Ha! Ha! I am a cliche.

When I got back to Phnom Penh I stayed by a lake in the north of the city. Well, I say a lake...it was really more like an enormous toxic puddle that had a weird rotting metal smell if you got too close. There is a cul-de-sac of a road running down one side of it which is crammed with pack-packer hostels, Western restaurants, book exchanges, money changers, music download places etc. Basically it made the Khoa San Road in Bangkok look positively open and ethnic by comparison. At least you could walk through that from one Thai-ish bit of the city to another. Once you got into this place you were trapped in a web of Westernism. Anyway I embraced it wholeheartedly for a bit. Ate steak and mash (there was a place called The Lazy Gecko which had the best sauces I have ever tasted. The blue cheese sauce was to die for. Shame the staff were fantastically unfriendly. The blurb in the menu went to great pains to point out that it was a Western run place and the Cambodian staff were paid a decent wage, had health benefits, holidays etc. which may explain it. Give people Western conditions and you get Western surliness. Keep 'em hungry and they have to work for their tips. Just kidding...a bit.) and downloaded an Orb album (got a massage in Siem Riep and the floaty music gave me a childish desire for some of the ambient gubbins I used to listen to as a youngster whilst on acid) which I 'zoned out' to whilst enjoying a beer in a guesthouse bar overlooking the lake (which may be deadly to human life should you fall in but does at least look nice) as the sun was setting. These places are fun and quite welcome occasionally but I find them a bit suffocating after a while so I headed on to Kampot (was horrible hungover for the journey...first time I have travelled with a hangover since leaving Bangkok oh-so-many moons ago) for a couple of days and am now in Sihanoukville on the coast which will be my jumping off point to get back into Thailand.
Will write some more later but the internet is quite expensive here.
Toodles.
By the way, I don't know if Kevin is reading this blog but if he is he will no doubt be vindicated and happy to know that I also downloaded Stevie Wonder - The Definitive Collection. Okay, okay, he is rather good (although I Don't Know Why I love you is a big pile of plops).