A Little Khmer Goes a Long Way...

Siousdey!

So yesterday was Sunday and also International Women's Day, this meant mainly one thing - everything was shut - except the pubs (Encouraging us to drink? I think so). We had grand plans to go and visit an orphanage in Siem Reap, but it turns out the woman who runs it had taken all the kids to Snooky for the long weekend. That's OK, we'll go and visit the free silk farm instead - INCORRECT, it was shut. So, all that was left was to grab some beer from a shop around the corner, sit out the front of our guesthouse and drink it. And we did. All day.

It was so fucking hot and there was a wedding that had been going on for the past two days next door (Khmer weddings start just before dawn and finish up around midnight, they generally run for about three days straight) so we had been woken up quite early and were feeling a bit lazy. We sat around and chatted to Ly (who turned out to be the owner of MotherHome). He was a really nice Khmer gentleman who asked us if we wouldn't mind proofreading his menu for the new restaurant and bar he was putting in. As we were just sitting there, drinking beer and composing a couple of Haiku's, we didn't mind at all (as you can tell from the writing of Haiku's, we were a little on the bored side).

Haiku Number One - Entitled Chicken

Chicken's chicken's all around;
Not a one to eat;
Achoo! Bird Flu! Bless.

More to come later, I know, you're riveted. That was one of mine, a master wordsmith if I do say so myself.

Then it was time for dinner! Pit came and picked us up from MotheHome at about 6.45pm. We had bought a slab of coke cans earlier to bring as a gift (for $9.00), when he saw the slab, he nearly fell over. Hilarious. Some American man walking past the tuk tuk thought it wise to make comment, "You sure got a lot of coke there mate!" Well spotted American. Why are you using Australian colloquialism?

We headed out of town on the road to Angkor Wat, and just after all the ritzy hotel's stopped, we turned down a little dirt track (a little bit more narrow than the one our guesthouse was on). At the end of this track was a house, which is where we stopped, Pit and his wife rent one of the rooms in the house. Mrs Pit came out to meet us (she was a bit surprised, because Pit was supposed to call and let her know we were on our way- he forgot :)). She was so lovely and welcoming, they were a little bit shy about their "small room" but it was beautiful. It's true, they do just live in one bedroom (about the size of our bedroom at home), but it it lovely and cosy and they obviously take pride in their home and achievements (on the wall is a photo of Mrs Pit at her graduation from college where she studied English).

There was a little kitchen set up to one side of the room, with a gas burner and some shelves with general ingredients on them. She had laid out so many plates with different dishes for us. We all sat on the floor around the amazing food and tucked in. There was boiled rice, some catfish (which was my favourite, she's going to teach me how to cook them next time), some pork (steamed with some vegetables, like the inside of a pork bun without the bun), another pork dish, some fresh vegetables, and some mango salad. When I thought I couldn't possibly eat anymore, Mrs Pit served up some dessert, coconut milk, corn and tapioca - DELICIOUS.

They also taught us some more Khmer, so I now know how to say the following;

Hello
Greetings
Please
Thank you
No Thank you (this has helped us immensely when not wanting to buy things, it's absolute magic!)
Bye
Farewell
Sorry
Yes
No
On the bus today I also taught myself how to count from 1 - 10 Whoo hoo!

And as suggested above, a little bit of Khmer does go a long way. They really appreciate you taking the time out to learn some of their language. A lot of the sounds are similar to Japanese, so if you know some Japanese sounds, Khmer is not too difficult (I'm no expert though).

We headed back to Phnom Pehn today, the 5 hour express bus, which took 7 and a half hours! This trip we had seriously pimping seats! We must have booked early because we had seats 1 & 2, right up the front of the bus, leather (all the other seats were the normal Brisbane City Council Bus material in the blue pattern), green, with a leopard strip down the middle. Like I said - pimping. So we donned our Fedora's, white tailored suit jackets and bling to the hilt and sat down, stretching our legs out in front of us with all the extra leg room. Once again, spoilt.

It was a fairly uneventful trip sleep, look out the window, sleep, talk shit, look out the window, sleep, watch a bit of the Kung Fu movie in Khmer (I may be able to count to 10, but I definitely couldn't understand what the hell was going on in that movie). I now have a lot of respect for the bus drivers who have to navigate the National Highway, the roads are really fucking bad. So bad in in fact that as we approached Phnom Penh - I saw a dead body for the first time.

We must have arrived just after the accident happened. A woman had been riding her moto (we couldn't work out exactly what had transpired), but as we drove past, she was unfortunately dead, still in the middle of the road. A tuk tuk driver was covering her body with some leafy branches from a nearby tree, but as we drove around, her legs were splayed and her helmet was poking out the top of the leaves. It was very sad and a very real reminder that we are not here forever and we have no choice in how we leave the world.

Life unfortunately does have to go on and our bus trudged along as though nothing had happened (I'm not sure if our eyes can be stapled open anymore, but they were).

We got back to Phnom Penh and found a new Guesthouse for just $15, (instead of $17 at the Paragon) the room is slightly bigger and the bathroom laid out a little better (They don't have proper showers here, it's more of a shower head sticking straight out of the bathroom wall, without a shower curtain or glass. When you shower, the whole bathroom gets covered in water, if the toilet is sitting in an annoying spot, the seat and toilet paper gets saturated. Annoying, but definitely live able).

After dumping our bags we headed to trusty old Bogie and Bacall's to organise another Dump Run on Friday. Tomorrow though, it's off to Sihanoukville for two days, to chill out by the beach, relax and reflect on our adventures. BOOYA!

Ley Huey!

Shanngelina