We were up a raring to go after a good night’s sleep.  The only problem it was 3:30am, which would be 2:30pm at home.  Day 2 was going to be a long one.  We laid around in our room for about 3 hours trying to fall back to sleep, but it was to no avail.  6:30am, time for breakfast!  Here’s how time messed up we were.  My lovely wife NEVER gets dressed to go down for breakfast when we’re out of town.  Normally, we get room service, which more times than not is bad food and way overpriced and then I’m in a bad mood.  To counter that,  I usually end up searching for a local breakfast place and bringing back to our room.  However, on this particular day, I suppose because she’d been up for 3 hours, she was dressed, coiffed, makeupped, and actually wanting to go to the breakfast buffet in the hotel.  Downstairs we went to the breakfast buffet after having been greeted by numerous hand clasped bows along the way.  “Good morning Mr. And Mrs. Davis, we hope you slept well.  Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”  Yesterday was a blur so were they really that nice or were we just that tired?  Today confirmed that they really are that nice.

We make our way to the restaurant, the same that serves Off with sparkling water.  No Off this time even though we choose to sit outside.  Of course everyone does the hand clasp bow and we’re talking about 7 or 8 more in the restaurant than the 10 we passed in the hotel lobby.  The handclasp bow is interesting, and you best learn it quickly in Cambodia because they expect a reciprocal hand clasp bow from you.  The proper way to handclasp is not to put your hands together with palms touching.  No the hands must be joined at your fingertips and slightly bowed as you go down your hands so that the clasp resembles a lotus flower showing respect.  The touching fingertips then are to touch either your chest, chin, nose or forehead.  The higher the touch, the more respect you are given.  A chest touch means, hey you’re just like me, get lost. Chin touch is for an elder or teacher, someone you show more respect for than your lowly equals.  The nose touch is for monks or perhaps royalty and the forehead touch is reserved for bowing to Buddha.  We consistently ranked at slightly below the chin, the “I should show you respect but you don’t have any clue what I’m doing but I really like those tips and boy do you Americans tip way too much but who’s complaining and, My Buddha!, you’re old, too!” touch.  Then, again, you’re expected to hand clasp bow back and we really don’t know what we’re doing.  Hate to admit it but we are terrible hand clasping bowers.  So many times I’d have something in my hands, it was impossible to clasp.  I’m convinced they time everything around the hand clasped bow, because it seemed they never had anything in their hands while bowing.  Enough about the hand clasp bowing.  Back to food!

Breakfast buffet, inside or out? Out please, beautiful morning.  Sparking please.  Hold the Off.  The glass door to the breakfast buffet is held open for us and we enter the breakfast Nirvana (Buddha would be proud of that descriptor, wouldn’t he?).  More bowing by the staff, but I have no time for bowing, this is too good to be true.  Croissants, pain au chocolates, fresh baguettes, other breads, cakes, a Bloody Mary set up station (did not partake for the record), a fruit station with passionfruit, dragonfruit (red and white flesh tiny seeds that looks like black ants have found a new home), cantaloupe, pineapple cut into flower shapes, some kind of cold oatmeal looking stuff, a salmon/charcuterie station.  Need I go on? Ok. An Asian station with noodle soup, dim sum, sticky rice, and finally the chefs in the back will cook you eggs, omelette, waffles, and whatever you damn well please!  Hampton Inn has a few things to learn.  Best part, breakfast is included!  Needless to say, Ms. Lisa dressed for breakfast each morning we were there.  She refused to miss the Raffles breakfast buffet.

Stuffed, it was finally time to go explore the city.  The bellman hails a tuk-tuk and we are off to the Royal Palace.  Back into traffic again, eyes wide open tightly clutching the tuk-tuk’s armrest, watching the driver pull out directly head on into traffic as cars, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, miraculously clear a path.  If this was the US, there wouldn’t be enough tickets for a cop to write.  Everyone and I mean EVERYONE is committing a US driving violation, several all at once.

In about 15 minutes of hair-raising vehicle dodging tuk-tuk driving, we made it to the Royal Palace.  Before we go there, you have to understand, a tuk-tuk has no seat belts, no sides just a top and no chance if it gets hit by a car, truck, or bus. Yet it is the main means of transportation in Phnom Penh for folks without a means of transportation, more than taxis. There’s a joke in Phnom Penh that the four most spoken words there are “You want tuk-tuk?” The other thing is you don’t know what they’re going to cost until the ride is over, but it doesn’t matter because $4 for a 20 minute ride seems very fair. Right? On the subject of money, let me mention this, too, the US dollar is one of two official currencies in Cambodia (why print your own money when you can use someone else’s?).  I read you should take $2 bills because you use them everywhere and Cambodians often don’t have change for larger bills. I brought 50 $2 bills only to find out the country no longer accepts them (really do need to pay more attention to the dates something is published on the Net).  I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one to read that because in many of the glass donation boxes in the temples we visited, there were A LOT of fresh $2 bills, a good use for obsolete $2 bills. Let the monks figure out what to do with them! Here’s a picture from the inside of a tuk-tuk if you’ve never been in one.

The Royal Palace is a compound of several beautiful buildings with a few dead royalty tombs called stupas scattered about.

Some stupas for your enjoyment.

Cambodia is a single party state. The Cambodia People’s Party rules and has done so since the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991. It’s a Communist party, which is odd because capitalism is everywhere. What’s odder is that the communist ruling party reestablished the monarchy in 1993 after Pol Pot evicted them and the Viet Cong left the country after 10 years of occupation (are you learning anything?).  The monarchy has no political power and not a lot of money, but the King lives very well. Here’s the thing about the beloved King. Nearly every guide says, “You know about our King?” wink, wink. No, I do not. “He’s 67 years old has never been married, has no children, and he’s a ballet dancer.” Wink, wink. Here is a portrait of the King done by a local artist, Fonki.  Note the ballet dancer on his shoulder.

Since the monarch is elected by a council, a lot of Cambodians jokingly say they are hopeful they’ll make the new king short list since there are no heirs. While the Cambodians we met do the wink,wink do you know about our King, the King is beloved for his generosity and kindness toward his people, plus he gives them something to gossip about.

After the Palace tour, oh by the way, we had a private guide at the Palace, nice man, but his Khmer-glish was brutal so we’re not sure if we got the story straight. We made our way back to the hotel for lunch and to get ready for our afternoon contemporary art tour.  Unfortunately, Lisa must have eaten a bad mussel at lunch having broken the cardinal rule that if it looks and tastes funky, don’t eat it, so she had to bail and I was solo on the art tour.

My guide, a 30-year-old named Jackson or Mr. Jackson (I suspect not his real name but easier for non-Cambodians to pronounce) picked me up in yet again another tuk-tuk.  Jackson is an affable young man and his English is very good, thank God!  The tour is almost exclusively outdoor mural art found in poorer neighborhoods that a group of Cambodian and foreign artists living in Phnom Penh have created, some of which are in protest to the government allowing poorer residents to get displaced in favor of Chinese development giving the displaced residents hardly reparations to move.  With the downturn in the Chinese economy, there are more than a few unfinished high rise apartment buildings and many finished but vacant ones.  The whole thing stinks, the government is corrupt as hell, and of course, it’s forbidden to talk badly about the government.  Welcome to authoritarianism. Time for the artists to step in.  It’s funny that the government allows the artwork in these poorer neighborhoods.  There is nothing overtly anti-government in the murals and the government does police them, but the anti-government subtlety is surely there, so the government clearly isn’t using its best art scholars to police the work.  Jackson and I set about touring the murals in the poor areas.  The murals are typically on alley walls and some on buildings when owners allow.  This is not graffiti, this is art, and several of the artists also display in galleries.  In a way it reminds me of the mural art in Medellin, Colombia in the slums high above the city, but the Phnom Penh murals are not painted by the residents, many are painted by well-known artists in the city. 

 In addition to the mural art, we went to two galleries showing a few of the same artists and ended at the Factory, a forward thinking co-working space, work, live, play complex on the south end of the city, where many of the same artists had more and larger murals.  I was impressed to say the least.

This last mural is a beloved singer who was killed in a tuk-tuk accident (I kid you not!) Below are two fabulous enormous murals at the Factory. The bottom was my favorite.

The tour was over but not without stopping at the outdoor gastropub, Wild, where I was treated with duck egg rolls and taco egg rolls (America, take note!) and a cocktail with my now very good friend Jackson.  I am lucky to have spent 4 hours with him and only wish that Lisa had been there, too.  She would have loved it.  To all, remember, if it looks and tastes funky, DON’T EAT IT! 

Here is my good friend Jackson enjoying a drink after the tour.