Cambodia Bound

Tomorrow morning at 5AM we're leaving for Cambodia. It's going to be a long day, but hopefully we'll get there before dark. The last thing you want is to be driving in Cambodia at night.

This will be my second trip and Fiona's first. Last time I went I had a 30 day visa, but I only managed to make it 14 days. It was a difficult place to be. There's an awful lot of poverty, and it was the first time I'd seen anything like it. Hopefully this time around I'm better prepared and can see a bit more of the country.

We're going to start off in Siem Riep (home of Angkor Wat) and we'll spend a few days relaxing there. We're both coming off some pretty nasty colds, so a few days of taking it easy will be really nice - especially after the last Celta-riffic month.

After Siem Riep we're not sure where we're going to head. At some point we'll make it down to Phnom Penh so that Fiona can see the Killing Fields and the S-21 museum. I've heard that the Ratakiri province in the Northeast is pretty remarkable, but it may not be possible to get there because of the monsoons.

Speaking of which, you may not know this about monsoons (I didn't, at least). I used to think that monsoons were constant, driving rain that didn't let up for months. Not so. Here in Bangkok they're really severe thunder and lightning storms that last for an hour at the most. To be honest, they're not that much different from the summer storms I remember in DC and CT. Of course, they're a lot more exotic with a bunch of food vendors running down the street through the pouring rain screaming in Thai the whole way.

Posted by flow Frazao on June 2, 2005 at 05:37 AM in Southeast Asia | Permalink