Rocking and Rolling Cambodia

Hi from Cambodia.  We are in our hotel in Phnom Penh, having tried to have an easy night.  Right now, I'm uploading some videos and backing up some pictures.  Tomorrow, we are heading to the Killing Fields, which are about 10 km from here.

This morning, we woke up at 530 am in Hong Kong, took a taxi to the Airport Express train and trained to the airport.  Our flight was at 855 am and we made it just in time for last call (our fault, we shopped too much).  We arrived here around 11 or noon, and proceeded to obtain visas.  It's my first visa, so I was excited.

We took a taxi to our hotel ($9, payable in American cash.  The greenback is widely accepted here.  We've only had $0.50 in the Cambodian ried and that's about as much as we will ever have.  Jeff, we're figuring out how to get a coin, if they have).  We even had to take out money from an ATM in the airport to pay for the visas ($20/each) and the ATM spit out greenbacks.  In certain places, however, the exchange rate between rieds and dollars encourages local currency.  That makes sense, it maintain the value of it.

We dropped off our stuff at the hotel and head off for the National Museum which is a collection of Khmer artifacts, as well as Buddhist and Hindu sculptures from throughout Cambodia, dating over the last 1000 years or so.  It was cool.  Our next stop was the Royal Palace, which I don't know if it is still active.  The highlight there (besides a building that was a gift from Napolean III and fits in like a European building would in Cambodia [i.e., it doesn't]) is the Silver Pagoda with a silver floor and one Buddha encrusted with 9,000 diamonds and another Buddha made of emerald or crystal.

Our next stop was via tuk-tuk (motorcycle-powered cab) to see the tallest temple in Phnom Penh (about 90 meters; it's a flat city).  This is a tourist trap, with boys/men selling the right to free their caged birds for $1.  I forget what else was there.  From there, we walked to the night market where there were plenty of fruits and inside-out animals.

From there, dinner on the water, complete with a birthday banana split and then a swim in the pool at the hotel and now bed time.

Good night.
Love,
The Birthday Boy