Siem Reap

The main attraction in Siem Reap, and maybe Cambodia in general, are the Angkor temples, the main one was built for one of the Khmer gods ( I think, but I'm probably wrong) named Vishnu. We read that during the building of this temple more people died than the entire cambodian genocide but it sounds too absurd... We took a day tour there with a tuk tuk driver named chan. The temples are incredible, I'm not a big fan of architectural sight seeing, but this is something else, some of the temples are monstrous, and climbing to the top awoken my fear of heights. The stairs are narrow and steep, and each stone is huge. Some of the temples are built inside an old dark green forest, with trees maybe 30 meters high, and the stones are black, with carvings of faces and women everywhere. In one of the temples Amit and I got lost, and thought we will never be able to leave anymore, because we are locked inside a cursed maze. On the way we saw monkeys, and even bought bananas to feed them, in return, they took over our tuk tuk until our driver managed to fight them off. We saw 6 different temples I think, each one unique in it's way, it was enough for us, but for the spiritual ones, this place is definitely  place to spend a while. At the evening we went for dinner with Chan, our new friend, and he told us about his father that was killed by pol pot (the one that lead the genocide), and that his mother lives in the country side and how life is for the poor in cambodia. One of the most interesting experiences in this trip is listening to the stories of the people, and we were shocked to hear Chan's story. He explained to us how you have to have money to get married, how the poor are dead poor, and the rich buy cars even rich people in Europe can't afford. How corrupt the police is - they are basically a mafia, all they do is take money, from businesses, from whores (here they are called "taxi girls" ) from tuk tuk and boat drivers. You have to have a family in the police if you want to work there, and if you work there, you are a rich man that can afford a nice house and a nice car. The next day Chan took us to the country side to see his village, he took us to his family and we had lunch together, we paid a dollar to a 7 year old kid for climbing a coconut tree and cutting off some coconuts for us, after I failed to make it half way up. After that we walked around the village and saw fishermen, farmers, and some friends and family of Chan. The highlight of the day was when we reached the entrance of some temple where many girls were selling useless things, and they knew a lot of languages! One of the girls knew as many as 5 languages! (English, Spanish, French, Khmer, Korean), of course only a little of each, but they were all around 10 years old and picking up sentences and songs from the tourists. We made a bet that if I eat a whole chilly they will sing a song in Khmer, this was easy, by now I'm uses to chillies here, but the little prick managed to find a chilly the size of a banana! I didn't back up and all the girls screamed as I took a bite, actually it was not anymore spicy than a normal sized chilli but I acted miserable to earn my song. After some singing done by both sides, and some teaching of Hebrew (shalom, ma nishma, sababa), it started raining and we headed back to our tuk tuk, paying a short visit to another family member of Chan on the way.