democapitalist

the funny thing about brendan is that he's rubbing off on me. we're both excited to get up at 1 am tonight (we've been falling asleep before 8 every night) to watch the soccer game. i would never have imagined that. and we've been getting pints of beer for 70 cents (he's also rubbed off on me with the whole drinking beer thing).

today was another super sweaty day where we rode around on a tuk-tuk (it's a motorbike with a carriage attached to the back for passengers) and saw three great historical temples. after that we went to a mexican restaurant for $1 tacos (cambodia is full of every kind of food imaginable, and they do a great job at it too!), followed by relaxing in a place called "peace cafe" where i had a mango lassie and ice cream. at restaurants they give everyone a cold wash cloth to wipe your face. at peace cafe i sat with the face cloth on my head for an hour or more. it was nice. while we hung out there i read about pol pot and the khmer rouge. man, that's a complex history that is too much to explain in one blog entry. basically... after the vietnam war the khmer rouge imprisoned its own country, forced them to be slaves and killed people by the thousands. it was basically genocide and a holocaust in one. totally horrific. it's a complete understatement, but the khmer rouge were just jerks. they filled the countryside with landmines to kill their own people, that to this day people are still stepping on and losing their limbs. we see a half dozen landmine a day at least, many of them are young adults. the khmer rouge fell from power in the 80s, and they've been rebuilding ever since. one thing we've found about cambodia is that it's quite a progressive nation. i'm sure a lot of their principles fall short in practice, but they have signs everywhere about responsible tourism (ie anti-child sex trade), and anti-drugs, they have laws about equality for women, and are open to same-sex relationships. i would imagine they have a long way to go, but we are glad to see they are so progressive in their outlooks.

we've been a little disappointed that the other gringos (white people) are not very friendly. jill and i chatted with lots of other travellers, but the people here are not very friendly. they don't even smile at us on the street. we''ve noticed that besides white people there are lots of westerners in general. it's quite easy to spot people who are of asian descent but who live in north america (or other wealthy nations). so we''ve stopped referring to tourists as white people, but rather as westerners. most of the gringos we've been able to overhear are aussies or kiwis, not many canucks this part of the world it seems.

hope you're doing well! we are doing fab :) it's hard to believe we've only been here 6 days!