I spent the first few hours of today catching up with sorting out the hundreds of photos that I had taken over the last few days, not to mention writing the blog entries of at least three days.
Around lunchtime I met up with my friend E' who suggested that we could grab a bite to eat before going to the National Museum and Royal Palace. I had already read in the guide book that some of these places are a little overstrict when it comes to clothes, so bare shoulders and skirts of shorts which were considered inappropriate meant that the owner would be barred from entry.
Flip flops and baseball caps were equally banned and when we were lining up for the queue to enter I saw at least six tourists turned away, four in disgust as they had already paid their entry only to then have their entry barred by the security but of course the tickets were non-refundable.
I saw the little market stall standing next to the the entrance but it did not do any trade today as the rejected tourists were far too angry to think about paying US $10 for a t-shirt to let them get in, and I whole heartedly agree or would have except for the fact that postered all over the ticket booth are large signs in english, including visual images,g statin what items of clothing were forbidden.
Anyway the National museum was the first visit and here we enjoyed a few minutes peace and quiet while I sat drinking a refreshing can and E' fed the fishes. We also went around the museum and took a few photos but there wasnt much in terms of information about the displays, mostly only very basic reference labels like "round serving tray", as if nobody would have guessed that already.
It was here that I learned that the Buddhist religion was going soft in its old age, as the monks were quite openly acting like any other tourists, wearing shoes, chatting to staff and visitors and even taking photographs of each other in front of interesting pieces, and it reminded me of the time back in Singpaore when I took a photo of a monk withdrawing money from an ATM machine.
The Palace was bigger and more impressive, especially the beautiful gardens, however the flowers were all chosen for their look and not their smell as even with all those petals and blossoms I barely caught any perfume or aroma of the lush vegetation that surrounded me, which was almost a sin.
The Silver Pagoda which was so called because of its silver tiled floor was hard to spot as despite being sign posted, you had to read the tourist blurb to know that it was so called because of its floor and in recent times they had taken to covering the floor with rugs and carpets so there was few visible floor tiles left to see and if you was not paying attention you could easily have missed them.
I declined from writing a wish on the lucky wishing tree,and it was a good job too as although it had become something of a cult status with tourists lining up to write on it, up above the tree was a sign written only in Cambodian, saying please do not write on the tree! However my reason for not signing the tree was that I am well aware of what wishing can get and that an incomplete wish fulfilled can be more harmful than no wish at all.
After the two big attractions for the day I remembered that my next two countries on my route, being Vietnam and China, both needed Visa's that were not possible to obtain from the border ( except perhaps with huge bribes and a few hours for them to process them for you ) so I asked E' if we could pop by a tourist place and sort them out, which after a trip to a photographics store to get some acceptable passport sized photos we did and for around US $86 and a delay of 7 days I could get them both done here.
For a few moments I considered if it would not be better to wait til I reached Vietnam before obtaining the visa or China as then I need not stay over a week in Phnom Penh, but then I rationalled that it was better and more convenient to do them both now, while I remembered and while the tourist place was almost next door to my guest house. Although it might work out better to have waited til I reached Ho Chi Minh City it could also have wasted a lot of my time there trying to find a place that did entry visa's that I could trust leaving my passport with and for a price I was willing to pay.
With this out the way I came back to the guest house for a short rest before meeting up once again with E' so that we could go to get something to eat western style, which we eventually agreed on Pizza. I chose a mix between a hawaiian and a sea food special only I was unprepared for them to replace the tomatoe base for thousand island dressing and the finished pizza just didnt taste right in my mouth, and as E' struggled to have 2 pieces of a medium size pizza I think she probably agreed.
Following a brief tour of the shopping complex we bought a few DVD's to watch over the next week or so and then after being unable to get a tuk tuk driver to understand that we wanted to go to a disco club we got bored and instead I dropped E' back near her place and then I went back to the guest house to rest up for the remainder of the night and to think about what to do for the next week.
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