Cambodia - land of 14 million smiles

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So where was I, think we'd just been thrown out of out last hotel for vandelism and had a nice little chat with the Battambang police. After that it was all pretty subdued. To avoid any further damage to our new hotel room, Sophie and I decided we should spend as much time out of the room as possible. We enrolled in a Khmer cookery class at a local restaurant and joined another Dutch woman so there was just the three of us. They started by taking us out to the local market to collect all the ingredients, just about surviving without passing out from all the rank smells from warm meat and flailing fish. The cooking class was pretty cool and we cooked three dishes each which we got to eat for lunch of course.

From Battambang we went back to Phnom Penh to see all the things we didn't get to see last time. We had a day seeing all the horrific sights like the torture centre S21 used by the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh where the vistims were buried in mass graves. All too shocking for words and all the more disturbing to know that it all happened in the 1970s. The second day we saw the rather more tranquil sights of the National Museum and the Royal Palace with all its decadence.

We had a couple of days spare so decided we'd head up to the town of Kratie in the north-east where if you're lucky you can see the rare Irrawady fresh water dolpjins that live in the massive Mekong River. We weren't holding out too much because they can be hard to spot in the wet season when the Mekong is so wide but we got a moto out there and got on a little boat, just us two and the driver. Only about 15 minutes out we spotted them, playing and fishing only about 20 or 30 feet away from the boat which the driver had tied to a submerged tree in the middle of the river. It was so cool to see these wierd looking dolpins (which are dark grey with a blunt nose unlike saltwater dolpins with their beak) so close to the boat and in the quietness of the river you kind of forgot you were in (at times) noisy and polluted Cambodia.

Now as you can imagine I can get pretty stressed doing all this backpacker stuff so once back in Phnom Penh I decided I needed a massage (not a 'massage') so we headed to the Seeing Hands Massage which is a great chain of massage places that employ exclusively blind masseurs, a group of people who would otherwise find it very difficult to find work. They have amazing awareness of you around them and give great massages although the traditional Cambodian massage isn't too relaxing but it certainly releases any tension you've got.

So that's it for Cambodia this time. I'll leave you with a couple of words of wisdom about Cambodia: they are the smiliest people I have ever met, especially the kids; Cambodian oranges (as in the fruit) are in fact green; and lastly whatever you do don't ever ever order 'Insides Porridge' as we saw advertised in one Battambang resturant.

See you in Vietnam.

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Photos

Dinner - Khmer style
This is a dish of deep fried taratulas, black beetle, crickets and other unidentifiable critter