Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 192

Shapes that emerge from the childhood fantasies of the magical land, wild and beautiful, unlike anything I have ever seen before, but yet eerily familiar and personal as some ancient interpretation of a collective Rorschach test. Stolen notes from a psychiatric session that hasn’t happened yet. Pictorial code of answers to the Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything, from our ancestors with a serious problem of interfering and converging dialectics of Hinduism, Buddhism and the reptilian race of Naga in prehistoric Kambuja. The original Elephant Man is my above-mentioned friend Ganesa (Ganesha), in the first picture. He has a beer belly, which Hindus claim to be a representation of fertility, but he also holds a box of candy in his right hand, so I would say that he is a regular bon vivant. One ... read more

So here we are in Phnom Penh - the bustling, busy capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia. We have another half an hr to spare before we head to the airport to catch our flight to Bangkok (and our left luggage not to mention! :) ) We arrived here at 7 yesterday as mentioned earlier. What we failed to add was how we got here - we sat on the plane with one humongous backpack of which even 50% wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment, and luckily was squished under two seats. We therefore had no space to squeeze our second backpack (much smaller, but which also wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment) underneath, so held it in our laps the entire way. In between us, we squished our bigger Siem Reap purchases including a framed ... read more

Wednesday When I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound. I said, when I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound! The sound turned out to be Jeff, "Time to get up Matty, it's a quarter to six". Clearly, I went back to sleep rather prompty. On his second attempt Jeff did manage to stir me and against all better judgement I rose to face the day. The reason for this unforgivable wake up call was that Jeff had a bus to catch at six and I wanted to see him off. His return to Australia was going to be a sudden wake-up call for me as it signalled the start of my solo journey. Well actually, Alex will be with me for a few more days but he doesn't count as ... read more

Zbudila sem se pred Maso, zato sem se malo sprehodila po nasi backpackerski ulici (in se sprasevala, zakaj ne obstaja kaksen sprej proti nadleznim tuk tuk voznikom) in se nauzila tukajsnjih dobrot. Jedla sem neko kvazi pecivo, pa v palmin list zavito banano z rizem in kokosom (se mi zdi?), pa se kaj se je naslo. Ko sem prisla nazaj, sem vzela LP Vietnam in se pocila v en hammock v gostilni nasega guest housea. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Ko je Masa ustala, sva zamenjali sobi - iz tiste za $5 sva se preselili v tisto za $3. Razlika je v tem, da ta cenejsa nima svoje kopalnice, kar pa je cisto vseeno, ker je bila tista prejsnja katastrofalna, nikjer ni bilo nobenih obesalnikov ali odlagalnih povrsin, umivalnika pa tudi ne, tako da sva si tako ali tako zobe ... read more

We got the little man who works at our hotel, apparently called Jake, but we didn’t really believe that as most are called Yueng or Chao and other exotic names to give us a ride in his tuc tuc to the killing fields and the S21 prison. This is where I mentioned in a previous entry that you will probably need to know a bit of Cambodian history to properly understand it all, although I think the pics say a lot! But just to be boring ill give you a little overview. In 1975 the government was overthrown by a party/army called the Khmer Rouge, headed up by a guy called Pol Pot. To say he was sick would be being nice to him, the man wanted to rid the country of any Western influence and ... read more