This Damn Monkey Slapped Me in the Arm

So Wat Phnom ("Mountain Temple") and its surrounding park are pretty breathtaking.  The temple (right) is one of the tallest structures in the relatively low-lying city, and its hilltop placement means it overlooks most of the city from its northern vista.  The temple itself is in the spirit of the rest of the capital city - definitively Buddhist, but with some sense of context of country.  The most notable part of the park to me is the landscape over which the temple looks:  the giant clock built into the ground is the recumbent centerpiece of a sort of open-air zoo.  I was distracted from the elephant-feeding station (US2 for a bushel of bananas to feed them) by the bevy of monkeys running freely about the park.  I saddled up next to a group of monks feeding a family of monkeys (I tried to come up with a clever pun for this scenario, but decided the sentence was funny enough on its own);  the above picture was taken with "mama monkey" before I got a little too close to her little one (below).  Once I snapped a pic of her baby, she sized me up for a brief moment, showed her teeth, and quickly slapped me on my uncovered forearm - and bear in mind, this uncovered forearm had just spent the day in the deadly Cambodian sun, unprotected.  Needless to say I was in some pain, and my stream of expletives translated well enough to scare off the monkeys, the monks, and just about anyone else near me in the park.  Touche, monkey.  Next time I'll admire the cuteness of your progeny from afar.

     

Mike Eats Ice Cream; Gives It the Thumbs Up

Unfortuately, I think my thumb got in the way here. 

[Edit: I lost the original of this picture, and had to retake it with a copy I found online, hence the grainy appearance.  The original thought, though, I assure you was knee-jerk.]

Pnom Penh is kinda small (or conversely, Mai Lynn is a big deal)

Special thanks to Mai Lynn Miller Nguyen (COL '07) for showing me around Phnom Penh.  As an editor/writer/apparently-all-things-to-all-people at AsiaLife magazine, she has her finger to the pulse of what's going on in Phnom Penh's current "cultural revolution" (no, not in the Chinese sense) - or I should say, westernization.  So once I'd finished my motorcycle derring-do during the days, I'd meet up with Mai Lynn (and her friends), who was happy to show me about as she checked out some new spots herself with an eye toward what to mention in her magazine (or so I gathered).  
My first night I received a text to meet at Metro on top of hotel Timbalaya, which happened to be 2 doors down from my hotel, on the riverfront boulevard Sisowath Quay.  I arrived late, though, and was only able to give the rooftop scene a glance before we headed to the Chinese House a little further uptown.  We bopped around at night to a pretty Western club scene - according to a couple conversations I had, foreign investment is pouring in, and those who are positioned to do so are making a penny for themselves.  One bar was a Miami-influenced "Copacabana," complete with outdoor beach and bottle service.  Another was a rock club, with '90's and '00's American music the featured tunes.  Each of my two nights out in Cambodia ended in a tuk-tuk ride where the rider was noticeably inebriated (or just flat-out crazy).  These nights out were fun, but also served to illustrate the beginnings of, and propensity toward, inequality in a developing economy being flooded with foreign money.  Is being Mumbai in 10 years a worthwhile goal or not?  To paraphrase myself paraphrasing Chubbs in my high school's senior yearbook quote:  Best of luck, Phnom Penh.  Best of luck.

Welp, I'm in rush-hour traffic in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Time to learn how to ride a motorocycle.

I put off writing anything about renting the motorcycle until I returned it safely this afternoon. Flashback to arrival in Pnom Penh:

First order of business was renting a bike. After ignorning the most persistent group of jostlers yet (tuk tuks, motos, cabs) outside the PP bus terminal, I walked down Monivong Blvd, the main North-South thoroughfare, to find "Lucky Lucky" bike rental, as per my guide book. In response to the question of whether I wanted a "big bike" or a little one, I had no choice but to say "big one." They ushered me over to a grown-up-sized Honda Degree, a real live motorcycle with a clutch, footbrake, and everything. Despite having never ridden a motorcycle, I was not one to back down. After a quick tutorial (and more than a couple embarassing stallouts), I was humming down Monivong in first gear, desperately looking for a side street to turn down so I didn't die. A few more stallouts in the alleys later, I was back in front of "Lucky Lucky," feeling the intensity of the irony dripping from its name.
"Ready?" was all the guy said to me when I got back - and I'm sure it was with a chuckle, cause I had to be visibly shaken. But I told myself, in the immortal words of Jim Morrison (by way of Lucas from Empire Records), "The time to hesitate is through."

After a quick run-in with the cops, I was on my way (see separate post).

The rest of the day was harrowing. I thought i was going to rent a moped and have a leisurely bike ride around town to find a place to stay. Not so. I was literally holding on for dear life; each intersection was an epic battle for survival. My first major issue was idling without stalling out (after short trial and error, I realized this was accomplished by holding the clutch down in first gear - but those first few "trials" were at busy intersections, so I was desperately trying to restart my stalled bike either at the start of, or smack in the middle of, violently restarting traffic). After this was mastered, the next important steps were being able to make left turns (flat-out terrifying), and down shifting quickly enough to slow down/idle, without stalling out. I'd been bouncing around in 1st or 2nd gear, making only right turns ~toward the river that marks the Eastern border of the city proper (where I'd read there were good hotel deals) long enough. Time to make some hay and find a hotel.

I was too frazzled to even learn what place I was photographing here - but it's in Phnom Penh!

Oddly enough, I did manage to see a bunch of the major monuments/points of interest. The national museum, the royal palace, the largest temple Wat Phnom, etc. are all on the east side of the city, along the river, so I came across them in my quest for accomodation. The traditional Cambodian architecture is possibly my favorite style, at least by way of religious buildings. I settled upon a cheap and dcent hotel, Corzyna, along the river for around US18/day. Tomorrow's agenda: riding the bike ~20km outside the city to the Killing Fields.