atst wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:32 pm June 2015 was my first visit here coming down from Siem Reap to PP looking at those houses on stilts thinking I could see myself in a hammock under one of those with a bit of land around me, beer in hand the blues playing and a lovely Kmers girl cooking my lunch, that would be just nice, well 6 years of that can still handle the hammock, beer, music and girl but the locals I've had enough of them, they won't be happy till every last cent I own is thiers.

Try to learn some local lingo. They won't take 'no' but the Khmer equivalent (ទេ) with a small explanation will do.

I was intrigued by the place from the late 70s when we were shown films about it in school. These were actual reel to reel films too. I didn't know what the hell it was about. It showed ravaged, starving people piling across the Thai border late in 1979. I later learned that these weren't normal refugees, they were civilians that had been forced to retreat with the Pol Pot army and had spent months in forests on the run under attrition. So I didn't know what to make of this. The teacher kept talking about communists. Vietnamese communists. I innocently asked her "What's wrong with communists?" - not really having a clue. So she went bananas, "What do you mean! The communists would kill your mother and father and whole family immediately!" So many years later I heard it was possible to visit Cambodia and find out.
The first time I thought about it seriously was late 1995. The feedback I got off anyone who had been there was that it was sketchy and expensive. So I went to India and Nepal for a few months instead. In 1999 I had been doing some pretty solid work for a while and took a trip around the region. North Thailand- Laos- Thailand- Cambodia. I was very impressed with most places but Cambodia took the biscuit. I only stayed a few weeks but it was on my mind afterwards so I moved here permanently in 2005. It's a much different place now but I still like it.