Weekend, Insanity (part 2)

Wanted to get this up but no time to do pictures. Sorry.

Sunday

Woke up the next morning bright and early, and I’m hoping to go to the beach. The rest of my group thought going to the beach at a beach town would be a bad idea (?) so we went on a five mile hike in the hills instead. It ended up being really invigorating and we got great views of the ocean from up high. I however, like my fear of water, also fear snakes and there were a few too many on the trail for my liking. But I got a good work out.

I was going to be working in nearby Kampot for the rest of the day/Monday so work picked me up in Kep around lunch time. We had another great seafood feast – more prawns, more squid, and this time, fish soup! – and then headed into the communes once again. Here, we encountered a.) the worst road I have ever, ever driven on; b.) a commune still ruled by Khmer Rouge. Neither was pleasant at all. It took an hour to go less than 3 km and I’m pretty positive the van’s undercarriage and shocks are just blown to hell. And Mr. KR didn’t want us telling his people about human rights and wanted us to fire a few of the citizen advisors we had hired in the area. Our director got diplomatic and we eventually appeased him but it was tense and disheartening and we were all a bit upset about it.

So after that meeting we headed back to Kampot where we had yet another fresh seafood feast and then retreated to our guest house for the night. I got my own room, which was awesome, and I watched about half of V for Vendetta and some CNN before I fell asleep.

Monday

More communes, more bumpy roads. No huge animosity from any village leaders this time, which was a good thing.

On the way home we got stopped for a bit because the bridge in front of us had gone out. So, we just waited as they fixed it. We didn’t have to wait long, which was sorta disconcerting. As we crossed, I was convinced we were going into the river. They had just thrown a few sheets of metal across the hole and hoped it stuck. Thankfully we made it across. This was not the first blown-out or untrustworthy bridge we had encountered all weekend – at one point, we almost began to cross a bridge before realizing it had collapsed (yikes). But we made it every time, thankfully.

About 35 minutes after leaving the last commune in Chhuk district, a parade of ambulances and military vehicles full of soldiers were heading the opposite way down the road towards Kampot, which puzzled us all. I honestly thought a coup was going on and we were in the midst of it. Turns out a passenger plane had crashed in Chhuk, right where we were, about 15-20 minutes after we left, killing the 22 passengers and crew on board. What’s weird is that they couldn’t find the plane for days, and just found it this morning (Wednesday morning) after a government search, a reward from the prime minister for any information about the plane’s whereabouts, and a donation from the U.S. government of the use of two spy satellites to track it down. A little bit odd for my tastes. Won’t be getting on any domestic Cambodian flights soon, that’s for sure.

We got home and I was exhausted and hungry and on sensory overload from everything I had experienced all weekend. So I stopped in at the new hit restaurant in town, Pizza World (yes!), ate a medium deep dish pepperoni pizza w/unlimited orange Fanta (one of my more expensive meals in PP at $6 total), grabbed a tuk-tuk home and watched House / read the Corrections all night.

- m