Bangkok to Rio

We headed from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, where we waited two days for our Vietnam visa to come through.

Other than some French colonial-style buildings along the river, Phnom Penh is mostly gray, concrete block-style buildings. Neither of us were too enamored by the city, but we managed to do a few interesting things -- the most interesting being a visit to Tuol Sleng, a former school in the city that became the Khmer Rouge's torture and detention center. The buildings have been left exactly as they were found, including chains, shackles, and torture equipment in the cells. On the wall of each cell is a photo of the last victim found in each room when it was liberated by the Vietnamese army. We took photos but decided they were a little too disturbing to put up here.

Mostly, we were excited to leave Phnom Penh and head down the Mekong to Vietnam, which we'll write about shortly. In the meantime, a few remaining pictures from Cambodia that didn't make it into the last post:

Fish Amok, the national dish of Cambodia: freshwater fish, cocunut milk, and other stuff, baked in a banana leaf. A bit bony but very tasty.

Some snacks for sale along the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. I believe those are deep-fried spiders on the right, some sort of roasted bird in the middle, and on the left, who knows? We didn't partake, but those spiders looked good and crispy.

Siem Reap, Cambodia is only about 300 km from Bangkok, but it took us a full 12 hours to make the trip, which involved seven different motorized vehicles - subway to taxi to bus to tuk-tuk to golf cart to bus to taxi.

Siem Reap is a dusty, poor Cambodian city with the same population as San Francisco, but people come there for only one reason -- the surrounding jungle is filled with ruins of the great Khmer cities and temples of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries.

Ignore the green scaffolding and this is pretty much what it looked like a thousand years ago:

For $12 a day, we hired a driver to take us around the ruins.

Not a bad ride.

I don't know why American tourists have such a bad reputation; really, I don't.

Okay, by popular demand, here is our travel blog. We've spent three delicious days in Bangkok and two days seing the incredible ruins at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Stay tuned for photos, anecdotes, and other self-indulgence!