An afternoon in a Tuk Tuk

No problems with my flight to Phnom Penh, and after a little while of mental readjustment (my fault, but I hadn't quite prepared myself to be on my own in a third world country) and adjusting to the culture shock,  I took a deep breath and decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood around the guesthouse where I'm staying.

Perhaps I should also mention that shortly after I arrived it started to rain, and if you haven't been following the cyclone off the Philippines, it's enough to say that because of it Cambodia has had a lot of rain these past couple of weeks.  So when I first went outside this is the scene that awaited me:

I didn't have to go far, maybe a metre away from the guesthouse door, and I had no shortage of offers to go for a ride in a tuk-tuk or remork - a roofed, two-wheeled trailer attached to a motorcycle.  They can be used as a form of taxi, but the drivers are also happy just to take you around and do their own, personalized tour of the city.

My driver's name was Wana and he's familiar with the tour I'm going to be joining so he suggested that we go for a drive through the "real" Phnom Penh, rather than going to some of the places he knows I'll be going to anyway.  It was absolutely amazing - and these pictures were taken just as we were driving through the streets.

Not much of this colour house that I could see ...

(The photo doesn't show it well, but the house on the left was a very lovely mauve colour.)

As part of our drive we did go my a few buildings and monuments that are very important to Phnom Penh.  I can't tell you much about them yet but hopefully over my next two days here I'll have a chance to go to some of them.

This is the National Museum

And this is the Royal Palace

This is the Independence Monument, built in 1958 to celebrate Cambodia's independence from France in 1953.

And my afternoon/evening ended in a rather different way as well, but I can certainly say I got a good dose of Cambodian culture.  Wana asked if I wanted to go and see the local kick-boxing match!  Why not.  And local it was!  As you can guess, kick-boxing isn't really my thing but it was neat to be a part of the local action.  And part of the evening's activities was a little bit of a concert before the championship fight - some singing, dancing and a sword performer.  THAT I really did enjoy.

Thought you might like to see my shower here in the guesthouse where I'm staying ... as you can see it's really the whole bathroom.  I turn the hot water on by the silver box on the wall and then I stand anywhere in the bathroom and use the shower head.