Weekend fun

January 22nd

On Friday night I went back to this little garden café which served 2 for 1 morjitos and then we went to eat at a dodgy little Chinese "restaurant" near the Psar Thmey, where the dumpling were soggy and dripping in oily water (I was sick the next morning). Then we went to Teukei where I found Corrine and Cedric. I sat with them and met this Belgian guy called Amori who was really fun and his new house mate, who arrived a day before me, Clayre. She's really nice. We started talking when we went to the new cool club which just open "The Rock". We'd drove past it a few times and it's this gigantic dome shaped building. We arrived and a car keeper showed us the way to park our car, a little side road. We quickly understood why: the car park in front of the building had only huge, shiny and so luxurious 4x4s… This new cool place is for rich son of ministers etc. Well, it was quite an experience. Everything inside was demesurate. Thousand of staff dressed in bow tie and long silk dresses. An immense concert hall with table and couches in front of the stage. At first it was Cambodian stuff. But from 1am a Cambodian DJ started playing western tunes and then the 3 Cambodian who'd sand the Cambodian crap before turned up again and started doing ricky martin, whitney Huston, destiny's child…The whole experience was bizarre cos this is another face of Cambodia I didn't know. The few filthy rich people. I mean the only thing we could afford there was Angkor beer. We though about ordering the 250$ chateau of I don't know what and then just leave after they opened it though…

Anyway, that was fun. So I got chatting to Clayre a lot, who's my age (people are usually at the very least 26 (Guillaume), but mostly between 28-35) and she's already lived in Mali a few time and is really interesting and nice person. We agreed to go shopping at the Russian market Saturday and go to the pool Sunday. Then we went to the Heart of Darkness, another NGO worker and expat filled people. By then I was too tired to have fun. It's hard going out Friday night when you've been waking up a 6.30 everyday of the week and still have to get up at 6.3o the next morning.

Which it was. I was so tired I didn't do any productive work. The morning went so slow, I swore to myself I would never go out so late on a Friday again. But it's a pain. I always thought weekend were too short in the first place, but just 1 day to sleep in is just not fair. Especially since your body is so used to getting up early, and it so F*** loud outside anyway, that you never sleep beyond 8 anyway on Sundays. Anyway, so yesterday I met Clayre after work (and a 1 hour nap) at the Russian market and again I spent too much money. But I wanted to buy a few decorations to make my new room homely. Julie and Silvere have moved out yesterday and I get their bigger room. I need to decorate it now otherwise I'll never do it.

Then we went for drinks at hers and then went for a meal and then we decided to go for a drink on the riverside. We walk out of the restaurant (which by the way, was a rip off. There were no prices on the menu and we asked how much stuff was. One lady would say it in Khmer and the other lady would translate a completely different price. Like she said the fried rice was 6000, so I hear that and I say it again and she says no no, 15000. I just laughed and said no, no, I understood what she said and she said 6000. In the end they charged us 8000. Pissed me off a bit that the price vary according to skin color but at least I got us out of paying more than double the normal price)

Anyway, so we come out of the restaurant and as usual, a group of motodop parked outside raise their hand and yell out "moto?". WE went to one of them and said Sisowath quay and he nodded. We sat and started chatting, not looking where we were heading. Then we started getting suspicious when he does a U turn in the middle of a road. He goe to a small side street and we remind him where he's going. I mean, we couldn't possible ask for a place in Phnom Penh which is more well-known. Then, he just stopped. Talked o a lady outside a closed restaurant. Again we tried to explains to him that we wanted to go to the riverfront. We said Tonle Sap, Royal Palace, FCC, everything so that we would go in that direction but he was asking questions to this lady and then pointed us to go to that restaurant instead. We were like that's it. And we walked away. So here we were wondering in an unknown place in Phnom Penh at night. Was pretty dead. We found more or less where we were and then another motodop driver came up to us. This guy was even worse. We knew in which direction we needed to go but he wouldn't listen to us. He was driving like a maniac and in the completely wrong direction. He was just laughing and repeating what we were saying. It wasn't long before he realized he was completely high on glue or something. We arrived at Wat Phnom round about and he went around it at high speed, in the wrong direction. We were so freaked out. At one point another motorbike going in the right direction had to do a serious swerve to avoid collision. So we asked him to stop. We looked at are map and saw which way we needed to go. We directed him the whole way and as soon as we saw the Palace we said ok that's it, take you money and we'll walk from here. And his eyes were clearly shiny and red. Scary experience, but kinda funny as well.

We were disappointed by the bars there. They're filled by old American and Australians chatting up the waitresses. It's not even expats in these bars, it's tourists, which is even worse. We had a few beers there and then we headed off to his party she knew was going on. There we saw Julie, Silvere and Guillaume, who were all like, hi, what a surprise to see you here, we'd thought we'd missed you

Well, so here I am. It's Sunday morning and I woke up at 8. I'm alone at the casa with Guillaume but hopefully I should be meeting Clayre this afternoon to go to the pool. It's quite cloudy outside and it was raining a bit earlier, but it shouldn't last.