Its been a long time

Somewhere in the haze of boat trips, moped exhaust, tuk-tuk rides and multi-city bus trips we neglected to post an update. Last we left you we had arrived in Phnom Penh, the capitol and largest city of Cambodia. And though we didn't stay long there, we did have time to take in a few historic, yet unsettling sights.

Below are some photos we took at the S21 prison. This school turned secret prison was used by the Pol Pot regime from 1975-1979. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge Party came to power under the auspices of creating a classless society based on agriculture. Even though we found visiting these places disturbing we wanted to share these photos because we knew little of this recent genocide prior to visiting.








Prisoners from the S21 prison and others like it were taken to fields outside the city where they were buried in mass graves. One to two million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge in a country who's present day population is under 20 million. Below are photos of the fields and of a monument housing their remains.





Feeling the weight of too many depressing tours we decided to get back to the old tourist standbys of temples and ruins. First, we hopped a bus to the small town of Kompong Thom where we borrowed a motorbike and set out to explore the lesser known temples of Sambor Prei Kuk.



On our ride we came across a cleared mine field...


Then we stopped for lunch and were surprised to meet our youngest waitress yet. We had heard about the lack of child labor laws but this was ridiculous.


Finally we made it to the ruins. The following brick temples date back to the 7th century.



Aaron was so excited he couldn't resist showing off his motorbike skills.



Having seen some of the lesser viewed ruins of Sambor Prei Kuk we hopped one more bus and headed down the road to the world famous temples of Angkor Wat.









And though these temples are truly amazing, what really made an impression on us was this incredible video put out by the Cambodian tourism board. Good luck getting this song out of your head. Mary has been singing it all the way to Bangkok.



Hope you have enjoyed our longest post yet (aka "the mega-post"). Tomorrow we fly to Taipei, Taiwan for ten days. Plumbing posts and quizzes will be coming soon!

-a&m