Well, we've come as close to the working life as ever in the past 10 days. We left Kuala Lumpur on a 7am flight but this meant that we had to get up at 3:15 to get to the airport on time to make it to Siem Reap in Cambodia. In case you're wondering, that's very early. The next 2 days had us getting up at 4:30 to get to the temples of Angkor early enough to catch the sunrise. Doing some simple math, that's 3 days of rising before 4:30 in a row. Even as a paperboy I didn't have to do that!

3 days of "templing" is exhausting. Our Guesthouse offered up free bikes and it was WONDERFUL to be back on bikes. We miss biking so much. The freedom and wind through your hair (no comment) is so great.

I'd like to talk about traffic for a little bit. From what I hear, Vietnam is even crazier but the first rule of surviving the traffic here is, forget all the rules you already know about traffic. They no longer apply here. Let's do a little quiz.

1.) When driving through an intersection and your light turns red, how many cars can still proceed through the light?

a- none
b- 1-3
c- 2-5
d- none of the above

If you guessed d, you're correct. There are no rules here. We're also not talking about cars moving at 80km/h. We're talking about cars that seemingly have something more important than the rest of the people on the road and so as long as you keep on driving through the red light, the other side waits. Astonishingly, no one honks or gets upset. I guess as long as the waiting traffic does the same, it's all fair. This begs the question, why not make the red light the deadline, and not the arbitrary discretion of each driver. Very good question.

2.) Driving here left hand drive, just like at home. That being said, when you go to cross a 2 way street, which way should you look?

a- left
b- right
c- 360 degrees
d- all of the above

If you answered d, you are correct. On any given 2 lane street there could easily be 6 streams of traffic. Motorbikes make up their own rules and often go the wrong way against traffic, both near the meridian, and near the sidewalk. When the road is congested, it's completely acceptable to drive down the sidewalk, as long as there aren't ad-hoc restaurants and their plastic chairs and tables blocking the way. Pedestrians should in all cases yield to anything on wheels - no exceptions. OK, enough about traffic for now, but I'm sure there will be more stories.

Walking around here is a good way to practice saying no thank you (otay a kun). There are people trying to sell us anything and everything. Tuk tuk rides, books, photocopied books, pirated CD's and DVD's, flutes, bracelets, tuk tuk rides...The tough thing is there are a lot of landmine victims and a lot of street kids that could break your heart. There was one little girl around the Angkor temples that had us both wrapped around her little finger. She could have sold a fridge to an Inuit. She spoke English very well, spoke some Spanish (and in fact wanted to be a Spanish teacher), even some words of Swedish. She rattled off all the capital cities in Canada faster than I ever could. In addition, she had a smile to kill and a giggle that just made you smile yourself. We just about pulled a Brangelina and adopted her. Baebs and I said to each other that even if that girl didn't finish school, which we told her to do repeatedly, she would excel at whatever she did.

From talking to various locals and reading guidebooks, it seems the worst thing to do is to give money to kids, or even to buy from them. This shows their parents that they can earn an income and then they don't get to go to school. We were finding this quite tough until we discovered a website that lists all manner of NGO's that have programs here to educate, train and provide sustainable employment for the least privileged people. Through this new knowledge we've dined at some fantastic places, often served by underprivileged kids with trained teachers overseeing their work. It's been a really fun and delicious way to try to make a bit of a difference. We're currently staying in a guesthouse that has the same mandate.

Food continues to dominate our travels. It's a little tougher here as the tap water is really not drinkable, which it was in a pinch in Malaysia. None the less, we continue to try little things that are well cooked. We had a tasty little potato sesame seed patty the other day, and yesterday we had what I affectionately refer to as a little "Sombrero of happiness". A little fried piece of dough that looked like one of those Mexican hats, with sweet sticky dough.

We've been learning lots about the history of Cambodia. It's not pretty. In the 70's, about 2 million people (~25% of the population) was wiped out. We went to a prison here where they tortured illegitimate confessions out of people. The weird thing is that there was no ethnic push nor inter-country disputes. This was just one losers dream to make Cambodia the primary producer of rice in the world so everyone worked in the rice fields and intellects, musicians, even people with glasses were all killed as they were the most likely to question the sanity of this all. Pretty grim stuff.

Yesterdays highlights were a massage at the ""Seeing Hands" centre where blind people have been taught how to give massages and they were fantastic. Hopefully we can find another one of these places in our next stop. An hours massage was 6 USD. Hello! After our massage we followed a tip which took us to a stadium at 5pm, though this also happens at 5am, where about 500 people were doing aerobics. Mostly young guys leading HIGHLY uncoordinated groups of older people who, we're told, are truly trying to keep slim and avoid high blood pressure along with young people who were much less committed to exercising but seem to do it because it's hip. We watch one girl in 1" heeled sandals lamely trying to keep up with the teacher, but mostly trying to look good. It didn't work.

This afternoon, we're off to Sihanoukville on the south coast. As for Christmas plans, we've no idea. My buddy Jeff asked if Pho soup with Turkey and a side of cranberries is available. We'll keep you posted.

Miss you all and we hope you're well and healthy and keeping warm.

Love from Cambodia,

Jason & Baebs