Tomb Raider

During my last day in Saigon, I learned that you have to show steady confidence when you cross the street with millions of motorbikes and a few hundred cars on it. My guide said that you almost have to close your eyes to show no fear. The drivers are like wild animals, they can smell fear. You just have to walk slowly to the other side, motorbikes will drive around you and the few cars will stop. If you run like crazy than you are unpredictable for the drivers and they will hit you. If you don't act like a crazy fool, they won't either.
Leaving Saigon behind, we arrived in Phnom Penh. Here I visited the Killing Fields in Choeng Ek, the site of a former orchard and mass grave of victims of the Khmer Rouge during 1975 and 1979. I did an audio tour with information about the different sites and stories of survivors. It was very impressive. After the Killing Fields, I went to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the former and notorious prison S-21 during the same period. Mainly this was a prison for high officials, even officials from their own regime. It was hard to believe that it was a school before they turned it into a prison. Some cells are as big as a class room, and sometimes for more than one person. Other cells are only two square meters for one person.
To lighten the mood again after the visit to the Killing Fields and S-21, I went with a few friends to the Royal Palace and visited the Silver Pagoda.
Now I found myself in Siem Reap, the base for tourists who are visiting Ankor. Thus, Siem Reap is very touristic with many bars and massage places. Of course, I visited Ankor as well. We drove there by tuktuk and the tuktuk drove us from the one temple to the other. We also booked a guide. This way, it is more interesting and you really need a guy who knows his way around Angkor. The distance between the different temples is sometimes 5km, so it's a very big complex. We first visited Bayon, the Buddhist temple with all the faces of Buddha made out of stone. The temple was in the middle of the city of Angkor Thom. We visited also a Hindu temple there. Outside the city of Angkor Thom, we went to Ta Prohm, or the Tomb Raider temple. Some people also refer to it as the Angelina Jolie temple, because of the movie. It is also called the Jungle temple, because you can really see that nature took over at this site. Trees growing on top and around the temple. I was also secretly hoping to bumb into Lara Croft in this temple, but I guess that would have been to good to be true. Last but not least we visited the famous Angkor Wat, the most famous temple at the Angkor complex. It is the most famous temple because it is very big, with carvings in the stones everywhere inside, even the ceiling, and because it is the temple that is most preserved of all the temples in Angkor. Unfortunately, we could not see the sunset, because it was cloudy all day. Luckily, it only rained for about an hour just when we had lunch inside a restaurant. Rainy season does not mean that it will rain all the time. Because if it did, there was no South East Asia during rainy season. When it rains, rain is pouring like crazy, most of the time with wind and thunder.
But we where lucky with the weather I think, because when the sun was shining, it was to hot and it would heat up the stones so all the temples would turn into giant stone ovens. But on the other hand, than we could see the sunset. But Angkor without sunset is still very beautiful.
After a whole day of walking in the magnificent complex of Angkor, I was really looking forward to a massage. So I had a full body massage at the Night Market in Siem Reap. It was really good!
Today, it was just a relaxing day, doing nothing. I explored the city, had lunch and got a hair cut.
Tomorrow I will leave again for Bangkok, stay there for two days and then fly for three weeks to Burma.
I will keep you posted!