Us with the orphanage, and our rice delivery

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed something towards The Lighthouse Orphanage (see earlier blog post). The children were so happy, and the volunteers hugely grateful for the bags of rice, and stacks of presents and stationery we took to them in time for Christmas.

If you haven’t yet donated, and feel you would like to, then you can do so through The Lighthouse website. It is a brilliant place, full of smiles and affection, but they are desperately in need of help.

Thanks again, Jo and Will xxx

This is realy annoying honestly. You get in a tuc tuc near your guesthouse and slowly and repeatedly agree the destination and price. You perhaps even get some help from people at the guesthouse and others who speak both English and Khmer. You then confidently zoom off with the wind in your hair looking forward to your destination. However, once you are a good distance away from the guesthouse and embedded in a busy flow of traffic the driver then grins innocently and pulls over and it quickly becomes clear he doesn’t have a clue where he is going.

This is usually all part of the fun of the day but when you are loaded up with 150kg of rice and other stuff and have no time because you thought your fliight left two hours after it actually does the amusement is slightly less.

Cambodia I love you and I miss you especially all your strange eccentricities and of course your amok.

If heaven has chairs...

Today, whilst we were chilling out in our lazy dazy beach chairs (beautiful and amazing, uber-comfy bamboo circles of heaven) on our lazy dazy beach (powder-soft white sands akin to snow*; sparkling, crystal clear, still yet lapping waters) on our lazy dazy Koh Rong island (remote, practically uninhabited, always sunny**) someone was shining down upon me and was on my side.

Whilst savouring our lunch of eggs, rice and fruit we were joined by a big, unfriendly looking, nervy and hungry cockerel. He meant business. He started flapping about, showing us his spurs, giving it all that, whilst eyeing up our eggs, rice and fruit. Not being the most bird-loving gal at the best of times (dad, I still do not forgive you for joining me to the RSPB all those years – couldn’t you have signed me up for Amnesty International, or the Whales, or even the Pandas?) I freaked out a little itsy bit. I did all I could to deter the nasty beast – flicked some sand about with a look of mad further intent about my face, upped and moved my chair a few times, made sssssh-ing noises over and over again. But alas, the beast was not to be perturbed. So, I brought out the big guns. Will then started pissing himself. And just as he started laughing, “What? You really think wobbling your big thighs around at him is gonna…” At which point, Will wobbled about and then fell dramatically backwards onto the sand and out of his lazy dazy beautiful and amazing, uber-comfy bamboo circle of heaven. Ha.

PS: Thank you to everyone who contributed to The Lighthouse orphanage (blog post below). We are shopping tomorrow for rice, other food and items to take to them. They will be so grateful, as are we. Thanks so much xxx

* The sand here is also surprisingly similar to crumbly soft parmesan cheese. Bellisimo.

** Koh Rong is a leisurely two and a half hour boat ride from Sihanoukville, but is another world away. It currently has only 9 beach huts (2 more in construction) and one ‘restaurant’, and they have been here for less than a year. Visit now folks, before the development starts…

Lovely lovely Snowdrift Bay, Koh Rong

Some Of The Victims Of S21

Formerly the Toul Svay Prey Secondary School, S21 (Security Prison 21 – the 1 referring to the one leader, Pol Pot) is the site of the mass imprisonment of around 20,000 victims of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. It is a harrowing place. Left almost exactly as it was found, with blood stains still smearing the floors, chains still shackled to the sides of cells, and instruments of torture still lying around on the ground or on hard iron beds, you get the sense cruel death still lingers here. The fact that these terrible events happened in such recent history, between 1975 and 1979, compounds the horror and the reality.

The leader in charge of S21, Kang Keck Iev (known as Duch) is currently on trial. He has asked to be acquitted of all charges.

Choeung Ek, or The Killing Fields 15km outside Phnom Penh city are the site of mass execution of thousands of men, women and children. In 1980 86 mass graves were uncovered, and 8,985 bodies were exhumed. A further 43 graves have been left untouched. People were beaten to death, shot, beheaded or tied up and buried alive here. Babies were beaten to death against The Killing Tree. A memorial stupa has been built here which houses thousands of victims’ skulls and piles of clothing. Like S21, here death feels very close. If you wanted to you could reach out and touch a skull or feel the clothing (although of course you shouldn’t, and probably wouldn’t want to), as the items are not completely encased away from visitors.

Words cannot describe the horrors. And yet somehow the place retains a certain calmness and beauty. It is almost serene.

A really sobering day.

And then that night we went to the wonderful and delicious Romdeng restaurant which is a training restaurant for street kids a la Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen. For some reason, Will and I ended up ordering tarantula as a snack to start off. I’m not even sure why. We hadn’t even been drinking. I think we were thinking tarantula would be a bit like peanuts. Or cashews. Or pork scratchings. And that they’d turn up all prepared, cut into little non-tarantula looking pieces, fried in breadcrumbs and looking edible. But sadly that was not the case. We were confronted by what can only be described as three tarantulas. Three huge furry black huge furry black huge furry black tarantulas. Did I mention that they were huge and furry? Somehow, (where did I lose my mind?) we ate them. Half a leg here, half a leg there, and then whoops I’ve just eaten a tarantula’s bottom. At least it did taste better than goat’s brain. But only just.

Yes, this is a spider on a plate

In Siem Reap we stayed at the super friendly family guesthouse Palm Garden Lodge. Excellent value, clean towels every day, soft pillows, amazing fried eggs and fresh baguettes for breakfast, and cute toddlers to play football with, all for just $3 each a night for the three of us sharing a room. Highly highly highly recommend.

Question – How do dogs have sex? One day whilst we were pootling along in our tuk-tuk we passed a couple of dogs on the street who seemed to be stuck together at their rear ends. They were struggling to get away from each other. Ian reckons this is because they were having sex. And got stuck. But I reckon doggy style is called doggy style for a reason. And this was not doggy style. Anyone know if dogs can have sex back-end to back-end?

Dinner With The Crocs

We had dinner one night at Dead Fish Tower, which was really quite cool. Lovely food, very good Cambodian dancers and underneath the whole restaurant is a crocodile farm. Literally underneath the wooden floors. I only saw one croc, which was about 5ft long and about a foot away from me, but Ian and Will clocked one that they reckon was at least 6ft. The restaurant was built on an old croc farm, and because the owners couldn’t release the crocs into the wild, nor did they want to sell them for meat/shoes, they decided to keep them, build the floors on top and then serve up some grub for hungry Westerners. All rather weird but fun.

Also weird but fun was our encounter with the kerazy Daffy-like Dr Randall Karlem Rogers (aka ‘Dr Pussy’), a mixed up, high as a kite, mental, definitely mental, artist and wannabe poet and sometime maybe owner of Native Khmer Guesthouse. We stumbled across the place late at night, hoping to check it out to decide if we wanted to move there the next day. It had been recommended to us by a girl, Phoebe whom we had met on our bus ride from Thailand. But when we found it, we were confronted by a locked 10ft wrought iron gate, a befuddled and unhinged Dr Rogers/Pussy and two surly, useful looking Khmers who acted as his bodyguards. Rogers/Pussy then regaled us with elaborate, but very possibly real, stories of how all the cleaners had left that day, as well as all the remaining guests and the manager, when he started throwing glass bottles and booby trapping the place. He offered us to come and stay a night for free, and promises of free alcohol in the Bob Marley & Jerry Garcia bar all night long, only they couldn’t find the keys to open the gate. They were effectively locked in. Rogers/Pussy spent half an hour reading his ‘poetry’ at us through the iron bars, as well as showing us his ‘artwork’ and ‘singing’ Beatles songs. Arming us with a copy of his ‘poetry’ book to take away, and trying to give us a doll’s head, we bid him farewell. Thank god.

It looks more serene than it really is... trust me

Finally I managed to get my fish foot massage. Having failed in Chiang Mai, I was really happy to find some fishy offerings in Siem Reap, and for a third of the price ($2 for 20 mins). My my these little suckers are quite sucky. Will had a complete fit and just could not cope psychologically with the fact 70 little critters were gnawing at his feet. He almost had a mental breakdown. Ian meanwhile was the epitome of calm and enjoyment, meditating his way through most of the twenty minutes. During the time the experience was described as follows:

• tiny little electric jolts of hell
• like torture, why don’t the Americans use this as part of rendition?
• fucking horrendous
• like that scene in A Clockwork Orange where he is chained into a seat with his eyes forced open by matchsticks
• like that scene at the end of 1984 with the rats in the cage on the head
• like beautiful angels blowing bubbles (guess who that one was from)

Will reckons Aunty Libby would LOVE this!! Are there fish foot spas in the UK? Or has our wonderful health and safety culture outlawed it? Probably.

Angkor Faces

Angkor was awesome. Angkor Wat itself was beautiful, especially at 5am sunrise. And I loved the Lara Croft-esque Ta Phrom which has been left to the jungle with greening stone, and trees, vines and roots intermingling with the rambling structures. But for me, my favourite temple had to be Angkor Thom with its myriad faces catching the light in so many different ways.

We met a lovely waiter guy called Heng in a restaurant we ate at on our first night. He was keen to come and see the temples with us on our last day, so we picked him up in our tuk tuk. At lunchtime Heng slyly ordered ‘tiger’ with the proprietress of the small local restaurant. Then he looked up at Ian, Will and I and asked if “you want?” Ian (who is a staunch vegetarian) looked totally appalled. Will and I declined politely. But when the food arrived, I took a deep breath, put thoughts of Amelie aside and tried a mouthful of Heng’s dish. ‘Tiger’ actually turned out to be jungle cat. Will is still amazed at the amount of fat you get on a cat. I surprised myself, and weirdly I felt okay eating cat (something I never thought I would do, and I definitely would not order it for myself) even though I am a cat person, but realise that I would under no circumstance ever eat dog. Which reminds me, I have an apology to make (to follow shortly). Am I just a teflon kid?

"The painted wings of the beeerterfly reflect the tropic sun..."

Ian dragged us to the Angkor Butterfly Centre, which actually ended up being fantastic fun. We saw some beautiful flutterbies, took lots of photos and stroked lots of furry caterpillars.

Also:

There are no tampons in the whole of Siem Reap. I know. I looked. And asked every third person I saw. Apparently Phnom Penh is the place for your menstruation needs in Cambodia. Worth noting if you’re a girl travelling in these parts. Except it’s still extremely hard to find tampons in Phnom Penh. On asking for help from a girl in our guesthouse to find some, I showed her a tampon from my bag as an example of what I needed to find. She took the tampon, looked at it a while, looked utterly confused and then mimed sticking it in her ear thinking it was an earplug.

Driving in Siem Reap is hysterical. We stood one night just traffic watching. It was so funny watching a gigantic 10ft wide steam roller being driven backwards down the main road. And it wasn’t just moving a bit to find a parking space. It was actually driving its journey backwards.

Siem Reap has a slight edge to it. Hugely touristy, so the foreign dollar here is on everyone’s mind. For that reason you definitely have to keep your wits about you. On our first night a small boy who couldn’t have been more than five ran up to me in the street and started hugging and pulling at my leg like he wanted some maternal attention. A minute later after he had finally let me go I realised the sly little fox had managed to get my trouser pocket open. Quite remarkable given that I can’t even open that pocket normally in daylight since it is a really awkwardly positioned button. Luckily because I can never open that pocket I never keep anything in it.

Ian quote of the day – “Isn’t it funny how the word ‘pacifist’ has the word ‘fist’ in it?”

A hop, skip and a jump to heaven...

Yesterday we took a lovely walk and checked out the Giant Swing, which Thai men (I presume they were men; surely women wouldn’t have been so silly, seeing the obviously flawed physics of the situation) used to swing on to get up to heaven. We also took in the National Monument and Ian and Will made it to the amulets market.

We are whizzing off now to Siem Reap, crossing the border into Brangelina Land. Angkor Wat first thing tomorrow. We are also too too excited about the fact that Cambodia is the only country in the world where you can get red bananas.

We have just tried a mangosteen, the so-called King of fruits. Delish.

See ya’s, need to go and check where our bus has got to… xx