DAY 470: It's one thing to experience my life on the road via this Blog, but it's another to experience it live, as it happens, as Noelle did that day. Since her first appearance on "The Trinidad Show," she saw things in person that she had only read about on-line, like that blue clamp that holds the logic board of my laptop together tightly. "Ah, the famous clamp," she said when she first saw it.

AFTER COMPLIMENTARY BREAKFAST AT THE GOLDIANA, we walked across town, passed the Independence Monument and more trendy eateries of The Ex-Pat Zone, to the scenic riverfront area on the Tonle Sap River, a district where ex-pats and budget backpackers came together from opposite ends of the city -- along with the taxi touts that come along with the territory. It was there we camped out at an internet cafe for an hour while waiting for the Royal Palace gates to open up to tourists after their mid-day break. We sat at two different computers next to two other foreigners and worked on our Blogs when a young local boy came in trying to sell English-language newspapers. He approached everyone for a sale, and by everyone I mean all the foreigners, except for Cambodian-looking me.

"Did that kid try to sell you a newspaper?" I asked Noelle on our way out.

"Yeah."

"He totally skipped me."

"Yeah, I saw that!"

This was just the latest in a case of mistaken identity that has happened to me in most countries I've gone to; Cambodians take me for Cambodian, Thais for Thai, Peruvians for Peruvian. As Noelle pointed out on one of our walks in Bangkok, "That woman just looked at you [as if to say] 'Hey, you look like me. What are you doing with that white woman?'"

WE WALKED DOWN THE STREET IN PHNOM PENH with the usual stares to the Royal Palace, a.k.a. the "Preah Boram Reach Van Chadomuk Mongkul," which is really a handful to say or write, so it's a good thing we can just call it the "Royal Palace." As the edifice commemorating the intersection of the four rivers in the area (Upper Mekong, Lower Mekong, Tonle Sap, and Tonle Bassak), the Royal Palace was constructed in the late 19th century in the traditional Khmer way under the reign of King Nodorom, who sat in his throne way back then and said things like "It's good to be the king."

With Noelle's rented sarong (since her shorts were too short for admission into the holy area), we wandered the palace and temple grounds, from the gardens and statues to the stupas to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (picture above), which was all very similar to the Royal Palace complex in Bangkok, except not nearly as crowded. Two main buildings set the Cambodian place apart from the complex in Bangkok: a French-style house built for Napoleon III during the French occupation -- the "N" was for "Noelle" we said -- and the Preah Tineang Tevea Vinichhay, the throne room where the new king Norodom Sihamoni, a former ballet dancer who had only been sworn in October 2004, also sat and said things in Khmer like "It's good to be the king." (Napoleon said a similar thing in his house, but in French.) The royal residences nearby were closed to the public because the king was in town, probably practicing his curtsies and walking around on his tippy-toes.

"[YOU TAKE A LOT OF PICTURES,]" Noelle said to me.

"Yeah, only about [ten percent] make the cut," I said, explaining the way I work with photos for the Blog.

After visiting the traditional Khmer wooden house on display, with traditional Khmer musical instruments and masks, we walked passed the Cambodian-Laos-Vietnam Memorial on the way back to the hotel for some pool time and to get sucked into bad made-for-TV sci-fi movies, one starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. and Angie Everhart. Afterwards it was back to the riverfront for dinner at the Happy Herb Pizzeria where we dined over a postcard-writing session. Noelle saw with her own eyes, just how burdensome writing postcards was for me; sure a couple is fine, but twenty-five all in one sitting? I racked my brain trying to figure out what to say on each one.

"You should hear the conversation over here," Noelle told me, referring to the four young Kiwi girls at the next table. "It's just funny."

"What are they talking about?"

"Just boys and stuff," she said. The four girls were obvious teeny-bopper types transplanted in Cambodia.

"Those are the 1981ers I keep talking about." She understood completely.

THE F.C.C. is an acronym I did not make up: the Foreign Correspondents Club. It was there we closed the night off with a carafe of red wine while sitting on the terrace overlooking the river. We sat with our wine, relaxed, and watched the people go by below as a cooling breeze blew by us, knowing very well that traveling for real is far greater the traveling vicariously on a website.