Another trip to Cambodia to see my fiance...I did the usual Seattle-to-Taipei-to-Cambodia flight, only this time I took along some extra baggage: my son. We got in around 11AM and my fiance met us at the airport. No lost bags this time, everything went very smoothly. My son managed the trip very well and my fiance was so excited to see us she was literally bouncing up and down with excitement.
After some intros we hit the hotel and dumped our gear. My son got his own room and we all took an hour or so to rest up a bit. Then the
Shopping Marathon began....over the next couple of days we hit about 30 different stores, shops, and stalls, mostly in search of gameboy stuff for my son. He was in 7th Heaven- Cambodia is
filled with happy shopkeepers who were only too glad to see a little tourist boy with loads of US dollars to spend, lol.
I had briefed my son on haggling for the best price and he did surprisingly well. He actually perfected the art of being disappointed when he "didn't have enough money" for something and then starting to walk away, looking all downtrodden and forlorn. Lol, if they had only known he was stuffed to the gills with cash.
Over the next couple of days he managed to pick up about $500 of Gameboy and PC games for about $50. I managed to snag a bunch of those cool MP3/4 players for reasonable prices, as well as a couple of other goodies like shirts and stuff.
The little boy in Game Heaven (with my fiance's brother next to him)
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/getting_games.jpg)
We toured the Royal Palace again and saw all of the beautiful artwork there, none of which my son cared about since none of it was made by Nintendo or fit into a Gameboy. Those 15th century monks just weren't thinking ahead, you know?
My son at the Royal Palace
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/j_at_royal_palace.jpg)
We did a little more shopping as there were still two or three things in Phnom Penh that we hadn't bought, like the airport and a couple of multi-acre religious monuments.
After our shopping fantasies were satiated we checked out of the hotel and headed for Kompong Som, the beautiful white-sand beach that's about 3 hours away. We had the same very "pro-active" driver as last time, with one major difference. He still pased with abandon and gusto (see the pics) but he wasn't honking his way to Heaven like last time. It took me a while to notice, but he didn't honk his horn once during the entire trip to Kompong Som. After a while I wondered if he'd had some sort of religious conversion or had just become sensitive to making noise with his horn for no reason. I mentioned his lack of errr "enthusiasm" to my fiance about he "
BEEP BEEEEEEEEP BEEP" serenade that took place last time, and she leaned over and whispered in my ear "
Horn broked". LOL! He'd actually beeped his car horn to death. Seriously- do you have
any idea how much work it takes to wear out a frickin'
car horn? It's the one part on a car that
NEVER needs replacement because it's so seldom used. (Well, except in Cambodia.)
On the way to Kompong Som. Ha, we ran them right off the road! Nyah nyah!
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/off_the_road.jpg)
We took the whole family this time- me, my fiance, mom and dad, plus one sister and her brother. We stayed at the Jasmine Hotel which is a pretty nice place. Rooms were $20 a night, in the US they'd have been about $100 a night. Nice rooms, great views of the beach and surrounding jungle, and we were only 100 meters from the beach.
My fiance's mom and dad and my son at Kompong Som
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/mom_and_dad_at_kps.jpg)
Kompong Som has a lot of free-roaming cows and bulls (oxen). The little baby ones (under 400 pounds) are like big ol' dogs...they'll come up to you and sniff for something to eat. If you feed them you've made a friend for life and they'll follow you around like a dog. A big honkin'
400-pound dog that will affectionately knock you down as they rub against you for attention or food.
A baby oxen looking for food...
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/baby_cow1.jpg)
Like a big friendly dog. Sort of. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/baby_cow2.jpg)
After our busy trip relaxing in Kompong Som we went back to Phnom Penh and relaxed a little more. I swear, the open buffets there will be the death of me. We must have consumed our weight in shrimp and beef and I don't even want to talk about the desert tables. Food, food, food. Amazingly enough my son never got sick or had diarheaa or anything, the little cheater. Sheesh. We also hit the Lucky Seven vertical mall for emergency doses of hamburgers and pizza, lest he become malnourished, lol.
I got some nice shots of the sunrise in Phnom Penh. These are pics straight from our hotel room and the sunrise was stunning every morning.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/sunrise1.jpg)
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/sunrise2.jpg)
Most Cambodians don't eat a lot of ice cream and will get the dreaded "ice cream headache (//vny!://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ice-cream-headaches/DS00640)" because they eat it wrong. My son and I on the other hand have vast experience eating ice cream and would put away a bowl of it while they were still nibbling around the edges, lol. They locals couldn't believe how fast we could eat ice cream- it's almost like a dangerous substance to them. As part of our cultural contribution to their country we showed them how to slog down mass quantities without getting an ice cream headache. Another reason why America
ruins rules the world.
We armed ourselves again and plunged into a little more shopping. My son got his mom some very nice silk cloth for sewing and some other trinkets (earings and stuff). We also got some local art for one of his teachers who had given him $20 for this purpose. We haggled and dickered and came away with a few very nice hand-made items for under twenty dollars- a beautiful 2-foot tall wood carving of a woman, some hand-carved seashell art (it's nicer than it sounds) and some carved stone wall hangings.
I wanted to get something really nice and really useful for my fiance, and I'd decided that a 2nd moto (motorcycle) would be damn handy for her and her family to have. With just one they have to endlessly coordinate trips and errands and if two people need to go someplace one person always has to wait or skip it. Her sister's husband is quite the wheeler-dealer and knows where to go for stuff like this so we grabbed him and off we went.
We went to the moto shop and were initially greeted with big smiles. "
Hoo boy", they probably thought, "
Time to make some money off of a rich tourist!". The moto dealer's face fell when he saw 'Te', the sister's husband follow us in. Damn, no easy sucker-sale here. Te started bargaining and it was all over in a flash. They had 3 models of the moto we wanted: a low-end version, a mid-range version and a high-end version. The medium-version was only $100 more than the low-end one and was well wworth the extra $100. The high-end one was $600 more and came with nothing more than a few bits of chrome trim as far as I could tell. We ended up getting the mid-range version and Te waved the sales guy away when he tried to tell us the high-end version was "better for us". Lol, yeah, better for *him* was what he meant- about $600 better.
Nope, we got the mid-range one and it's a sweet little ride. They prepped it, gassed it up and off we went, but not before Te motioned to a poster on the wall offering some free stuff "with every moto purchase". There was a short but heated discussion as they tried to screw him (us) out of the free gear, but Te had his way with them like a drunken prom date. It was advertised as "
free with every moto purchase" and we had just purchased a moto. What part of that was open to interpretation? There was a mini-fridge, a cool gas grill, a small TV, and a few other items. Te picked the gas grill (and it ended up being given to my fiance's parents).
The new moto, fresh off the floor. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/moto_1.jpg)
I thanked Te profusely for helping us, and my fiance said Te actually liked dealing with shops like this because he knows what stuff should cost and they can't jerk him around. Te was smiling as he drove off. I think he would have probably paid me for the opportunity to force the sales people to give him a fair deal, lol.
The rest of the trip is just a drunken, sex-filled blur. No, wait- that was college. Never mind. We went back to the hotel (driving our cool new moto) and had a nice dinner. That damn buffet sucks me in every time.
Damn you, you evil buffet chefs! Honestly, you can only consume so much prime rib, jumbo shrimp, braised beef, seafood thermidor, pork cordon blue, Alaska King crab and your pick of 50 different deserts before you start to feel like a pig. (Or so I've heard, I never actually had that problem.) We had the bellboys wheel us up to the room on a luggage cart and collapsed for the night.
The next day we went over to my fiance's place and she got on her cellphone and called her parents from the street, "
Come down and look what I got!". They came down, she showed them the moto and they went bonkers. Her dad made a noise I haven't heard since college. I had my fiance tell mom and dad that "I loved them very much and stole it just for them" and to take it inside and repaint it right away. That got communicated to all the neighbors standing around and was a big hit, lol.
We also went to a historical monument that had wild monkeys running around all over the place. We bought some banannas and fed the monkeys and I got some great pics of my son with the monkeys. I looked at them today and I can hardly tell who's who.
I think my son is the one on the right. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/boy_and_monky.jpg)
We also went to the Phnom Penh Water Park, kind of like a Wild Waves place, if you know what that is. It was hot and we swam around for hours and hours. They had a sign that forbid us to bring our guns in, those party-poopers.
Notice the "Attention Criminals" sign on the right side- LOL!!No guns allowed in the Water Park.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/water_park1.jpg)
We went to CMAC (vny!://www.cmac.org.kh/), the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (//vny!://www.cmac.org.kh/) to make a donation. CMAC's mission is to clear the country of land mines and other unexploded ordinance. The US dropped
millions of land mines in Cambodia and other countries dropped similar numbers as well. They're still killing people to this very day and injuring scores of others- children, farmers, anyone who wanders into the wrong place (which can be damn near
anywhere). My friend wanted to make a donation and inquire about being a point of contact in the US to help get donations and raise awareness of CMSC's mission. When we went there I met with the head guy, the Director of CMAC Operations. We gave him the donation and talked for a couple of hours to make arrangements for him to contact my friend for his assistance.
Old mortar shells at CMAC- a fraction of what they dig up each week.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/cmac1.jpg)
Plenty more where these came from. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/forums/richedit/smileys/Sad/11.gif)
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/cmac2.jpg)
I also took some pictures of some odd signs, I have no idea what they mean specifically but you can look at them and decide for yourself.
NO, just plain "NO". 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/no_sign1.jpg)
No, you may not. Not what? I don't know.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/no_sign3.jpg)
And no, you can't do it here, either. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/no_sign4.jpg)
Or here. No, you just can't do...something. I have no idea what.
But whatever it is, you can't do it.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/no_sign5.jpg)
Weird, eh?
We also went to the doctor because my fiance had a small cough. The doctor's office is, umm,
basic. Very, very basic.
The doctor is on the left. That's a sick person laying there on the right.
I loved his medical uniform- pants and a 'wife-beater' shirt. But he was good and well known.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/doctor_1.jpg)
So there ya have it, another fun and enjoyable trip to see my fiance.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/forums/richedit/smileys/Happy/3.gif)
Click here for the story of the 5th Trip (//vny!://discoverseattle.net/forums/index.php/topic,3388.msg102751.html#msg102751)
