Onto Cambodia

Well, we have made it to Cambodia. What a different feel this place has compared to Bali. It is always a wonderful experience to wake up in a brand new place, with all the smells, sounds and sights you have never seen.

We arrived last night, right at sunset. With all the plaes I have been to in the world, I have never quite experienced a welcome quite like this one.

We were herded off the plane and then a lady seemed to indicate to Amy and me to go straight over to the immigration desk. When we got there, this rather surley immigration clerk just barked at us...."VISA?!?!?VISA?!?!?!" in an accent I couldn't quite understand. When we said no,we hadn't gotten a visa yet, he pointed to the back of the room where there was a line of tourists. This is where you needed to pay the $20 to get the Cambodian visa. Okay, we understand. So we went to the visa line, handed over our $20 and our passports and were told to wait over to the right. When I looked over to the right, there was this semi-circle of about 15 Cambodian officials sitting at this long desk. In their get-up they looked just like the Wizzengamot from the last Harry Potter movie. Amy and I both had that thought, believe it or not, and had a really hard time not laughing out loud. I had no idea what 13 of these 15 officials did, as the visa lady bought the passports to the far end of the Wizzengamot and handed to one guy, who handed it to another, who called out the person's name. Finally, they called out Amy and my names and THEN we headed back to immigration. They would only take us one at a time, so Amy and I got different officials. Mine was this rather pretty lady, but boy was she surley. I just said hello to her and she wouldn't even look up, just kept going all through my passport looking it over and frowning. I suddenly wished I had a Canadian passport, maybe she's just like this to Americans. Finally she took her stamp, punched my passport hard a couple of times and waved me on. I thought for a moment that this was the meanest immigration official I have ever seen, but then I thought of the ones I've had at JFK in New York and they are usually worse.

We got our luggage and when outside the airport, looking for our tuk-tuk driver who was supposed to pick us up. No one. We waited awhile and our tuk-tuk didn't show up. We called the hotel and the poor desk clerk said he totally forgot, sorry about that! So we shared a ride into town with an Italian couple, no problem.

The desk clerk, Malu, was very apologetic, but we told him no problem. When Malu came out behind his desk to do something, we saw he only had one leg. Land mine accident, no dought. you see that a lot here. Many folks with one leg, one arm, no hands, etc. Very sad.

But our first day here in Cambodia has been wonderful. The ruins here at Angkor are a true marvel and some of the best I have ever seen. Amy will be posting about that today. We will be touring the ruins for the next four days and we are very happy to be here.