My Travels To Cambodia

My  Journey "Moving Me Physically, Emotionally & Spiritually"

I've spent the last 2 and half months in Thailand moving from the North to the

South.  My travels have deeply opened my heart and my mind. I have been doing many trainings and workshops as well as taking in as much history as I can. I have also come to enjoy living out of my bag believe it or not. In this new world I am in the "less you have, the better". I am enjoying the simplicity this brings. Each new guesthouse becomes home for either a night or 20. I have moved from guesthouses with my own room and toilet to dorm rooms that hold 12 people with a bathroom outside. I really love the experience. I know this is definitely not the way some people could travel but it's working for me.

Last week I made a 12 hour journey from Bangkok to Cambodia. The border crossing was a little crazy and very slow. It seems something with oil in it had blown up near by. My intentions in coming to Cambodia were to renew my Thai visa, see the temples at Angkok Wat and go to an Indian Embassy to obtain a travel visa.  From the border my friend and I took a 3 hour taxi ride to Siem Reap. We found a nice clean guesthouse for $15 a night. I got over my culture shock of this new country pretty quickly. Although it was similar to Thailand in many ways I also found it to be very different. The suffering these people have endured is much more apparent on the surface. You can feel the heaviness in the energy here in Cambodia. We spent the next 5 days exploring every temple we could. Starting at 5am we would ride in a tuk tuk taxi to the temples (Angkor Wat) to watch the sunrise. It is such a profound feeling to sit on the stones of these ancient temples that have so much history in them. I was saddened to see so many of the Buddhas destroyed and beheaded from war. The thieves believed that when you take away the heads you take away the spirits.The temples almost seemed unreal, they blew my mind.  I imagine the world of Atlantis would have looked like these temples.

There is so much beauty and so much destruction, so much love and so much pain. I am really seeing the Yin & Yang in everything around me and inside. 

Another highlight in Siem Reap was our guest house called the "Golden Temple". The entrance way was covered with huge overgrown plants and Buddha sculptures, two hammocks hung underneath the patio trees. The room was only $15 a night, a 1 hour massage was $3, dinner $2 and they offered free coffee and bananas anytime. The best part was they actually had soft beds in the rooms, what a treat.

The Cambodian children fill my heart and touch my spirit with their beautiful faces and big smiles. I find  it difficult to watch them working so hard everyday, some of them are as young as 3 years old. I wanted to pick them up and hug them.

It turned out that there was no Indian Embassy in Siem Reap so we had to travel for another 7 hours by bus to Phnom Penh to apply for a visa there. Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia. This country has seen more suffering and destruction than I ever could have imagined. A trip to the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields left me speechless, with a pain in my gut. I have created this slide show to capture a glimpse of what I saw but nothing can compare to what it felt like to be there and feel the death, torture and barbaric cruelty these people endured during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979. Bones and clothing of the dead lay on the ground. I had goose bumps as I walked around the massive gravesites. This was worse than any horror movie I have ever seen. This was and is real. It’s amazing what us humans will do to each other. That night I watched a documentary by a man named John Pilger. This really helped tell the story of what happened here. It also made goose bumps rise on my arms as I looked out of my guest house window to the streets of Phnom Penh to see the same streets were not long ago barren of community and life.

Please watch this video...

The Killing Fields Of Cambodia Slideshow: Ocean’s trip from Ta Khmau, Cambodia to Phnom Penh was created by TripAdvisor. See another Phnom Penh slideshow. Create your own stunning free slideshow from your travel photos.

As I write this it is February 9 at 7:30pm my friend Tom and I are sitting in a café on the street in Phnom Penh reflecting on our universe. I will stay here until February 11 in the hopes that my India visa application is accepted. My plan is to go to Kerela, India on March 5-21, 2011 to study Kalari. Kalari is a "kaya sadhana" or embodied art form that is considered to be one of the oldest "martial art" forms in the world, as warrior training is part of this profound and beautiful fluid form. Practiced in a Kalari - a temple created on the raw earth - this form complements the sacred relationship to the body in yoga while giving expression to the embodied power of shakti that is received from the earth and liberated through movement flow,meditation and marma massage.

If all goes well and I get the visa I will head back to Thailand and head to Chewlan

Lake in Khao Sok National Park, Southern Thailand for an 11 day Thai Massage/Yoga Intensive; at the 500 Rai Floating Guesthouse on the lake.

Its an hour by car from Suratt Thani airport, another hour by longtail boat, a 20minute hike through the jungle, and then you’ve reached Chewlan lake, a stunning and incredibly peaceful lake in the midst of the most unspoiled and beautiful jungle. The wildlife includes many different species of monkeys and rare tropical birds, eagles and even elephants and tigers. We will be staying in simple but beautiful bamboo huts that are floating on the lake. The challenge will be getting used to having no electricity or contact with the rest of the world for 11 days. That means no facebook, Skype or phone. It's all part if the journey. I will have two days to get from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Surat Thani, Thailand. I have no idea how this will play out yet

This was an amazing day for me at the temples...