If you're like me, most of what you've learned about Cambodia is through Angelina Jolie: awesome temples to plunder and all-you-can-adopt baby buffets. What Angie didn't teach us is that the internet is ludicrously slow here. Sorry for the delay, but I'll just backdate this entry (suckas!)
To save travel time, Christopher and I decided to catch a flight from Vientiane to Phnom Penh. Lao Airlines, which holds a virtual monopoly on flights in and out of the country, has a safety record rivalled by the crew of the movie Airplane!, but luckily we made it through alright. My churning stomach, however, was not eased by the inflight snack-- what I thought was cheese turned out to be some sort of sea creature (narwhal??).
Once in Cambodia, I decided to try to match my mastery of the Lao dialect (aka, how to say "hello"). I was determined to learn from the locals. It turns out, here "hello"is translated "HELLO MISS YOU NEED TUK TUK OKAY MAYBE LATER TUK TUK TOMORROW." There is definitely more hard selling including tuk tuk drivers following you while you eat, but it's not as bad as Africa. And you can hardly blame them for wanting to exercise their considerable road skills, because driving here is unlike anything I've ever seen. Vehicles come from all directions, at any time, but traffic flows smoothly, though with liberal horn honking. A left turn is a demonstration of the triumph of the human spirit-- the driver weaves through oncoming traffic, edges over to the left side of the new road, then merges through more motos hurtling head-on to get over to the right side. Crossing the street is like playing Frogger.
We were able to get in all the big sights of the city. We saw the amazing sculpture collection at the National Museum, popped in to see the king at the Royal Palace and silver pagoda, visited the center of Cambodian Buddhism, and, my personal favorite, wandered through the sprawling expanse of consumerism that is the infamous Russian Market, selling everything from Thai Buddhas to "Kevin Clein" apparel. Khmer culture is amazingly rich-- the ancient empire, at its largest, included Laos and parts of Thailand and Vietnam. Maybe for this reason Cambodian cuisine holds its own against neighboring culinary giants Thailand and Vietnam (Lao food... well... they eat dog there). We also had dinner at the world-famous Foreign Correspondents' Club, with half-price drinks at happy hour prompting the great decision of fresh-fruit passionfruit daquiris.
Phnom Penh is an interesting place, where it's unbearably hot by 10 in the morning but cools down after lunch before a torrential downpour in the afternoon. The effects of old conflicts are apparent in the limbless people around town, but all the hustling shows a determination to move on and succeed. I'm really glad we were able to experience the old "Pearl of Asia" before heading off to our Angkor adventure in Siem Reap.
