More cambodia pics
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2007
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42
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Trip End
Ongoing
Siem raep, Cambodia
Monday, October 15, 2007
Made it to Angkor Wat, a place that i was looking forward to for a long time.. At first i was a tiny bit disappointed, since the first couple of temples were polished up a bit too much, but eventually i got what i came for; awesome unrestored temples with big-ass trees crawling over them. The trees looked to me as if they were aliens, invading this place and slowly taking it over, a bit like in the movie ' war of the worlds' with Tom Cruise as one of the main actors. In one word; awesome!
Will go back tomorrow, to see some temples i didn't visit today, and hopefully to watch a beautifull sunset. Haven't really met any people here, exeptf for a cool ozzie guy, but he had to leave the next day, and so i was all alone again. not that it's bad, havin' a good time doing things by myself and haven't reached the point yet where i am getting crazy of mysef and my thoughts..
This afternoon i spend visiting the war museum, and damn, what a crazy experience this was. At first it looked as if it was a half assed museum, with a bunch of rusty tanks in a garden, but it turned out to be really impressive. Got a free guide with the entry ticket i bought, and shit, that guy has been to some stuff. He was a child-soldier, and at the age of 14 he already had to fight.
The man told me he got shot three times, stepped on a mine twice (one didn't fully explode, which saved his life) and he still had shrapnell of grenades in various places of his body. At first i thought he was exaggerating a bit, but then he showed me his scars... jesus, his whole body was covered with them. Lost a foot, got only 60 %visibility, got shot in the chest, an arm and a leg and you could still feel the pieces of shrapnell just under his skin. Amazing that this guy was still alive!
He showed me around, and the next surprise was that i could hold each and every gun they had on display. He even instructed me how to use them and told me their strong and weak points. It was bizarre, everywhere there were lying guns around that i could have put in my little rucksack easily. ( didn't do that, don't worry) He said that the guns were made harmless, and that was the case with a few of them, but i'm sure some weren't demillitarised, since i had a closer look and they would definately be 'usable' after just a little bit of oil and 15 minutes of work.. I guess there are just so many guns, grenades and landmines left here, that nobody thinks it's a bit dangerous to have them lying around everywhere, where everybody could just pick one up and do whatever with it.
Anyway, i'll put a few new pics on the site, till next time, cheers, vincent
