"The itsy bitsy spider..."

... went into robins mouth....

The King and I

Here we are at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh... biked it here, which triggered a lot of biking around the city...







This is the entrance walkway and throne hall



Here's the back of Chan Chhaya Pavillion





Now when i walked out of the thrown room all these people were gathering around... and i was like... "what are we lookin at??"... then out of no where... its the King... H'es the little guy in white w/his hands in the air... that more or less rocked my socks.





Another view of the thrown room and pavillion





This here is the royal dining hall donated by Napoleaon III , and a gate



Stupas





Wall paintings





Silver Pagoda and statue of King Norodom





More stupa spires



A monk sitting and thinking, along with a buddha



Some arts and crafts





Outside the palace... the main square





Classic music inside the palace

"Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes"-- "Changes", David Bowie

So one of the coolest things about Phnom Penh is how in the past few months its been going through rapid changes... Its been growing, developing, booming at a pace I've never seen before. First there's little things, like before I left there were supposedly only 2 ATMs in Phnom Penh... now there is one in almost every store. There are buildings and things up now, that weren't there when I got here in may. Heck, since I've been in my apartment, the skyline view has changed... everything is under construction, except the roads, which are the one thing that need it. Huge buildings go up in about 2 weeks... if we had these builders in va beach, we'd of finished "down town" about 5 years ago. While this is all very exciting... its also very distressing when you get around using land marks...
On a similar note... and actually what prompted this e-mail would be the changes to wat langka... as i said before its right across the street from where I work... And its really pretty so i look at it a lot... then yesterday there were these flags outside of it... looked like maybe different provinces. Now today they've run different colored flags up some poles... so I wanna know... what on earth is going on? Oh, and there was a flip flop on top of the gate... which I can't figure at all, b/c there really isn't a way to climb up there... and the only reason I saw it, was b/c i was looking down from my building.
Oh and they've also started finishing construction on what I believe are monk quarters... nothing is wierder than looking over at a 3 story building that wasn't there the day before.

Black Sheep II

I saw the black sheep again today… he really is becoming one of my favorite people… just as long as he doesn’t feel the need to talk to me again… so I guess I should rephrase that a bit… he’s one of my favorite people to observe. Today I saw him riding a push bike. Now I ride a push bike too… but only to and from work… in the morning and afternoon…. He’s riding at like 12:30… its hotter than hell outside. But there he is biking along. Now you have to imagine a decent looking guy around 6’4”ish… athletic etc. Shaved head, goatee… on an oldschool granny push bike… we’re talking women’s bike, no gears, basket in the front. Now he also is doing this shirtless… which is really just unheard of hear… I mean, I’m wearing dress pants, and a three quarter length shirt w/ a tank top underneath… it’s a modest place… even the men here… the most they do is lift their shirts above their bellies… never off altogether. But that really wasn’t the funny part… he was wearing bright girly pink pajama pants. It made my day.

On another note… there is something to be said about developing a routine… My lunch routine involves going and eating at the herb café. I know there are other places to eat… I just never get to them. It’s a quick walk, fairly cheap… all the main meals are between 3-4 dollars. And they have all sorts of sandwiches and good lunch stuff. As long as they aren’t playing Christmas carols, it has great atmosphere… perfect for people watching. And I can just sit back w/ my book, dining outside, and just chill. And now they know me. They know that I don’t order the same thing everyday. They know to shoo off people trying to sell me things. They know not to make me wait a long time. They throw in an extra side salad. Today they even gave me a free glass of water. Of course I tip well (meaning that I actually leave a tip… somewhere around .50… which is a huge deal here).

Its also come to my attention that it may be costing me more to go grocery shopping than it is to eat out every night. Which is really a completely foreign concept. But it costs me about $40 a week just to pick up bread, cream cheese, milk, yogurt, peanut butter, cereal, apples, and gram crackers… plus a few other odds and ends… like frozen veggies, and easy things I can cook up. The cheapest way to go food wise is to hit up vendors and stalls… but there are some draw backs to this… first… they aren’t really around where I live… so it means I need to travel somewhere… 2nd… according to last years health report put out by the Cambodian government… 75% of all food stalls had significant levels of bacteria… so yeah… that’s a bummer… and its not like you ever know what your eating… except fruit stalls…. I love fruit stalls. And most exotic fruit has to be peeled… which works well… I love passion fruit, mango, magosteins, lychee, and rhambutan. I do no like dragon fruit or papaya.
What keeps me from eating out tends to be 1) there’s only one place really close to where I live… 2) it gets dark really super early here… like around 6:30 ish… So what I’ve done is I like to eat lunch out, making it a decent sized lunch, then make like a cheese sandwhich for dinner… unless my people call me to go out… then I go out

Black Sheep

I met the most bizarre guy today… The worst part is I was intending to write about him even before I met him. I’m having lunch in my usual spot, the Herb Café… I’m on my own, but by this point I don’t really mind… it gives me time to just chill outside and people watch… read a book… whatever… so this guy pulls up in this big fairly nice car… it’s a greenish turquoise color… but rather than looking for a place to park, he makes the tuk tuk drivers move… which I thought was a little odd… but whatever, people do whatever their gonna do. So he comes and sits down at the table next to mine… Now he isn’t bad looking… older… maybe mid-late 30’s. He’s wearing all grey… grey pants with a different colored grey shirt, redish sunglasses and black commando boots. He had tattoos up and down both arms, the one arm had a beautiful Buddha picture on it. So anywho… he starts talking on his phone… fairly loud… and he’s angry about something… everything, whatever. And he’s like… “I’m the black sheep, I don’t care what the white sheep do… I’m the black sheep… I like to be on my own, not that white sheep can’t survive on their own, but they herd with other white sheep… and your born that way, you can’t change that you’re a black sheep”… so at this point I’m amused… but eating a crunchy sandwich so not hearing everything. Next he starts talking about the law… and how he’s had to read the law, and there is law in Cambodia, you just don’t know about it. Then there was stuff about how some guy owed him $3,000 and then I just kinda zoned out. So he gets off the phone and starts talking to the tuk tuk and moto drivers that are hangin around… telling them how he needs to learn some khmer before he dies, and he has a teacher, but he never shows up. And I’m finishing up my meal, and he turns to me, and he starts talking to me… Normal stuff… hey where you from, how long you been here, what are you doing… actually scratched that, he asked me if I was here to save the world like everyone else… normal small talk more or less… and I reciprocate…. He’s from Alabama… which you would never be able to tell cause he had a bit more of a English accent… grew up in Hawaii. He’s been coming back and forth to Cambodia for 4 years, but just decided to “reside” here about 3 months ago… after living in Thailand and the Philippines. He asked me if I got to choose Cambodia… and I said yes… and he was like, “For the past right? Why wouldn’t you go to somewhere like Africa where the action is going on right now?” and he asked me what kinds of human rights issues there really were right now… and wasn’t it a thing of the past… which just kind of made me stare at him blankly… then he told me about his Korean students bringing in a news article about marriage rates and how they’ve doubled in the past year… and that set him on a tangent about how its promoting women in the system… and if women get more power, then the laws will change, and will have to be enforced… Then he moved on to corruption… about how the higher ups looked down on corruption and were frustrated that cops aren’t enforcing the law… b/c they only make $50 a month, so they use corruption as a way to make up for it… etc. etc. etc. About at this point I decide to ask him what he’s doing here… and his reply… I’m the black sheep. My response…. “in Cambodia can you really be the black sheep when everyone here is as well?” His response… the problem is when there’s too many black sheep, someone wants to be the leader…. Lucky for me at this point some kids came to shine his shoes…. And he’s like, yeah I taught them this new method… and showed them how to use a lighter to help burn the wax… and I feel good for teaching them a new skill a better skill, and I’m think about making them nice little boxes to keep their stuff it… While he was distracted I got my bill, said g’d by and split…. Seriously, this place is a trip.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull-- Post Production

And then we go artsy w/ some black and white pictures. Guidebooks tell you to take pictures in black and white to see more detail because the grey of the buildings on the green backgrounds tends to get washed out... They also look incredibly awesome and old school...




Angkor Wat...







Bayon...



Ta Keo...



Bantaey Srei...



Koh Ker...

"You have chosen.... wisely"-- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The next day we got up at the ass crack of dawn for day number 3 in a row to haul it way out to Koh Ker... where we were the only tourists. Now Koh Ker is about 3-4 hours from where we were, so we were really in the middle of no where.













Before I really get into this adventure, let me give you some background. Koh Ker was once a capital city, and then the Khmer Rouge used it as a strong hold. The whole area was at one point a mine field. Now it is slowly but surely being cleared. Below are some pictures of the deminers, a cleared mine sign, and some land mine markers.



We began at Prasat 5....






Prasat Kamou (Black Temple)...



Random Temples....



Sacred Well...



Prasat Thom....



Funny story here... the shot right before this one i had to be at the top of this mud pile... and when i turned to walk down I slid in classic robin fashion slamming my camera on the wall... so i was like, "rocky, smile to make sure my camera still works"... luckily it did...


City of Lingas...

Another unknown Temple...

Jungle Temple/Siva Temple...

And yet other jungle temples...

The Elephant Temple...

And then the best was saved for last... no, literally... not that i was saving these pictures, but that this was the last place on our big adventure... and it was the most incredible... Its called Beng Mealea. Back in the day Beng Mealea served as the model for all other temples... it was built on a smaller scale and not particularly fancy or made of permanent material b/c it was just a large scale model... this means when it fell apart, it fell apart something awesome... but i'm babbling... picture time... Oh yeah, there was a terrential down poor right before hand... and during... making all that much better...

I climbed up those rocks there to get up top...

This was supposed to be showing me still climbing up rocs, steps and the roof... but somehow it came out creepy.

Thats another view of how i got up... (Yes there was a guide leading us)

And then we went down this way... and into this long dark tunnel... which was terrifying... please not the reflection at the end... its a big thing of water that we all stepped in. On the other side we had to climb down and the guide would be like "step here" "step there" "ah don't step there"....