For those who have been faithfully following the trip (which, by the way, I appreciate), you’re probably wondering where the eff did I disappear to the last 4 days or so. 

The short answer:  Cambodia.

The slightly longer answer:  I bussed it from Vietnam, up to Phnom Penh where I met a fellow traveller who was on the exact same route and abbreviated timetable as me on the way through Cambodia and over to Bangkok.  And so in a sort of platonic and low-budget, funhouse mirror version of my mom’s Phnom Penh to Bangkok journey, I travelled the same route.  But instead of meeting a random Mexican man on the plane, I travelled with a Spanish woman named Flor.  Instead of planes, we did 3 buses totalling 22 hours.  Fancy Thai restaraunts for them once they made it to Bangkok.  A string of $1 street vendor dinners on this end.   Skinny dipping at the 5-Star Oriental Hotel as I’ve already mentioned.  Platonic nights in $5-a-night guesthouses for us. 

All of it concluding at some awesome Muay Thai boxing once in Bangkok. 

All in all, it was outstanding company for this leg of the trip.  (A heads up for anyone in the LA, SF or NYC areas…if you’re looking for an entertaining house guest in a few months, she’ll with be making her way through those cities and could probably use a place to stay).

Along the way, we checked out Phnom Pehn, Siem Riep and Angkor Wat.  I was particularly curious about Angkor Wat as it’s one of those places that gets dubbed an “Eighth Wonder of The World”.  I never trust “Eighth” Wonders.  The first Seven sure; they’re pretty well locked in, but basically any relatively amazing or even moderately unique thing usually lays claim to being the next great one after the original Seven Wonders.  I mean, there’s a giant ball of twine in Iowa I think that claims 8th Wonder status, so I wasn’t going to get too worked up. 

I should have.  The minute you cross the moat and walk up to this humongous temple that was built in the middle of the forest almost a 1000 years ago, you realize how badass it is.  And this main one is just one of hundreds, all loaded with intricate carvings of Buddhas, battle scenes and other elegant carvings, not mention a good number of the ol’ antiquity staple–topless women.  As Flor pointed out, the really well endowed ladies might have been a bit of wishful thinking on the carver’s part seeing as on the whole you don’t see a lot of stacked Asian woman (hey, she said it, not me).

Anyway, I haven’t seen enough “Wonders” to officially put it at Eighth status, but I can say this; any other Wonder would have to be pulling its A-game to knock it out of the Top Ten. 

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Back in Phnom Penh we did a different sort of site seeing as we visited the Killing Fields and the S-21 prison, both places where Pol Pot committed unspeakably barbaric acts.  I can’t even begin to describe in these quick couple sentences seeing the piles of skulls and the torture chamber and other reminders of the horrors the Khmer Rouge unleashed on the people of Cambodia.  

Two million killed, many of whom were brutally tortured before being bludgeoned to death in order to save bullets.   And when you see the absurd reasoning for the killings it makes it all the more mind-boggling.

And this was only 30 years ago.

I had been weighing whether to include anything about the Killing Fields and the prsion, since this is meant to be a light-hearted blog and I don’t want to come across as that naive guy who is “shocked” such atrocities occur in the world, but something about it hit more than anything I’ve seen.  I’ve been to war museaums and the Dachau concentration camp, so I don’t know why this place stood out more.  Maybe it’s partly the fact that the Cambodian people I crossed paths with were some of the friendliest people I’ve met.  To think that these atrocities were going on during the lifetime of anyone over the age of 30.  And maybe what’s most disturbing is that if you can’t stop a two-bit, lunatic dictator from terroizing his people, then, yeah, it’s pretty much going to keep on happening again somewhere.  Different people.  Different mode of brutality.  Same nightmare.

Anyway, that’s the last of the serious bit for awhile.  I promised you fun and gambling and adventure, so I’ll move on to lighter topics before Eddie gets on a plane, comes over here and forces me at gunpoint to place some freaking bets for God sake.  But let me leave it with this…if you’re ever looking for a charity to throw a few bucks at, you could do worse than one of the many that are currently working in Cambodia.  Just saying.

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Tough segue, but here goes…

Back in Saigon, I had hunted around to find a Vietnam bet, but all I found was this “Bingo Club” in which only foreigners can play. 

 

It’s all electronic games and not very exciting, but I played a couple rounds and blew a few dongs (whoa, that was an unfortunate local currency to use for that turn of phrase).  Having heard that casinos were plentiful in Cambodia, I opted to wait a day for my main bet.  Turned out to definitely be the case, casinos were everywhere in Phnom Penh.  But again, hopping right over to a casino after a day viewing piles of skulls and bloodied photos of tortured victims felt wildly inappropriate.  I’m all for inappropriateness in general, but even I decided to sit this one out.

Not that I made it through the whole country without a bet though.  I did pool shark a beer out of Flor in a game of pool at the severely slanted billiards table at our Phnom Penh guesthouse.  This is me there–the pool table would be a few feet in the other direction. 

 

Life’s good when you can shoot pool out on a rickety deck overlooking a lake in the middle of Phnom Penh at 5 bucks a night.

The little girl in the earlier photo (her name ironically was pronounced Boy), was a huge Flor fan and would heckle me whenever I shot and cheer loudly when Flor would sink a shot (so, about once a game).  Boy later played a game with us, and she promptly opened up a can of whupass, using the fat, handle end of the stick to hit the balls, probably thinking, how come these idiots insist on using the smaller tip with less surface area when they could make things a lot easier flipping it around?

 I just realized this post is getting on, and the Muay Thai fights deserve more than just a couple sentences dumped at the end of a post.  Sorry to drag this out, but I promise to get back tomorrow with the rest of the story.  

In the meantime, let me leave you with this photo of a local Phnom Penh business.  I loved the concept…Catch a buzz while you get a buzz: