Val arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday around noon! I met her at the airport and we headed back to the hotel in town. We are booked into a western style hotel that is costing a whopping $20 per night, but it is as good as any Hilton or other high end hotel in the US. Besides AC, hot showers, cable TV with 64 channels and the mini-bar, we have free wireless internet in our room. Oh yes, the life of luxury.

We had been promising ourselves that at some point along the way, we would splurge a few nights since we've been staying in a lot of very inexpensive places to stretch our budget out. Australia had been very hard on it and we felt like SE Asia would help to get us back on track. We've done very well, so this is our reward:)

Our trip hits the 2/3 mark today and it's a little sad. We know there are still 4 months left, but it feels like time is closing in on us a little. We only have 3 more weeks in SE Asia and then we start to jump around the world in big chunks. Two weeks in the Maldives and then on to Africa. Well, Egypt and Morocco anyway. We've starting planning that in a little more detail and it looks like we may just stick to Egypt for a while and probably see Morocco after we fly to Spain. Sounds backwards, but we are going to take the ferry back across from Spain to Morocco rather than fly back and forth from Egypt. It's less expensive and we had budgeted time for that while visiting Spain.

But here in Cambodia, we still have some time and things to do and see. Today we went to see the Russian Market, the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, the Central Market and then finally found a German/Swiss restaurant and had a decadent dinner before having a tuk-tuk take us home for a night-cap on the roof top at the bar watching the lights of the city. A truly wonderful day!

The Russian Market is just the name for it. It's not run by Russians or anything, but it is sort of a black market. We bought lots of Columbia Sportswear pants, etc. for pennies on the dollar. Pants that are normally $50-$70 in the US were $3-$4 there and they are not knock-offs. They're made right here in Cambodia so there are tons of them here. Past years styles that never even got shipped out of the country and sold off cheap. They also have a section of the market with about 10 tailors just waiting to make alterations for you if necessary. I bought a pair of pants that were too long and for $0.50, they were measured and re-sewn in 10 minutes. We may go back and get more:)

The Royal Palace was most impressive! Much of it is off-limits to the public and photos of the buildings interiors are forbidden, but I did get a bunch of outdoor shots of the architecture. There is one building called the 'Silver Pagoda'. The floor of this building is finished with 9" square silver tiles that each weigh 1 kilo (2.2 pounds). I'm pretty sure I'll never get to work on a project with a budget like that. Inside, they also had a Buddha statue that is carved of pure Emerald. It was probably 2 feet tall and had to weigh several hundred pounds. There were thousands of silver Buddhas, ceremonial crowns, bracelets and other accessories. The palace itself had a painted ceiling that easily rivaled the Sistine Chapel in Rome for quality and detail, and it is in much better condition (although I have not seen the Sistine Chapel since the restoration was completed). The Central Market was similar to the Russian Market, but it was more for tourists than the Russian Market and the vendors were much more aggressive. We stayed only a short while and left.

Today is our last day here in Phnom Penh and we are heading out to the Tuol Sleng Museum. This was a high school that was taken over by Pol Pot's (the leader of the Khmer Rouge) security forces in 1977 and became a torture prison. People that survived the torture were later taken to an extermination camp called Choeung Ek and bludgeoned to death in order for the military to save bullets. Their bodies were then dumped into mass graves. This is known as the Killing Fields. We're going to go to the museum first and see how we feel before deciding if we are going to go out to the fields themselves. There were close to 9,000 bodies exhumed from the graves. This was a clear act of ethnic cleansing that took place here only 30 years ago and was not very well publicized since Cambodia was still a fairly closed country to westerners up until just recently. The fact that Pol Pot died before he was ever brought to justice angered many Cambodians and is still a sore subject to them. The recent history and political turmoil of this country are remarkable and the fact that they are starting to turn the corner and have shown enough stability to join the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) in 1999, is truly a testament to the strong will and courage of the people here.

Tomorrow we ar going to take a bus and head north to Siem Reap which is a small city near the town of Angkor and home to 1,000s of Wat or temples. We plan to stay there for 5-7 days and then head back to Thailand for our last week or so before heading out of SE Asia.

Until next time,

Eric