Angor Wat - Siem Reap - Cambodia

Dearest friends and family,
It is with pleasure that I write to you about our travels and adventures in the Kingdom of Cambodia. Or, as Norah and I like to say, Cam-bo-d-YEAH! But I digress. So, let me start by saying that there are, presently, no less than 6 lizards on the walls of this little internet cafe. How cool is that? But really, that is just the start.Norah and I have found Cambodia to be much flatter than Thailand. Also, there is much more poverty.We've heard others describe this country as Thailand 50 years ago or so. However, the economy here is booming, and whatever the government officials don't take for themselves trickles down to the locals (which doesn't appear to amount to much). Today is our second day in the country, as we arrived yesterday on the 25th of July. We fly out tomorrow mid-morning to Vietnam, so it has been a short stay.
Our purpose here was to visit the temples of Angkor Wat, and they were truly amazing. To our minds, they're on par with the pyramids, Petra, and any other wonders of the ancient world.The temples lie about 10 minutes outside the town of Siem Reap,and were built around the 9-11th centuries. There are maybe a dozen or so actual temples in the area, and many tourists take several days to see them all. We started this morning at 6:30 and went strong until about 1 pm, when we came back to our hotel, ate, and collapsed. The temples were only rediscovered by the"modern" world in the late 1800's by a Frenchexplorer. For more information, please visit www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_wat
(After our visit toKyler's in Jerusalem, we've taken one of his ideas ofadding links to our messages :)
After we woke up from our nap, we spent the rest oftoday shopping in the local market, eating dinner while watching a Khmer (local culture) dance show, and updating our blog. Yesterday we arrived around 1 pm. After we arrived and found a hotel, our taxi driver took us to a floating fishing village that Auntie Helga recommended we check out. On our way there, our taxi had to stop at a tourist checkpoint where a government officalcharged us $15 each to visit the village. We asked for a student discount, tried to look poor, and he only charged us $25 all together [smell fishy?]. We then went on, gave our ticket to a boat driver waiting in the river, and recieved an hour and a half cruise of the floating city.This place was very dirty, and the people were extremely poor. It was fascinating to see, but heartbreaking at the same time. These people, apparently, are the poorest of the poor. They live on the river because they don't have to pay the government taxes to do so. Accordingly, their whole life is on the river...they have floating schools, markets, and churches (Buddists, Muslims, and Christians all live in the village).
After we finished with the river tour, our taxi drivertook us to Angkor Wat to buy a ticket for the next day. They also had some deal where you could watch the sunset from one of the temples if you purchased a ticket for the next day, so we did that. It was spectacular! There were a lot of people up on top of the temple, and we actually ran into an older sister missionary and her grandaughter, who was visitng from the states. Sister Morgan has been in Cambodia for 6 months already, and prior to here, served a mission in...Zimbabwe! She happened to know theKneels and Newbolds - both families are friends ofMargie's...small world! Life is good here on the other side of the world. Tomorrow we fly out to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and will send more updates from there!!
Sorry we haven't been able to get more pictures up - our connections are usually too slow to do it. We'll keep trying!
Lots of love, Mike & Norah