Once we were done with border crossing though, it was a beautiful and bumpy 6 hour ride to Phnom Penh. Cambodia already is so much different from Thailand, even the way it looks! It was a lot flatter with long rolling hills of green. and a lot more shack life then I noticed in Thailand, annnd, white cows EVERYWHERE we had to stop quite a few times for them to get out of the way.
As we got closer to the city though (about an hour before Phnom Pehn) I really noticed the garbage, and it completely took away from the scenic beauty beyond. Just litter, and small garbage bags everywhere, and the cows were eating it! Gross! Most of the litter piles up in the big ditches that are in front of the houses and shacks, and I hardly think its by accident, - I saw a few ladies deliberately sweeping garbage into the ditches. - I guess they don't really have other options, but it's really sad to see, in lots of the ponds closer to the city there is garbage floating around in them too. In these areas there was 'mild'' poverty, but at least the people had some form of a house, and I just felt like this was their way of life... the city was different...
When we arrived in Phnom Penh I was actually a bit surprised to see that it wasn't as developed as I thought. - Still a lot of dirt roads and shacky looking places, amoung shiny big new buildings and great old temples. - i guess that should have been obvious though considering thier history. The bus drove through an alley that I kind of needed to look away from, a little shack town in the city. I saw a dirtry mattress with 3 babies - aged 1-2.5, they were naked and so dirty, playing with their mum, I also saw a family and naked baby sleeping outside a store, just on the hard tiles...
After the bus ride and a hoared of drivers wanting to take us, we went to the main backpacking area of Phnom Penh, on the lake where everyone stays. We looked at a few places that (to me) were awful!!!! They were dark, and slanted - literally, - many of the guesthouses are built over the lake and are slooowly falling apart, and the first two rooms make you feel wonky! - Also, they didn't have bathrooms in the room, -The idea of shrared bathrooms is fine with me - but the shared bathrooms here are disgusting - totally not clean AT ALL, and falling apart, tooo much for me I is sorry.
So our third room seemed great simply because it DID have a bathroom. We got a room that was built right over the lake, and the guest house restaurant has a really lovely, huge deck to eat and drink and relax on. We were pretty tired last night so we ate some food, and a few drinks, and went to bed. The National dish here is called AMOK, and they had Amok with tofu, so I decided to try it - MUM, It is soooo good, it's like a curry, but the one I had was very mild, it's base I think was coconut, and it had yellow onions, big chunks of good tofu, and huuuge chunks of pinnapple, served with rice. It was delicious!
Before bed, I was bbrushing my teeth (over the toilet, cause our bathroom has no sink!) and noticed a small cockroach. I asked Davey to get me a shoe and I killed it, then he was like "get it, it's over there!"and I said ""no, I killed it, see."" - It was another one, ewww, so we slamed shoes around and made sure they were all dead. Then, at night I woke up to a slithery sound, it sounded like a lizard, on the floor, and not a small lizard. I was certain it was in our room so I quickly turned on the light! It was a rat and it ran up the wall and into the crack of the wall! And I discovered the slithering sound was something it was draggingg along the floor - it was a package, and I looked at it - Dried Eel! - Some how the rat had found a package of DRIED EEL, and was dragging it thru our room. I woke Dave up and the rat kept running along the top ridge by our ceiling a few times and then disapeard into the room beside us. Hahah, this was at 4:30 in the morning, and shortly I heard our neighbors wake up and they kept opening their door, trying to get it out. Poor thing, he just wanted some dried eel!
We got a different guest house today, I'm addicted in this way, Even though it would be nice to have a steady home base once in a while, I really do like moving almost daily to see what other places have to offer. - Now when we go back to Bangkok, I have my list of favorite places because of my addiction. - You would be proud of my hotel prowling mum!
(written later in the evening)
Dave and I went to see the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum today. It's still too heavey and fresh in my head to really reflect on here at this point, I need to think about it more on my own before I go into details and written thoughts. When I was in grade 12 I did a long history essay on Pol Pot, so going into this, I knew the history, and what to expect, so it may have made it a slightly different experience for me, than for others that had no idea, or a vague idea. Seeing it, in real life though, was so, so strange. I got really sick and dizzy by the end, and had to take a few breaks from looking. Tuel Sleng used to be a highschool before it was taken over, and it is the actual location of mass tortures and killings. We saw all of the cells people were locked up in, and I'm fairly certain the remaining blood stains on the floors. There are lots of graphic photographs that were used for documentation, and rooms filled with headshots of all the victims when they first arrived. - so many young boys, and women and children, such beautiful, poor poor people. =(
I think I would rather not write about it, people should learn about it though, if they don't already know - Pol Pot and Khemer Rouge. It's too heavy and sad for me to ever express in an online journal, and I'd rather talk about it in person, when I come home.
Anyway I'm not feeling well now, I feel angry like I did when I researched this 5 years ago, and honestly am truley wondering, again, as usual for me, how different the world would be if women ruled it...
