Hello Lady Gentleman Buy Something

Hi friends.

greeting from Phnom Penh. i realize the blog has gone downhill, and I apologize, sort of. I've come to not really want to be on the computer. It takes away from doing things and the computers suck. Not very eloquent, but true.

But I'm here anyway, so here's what's been going on. At first, I was a bit ambivalent about
Cambodia. The food is better in Thailand and the people seem friendlier there as well. It's been a week now, and now I really like Cambodia and appreciate the differences. Thailand was a fantasy vacation and this is a poor, war torn, recovering country. I've learned a lot about the genocide here under the Khmer Rouge which ended 30 years ago. The brutality of the regime was inredibly horrific. People of education, intellect, skills, and talents were targeted and not many of them were left at the end of the 4 year reign of terror.

The thing to do is hire a moto driver and jump on the back. Yes, it's scary. Today, in my mind, I likened the traffic of a busy intersection to a busy intersection for pedestrians. You go in full speed, brake late, if you have to and work your way through. Traffic signs or signals, if there are any, don;t recieve a lot of attention.

...You hire someone, for about $10/day at the most and you cruise around. How much they guide or you guide and how muh english they speak will vary. I found a terrific guide in Battambang and spent about 14 hours with him over two days. At the end we were friends. He understood the type of stuff I liked and was happy because it was different from most of his clients. I told him small villages and we would stop and check out people making different things. rice paper, a lily seed cake for a large funeral, bamboo sticky rice, rice wine, but they weren;t making rice wine that day because they were taking care of the 13 piglets that had been born the night before, some other stuff. The guide was Thien, and one of his unmentioned specialties was making subkects laugh laugh and smile for pictures.

Today my guide was really just a driver. We went to the genocide museum and the killing fields so there was really no way to jazz it up. It was raw.

Potential Itinerary:
tonight=Phnom Penh
tomorrow-Kep
6-Rabbit Island
7-Phnom Penh
8-Siem Reap
9-BKK
10-BKK
11-India

Bye bye all.