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Kevin, Keith, Tom, and Ryans Voyage
Its been pretty crazy on the trip the last few days. On Tuesday, we flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia early in the morning. We were under the impression that the Angkor Wat temples were under an hour from the capital. We were badly misinformed by the travel agent in Bangkok. We were actually over 300 kilometers from where we wanted to be. We dropped the ball. We were able to secure a driver to take us to Siem Reap (the town next to the temples) for $80. After 4 and 1/2 hours on the road, we made it. Cambodia is a beautiful country with friendly people. We stopped along the way in the rural countryside and talked with and old woman and her family. They were very very poor, living in a shack on stilts. They were very nice and welcoming however, and we gave them some money before leaving. When we arrived at the hotel in Siem Reap, the driver claimed we agree to pay him $150! We confirmed with three different people before we left that it would only cost 80. After about 25 minutes of arguing, he took $90 and left. We arrived too late to see the temples, but since we had gotten up at 430am, we grabbed a great dinner in the hotel and took a swim in the hotel pool. We all crashed pretty early and woke up at 430 again to see the sunrise over the temples. What an amazing place. 16 square miles of temples that were built thousands of years ago. It is very hard to put into words the beauty of this place. Bhuddist monks still practice there and we took pictures with them, as they were very excited to see us. We also each did a prayer in one of the monastaries. After a few hours, we decided to get back to the hotel before our flight to Vietnam. As we were waiting for our tuk tuk (a motorcycle with a passenger cart attached) a group of children came up to us trying to sell us books and t shirts. They were very nice and somehow all knew the capitals of the US states. They even knew Arnold is the governor of California! We made it to the Siem Reap airport and were soon on the way to Ho Chi Minh City (Or Saigon as most call it)
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