Land Mine Museum, Balloon Ride, and Shopping and a Show before leaving

First the important news--I picked up our passports today at the travel agency with our new Vietnam visas. We are now just a plane ride away from returning to Saigon and can leave anytime I get the news that my G&R for Henry has been scheduled.

I have to admit it is stressful but traveling with my mothr and seeing incredible sites has helped pass the time. My dilemma is of course that I only have a fixed amount of time I can take off work and this is taking time away from the other side--when I return home with Henry and want to spend time with him. I suppose I'll go back to work part time to begin with to stretch the time out.

Land Mine Museum

I had seen a documentary not lon before I left home about Aki Ra, a Cambodian man who has made a life's work of getting rid of the land mines that infest the country. He takes boys and some girls who have been maimed by the mines and educates them in his school--I think he can house around 30 or 35 at a time. He also trains some of them in the art of deactivating mines.
There seems to have been some controversy around his activities and his museum. He was accused of making the country look bad and also of posing a public danger because he was accused of having mines and bombs that were still active. This turned out to be a stunt to close him down--a local military leader opened his own military museum and the supposition is that he wanted to close down the competition. But it didn't work, in spite of having been arrestd a few times Aki Ra continues his work and his museum.

Land mines
A faux minefield

Balloon Ride above Angkor Wat
I had read about a balloon ride above Angkor Wat and I was interested in doing it. It wasn't as exciting as it initially sounded--the balloon rises only 200m into the air and it is tethered to the ground by a cable. And it cost $15 for what amounted to a ten or twelve minute trip--a fortune in a town where you could get a hotel room and three big meals for that price.

Still if I didn't do it I would wonder what I had missed so when we had time left over I asked Krem to take me to the balloon site.
Nearby things like the flooded rice paddies and cattle grazing areas were crystal clear. Angkor Wat is here in the distance and it is kind of hazy in the afternoon heat. It actually looked somewhat clearer to the naked eye.
This is the mountain top temple that we visited on the first day for the sunset tour. It was the only other monument that I could clearly see and identify. I suppose some of the others were visile (Ta Prohm is said to be visible) but they would be coverd too much by trees and I didn't locate them.
As we drove around we always saw children and even some adults swimming or bathing. As we drove away from the balloon ride I was able to capture this photo of some boys in the water.


The next day (today) we just rested and did some shopping. And picked up the all important passports with the visas! This is the front of the hotel--with the huge statue blocking the entrance but it is striking.

We waited until after four to shop the old market to try and beat the heat but it was still oppressively hot. I looked in vain for a wooden carving of Angkor Wat. A couple of days ago I did buy some small replicas of the temples that I suspect are plastic, but I wanted something wooden that wasn't a generic elephant. Finally I found a four sided face like the dozens that are at Bayon and I bought that as a momento of the temples.
The hotel we are staying at, Temple Villa, also runs a hotel in the trendy part of town (a couple of blocks away) that features an all you can eat buffet and a nightly traditional dance show.
We sat on the balcony--it gave us a great view of the street but it was hard to see the stage.
Women were dressed like fish and men were dressed like monkeys in the dance show that was performed.

And so our time in Cambodia is drawing to a close, though we might have some exciting things to post tomorrow. We leave at 7 in the morning to take a 3 to 4 hour taxi ride to the Thai border. This is dangerous area--it's where most of the land mines were planted and the Khmer Rouge hang out there. Even though it is heavily traveled the roads are horrile--I have read numerous horror stories about tourists stranded in the mud or riding in the back of a hot pickup truck when they had bought a bus ticket. We are hoping to avoid this by hiring the taxi--at a cost of just $27. When we reach the border and if we can avoid the pickpockets and scammers we will catch a bus that will hopefully take us right the area where the hotel is that I booked in Bangkok.