Cyrus and Paige au Cambodge

Hello World,

I know its been a long time since I've written anything on here but we haven't really been up to that much lately. As you read in Paige's last post we've been dealing with these animals in the classroom for the past couple months without much of a break. And then seemingly out of nowhere, we were granted a week of much needed vacation.

First we were headed to Bangkok for a race. Paige and I signed up for a race a while back for some motivation to exercise. It was a 16.8k race which comes out to around 10.5 miles so we had been training for a couple months leading up to race day and were pretty excited. But there was one downside: the race started at 4 am. We got to to the race area at around 3:15 in the morning which, looking back on it, is a ridiculous time to be running. But they had to do it early because of the heat and because its pretty hard to shut down Bangkok traffic for even a couple hours. We were a little bit surprised by the organization of the race when we got there, it looked really nice and seemed to be running smoothly. And about 10 minutes before the race was starting they even had group aerobics for all of the runners at the start line! It was more ridiculous than it sounds because Paige and I were pretty much the only people not participating. But the feeling we had that the race organization was too good to be true was correct. On the course most water stations were completely out of water. When they did have water they didn't have it poured and so you had to stop and wait at every station for them to pour you a glass. Afterwards there was no snacks or drinks and getting our bags back was a mess as well. But overall it was a good experience. It was a lot of fun being able to run through the streets of Bangkok (even though it was dark for the whole race) and doing something competitive. For those of you wondering neither Paige nor I got first place. The Kenyans were a bit too fast for either of us this time, but if we trained for a year I think we could beat them pretty easily (maybe).

After recovering in Bangkok for a day, we were finally off on our big adventure for the week. We decided to finally make the trip over the Eastern border to Cambodia. We had heard some good things about Cambodia so we were pretty excited to go over there, especially to see Angkor Wat. We took a bus from Bangkok to the border and had to get out to go through immigration and customs and all that. As soon as we  were out of the bus I immediately wanted to go back to Thailand. The border town was called Poipet and was one of the dirtiest, shadiest, nasty places I have ever been to. There was trash everywhere, people were getting carried across the border in huge caged cars and the touts were unbelievable. Paige and I were trying to figure out our plan for getting to our next city and were trying to talk to one another but could not even hold a conversation because of taxi-drivers right up in our faces asking us questions and telling us where to go. We ended up taking a "taxi" from Poipet to Siem Reap (which was our final destination) When we got to Poipet I was like this but when we left i was like this.

The weirdest thing upon entering the country is the currency they use. Instead of using Cambodian currency they only use American dollar bills. All of the prices are listed in dollars on menus and at stores. When you looked at a menu it is amazing when you can actually see in USD how cheap what you are eating is. And it also just felt weird to have American money again. It was the first time we had really seen it in almost a year and it looks a lot different after you've been looking at Thai money for that long. 

Coming into Siem Reap we had heard good things so we were expecting to be impressed. When we arrived we were blown away. The city had a completely different feel than any city we've been to so far in SE Asia. It had a European influence but was a lot classier than some of the other European-styled cities we visited. It was such a stark contrast from Thailand that it was hard to believe at first. The first night we just walked around the town and repeatedly talked about how awesome it was there.

Walking through Siem Reap at night

Dinner in Siem Reap at the same restuarant Mick Jagger ate at (their claim to fame)

We spent the next three days exploring Angkor Wat which was an amazing adventure. Basically Angkor Wat is an ancient city from around 1100-1200 AD. All the ruins that are there are huge temples that were dedicated to different gods and different kings. We were expecting the temples and ruins to be similar to what we had seen in Thailand but they were completely different. Instead of being Buddhist temples the temples at Angkor are more influenced by Hinduism. The architecture was different as well as the gods that were depicted. After seeing so many of the same kind of temples over and over again in Thailand, seeing these Hindu-Buddhist fusion temples was interesting and refreshing.

Here are a couple videos of us walking through some of the temples on the compound:

The setting of the whole Angkor complex was fun as well. Most of the temples were covered with trees and bushes in the middle of the jungle. It is where they did some of the filming for Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider if that gives you a better sense of the scenery. While they are doing a great job conserving and restoring the ruins, the way that nature is seemingly taking over the compound was beautiful. Even with the amount of people touring the sites it was very easy to imagine stumbling upon these huge ruinous temples as the first adventurers however many years ago, as Linda would say. During our trip we took many "adventure" posed pictures because we felt like explorers the whole time we were there.

Paige and I exploring the ruins

Nature taking over

Overall we came away from Cambodia being very impressed. It definitely lived up to its expectations and even surpassed them in my mind. If we had more time over here in this side of the world I might even go back again just because of how much fun the city of Siem Reap was. For those of you keeping track at home we have been here for ten months already which means only a couple more until we come back. Time has been flying by for us over here but we are starting to actually get excited to come back (a little bit at least). We are done teaching in one month! Crazy how fast this whole thing has been going.

For more pictures of our trip you can click on this link and it will take you to an album.

Hope you all are doing well and have been having a good summer!

Cyrus and Paige

PS. I know you guys are all getting excited for another great season of Lions football!