were filled with soldiers. At the temple itself soldiers were standing around chatting. And then I noticed all the hidden sniper machine gun nests all over the temple grounds. In this picture everything blue is hiding a machine gun on a tripod. The day before there had been "some problems" between Thailand and Cambodia and the Cambodian army is preparing to defend this border. We were the only tourists at the temple and the soldiers were friendly to us, especially when they found out I was American. (A short thank you prayer was said by me at that point).Another frightening aspect of touring Cambodia are the land mines still hidden all over the place. There are agencies from all over the world currently in Cambodia working on removing the mines, but this is an ongoing process. In the US, stretches of road will have"This portion of highway sponsored by XYZ Company." In Cambodia, there are areas with signs that say "This area has been cleared of land mines by the Australian/Japanese/etc group." Even so, all of the temples have warnings not to stray from the main area because of potential land mines.
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