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January 24, 2005

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Well, I'm home again but there was so much that happened in the last few days of my trip, and I want to put it down before I forget a lot of the details.

First of all, my money belt was found about 5 days before the end of my trip as I was packing to leave Siem Reap and head back to Phnom Penh. It had slipped down into a small pocket on the inside of my enormous backpack that I didn't even know existed. It's a small flap with a piece of elastic holding it closed, and so even when I shook my pack multiple times out of frustration when I first thought my money belt had been stolen, it didn't fall out.

So, when I discovered it, I was pretty elated, (and my faith in humanity was restored) but unfortunately my credit cards had already been cancelled so they were useless. This made the rest of my trip a pain because I had to carry a large amount of cash to get through the end of the trip, with no real way to get more cash and was paranoid that I would lose it or it would be stolen. (By the way, American Express ROCKS, they saved my trip with the emergency cash I needed in this case, and I will always feel like they are a good organization for what they did and how easy they made it for me when I was so distraught.) So, all of that was a lesson learned. I will forever always carry my money belt at the very least even for what might seem like very short time periods, even though all ended well and nothing was stolen after all.

I have a few notes that I wanted to add so that I remember these things later on. First of all, all over Cambodia right now they are slash-burning the rice fields. I suppose this has been done for thousands of years and makes the fields more fertile and kills diseases that might build up, but the air anywhere in Cambodia is not clean or fresh and there is just no escaping it. That was tough at times when I would have just died for a few fresh breaths of air. We are lucky here in the Northwest for that alone.

Another thing I failed to mention is that Hun Sen himself was in his seaside residence in Sihanoukville while I was there. I was told by a moto about his visit, and after driving by at some point I don't doubt that he was actually there due to the fact that there were at least 20 uniformed guards in front of his elaborate gate. His "palace" there happened to be almost directly across from the hotel I was staying in, maybe a few hundred yards away. I was of course mentally wishing him nasty thoughts the whole time once I knew he was there. :) Oh, and I also found it interesting that with all the corruption going on in Cambodia that his "palace" in Sihanoukville was not more grand. I've seen much nicer and larger homes in the West hills of Portland. Maybe he doesn't want to piss of the locals too much.

Posted by Shonda on January 24, 2005 01:01 PM
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