Phnom Penh

Back to Phnom Penh, to the maze of alleyways and dark passageways that comprise the old lakeside warren of cheap guesthouses and hotels, bars and cafes. It was thirty eight degrees again yesterday and the asphalt seemed to breath out fire in the evening. Last night I booked into a room with an air conditioner for once - paying a whole eight dollars!!! The air conditioner blew softly onto my face, cooling it, but not altering the temperature of the room by even one degree. But it was enough to lull me to sleep to the sound of pounding disco music, waking up in the night to the sound of pounding rain, like a thousand drummers beating out their rythms on the tin roof.

I dozed off again to wake late. Loud claps of thunder had been added to the pounding rain, and as I entered the lounge area/deck of the hotel, a couple of hippies that I had met the day before came up the stairs looking like drowned rats. "The water is ankle deep out there" they said "and you have to walk through it quite a way to get to a tuktuk". I decided not to go out to breakfast.

Lakeside was once a beautiful place, but developers have dumped a huge pile of earth in the middle of the lake, making it much smaller. They are going to build on the pile of earth. Then in one year they are going to knock down all the little hotels and cafes on this side of the lake and build multistory hotels. I'm glad I got here before that happened.

Flight out of Phnom Penh tonight. Not looking forward to it.
I will put some photos on the blog when I get back to England.