so long thailand, hello cambodia!

we've fallen a bit behind again due to really slow internet connections and just plain being busy. we won't say a ton about our last week in thailand 'cause there was quite a bit we didn't like about it, but there were some highlights.

we headed down to phuket which turned into just a stopping over point for us, mostly because we hated it there. i'm sure there are very nice places in the phuket area... all the guidebooks say so. we just didn't see them. we did see lots of prostitutes and men who looked like our grandpa partaking in such services. it was basically just a seedy tourist trap where we felt like walking dollar signs. 'nuf said.

from phuket we caught a boat to phi phi island (pronounced and sometimes spelled pee pee). aside from being pretty touristy and often mysteriously smelling of poo, it was great. the highlight of our 3 days there was the full day snorkeling trip we took. we signed up for a speed boat tour which can have from 15-20 people on it. we were lucky enough to share our boat with only 2 other girls.... for only half the day. the other half we had the run of the boat. and as you may have gathered from other posts.... any time we're on a boat in a tropical location we're generally pretty happy. having a speed boat all to ourselves while jetting through around the islands of thailand pretty much takes the cake. the snorkeling was the best we've seen. sometimes there were other boats of snorkelers. sometimes we were completely on our own. and if any of you have seen that not so good movie 'the beach' with leonardo dicaprio... we went to that beach. it really is that pretty.

after phi phi we went to krabi province and spent a day in ao nang. we then headed back to phuket and caught our flight to phnom penh.

cambodia was like a breath of fresh air after crazy crazy phuket. i wouldn't exactly describe phnom penh as a sleepy little town... it's a city of nearly 2 million people.... but we immediately felt more relaxed once we got there. our friend carrie lives here and she is a rockstar. she's been a volunteer for mcc for over a year and a half now. she can speak khmei, can tell us all the best places to go, and can put any tuk tuk driver in his place. we are amazed by her on a daily basis.

our first few days in phnom penh we spent exploring the temple which is the city's namesake, browsing markets and picking out fabric to have dresses made. we got a tour of the organizations carrie's been working with. we met up with some other goshen college kids who are here as well and had some good karaoke fun. then anna and i got sick. it was bound to happen and frankly we're surprised we've been as healthy as we have been for this long. let's just say we spent some quality time with our hotel bathroom and were very thankful to have a 'western' toilet. as anna says, cambodia may be the best diet ever. it will make up for all those french fries we ate in australia.

once we were both able to hold down some solid food we got our bus ticket to siem reap. the first day here we met the tuk tuk driver and the guide we had hired for the day at 5:30 and headed to angkor wat for sunrise. it was pretty amazing... as were a lot of the things we saw that day. we all the 'big' temples that first day and we were very happy to have a guide along. he was able to explain what the intricate carvings meant. and he could explain the shift between hinduism and buddhism depending on which king was in power at the time. if a temple had been built by a buddhist king and was followed by a hindu king all the statues and images of buddha would be removed, destroyed, or changed to look like a hindu god. or the temple would simply be abandoned. there were a lot of headless statues laying around.

one of our favorite temples was ta prahm, otherwise known as the temple 'tomb raider' was shot in. it's a temple that has only been partially cleared from the jungle that reclaimed it after it went out of use. there are huge spung trees that are growing on and through the roof and walls. it gives it a very ancient, jungly, mysterious feel.

today was our second day of temple visiting. we decided to go without a guide this time since the temples we were visiting were smaller and less significant historically. because all of the temples on today's tour were much more spread out we got to spend a lot of time on a tuk tuk driving through the cambodian countryside. the drive was just as good, sometimes better, than the temples themselves. lots of naked babies. lots of little kids riding adult size bikes and managing pretty well. lots of families with stands selling fruit, baskets, and other crafts to tourists. our driver told us how the company that sells the tickets to the temples (which is not even a cambodian company) is changing things. soon transportation will be included in the price of the ticket which will put hundreds of tuk tuk drivers essentially out of work. they are also building new roads to the temples.... roads that do not go through the small villages we drove through today. all the people who make a living selling baskets and fruit to the tourists passing through will also be out of a lively hood. and the government is ok with all of it. no one knows how much the company pays the government each year but it must be a sizable amount. we are beginning to see the ways in which cambodia has earned it's place in the top 20 of the world's most corrupt countries.

tomorrow we're heading to a floating village which we've heard good things about. we'll have a couple more days up north here and then we'll head back for some more fun times with our good friend carrie. we passed our 2 month mark on the trip a few days ago. it's both hard to believe we've been gone that long and hard to believe it's only been that long. so much has happened and we've seen so much. hopefully the next month treats us as well as the first two did.