Explorations

So I had a excellent blog post, pictures and all, ready to go this morning, but when I went to post it, the entry disappeared, and of course I hadn't saved it. I got mad and left the computer room, which was also about 150 degrees, adding to my discomfort. Anyway, the wireless isn't working this afternoon so I will write up some experiences from yesterday and then post some pictures this evening. Of course, all of this is irrelevant for you, since it's about 5 in the morning, and I assume no one will be checking this for several hours, except of course for Stringer, who checks my blog every 5 minutes for updates, or Professor Sugunasiri, who has been known to answer e-mails at about quarter of 5 in the morning.

Anyway, I woke up yesterday morning feeling pretty refreshed and so decided to explore the city with 2 interns, Jenny, from Vancouver, and Francisco, from Mexico City. We decided to walk to the Riverfront area, which is the main tourist part of town.

The first two most striking things about Phnom Penh are the humidity and the traffic. We are just starting the monsoon season here, so temperatures are actually not as bad as they were in April, when it was generally 40 degrees celsius each day. But, it is still incredibly humid, so you basically start sweating as soon as you wake up in the morning. Once you start walking outside you immediately notice the traffic, mainly because if you didn't, you get hit by a motorbike.

The roads are essentially filled with motor scooters, called "motos" here and you can't walk two feet without someone asking if you need to hire one. I have no idea how the city supports so many moto taxis. The slightly more expensive form of transportation is called a "tuk-tuk" which is basically like a rickshaw being towed by a moto. These vehicles seemingly obey no discernible traffic laws. Motos cruise on both the right and wrong side of the street and there are really no stop signs or traffic lights, everyone just sort of glides into the intersection and avoids everyone else. Remarkably, this seems to work OK, and I haven't witnessed any accidents just yet.

Anyway, we eschewed these options to take a quite sweaty 45 minute walk through the city. Along the way we stopped at a couple of "wats"or Buddhist temples. The most famous one, of course, is Angkor Wat, a few hours away, but there are many in Phnom Penh. They have pretty incredible architecture and a lot of Buddha statues. At one wat we were taken inside a little pagoda by an older Khmer man, who proceeded to bless us with some kind of holy water and gave us incense sticks to place in sand in front of the Buddha. Of course, he could have been saying "Stupid white people, you are so gullible" over and over, but it sounded good to us.

Closer to the Riverfront we visited the National Museum, which I will post a picture of tonight. The museum is mainly filled with statues of the Buddha, some of which date back to the 6th century. The statues are beautiful but you can get a little bit Buddhaed-out at times, kind of like being in Italy and seeing 8 million Madonna and Child paintings.

Jenny and I also checked out the Royal Palace, which is also pretty impressive. The palace is actually made up of a number of wats, pagods, and other statues and buildings spread out over a big big property in the middle of the city. Again, it is easier to see this than for me to describe it, so I will post pics tonight.

We also took in the Riverfront street, AKA Sisowith Quay. This is a pretty Western area, filled with a lot of Western-style bars and restaurants. Interestingly, there are no western chains here, no McDonald's or Burger King, which is kind of a relief actually. You will be happy to know that Coca-Cola has made its way to Cambodia. It is nice to see a small, scrappy company like that break into a foreign market for once....

Last night we met a few of the other interns who had arrived yesterday, had dinner at a Khmer/Thai restaurant and then drinks at an Australian-run bar called "Talkin To A Stranger", a name I loved. There we met Holly, a very cool woman from Boston who runs a harm reduction clinic in town. In her words, she works with Khmer ex-cons deported from the United States after 9/11 to try and prevent HIV among heroin addicts in Phnom Penh. We are going to visit the clinic next week, so that should be pretty interesting.

So that was my day!! I apologize for the extremely long post. I will try to post more frequent, shorter entries in the future. Tonight I will get some pictures up from yesterday and also maybe write about our visit to the Tuol Seng genocide museum after I've had a chance to digest what I saw there a little bit.

I hope all is well in North America. Let's go Senators and Suns!!! (by the way, for those of you who think I'm roughing it, there is a tv in my room here with about 60 channels, including ESPN International and CNN. I watched part of the Golden State-Utah basketball game this morning LIVE!!!! Hockey coverage is unlikely though)