I'll take "potpourri" for $800, Alex

A few things that are rattling around, still to be said:

• There's something kind of disturbing about the constant refrain of tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh coming up and saying "Killing Fields?!" They say it over and over again - Killing Fields? Killing Fields? It feels like walking the streets in Germany somewhere and having Jews come up and say Holocaust?! Holocaust?! It's unsettling, and I know it's a tourist destination, the main Killing Fields memorial site, and I know it's immediate and often personal history, and I know it's just a shorthand, and I know it's no different than saying "National Museum?" or any other destination, but it unsettles me every single time. I'm not sure how to feel when I say no. What I want to do is stop, and look at the person and tell him I'm so sorry that this horrible thing happened to them. Then I realized that if I'm talking to someone in his mid- to late-40s, it's a bit more likely that I might be talking to someone who perpetrated the crimes than someone who survived them, since so few did survive. Complicated.

• For the most part (except on our return to Phnom Penh, curiously), vendors and tuk-tuk drivers have been remarkably low-key. They don't chase us down, they don't keep asking after we say no, etc. This was true in all of Cambodia and Laos.....except at Angkor Wat. We went to the vendor area to buy a bottle of water, and you couldn't go near it without being swarmed by kids selling postcards (look lady, see, Angkor Wat sunrise, Angkor Wat clouds, temples, see lady? you buy? One dollar, look lady...), kids trying to take you to their family's "stall" to buy food or drink, women trying to pull you this way and that, to buy food or drink. So Marc headed toward one woman to buy water -- purposely not going to the left because that woman was being too pushy -- and as he paid for the bottle of water, the pushy woman started screaming at him: "You don't keep your word! You bad person!" I guess this is the intersection of a constant flood of tourists and great need.

• Cambodia is always described as one of the poorest countries in SE Asia, and I think Laos is considered poorer. In southern Cambodia, everywhere we looked we saw people with at least a couple of cows, a few pigs, a bunch of chickens, and fields of rice. Curiously, we didn't see cows in Laos, though on our trip out to the waterfalls we did see a couple of chickens here and there.

• In Laos, the word for hello is sabaidee (sah-bye-deeeeeeee), and it's always said with a smile and with palms pressed together and held at your chest, like the namaste pose. It's an all-purpose word, I think - it means hello, good morning, welcome, all those concepts. When we'd go to breakfast at our restaurant in Luang Prabang, the young women who worked there (one nametag:  Mrs. Chit, waitress) would stop whatever they were doing, turn to face us fully, and place their hands together and give us a full sabaidee. I started doing the same thing and it felt really amazing - not just a mindless hi in passing, not really paying attention, but a real stop and look and acknowledge. I enjoyed every sabaidee given and received in Laos.

• Our dinner last night at K'Nyay was absolutely amazing, and I hope Marc can replicate it when we get home. We had sweet corn fritters for an appetizer - the kernels were giant, and the batter holding them together was very light and crispy, and I could've eaten them til the cows come home. We each got char kreung - mine with chicken and Marc's with shrimp - and the sauce was so spicy it left our lips and tongue stinging for a long, long time. They were served with a wild rice mixture that was perfectly chewy and nutty and stood up to the rest of the meal. We actually got dessert, which we don't usually do; I got banana fritters (served with a small scoop of ginger ice cream) and Marc got pumpkin coconut parcels, which were delicate and subtle and really delicious. I really wished my camera had been working, the food was beautiful and wonderful. We may go back there tonight, for our last dinner in Cambodia.

For our last two days in Phnom Penh, we're staying in a tiny little hotel - the Blue Lime - down an alley behind the Royal Palace. If it weren't for the loud construction project going on all day long next door, this would be a nearly perfect place to stay. I love the decor - it fits my aesthetic and makes me happy - and it's certainly reasonable. Our first of two nights we had a regular room, but tonight, our last night, we got a room with a private pool....for $75/night. Want to see?

looking out our bedroom window, at our pool

standing outside at our pool's edge, looking back into our room. COOL!

this is the main pool for the hotel - not bad either, but the noise is a bit too much

For a bit of sightseeing this morning, we walked to Wat Phnom, which is the namesake wat for this town. According to legend, a woman named Penh found 4 Buddha relics in this area, and took them to this phnom (which means hill...it's the highest point in town) and this wat was built. Anyway - big, wat-ey, and interesting.

this elephant is available for people to ride around the wat

there was a small bunch of monkeys hanging around

and here it is, Wat Phnom.

So we leave Phnom Penh tomorrow, Saturday at 11 something in the morning, for the 2.5 hour flight to Hong Kong. We leave Hong Kong around 5-something pm (still Saturday) and we land in JFK at 8pm (still Saturday). After flying for 16 hours (just the Hong Kong-JFK part). That always blows my mind and confuses me a little too much.

at some point, you're ready

And for me, the moment is NOW. I am ready to go home. I'm ready to sleep on something other than rock-hard platforms, with giant hard pillows. I'm ready to have my good coffee as I'm waking up slowly, rather than having to get dressed and fixed up and wait for Marc also to be ready, and then to get usually-mediocre coffee. I'm ready to go home. If it weren't for this bed situation, I think I wouldn't be quite so ready, but this has done the old girl in.

I've been thinking a lot about strangeness, and Otherness. When we went to Vietnam in November of 2005, it was my first time to really be somewhere else. I'd been to Mexico (what Texan hasn't), and to Paris and surrounds, London, and Glasgow. But you know, those aren't really different in any important way. It helps that I can read French, but anyway, it's all western, all modern in the same way as my home was. But Vietnam, that made my head and self split open. I couldn't read any of the writing, the script was unrecognizable to me. The money? 148,000 dong to a dollar, couldn't do that translation in my head so it was a constant source of confusion. The people spoke almost no English, even at the front desk of our fancy hotel in Hanoi. The rules, unlike any I'd encountered (cf crossing busy streets, and remember, this was before I really lived in Manhattan). The food, not all that familiar to me. At one point, and it was early on in Hanoi, I hit a kind of wall and didn't think I was going to be able to take it any more. But of course when that happens, you just be with it until it passes, and I did, and it became great again. Still, I've remembered that shock of Other, and thought I'd feel it here.

But I haven't. Is that because it's easy now, since I've already been to this part of the world? Is it simply less Other here, than it was in Vietnam (which was more complicated given our military history there)? If I were to go back to Hanoi, I probably wouldn't feel that again, not even a little bit, because it would be my 2nd time there. And I've changed a lot in the intervening 5 years, seen a lot more of the world. Can I still experience the Otherness that was so shocking? That's one thing I liked about traveling, getting to feel that jolt, that reminder that what can come to seem like "just the way people are" is NOT "just the way people are," but rather "just the way I and my culture are."

Anyway. Ready to go.

When we pulled into Phnom Penh yesterday, I felt so happy to be back in this wonderful city. Something big was going on, cops at every intersection, some kind of cavalcade of big cars with little flags flying on antennas, and I loved that. It's a vibrant city. Last night we ate an amazing dinner at K'Nyay - more on that soon - but before we went to the restaurant we walked along the river, where the Water Festival crowds had been. It was relatively empty this time. Young people walking around, parents with very small toddlers running around, beggars hitting us up with open hands and wordless pleas from their eyes. There was a most amazing temple we saw, on the waterfront plaza. It was crowded, and on the altar were three statues of fat dudes with really giant eyebrows....not too Buddha-like, I have no idea who they were. But behind them was a green and red and white neon thing with flashing lights, could've easily been in Las Vegas and no one would've even blinked. But there were a dozen people sitting on the ground in front of the altar, and a bunch more just outside the door lighting incense. It was such an unusual scene.

Out to search for a Cambodian scarf, then we'll probably relax around the pool the rest of the day. Tomorrow will be LONG, but I'll write one more post tonight.

goodbye sweet Kep

Last night was an enormous storm - there were torrential rains much of the night, with booming thunder and streaks of lightning. I loved it, and such a nice way to end our time in Kep.

I'll really miss our lovely bungalow

Our last gorgeous sunset; we knew a storm was coming, but.....

WOW look at that storm cloud!

We had breakfast this morning and then got in our cab for the 3-hour trip back to Phnom Penh. The roads were so bad, so terribly bumpy, that there was no possibility of knitting to help pass the time, but I did make a few notes of things I wanted to be sure to comment on, so I don't forget:

• the surprising popularity of bocce ball! we didn't see it being played anywhere in Phnom Penh, but we did see it a lot in the countryside around Kep and Kampot. Weird, right?
• our hotel in Kep, the Veranda Resort, was really wonderful. Marc and I would love to come back and stay for a week, partly because we just loved Kep and the area, and partly because it was such a lovely, lovely place to stay. (It is a little strange, though, having the peace and quiet wrecked by coconuts crashing into the roof, knocking the tiles off.) One thing that was less than ideal, though, was the security. The room didn't have a safe, and we were told at the front desk that we could leave cash in their safe if we wanted. Well, we wanted to do that! So the first night, we left our cash with them, got our little receipt, sealed the envelope and handed it over to them, along with our passports. The next morning we wanted our passports and we watched in shock as they opened the "safe"......a canvas bag, hanging on the back of a chair. Right there. Easy reach. It may have had a zipper, but maybe there was just a flap. And don't think "canvas bank bag" that might have a lock or something. NO. Think shoulder bag, purse, that kind of bag. There was all our money, right there. Any unscrupulous person who saw the set-up could just walk behind the counter any of the numerous times there was no one there, and lifted the whole thing. 
• It's often sweltering here, as you'd expect in a tropical area that has a monsoon season. Sweltering. Muggy. Intense (for me, though Marc loves it). But the Cambodians wear a LOT of clothing, including long-sleeved sweaters and hoodies, simultaneously. There I'll be, panting and dripping sweat, and there they'll be in layers and hoodies. What is up with THAT.
• And another what's up with that: we can't get any cell phone reception in Phoenicia, just upstate in NY, but everyone here, in every remote bit of countryside, has at least one cell phone that's in constant use. 
• In Vietnam, it's like everyone is an entrepreneur on speed. "Want to buy a bra? No? Then can I make you some lunch? No? Then want a ride somewhere?" Right in front of obvious communist signs, too. It's like screw the political system, everyone's a mini-capitalist. But here, the entrepreneurial spirit isn't in evidence to the same degree. A huge exception is Pharey, our tuktuk driver from yesterday in Kep. He had two phones, and he was always setting up some kind of deal for someone. He stopped to help a couple of western girls get on a bus, then told us that he'd taken them to Kampot the day before. He knew everyone, it seemed, waved to everyone, and was always upselling us. It wasn't offensive or aggressive, but he was ... um ... earnest.

So now we're in the Phnom Penh airport waiting for our flight to Siem Reap. Tomorrow, Thanksgiving at home, will be very different for us. Our plan is to see Angkor Wat, and it's also the national day of mourning for all those lost at the Water Festival. It'll be the most unusual Thanksgiving I've ever spent, that's for sure.

stampede at the Water Festival in Phnom Penh

I just heard about the stampede at the Water Festival in Phnom Penh - 339 people killed, so terribly sad. We're ok, obviously, but it's really a tragedy. That's a lot of people killed. I can imagine how it happened, the crowds were so intense, people sitting on the ground in big groups, small children everywhere, people who might still be easily skittish even this long after the amokness of Pol Pot. So so sad.

the ubiquity of the Gaga

OH - I meant to say this earlier. Our first night here in Phnom Penh, we were kind of dazed by the long journey, thoroughly lost in time and space, and wandering around looking for a place to eat dinner. As we walked through a giant park, there were loudspeakers somewhere blaring

P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)
P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)

It made me laugh, and remember earlier this spring, in Honduras, how we kept hearing Paparazzi.

So before we pack up for the day, one more little post. We walked to the Central Market, because we love markets, and keeping in mind the way Phnom Penh is the NYC of Cambodia, we walked through the gold and diamond district....

and the machining district, where a guy was poking another guy with the tip of his arc welder:

Whatever she was cooking (below) looked and smelled great! Street food is often this, a woman with a little stove cooking for you, on the spot:

Central Market was the least interesting/most commercial market we've seen. The one next door to our hotel is the best so far, but of course we have a lot of them still to see. I'm especially interested in the night markets in Laos.

crowds and fetal eggs

Phnom Penhers do love their city, and of course this makes me love them. As a Texan and a Manhattanite, I really get pride of place. When we were coming to the hotel, our cab driver said, after we told him we're from NY "Oh, that's a big city like Phnom Penh." I laughed and said yes. In Cambodia, PP is "the city."

Yesterday afternoon we walked all over the place, including locating a different hotel for our return to PP. This one is fine, and we've enjoyed the central location, but we'd heard about this other place that sounded amazing. Also, this is a giant hotel, and we tend to prefer smaller ones.

 we're on the 2nd floor, that room on the mid-corner. it's like being in the prow of a ship.

this is our room - surrounded by windows, these are just a couple. the entire wall on the left is solid windows.

So anyway, yesterday afternoon we wandered around, found (and booked) our next PP hotel, rested a bit, wandered out into the insanity of the Water Festival, and got massages. We each spent $7 for an hour-long massage - I got a foot massage and Marc got head and shoulders. We both laughed afterward; our young masseuses had no training or skill, they just kind of rubbed us, but it was ok, and at least somewhat relaxing.

For dinner, we decided to go to the Bopha Phnom Penh Restaurant; it was highly-ranked on TripAdvisor, and we'd scouted it out earlier in the day and it looked great - decks overhanging the Mekong, deep cozy chairs, nice ambiance, and they had a set menu of Khmer specialties we wanted to try. WELL. As evening fell, I swear the number of people attending the festival quadrupled. It was shoulder-to-shoulder, packed. Like Times Square on New Year's Eve. Families had spread out blankets all over the sidewalk and were eating; vendors were out in force selling food, and for the first time we saw the mounded platters of deep-fried tarantulas and grasshoppers. And another thing they eat here that I find really hard to imagine is fetal duck eggs. Here's a YouTube video - don't click play if you're squeamish:

 these egg vendors are everywhere - the bicycle with the sidecar, filled with fetal eggs.

So anyway, we navigated through incredible crowds and made our way to the restaurant. We got wonderful seats, right at the edge overlooking the river. Happy. A lovely breeze. I wanted to try Angkor Beer, but they were out so I tried a Tiger Beer (meh). Lovely. And then, after we'd ordered our food, we saw the first in a long parade of  .. gosh, I don't even know what to call them. Floats, I guess. They were on HUGE barges, and they were these intricate filigreed light displays. For the most part they didn't flash, they were just static light displays of different things, moving slowly past on the river. We're not familiar enough with the iconography to understand a lot of it, but my favorite one had a brilliant green dragon with flames coming up out of its back in a recognizable Buddhist shape. Some of them had music accompanying them on the barge, and a couple did have small bits of moving light - one, for instance, had a person with what looked like a 1950s satellite receiver thing on top of the head, sending out rays. One float was what looked like a demon. And one was clearly a city, and then one of the waiters stopped by our table and pointed and said, with enormous pride, "That's my city." I just loved that.

Anyway. They were gorgeous. One after another, after another. After a while we noticed that at some point farther up the river, they turned around and came by again, facing the other bank. I think that thing from the previous post was one of these light displays - here:

Our dinner was 2/3 great; we started with a beef and pepper salad, really great. The 2nd course was fish amok* which was an OKish curry, I don't tend to like fish curries because of the fish texture. The last course was some kind of deep-fried pineapple spring rolls that were divine.

*do you know what the word amok references? We run amok, as in "Don't you kids run amok while I'm at the store!" But amok is a Malaysian concept for a murderous frenzy, a killing spree perpetrated by an individual out of rage or resentment over perceived mistreatment. Wikipedia says the syndrome of "Amok" is found in the DSM-IV TR. Anyway, I guess the cook went all amok on the fish's ass or something. Or else amok is the curry. Whatev.

We're going down to breakfast now, and then we'll wander around some more. Our cab is picking us up at noon to drive us the 2-3 hour trip to Kep, on the coast. I'll post from Kep.

HAVING A WONDERFUL TIME. Do not want to leave. :)

Nom Pen

When we were taking the 45-minute cab ride from the Phnom Penh airport (pronounce that Nom Pen to sound like a local), the friendly cab driver told us about the Water Festival that's taking place Saturday through Monday. He warned us that our hotel is right in the middle of it, and the festival goes 24-hours a day, and it's crazy and loud, and that most people change hotels to stay farther away from the middle of it all. 24 hours a day. Crazy. Crazy traffic, and crazy people, he said. When we checked into our hotel, the smiling woman at the front desk said a million people are coming for the festival, from all over the countryside (a million, I asked? And she smiled - I liked her immediately for the emotional exaggeration.).
Well, this may be a problem for people who haven't come from New York City, but for us it was just more of the same, and we love it.

I don't know where to start, except with the emotion of it. I love this place. Love it love it love it - there's such a wonderful energy, streets crowded with people all going in every direction doing everything, selling buying. Streets crowded with scooters and tuktuks and cabs and cars. Scooters carrying young men with women sitting sidesaddle behind them, sometimes wearing regular clothes and sometimes very dressed up. Families of 4, with a little child in front and another child between - baby father child mother. Scooters laden with plastic bags of stuff. I hope I remember how it feels to be here. I hope the photos help me remember. We'll shoot some video, but it's the whole sensory package and nothing electronic can capture all that.

Having been to Vietnam, we already knew how to be a pedestrian here: you can't wait for a pause in traffic, because there isn't one, so you just walk out into it. Back in the atari days, I played Frogger and it's a lot like that - I even imagine the sound effect as I'm squirreling my way across the street through the cars and scooters. You just gauge your starting point and walk into it, and you don't hesitate or change your mind because the drivers are gauging where they're going to go based on where you are headed. It all works, somehow, and we get across the street.

We had breakfast at our hotel this morning, pretty good, and then we went out for a short walk. When we passed the big temple, I saw three monks standing behind the gate, holding pinkies and smiling. It made me so happy. We wandered down the busy side street next to our hotel and found ourselves in the market -- HAPPY making. The aisles were tiny, but not as choked with scooters as the Hanoi markets, which meant we could look around a little more easily. No stacks of fried dogs, but live chickens, just-dead fish, lots of produce, some kind of small brains (Marc suggested that they were weasel brains, of all things), little stalls of people making amazing-looking meals, skewered grilled fish. The banana market, which Marc especially loved.

Except for one very young begging boy who aggressively jabbed Marc in the back until we had to just leave, we haven't been bothered at all by people wanting things from us. Everywhere we go, men assertively offer us tuktuk rides, and they use a friendly strategy - "hey! You again! I saw you yesterday!" and then the conversation is going and they press press press, offering to take us to the Killing Field memorial, to the temples, everywhere. There's a bit of misleading going on, with them assuring us that some things are closed but that they know what's what, but it's not an all-out assault like it was in India. After a short conversation and saying no several times, they quit pushing us. It doesn't feel aggressive and impossible. It helps that everyone smiles so much - since I smile a lot, it feels comfortable and familiar to me.

We had dinner last night at a little "swiss" garden - who knows why it was swiss, but the food was AMAZING. i had tofu clay pot, which was full of seafood i think. tiny squidlets, some shrimp, some unknown stuff but i didn't stop to think about it it was just so so good. marc ordered fried river lobster but they had run out, so he got fried shrimp with garlic and pepper. usually we've planned where we're going to eat, after doing research - and we'd done that last night too, but the restaurant we'd picked was closed for the water festival. so for once, we just walked along the street and picked a place and went in. it was really great food, just what we needed after our very long day of travel.

So the Water Festival. We had no idea what to expect, I was wondering if it would be motorboats racing up and down the Mekong (the Mekong!! I'm staying in a huge room with an enormous wraparound veranda overlooking THE MEKONG RIVER!!). But no, no motorboats. Instead, there are these extremely long boats filled with people rowing like hell. The men in the back stand, and those in the front sit, and there's a guy in front yelling the rhythm. We can't figure out how the racing aspects works, they just seem to be randomly going, not competing with each other in any way we can tell. Perhaps the time is clocked when they take off and when they come back, and everyone just starts whenever they want. We can't tell. Most boats are clearly well-organized teams, with every person wearing the same shirt and hat... the red boat, the green one, the pink one, etc. But now and then you see a long boat filled with kind of random-looking people.

 distinctive architecture here

 such a young population, and temples everywhere you turn

 this is the presidential palace, we think

 this wat is right next door to our hotel

' a wat complex - photo taken from our balcony

 the long boats - these guys all row HARD

 fruit with our breakfast

 wait....what? COFFIN SHOP?

 Ministry of Cult and Religion?

 

don't know if this was just set up for the Water Festival, but it's huge

 Marc heading for a banana vendor

 busy people on a busy street

 chicken vendor in the market, squatting among her still-live (but kind of zombie-like) chickens

 great-looking fruit in the market

 a lunch stall -- those are skewered grilled fish near the bottom of the photo, on the table

 this isn't even the main market, but it was wonderful

 i kept seeing these everywhere; maybe they're places for offerings? there were often little piles of things scattered about, and sometimes even half-empty glasses of beer.

the view from our room

My posts aren't usually this scattered and random; getting started is always a bit of a mess, because so much happens by the time I'm ready to post the first time. Anyway - so far it's been amazing. I love Phnom Penh and can't wait for the rest of the day.

Phnom Penh: Amanjaya Hotel

And here's where we'll stay in Phnom Penh:

 Fancy! The rooms are beautiful, and ours will have a balcony:

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, and apparently it has a lot of old French architecture, from the colonial days.