Hello all,
Hope you are all well and had a Happy Easter. We have now left the Orphanage in Phnom Penh after two weeks. Its fair to say that we could have easily stopped longer, as it was a fantastic experience for both of us, but time for this leg of our journey was against us.
In our last few days the volunteers and staff threw a Khmer New years party for the kids at the neighboring orphanage. It seams to be a great day, which hopefully raised some awareness as well as a bit of money. We handed out leaflets a few days before in the city encouraging other traveller's and holiday makers to turn up, and there was a pretty good response. The kids from the orphanage and many other children from the village played games all day and had food. By about 7 pm we were all absolutely knackered, but it was well worth it. We left then next day on Wednesday and would just like to say thanks you to Mr & Mrs Samith, the kids and everyone else at the orphanage (especially Srey Lat) for making our stay so enjoyable. Also, a big hello to all the other volunteers who were there at the same time as we made some good friends.
The next few days in Phnom Penh were in stark contrast to the first two weeks. The city has witnessed the worst of humanity and we visiting the harrowing genocide museum at the former S21 prison. Many of the people executed at the Killing fields were held here. Of the 20,000 people who went through the prison, only 7 survived. An absolutely haunting place. To follow that we also went out to visit the Killing Fields themselves at Cheung Ek where a staggering number of people from all over the Country were killed during the terrible reign of the Khmer Rouge. The bones of the departed exhumed from the mass graves are displayed on 14 levels in Stupa constructed there. A very sobering experience indeed. So after that it was time to move on......
We are currently in Siem Reap in the north of Cambodia to see the eight wonder of the world, Angkor Wat. We went this morning to captured its beauty at sunrise along with several thousand other early risers. It is mighty impressive and amazing to think of how big the Khmer empire must have been, however, we have seen that many temples now that they are starting to lose some of their magic. Maybe we should have come here first? Don't get me wrong, we did enjoy it, but I think we have both reached and breached our temple threshold now. After 6 hours of now stop ruins we called time and came back for a brew and a nap. Call us Philistines, but I don't know how anyone could handle the 3 day tour pass they sell. We saw about 6 out of about 100 temples and religious shrines, and that was plenty.
After all that, we are now officially ready for the beach. We are heading to Bangkok, only briefly (Thaksin has a lot to answer for, not just at city), before getting down to the islands in south Thailand. My T-shirt suntan is proper embarrassing so need to get that corrected quick smart. We are also hoping to do a bit of scuba diving if time permits.
Anyway, its less than 4 weeks now before we are back in blightly for a week. It better not rain.
Take care
Pete & Urvy
XXX
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