Out and about

We have done so much today as you can see! Got my photo taken with some Newlyweds and some lovely dried fish. We also had lunch at a noodle ship Bill Clinton visited. That is their claim to fame but the pho (soup) was pretty decent as well! Nap time!

Ukulele

Morning everyone! This is a pic of the ukulele our group bought for our tour leader at the end of the Cambodia leg. She had mentioned she really wanted to start playing! Cute huh?

OMG Strongest Coffee Ever!

Very good! I think the guy gave us a free one cuz he liked that we spoke English. FYI 20,000 Dong equals a US dollar :)

We are in Vietnam!

This is a photo of the cyclos bringing our bags to our hotel (we walked). Tomorrow we get a new guide and say goodbye to some of our group. More later!

We just had foot massages!

Forgot to take a photo, but we just got lovely foot massages at "Seeing Hands." It really hurt at first and I kept forgetting the Khmer word for "softer." Then at one point I told my masseuse that he was strong. He thought I wanted a stronger massage so he pressed harder than ever!!!! I didn't know how to get him to stop. It was funny. Painful at the time, but I walked out of that place feeling great! Thank you to Kim and Matt for this massage! We actually went twice. A couple days ago for full body, and today for feet!

Sad news from Aurora, CO :(
Goodnight dear friends and family.

On the bus

We left Sihanoukville this morning on a gritty local bus and are now back in the capital, Phnom Penh. Tomorrow we will take another 7 hour bus trip to the border and cross into Vietnam. It has been raining quite a bit over the past few days! It is, after all, monsoon season. Sihanoukville is on the southern coast of the country and while the clouds parted for a few hours yesterday we did a little swimming in the salty ocean. We are both excited for tomorrow and a new country!

Rain!

It is monsoon season after all...

Sihanoukville

We are at the beach town of Sihanoukville! It began pouring as soon as we arrived at 2 yesterday. It's now almost 10 the next day and still raining! We are still going to try to swim I think. And catch up on some sleep. There is more crime here but we are being careful. Here are some photos of our dinner last night. Our Irish buddies Declan and Deirdre took the nice photo of us and said our pictures were too posed. We tried again and they didn't think that was weird enough. So they showed us how it is done! Ha!

Ugh

No picture to go with yesterday's activities. It was horrible but also my favorite day in Cambodia. We went to S. 21 which was a prison and torture center for the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. It was a high school before they used it for such gruesome purposes. Extra eerie. I got my photo taken with one of only 7 survivors. Then, we went outside the city to the "killing fields". There were 129 mass graves here Absolutely unbelievable. Also unbelievable that trials are still going on so they leave several mass graves as evidence. I can't write about it all here, but please ask me to tell you about it sometime. Our guide for both places was born in 1977 (like me) and his father was killed by Khmer Rouge for being a former soldier. Our guide and his siblings survived due to the intelligence, cleverness and strength of their mother. He made the experience so much more real for me. And I so appreciate his willingness to share personal stories. The few hours we spent at these two places were haunting, and well yeah, I am so glad we went.

A few homestay pictures

The homestay was wonderful! We spent the evening being entertained by a dancing group made up of local children and eating a wonderful meal that was prepared by some local women. The three pics of just a couple that we took. I included one picture of the bottle of spider wine we were given. Its rice wine with a tarantula in the bottle! Ahhhhh!