Cambodia and Vietnam

After Chang Mai and the Songkran Festival in Northern Thailand we headed back to Bangkok for some last minute site-seeing and shopping, and to pick up our Cambodia and Vietnam visas. A bus picked us up at our guesthouse a little after six on Monday morning, heading for the Thailand-Cambodia border. We had purchased a package trip to Siem Reap, home of the Angkor temples, which involved a bus to the border, an escort across (you have to cover a few hundred yards on foot), and a bus from the border to the center of town. The price was reasonable - 600 baht per person, about fifteen dollars. The bus seemed decent enough, though every inch was packed with either person or luggage, and the aisle was so full that we literally had to climb out the windows when we stopped for lunch.
What we didn't know, and what we later noticed in an embarassingly prominent position in the Siem Reap section of Lonely Planet Cambodia, was that this particular ride was known as the 'scam bus'. The scam, essentially, is to drive as slowly as possible between the border and Siem Reap, and then drop the passengers off at a guest house in town at a late hour and tell them that all of the other guesthouses had already closed for the night. Normally, nobody would question the snails' pace of the trip, as the road is in truly terrible condition (we had been warned about that by several fellow travellers) - and most of the passengers are too busy bouncing like tennis balls to notice that maybe the driver could move a little bit faster. Fortunately, though we hadn't read about the scam in our guidebook, Rachel had been warned by our guesthouse when she called to make reservations, and she was thus able to warn our fellow passengers. When the bus landed in the driveway of the participating guesthouse, all the passengers scrambled to find taxis. Scam averted.

We found our way to a great guesthouse, called Smiley's, largely by luck. There are dozens, if not hundreds, to choose from. The town quite literally runs on tourism.
(Angkor Thom - featured in the Tomb Raider movies, but better in person)
Accompanied by a great fellow traveller named Noah, we spent two of our three days there exploring the temples at Angkor - the most famous of which is Angkor Wat - possibly the largest religious structure on earth. The more interesting temples were those less touched by renovation. Several had trees growing on or through them - walls half supported by massive trunks that had grown in the thousand years since the structures were built.








(Climbing one of several shaky staircases) (Bayonne Temple, a structure decorated with hundreds of stone faces, each about a meter high, which supposedly bear a strong resemblance to the king who commissioned them)
(A stickbug we encountered in one of the temples.)
(Rachel in one of the Angkor temples.)











Next we headed to Phnom Penh - capital of Cambodia. We spent our first full day visiting the killing fields and the genocide museum. That left us exhausted and depressed, though fortunately at dinner we had as a waiter a great guy named Charles whom we'd spent some time with in India. We explored the markets for a day, and then we flew to Danang in central Vietnam, via Saigon. Danang was just a stopover on our way to Hoi An, where we still are. It's a charming riverside town just a few kilometers from the South China Sea, and it's one of Vietnam's four world heritage sites. Nearly every other store is a tailor's, and so we've spent much of the last four days at fittings. Trousers for $20, winter coats for $25, and business shirts for $10. Yesterday we ran into someone I knew from school, currently travelling with two of his friends on a similar trip through Southeast Asia. Together we rented a small boat, which headed out towards the sea. Unfortunately the clouds settled in just in time for sunset, but we had an excellent time with great company, and we did get a close-up view of the fishing nets scattered along the coast - four long posts reaching several meters our of the water, together supporting a large net that is used like a basket - lowered into the water and then raised an hour or so later.
Today, our last day in Hoi An, we finally made it to the beach. The waves and the crowds were small, and the weather was perfect. Tomorrow we're heading back to Danang, from where we'll fly to Hanoi for the last leg of our trip - Northern Vietnam. Thanks to everyone who's still reading - though we're both saddened by the idea of the trip ending, we're also excited to get home and see everyone.