We’ve finally finished converting our 360 panoramic views to Flash. Our collection now includes 20 panoramas, so start spinning your way around Asia. We’ve even added three new views, including: a cave temple at Ajanta in India, Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia, and the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Myanmar.

Thank you Freda, Michaela, Stephan, Beverly, Lisa and Garrett for joining us here and making our adventures in Cambodia such a great experience. Speaking of Lisa and Garrett, they will be back with us soon for more adventures in Thailand, so stay tuned.

So was the Cambodian border saga worth it? Absolutely. Mom has fallen in love with Angkor Wat as you can see in the gallery above. And although we were in Cambodia just ten months ago, we just can’t get enough of this spectacular world wonder.

For years, corrupt Cambodian border guards and customs agents have hassled visitors to their country demanding bribes for everything from entry stamps to bird flu health forms. Sometimes, requests for bribes are aggressive and threatening. More frequently, requests are tongue in cheek pleas which appear more like jokes. Either way it’s annoying.

For this reason, we were quite happy to see that the Cambodian government’s latest attempts to crack down on corrupt border guards at the Poipet crossing had been reasonably successful. Of course, the guards still demanded a bribe before issuing our on-arrival visas, but when we said no they didn’t fight it. (Hey, that’s some kind of progress, isn’t it?) Sadly, most of the foreigners crossing the border still nervously paid bribes, some stupidly not even realizing they had done so. Oh well.

But our enthusiasm at the government’s modest reforms was relatively short-lived. It turns out the scams connected to onward transportation are alive and well. And their latest incarnation has become somewhat threatening.

Exiting the border crossing, visitors traveling to Angkor Wat suddenly discover that they have very limited options for traveling on to Siem Reap. Taxis and minivans have been cleared from the border area and local buses are strictly controlled to make them useless for travelers. A single shuttle-bus stop advertises a free transfer to the “regional bus station and taxi stand.” I had read that the free shuttle bus took you to a private bus station located far out in the countryside where travelers had no choice but to buy overpriced tickets to Siem Reap. But the shuttle bus sign advertised that the bus station was only one kilometer from the border. Optimistically, I hoped that online warnings had caused the distant bus station to relocate to a more practical location within the city limits. Unfortunately, that was not the case, the sign is 100% lie.

So, trapped way out in the rice fields at the “regional bus station and taxi stand,” we were confronted with the choice between an overpriced taxi and an overpriced bus. The entire set-up reeked of scam – which it was – but most of the foreigners, who had never been to Cambodia before, assumed this was the way things worked in the country. Many of them jumped into taxis and proceeded on to Siem Reap.

Having been to Cambodia before, we knew that many of the long-distance taxis stop along the way and demand more money. Not up for more scams, we opted to wait for the slightly cheaper bus for the three hour trip. BIG MISTAKE. As soon as we stepped into the bus, we realized that they were pulling the notorious late arrival scam which used to plague travelers before the roads were paved. In the late arrival scam, bus companies drive as slowly as possible to Siem Reap hoping to arrive after dark. The assumption is that disoriented travelers will go to hotels connected to the bus company. Oh, so annoying.

But apparently, the old late arrival scam is no longer enough. Arriving after dark, our bus pulled into a walled compound outside of Siem Reap. Travelers were told that we were at the Siem Reap bus station, but Thomas and I had been to Siem Reap before, so we knew they were lying. As the bus doors opened and passengers were allowed to exit the bus, I noticed a worker closing the compound’s gates effectively locking us into the enclosure. Passengers were told that they would then have to buy overpriced tuk-tuk tickets to travel into downtown Siem Reap. (For those who don’t know, tuk-tuks operate like taxis. You pay when you get out; there are no tickets.) The implications were clear: we’ve got you cornered and you’ll have to buy your way out.

Locked into a compound somewhere in the countryside outside Siem Reap, most foreigners were easily intimidated into buying “tuk-tuk tickets.” But to Thomas and me, Siem Reap was not an intimidating place, but rather a friendly destination with wonderfully helpful locals. The only intimidating thing to us was the locked gates. We blew up and insisted that the gates be opened immediately. After a relatively short but ugly fight, the gates were unlocked and Thomas, mom, and I, along with one very intelligent Brazilian passenger Fabian, chose to leave.

To me personally, the most interesting part of the story is what happened next. Every other foreign passenger chose to stay behind. As Thomas, mom, Fabian and I walked out to the main road, the passengers zoomed by in their captors’ tuk-tuks. Clearly suffering from the travelers’ version of Stockholm Syndrome, many of them went so far as to taunt and mock us for for “being trapped in the middle of nowhere.” (This was said in a mocking way, not out of concern.) What they didn’t know is that 30 seconds later, we stepped into a passing tuk-tuk driven by a friendly, honest local who drove us to our hotel at a fraction of the price they payed. More importantly, we were able to walk away from the scam and make it clear that not all foreigners will willingly play the victim.

So many lessons in a single story.

But rather than break them all down, I should explain what we discovered later while talking to locals in Siem Reap. Apparently, the regional government of Poipet remains angry over the wealth and success that has come to the region around Angkor Wat. Corrupt Poipet officials are complicit in the transport mafia’s schemes and refuse to allow any competition to disrupt what has become a serious money-maker for their region: namely screwing over travelers passing through their domain.

Such border corruption continues to hamper the Cambodian government’s attempt to promote the country as a serious tourist destination. Poipet is by no means the only border crossing with such problems. In fact, it just might have the fewest problems. We can only hope that ongoing efforts to reduce border corruption expand to include the transportation infrastructure. Good luck Cambodia, you really need it.

Suggestions for Travelers Crossing at Poipet

Ultimately, the overpriced taxis from Poipet appear to be the best option. Currently priced at $48 per taxi, they are a reasonable option for groups of four. Unfortunately, the border mafia requires you to prepay the taxi, so you are at their mercy once you are on the road. Some taxis may stop and demand more money along the way.

Local Poipet officials currently rotate private bus companies which are allowed to operate between Poipet’s “regional bus and taxi station” and Siem Reap. Bus companies angered over the bizarre rotation scheme appear to now be using the set-up to their advantage by exhibiting some seriously unethical behaviors and assuming that passengers will not be able to identify which bus company they were actually traveling with. Locals in Siem Reap were quite surprised by what we experienced on our bus and said they had not heard of this happening before.

Many travel agents on Bangkok’s Khao San Road offer “direct bus tickets” from Bangkok to Siem Reap. In reality, many of these trips suffer from a number of scams including one in which they stop before the Cambodian border and force passengers to prepurchase over-priced Cambodian visas. In reality, they should only be $20. Moreover, many of these direct tickets require you to change to local Cambodian buses in Poipet.

The situation changes constantly, so get on travel forums such as Thorn Tree and start reading. Unfortunately, even the best informed travelers may stumble into a bad situation.

Since 1993, Aki Ra and his team have cleared around 50,000 landmines and unexploded ordnance. His dedication to this important cause should definitely earn him this title.

Please vote for Aki Ra to make him CNN’s Hero for 2010. Voting is open through November 18. The results will be aired on Thanksgiving night, November 25.

Finally! Beverly and I are so sick of hearing that we are in our forties whereas YOU are in your thirties. Well, Sir, welcome to the club. It hurts, doesn’t it?

There’s nem, river fish zinged up with ginger, lime, chili, garlic and probably MSG. The snack is then neatly wrapped in banana leaves and sold by the dozen. But don’t be fooled, the packages are deceptive. What looks like a lot of fish, is not. After peeling away numerous layers of banana leaves, desperation sets in and you start wondering whether you’ve been tricked. More frantic unwrapping eventually reveals a tiny piece of soft white fish rolled into a couple of fragrant basil leaves. Suddenly, a dozen of them make sense. Clearly not more than a delicious appetizer, a handful of nem doesn’t really fill you up.

And that’s where krolan comes in handy. Apparently Cambodians go crazy over the sticky rice/red bean concoction prepared in a bamboo tube. But more peeling needs to be done to get to the sticky center and when you do, you realize what all the fuss is about. Once the outer bamboo layer is peeled away, the sticky rice remains encased in the thin skin-like inner lining of the bamboo which almost gives the rice a buttery taste. Of course, the special flavor could have been from the bean-sized cockroach Tony found in his lunch. Oh, well!

For a more social meal, go for a Cambodian table-top barbecue. The clever metal contraption serves to boil and grill at the same time. For only a few dollars, you can usually find amazing all-you-can-eat buffets that offer anything from raw squid, muscles, liver and shrimp to tofu, fish balls and seaweed.

I’m definitely going to miss Cambodian food, but now that I’ve heard about Laotian baguette-style pate sandwiches, I can’t wait to get to Laos.

Cambodian Kramas

We ended up spending almost 40 percent of our monthly budget on food, more than we spent on hotels. There definitely seems to be a trend. Food prices are rising quickly all over the world. Especially fruit can be shockingly expensive. It’s crazy to pay $1 for a mango at home, but it’s even crazier to spend that much in Southeast Asia. Luckily, that dollar can buy you plenty of other things. Check out what you can get for around a buck:

• 2 glasses of draught Angkor beer during Happy Hour
• 1 ginger-stuffed barbecued frog
• 1 krama, traditional scarf worn around head
• 3 fried tarantulas
• 20 minutes of fish pedicure
• 4 liters (1 gal.) of drinking water
• 1 T-shirt at Angkor Wat (pay $1.50 for a slightly better quality)
• 2 cans of Coca Cola
• 1 kg of clean laundry
• 2 dragon fruit or 50 grams of Danish blue cheese

The Mekong is truly beautiful. The river has a palpable energy which sets it apart from many other rivers in the world. It feels magical. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another large tropical river with clear, blue water – it’s quite extraordinary. Gliding through the white sand banks and forested islands in a long-tail motor boat is pure joy. The small stilt villages and colonial river towns recall another age. I would go so far as to say that it’s second only to the Nile on my short-list of super rivers. Clearly from the photo collage, I’m not the only one who is enjoying it.

Cruising around on our mopeds through the Cambodian countryside, we have had a hard time spotting gas stations. Nothing looks like a Shell with an air-conditioned convenience store. Instead, fuel hand pumps present the latest technology in these regions.

Whenever I see a hand pump sticking out of a rusty fuel barrel, I think of an episode of The Amazing Race. One of the teams was almost eliminated because they had the hardest time filling up the glass cylinder. But not worries. For the technologically challenged, there are fool-proof gas stations where you can buy gasoline by the soft drink bottle.

Progress looks like crap to me. Cambodia is for sale, and everyone is buying it up – especially the Chinese. All across the country, new roads are being financed by China and there are definitely strings attached.

“When the Chinese built the road to Sen Monorom,” one witness recalled, “they cut down all the big trees along the way, even the trees that were far from the road.”

Yes, trees are part of the tribute that China demands for its contribution to Cambodia’s development. All throughout Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri Provinces the forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. When I spoke positively about a stretch of seemingly intact forest to the east of Khao Si Ma, I was quickly corrected.

“Oh, that’s just a show,” said a local World Wildlife Fund worker, “The Chinese knew that was marked as a reserve on the maps, so they left a strip of forest along the road. About a hundred yards back, much of it has been cut down.”

Yet again, stories of China’s unapologetic harvesting of the developing world.

However, as much as I would like to blame the Chinese for everything, many nations as well as domestic commercial interests are scrambling to claim their piece of the pie. Tropical islands for sale in the south, stretches of forest pawned off to the highest bidder, real-estate bargains, mining companies digging up whatever they can get their hands on. It’s a free-for-all feast with corrupt Cambodian government officials hording their share of the plunder. Even world-famous Angkor Wat has been leased out to Sokimex, a petroleum conglomerate, who runs the UNESCO World Heritage Site for profit. Surely, something as sacred as the Killing Fields could escape commercialization – nope, that’s run by a Japanese company.

Don’t think Cambodians aren’t noticing the looting of their nation, they are. They simply do not have the wealth or knowledge necessary to combat such powerful interest groups. For many, it is already a lost cause.

“I am going to take these Pnong families and we are going to move deeper into the forest,” dreams one Sen Monorom local as he talks of saving the local tribal people, “There are more animals there, so hunting is better.”

That won’t last long I thought to myself in response. But who can look someone in the eyes and tell them that their dream of survival is hopeless.

Back on the bus, it’s dark and I no longer have to witness the destruction sliding by outside. I mull over the endless threats to Cambodia’s wilderness as we arrive in Ban Lung, supposedly the heart of Cambodia’s darkness. It looks more like cement jungle to me. Just south of here lies the Srepok River, which served as the inspiration for the river depicted in Apocalypse Now. I visualize the terrifying film scenes playing out in the dense tropical forest. Somehow, the region seemed so much nicer then.

Tony, Beverly and I are quite experimental when it comes to food. But there are limits. The thought of stuffing a sizeable hairy spider into our mouths was almost too much to bear. But only almost. Watch this short video and see who’s enjoying themselves beyond what you’d consider normal.

OK, there’s no point to this post at all. This little monkey was just so cute that I had to put him up on the blog. So sue me!

In the last two and a half years, we’ve never mentioned fresh-water dolphins – that doesn’t mean we haven’t been trying to find them. Scouring the rivers of eastern India for Gangetic dolphins and Myanmar for Irrawaddy dolphins, we’ve been looking and looking and looking. No luck.

It turns out that our lucky river was the Mekong. At long last, we’ve finally found them in Kratie, Cambodia. And when the luck came, it really came. Most people searching for fresh water dolphins are lucky to see a quick flash of dorsal fin or flipper. We, on the other hand, had tails, flippers, fins and the occasional head splashing and bobbing around us as somewhere between 9 and 12 dolphins encircled our boat. Considering that there are an estimated 100 of these highly endangered animals left in the Cambodian Mekong, I’d say we hit the jackpot. Even when we returned to the shore, we could clearly see the dolphins diving and playing as we sat sipping drinks and feasting on dragon fruit under the shade of some overhanging trees.

Now the downer. Somehow, the severely endangered Mekong dolphin has managed to survive the horrors of colonial hunting, the Vietnam war, and the Khmer Rouge. One would hope that that would be the end of the trauma. But China is now pushing to make the Mekong fully navigable from Yunnan down to the delta in Vietnam. That combined with plans to dam the river will certainly lead to the extinction of this remarkable animal in the Mekong.