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Published: January 9th 2009
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I got sunburned
We looked at this view for an entire day and I got sunburned. Now... where was I? Oh yes! The sound of the window opening in the middle of the night. Em started shouting "John! John!" and I jumped up and flipped on the lights and the would-be intruder disappeared into the night. The window which I had previously described as looking out into the underside of an awning actually was just a couple feet from the roof of the kitchen. Whoever it was had managed to climb onto the roof and then brace themselves against the awning and slide both our outside window open and the screen. An impressive feet. I tried to tell the front desk person what had just happened but he spoke zero english and I spoke zero Khmai. So I closed and locked the window (it wasnt locked before) and secured the security gates with a coat hanger. Very strange but I'm glad that we woke up before they actually were in the room or things would have been a lot less fun or at least more frightening.
So that was our first night in Cambodia.
The next morning we headed out for breakfast at a nearby guesthouse that our friends had recomended for breakfast. It was
immediately across from a laundry place where they beat your wet laundry against various surfaces and charge you a relatively exhorbitant fee. As we had arrived with a bag packed full of dirty laundry, poor planning on our part, getting our laundry to a laundry service was of paramount importance. To be fair, the laundry was a bit cleaner than when we dropped it off, but some of it also had holes in it and most of it was stretched out. The moral of the story is when in Cambodia drop your laundry off at a fancy hotel's laundry service or walk around with stretched out, hole-tastic laundry for the remainder of your trip. Anyways, the breakfast was good. I got a breakfast aptly named "the fat boy" which was eggs, toast, bacon, hash browns, sausages, grilled tomatos and onions with a cup of coffee like substance. Excepting the coffee like substance, it was really good. The sausages tasted like pizza due to a heavy amount of oregano used in seasoning them and the eggs were yummy.
The rest of the day was spent at a nearby guesthouse sitting on a deck overlooking a dirty lake in the middle
of Phnom Penh which is in the process of being filled in to make way for a Korean business complex. Considering that the time spent here staring at the lake was by far the most relaxing time on our trip to Cambodia I must say that it is a shame that they are filling it in. Especially considering that most of the city is a collection of small buildings, empty lots and makeshift shacks. Why they couldnt relocate a few shacks rather than fill in an entire lake is beyond my comprehension. At any rate, we sat on the deck for about 5 hours and then met up with Angie and David and headed to the orphanage to meet the kids. Visiting the orphanage was probably the most rewarding part of our trip. The kids were really friendly and the staff obviously cared a great deal about the children. We hung out with the kids for a couple of hours and got a tour of the facilities before heading off to dinner with Angie. We went to a chic Italian restaurant along the riverfront that had been recomended by the Lonely planet. The recomendation was well deserved as the home-made
gnocchi was frickin awesome. That was one of the most surprising things about Phnom Penh, the Western restaurants are generally really good. It's much more hit or miss in Thailand. Deep fried pancakes are all too common among guesthouses all over Thailand.
So we ratted around Phnom Penh for a couple of days, eating western food and generally relaxing. We went to a market, ate some yummy Chinese noodle dishes and got a massage. The massages in Cambodia were different then in Thailand. Emily's masseuse kept burping and then saying "Mmmmm" as though she was enjoying seconds of whatever she had for lunch. My masseuse gave me some serious rug burn on my leg where she rubbed the same little patch of leg HARD for an hour. Angie's masseuse beat on her either with an open palm or maybe her fist, but either way, none of us had a very relaxing experience. I would not recomend it to anyone I liked...at all. That pretty much wraps up Phnom Penh. Up next we journey to the mysterious, the magnanimous, the majestic Angkor Wat. Stay Tuned!
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Albert
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Glad to hear there are joys of some sort in Cambodia. Although I am a natural enemy (not unlike man vs the sea), I will give a pass for smiling orphan children.