Or you can have that......

Finished my stop over in Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor with an amazing last day of site seeing. We actually almost saw a real sunset at Angkor Wat on the last day which I was pretty happy about. My final meal in Siem Reap was delicious as well. Cambodian BBQ, and I got the ostrich. It was like a mix between beef and chicken, and extremely delicious, though not as good as my pumpkin in coconut soup from the day before....I'm being spoiled these days.

Anyway, headed down to Sihanokville (it's a mouthful) with some friends in southern Cambodia. Its the beach town of the country. We decided to head to Otres beach, which during this season (the start of the monsoon) was truly deserted. We had a beautiful white sand beach to ourselves....literally. I saw about a dozen local fisherman the entire time we were there. We could have stayed in town at the bigger beaches where the people tend to go but we decided against that in favor of quiet, and we found it. Running along the beach was amazing and peaceful. The only downside to the distance from civilization is the amenities of the place we stayed at. No running water, electricity by generator only and very very limited menus for food. Kinda like being in the Nepalese mountains again but with a beautiful beach. The water was quite as clean at peaceful as the beaches in Thailand but the stay here was relaxing nonetheless. And we had some adventures here.....

We decided to have dinner at a "restaurant" up the road from our guesthouse. We find this place on the side of the road with 2 tables and chairs...thats our place. We ask what we can get, fried noodles or rice with beef were our only options.....or you can have that the owner says pointing at a chicken. The chicken was alive at the time and we decided it best be to eat fresh, our guesthouse owner was fishing for our food everyday before that so why not keep up the trend. We helped the family a bit trapping the chicken, I think it saw the hunger in our eyes, and once captured....well, things got messy. It's head came off with a quick swing of a cleaver type knife and it kicked its last few beats before the owner of the place squeezed the blood out, de-feathered it, and fried it up for us (I was traveling with 2 other guys and a girl from UK and the States). It wasn't the best meal I'd ever had but it was certainly one of the more memorable adventures I've had in Southeast Asia.

After dinner we had some drinks with the family and talked about life and things. It was amazing to discover that most Cambodians cannot afford to go to college because it costs between $500-800 per year. My books cost more than that for a year. Quite different than the states. An amazing fact of Cambodia, and its somewhat disheartening to me, is the currency that they use....the US dollar. Go to an ATM and thats what it spits out. The Cambodian currency called the riel is more like the change. It is completely dependent on the dollar and it fixed at 4000 riel per dollar. So if I go to the store and it costs $1.50, I'll pay with $2 and get 2000 riel back. Its unfortunate that the country doesn't operate on its own currency, especially considering the fact that the currency is beautifully decorated. And they also drive on the right side of the road, something that I hadn't seen for sometime before arriving here.
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From Sihanokville I headed to Kampot to go to a national park and check out some caves that the Khmer Rogue used to hold "prisoners" in. There are suppose to be very old religious monuments in these caves as well which should be interesting to see.