Cambodia is a land of rice patties, bumpy roads, delicate gilded monestaries, amazing ancient temples, and an extremely resilient people who are still in the process of rebuilding their country and families after a civil war and extremely oppressive regime only 30 years ago. 

We explored Cambodia on bicycle and van and, in Adams words, painted a landscape of the country and its people in our brains as we rode. 

The first two days we rode through Angkor watt. Our jaws dropped as we gaped at the amazingly intricate, meaningful and ancient temples rising out of the jungle.

Then we bumped through the countryside where rice farming takes up a bulk of the countries space and the people's livelihood. Unfortunately Cambodian government is extremely corrupt and don't seem to do much in terms of road maintenance so when I say bumped I really mean bumped. The soil here is red and the days very hot and humid so while we peddled past squares of rice patties, skinny white cows and traditional Khmer houses, thatched roof, on stilts with the cooking and hanging out area underneath, we also moved past our physical limits. We summed up our persistence, positivity, and flexibility as our guides changed our plans and I discovered my inner water buffalo as I stuburmly and often slowly pushed on. We felt lucky to have a van with cold drinks and a guide to show us the back roads along the way.

In the middle of our journey we stayed in phenom penn, a bustling capital city full of people, noise, and stacked three story buildings with balconies that are surrounded by rickety looking power and telephone lines. We stopped at teul sleng museum-a former school turned detention center by the Khmer rogue. There we stood in the rooms where they sistematically tortured and then killed all the intellectuals, artists, dissenters, and former government workers during their reign in the 70s. They then emptied the cities, sending everyone to work in the country in forced labor camps. Every single person in this country was affected by this history and everyone that we have talked to knows brothers and sisters who died as children from disease, aunts and uncles who died of starvation or parents friends who were tortured and killed. We see older folks still using the red and white checkered scarf that was issued as uniform during that time as sun protection when working in the fields. People share their stories in a matter of fact way and when you watch strangers interact you get a sense of comerodity-people have made it through together. In the museum they have pictures of each deetanie and some images of the same people after they died, imaciated and beaten. The pictures line the walls of two or three rooms and I have never seen such anger, betrayal, and distain so evident in pictures. After seeing those rooms i sat down and cried.

On the rest of our journey to the coast we saw Cambodia building. We saw an environmentalist mission building when we hiked to a waterfall, people building houses and farms along the way, a opposition political party building momentum and Cambodian music and dance building a pop scene. lWhen we got to the beach in Sihanoukville we saw the tourism and export industries building as well. We also saw lots of people building families with lots of love and very cute children.

On the coast we were met with the monsoon head on. Rain coats did little to keep us dry since when we wore them we got just as wet from sweat as we would have from rain. It was fun to bike through the tropical rain forests, tall trees and stringy vines  covered with red mud with giant warm raindrops soaking us. When we ended at the ocean the waves roared and crashed tumultuously. We spent one day here but, because of the rain cut off our plans to stay on the Cambodian islands and headed back to Penom Penh for an amazing dinner at Malis, the best Khmer restaurant in the capital, in celebration of Adam's birthday. We are headed now to Hoi AnVietnam. The beauty of spontaneous travel is that one plan skipped opens a myriad of opportunities for future adventures added on. So...onward to Vietnam we go!