Let's hope I can get this written and sent before the power goes off again!
Wow! I really like Phnom Penh! It's such a charming city! I have a cheap windowless but A/C room right across from where the Mekong meets the Tonle Sap river, as wide as the Mississippi, with a few big ships in it. At night, the riverfront is full of people and vendors. I got into town last night and walked around and caught a great sunset over the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, Just that morning I had been out to this cave outside of Kampot, with my moto driver, who hired a local cave guide who got us lost and we ended up climbing out the perferated top of the cave so that we were clambering around on these jagged eroded, broken stagmite bits suspended over deep caverns, all covered with thorny, centepede ridden vines to trip you up. I was petrified! The little young lithe Cambodian guide kept scurrying thru little steep crevasses and expected me to get my big old stiff American body thru those same little spaces. I was litterally ass over tits, clutching sharp rocks, wondering if it's better to inch my way backward or just fall face first onto broken stone. The big language difference made it hard to express things like "hold my camera" and "I can't brace my foot on that rock because its wet and slippery' and "I know we came up that way, but there is no way I can go back down that way' (but I did end up going down that way.) We eventually came out of the cave wet dirty and quite scratched up (my driver being the most scratched). I was quite pissed off while in the cave, but we were all laughing about it not long later. We then drove thru some amazingly beautiful countryside to another cave with temples in it that my driver did the whole inscense and praying bit at, so it was quite charming. Then back to the guesthouse for a quick shower and checkout, then to the market to pay for two seats in a taxi to Phnom Penh. I bought two seats so that I could have the whole passenger seat to myself. They usually put at least two people on the passenger seat, and on this ride, the driver shared his seat with a passenger. I have seen a taxi the size of a Ford Fiesta with 12 people in it! One benifit to taking two seats that I hadn't thought of was that I got to use the seat belt, which was great becuase the taxi ride was at leat as scary as the experience earlier in the cave. These drivers use their horn instead of their breaks. This driver was passing other cars, trucks, steamrollers, bikes, cows, motobikes like crazy, working my last frayed little nerve. What made it even more scary was that the taxi was a Thai Camry, so that the stearing wheel was on the WRONG! side, so that he had to get a few extra feet over to the other side befgore he could see if it was cool to pass yet. Of course, I knew when it was uncool to pass a few seconds before his response, so I constantly had these little moments of terror. I don't get car sick, but I was getting nauseated on this ride, hoping it was car sickness and not a reaction to whatever bio-organism might have been on the rim of the fithly glass of lukewarm tea I was offered by the old man caretaker at the temple cave earlier. The glass was upside down on a nasty little worn out plastic tray with dirty looking water collected on it, but I had already accpted the offer of tea before I saw the condition of the tea set, so I had to drink it (and it was actually nice tea) Alas, I did not get sick, I chewed some gum and felt better, but man, there are so many things to worry about! So many, that you just have to stop worrying. Tho I did make sure to disinfect all the scratches from the cave experience. Supposedly even showering in the tap water can infect a scratch.
Two nights before the cave I was sleeping at a pagoda at the rim of this cliff way at the top of Bokor Mountain. My driver rode us up there on a 250cc dirt bike (2.5 hour ride, very bumpy, only about 10% of the pavement layed in the 20's still exsists, usually pavement chunks the size of a serving platter to the size of a bed sheet and usually the shape of the state of Florida.) The pay off at the top is the remains of a french built resort from the 20's which most recently was one of the last hold outs of the Khmer Rogue. A huge, long, costly battle was fought there between Vietnamese and KR troops. Now the place is desolate and lichen and graffiti covered. It's a complex of about 20 bulidings, the most impressive being the big hotel right on the cliff, with a broken terrace overlooking a 3000 foot plunge and then out to the sea. A great place to watch a sunset, a thunder storm, a sunrise, and just watch the clouds overtake the mountain. Anyway, we got up there and found out that there was a big ranger meeting for the national park and so the one little guest house was full up and we could try sleeping at the pagoda. That idea filled me with aprehension, cuz I didn't really know exactly what the pagoda was. Turns out it's a temple complex with a temple building, a place where the monks live, a place were a family lives to take care of the monks, and a few other buildings. So I got to know the family, but the monks kind of kept to themselvs or were shy or something. The dogs were not shy and neither was the monkey, which had run of the place and might be found warming himself in the bed or by the fire in the kitchen in the morning. A gentle, half blind little thing. There were also two little boys who frolicked about. I luckily remembered that I had this little stuffed pug-dog that I got in a happy meal at LAX in my bag, and gave it to the youngest boy, who must have been about two, and got the sweetest little wai (praying hands and bowed head gesture of thanks) out of him. The next day, on the way down, the bike broke down so we coasted down the mountain about a third of the way. The day before the bike lost its oil fill cap, so a monk with a machete carved a new one out of wood. That's Cambodia!
Today I visited the former Khmer Rouge torture prison, and then out to the killing fields to visit the mass graves. The torture place was originally a high school, and classroom after classroom was full of pictures of people processed there. They took pictures of everyone who came thru and documented what they did. Looks like most of them were just kids, and many were actually children. In less than three years the KR killed about 20% of the country. It's amazing what these people have been thru, and so recently too.
Let's see, I have also recently been a guest at a birthday party in a beach hut in Sihanoukeville, for a little girl, and then the whole party ended up going to the disco, and I was the only western guest, much drinking and dancing to Khmer hip-hop! Unfortunately, the party degenerated into karaoke, which was fun for a while, but Cambodian pop all sounds the same. I found a sober moto driver to take me back to the guest house.
Cambodians are so friendly and warm! I am having all these great experiences but it's really the people here that I came for. Day after tomorrow I am heading down the Mekong for Viet Nam! Tonight I might try nightclubbing, if my laundry is done, but if not, I am not gonna go out in the filthy clothes I have on.
Later guys!
Love Maxwell


PS, these posts were written on my trip to S E Asia last spring, so I know nothing about the current storms in Cambodia.

omg. i am going to go drink some milk right now so i can spit it up through my nose when i read this again.