I’m in Cambodia!

Last night around 12 am my friend Justine and I arrived after 18 hours of travel. Funny sidenote: this WordPress app wants to autocorrect Phnom Penh to “phenomena openhanded” which I have to say poetically describes my first impressions of the city quite accurately. However, the Lonely Planet guidebook informs us that Phnom Penh is actually “the pearl of Asia”.

Another sidenote but worth observing: long distance plane travel gets harder on the body as we age but you can override that with the excitement of being hauled into space at insane speeds, soon to be pooped out into a whole new world. Do astronauts have severe dehydration or what? Anyway, this trip was a long time coming.

This post and hopefully many more over the next six weeks are in fact sidenotes to my regular posts about massage techniques and wellness related things. When I started the blog it was supposed to serve as a creative outlet as well as inform my clients.

What does the “b” in blog stand for? It’s not boring or bullshit, right? My drive for writing about what I do seems to have tapered off in the last few months. Sometimes in the quiet space of a massage studio, you find yourself daydreaming of loud and crowded things. I seem to have manifested that for myself.

Upon arriving in Cambodia, Justine and I started our morning with a real accosting of the senses (in the best way). It was like a shot of espresso! The first street we turned down out of the hotel was an open market. Soon I’ll be desensitized to this sort of scene so all the better to capture these details now. There were tiny bananas and a wriggling carp on the asphalt (a metaphor for fish out of water?).

Literally, that fish was trying to wriggle away from the hot water. There were babies on mopeds and grandmas in hammocks swinging over their raw meat, tuk-tuk drivers beckoning us every 10 feet, clothing and shoes and books and auto parts for sale and the humidity crawling down my spine and thawing out my cold Seattle bones.

All this while I tried to stay out of the way of motorcycles and tuk-tuks.

Later we visited the national museum which houses loads and loads of Buddha and Vishnu statues. I learned a bit about the Khmer civilization. We found a peaceful shady garden spot and a liter of water for one dollar. Everything is cheap here, as promised.

After we rested for a bit we headed out on a tuk-tuk for a tour of the city and ended up at the Russian market. This is where the real shopping is done. Bartering is expected. I scored a watch, three bracelets and a Buddhist figurine for 9 bucks. I probably overpaid. But probably the tuk-tuk city tour for ten dollars was our favorite because our driver was so sweet; we didn’t even mind when he ran out of gas.

By the way, I don’t know how there would ever be a traffic violation in Phnom Penh. Ever. You can tell all the lines have been crossed too often for too long, or maybe the lines were never drawn. There is no median line in the middle of the road; they only have their horns and the good sense to stay out of each other’s way. And there are no crosswalks!

I haven’t even described my meals yet, but I’ll save room for later. I wouldn’t want you to get bored because the ‘b’ in this blog stands for boisterous, blissful and buoyant!