Jum reap Sour,
I've been here in Cambodia a little over a week now and despite the heat, the mosquitos and the bed bugs, im enjoying it alot.
I'm currently staying in a guest house in central Phnom Penh, taking a two week Khmer course along with the five other Project Trust volunteers. Despite a wobbly start as I am no linguist, im beginning to pick it up. We have 4 hours a day of lessons from a cambodian university graduate called Nim, who seems very keen to get us all cambodian boyfriends.
We are currently on a three day break as it is the Festival of the dead; the city is very quite as everyone goes back to their hometowns to pay respect to their ancestors. It's interesting to see small offerings of food along with incense sticks all over the place and when we visited a temple, huge offerings of rice and money were being made.
During the week we have visited all of the main tourist attractions on offer in Phnom Penh including the markets, where the amounts of fake designer handbags, purses, sunglasses and watches is crazy. When I come back looking like I've just walked out of Harrods you will know why.
We visited the National museum which was very Cambodian and impressive architecturally, the museum housed mostly ancient artefacts which I found less interesting than some of the Khmer Rouge history.
We also visited the Royal Palace which was very grand and I was interested to find that the King is commonly suspected to be gay. Which is easily accepted. I was very sad however to find that the scene from King and I, where the king rides down the street on an elephant would not be reanacted infront of me as the white elephant has died and was replaced with mercedes benz and BMWs.
We also visited the Toul sleng genocide museum, the prison in which thousands of people were kept and tortured; and the killing fields where the prisoners where taken to be executed. Both were extremelly sad. I found the museum particularly interesting as our guide had witnessed the ruthlessness of the Khmer Rouge era. He told us that his two sisters and father had died, father having dug his own grave. He told us how he had been sent to a centre for children which he hated so he ran away home, he found his mother but she refused to talk to him and sent him back as she was scared. So this will give us something to think about when we think our homesickness is bad.
A couple of nights ago we enjoyed Cambodian Night life, we visited a couple of bars and one club, one of the bars we believe to have turned out to be a brothel. I was astonished by the huge amounts of prostitutes in all the bars and clubs . They seemed very keen to talk to us and we enjoyed alot of compliments. The club was so cool even for London standards but was again filled with large amounts of prostitutes and fat pervy businessmen. So that night turned out to be the best people watching I have ever done.
I have another week in central Phnom Penh before I make my way to Takhmao to my Project, hopefully with enough Khmer to communicate with the kids.
Jum reap Lear
