VIP in Cambodia

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It has been brought to my attention that many days have elapsed without me writing in my blog. for this i appologize but sometimes sitting at the computer can be such a drag, or it can be very hard to find. haha it goes both ways. so here i am in sunny hot dusty sweaty but wonderful cambodia. we are in pursat visiting my friend kris who is in the same program as Jenna and I and doing his practicum here.

you may notice that im not bothering with capital letters and much punctuation partly because im lazy and out of school and partly because this keyboard is a real drag.

so cambodia has been a very different experience than the rest of our trip. before we came with arranged to stay with a close friend of my dad's who he went to highschool with. i have never met him before and my dad has not seen him since he left cambodia. at the airport we were greeted with a sign that said
KEN DRA and the verifyied it was me with a picture that my dad had sent a few weeks earlier. i didnt know this before but all the guys that my dad used to hang out with are now in some top government positions. we found this out very quickly when at the airport we were able to glide through immigration and customs. my dad's friends son Botto and an old basketball teammate of my dad's found us at the back of the line and took our passports. the teammate works for the ministry of the interior so he took the passports took us past the line ups and we waited on the other side while he got our stamps for us. they didnt even verify that our faces matched up with the passport pictures or check through our carry-on bags. i felt like a pretty big deal.

the house that we are staying in is very nice but not too big, well i guess its big by cambodian standards. our room has air conditioning which is a real treat. my dads friend takes very good care of us and makes sure we have everything we need. our freedom is very limited but i guess we just have to get used to cambodian hospitality. the son, Botto is 25 and speaks enough english that we can communicate quite fine. i teach him some english and he teaches me some khmer. i really wish i knew more, it would be helpful. my dad's friend doesnt speak english but he knows some french so we can talk that way.

we spent three days in Siem Reap exploring the Angkor ruins. they were totally brilliant and completely breathtaking. it was definitely a dream come true, my whole life i have wanted to see them. i loved it. the carvings are so detailed and the size of some of the temples is really astounding. i really want to learn more about the history, its pretty incredible. cambodians are so proud of the temples, and rightly so.

jenna and i expected that we would just take a bus there by ourselves but it didnt turn out that way. my dad's friend arranged that a driver would take Botto, Jenna and I and they accompanied us the whole time. it was nice to have a guide and it saved us a lot of money but it was a little tiring having a chaperone. we watched the sunset at phnom bakheng and the sunrise at angkor wat. we saw angkor thom, prasat ta keo, thommanon, the elephant terrace and so many more i dont remember the names. i have lots of pictures but this computer is far to slow to load any.

tomorrow im going back to phnom penh and then i will visit svay rieng, the town where my dad was born. i am very excited, its a place that i have tried to picture so many times in my life. jenna will stay here and continue to hang out with kris and the other volunteers, i think they will participate in some chinese new year festivities which should be really fun and interesting.

11 days till India, its crazy how quickly S.e asia has gone by. i will definitely come back here.

I hope its not too cold in canada, but im sure it is. as a consolation, it should be known that not a second goes by that i dont sweat profusely.

lots of love, Kendra

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Comments

[lucy]

Enjoying your blog -sounds a great place.....