Grad Trippin News #2

Sheep snake, Net snake and Pudge snake (Sam, Say Heng and PK respectively; excuse the horrific juvenile nicks) have returned to Singapore so it's just Jae and I left. But it's cool, I see it rather as a bonus that there were 5 of us at the start. Earlier it had looked like it was just Jae and I (if you really want to know, its 'C snake' and 'Jake the snake') for the whole trip.

We have made it to Phnom Penh, a dity little city where airborne pieces of dirt with violent intentions fly into our eyes and the people look rougher than the Vietnamese. But our jouney here was the worst -- we paid an exorbitant $40 from the Viet-Cambdia border to here. $20 per head for a 3 hour journey sounds okay to me actually, but we realised how jack-assed we were when along the way, our smug driver called his friends to arrange a drinking session and picked up his family members en route to go to PP to celebrate his bonaza. It's just too bad that because of his superior swindling I dont feel good right now and have clammed up at the sigjht of anyone wanting my money, even debilitated street beggars.

We visited the Killing Fields off PP and the Tuong Sleng Genocide Museum; both testaments to the horrific-beyond-words Pol Pot regime of the 1970s. But I did not feel much again -- was the whole exercise over-commercialised or am I just an insensitive insulated Singaporean?

Siem Reap and Angkor Wat is next, now I am going out again to face more Flying Dirt and Plunging Poverty. It's not happy shiny but its great this way.