The Road to Phnom Penh

     It was a crazy night at the hotel.  Maybe I'd become spoiled by the utter quiet at the Project, but there surely seemed to be an inordinate amount of noise all night long at the hotel--sounded like a 
party at which the primary event was out-shouting one another.  Later we saw a couple of vans in the parking lot filled with young men in uniform--the likely culprits.  I asked Jack who they could be, and he said they were Chinese Army soldiers who worked at a nearby GOLD MINE!  Is there ANYTHING ordinary about this country?




     I took a couple pictures of my friends Becca and Megan as they gazed out over the parking lot waiting for our pick-up.


So.  We loaded ourselves into the car and sped off for Phnom Penh.  Mysteriously, the way back was much shorter than the way there had been.  I took a number of rather impressionistic photos--not something I was trying to do, but simply a by-product of being a
 passenger in a speeding vehicle driven by

someone whose language I don't speak.  Not even enough to say "Slow down!  I want to take a picture!"   As a result, here are some strange pix that TRY to depict the phenomenal deforestation being done by the Chinese.  I am positive that at least a couple more MILES of forest immediately adjacent to the highway had gone down just in the two weeks I'd been at the Project.  This was once a NATIONAL PARK, but the Cambodian government sold it to the Chinese so that they could clear the jungle and make more rubber plantations.  The financial pressure on a country as poverty-stricken as Cambodia is enormous.  It's easy to vilify the Chinese, but to be honest, what have we Americans been doing for the last 150 years but exporting OUR catastrophic environmental exploitation, not to mention exporting our equally catastrophic WARS?
     

     This is how a fairly mature rubber plantation looks at 60 mph--well, I was travelling 60 mph.  The rubber plantation was more-or-less stationery.
     We arrived in Phnom Penh.  I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit this, but at this point in my trip I wasn't up for the minimalistic housing available at the Three Rivers.  Jack suggested that I "upgrade" to the new hotel next door and helped me get started checking in.  Oh my!   What a shock!

     Picture this hot, sweaty, filthy, tired woman standing at the desk of this ultra-modern BOUTIQUE hotel.  That would be me.   Here's this extensive hugely eager-to-please staff, crisply uniformed, in a hotel that has been open two WEEKS.  That would be the staff of the King Grand Boutique Hotel.
When one of them brought me a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice over ICE (something I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks), I admit it:  I practically wept. 

      I was escorted to my room and was stunned to find it VERY luxuriously appointed.  I was so moved that I just had to take photos of the decadent appointments.  Isn't it lovely?  And did I mention that the rate for this room was $38.50?  That they brought a laptop to my room so I could catch up on my email?  That the chef made me a sandwich since they were no longer open for lunch, and that it was accompanied by an ice cold glass of chardonnay?  That I had a gorgeous BALCONY??  That they did my LAUNDRY????????
      Although I was undecided as to whether I should be feeling guilty, I never appreciated being pampered so very much.