At the airport

Food at the Central Market in Phnom Penh - note the banana stall - my very own room 101... worse I think than the buckets of insects, some of which look suspiciously like cockroaches (Cambodians, like north eastern Thai are quite fond of insects.)...

I have had two lazy days in Phnom Penh. I spent most of yesterday at a swimming pool / sports club a little south of the CBD. Some French people I was chatting to the day before recommended it. The sports club had a sauna.... hmmm... funny really as sitting outside achieves much the same result with no extra energy consumption. It was a good reminder about the importance of sunburn cream as I have a few red stripes on my legs where I missed applying it. Despite sunburn cream at least twice a day, I have managed to come out in lots more freckles in the time I have been here. My plans for shopping at the Russian Market (the English name for a market that used to be patronised by the Russians when the Vietnamese were running the place) were thwarted. An early morning visit there found them closed as the shop owners are protesting government plans to sell it off to a developer. An Australian woman who lives locally that I was chatting to at the pool was quite taken aback when I mentioned it to her and commented that most likely they woould all be in prison by now. It seems speaking about the govt. is fine, so long as it is positive.

The Thai PM has been visiting and apparently various groups were denied the opportunity to protest while he was here.

I have been impressed with Phnom Penh, it's similar to Hanoi, with less chaos and locals that seem somewhat less inclined to rip off tourist faces. It's a much more harmonised city than BKK, low rise, lovely French colonial architecture, public spaces - though that may not be the case in the suburbs, I am not sure. It is much less international than BKK where the supermarkets are more international than Sydney, London or Tokyo.

To be continued from BKK

It's a bit meaningless to generalise about the people of a country because you get good and bad people anywhere. Occassionally it felt that anyone who talked to you wanted money, but that's part of being a tourist and not really knowing the people. That said though I only had one unpleasant encounter with a person in Cambodia, the woman at the PO at the airport who shouted at me, telling me that I was cheating and stealing from Cambodians when she asked for 800 riel extra per postcard going to Japan or China.... Posted from the GPO postcards to Asia were 2000 - and that's where I got my stamps for the ones I was posting. I asked her to check the price as I thought the GPO most likely would know, she didn't like that idea at all so I took my postcards back and have posted from Bangkok.... the mood she was in I could see her pulling the stamps off the lot and reselling them.... hopefully the Thai posties are kind...