jueves, 7 de diciembre de 2006

From Thailand to Cambodia


I am in Vietnam after spending 6 days in Cambodia... Cambodia was really an adventure.. I didn't take Gwen's advise of flying to Siem Reap so I spent 14 hours in a bus that wasdriving at 20 miles/hour. I got Siem Reap at 10 pm.. Crossing the border and getting the bloody visa was a nightmare.. Finally they wrote down in my visa ElieGer instead of Eliezer... So in the immigration desk that look like any border immigration desk people like crazy trying to guess who this guy was...Then the road from the border to siam reap was very bumpy and because of the flood we were very busy pushing the fucking scrap-like bus up every 2 kilometers... But the only excuse I have it is that the bus ticket was just USD 7 and flight one was $120... Anyway I enjoy Angkor Wat and surrounding with three English guys and a Swiss girl that I met during the trip...
I wrote you the last time from Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia coming from Siem Reap and Ankor… What I did there? Well, after six hours in a bus where they had a TV like the ones they put in Venezuela but instead of a film of violence they put an humorous program in Cambodian… all in the bus, I imagine Cambodians, went dead of the laughter… Later they put musical comedies Karaoke type that several around my they made cores. Anyway… I arrived at Phnom Penh and immediately took my moto-taxi, that took me to a travel agency to made my visa Vietnamese and then to a hostel. Everything by 1 American dollar. Perhaps you can imagine me with my backpack from the airport in a small motorbike. The hostel was $8 per night, with air conditioned and toilet, and was near the river… On the following day my plan was a little dark… First to visit the famous S21 jail, and then to go to the Killing Fields (did you see the film?)…

I rented a Tuk Tuk, and I had to pay for the whole day $10. The S21 is really dark, I spent two hours in S21 to be able to swallow as much terror… it could sounds masoquista of my part, but really that was here hardly three decades away, it was unimaginable here. But the incredible thing is this is one of the few "tourist attractions" of Phnom Penh… There is one section of the jail where the tortures were executed where the even alive, and the jail workers actually tell their history of why they did it and if they regret or not… The incredible thing of all this that a single one group wants to determine the life and the ideology of others, and it even happens in other parts of the world… it sounds cliche, but I could´t stop to compare it with others realities. There, one was supposed to be re-educated, everyone that spoke, dressed, smelled of middle-class or people with certain education immediately were tortured so that they declared to be antirevolutionary… The same members of the Khmer Rouge in the end were prisoners and tortured themselves for not accepting what was passing, or because the people who were being tortured it was some type of relative (here in Cambodia the extended family any familiar proximity means that…) for that reason it is not estrange to find a lot of people living in a small house… Anyway… my last night in Phnom Penh I met Dave, one of the English of Siem Reap and Anne, a gringo girl who I met in Ankong Watt and that by chance pass by where Dave and I were having supper. At the end I bought tickets of airplane from Phnom Penh to Saigon, the South of Vietnam, and of there to Hanoi, North of Vietnam

1 comentario:

Anónimo dijo...

You may not have taken my advice about flying....I hope that you took my advice about NOT taking the boat!!