Tuesday, November 6, 2012

November 7

Phnom Pehn/Sydney: Cousins to Koalas

Voting for the U.S. presidential and other elections is still going on but here in Sydney, it's already Wednesday.  I'd like to say I know the winner but the polls suggest that everyone will be up late in the States before finding out.  Hopefully we won't have another situation like in 2000.  Especially in terms of outcome!

Last Friday I flew from the world of temples and Buddha's to the more earthly delights of Phnom Pehn, the capital of Cambodia and home to not a few fine restaurants, many of which carry the lingering influence of the French.

Before leaving Siem Reap, though, I had a chance to visit a floating village, about 50 kilometers from Siem Reap on a massive lake.  The village is built on stilts and is both a real fishing village and an ecotourist destination.  Here you can see a little bit of the village, the mangrove swamp surrounding the village that I was escorted through and my guide through the swamp, a young and incredibly strong young woman who pulled my growing mass through the swamp with nothing more than a flat pole.





While the Vietnamese have gone far to eradicate evidence of its time as a French colony, Cambodia seems to embrace it.  Many signs and street names are in French and French tourists are much in evidence.  This is really no surprise when you think about it because the Vietnamese fought a war to rid themselves of the French while Cambodia, under the leadership of its recently-deceased former King Sihanouk, peacefully parted ways with DeGaulle and France by treaty back in the 70's.

Phnom Pehn is home to a large group of expat's, including (most importantly) my cousin Paul and the daughter, Lizzie, of another cousin (Margo).  While I was interested in seeing Phnom Pehn, it was the prospect of catching up with Paul, and meeting Lizzie, that drew me to the capital.  Paul is a Harvard-trained lawyer who has worked in places from Boston to Berlin to Little Rock but now spends most of his time in Cambodia working on a number of consulting projects (in places like Afghanistan) for NGO's and UN organizations.  He and I are the same age but haven't seen each other since the 80's, when we were both beginning lawyers in Boston.

After arriving by prop plane from Siem Reap, I headed for my hotel and then dinner with Paul, Lizzie (an intern at an environmental NGO) and Tim, a Stockholm-based journalist staying in town for a while.  After a great Khmer-Vietnamese dinner, we headed to Sparkies, a long-time expat watering hole with live music from a local expat band, The Fumes (named after the pollution that the city's busy streets churn up).

The next day I headed out into the amazingly hot and humid weather, walking down to the river in hopes of cooler breezes but the river was pretty much blanketed with the same hot sun as the rest of the city.  Fortifying myself with a couple of iced coffees, I moved past the National Palace to Phnom Pehn's Central Market, a gigantic covered (but not air-conditioned) maze of small shops and stalls selling everything from silver to stuffed animals to clothing to detergent.  If you want it, you can find it here, although knock-offs are rampant of course.

Cousin Paul rescued me from the clutches of various vendors and we hived off to lunch, where Lizzie met us, having biked halfway across town.  We checked out another big market, where we were the only non-Asian customers and then repaired home to cool off.  Dinner was with two other expat friends of Paul's, a couple from Washington State who were working on a project to help protect fresh water dolphins, a very rare and quite threatened species in a remote part of Cambodia.

Paul and I lunched again on Sunday before my departure.  It was great to talk about our crazy family, where someone like myself who has pursued a conventional career is considered a rare and suspect white sheep of the family.  The good works that Paul, Lizzie and others are engaged in, though, definitely have their appeal; more food for thought.

Here we are, standing in front of a Buddha statue before my flight.


Sunday evening I headed off for Sydney via Kuala Lumpur.  En route I saw some amazing clouds that I had to show you.



Overnight from Kuala Lumpur, the flight took 8 hours, a surprisingly long time but Australia is definitely "down under" and a fair distance from Southeast Asia.  I managed a decent rest on the flight and, by late morning, was in my hotel in downtown Sydney.

Of course I had to do the tourist thing, wandering around the famed Sydney Harbor with its iconic Opera House and the Harbor Bridge, which towers over everything.  The weather was superb and a welcome respite from the heat and humidity I'd had for the last month.  Sydney is a lovely place with many restaurants and pubs along with astonishingly high prices, at least the equal of London and Zurich in terms of cost.

Here are a couple of iPhone shots taken on my wanderings; more at the end of the week before I head out.




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