25 Feb 10 Cambodia - lovely jubbly

At about 3pm on 20th Feb we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. After a short orientation walk around the city, we all went for a compulsory drink as it was ‘happy hour’. We sat on the balcony of a bar people watching when we noticed an elephant walking down the road. The elephant did not phase the passing traffic whatsoever so it must be a regular occurance here.

The next day we spent the morning visitng The Royal Palace before a bus trip to our Homestay in Chambok. We arrived at the homestay at around 4pm. We didn’t really buy gifts for the hosts, although we did take a bag of mangos. In Hindsight we should have known that they have bloody loads of Mango trees and these people don’t really need more of the same.

It was soon time for dinner, so Komphak took us to the national park where there’s a women’s restaurant. The restaurant is run for those ladies who cannot read or write and need a means to earn a living. In fact the whole community is very ‘together’ in the sense that they all pay 30% of their earnings towards the development of their community group, which has helped fund water supply, schooling and energy. These people have so little but they share whatever they have, yet we have so much and share so little. Stange that.

Whilst waiting for dinner we played Hacky-Sack with the locals. My head and feet coordination was somewhat lacking, but I put it down to the fact that I was wearing flip-flops. Anyhow after landing on my arse and hurting my groin, we eventually had dinner. Maybe they we waiting for me to make a twat out of myself before they fed us, who knows.

The dinner was great but it was getting dark so all the insects had began to descend down to our table, more specifically the lights. There were whole swarms of insects and by the end we were covered in them.

In the evening the locals taught us a few local dances and we repaid them with the Macarena. The shame!

Early on 23rd Feb we left Chambok for Sihanoukville, a nice beach resort! We arrived at about 12 and went straight to the beach to have a few beers. A few soon turned into a few too many and by 10.30 I was trashed. At 50c a pint it’s rude not to.

On 24th we woke up early, with the filthiest hangover, and took a boat trip to the local National Park.