Battambang, etc..

The last 3 days I have spent exploring the temples of Angkor. I also visited the Land Mines museum outside of Siem Reap. This is a depressing place, but also very informative and uplifting in the way that the man who runs the museum is working very hard to remove many lind mines himself with his bare hands. He estimates to have removed 50,000 land mines himself. Landmines, I feel, are ridiculous and so stupid. Arg. It is infuriating. There was a treaty signed called the Ottowa Treaty to Ban Landmines (something like that) and 151 countries signed! Hooray!! Unfortunately there are 22 or so countries that have not signed, including China, India, Russia, and the US!!! Damn US!! Just sign the damn treaty!! Apparently, the US says they will sign it only if they have a "Korean exception" because they say that landmines are necessary for stopping an attack on South Korea by North Korea. Well, that is just so stupid because obviously land mines don't really work to kill who you want. They seem to usually kill young children or farmers, or just blow their limbs off. Well, being here I see quite a few people with no legs, no arms or other injuries that are probably from land mines. There are estimated to be 6 million mines still in Cambodia only, and they area active 150 years after you plant them! It seems like a major slap in the face to all those limbless people that the US refuses to sign this treaty. Shame on the US for this!!! In my opinion!!!

Anyway, there is not a whole lot else to do in Siem Reap besides the temples. It is a wonderful little town though, and I could probably waste weeks eating my way through Siem Reap and lazing about the coffee stalls, markets, and villages. But I have a country to see!! So, off to Battambang! It looked like a good next stop on my backpack trip through Cambodia. I decided boat was the way to go, and was I right!! I actually just arrived in Battambang a few hours ago. I got the "fast boat" from Siem Reap, which I think they call fast only because it goes faster than the hand paddled wood canoes, because the thing sure ain't fast. But it IS fantastic. It sort of was this little sputtering dingy thing. It left Siem Reap at 7 AM. I decided the roof was the best seat in the house, so requested to sit up there. This boat ride is really such a good way to see the Cambodia country side. The whole trip is about 7 hours. It was a nice overcast day today, so not too hot, and with my new $1 Cambodian straw sunhat I was ready!! We ended up with quite the crowd on the roof. It passes by these floating villages that are either houses that are actually floating on Tonle Sap lake, or houses that are on high stilts. It is a beautiful sight. It made me want to live like that for a few months and see what it is like. Some actually have literal house boats which are oversized canoes with motors, and have thatched walls and a tin corrugated roof. From the inside of these boat shacks came cooking smoke from breakfast. There are quite a few village colonies along the way to Battambang. One of my favorite things about traveling is to see how other people live. I like to see what the day to day lives of different kinds of people are like. This is a really good window into life on the water. Some floating huts even had a floating wooden cage full of fat pigs, and I saw a few floating houses with pet dogs!! Anyway, I highly recommend this boat trip to anyone traveling from Siem Reap to Battambang.

Battambang: Just got here! It is the second biggest city in Cambodia, and that is all I know about it! So far I have walked around a bit through the market, and thats about it. And now, off to EXPLORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cambodia ROCKS!