Happy New Years from the FUTURE

Hey guys!
Thanks again for the comments. We are having a really good time here. The time difference is 14 hours ahead of California, so it's after 10AM New Year's Day here..and you guys are still waiting to celebrate, huh?

This is Jordan's journal entry from this morning:

Jan 1st 6:30 AM

I woke up to a rainy Phnom Pehn this morning. I've been up since around 5am, and Raina is still sleeping. I didn't stay up for New Years. We got back from the restaurant around 9:30 PM and I was in bed by 10PM, just too sleepy to even try for the two hours. Raina went with the rest of our group up to the rooftop to watch fireworks at midnight. Yesterday was great, my first real taste of Cambodia and I had several "I really love it here" moments. We had breakfast in the hotel, french bread with some waxy butter, watery juice, and some fried flat noodles that were surprisingly spicy but good. I ended up craving them until my next meal. They also had boiled brown eggs like Beth (the chicken I had as a kid) used to lay, but it wasn't cooked all the way so I didn't eat it.

After that we went to the internet cafe, then back to the hotel to unpack our stuff. We went to lunch at the 'Boat Noodle' restuarant with our group of 12 students. It was small and simple, on the corner of an intersection. most of the people there were locals, but the menu had both Khmer and English, which i guess is typical here. I ordered Pad Thai and a bottle of water (we've since learned to take 2 water bottles every where). The food was amazing, probably the best Asian food I've ever had. It cost around 5000 RL which is about $1.25. Raina was more adventurous and ordered a Khmer dish of Chicken and Banana Bud Soup (still don't know exactly what a banana bud is). It turned out to be very spicy. She ate a lot of it, but appeared to be in some pain by the end of the meal. We walked the short distance back to the hotel amid the shouts of "Tuk-Tuk, you want Tuk-Tuk?"

There are generally sidewalks everywhere around this part of the city at least, but it seems like they also double as parking spots, with half the car on the sidewalk and half in the street, so we end up walking in the street more than we'd like, dodging in the insane traffic. My first day here we had to cross a main street with two lanes of fast and bizarre traffic (cross walks haven't been invented yet). I don't think I would have had the courage to cross if I hadn't been in such a large group of people. I saw a motorbike the other day piled high with dead chickens (at least I think they were dead) all their little feet were tied to the seat.

So after lunch the 12 of us hired three of the tuktuk drivers, who hang out in front of our hotel all day, to take us to the Russian Market. The Russian Market would be better named Humid Labyrinth. It's sort of an indoor mall I guess, in the sense that every vendor is stuck next to another one, and the whole thing is covered by bits of make-shift roof to keep the rain off of their stuff. I'm not sure how large it is, we were there 2 hours and never found our way across the whole thing. Everyone seemed to be selling almost identical wares, so it was hard to tell if you had been to a particular stand before. There were sections with clothes, places with souvenirs, like statues, paintings, etc. Deep inside the market we found a very hot restaurant type of place, a grocery section selling fresh produce, fresh meat (ew), and a motorbike repair place. We didn't buy very much because we still have to budget for the whole trip, but I'm definetly going back there before I leave. We did get some shirts, scarves, and fruit.
To go back to the hotel, we had told the tuk-tuk drivers to meet us back at a certain time. So after somewhow navigating our way out of the labyrinth through were we had entered (this was entirely by accident), we looked for our driver. I remembered him because he was an old toothless guy with glasses and a bucket hat with a green tuktuk, that all together reminded me of a turtle. He was very excited when we came back to him amidst all the other drivers.

Back at the hotel everyone took their midday shower. I mention this because I slipped and fell in my shower. This could have been disasterously worse than it was, I ended up one hand inside the toilet to break by fall, and bruised knees. Smooth.
THen about an hour later, I was entering the elevator to go to the hotel lobby, and discovered elevator doors here don't stop for you if you are in the way. That's right. I walked in as the doors were closing (they close pretty fast) and they clamped shut on me!! I had to pull myself out--it would not let me go. I guess the damage was more mental than physical here. Those doors make me nervous now and I wonder what I would do if I had broken my knee in the shower.

The 12 of us went to dinner around 7 PM to a nice (but more touristy) restaurant near the hotel. The food wasn't as good as the first place (twice as expensive!) but the ambiance was amazing. It was the first time we had to take our shoes off somewhere. We ate out on a covered balcony, and it was pouring rain. The table was low to the ground and we sat on cushions. There were candles on the tables and red paper lanterns overhead. It was a really beautiful place.

Raina: Ditto, and my hands are tired from typing! You have to SMASH the keys. The Russian Market has officially replaced used bookstores as my favorite place to shop.
There is so much more I'd love to say.

Happy New Year 2009!

~Raina and Jordan


P.S. All of the toilet paper is pink and Jordan's nose is popular here.