Thailand - My Chiang Mai Life

8:30 a.m. and on the bus to Siem Reap (S.R.)a 6 hour ride for $11.00. Bus was nice, a/c, t.v., a snack box and bottle of water, and most important a bathroom. At 11:45 we stopped for lunch and then on to S.R. arriving at 2:30 p.m. Lots of horn blowing along the way as the roads are narrow and the bus is wide! Scenes along the way - Greeted by "old friend" upon arrival at hotel. Dog was here 3 years ago when Charlie and I stayed at the hotel.... Start of the day at hotel restaurant. View from breakfast table... A great way to spend the afternoon!! My room.... Street from old city to hotel a 5 minute walk Old market in S.R. River scenes of river that runs through the city. Typical city street in S.R. A S.R. clothes line! Next post my tour guide "Divit" takes me to some of the out of the way temples...

This post is just on the "Genocide Museum" or S-21 prison in Phnom Pen. Pictures taken 20 July 2010..... 26 July 2010 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) -- A man who ran a notorious torture prison where more than 14,000 people died during the Khmer Rouge regime was found guilty of war crimes Monday and sentenced to 35 years in prison -- with five years taken off that sentence for time served. At least 1.7 million people -- nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population -- died under the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge from execution, disease, starvation and overwork, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Captions are not needed as the pictures tell the story - especially the "eyes" of the victims

14th of July I flew to Cambodia to visit a friend in Siem Reap and to explore Phnom Penh. This is the first of several post on my visit to Cambodia plus a little history. Cambodia is an amazing country considering that it tore itself apart in the middle 1970’s. Over 1.7 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge - some estimate as high as 3 million killed! In many areas of the country people were rounded up and executed for speaking a foreign language, wearing glasses, scavenging for food, and even crying for dead loved ones. Former businessmen and bureaucrats were hunted down and killed along with their entire families; the Khmer Rouge feared that they held beliefs that could lead them to oppose their regime. A few Khmer Rouge loyalists were even killed for failing to find enough 'counter-revolutionaries' to execute. Most of the educated Cambodians – teachers, doctors - were either executed or fled the country. Now 30 years later Cambodia is a booming S.E. Asian country. Everywh...

Riding my bike the other day I say a large crane picking up logs and putting them over a wall into a construction site. A few days later I went by the same place and found out what they were doing with them - support beams for a new house. It will be interesting to see what the house looks like when completed..... Made a trip to Bo Sang to see the craft center. This is sort of a tourist trap but I did not see any tourist to "trap" while I was there! Small Wat I discovered riding my bike down old country road!