Now there are two types of buses that go between the two cities a couple times a day – the regular one that takes 6-7 hours, and the quick bus we took that makes it in around 4…and you may be wondering the same thing I was…why does it make it there quicker? More stops? Nope...because we drive like we are in an ambulance or something! It was completely CRAZY and yet so much fun…swerving around people/vehicles, speeding up as fast as he could to go around someone and keep going fast until he had to slow down for oncoming traffic, oxen, motos, or other cars.
I kept wondering whether I should be wishing I was sitting in the front seats to get a good video of the whole experience, or whether I should be thankful that I missed most of the close calls and crazy driving. It was a blast, and you just have to keep reminding yourself that this is all the driver does for a living every day – so he is a great driver, and can judge space very well! Another thing to keep in mind is that to say that there are traffic lanes is a pretty strict interpretation…there are lanes, but they are more like loose guidelines to show you what general side of the road you should be on when you are driving…so for our driver to be going around people and anything else that might be on the road, is pretty common. It is just not quite as common to see people going 80 miles an hour and passing so quickly – they don’t have highways over there.
Here are some pictures from that trip:
This is how most of the rural people live over there...
Another typical house
Hungry for a tarantula? They eat them of course, and think it is funny that us "Americans" are afraid of spiders.
Grasshoppers anyone?
This is how they dry the rice...
We then took a tuk-tuk to a traditional Khmer (kuh-MY) restaurant where we met one of Kara’s friends and ate sitting on the floor (another first, in case you are wondering). Another cultural thing in Cambodia is taking off your shoes – almost everywhere…and this restaurant was one of those places (houses for sure, and several work places also are typical shoe-less areas). These places normally have a spot for you to stack your shoes out of the way while you are inside. The food was amazing (pineapple chicken fried rice that was brought to us in a pineapple!) of course.
Then we headed back to Kara’s house to put our backpacks back before heading out again, sharing motos this time since we didn’t have as much stuff to haul around, plus they are a lot cheaper. Our next spot was Tuol Sleng which is where the prison camps were for their country’s own holocaust similar to the Jewish one with Hitler. The main difference is that the Khmer Rouge and the leader Pol Pot were in the late 1970’s, which is my opinion makes it even more tragic. It was very sad to see how a school was changed into a spot where so many men, women, and children (they targeted families with any education at all, all over Cambodia, not just at this prison camp) were tortured and killed (20,000, not including children – which seems incredibly high for such a small country).
Next we rode out to what in English means “The Killing Fields”. This is where they brought people from the prison camp by the truckloads to be exterminated. They have excavated many of the bones and created a monument to honor the families. By the end of Pol Pot’s rebellion in late 1978, they were bringing a truckload a day to be killed – almost 300 people a day, or as fast as they could murder them. It just was terrible to learn about the brutality and inhumanity that took place just 30 years ago. And the trials are just now taking place to convict the guards of the prison camps and other leaders in the Khmer Rouge.
It is no wonder Cambodia is a third world country with all of this as its very recent history – people my age are some of the first educated people in 30 years – and that is only if they have the money to pursue it. After that we headed back into town on our moto to grab some dragon fruit (yum!) from the market, head back to Kara’s house for a little bit, and then head back out for dinner with one of her housemates, Rotah (I am probably slaughtering the spelling). After that we cashed back at her house, relaxed, and watched a movie.
1 comment:
Don't think I could eat spiders or grasshopers!!
Post a Comment