My last full day in Cambodia already! Well, at least it was fun and I saw a bit more of the city. Jessica and I hit the markets in the afternoon and sort of ate our way across town. We tried some delicious street foods again. Yeah.

Then we spend quite a long time walking around in the covered market looking for cool clothes and collectables. We were also trying to avoid the torrential rain that was flooding the streets.

I also had a chance to once again drink a delicious set of iced coffee and tea, the best in the city according to a plaque signed by “three Danish coffee lovers.” The older man running the stand had been in business there since 1980 which is actually pretty amazing especially considering the history of the period.

Pretty slow and easy day here. I got up a little late and walked around the corner to a great Indian food restaurant that I have been eating at a lot. It seems like many Indians from Tamil Nadu and Kerala live here, so the South Indian food is great. 

After eating breakfast, I walked around the city for a while. I went to a big wat that way focused around Angkor stone monumentalism and the cosmic Buddha. I am not sure why the cosmic Buddha is so much more popular here than in other places, but it seems to be. 

I went to an expat coffee shop that caters to the white, wealth, and sometimes snobbish coffee drinkers about town. I have to say it was good coffee though. I continued to get my caffeine on throughout the day as most small snack meals and street food come with unlimited tea if you go to the right spots. 

After walking around for an hour or so I found myself in some of the older housing projects that are starting to disintegrate even as they continue to be inhabited my many many people. While in the area I picked up a bunch of sour cherries for a street vendor and proceeded to eat them all as I walked around.

Perhaps it was not the best idea to eat a pound of unwashed super ripe sour fruit, but in the end (no pun intended), my stomach was only mildly distressed. 

In the evening I went to a local bar that was hosting “nerd night,” where many expats, young academics, and NGO workers meet to present on their topics of interest. I watched my friend Jessica give a great Pecha Kucha  talk about the golden age of Cambodian film. Pretty fun night out really.

Amazing day today! I started out early by heading off to the old Royal Palace. It was very cool and just as shiny and grand as I remember. Inside the compound there are several buildings and a few temples that were used by the royal family and in the affairs of court. There is also a wraparound mural that is several hundred feet long and, despite its state of decomposition, is actually really cool to walk along and look at. The Royal Palace seems to be a big hit on the tourist circuit. I looked back at my old photographs and memories from my visit about ten years ago and there was absolutely no other tourists around except for a few monks. This time there were hordes…wait is that offensive… of Chinese tour groups. It was almost as impressive a transformation as the palace itself.

Next stop was the National Museum which has a number of great holdings from around Cambodia. It also does a great job displaying the contemporary nationalist narrative of the Cambodian nation through semi-outrageous maps and historical claims. I also found out that the museum building itself is a UN World Heritage Site. Pretty fancy, eh?

After my morning out, I met up with my friend Jessica from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She is here studying Khmer and doing research for her M.A. thesis on Cambodian film in the 1950s and 1960s. She has been living here for several weeks, so I totally leaned on her local, and linguistic, knowledge. We walked around the city for several hours eating local street foods, finding a currency exchange, and generally having an awesome time.

One particular highlight was our visit to Olympic Stadium, a large public space created for sports and recreation in the 1950s (or 1960s maybe?). As we climbed to the top of the stadium, a massive rain and thunderstorm broke out and we had to run around to a covered food area with all the other locals. We spent about forty-five minutes under a concrete roof looking out at the city as rain poured around us. It was great fun and we used the time to eat ice cream, drink orange drink, and sample pressed sugarcane juice. After the rain stopped there was a great rainbow that stretched in a high arch above the stadium. It was pretty fantastic.

I finished the night off with some delicious and cheap southern Indian food. I find that tall food is often more delicious, and this dosa lived up to that claim! Yummm!