Cambodia: KL

This Pchum Ben holiday I took my lovely assistant to KL. I wanted to thank her for all her support & good work. I also wanted her to see what somewhere other than Cambodia is like. She would like to find a scholarship to study overseas but I wanted her to know what overseas was like first.

We flew from Siem Reap so we also had an opportunity the day before to visit Angkor Wat. For me it was my 7th visit there. For L it was her first as an adult, she had been once before as a small child. It absolutely poured with rain - Pchum Ben is traditionally the wettest time of year - like a UK August bank holiday!

That evening I traumatised L by ordering spring rolls that had pork & not shrimp the advertised in them - she is vegetarian. Then an american tourist knocked my drink all over me by swiping our table with her bag. She then proceeded to deny any responsibility. Truth was I was pretty wet already from the saturated temple visit.

Umbrellas brightening up the grey & acting as lightening rods!

Angkor Wat

As for Malaysia I think I will just leave it to L for the words & I will just provide some photos....

"After I visited Kula Lumpur in Malaysia for several days on Pchum Ben day, I found out there are some similarities and differences from my own country, Cambodia. Malaysia is much different from Cambodia. It is really modern city. It has a lot of high standard buildings. There are trees around the city and buildings. There are also many restaurants and shops for us to go for eating and shopping. Varieties of foods and clothes are offered, such as Indian, Chinese, Western, etc. Moreover, the public transportation is very good and well-organized. It is easy to find the bus, taxi, and train. They are fast. And, the roads are really good and clean. On the sidewalks, there are shelters for passengers to relax. Over the driving roads, there are roads with the roof for walking. So even it is raining, you can walk easily without getting wet. The environment in the city is good. It is clean and has light all days even it is at night. Beside the modern infrastructures and public transportations along with clean, good environment, however, people there are not really friendly. Even you say hello, they seldom smile and talk back to you. They do not care about you. But there are also similarities to Cambodia. It seems everything is more expensive for the tourists. People seem overcharge for us. For example, when we looked for the taxi, the taxi driver gave us high price which is not usual price. It is the same in Cambodia. And the men are the same. Most of them are arrogant and look down to women. When I walked on the roads, men blink and do some bad signs to me. They do not respect women. All of these are some similarities and differences between Malaysia and Cambodia."

What she has omitted to write about is;

She suffered terrible travel sickness that resulted in an incident with a plastic bag with a hole in it just minutes from arriving at our hotel in the shuttle bus.

Every thing was cooked in coconut oil & the rice in Malaysia is no where near as good as Cambodian rice.

I lost the ability to navigate or read a map & we got horribly lost.

We nearly missed our flight back due to a combination of taxi related human & mechanical error.

On returning to Cambodia L's house was under flood water.

She sent me this in a text shortly after - "This is Cambodia - dirty country"

What have I started?