I have one more stamp in my passport! We are in Siem Reap, Cambodia now. It has been a busy last week. When I last updated the sight we were in Saigon (Uncle Ho's city) in Vietnam. The city was beautiful. You can see some of the architecture in the pictures that I posted. The area was rich in American War history because so many of the troops were stationed in the area and around it. For example we saw the Rex Hotel on out night tour, which is where the US officers stayed during the war. We also spent a morning visiting the Cu Chi tunnels. Our guide was absolutely crazy! We sat down in this room to watch a propaganda video about the war and then our guide comes in to drill us with a pointing stick and a map about the tunnels. His speech was so intense. We nicknamed him the general after that. As we walked through the woods to see how the tunnels were used in the war, he kept pushing other groups aside and yelling to us "lets go" and "I show you, hurry up!" Too funny. It was really interesting area though. I didn't realize that some people lived almost their entire lives in these tunnel networks underground. James and David got to shoot some war guns at the shooting range. The others went through one of the tunnels, but I took one look at the size and couldn't do it. Ben said that he was crawling on all fours to get through it. We spent the afternoon running errands in the rain. Then the guys and I headed out to have another fantastic meal at a place in the street market. We have discovered that the best way to eat on this trip is for the five of us to get a bunch of dishes and split everything. That way we get a tasting of a variety of great foods and it isn't as expensive. That evening we had 7 dishes and two beers each for only $4 each. Unbelievable! So, we barely made the 8:00 am bus ride the next morning after a long night out dancing and singing. We did however, have a smooth trip through the border and continued on to Phnom Penh city in Cambodia. The first thing that you notice when going to Cambodia is the beggars. Not only are there beggars everywhere, but they are all children. It is very sad to see, but they have a real population problem in Cambodia because %50 of the pop. are under the age of 17. Anyway, we just had a short time to explore before going to dinner at a place that supports getting these children off the streets and in to schools. We ended up going out to an great little pub and then danced the night away at a Cambodian night club. I will just say that it ended up being a crazy night for most of the people in our group. Our second day in Phnom Penh was a humbling one. We visited the most horrific places that I have every seen in my entire life. I had no idea that this country had experience such a horrible genocide. What I learned this day was deeply disturbing and eye opening. Our guide himself had lived through this period and was willing to share some personal stories about it. We first visited the Toul Sleng prison where thousands of Cambodian citizens were tortured and then sent off to be killed. The cells, pictures, and stories were almost too much to bear. After an hour tour we jumped back on the bus to head out to the Killing Fields. We were told that almost 3 million people were killed during the war period. The field that we visited had over 30 mass graves with tens of thousands of bodies in each one. I know that this is very difficult to think about, but imagine how we felt walking around them. They have excavated the graves, but as we walked around to see the sites our guide painted some vivid pictures of how these people were murdered. The worst part was that we could look down and see human teeth, bones, and clothes in the dirt that we were walking on. The even had a memorial for the victims that contained thousands of human skulls. It was very difficult experience for all of us. As we left, we ran into a couple of guys that got their truck stuck in the mud. The guys kindly got out and helped them push it out. All of them were caked in mud in the end. I spent a couple of hours at the Green Vespa (great little pub owned by an Irish guy) watching the World Cup and then headed off to bed. We had a very early flight to Sim Reap the next morning. When we arrived, I could tell that I was going to like this city a lot more than Phnom Penh. It was beautiful. The city has a river running through it and all these beautiful trees overhang the water. We saw the hotel that Angelina Joeli (sp) stayed at while filming Tomb Raider here at Angkor Wat. It was a crazy night out again watching the very upsetting England game. It was quite an English crowd at the local pub that we were at. We didn't get much sleep that night since the game ended at 1 am and we had to be up by 4:15 am to go to Angkor Wat for the sunrise. The sunrise over Angkor Wat was beautiful, but there was a lot of cloud cover which took away most of the colors. We wandered around the magnificent temple for a while. We couldn't get over how large and well preserved the temple was. Also, it was amazing how the people of the 12th century could build such an amazing structure. After a much needed breakfast we spent another hour visiting the Angkor Thom area. Most of us headed back for a long nap before grabbing some lunch and then going back out for more temple touring. Next on the list was Ta Prohm where they filmed a lot of the film, Tomb Raider. It was so cool. As you will see in the photos, there are these enormous trees growing the temple ruins. It was pretty amazing to see the actual scale of these plants. We also visited a temple called Preah Khan. After a long day, somehow we found the energy to go out for drinks and spend another night dancing till the late hours of the night. Today is our last day in Cambodia and we are taking a very long bus journey back to Bangkok tomorrow. So, we are celebrating the end of our journey tonight with a dinner and an award ceremony. It should be interesting. I am sure that there will be a lot of laughs at dinner. David, Ben, and I are heading to the beach on Wednesday! I can't wait to get a little R & R in the sun. I will probably be in the states by the next time I update this site. Miss ya'll. Till next time....