Day 10 & 11 Farewell Beijing...Hello Cambodia

Day 10: Silk Market....Today I went and checked out the silk market. The silk markets
is building with many floors of different types of goods to sell. One floor is dedicated to silk, the other one jade, another one for perl, leather, etc... The sellers there are pretty aggressive as they come after you to buy things. Things are cheaper in Beijing than Hong Kong. The malls in Beijing are very similar to the malls in the U.S. I checked out the local McDonalds just to see if there were any differences, but didn't notice any, they had the usual Big Mac's, etc. Later that evening went to a Japanese rest. with my friend Asha and her family. The Japanese food pretty much taste the same. The pollution in Beijing and Hong Kong is pretty bad. Some people wear the facial mask to protect them from the pollution, I hadn't realized the pollution was so bad until I looked down at my white shoes and they were covered with brown marks.

Day 11: Farewell to Beijing...Big thanks to Asha and her family for letting me stay with them. Had a great time. That morning got up at 6:00am as I had an early flight, I only had a few hours of sleep as I was trying to catch up on some things the night before. Ended up catching a taxi to the airport. When I got out of the cab a gentlemen came to the cab and took my bags and put them in a cart. Then he asked me where I was going and told him. We headed towards the terminals, he was walking quite fast so I was trying to keep up with him, so I didn't really have a chance to ask him how much he charged. I figured I would give him 5 RMB (= 80 cents), which is alot for them. Once we got into the terminal he told me he wanted 100 RMB (=12 dollars), I was shocked and told him I would give him 5 RMB, then he said 50 RMB, a little worried since he was still holding on to my cart, my eyes quickly darted around the room looking for a policeman, none in site, I figured I was in hopeless situation as I didn't speak Chinese and couldn't ask for help, I said 10RMB, luckily he agreed to this amount, boy was that a close call....

I did have a good experience with one of the taxi cab drivers in Beijing. He had taken the wrong turn when driving me from the Silk Market back to where I was staying. When he dropped me off I gave him the full amount of the fare, and then he gave a few RMB (Chinese dollar) back.

Hello Cambodia.......Rest of the day was catching flights to to Siem Reip in Cambodia. The flight over from Bangkok to Siem Reip was full of Americans/Europeans/Australians. I hadn't realized this was such a popular destination for them. As we were landing I noticed all the palm trees it reminded me of Key West Florida. I read up on Cambodia on the plane and hadn't realized all the atrocitices that had happen in that country. I had vaguely heard about it, but didn't really know the details. It seemed we had always heard about the Vietnam war, but had not so much about the atrocities that happened in Cambodida in the late 70's. As I read my 'Lonely Plant' book on Cambodia, I realized that in the 'history' section of all the countries in South East Asia that was the only country where they describe the history as the 'good, bad, and the evil'. The atrocities I am referring to that happened to Cambodia was the period during the 'Khmer Rouge', when 20% (2 to 3 million) of the Cambodian population was killed between 1975 and 1979. Most of the people that were killed were 'educated and intellectuals' of Cambodia. The 'Khmer Rouge' was lead by Pol Pot a Cambodian Communist. You can tell that this is still a very sore subject for the Cambodian peoplem, as so many had family members that had died during this period. My tour guide, Darrith, and I were talking about the 'Khmer Rouge' as we were getting out of the car for one of the tours. He had mentioned to me that his uncle had died, his uncle an educated man was asked to go to the local school and he never came back. Then he was telling me about Pol Pot, he then stopped as we were in crowd of people and said that we should not really talk about Pol Pot in public, as many people had family members that were killed during this time.....