Cambodia...and descrimination against Livia

Hello All,

Well, where to begin. I shall not start at the very beginning as they always do that in The Sound of Music and this is not a musical. I shall start at...

Firstly, i think we should all give 3 big cheers for copywrite pirates. Nobody goes to Asia purely to pick up cheap copies of dvds or music, but it is certainly an item on the agenda for most of us. Here we have found shops where you can put movies/tv shows/music on a dvd or even on your ipod. There is even a chain store that does it here. So cool. I told Livia i was going out to do this, but i think she suffered from a case of 'i don't know what the hell he is talking about, but i will just say yes, no problem, anyway.' When i came back with something on the ipod (just to take the edge off the long travel times) she didn't believe me. 'What do you mean you can watch tv on your ipod?' When i showed her she squealed with delight. Like a kid in a candy store that has just discovered their new favourite lolly. I couldn't believe she had never known about this before....and she has the newest type of ipod.

And now... we are are in Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia. I (Tim) have not seen the ocean for over a year and Livia hasn't since she went on holiday to Spain with her girls in June. I am still very jealous of this Spanish trip so wont discuss this any further. So, anyway, we were both very excited to see the sea. We could see it from the bus just before we arrived. We ran down to the ocean after dropping our bags off (not really this quickly, but it sounds good for the story) only to discover the beach was one big wall of sand bags. Ugly ugly ugly. This town has all the things needed for a very touristy beachside town, except a beach. It seems to have been washed away over the last 20 years of development. The only thing there now are bars wall to wall along the 'beach' lots of cries of ' Ladiiiiie, want a pedicure ladiiiie?' as well as lots of older western guys with their younger Cambodian wives. Not a pretty place. We are staying a little away from the beach at a more backpacker place with a better vibe. Livia still wants to swim in the ocean while we are here but i am steadily working on changing her mind.

So, we are staying in an English owned guesthouse here in Sihanoukville. One can purchase a greasy fry-up for breakfast and get oneself a pot of tea too. One of the things they welcome you with when you check-in is a free beer. Now this is the part of the story where we find Livia is discriminated against. As most of you know; Livia hates beer. I will admit this is one of her bad points, but i am learning to live with it. At least she never drinks mine at home. So she politely asked the publican if she could have something other than a beer. He politely replied that she could not. 'Don't worry love,' I chuckled, 'I'll have your beer. I luv it.' This little episode sent Livia into the worst kind of depressive/angry mood. If you know her well too you will know that this is not a common thing for her. Anytime there is an option for alcohol in this part of Asia it is most certainly always beer. When we both order a drink; me a beer and Livia anything else, i always receive my drink about 5 minutes before she does. When we travelling on the slow boat for two days in northern Laos there was no other alcohol than beer for sale. There was no softdrink for sale, there was not even any water for sale. Oh man, did this piss her off. Livia is truly a second class citizen/backpacker.

We are now both very conscious of this institutional discrimination against her non-beer drinking ways. So much so, that we both wait and watch after our food and drink is delivered to watch the descrimination in action. It makes me laugh a little big :)

Before our little adventure down to the south coast of Cambodia we visited the capital of Cambodia: Phnom Penh. Not a bad place i must say. We didn't stay long, only long enough for me to visit the sights that house all the reminders and evidence from the Pol Pot regime. Livia didn't come with me to see these as they really are not lovely places to visit. Fair enough too i say. The only thing i want to say about all of the things seen at the burial site and the museum is how normal these places look and how young the people that did these awful things were. The school (S21) which was the prison and torture chamber for the regime was just like any other normal looking high school. If you unfocus your eyes it could have been any school built in the 60s that any of us could have gone too.

Aside from this though, we both finally had a chance to speak to locals. Usually this kind of situation was clouded by someone wanting our money and just trying to chat us up so we use their hotel/retaurant/travel agency/tuk tuk. We both left each other for about an hour in Phnom Penh; me to go to get some pirated copies of Family guy and Livia to just chill out and watch the Independence day Fireworks. I think these conversations we had with locals on this night was one of the best experiences of visiting Cambodia. You never learn anything from visiting tourist sites. Cambodia is such an unexpectedly strange country for us, that i am not sure either of us have a hard idea of what we think of it yet. The people can be pushy, mean and agressive, but also kind, sensitive and shy. I supposed like anywhere really. There is a strange vibe about this place though and really, I am not sure we will be any closer to understanding this place more when we leave.

I think in the last blog Livia said that we were in Siem Reap which is the town next to Ankgor wat. Livia was lucky enough to randomly see two of the Physiotherapists from her work in Zurich there. So bizarre to see people you know in such a place. Siem Reap was a town we were both happy to leave by the end, but we both loved to visit Angkor Wat. We spent two days (along with thousands of other tourists too) trampling through the ruins of this ancient city. We both really thought it was fantastic. At one point though, Livia was beset with a horrible stomach cramps and almost had to disappear into the bushes. I told her that would be disrespectful and we must walk the 2 kms back to the proper toilets. Oh what a crap boyfriend i can be.

Aside from all of this news, we almost lost all the photos for a second time in Siem Reap. This time it ended with a happy ending and all the photos being saved. Unfortunately we have found that when we connect our photo cards to a pc in an internet cafe a virus creeps on just about everytime. So unfortunately there will be less photos for the blog for the time being. We will have some for you today as we have many of the photos on disc now, but only photos from a disc will we include in the blog. Sorry all.

Anyway, take care of yourselves. And please feel free to write on the blog anytime. Just between me and you, Livia is a bit sad none of her friends have written here (that means you!). Both friends and family of me have done so, but no friends of Livia. So please, take the time to write one of more of any of the below statements:

Tim, your writing is dull, we want to hear more from Livia

English is a stupid language! Go back to Deutsch or even Schwiizer Duetsch.

Tim, Stop being a crap boyfriend to Livia!

... or even one that you have made up yourself. Be creative.

I think Tina has kindly included instructions for how to make a post in one of the comments left on a recent blog; Hellou Cambodia

So we stay here in Cambodia for the next 3 days or so and then we move onto the last country before our Syd-a-ney trip: 'NAM!

More news from there.