Phnom Penh (Day 1)

a couple of notes: it seems that i made a few factual errors in my little history lesson on cambodia. first of all, angkor wat is not on the historians' ' wonders of the ancient world' list, but i still contend that it should be. the second thing is that it was the north vietnamese army, the NVA, who liberated the cambodian people, not the viet cong. i could write more about this, but if you care, you'd be better served reading elliott's comment on the previous post. he sums it up well.

i am going to bang through a couple of entries in the next few days. i am woefully behind on this blog, but the purpose of this is not to keep it updated to the minute, but rather to give you guys an idea of our experiences throughout our journey, and hopefully to inspire some of you to come out here and do the same things yourselves. believe me, there is a lot that will not be included in this blog that is mighty interesting, but you will have to get it in person from skeelow or myself when we get back.

we left off in siem reap. papa skee and i had decided to head to the ville after phnom penh and scrap our plans for heading south to the islands. we took a bus in the morning from siem reap to phnom penh. the trip lasted for about 5 hours, but wasn't nearly as hellish as our previous bus ride. the trip was uneventful; i slept for most of the way. on the bus, we got to know this guy named jason, from LA. he would be a major player in our next two weeks of travel. more on jason later.

we arrived in phnom penh with very few expectations; the only thing we had heard about the place was that it would be like bangkok in the 50's. from what we had seen of cambodia, this was not so hard to believe. on our way into the city, we witnessed more shocking poverty. most of the shacks by the river were literally nailed together and the rooves were simple sheets of metal, hammered down. god knows where these people went to the bathroom, or washed, or found food, for that matter. however, we were impressed that the streets were paved the whole way from siem reap to phnom penh. the lonely planet called the road "an airport runway", and claimed that the journey would be a breeze. this was hardly the case, but as we have found out, lonely planet is not the most reliable source when you get to third world countries.

phnom penh is a beautiful city. there are streetlights everywhere and the city hugs the mekong. all around the river, there are bars and guesthouses. there is also a huge wat (buddhist temple) in the center of the city where they keep elephants for the tourists to pet and ride and take pictures of. we decided to head over to this guesthouse called "number 9" (next to number 10 and number 11) that jason had heard was good. actually, the book told us that it was nice. when we got there, the place was all booked up and the rooms were supershitty. there were holes in the walls and mosquitoes galore. we decided right then and there that we should not stay by the river; it would be a very good decision.

almost at random, we picked another place in the lonely planet called "okay guesthouse" which was a ways away from the river. at this point, we were pretty desperate. the night was coming on and we hadnt found our accommodations yet. the last thing we wanted to do was to wander around the city with our bags; that would be like putting a big sign on your forehead saying "rob me."

okay guesthouse was more than ok. actually, it was probably the nicest place we could have stayed in cambodia. the way it works there is that you can go and get anything out of the fridge -- beer, water, coke -- and order anything on the menu, as long as you recorded it in this little log book with your room number on it. how's that for the honor system? we checked into rooms that had nice, personal bathrooms and AC. cambodia is hot and humid as fuck and the AC was a top priority for us.

luckily for us, our rooms were right next to these two blonde canadian chicks from saskatoon, saskachuan. (i am actually pretty unsure of the spelling here; the only thing i know about saskatoon is that we read a book about owls and owlets in 4th grade that was based in that city -- thats it. i asked the canadians about this book and whether they had an inordinate number of barn owls in their city. they looked at me like i was crazy.) one of the girls had never been outside of canada in her life. the other girl had traveled through thailand before with her boyfriend at 19 (whoop de doo). the second girl was hotter, in case you were wondering.

they told us that they would be heading out with their tuk-tuk driver to a bar called "heart of darkness". we had seen it in the book, so it was probably legit. they said that they had had one of the best days of their lives with joe, the tuk-tuk driver. he had taken them to an orphanage where they had played with HIV-infected orphans for several hours. we were pretty impressed at how hardcore these girls were. they told us that they had a flight to leave the next morning for the thai islands. we were quite disappointed.

the girls invited skye, jason, and i to come and meet them at the bar. without another clue of what to do, we agreed to go with them. this is where we met joe.

heart of darkness was pretty much what we expected: overpriced (yet still wildly affordable) drinks, tons of white travellers, and a good number of hookers.

(side note: i guess this is as good a time as any to tell you a little bit about cambodian hookers. we learned that it is very bad in their society to show off their bodies in any way. their television and media is censored by the government and it is a mandate that cambodians do not wear sexy clothes. the consequences are severe. however, being a high-class whore is far and away the most lucrative job you can get as a cambodian woman. they can charge upwards of 20 dollars for the night; this is in a place where the average waitress in a restaurant makes 60 dollars a month, working everyday with no breaks or holidays. you do the math.

another thing we would learn later that emphasized this point to us was that cambodians, regular cambodians that is, wear all of their clothes when they go swimming in the ocean. im not talking about the fat kid at the pool who doesnt want everyone to make fun of his man-tits when he goes off the high dive -- this was different. they wear EVERYTHING in the water -- the only thing they do is roll up their pants a little. it is a very poor move in cambodian society to decide to be a prostitute, and these women (some of which are SMOKING HOT, by the way) are pariahs in society. everyone knows who they are because they are the only girls dressed in western whore-wear -- short skirts, halter tops, high heels, etc. so, if you are in cambodia, and you see a chick wearing anything but pajama bottoms or maybe jeans, she is a whore -- 100 percent. i also learned later that they call these women "taxi girls". i'm sure you can figure out the reference.)

where were we? oh yes, the heart of darkness. what a name. we ended up hanging out with the canadian chicks and joe, their tuk-tuk driver. at some point in the evening, we asked him if it was easy to find weed in phnom penh. the shit we had seen in siem reap was the worst stuff i had ever seen in my life -- all seeds and stems; no sticky-icky-icky. he seemed overjoyed that we wanted to smoke, but he was pretty faded because the second canadian -- lets call her kristen, to be safe -- kept buying him drinks. she was adament that he not pay a single riel for anything out there. i found this to be pretty noble and i have to admit that it made me a bit more attracted to her. she told us that he was no longer just a normal tuk-tuk driver to them; he had entered the "friend zone". this was also pretty impressive to us.

after we got sloshed at the bar on seemingly endless angkor drafts and red bull-vodkas, we headed back towards the guesthouse with the canadian girls and a drunk as a skunk joe as our driver. joe made a pitstop in a dark alley so we could pick up some weed. this was pretty sketchy, to say the least. before we knew it, there were about 10 dudes buzzing around us on motorcycles, offering us every type of drug known to man. and they would just hand the stuff into the tuk-tuk, like it was free candy or something. i saw crystal meth, heroin, opium, shitty weed, really shitty looking E, and god knows what else. at this point, we told joe to book it and he complied, until we got to a dead end and he had to swing the tuk-tuk around. because he was plastered, he pitched the bike a couple of times, but we finally go going. one of the dudes chased us down on his motorcycle and we decided to spend the 5 bucks to get him out of our hair.

joe told us that there really werent any laws against smoking weed in public, but he said that it would be much more chill if we went to a traditional khmer restaurant, which was basically just a setup on the street, so we could get some beer and roll some spliffs. joe is a spliff rolling machine, by the way. now we were talking! we went to this place where they served pretty delicious steak and we got this big pot of soup, where you put your own veggies and meat in -- kinda like a hot pot deal. the food was delicious and, as is with cambodian tradition, we had a chick continually come around to refill our beer glasses with beer and ice cubes.

(side note: why dont we put ice in beer at home? what could possibly be bad about this? i want to lead a movement to introduce ice cubes into beer. it keeps the beer ice-cold and doesnt really affect the taste of the beer at all. try it; i promise you'll like it.)

at this point, we found out some funny stuff about the canadians. jason and i were discussing the aforementioned chengus (the chinese-australian). jason had hung out with chengus and had shared a room with him in siem reap. they had gone to angkor wat together. it turns out that chengus was kind of a weird bird. he would never speak unless spoken to, and would only offer single sentence answers to any question. the thing that tripped jason out the most about him was a simple thing: whenever they would sit down to eat together, say at a 4-top at a restaurant, chengus would always sit kitty-corner to him. so, imagine you are hanging out with someone, and you go to denny's or chili's or something, and you are sat in a booth. where would you sit? i contend that in america, if you are with a girl or on a date or something, you sit right next to her. if you are just friends, you sit across from each other -- but never kitty-corner. skye and i decided that this was very strange.

the first canadian girl, lets call her suzie, really went off on us then. she said that if she were at a restaurant with even a good friend, she would always sit kitty-corner. (actually, lets call her kitty-corner). this was a shocking development for us. we asked joe what khmers do, and he agreed that sitting across from the other person was the proper thing to do. but this chick was adament that unless she were seriously dating the other person, even sitting across from him or her was out of the question. this was just too much to handle; kristen neither confirmed nor denied that this was a normal canadian custom. i had always thought that canadians were socially less uptight than we were; now, im not so sure. what do you guys think?

so after our meal, we had joe take us back to the okay guesthouse. at this point, we decided that joe would be our own personal driver for the duration of our stay. he spoke the best english of any human being we had met in cambodia and we was down to party with us. he kept giving us hugs in the bar, so we knew that he wasnt shy. we were pretty sure that he wasnt shady. this would also turn out to be a good decision for us. we agreed that after he took kristen and kitty-corner to the airport for their flight, we would meet him in front of okay guesthouse so we could do our obligitory duty to see the killing fields. we were not too excited to do this, but we knew that we had to.

we went back up to our rooms and kristen and kitty-corner fed us pringles that they had found at 7-11. apparently, they had been craving pringles for days and hadnt been able to find them. after this, we bid them adieu and went to bed. this would be the end of our first day in phnom penh. skeelow and i retired to the honeymoon suite and slept on sheets that had little hearts on them. classy to the max.

im pretty over writing right now. mosquitoes are biting my feet and i have to go get some dinner. i will finish this entry up later. i have to drop some more history on you and give the killing fields their proper time and respect. adios.