Camera

After dinner and the New Years celebration we were walking back to our guest house along the main riverside street and chatting when all of a sudden I felt my camera being pulled from my shoulder. I turned around immediately and started running and yelling after the thief. First I followed him through traffic and to the other side of the street and almost as soon as we'd crossed he dashed back into the traffic and to the first side, again Clint and I followed with little to no look in either direction. Clint and I must have been gaining because suddenly I saw my camera case fly up and hit the ground in front of me and send my camera bouncing along the sidewalk. Luckily, everything was still there and aside from a few new dents and scratches the camera wasn't damaged. The experience certainly got the adrenaline pumping.

We spent the rest of the night cooling down and playing cards and the following morning caught the Mekong boat that we'd meant to take the day before.

Penom Penh Redux

Clint and I got back to Penom Penh and got a room at the 'Okay' guest house, spent the day seeing the inner-city sites, the palace and national museum, both of which were what you might expect. I ended up spending most of the museum time sitting on a bench in the garden observing museum goers and the lotus ponds. The palace was somewhat interesting, with lots of buddha statues that had been taken and buried in the forest during the Khmer Rouge, as well as a 'silver pagoda' whose floor consisted of 3000+ tiles made entirely of silver, each weighing ~1-2kgs.

We had planned to catch a boat down the Mekong River the following day but I woke with a start that morning, just 30mins before departure, with the realization that my Vietnam visa wasn't valid for another day. So instead we stayed another day in Penom Penh mostly lazing about, and had planned to spend all day that way but were convinced by an enterprising young rickshaw driver to go down to the Wat Penom to celebrate the Cambodian New Year. We had been aware that it was 'new year' weekend but had been surprised at how quiet things were, and had decided it was more of a family time.

From the driver's description it sounded like the only people that would be down at the wat were the small group of loners that didn't have any family in town that they could visit, so we were a bit surprised when we arrived and the park was packed with people, young, old and everyone in between. Similar to other Asian and Indian celebrations, for New Years the Cambodians throw baby powder and water on each other as part of the celebrations; needless to say it only took about 5 minutes for Clint and Ito get our first dousing of powder. Our rickshaw driver had come into the park with us to show us around and he quickly had us buy two bottles of powder to join in on the dispensing.

At first I was a bit skittish about getting powdered and doing any powdering but that soon wore off and before long we were both fairly well covered in powder and doing our fair bit of dispensing. Apparently this powdering has been a tradition for a long time but this year the government was trying to discourage it, we never found out why exactly. At one point a police officer came up with a sour look and snatched the bottle of powder out of my hand and threw it in the garbage; it was at this point that our driver decided to tell us that the powdering was 'not allowed' this year.

During our walking around Clint braved to try a friend cricket and I decided to give cockroach a shot, I have to say that it was better than the cricket, more crunchy but not as salty.

Photos: Penom Penh

Angkor Wat

The day after Clint's arrival we caught the 6hr bus up to Siem Reap to see the renowned Angkor Wat temples, spending most of the day in transit. The next day we were up at 4:30am to make it to main temple in time for sunrise, which was anticlimactic thanks to a few rain clouds but worth it none-the-less. As the sky lightened and the rain began to fall we ducked into the and spent a couple of hours wandering the corridors, exploring the various rooms, climbing stairs, and staying dry. Despite the large number of tourists the temple was so large that it was fairly easy to find secluded spots away from the masses.

At such an early hour we hadn't really thought about the possibility of rain and so were without rain jackets when the downpour started. It was a bit prohibitive to our site seeing at first but we were thankful for it later as it kept the heat of the day at bay. Of the 20 or so temples (a number I vaguely remember and could be making up) in the area we managed to squeeze in a good 5 or so. The temples were absolutely amazing with the standouts being the Bayon temple (my favorite), with over 100 giant heads carved into the temple and the 'Tomb Raider' temple (where the movie was filmed apparently)which has been largely been overrun with large trees growing from the walls. We had planned to spend sunrise to sunset temple viewing but by 2pm were fairly well exhausted and headed back into town.

Feeling tired and achy Clint suggested we get a massage, so we found a small place and each threw down $6 for an hour long massage. I have to say that after my massage in India I was a bit disappointed; the massage felt as if hundreds of crabs were clawing at me and all I could think was 'how can people think this is enjoyable? surely no one does'... of course afterward Clint's first words were of how amazingly good that massage felt.

Photos: Angkor Wat

Penom Penh

After heading back from the island to Penom Penh I rendezvoused with my buddy Clint. We hit the ground running and on the first day spent the afternoon sightseeing . First we drove to the 'killing fields', a morbid site but one that I admit I felt fairly desensitized to. At one point our guide showed us a tree where soldiers of the Khmer Rouge would smash babies head's to kill them; it's a strange experience going as a 'tourist' to a place where people were killed en masse, one gets caught between wondering if being there and being aware of what happened is of importance and that I 'should know' by seeing it or if it's commercializing and in so doing trivializing the tragedy.

From the killing fields we stopped at the Stung Treng aka S-21, an old school turned prison that was notorious during the genocide for torture and killings and from which a lot of people were transferred to the killing fields. Another depressing site, mostly of rooms containing old rusted beds where prisoners were held or photographs of what went on there. We tried watching a documentary about the site but heat and fatigue caught up with us, so we called it a day.

Photos: Penom Penh

Cambodian Coast - Bamboo Island

Before Clint showed up I decided I needed to rest up a bit for the flurry of tourist activity that he was going to want to do. To that end I decided to head straight out of Penom Penh the day after my arrival and down to the southern coast and ended up at the small coastal town of Sihounakville. I stayed in my $8 oceanside bungalow for two days but decided that even this wasn't relaxed enough for me and so I caught a boat to Bamboo Island, an hours ride away. Bamboo island turned out to be just what I needed; there are only two sets of 10 bungalows each, one on each side of the island...nice and remote/rustic but still with a great restaurant serving good food.

I was planning on doing nothing but resting in a hammock for a few days but my second day there I was surprised by Vered and Chris who I'd traveled through Laos with but had separated from a few days before when they headed up to Angkor Wat. Our time was pretty simple, for the next few days all we did was lay on the beach, snorkel (I finally got to test out my underwater camera case), chat, and eat. By the time I headed back to Penom Penh to pick up Clint from the airport I was energized and ready for tourism.

Photos: Bamboo Island