Crispy Crawly Snacks + Dirt Farmers

Siem Reap -> Phnom Pehn, Cambodia Siem Reap to Phnom Pehn is a bumpy 6 hour bus ride with some interesting observations along the way. Best of all are the snacks that are available for sale when the bus pulls into a roadside stop every 1 1/2 hours or so. The deep-fried spiders and bugs looked especially tasty and if I weren't on the Atkins diet I would have put back a few kilos of those in a minute. Bugs look appetizing enough as it is, but when they are fried to perfection they're almost irresistable. Deb - Do vegetarians eat bugs? Farming is still done with water buffalo to pull the plows and manually picking or cutting with scythes. This is at about the time when the first settlers were making their way across Canada with ox-carts. After seeing how dominant the Khmers were when they build the incredible temples at Ankor Wat and how backward they are now compared to the rest of the world, it's hard to believe a society fell so hard. Getting off the bus in PP you are swamped with people trying to get you to stay at hotels and guest houses. I didn't have a reservation but knew a few places that I wanted to try so I just get a cab. The cab driver starts pushing the King Hotel even as we're walking to the cab so he's just like the rest of them. I convince him to take me to where I wanted to go and he tries to talk me out of it the whole way. He even told me that there was a crematorium across the street and the smoke of burning dead people blows into your window at the place I wanted to go. We went anyway and there wasn't a crematorium in sight. Paul