I told you I'd walk around town today, and take pictures of some stuff that I saw. Well, I did, and I did. It wasn't some sort of great adventure. Actually all I did was go out for lunch, so this entire entry is kind of lame.
Below, you see Norodom Boulevard, where I live. I look at this every day when I come out of the house. Usually there are more cars, though.
Every day, I pass by one of the banks that apparently isn't responsible for the current global financial crisis: Sacombank:
I walk down this street sometimes to get to one of four internet cafes that I patronize; also my favorite restaurant, The Blue Dolphin, is down here.
And thus I went to the Blue Dolphin for lunch. Always delicious, always at a reasonable price. I chose to buy Pumpkin Soup today, which is something new for me. And like everything else in the restaurant, it holds to a general level of awesomeness.
Pumpkin soup.
After that, I didn't want to go home, so I just kept walking. I walked straight through the red gate and into the pagoda (or monastery).
Normally, I have reservations about entering other people's religious property. This probably comes from my general upbringing as well as all the time I spent in the Emirates where it is illegal for a non-Muslim to so much as set foot in a mosque--or for that matter, touch the Qur'an. I find that the height of hypocrisy given the way most "Muslims" in that country behave...but I guess Cambodians are much more reasonable than those douchebags. I even saw monk robes hanging from the shutter:
On the other side of the pagoda is riverside. Shit, I had found myself on riverside.
If you're like me, you make it a rule never ever to go there, because you don't like being hunted down by tuk-tuk drivers, motodops, beggars, sunglasses vendors, small children, and prostitutes like a winter fox. But then, most people aren't like me.
Riverside
Riverside
Riverside
Sometimes, though, I like to sit on this bench that Sacombank put along the river, and I like to stare at nothing for a time. Actually, I like to watch them build that enormous building for the rich and powerful on the opposite side of the river, in the same place where I was going to put Washington DC once I gained godlike powers.
After brooding over the fact that Washington DC will never be next to Phnom Penh, I went home. Down this road which I take every day.
This is my favorite road ever!
And I got home in time to begin the search for a new apartment! Yay, eating lunch out on a Sunday afternoon!!
hehehe... you walked into the pagoda? Lolzz! Had any eerie feeling in your bones? I felt a little itchy when I walked into the Mosque too. But Cambodian mosques are very nice after all, guaranteed!
ReplyDeletewow, thanks for these pictures. this may sound bad but i didnt expect cambodia to look so nice. i expected rubble and trash everywhere. (thats what i've read)
ReplyDeleteI won't lie, there is a lot of that depending on where you are walking. But I want to emphasize the positive here. I'm quite impressed by very much of what I see in Cambodia, still, two years after I moved here.
ReplyDelete