My bus into Cambodia was much better than my bus into Vietnam. Only 6 hours or so, proper air conditioning, and all the windows remained intact. Because I was with a reputable bus company, I trusted them with my passport at the border, and they did all the necessaries with aplomb (and for free).
Phnom Penh is a charming city, with real character. Sometimes in places like Bangkok and Saigon there's a jarring contrast between the 'real' or 'indigenous' parts of town on the one hand, and the newer high-rise buildings and tourist havens on the other. But most parts of Phnom Penh retain all of their 19th-century charm, both the temples and the colonial-era buildings, and if you overlook the beggars and the touts (even more tenacious than in Vietnam) it's just a really nice place to wander round. Best of all, the weather is cooling off a bit right now, and so I am feeling a lot more comfortable, and also I'm relieved of the obligation to think up another piece of sweat-related alliterative simile.
Another good thing about Cambodia is that you can use dollars just about everywhere. After Laos (15,500 kip to the pound) and Vietnam (29,000 dong to the pound) it's nice, even for an amateur maths geek like me, to be able to drop all the zeros and have a nice simple menu: beer $1, pizza $4, etc etc. This internet cafe is costing me 50 cents an hour.
Yesterday I visited the Tuol Sleng museum in town, and tomorrow I will take a tuk-tuk out to Choeung Ek. (Today was sacrificed to worshipping the great god Immo De Um, at the great white porcelain temple.) Both places commemorate the Khmer Rouge genocide which took place between 1975 and 1979. As with the museums I visited in Saigon, there is no squeamishness about describing (and often showing very direct photographic evidence of) exactly what happened in these places. Above all it's another depressing reminder that all of the great genocides of the 20th century were not carried out solely by swivel-eyed psychopaths - the actual killing was mostly done by ordinary people like you and me. And Pol Pot died in his own bed in 1998, at the age of 73. (And, incidentally, Pol Pot was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris).
I set my alarm for 4am this morning so that I could watch Murray v Federer in the US Open final. I'm not normally the biggest follower of tennis, but on this particular occasion I did feel it was my patriotic duty. Therefore as an Englishman I was highly pleased to see Murray get completely turned over. Mint.
Latest update on the Newcastle United managerial vacancy: ha ha ha, he he ho ho tee hee, chuckle chuckle!
