"Do I really have to pee in that thing?"

We spent yesterday in Phnom Phenh, Cambodia. We got up at 7 am to head to the killing fields. In case you don't know, the killing fields are where the Khmer Rouge killed over 1.7 million people under the Pol Pot Regime. Horrible to say the least. There were still peices of clothing in the ground washing up from the rain even though it has been 30 years since the killings happened. There were mass graves of people, there was a tree that they hit babies against to kill them..absolutely nuts. Ammunition was precious back then so they had to kill people in other ways, usually hitting them with blunt objects like shovels, hoes, and sometimes bamboo sticks. There was a temple with the skulls stacked up in in probably 50 feet tall (but as my father says I'm bad at estimating.) The clothing coming up through the ground was the weirdest for me. Weirder than the bones and teeth. It makes the victims so much more human.

After that we went to the S-21 prison which is where the Khmer Rouge kept the prisoners before they were brought to the killing fields. It was three stories with the bottom story full of small cells made out of brick. If you held your arms out you could touch both sides. Many of them still had blood on the floor. The top two floors were where they kept the people chained up together all laying down in a row like sardines. One prisoner said he couldn't walk after that (one of the seven prisoners that actually survived.) Now they use the top two rooms as displays for their torture devices. I won't go into detail but it was horrible. They also had barbed wire around the outside of the building to prevent prisoners from jumping off and commiting suicide. I ended up buying a book from a guy with no legs outside about the Pol Pot regime (even though it was obviously a photocopied book but hey..hey had no legs, how could I resist?) Oh that reminds me. When we pulled up in front of the prison I got off the tuk-tuk and a Cambodian guy said to me "hello! wow you so dark you look like you're asian!" Then he asked me for a handshake but pulled me in and kissed both of my cheeks coming dangerously close to my mouth but he was so funny. Everyone is a lot friendlier here than anywhere I've been since Thailand.

After we headed back and had lunch we hit up the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. Asian architecture is definitely the coolest kind. It's so intricate and creative with how all of the pieces fit and flow together. We also visited the National Museum which told a bit of history of all of southeast asia. My favorite thing in that museum were the accounts from different people about their lives in SE Asia. There was a rice farmer, a fisherman, a weaver, etc. After this we caught a bus to Siem Reap and got in around 1 am last night. The bus had tiny munchkin bathrooms. You had to squat to get through the door and it was a tiny tiny room with a squatter toilet so it was difficult. Especially on a bumpy bus. I straped on my headlamp and braved it though. Ashley and I also played MASH on the way over there. For any males who aren't familiar with MASH it's a game you play when you're like eight that determines who you're going to marry, what job you'll have, where you'll live, etc. Then when we were done with that we played med-school MASH which determined your specialty, how many malpractice suits, how much debt you're in etc. THEN we played homeless person MASH and my life kind of turned out the best in that one (in med-school MASH I had a million dollars of debt). In homeless person MASH I made 1,000 dollars a day, the drug I was addicted to was ecstacy, and my imaginary friend was a cool lumberjack guy I could hike with named Rodney. Oh and my last shower was yesterday. Sounds good to me. But anyway here we are in Siem Reap. This is the part of the trip I've been waiting for. We're going to the Angkor Wat temples today. Google them and you'll see what I mean. The definition of epic.