Random thoughts and observations on Cambodia:

1. On the bus from Bangkok to the border, we met a Canadian girl who couldn’t stop telling us stories about all her friends who were raped by taxi drivers, or mugged, or had their arms sliced by machetes in drive-by bag-snatchings in Cambodia. A couple days earlier, I had a bad taxi experience in Bangkok when I got sick at the weekend market and went back to the hostel alone – I was harassed and in tears, and had a nice Thai woman find me a free ride home, and after that I locked myself in the hostel room for the next few days. So yeah, I was pretty afraid of Cambodia before I even got there because of Andy’s stories.

2. Despite the scary stories, all the Khmer people we’ve met have been the sweetest.

3. There are no 7 Elevens, only 6 Elevens… but those look sketchy, so I stick to the supermarket.

4. The supermarket has all kinds of things I haven’t seen in over a year. Like Goldfish and cliff bars and peanut butter M&M’s.

5. They use the US dollar.

6. They drive on the right side of the road – which, by the way, is a total mindfuck after being in Australia/Malaysia/Thailand for the past 13 months. Not only are the roads crazy with tuk tuks and motorbikes, but I also have no idea which way to look when crossing the street, so I had my life flash before my eyes several times in the past few days.

7. All the Cambodian people who are trying to sell us things call us “lady” (pronounced: lay-DEE). “You need tuk tuk, lay-DEE?” “You want pants, lay-DEE?” “You buy postcard, lay-DEE?” It makes me want to never buy anything ever.

8. I have no idea how people do multiple days at Angkor Wat. Kelsey and I used our one-day pass, beginning at sunrise – and even though the temples and ruins were beautiful and there are enough to last you for days on end, we didn’t make it past 1pm. Maybe I was burned out after waking up at 4am for the “sunrise” in the pouring rain.

9. Beer costs 60 cents in the supermarket. Happy hour drafts are 50 cents.

10. All the pizza places sell “happy pizza” that will put you in a dazed state for at least a day.

11. When booking buses throughout Cambodia, splurge for the $14 bus instead of the $6. They tell you the only difference is that the “VIP” bus has wifi, but they’re wrong. We took a $6 bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and were forced to watch/listen to awful dubbed karaoke music videos for ten hours while we dodged potholes on the “major highway” that was a dirt road.

12. Cambodia is still very much in its developing state. It has a horrific history that I learned so much about in Phnom Penh, visiting the Killing Fields and the genocide museum. Walking through the old prisons, seeing portraits of every victim lining the walls, standing in the fields where people were tortured to death, bones around my feet, made my heart ache so much for the people here and everything they’ve been through.

13. It is awesome to have connections while traveling. While in Phnom Penh, we stayed with a friend we met in Thailand, originally from Texas, who’s been teaching at the local university for two years. We had our own bedroom, not to mention a whole apartment to chill in our down time, and a local to show us the city, all the good party spots, all the good eating spots, and anything else we could ever need to feel at home in a foreign city (like Dairy Queen).