Day 28: 5/7/13
We had some free time this morning so we didn't have to be up at all hours! We were up by 9 anyway and we went to the Palace. When we were jjst leaving the hotel one of the women was coming out of a tuc-tuc from the palace. She reccommended getting a tuc-tuc as it was confusing to get there, so we did that. I think the driver drove around in a bit of a circle but we had agreed on a dollar before we left anyway, so that's all he got!
Annmarie had to buy trousers to cover her legs as they wouldn't let her in with a skirt- the trousers were hilarious- like a purple sack of potatoes!
We wandered around the palace grounds then. There were a lot of areas prohibited and there weren't many buildings you could enter. The building that seemed to be called the palace was a big room with paintings and chandeliers and a throne in the centre. You couldn't even go in though, you could only look in the windows and doors over a rope! So that seemed a bit pointless! We went to another building then called the Silver Pagoda which had a big golden Buddha in it- apparently made of 9kg of gold! There were loads of little ornaments and things in there that you could look at aswell. There were a few other buildings with Buddhas and things in them too. There was a model of Angkor Wat surrounded by a pond with fish in it. There were nice water fonts in the garden too with lily-pads in them and lovely purple flowers. The grounds and the buildings were very ornate and pretty- it's a good job as there wasn't much else in it!
At the exit there was a little shop where we stopped to have an ice-cream and there were people playing Cambodian music with the xylophone instruments again! There were a few displays there too like traditional houses and clothes and there was also a room with the royal seats/thrones that would be out on the elephants.
The palace closes from 11-2 and it was after 11 when we were ready to leave, but we didn't even realise it. We went to go out the gate but it was closed so we thought there must be another one and we were walking around for ages and didn't find one! We were getting a bit worried then as we had to leave at 2, but luckily someone else went to go out the exit and knew where the other exit was! We got a tuc-tuc back to the hotel then and got out stuff ready to check out. When we went downstairs most other people were there too checking out after whatever activity they had done in the morning.
Two of them- Colin and Jess were going to the Central markets so myself and Ann-Marie went with them. There was a bit of everything at the markets- clothes, shoes, beauty products, household items, jewellery, electronics- anything you could have wanted! There weren't many souvenirs but we didn't even want to buy anything so we were happy enough with that! We spent about twenty minutes at a jewellery stall looking at rings. I liked one that was too small but she pulled out every ring she had then and then I found one I really liked. Ann-Marie got one too. She usually charges $17 she said for the one I had, but $15 for me. We managed to get her down to $18 for the two rings, just 9 each, which was great! We didn't even know if we really wanted them which seems to be the key to bargaining- pretend you don't want it at all!!
We got the bus to the homestay then at 2pm and our guide had bought the film 'Killing Fields' for us to watch. I wasn't sure how horrific it was going to be but it wasn't too bad as it was from the point of view of an American journalist who had been in Cambodia and was a completely true story. The journalist, his phtographer and his interpreter were captured a few times and let go but when they went to flee the country (the US bailed out before the Khmer Rouge took over) the interpreter couldn't go with them. They showed him them in a village situation where he had no freedom to do what he wanted although they didn't show much of the torture or anything. He escaped and after a lot of drama got through the border and managed to get to the US where his family were. The actor who played the character was a Cambodian who had been a prisoner in the Khmer Rouge time and he won an Oscar for best supporting actor. A few years after the film he was killed in LA.
The view along the way was pretty good aswell as we were getting more rural all the time. We had to drive over rickety bridges that you wouldn't dream of cycling a bike over, not to mind a bus! They all have little wooden houses and in the afternoon and evening when the work is done you can see them all sitting around outside their houses. So there's plenty to look at! There were people out moving cows aswell so we got stuck in the middle of them. The cows are skinnier and are sort of hump-backed and have lots of loose skin around the neck- most of them are sort of a beige or brown colour aswell.
We arrived at the Home stay around 6 o'clock. We were brought to the houses first to show us our rooms. I was expecting a row of mattresses on the ground and all of us sleeping more or less side by side. But we were split into three different houses. There were four beds in our room for five people so Ann-Marie and I shared a bed. But they were proper double beds up off the ground and everything so we were well impressed.
We were shown the toilet aswell which was more or less an outhouse. It was a squat toilet, so a hole in the ground and they have a little tank of water beside us with a little saucepan to put water into the toilet. We were all hoping we wouldn't have to trek out there in the middle of the night!
We didn't meet the family we were staying with really. They were standing around when we were brought in to check out the room. Then we were brought to a community centre where they were going to cook dinner for us. There's about 300 women that cooked for us so they don't have to cook that often.
We had a presentation first from a tour guide from the area. He had learned English from some volunteers that worked in the area a few years ago. He was giving us a run-down on the history of the people in the area. There were a lot of Khmer Rouge in the area so the government moved them away from the area. They were in one area for a while and then moved back but had to move to refugee camps again shortly after. Most of them, including the guide and his family lived in refugee camps for over ten years. Even when Pol Pot died they couldn't come back because there were lots of landlmines in the area and they had to be removed. The Khmer regime ended in 1979, Pol Pot died in 1998 but they didn't get back to their land until around 2003- only 10 years ago! So even though the fighting has been over for a while their lives are only coming back to normal now.
Children danced for us before dinner. They did similar dances to the ones at the temple club- the blessing dance and the coconut dance. They did two other dances aswell, one was a Muslim dance and I can't remember the other one. At the end they sang a song for us to say thank you.
The dinner was like the house we ate in in Kompong Cham- curry, rice, noodles, etc and watermelon for dessert. Then they lit a fire and were dancing around it. We were all out trying to get our hands to bend back like they do and trying to copy the salsa type of steps they do. There were men from the community dancing and their dancing was so like salsa- it's weird! The English girls, Hannah and Steff, wanted to know how to do Irish dancing so myself and Ann-Marie showed them how to do 1,2,3's and the side-step! We did shoe the donkey then- I had one girl and Ann-Marie had the other. It was good craic! One of the Australian guys, Colin, wanted to know how to do it then so we showed him aswell.
We went back to the house we were staying in then and the woman of the house frightened the life out of us because she was standing in the gate in the dark waiting for us! She showed us into the room and they had everything all organised for us- they had boiled water in a kettle and left the water and glasses for us, they had the mosquito nets down over the bed and they had toilet paper in the toilet! So they were really kind to us! We had an interesting trek to the toilet then as there was a cow near it, tied up in the dark! We survived though and settled down to sleep fairly quickly.