot took over this city in 1975 and forced all the residents into the countryside to work in forced labor camps on farms.  Estimates are that between 1 and 3 million Cambodians were killed under his regime.  When you find out that there were only around 8 million Cambodians living in the country at the time, you began to get the breadth of the madness of this evil man and his supporters.

These were the rules posted in S21, which used to be a high school but was turned into a prison under Pol Pot.  The english version wasn’t added for tourists.  This was the original sign.   Cambodians weren’t the only ones imprisoned here.  Two American backpackers were among the victims of the Khmer Rouge.

We took an audio tour while walking around and we highly recommend it.  

Inside of those rooms were metal beds where people were strapped down and a car battery was clipped to the end.  I didn’t want to take pictures here. In another building, there were makeshift cells with a bowl for people to go to the bathroom.   The audio commentary included some pretty horrific information about these cells.  If your bowl overflowed you were forced to lick it up.  I didn’t want to take pictures here either.

We would take a trip out of town to the killing fields.  This sight, and many like it, were where the majority of the Cambodian population were executed under Pol Pot.  I’ll spare you the details we learned, especially those regarding how babies were dealt with, but I have to show the few pictures I was comfortable taking while here.

I don’t think at this point I need to explain what is in the bottom of these pits.

This temple, a memorial to the victims, sits in the middle of the compound. Inside are the remains that were discovered buried.  Unfortunately, remains are still unearthed to this day.

After you remove your shoes and you enter and look up, this is what you see.

To say this was a sobering experience is a gross understatement.

As we were leaving, I took this shot of a worker taking a break.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it was nice to see an actual living human on this piece of land where such atrocities were carried out.

You ready for a pallet cleanser?  When we were in San Juan Del Sur, I bought this tank top and it only cost $2.

Turns out it was more of a dress.   I look fabulous though.  Lot going on in that picture.  Take a minute to take it all in.

This was taken in the hotel we stayed at in Siem Reap, our last stop in Cambodia, which is also where we would see the infamous temples of Angkor.  Get ready for a bunch of pictures of some really old buildings!