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Published: March 7th 2010
Hello all. I am glad you have chosen to visit my obscure little niche on travelblog.org.
I would like to report that, as the title implies, I am alive and well in Cambodia; TESOL training begins tomorrow.
I have been here for about 36 hours. Now, granted, have been asleep for approximately half those hours (
you try surviving a 26 hour flight after 2 arduous weeks of moving your entire life back to Mom and Dad's and see if you don't need to sleep for 18 hours), but I have still managed to do the following:
-Ridden in a tuk tuk (which is a motorbike with a carriage attached at the back)
-Ridden a motorbike to market
-Visited the Russian Market
-Visited Phnom Wat and the Royal Palace
-Gotten a tummyache--less from what I ate than what I didn't eat, namely, FOOD
-Ingested tap water, ice, mystery meatballs, and a series of other things likely to give me a worse tummyache.
I got in late Friday night, too tired to do much besides go to sleep. I don't complain about this however--I was certainly assigned the best room in the villa, which is about the size of the Royal Palace and has the building's only functional air conditioning unit. PLUS its own bathroom.
The air conditioning is more important than you might think--it seems to be about 100 degrees Farenheit out here, and humid. Having fled a snowy February in Cincinnati, I'm not used to it; but I remind myself that it is certainly no worse than what I endured in Dubai.
I don't know if 36 hours is a fair amount of time to make any sort of pronouncement on Phnom Penh, but so far I am rather impressed--certainly far more so than
I was impressed with Copenhagen, for instance (which, in my own biased opinion, was a third world country with drinkable tap water). And unlike Copenhagen, the food is delicious for about a tenth of the price (some of my readers will remember my run-in with a $15 plate of mediocre spaghetti one dreadful night).
Phnom Penh is very beautiful. There are a lot of fancy and colorful villas covered in trees and flowering shrubbery. Maybe I'm in the wrong section of town, but even poor folks seem to live in these. Some of the buildings are dilapidated, but no less beautiful. Our villa has a mango tree and a dragonfruit tree in the front of it.
All in all, and perhaps I am only imagining this, there seems to be a positive aura to the place. I may take this back after 30 days.
Well, it's time for dinner. So goodbye for now. Please enjoy my photos below:
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Joe
non-member comment
This site (not your own blog) does indeed suck
Your entry here has been linked to by a native Khmer blogged at khmerbird.com who has some serious and not so serious entries about Cambo in pretty good english too. I've been to Siem and PP once, totally loved the laid back friendly atmosphere where it feels you're getting ripped off much less than in Thailand, less tourists too, more traveller and ESL types ;) One of my mates from the UK has got a page on this site as well and it's really hard to navigate the pages - he had problems himself getting posts to display to anyone but himself too so I can't understand why it's so popular :S Anyway, nice blog, man. Nice pics too. Good luck, kick back and enjoy the weather, fruit and escaping the real world ;)