Michelle and I went for a short trip in Cambodia ... Since I read about the history long time ago, this country is one of the top choice in my travel list.

I'm actually more keen to Middle East / European /South American ancient civilization, but Cambodia is attractive in a way and one point is, the location is close to Hong Kong. the country borders Thailand to its west and northwest, Laos to its northeast, and Vietnam to its east and southeast. In the south it faces the Gulf of Thailand.

Cambodia's capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, but we went to Siem Reap - The previous capital and the location of Angkor Wat and other temple complex, ruins. (I love ruins.) "Siem Reap" means "Defeat Thailand", as many of you know "Siam" is the old name of Thailand, and "reap" in Cambodian means "defeat" or "fall". Before the Angkor Kingdom Cambodia used to be a great ancient empire ( The Khmer Empire ) over south east asia until 15th century, when Siam defeated the country.

Some saying that actually not the Thai take over the place as historic prove the city just left empty after 14,5 century, and there's many local rumours about the last king was killed by mistake etc. But personaly I think its just like how Thai people gave up Ayuttha when Burmer attack the city - they need to move the captial towards the south... after 1300s, when Genghis Khan just conquer China (Yuan Dynasty) and moving toward Khmer Empire, at the same time Siam also enter the kingdom, since then there's not much record about the country anymore - the history has a blank page in the kingdom, until 1850s a French traveller discover the empty temples, city complex ruin in the middle of the forest and bought the news back to Europe, the rest of the world realized there was a lost civilization once exist in the world ...

Just like most of the Asian countries, Cambodia was once colony of European countries. it was a French colony; Siem Reap and provinces around was still belonging to Thailand, until around 1900s the provinces were ceded back to Cambodia by a border treaty between France and Thailand.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop Khmer Rouge incursions across the border and the genocide in Cambodia. didn't get a chance to visit the museum about Khmer Rouge but may be better not - I feel really upset even just reading the books. :-(

Remember a documentary talk about 'when you make more than 1,200 USD per month, you are already the top 20% of the richest people in the world". Those lucky people are including you and me.

Compare to the most poor African and South American countries that people are suffering famine all over the country, live without clean drinking water, Cambodia isn't THAT bad, but it's still a 'typcial' south east asian country - parents tell their kids to go to sell tourist water/book/clothes/art and people lives in broken wooden house, kids don't go to school until 10 years old and naked running around (no money for the clothes), beggers all around etc. But good thing is that they still know how to smile and have their ancient temple ruins to feed the whole country by the tourism.

When we arrived and get back to hotel is already afternoon ... didn't plan to go to the temples today but go around Siem Reap city and relax, prepare the no resting trip the next 3,4 days.

Went to the markets - actually there's a lot of market around town. Old market, new market and night market. The goods are very simliar from Thailand, like the bags / clothes, so I didn't get much thing. They got some decent pure sliver ear rings and sell it by weight. Not cheap actually, but really nice ....

But I don't come to Cambodia mainly for shoppings anyways =)

Just walking around - we decided to have local food the next day, but come back to this nice area for dinner tonight ... after a massage =P

There's TONNES of massage place in Siem Reap, in fact I would say MUCH more than in Bangkok. they are just EVERYWHERE!

The touristism really feed the whole city / country. Massage, traditional goods that selling in the market, hotel, tuk tuk, entry fee for temple (yes I will explain that later), resturants ... I think even you don't do any donation normally, to visit a country that depends on their touristism for the whole economy already help them a lot ... ok I'm not telling you not to go to Europe / N. America or Australia... but think that you may have fun and do sightseeing while you bring the money to these countries isn't it good? :-)

There's some really nice restaurant around really - we walk through the street few times before we can choose a restaruant... then we went to the night market.

It was kind of fun. lol

A lazy day. the next few days we walked A LOT though. =)