City of Ghosts... and beyond...

Pygmy's latest posting inspire me to get a bit more visual. I really also wanted to do a Love-based piccy-thing... but certain tech things aren't facilitating this right now. Next time!

Here are some of my favourite pictures from my recent trip to Cambodia.



Late afternoon, Serendipity Beach, Sihanoukville. I love how this looks like it was done in oils... a happy mistake!




The view from the upstairs restaurant at Beach Road Hotel, where Anne and I stayed.



"Magic Geckos" along Street 240, my favourite place to sup and shop in Phnom Penh.



An elephant having its daily meal at La Croisette, view from Doll's balcony, Phnom Penh.



Lady Penh atop Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh. Doc was paying her tribute.



Mau, Doc's usual tuk-tuk driver, Phnom Penh. Funnily enough, he was also carting me and Anne around, before Doc got to PP... it really is a small world there.



The Bodhi in Kampot. I fell asleep here for a couple of hours when I was drunkenly dragged here much later that day...

Return to the Big Durian

I've actually been back for a week now, but am still allowing the decaying shroud of my holiday in Cambodia to envelop me. It's part of the reason why I procrastinated on completing what I imagined to be an easy travel piece on Phnom Penh, I didn't want to put it down into words, signalling it was over. The other reason was Buffy, and the way its taken over all my free time lately! Behold the new Whedonite.

It's not so bad being back actually. The trip to Cambodia was exactly what I needed -- relaxing, inspiring, heartwarming -- but I missed my family more than ever while away(I always want them with me in Cambodia), plus was spending money I don't really have, so returning to the family bosom was comforting. And I am more certain that I ever I will return to live next year, shortly after my contract is up. Hopefully I can find a job.

I've decided to stop trying to love Jakarta, I never will. It's just unsuited to me. I felt so content in Phnom Penh -- no doubt partly because its familiar and nostalgic, but also because its so much easier. No traffic, lots of lovely shopping and dining, a view of a river... open spaces. I may as well be living underground in Jakarta, so rarely am I willing to face outside, with thick air, thick traffic and lack of pavement. When someone in PP asked me what Jakarta was like, I tiredly answered Thick, and they nodded. The no-pavement thing is so annoying, but I guess rarely anyone walks from place to place here, so they don't need them. I won't go on like this because the theme is essentially that Jakarta sucks, Phnom Penh rules.

I wonder if I can truly like any new place, if there isn't a part of me embedded in it, so to speak. The only two cities I know I feel at home in are London and Phnom Penh -- and I am half-English (and went to uni in London) and grew up in the latter. Everywhere else I've been, in a living sense, rather than just a holiday way, has felt a bit off, perhaps that was simply unfamiliarity. I think back on my time in Dar es Salaam fondly, remembering it as a beautiful haven, at the same time, if I dig deeper, I also recall the profound loneliness and boredom. Jerusalem spooked me, despite the beauty of the Old Town, the tension could be felt everywhere, and at night I heard ancient howling (probably just the wind blowing around the Mount of Olives) that unnerved me (I worried if I properly listened to it, I could actually understand what the howls were 'saying'). I have this romantic idea of trying out a new city every year of my twenties. Cities that I imagine I might like to live in include San Francisco, New York, Edinburgh and New Orleans. For the sake of my area studies, I'd like to try some more Southeast Asian cities.

Other than all that, I guess almost everything I wanted this summer. Best friends visiting (Tofu and Anne), Cambodia, seeing Doc again, a proper holiday, all tangled up together.

I am back now. Time will pass. Better make the most of it. But for a bit longer, I will gaze at my too few holiday pics -- here is a shot of the tranquil Mekong in Kampot, just before the sun begins to set.

Holiday in Cambodia

Right now I am at the cheapo terminal in Kuala Lumpur, killing time before my flight to Phnom Penh. Due to bad weather conditions, it has been delayed by almost two hours.. so I have almost three hours to kill still, along with Anne, my laptop and book (which Anne has currently stolen!). I guess I could get some headway on the article I need to finish by the end of tomorrow. So very tired tho. Haven't been sleeping well lately, and just feeling generally run down. Hoping to catch a couple more hours on the next flight so I can be relatively fresh... we're meant to be meeting Doc's "husband", Doll, tonight -- it's his birthday. Anne met him a couple of months ago, when she was first in Phnom Penh, but its my first time.

The excitement over returning to my childhood home for the first time in four years hasn't really sunk in yet. I guess its trying to fight the exhaustion and disorientation. I have a lot to look forward to over the next two weeks... my favourite bits of Phnom Penh, the relative cheapness compared to moneysuck Jakarta, the relatively fresher air, the relative lack of traffic,the best part of a week on a beach, seeing Doc, focusing on my writing, taking a break from long days of copy-editing and commuting, seeing Devil and Pooh's mum and dad at their apparently beautiful new home in Kampot... just taking a break. I don't have high expectations this time. I just look forward to it generally and hope I come back feeling refreshed, with enough renewed spirit to slog out another four months at work, before my parents' three-week 25th anniversary cruise in December, and then another 3.5 months to see out my current contract.

Anyway, I actually don't mean to be so down on my job anymore... it's just been a long year so far, one thing to the next, and little chance to properly relax yet. I actually feel really grateful that I'm employed in a relevant field, particularly as a lot of my friends are struggling to find any kind of job at all. It's not a nice job world out there. I do know that I won't renew tho, Jakarta really isn't the place for me.

And unfortunately... the battery on my computer is near-dead and we can't seem to fit it into Anne's "universal" adaptor... so I better finish here.