(no subject)
i woke up at five in the AM in a small but comfortable hotel room in Siem Reap, a small town in northern cambodia. the night life in this area consists of a small, quiet bar on the main street with two or three locals sitting around talking about things that only someone from this continent would understand and listening to "rain drops keep falling on my head" and other songs from old western movies.
I checked out at 5:40, and jon waited with me outside for our ride to come. A pick up truck completely full of backpackers and their luggage picked us up just before six. we had thought that this truck was going to take us directly to some sort of boat, that would then take us out to another larger boat, that would then take us to phnom penh. this isnt quite what happened...the driver said that, because of the rain the day before, the truck would not make it all the way and that we had to pay a man in some small village a dollar each to ride in his tractor. this tractor was highly shiesty. a very high level of shiest immediatly consumed our trip that day, and i was hardly ready for it at 6:15 in the morning. hours later, after digging a different tractor loose out of the mud, and eventually just walking the last stretch because our tractor would only make left turns, we made it out to the docks of the Tonle Sap (the great lake). As it is still low season, certain boats can only navigate in certain parts of the lake, and river. We squeezed into several very small dug-out canoe things and were taken to what might have been a police post out in the middle of the lake supported by wooden stilts where we boarded two small speedboats. We rode these speedboats (one of which crapped out halfway through and then we were really squeezed in on just the one, people hanging off the sides and backpacks piled as high as i am tall) until reaching the big boat which took us all the rest of the way in style.
Some of this city is nice, but some of it looks like something bangkok crapped out after a long night of drinking. Jon and I checked into a guest house for $8 a night. Everything in cambodia is quoted in US dollars, and the local currency is only used in place of coins. There are four thousand riel to one dollar.
Today I: shot a russian AK-47, tossed a live handgrenade into a small pond and watched it blow up, visited the killing fields and saw a lot of skulls and bones there, visited a museum that used to be a concentration camp under Pol Pot's regime and saw more bones, and wandered around a lot.
Tonight: there is a bar here called the "heart of darkness" bar, and i can't not go to that...jesus. Even though the book had nothing to do with cambodia, I guess the "Apocolypse Now" bar didn't have quite the same ring.
Ariel:
did you get the flight info from that comment I left last week? tell me now dammit! and thanks.
I checked out at 5:40, and jon waited with me outside for our ride to come. A pick up truck completely full of backpackers and their luggage picked us up just before six. we had thought that this truck was going to take us directly to some sort of boat, that would then take us out to another larger boat, that would then take us to phnom penh. this isnt quite what happened...the driver said that, because of the rain the day before, the truck would not make it all the way and that we had to pay a man in some small village a dollar each to ride in his tractor. this tractor was highly shiesty. a very high level of shiest immediatly consumed our trip that day, and i was hardly ready for it at 6:15 in the morning. hours later, after digging a different tractor loose out of the mud, and eventually just walking the last stretch because our tractor would only make left turns, we made it out to the docks of the Tonle Sap (the great lake). As it is still low season, certain boats can only navigate in certain parts of the lake, and river. We squeezed into several very small dug-out canoe things and were taken to what might have been a police post out in the middle of the lake supported by wooden stilts where we boarded two small speedboats. We rode these speedboats (one of which crapped out halfway through and then we were really squeezed in on just the one, people hanging off the sides and backpacks piled as high as i am tall) until reaching the big boat which took us all the rest of the way in style.
Some of this city is nice, but some of it looks like something bangkok crapped out after a long night of drinking. Jon and I checked into a guest house for $8 a night. Everything in cambodia is quoted in US dollars, and the local currency is only used in place of coins. There are four thousand riel to one dollar.
Today I: shot a russian AK-47, tossed a live handgrenade into a small pond and watched it blow up, visited the killing fields and saw a lot of skulls and bones there, visited a museum that used to be a concentration camp under Pol Pot's regime and saw more bones, and wandered around a lot.
Tonight: there is a bar here called the "heart of darkness" bar, and i can't not go to that...jesus. Even though the book had nothing to do with cambodia, I guess the "Apocolypse Now" bar didn't have quite the same ring.
Ariel:
did you get the flight info from that comment I left last week? tell me now dammit! and thanks.