Phnom Penh

This is being written in ‘word “and copied over to the Blog so it should be a better quality, than the stuff we have to put on the web direct.

This is very embarrassing one for me to write. You will see why later. And for a police man, who is telling everybody else to watch out.

Bus Journey from Siem Reap

We travelled yesterday from Siem Reap to Phnom Phem. This was a local bus and only cost USD$6.00 each. Local means that it seems to pick up and drop off wherever anyone wants. It also stops for a “wee stop”every two hours. It was a 6 hour trip and relatively uneventful. One of the local rules is that if you are under 8 and under 1.3 m that you don’t have to buy a ticket if you are with a full fare paying passenger.

Poor Saasha: She was beside a very big 8 year old who sat between her and some relative. Exacerbated by her sunburn, larger than Cambodian frame, and an apparent innate inability of Cambodian children (one on each side of her) to keep their stomach contents intact, she spent much of the journey sourcing plastic bags. Unlike the airlines there are no vomit bags on the local bus.

The wee stops are at eating places where local fare is abundant. Some of the local fare shown to us by the inveterate hawkers and beggars included “you buy pineapple mister” You buy paw paw lady” . Other fare which we chose not to partake was crickets(cooked of course) and big black spiders both cooked and live as well. The kids there seem to have no problem in handling these things. You should have seen Saasha jump when she was handed a furry creature(it was a little toy koala). Very funny. James and Patrick are a curiosity as they are literally twice the size of local children of the same age. And all the girls want them as boyfriends.
The toy koalas (you know the ones that you8 clip on lapels) are a hit with the kids.

We arrived in Phnom Pen, which when comparing Siem Reap, would be like comparing Ballarat and Sydney.
This place is bezerk. From the bus station we were taken to the Sunday Guest house, not that far, but far enough. Mum Dada, James and Patrick and ALL the baggage in one Tuk- Tuk, and Saasha, had a terrifying journey on the back of a motorcycle.

The Guest house is comfortable but hardly 6 star. But this in my opinion is what travelling in these parts is about.

OUR FIRST FORAY,

And foray it was. Things we had not seen in Siem Reap. Some kids sniffing paint and like behavior. Admittedly this caused me to advise all that “this place is not like Siem Reap, we must be more vigilant” We walked for about an hour or so and decide to go into one of the more “western” shopping complexes. It had 5 floors and of course escalators, which brought about my undoing. Some of the locals are not very comfortable with these metal monsters. Getting to the top of one of these the young girls in front of me stopped for no apparent reason and I ran into her, grumbling that she should not stop there. In retrospect what happened then was that this little woman's accomplice, a young fellow of a similar age relived me of my camera from my pocket.

I only discovered the missing camera some time later. After a frantic but futile search. we accepted the inevitable. Now if any of you have seen the Grizwold’s European holiday, and what happens when Clark loses his movie camera…..keep that thought in your minds. Little does Nathalie realize…….Oh well ….I only think there were 200 or so images, which most are retaken by James anyway. Fear of selecting an “unsafe” meal at dark in a “unknown” city, we had pizza for dinner, shortly followed by the purchase of a replacement camera (silver this time).