Right now I'm with Srey Moch in Phnom Penh and she's letting me use her laptop to type. Anyway, how has everything been? As for me, I've gotten much better since my food poisoning and I haven't gotten any other tummy problems since. I still have a cold though and it's been going on for around 10 days! It's one of the longest colds I've ever had. Right now I have a blocked nose, phlegm and a chesty cough, but I think it is ending soon and I'm just letting it run it's course.
Since the last email I've sent you, we've done a lot of things. We went to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and Ta Phrom. We had a tour guide and it was really good because he told us all about the carvings and the beliefs. We found a dinosaur carving (stegosaurus) on the wall at Ta Phrom and it was really interesting because way back then they knew of the existence of dinosaurs and what they looked like. People still don't know how they knew, whether it was their imagination or whether they somehow were able to see what dinosaurs looked like. I took a picture of it!
Angkor Wat has changed since the last time I visited. I remember when I climbed it I got to climb the temple staircase. It's very strange to see that they've cut off access to the staircases now and have built a new and safer one. The tour guide said that pretty soon they will put glass up in front of the walls so that you won't be able to touch it anymore in order to preserve the carvings. I think it will be sad when that happens because you won't get to fully experience what the temple was like first hand, so I'm lucky to have seen it before they put all the intrusive displays over them.
Another interesting thing the tour guide said was that at the top of Angkor Wat is Nirvana where nothing exists and nirvana = zero. No hunger, no human needs, just zero. I never knew that before and learning about it really opens my eyes up to the culture. The tour guide's story was quite sad too, we get to meet a lot of interesting people here. He said that he was an orphan and he lived with his distant relatives but then ran away to live with the monks because they weren't caring for him properly. He then became a real estate agent, but when the market plummeted, he became a tour guide.
After Siem Reap we went to Koh Kong and swam at the beach. Srey Moch also took me to see Grandma's sister and all of our uncles and aunts. Grandma's sister really likes to take photos, so I have some photos with her and the others. After Koh Kong, we drove to Sihanoukville and went on the Sun Tour boat which was really nice. It included snorkelling, swimming on a white sandy beach and a tasty lunch on the boat. The trip went from 10am - 5:30pm, and we went on it twice because the boat goes on two different routes. We ate seafood along the beach too, it was grilled very well and it was really tasty. I was initially very scared to eat any seafood because I didn't want to get food poisoning, but I figured since I was there I should eat the seafood because it's so fresh. I got grilled king prawns and potatoes for $5. They gave me 7 prawns and 3 potatoes, it was really tasty and the most expensive meal I've had so far.
On the Sun Tour boat
Koh Kong OceanSiem Reap and Sihanoukville have changed a lot and I'm really surprised. They are more tailored towards foreigners and a lot of people learn to speak english from the foreigners on the beach. I hope that those two places won't turn into a tourist haven though, because it's sad to see the Khmer places be turned into an unknown place. As the tour guide said "Siem Reap doesn't even look like Cambodia anymore."
After Sihanoukville we came back to Phnom Penh and stayed at Soy Goos house. He lives near a house that has two very cute puppies and I took Chloe to go and see them and she became obsessed with playing with them. I was too before I saw them eat their own poo, then I didn't want to touch them anymore. Soy Goo's house is very big, even bigger than Ye Goo's house. It surprised me to see that Ye Goo doesn't have any pictures inside his house or room of his sons. I wonder why. When we visited his house he wasn't there, Soy Goo said he was still in Koh Kong doing business. He seems like a very busy man and I had no idea about how many important people he's met. He has pictures up in his house of him and Al Gore shaking hands. I also didn't know that he had a bachelor's in Law and Science, and a masters in Law either!
One of the puppiesAnyway, Soy Goo's house is very big, it's around 4 storeys high and it's very spatious. We slept there overnight but he has no aircon and the room I stayed in had no fan either. I was plagued by mosquitoes and the heat. I stayed underneath the blankets to prevent the mosquitoes from biting me, but they still got me on the face and I became very sweaty. I could also hear them flying in my ears which prevented me from sleeping properly. I slept in the same bed as Nethan and the same thing happened to him. Soy E came in the middle of the night with aerosol and scared me because I was half awake and saw a dark figure standing above me. I flinched and it scared her too and woke Nethan up, it was pretty funny. I didn't have a very good nights sleep there, but I do think his house is very nice.
I slept for one night at Soy Goo's house and then I took a bus with Srey Moch to Kratie and stayed there overnight. Soy E didn't want to go because the trip was too long and she just wanted to sit in the house and relax, and so nobody else wanted to go, but I still did. So I told Srey Moch that I was the only one who wanted to go but I'm not sure if I can do it alone, and she offered to leave work to come with me which was really nice.
Kratie MarketplaceWe went to see the dolphin's and to see where mum used to live. The new owners lied to us though, and said that it wasn't the house, so we were lost for around 2-3 hours walking around asking where it was and nobody knew. That was, until we asked the people next door to the house who said that it was the house that once belonged to O Dee. We then asked the new owners of the house again and they denied it. I think they were scared that I would take the house from them or something, I don't know.
Dolphin finI think when I get back I want to learn Khmer because I feel kind of ashamed being gown khmai but not being able to speak very much. A lot of foreigners here can speak more than me!
Another thing I experienced when being here is a lot of poverty, sadness and corruption. In Siem Reap we found a massage place in the market that blind people worked at. The blind people were trained for 6 months before they could work and their boss was very stingy and mean to them. She was only interested in money. I got to know the person who massaged me, she was only 16 and she was very nice. I gave her a 10,000 reol tip to her and the person who did Srey Moch. When the owner saw she yelled at them and said, ÿou don't deserve the money, you should give it to me so I can pay for the fan, see the fan here it's working here to cool everyone and I need the money for that. I felt very sad then and I wanted to push the boss over or something, she was very very mean and it was like she was running a slave camp. I feel like helping people out more and I feel sad seeing so much hardship.
There was an old couple who lived on the corner of our hotel in Phnom Penh when we first arrived. I think they were squatters and they had a young child to take care of who had no clothes. I felt really sorry for them, and so did Soy E. So I took a whole bag of fruit to them, a bunch of cooked bananas imported from Vietnam, and a branch of mandarins for them to eat. The bag was very heavy and had a lot of fruit in it. I carried it to them and also gave them 10,000 reol. They were very happy and thankful and Nethan and I felt very good afterwards. Whenever I use any service where the people were really nice or when we learnt about their stories, I give them a tip or try to take them with us to experience the attraction too or take them some place to eat with us. Everyone around here tells me that jobs are really hard to find in Cambodia. I wish the Government could do more to provide more people with jobs. When I see people working so hard I really want to help, but I feel like it's a much bigger problem and my donation can only help for a few days.
Anyway, this is a long enough email! I will write more when I arrive in Vietnam :) Oh, another thing! My shoes have fallen apart, like there are separate rubber bits that are stuck with glue to make the funky pattern. Those have all peeled off, so much for good quality shoes!
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