Jakey Jake

Wednesday 17th March
2 hour drive to the border with a short stop at a laquer factory to see how the production process works and they were hoping that we would make a purchase, no such luck from this boy, not really my scene although i have to admitthey were quite talented artisans. Crossing the border meant lugging our bags about 1 km between 2 gateways, with a lot of paperwork at either end. although it seems as though you can speed the process up a little with a nice little cash handout. Met our new tour leader, tear. His english wasnt the greatest so its going to take a lot of energy to listen and understand him. we drove a further 5 hours into Phenom Phen. Surrounding the city was a shitload of poor people in what was clearly a much more poor nation than that of Vietnam. Seemed to be a lot more beggars on the street than in Nam. after driving around the city a bit we stopped at a corn plantation to taste the local corn. then we headed off for dinner. It was true Khmer food, and i must say it was divine. i started witha green mango salad with dried seafood and cashews, followed by a pineapple that was cored and filled with rice, rasins, cashews, pineapple and pork… YARM!!!! followed that up with some fruit and had a couple of local beers of the angkor variety. Damn it im over drinking beer, makes me feel so bloated and it tastes shit too, but the wine tastes like its been sitting out in the sun all day long, mmm vinegar NOT. after that we trekked out to see the phenom phen nightlife. Full of pros… oh yay mostly some pretty bad bars although we found one where we could dance. On arriving we were padded down for weapons, a truly great sign of a good club. after dancing for a couple of hours we headed back to frenchies room to continue the party, and later retiring for bed about 1.