The last few days have been a mixture of routine and general day to day living mixed with a few instances of great fun and enjoyment.
Cambodias capital, Phnom Penh, is a bustling busy oriental city with all I have come to expect from months of travelling around, and it never ceases to amaze and confound my efforts on encapsulating in it written form.
Tuk-tuks and motos are everywhere, calling out to you from the very moment you step outside your hostel or hotel to the moment you return, some politely smiling or waving to you while others are more irritating as they pull at you, block your path or even follow you shouting loudly as if by raising their voice you might suddenly change your mind and decide to use them.
However if you find yourself even a couple of streets away from the main tourist avenues you may find it impossible to find one in either travelling along the road or even sitting motionless on the sidewalk.
A city full of massage parlours, beauty salons and spa's where prices start from as low as $5 for an hour and go up to as high US $30 that I have seen, though I expect if you try checking into a high prices hotel their inroom massage service might be even higher.
There are only a few cinemas left in the city, each with only a couple of screens and their last show beginning around 6:30pm.
The messed up mixture of using both local currency and the US dollar notes pretty much everywhere has reached such a level where you sometimes pay using dollars for the main amount and riels for the balance or receive your change the notes of both currency. This not only means that in no time at all you find yourself with a bulging wallet, or purse, filled with notes of both amounts but also no real idea of how much in total you have. The good news however is that seem to have done away with coins altogether, which means that even a full wallet does not start digging deep into the bottom of your jacket or jeans pocket.
While there are plenty of stalls and markets where you can get either khmer or chinese food, the larger restaurants often have a variety or both mixed with a few Continental and America suggestions mainly for the tourists.
I did have a couple of episodes of iffy bowel movements, but I put that down to eating cold rice from a stall where it had been sitting all day followed by a few drinks chilled with less than pure ice, but after just a couple of meals of more familiar choices my body got its act together and things got back to normal.
The heat and humidity of Cambodia is such that a shower, a covered tuk tuk while out and about and accomodation with air conditioning is never far from my mind.
Three days ago to escape the heat me and E' went to visit the local water park, which was just a few miles outside of the centre of town. The place was a few signs of age, needing a bit of paintwork and showing spots of rust here and there but the main areas were ok and the price was affordable for the majority of the locals. With seperate kids pools, inflatable ring river around the outside, a three in one water flume area and a main pool there were plenty of places to go and just get wet without climibing over anyone else.
Because of the heat there was plenty of umbrellas and thatched roofing over the walkway areas and a sort of mesh cargo net that was slung over the main pool to let light through but no enough direct to prevent anyone getting sunburned. E' and I splashed around for about an hour in the main pool before we headed over to try the water flumes and once the water jets started to work again we had a whale of a time til it was time to go.
Maybe because I am heavier, or more water dynamic I'm not sure, but even giving E' a count of 5 I still somehow managed to crash into her midway down the flume so that by the time we spashed down into the pool at the base we were always is a heap of sprawling arms and legs. I found that going superman style I could avoid a big faceful of water at the end but going down face up was much faster.
Sadly the park closed around 5pm, so we had to get out, though to our credit we were the very last ones out of the pool, and in the hot evening air we dried up very rapidly. Once outside there was a bit of a mini fun fare just setting up, but it only had a few mechanical rides, a couple of hoop the can games but plenty of throw the dart at the balloon games. Only thing was, that the darts were very light, you were much further away than normal and so you really had to throw it hard to get it to reeach the balloons.
It seemed easy enough, as the balloons were packed tightly between each other with only thin strips of wooden battoning between each row and yet I managed to stick the darts into the battoning more often than a balloon in all three games that I played. At one point I thought that I had done enough til I was told that even one miss was enough to lose that game and unlike parks in the UK or US, you dont save up tokens to buy a prize it is a all or nothing kind of thing, so one miss and you may as well start again.
The next night we had a plan to visit the local puppet theatre stage, with the guide book offering drums, puppets, dance and a circus so plenty to keep us amused, however when we arrived and got our seats it turned out that these events were not held on the same night or weekend and that this particular weekend was a drums event. Slightly deflated I took my seat at the back with E' wondering how fun drums could be for an hour, but pretty soon I got into it and it was not a dissapointment.
Set over 10 acts, there were plenty of jokes ( in khmer ) that the audience roared at, dancers, acrobats with monkey masks acting like wild beasts first discovering drums make noise and songs, each act seperate and distinctive. During the half time interval we got to look at the puppet workshop area and I would have willingly bought a dvd of a puppet show if they had one, but all that was on offer were small puppets themselves, but not having anywhere safe to store them I decided against it.
The second half was no less entertaining that the first half and for the cost of a few dollars entrance it was well worth going to see and made a different evening activity than just sitting in a hotel or propping up a bar with a beer or cocktail.
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