Our three stops in Cambodia were Siem Reap, Koh Rong Island, and Phnom Penh, but just crossing the border to Cambodia from Thailand met us with a couple surprises. First, the country felt much more poor than walking the streets of Bangkok felt. The roads were worse and there were many more people selling food on the street. Second, Cambodia uses US dollars. There is also a Cambodian currency, but since 4000 Cambodian riel = 1 USD, the local currency operates in place of US coins. The ATMS all dispense US dollars, and change at stores in restaurants is given as a combination of dollars and riel.
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Sparked with curiosity after seeing an American dollar for the first time in almost six months, I looked into this economic situation. While using the US dollar for daily purchases stabilizes currency value in the country, the government loses tens of millions of dollars in revenue along with all control of fiscal policy. While convenient for me, it seems like Cambodia would benefit from switching back to the riel. In the meantime, it makes purchases easy in the cities we stopped at!
Siem Reap
Siem Reap, located in northern Cambodia, is best known for the massive Buddhist temple Angkor Wat.
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It is one of the largest religious monuments in the world and a must-see. Angkor Wat is one temple in a series of eight or so, and seeing them all is a full-day trip. The city of Angkor, which contains all of these temples, was the capital of the Khmer Empire (roughly Cambodia) and contained 0.1% of the world’s population from 1010-1220. It was so surreal to walk the streets and explore the ruins of what used to be one of the largest city centers in the world.
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We arrived at Angkor Wat early in the morning to catch the sunrise. Afterward, we opted to walk to each of the temples on the route. In retrospect, it would be better to rent a tuk-tuk for the day and have a driver take you to each of the temples, which is what most people do. We enjoyed the shaded walk however, and hired a motorbike to take us back home with all three of us on a bike.
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Koh Rong Island
Our next stop was Koh Rong Island off the southern coast of Cambodia. My favorite part of Koh Rong was how integrated I felt with local culture as a tourist.
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While the tourism industry is essential for their economy there, the part of the island I was on (the village with the main port) was not very built up.
The streets were are constantly buzzing with children and puppies, mothers selling homemade food up and down the beach, and motorbikes quietly whizzing around pedestrians in the sand.
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Most people speak Khmer, the language of Cambodia, but also varying levels of English so communication has not been a problem.
There is a 45 minute Jungle hike that you can do on the island for free. But climbing the steps to the Sky Bar and walking through it, there is a path all he way through the jungle on the island. The route leads to a wide white sand beach, from where you can hire a boat back to the village or walk.
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Swimming in the bioluminescent bay is also available for $5, and fresh smoothies are sold all day fir $1. The perfect budget week in paradise!
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh, our last stop in Cambodia, is located near the border of Vietnam. It is most well known for the Choeung Ek Killing Field, which is the largest in Cambodia.
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Under the Communist Khmer Rouge regime led by the genocidal tyrant Pol Pot, 2.5 million people (25% of Cambodia’s population) were murdered between 1970 and 1975. At the Choeung Ek field we visited, 8,895 people were murdered - and this was only 45 years ago.
The red roof is covering a a mass grave with 450 people. That is my entire high school class of 2015.
The hardest part of the tour was right here, where babies and small children had been swung by their feet head-first into this tree.
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When their skulls smashed, they were thrown into another mass grave directly to the right. This grave is all women and children.
Each of these depressions in the ground is a mass grave. Because the area is swampy, and the graves are recent, bits of clothes, bones, and teeth surface regularly and are collected every month.
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I saw the glass containers of collected human bones
I saw pieces of clothing wrapped around tree roots.
But the worst part was that I could smell the bodies decaying.
My heart broke on this tour.
Finally, Buddhist stupa is a memorial filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. The audio tour that guides you through this experience is extremely well done, and we left well educated but with heavy hearts.
The other must-do in Phnom Penh is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which goes along the Killing Field experience. The site of this museum used to be a high school but was converted to a torture prison but the Khmer Rouge government.
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The Khmer Rouge was a communist regime that championed the working man. People targeted to die included anyone who was educated, spoke a foreign language, wore glasses, worked in the city, had soft hands - and their families. If one parent was well educated, they would kill both parents and all the kids to ensure the kids never sought revenge.
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After torture, the victims would sign a confession admitting something they didn’t do, and then were sent to the killing fields. In the five years this prison operated, there were 12 survivors.
The things I heard here made me want to throw up.
As heavy as these experiences were, I learned so much. Outside of the walls of these tragic memories, Cambodian people are cheerful and peaceful. Exploring the city, every entryway seems to sell meat, vegetables, and packaged goods, and half the stalls are grilling fish on the ground while you walk by.
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Motorbikes fill the streets, but never honk. Traffic flows in some form of organized madness, which fit right in to our Cambodian experience.
What an amazing country.
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