How have we only been here 4 days?

Day 4 of our holiday in Cambodia and since Pete has been doing the heavy lifting with the updates, I thought I'd better put my 2 cents in too. Cambodia has been a lot different than I expected - in that it's not all that different, I guess. It probably helps that we're staying in nice hotels with all the modern amenities but everything has been really comfortable. The people we've interacted with are beyond amazing, polite, and super super smiley. In direct head to head competition, Pete has shown himself to be far superior in terms of learning the language -- I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he is patient and I am not, a fact that is becoming more and more obvious the longer we are married (which has been 5 whole days now!).

Like Pete said, the drive over here was an eye opener. In terms of the scenery and seeing how people live, but also in terms of how ridiculous fast our driver was going given how many people were on the road. At one point, I think an entire school let out and I thought we were going to take at least a few little guys out as we blew past them, but they were totally unconcerned. In America, we freak out if a kid is in the front seat. Here, we've gotten used to seeing families of 4 or even 5 crammed on a moped, baby dangling over the road, no helmets in sight. In fact, Pete saw a 3 year old steering a moto the other day and I'm pretty sure I saw one driving a van.

Yesterday was a great day. Another free upgrade, bubbly in the room, massage, and dinner at this weird place with a live crocodile pit. The decor was crazy - a huge warehouse with multiple levels made from thin planks you accessed by climbing really steep creaky ladder-like steps. It kinda looked like that painting with all the staircases that don't lead anywhere. After dinner, I literally couldn't figure out how to get down until someone showed me. I could see where I wanted to go - just, for the life of me, could not figure out how to get there. I also compared it to Winchester Mystery house - its like they just couldn't stop themselves. Oh, the place probably holds a few hundred people - did I mention that we were literally the only ones there? That's shoulder season in Siem Reap.
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We cam back home and spent the rest of the night drinking and playing pool in the elephant bar downstairs in the hotel, which I guess is kind of famous. I enjoyed several tequila sunrises (I'm on vacation!) and Pete looked very debonair in his linen outfit drinking scotch. Today, we've hired a tuk tuk driver and are going to check out some temples. Tombraider comes to life!

Some last thoughts, in case I'm too lazy to update again. I keep thinking we're on safari (except w/o animals save the occasional monkey or elephant) because everything seems very 1920's lodge here. Everything's kind of old-timey in a modern way. Pete may have to grow a mustache, smoke a pipe, and start saying things like good day, old chap. Another thing, in retrospect we should have brought every pair of underwear we own, as 3 showers a day seem to be the norm. It is HOT. And next time, I'll leave the hair dryer and flat iron at home.

I am absolutely loving each minute of this trip. At one point last night, we were racing back in our tuk tuk, through the pitch darkness near the hotel, hair blowing every which way, and I turned to Pete and said, what are we doing here, we're normally very conservative. But maybe not anymore?

Signing off - Cheerio all that!

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