Sunday morning.
Phnom Penh.
New tickets home safely stored in our waterproof orange bags.
Three days to see whatever we might want to see in this slightly jumbled city, with it’s vast armies of Tuk tuks and disorganised rabbles of street children and occasional shiny glass shopping centres, the carpark bus station and the wide river.
We increased our familiarity with the hotel breakfast staff, and just the same they became more sure that the only thing we would ever order was fried eggs on toast.
We wanted to have a little look along the waterfront in the day time, but also to see Wat Phnom, the temple that precedes the entire city, according to legend. The waterfront is actually called Sisowath Quay. The quay itself is not in evidence, unless it’s hidden somewhere behind the wooden billboards covering some type of construction project most of the way along the riverbank. Like many things in Cambodia, people are busy rebuilding it, but you could imagine that in five years it will be really nice. Along the riverfront is mainly restaurants and other things tourists might be interested in, like massage or souvenirs or travel agencies. And a fair few beggars, unfortunately; some among them families.
It was late on for lunch but we stopped at what looked like a bakery, and found certain tasty items which were suitable for eating. I don’t think it’s really that good a trend for people to run shops in, let’s say, Phnom Penh or Tokyo or Kinshasa which are supposed to look like they could be in New York or Sydney. But when you’re less than a week from home, you can’t help yourself.
Now; in many places that we saw it, the Mekong River seemed mighty. But in Phnom Penh, the sheer width makes it particularly mighty. After lunch we walked north towards the long but unrefined concrete bridge; just before there is basically the start of Sisowath quay, and near to the edge of ‘town’ proper. You do a left turn and cross some busy roads and Wat Phnom is right there, easily recognised by being more or less he only hill in sight, even though it couldn’t be much more than 50m high.
Or if you wanted to you could just follow the smell of monkeys, elephants, and dogs… for those are the things which crowd around the bottom of the hill or lie on the grass in between the spiralling stone walkway to the top. Well, mainly dogs and small monkeys, to be honest; there were only a couple of elephants and those were reserved for tourist rides at a semi-modest price we did not enquire about. Still, it’s an elegant setting, with the green grass and stone walls and the shady trees on the hillside.
The temple at the top is surprisingly small, something like 5m x 15m, and set in a final row of stone battlements with wooden drum and bell houses inside the walls. The story is that there was a Lady Phnom who found a buddha statue washed up on the banks of the Mekong, and looking about for a suitable spot to set this statue up, she saw the hill and realised that would be ideal, and then she became more or less the patron, and so of course there is also a shrine to Lady Phnom in behind the actual temple. The building is quite simple; white stone on the outside and wood panelling inside.
And from somewhere; about 80 million mosquitoes, which I had no idea were hanging around, until we sat down inside for 15 minutes, on the mat with shoes off, although your standard Dunlop Volley is just a pair of socks with laces anyway. While we were having a close look at all the various buddha statues, in glass cases or not, of many sizes, and having a strange mixture of decorations all over and around them. Some of them had banknotes stuck into every nook and partially open hand, which finally answered for us the question of what Cambodians actually do with their 100 riel notes.
So we closed our eyes for a bit and then tried to take in the altar and it’s garish population, and the mosquitoes took in every drop of my blood that they could swallow. It was only about 2 in the afternoon, so I thought I just had an itchy back. Not so.
Actually, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m feeling a bit itchy just writing about it.
Out the other side of the building people were also lined up, but not so many as you might have seen at Angkor Wat, to pay their respects to Lady Phnom. Her statue, in the corner of the outer wall which comes just before the stairs back down, is considerably more ‘decorated’. And it has little pre-recorded dancing figurines that twirl. How that amounts to giving thanks to the lady who built the temple, I am not sure. But people like them, so that’s good. Other than that I have strong memories of a hell of a lot of yellow material, of the glitzy variety.
On the way back down Alice had fun playing with the monkeys while I reminded her about those rabies shots that the GP had wanted me to get…
We had a bit less fun noticing just how many beggars there were all up and down the steps, and the combination of injuries that they had managed to acquire, e.g no legs and one eye, and other awful things like that. Those people, you can see, really do need a break from life. Maybe just one person giving what they can will be worth it.
As we walked back through the gaggle of dogs, monkeys, elephants, other tourists, and tuk tuk drivers looking for rides, I looked back and the monkeys were taking over the arms of a giant clock built into the garden. So the army of the twelve monkeys has already made it this far.
Afternoon was well into play by now; we wanted to get to the internet cafe and then possibly have to make phone calls before dinner at 6 with Ella, who would be off the following morning. With no great progress on the ‘Will we get to go to Hawaii’ front we were still not sure what was going to happen, but at least we knew that we would be getting back to Sydney. So we hopped into a tuk tuk and paid a whole two dollars or something to get back to the hotel because we were pretty much just sick of walking. For no reason that I could identify, the tuk tuk had a little All Blacks flag taped to one of the poles…
One of the great features, now that we started to think of such things, of the previous months, was how much time we had to just get about taking photos, and then have a really good look through them on the computer and rank them and start to get a much better idea of what a good photo is and how you might make one. And that’s usually a nice way to take up the rest of the afternoon.
Dinner with Ella was funny because we couldn’t resist going back to the same Korean restaurant right next to the hotel. This being the same Korean restaurant with the Funny Old Korean Men in their Funny Old Korean Indoor Sunglasses.
Other things we couldn’t resist;
a. getting wrapped up in the Korean romance-drama on TV, even though we had no idea if they were actually speaking Khmer or Korean or possibly German…?
b. getting more incredibly strong-flavoured Kim Chi like raw onions and ginger-pickled vegetables, and some kind of salt paste soy thing which temporarily prevented thought.
c. giggling at the above.
d. attempting to communicate in english/sign with the funny old Korean men. Apparently Kim Chi makes us stronger.
So it was a great fun dinner, with another little bite of sadness because the people that we were just getting to know were pretty much all gone. Although we did manage to pass on some more Malarone to someone who might actually use it… seems less like a grand and frivolous waste of money that way.
Greg
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Очень ценная фраза…
Оператор call центра Sunday morning.
Phnom Penh.
New tickets home safely stored in our waterproof orange bags…..