CAMBODIA
After leaving Seoul and changing planes in Hong Kong I
landed at the Phnom Penh airport in the late afternoon, about a half an hour
ahead of Jeff. Actually, my flight out
of Hong King was delayed almost an hour.
They didn’t tell us why, but as we were all standing in line wondering
what was going on a soldier with a machine gun showed up. Then a bunch of official looking people came
up to the gate and about five of them boarded into first class after shaking
hands and doing a bunch of bureaucratic looking handshaking, etc. Then the soldier left and we were allowed to
board . . . obviously they had been holding the plane for these VIPs. Anyway, when I landed in Cambodia there was a
United States government plane on the tarmac but I didn’t find out until I
disembarked that Hillary Clinton had just landed! That night I put two and two together when I
saw the VIPs from my flight out of Hong Kong on TV! Evidently they (and Hillary) were in Phnom
Penh for the ASEAN talks.
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| Hong Kong from the plane window |
When Jeff landed he realized that his luggage was lost. He’d checked his carry-on bag (I haven’t
figured out why) – and not surprisingly it didn’t follow him as he changed
planes in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore. (I’m writing this four days later and the
luggage has still not been found). He’s
been scraping by with two shirts, one pair of shorts, and one pair of underwear. We decided to make the best of it, though,
and checked into our riverside hotel, the Ohana.
Though it was dark by this time we decided to check out the
neighborhood and went for a walk along the river. We were excited to see that
our hotel is just about 100 yards away from a huge temple, or wat. As we peered
through the gate leading into the temple complex we wondered if we were allowed
in. This question was answered by one of
the monks who came strolling past – he waved us in and smiled. So we walked through the gate and around the
back of the temple through the dark. We
passed several monks in their saffron-colored togas – including one who seemed
to be involved in some forbidden love as he was talking to a pretty young
lady. If I’ve learned anything from
teaching over 20-plus years it’s the posture of teenaged flirting and this was
definitely what was going on in the shadows of the wat.
Besides seeing a few rats at the riverside the rest of our walk was uneventful.
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| Looking from the rooftop of our hotel towards the slummy side of Phnom Penh |
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| In contrast, there was a beautiful pool area in the atrium of our hotel |
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| Jeff went through the market on an early morning walk |
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| Just walking to the other end of our hotel rooftop afforded us this marvelous view! This is the temple where we saw the forbidden love the night before |
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| The royal palace could be seen from our rooftop |
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| The dock to the royal palace |
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| The market as seen from our hotel |
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| From the rooftop |
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| From ground level |
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| Our hotel - quite nice, but bordering on a sketchy neighborhood |
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| The pool at Hotel Ohana |
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