Sunday, April 19, 2009

Cambodyeah

Crossing the Vietnam border in this direction was completely hassle-free, you literally feel the change of people's attitudes as you cross, seven hours by bus from Saigon took me to Phnom Penh. The weather was gorgeous for the entire busride but as the doors opened so did the skies. So there I stood, on the "wrong" side of town in a monsoon/typhoon/windy rainy storm, trying to get a ride to the "right" side. When the thunder and lightning persisted a tuktuk driver drove me through the flooded roads lined with huge fallen trees and bent roadsigns. During my previous stay in Phnom Penh I stayed lake-side so I decided to vary my trips and chose the other tourist option of river-side (allthough in these conditions the whole of Phnom Penh seemed to be riverside.) I did my usual hectic sightseeing, walking around markets checking genocide-museums and visited a barbershop (I say barbershop, in truth it was just a random man in the street who happened to own the combination of a chair, a mirror and a hair clipper.) He cut my hair very short, but at the price of less than a dollar I can't really complain. Out of my two hectic stays in this capital city I must say I preferred staying lakeside, but Phnom Penh on both occasions was great. Now however I have reached a new town after almost 5 hours on a bus showing a Cambodian singing stand-up routine where both the male and female character sounded like Janice from "Friends," it did have the entire bus in fits of laughter though, kids standing on their seats, hard of hearing grandmothers having the jokes retold, so they must be doing something right. The town I've reached now, on my speed-dating tour of South-East Asia, is the beachside town of Sihanoukville, where (fingers crossed) there wont be any monsoon or Blackpool brothers, so I that I can return to Sweden with a somewhat respectable tan.

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