Would you live in a town whose initials are PP?

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Saturday, October 20, 2007

Phnom Penh..... yea say it again, Phnom Penh (sounds like pompen), what a cool name huh?  Well we are back in the big city after a few day relaxing on the soft sands of southern Cambodia.

Actually had two of our nicest bus rides yet back and forth.  Not only did they show up on time, and not charge us a 100% markup but they were remarkable close to schedule.  A point of interest for all you karaoke fans out there, get your butts over to Southeast Asia, karaoke is HOT!  All the bus rides have a television and play music videos with the words on them and the little color highlight that moves across the words as they sing.  They have a good selection of music ranging from Mariah Carey to Macarena to Happy Birthday.  Best part is they play it loud enough for anyone who may be riding on the roof.

So leaving Sihanoukville with hangovers and sunburns we arrived into the city surrounded by the usual mob of tuk-tuk drivers that know the 'best price' for anything and everything you could possibly want, but probably don't.

Off to the lakeside, a 'backpacker's paradise' as described in the guidebook, with all the

Look closely... something is out of place here!

guesthouses over looking the water to the west.  They didn't let you know in the guidebook that it is the end of rainy season and the term ' overlooking the water' only applies to the dry season as the approaches, roads, walkways to the guesthouses (which are built on stilts) are all under anywhere from 2 to 6 inches of water!  We had it covered, we decided that the No Problem guesthouse probably had things under control so we waded in. 

It was cheap, I'll give you that, 3 dollars a room, with our own bathroom.  The whole building resembled something I might have constructed when I was twelve.  If the people in the room next door turned on their light the rays reflecting on our wall rivalled the wonderful sunset we were about to see.  We set up camp, went out to the lounge area which overlooked the water.  Definitely worth it.  We hung out on this porch overlooking this one-of-a-kind colored lake.  Comfy lounge chairs and plants all sitting on this porch projected over the water.  No tuk-tuks, moneychangers or bracelet sellers (Maia is up to 5 now.)  Only one kid precariously crouched in the bow of a little wooden boat offering rides to westerners (in my opinion you would have to be really drunk as well to climb in to that 'vessel.') 

We grab a cold beer, again I can't stress enough the tastiness of the beer here.  They are really proud of it too.  The motto is 'My Country, My Beer.'   As we settle down to the tunes of Bob Marley vibrating the floor boards of our little peninsula over the water we get the most wonderful view.  The sun is setting over the lake in front of us, Huge orange rays over the bright green lake.  The other side of the lake is the international airport, I got to enjoy watching an assortment of aircraft roar in and out as the sun settled over towards Thailand! 

Rested, refreshed we set off in search of food.  Khmer food, curries, lots of it!  We end up in a cafe with a lazy cat hogging one of our seats and we proceed to enjoy one of our better meals yet.  Green curries, with coconut milk, basil and chicken, doused with lots of spiciness.  A huge greek salad, full of freshly chopped veggies.  Spicy beef with peanut sauce and ginger.  Ahh and a huge plate full of garlic bread, such good baguettes here!  To top it off, one chocolate shake!  We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and waddled back to the guesthouse to enjoy a move that they had playing before heading to bed! 

SNORE!!!

Another day, Maia decides that the rank smell in the bathroom is not aliens and resigns to do her laundry.  Off around the city of Phnom Penh.  We haggle for a ride to the museum south of us, where in the late 70's the Khmer Rouge performed genocide on a majority of their educated countrymen.  The museum was set in the old 'security center' and was the largest

Haunting pictures of people killed in the prison

torture and extermination center used in the country.  To make a long, gruesome story short, Pol Pot the leader decided that educated people are a problem to control and convinced his un-educated countrymen that they would be better off without anyone who had any 'comforts of society.'  After killing some of them he started more broadly defining those with comforts as; how hard you work, who you were related to, whether you had any schooling whatsoever, etc.... As you can imagine, everyone kind of fit the bill at this point and it all fell apart with the aid of the Vietnamese army and yet another 'secret' bombing campaign by the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. 

After having my faith restored in humanity we opted for a walk along the riverside.  Phnom Penh is on the banks of some of the major rivers in the area and has a great river front walk.  The architecture is French colonial and intermixed with all the beautiful buildings are a few Asian influenced palaces, museums and religious buildings.  The intricate carvings, designs and paintings of the royal buildings where impressive.

Note to tourists: Don't eat seafood off the street

You got a sense of the work involved as the royal palace had about 100 workers in a 200 meter span all, scrubbing, painting and redoing the plaster/cement.  Phomn Penh's streets are surprisingly clean, which makes you wonder how so much trash has ended up in the river.  There were boats of all shapes and sizes, pretty much of the same design, all crowding the shoreline, hanging fishing poles off the side.  The people lived on the boats as you could see a little shelter as well as their home goods just sitting in the boat. 

We hit up a book store, and found a really tasty looking, and wonderful smelling Mexican restaurant which we are going to hit up today! 

I hope you are all doing well, enjoy the foliage for all you in New England!

bye bye!