I Want to be Like Her When I am 82

Day Fifteen: 2/26 – RV Tonle Pandaw Day #4
Title: I want to be like her when I am 82

I made it past the halfway point! Up until this morning the trip really has been fantastic. I hope things aren’t turning for the worse. This morning’s excursion was my least favorite part of this trip thus far. We had to get up early (6 am) after a night of not particularly good rest. They dropped the anchor at 2 am (which is really loud) and dad was snoring. I REALLY was not ready to get out of bed.

The morning’s activity was titled a “Phnom Penh city tour by bus”. Phnom Penh is a pretty nasty city. It smells, is very dirty and there are beggars all over the place. There may be a nicer part of town but we didn’t see it this morning.

Our first stop was the National Museum. I was bored out of my mind. I spent 20 minutes checking out the displays and signs. I read 80% of them in that time. The additional hour we spent in the museum was painful. The majority of the stuff was a similar style to that of Angkor Wat. I would much rather wander around the stuff in its original resting place, than in a museum. The guide was also highly annoying. The Pandaw is not allowed to use its own guides in the museum. Instead, a museum provided guide must be used. The lady’s English wasn’t very good, which can be forgiven. What was utterly obnoxious was she answered her cell phone five times in an hour and twenty minute tour! I eventually got fed up enough that I just gave myself my own tour and tried to wait patiently in a chair. Fortunately John and Sigrid were bored out of their gourd too, so we entertained ourselves by mocking WOP.

The second stop of the day was the Royal Palace. It looks like most other Royal Palaces. I would say it has a little more European influence than most in Asia because of the French occupation… but it was still a lot of the same. I am getting a bit tired of the temple and palace scene.

Our final stop of the morning was the central market. Ughhh it was dirty. I was pretty excited though that we found our dictionaries for Raksmei. I didn’t really feel like fighting the dirt and crowds after that so dad and I set out to find an Internet shop. We found one and I checked my mail to make sure nothing important had happened at home. We only had 15 minutes, so I haven’t written back to you guys yet but I certainly will tonight. The lunch gong just rang, so I am going to go eat it.

I just had lunch with PG (Parkinson’s Grandma). I no longer believe that she has Parkinson’s. She is a real hoot. Her husband, whom she married after knowing for 40 years, passed away five months ago. She is 82 years old and on this great adventure all by her lonesome. She told me all kinds of cool stuff. She traveled to Afghanistan in the 50’s for an archeological dig just because she could. Back in the day she was a Macy’s sales girl in San Francisco in the wallpaper section (who knew they sold wallpaper?) This was quite remarkable because she lived(s) in London, not in the US. She is rather dramatic in both her prose and her facial expressions. I so do love this ;~> One of my favorite lines of the lunch was when she told me that she had to evacuate London for Whales during the war. She was ticked about this at the time and clearly still is today, roughly sixty years later, because “Whales is sooooooo bloody boring.” I just loved hearing this coming from an 82-year-old woman!

I don’t even know where to begin in describing this afternoon’s excursion. We went to the S. 21 Genocide Museum. I am not sure how familiar all of you are with Cambodian history but not much of it has been good. The worst occurred in the 1970’s when Pol Pot was in power. One of our guides said it is estimated 20% of Cambodians lost their lives during this regime.

S 21 is a school that was converted into a detention center by the Khmer Rouge during their regime. Basically all educated members of Cambodian society during that time were murdered. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and religious leaders were the first to go. Many of these people were considered “VIP Victims”. Because of their status they were taken to S 21 to be tortured for “information”. It is still not clear to me what the Khmer Rouge was trying to learn from them. I think more than anything they were trying to locate any other undiscovered educated people so that they could murder them as well. Part of the facility was left as it was during this time so that visitors to the museum can see how the prisoners were forced to live. Out of 20,000 detainees who stayed in S 21, only seven made it out alive.

I think the feelings one experiences when walking through this place are the same as one might feel wandering around the grounds of Auschwitz. It is impossible to imagine the horror that the prisoners must have felt and the hatred that consumed their captors. I pray God took pity on all of the Buddhists who were murdered in S 21 (and the killing fields) by letting them into Heaven because they truly had experienced Hell on earth.

After S 21 no one in our tour felt like doing anything other than returning to the boat. Dad and I decided to venture out for a while and search for an Internet connection. You know that I found one because I have already sent you the blog from the last three days. When I finished dad and I strolled back to the boat for dinner.

We had yet another nice meal. The food wasn’t anything to write home about but the company was great. We ate with John P., Sigrid, Cathy and Dick. Dick is a cool dude. He was the quarterback at Michigan State way back in the day. He served in the Marines with former NFL coach Jim Mora. They are still best of friends to this day. For those of you who can’t place Jim, he is the coach on the current Coors Light commercials who says “Playoffs? Playoffs? You want to talk about playoffs?” Dick and Cathy have two sons in their 20’s. Man I wish those boys were on this boat. They are sure to be tall, dark and handsome ;~>

After we finally stopped socializing around 9:30pm I made dad go back out to the Internet bar with me. I wanted to take advantage of my last opportunity to play with puter for the next few days. We stayed out until roughly 1am.

Our return to The Pandaw was not without excitement. The bar we went to was approximately a ten-minute walk from the gated pier where the boat was docked. During the walk dad was commenting on the fact that he felt fairly safe. Safe was not the foremost thought in my mind. I was thinking things more like dark, smelly, dirty, sketchy, etc… We were propositioned for a million and one tuk, tuk and scooter rides. We declined each because dad wanted to walk. When we finally arrived back to our gated pier we realized that the gate we exited was now closed.

The people on The Pandaw told us that we could come and go as we pleased so long as we returned by 8am when the boat was scheduled to depart. Needless to say we were a little dumbfounded by the closed gate. I thought I might be able to slide it open far enough for the two of us to fit through. No dice. As I continued to mess around with it a security guard who couldn’t have been more than 17 came over. Dad did his usual accented English, “We waaaaaaant to get on boaaaaaaaaat.” The guy shook his head up and down and yelled to someone else. A man who appeared to be in his 40’s came over. Dad again explained, “Paaaaaaaaaassenger on Paaaaaandaaaaaaaaaw”. The older security guy looked unimpressed.

As we were negotiating with the guards a tuk tuk driver pulled up behind us. “Tuk, tuk”… “no thanks”… “no you take tuk, tuk”. I felt like any second we were going to be forced into the tuk tuk and taken away as hostages. A good four minutes later the tuk tuk driver finally pulled off. I felt slightly safer at that point but I was still annoyed that after six minutes we had gotten nowhere with the gate keeper.

Dad continued to point to the Pandaw and pull stuff out of his pockets that had the ships name it. Eventually the older guy said “okay I call” and made a phone gesture. He took something out of his pocket that looked like a phone or a walky-talky but he didn’t appear to say anything into it. We stood outside of the gate for another few minutes. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get back on the boat, when all of the sudden the older guy just pulled a key out of his pocket, opened the people gate and let us through. He didn’t say anything when he did it and no one called him to say to let us in. Neither of us understood why he FINALLY decided to open the gate when he did. Maybe he realized we were not going to go away. It didn’t dawn on me until now (a day later) that he might have been waiting for a bribe. Regardless, dad and I were both happy to back on the Pandaw will all of our stuff safe and sound.

When we returned to our room we were both ready for bed. I was nearly asleep when I heard dad ask me, “Would you prefer Pulpy or Bless You”. I knew I was tired but I thought I heard him correctly so I asked “What are you talking about?” He said, “It’s time for a toilet paper change and we have Pulpy and Bless You.” I picked pulpy, which leads us to our Dr. P. fun fact of the day.

Dr. P. is obsessed with toilet paper. Any of you who have ever spent any time with him probably know that his paper product of choice is Charmin Ultra purchased in MASS quantities at Costco. One of his biggest fears in life, and sadly I am not kidding, is running out of toilet paper while on the john. I was curious as to where this weird obsession, and it is an obsession, came from. He thinks it is rooted in his history as a boy scout. He can remember having to search for leaves and always being concerned that he collected enough of the right kind of leaves. The poor boy, his mother really did mess him up ;~>

Have a good night,
Katy