The girls hit Phnom Penh!

Hi everyone,

Mum has arrived safe & sound in Cambodia and we are taking Phnom Penh by storm! She only just got off the place, dumped her bags at the hotel and it was straight to the pub to watch the football - and of course Holland gave Brazil a beating :)

Over the last couple of days we've enjoyed seeing the major tourist sights and also getting down with the locals. We visited the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and headed over to the S21 Genocide Museum. It's still as creepy as the first time, but I thought it was important for mum to see. We skipped the killing fields though, in favour of shopping at the Russian Market (hey, we're just girls at the end of the day)

Me and Mum at the Royal Palace

Statue of Hang, the sacred golden bird (he's the bird on top of the Japanese temples)

I have a picture of me in this same pose from 2008

Mum at the S21 genocide museum

Me buying a pair of Ray-Bans, and yes that is a new scarf

Me and Mum in a tuk-tuk on the way to the Russian Market

The Russian market is arguably the biggest baddest market in all of Phnom Penh, the only competition might be the Central Market but that's currently undergoing some renovation and parts of it are closed/temporarily relocated. At the Russian market you can buy everything and anything, including tons of stuff you didn't even know you needed/wanted. Of course there are millions of stalls selling Cambodian silk scarves - I nearly had a nosebleed, you all know how much I love scarves, and they're all so BEAUTIFUL and CHEAP - handbags, purses, wallets, notebooks with silk covers, dresses, luggage tags - you name it, they can make it out of silk. Lots of other touristy stuff too, like Buddha statues, chopsticks etc. It's to be expected, and fun to browse.

Spot the tall whitey! haha (inappropriate?)

scarves as far as the eye can see!

Mum with her first purchase - a couple of Cambodia kromas (cotton SCARVES)

One cool and very unique thing we found at the Russian Market was a lady selling custom-made silver name necklaces in Khmer script (a la Carrie from Sex and the City). Mum bought me one as a present :) "May Lee"was a bit short so we added ''koung" to the front which means "child", as in you are the child of somebody; it seemed fitting since it was a present from mum. Here it is:

Here's us having lunch somewhere

Today we had an awesome morning. After breakfast mum wanted to buy some fruit so we headed over to a smaller local market and checked out all the produce for sale. We had fun checking out all the tropical fruits, veges, herbs and meats - any and all parts of the animal on display. After picking up a pineapple for morning tea we headed deeper into the market for a look-see, where we stumbled upon a pocket that can only be described as the secret women's enclave of Phnom Penh. (I found one of these by accident the other day in another small market as well, it's like finding a secret level on a video game :P) It's rows after rows of salon market stalls - a bunch of girls with a sink, mirror, pots of dye, hair dryers, straighteners, bunches of hair for extensions, and innumerable pots of nail polish. Mum had been saying she needed to go to the hairdresser, so I said "why not here?" She looked a bit doubtful at first, but the girls (who spoke about 3 words of English) were really nice and said "madam, you sit! you sit!" A guy who was passing by translated and said a wash, cut and blow dry would cost $1.50 - bargain! So mum sat in the chair and the girls started washing her hair and gave her the best head massage ever.

I started to feel a bit left out at this stage. I spotted a few pairs of hair straighteners lying around and after another round of miming and "lost in translation", 5 minutes later I was in the chair with 2 Cambodian girls carefully and professionally straightening my hair. Bliss!! I can't believe how much my hair has grown in 3 months. When my hair was nearly done, one of the girls said "madam, colour?"pointing at my feet. I took that to mean pedicure, and at 75c I said why not?? :) (I have learned Khmer numbers, extremely useful) Mum had to have a pedicure too of course.

So an hour or so later we walked out of there looking like supermodels and feeling like a million bucks :)


Of course the Cambodian girls found it hilarious that I was a whole head taller than all of them but they were delighted that mum had come to travel with me, family being so important to Asian cultures. Everyone thinks mum is Khmer (and I thought I was getting it bad). She's been here 2 days and every single person treats her like a local.

Just a random picture of an elephant walking down main street in front of a posh hotel, between all the motorbikes

Khmer street delicacies - roadkill, entrails and insects

Off to Sihanoukville in a couple of days for some beach time, kampot pepper and fresh mud crabs. Until next time!

xx ML