I left France on November 21st 2012 and I'll leave South East Asia from Bangkok in December 22nd 2014 to land in Paris. These 25 months will remain a strong part of my life and made me a lot more confident. This trip made me realized the only barriers on our way are the one we put to ourselves, the strongest being our comfort zone really hard to escape when we are used to it. Leaving all our belongings, relatives and culture for a while are the necessary key ingredients to reborn as many time as you want and live numerous lives in a lifetime.
I spent so much time in Thailand and Laos I only have less than 3 weeks to spend in Cambodia. I also lost two photos albums during this trip (Kampong Cham and its incredible bamboo bridge, as well as Battambang and the several millions bats going out from a cave at twilight). However I hope I have enough pictures to make you travel with Stephanie and I!
With Stephanie we rented a motorbike in each cambodian cities we visited excepted Siem Reap where we rented bicycles. With my Free Android Offline Topographic App we explored the wild like nobody else could do without getting lost! In Eastern Cambodia we visited every waterfalls we could find. Don't ask me how but I found a way to twist my right ankle. It gave me the opportunity to discover that a bandage with ginger could help! Two to three days later it was healed.
You cannot go to Cambodia and miss the Temples of Angkor considered as the 8th wonder of the world. It's like going to Gizeh without visiting the great pyramids. It also support Cambodian people to have a better life as they lived the worst of what human beings can do to each other: Vietnam War, Operation Menu (Nixon again, after Watergate in Laos), Red Khmer until 1994.
The beauty of this temple complex contrasts with the last 60 years of Cambodia history. No matter how many technologies surround us today, I believe we are far less advanced than we were thousands of years ago. Recent studies and researches now claim there was an advanced civilization that gave us the gift of knowledge somewhere around 12500 B.C. What we study today at school is completely obsolete as our understanding of those numerous sacred sites all around the world gets deeper and wider.
We lost so much when the Roman empire divided between Rome empire and Bizantium empire or when the Great Alexandria Library turned to ashes. The Renaissance is the start of an intellectual movement only because what was saved from Antic Greece in Bizantium was brought back to Italy before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Humans knew the earth is round and turns around the sun before Antic Greece, and rediscovered it with the Copernican Revolution, Kepler, Galileo and Newton!
Diving in the mystery of our ancestors is fascinating and will change your thoughts about Human's past. I invite you to read or watch Graham Hancock documentaries, one of the pioneers of this new understanding.