Death valley supports a surprising amount of life. I was expecting grey desert, but there *is* water (I saw a puddle, although it was so salty you’d be seriously ill if you drank it) and vegetation. Life goes on. Bangkok felt similar, with people just getting on with it – stalls in front of shops, a little cafe below a dual-carriageway bridge, street vendors on street corners.
On the skytrain to the airport, scenes alternated between run-down residential areas, industrial sites and affluent developments. The landscape is an intriguing mixture of concrete and lush vegetation. I wasn’t sad to leave, because I knew I’d be coming back.. I may even plan to spend a few more days here before my flight home, and wondered how I’d feel about returning to somewhere months, and hopefully many adventures, later…
Smallest commercial plane I’ve ever been on – it was more like a single-decker bus with wings. It was a bumpy ride with a flight path like a traffic cone: up, along a little bit, and back down.
I totally needed the chocolate cupcake:
Arriving Siem Reap (pronounced “See-um Ree-up”) was uneventful, apart from the man at passport control who would benefit from some customer service training (his distaste for all who crossed his path was almost tangible). Cambodian writing was the first thing I noticed – distinctly different from Thai (but still completely unintelligible to someone who only speaks Latin-based languages).
“Is this the bus into the centre?” I asked three blokes throwing their bags in the back of a minivan.
“Sure, hop in.” Turns out it was their hotel transfer… and that my hotel was only three doors away. But, unfortunately, the driver was wrong, and it wasn’t. I grabbed a map, and headed in vaguely the right direction. And then the heavens opened:
Not for the first time, I arrived (an hour later) at my hotel dripping and tired. And again, they couldn’t have been nicer (but no upgrade – perhaps I should have mentioned my pants 😉 ).
Some random information about Cambodia (not verified, but from fairly reliable sources):
- It’s about one and a half times the size of England
- It has a population of about 15 million
- 90% are Khmer
- 96% are Theravada Buddhist
- 20% of the population were killed by the Khmer Rouge (so now 15 million)
- 50% are younger than 15 years old
- It uses US dollars (USD), with the Cambodian riel (KHR) only for amounts below $1
- With an average annual income of just $944 per capita, it’s the third poorest country in Asia (after Nepal and Bangladesh)
- It has one of the highest rates of deforestation: primary rainforest cover fell from over 70% (1970) to just 3.1% (2007)
- Cambodia has changed its name more frequently than almost any other country in the world – a sign of its turbulent past…?
- Traditionally, birthdays are not celebrated in Cambodia. Older people might not even know their birthdays.