New adventures

I wrote this web log almost a week ago, but because of failing internet connections and a murdering travel schedule with days from 5.00 am – 20.00 pm we were not able to post it up to now.

We have said the island farewell and are now in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We have had a nice last week in which we finished our exercises for assistant instructor and spent a wonderful weekend diving with the volunteers on Koh Tang, a small island 3,5 hours by boat from our own island. The visibility was incredible. During our deep dive, which started at 32 m, we were still able to see the surface. That's a slight difference compared to our normal visibility of 5 m, or 8 m on a good day. We saw a lot of different coral patches and some small fish, but unfortunately the overfishing seems as bad as on our own island which means no big fish. Wonderful Christmas tree worms in 20 different colors though (it is a worm which attaches itself to a rock and looks like a garland in the form of a triangle, hence the name).

We did see a school of small barracuda and some fish we rarely see near our island. We will upload the pictures later. For the night, we put up 15 hammocks on the boat and mattresses on all elevated areas which turned the boat into a nice jungle of hammocks. It was a good way to finish our dive time in Cambodia. After we have send in the paperwork we're official assistant instructors!

We have started out travels with looking at the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime, by paying a visit to one of the killings fields. Because Pol Pot's regime ended in 1979, there are still survivors left and they told their own stories on the audio guide which made it even more horrid. In almost four years the regime managed to kill 3 million people out of a population of 8 million. After that we visited Tuol Sleng, or S-21; a school converted in torture and killing center in Phnom Penh. Most of the 20.000 people who died here have there own picture on a board. It was good to see this bad part of history in Cambodia, but we ended our day with much happier seeings; a visit the the Royal Palace and the silver pagoda. Built only in 1866, the buildings still looked beautiful as you will be able to see in the pictures later on. In the twilight we paid a visit to the Wat Ouna Lom, the epi centre of Cambodian Buddhism. In a nearby temple, the monks were so happy that we visited that the flashing lights went on immediately and he insisted that he took our picture in front of it.

Cambodians love flashy lights, so you see them everywhere were they can afford them. On billboards, buildings, as part of their karaoke show (yes, they love karaoke as does the rest of Asia) and apparently on their Buddhist shrines. But the thing they love most is our purpose of the next few days: Angkor Wat. We already noticed on our island that Angkor Wat is part of your everyday life: one of the 2 beer brands you could buy is called Angkor and the cutlery we used had Angkor Wat engraved in its design, and of course Angkor Wat is on the Cambodian flag which every small fishing boat has.

Next blog will be from Siem Reap and after that, diving in the Philippines!