Paul's Oriental Travelogue

Penh's Hill

Good internet access is hard to come by here in the sticks. And by the sticks I mean the capital city of a sovereign nation. Deciding it was time for a new pair of royalty, a new pair of local...
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Happiness is a Warm Gun

Phnom Penh Photos Each of these capital cities is as much crazier than the one before it as that one was to the city previous. The level of craziness is increasing at a constant rate. I guess what that means...
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Siam Defeated

Slow boat to Siem Reap: it's the only way to travel. Actually it's a fast boat but it still took 5 hours (starting at 7AM). A bus takes about twice as long on a somewhat similar route because the roads...
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But how do we play the slots?

Cambodia is a coinless society. Not cashless -- there's certainly plenty of that around, though it's bizarrely devalued. Since currency was abolished in 1975 and only re-established in the early eighties, that seems not a long time for 4,010 riel...
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Something's missing

There are no ATMs in Cambodia. There is not one 7-11, McDonald's, Starbucks, or Dunkin Donuts. The no 7-11s is especially surprising since by my estimate there are approximately seventeen billion 7-11s in Bangkok and Hong Kong, each. Picture New...
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Angkor Aweigh

There hardly seems a point in photographing Angkor. In person there's dozens and dozens of ancient, crumbling mazes of stone and flora. Above, below, all around. Crashing in, nooo!! In a picture it's usually a big pile of rocks and...
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Kingstown

A full day on the roads takes me to Sihanoukville. Never heard of it? Then you're not much of a royalist because it's named after the king. As with all routes in Cambodia, this one ran through Phnom Penh. The...
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The Way of the Warrior

In one episode of The Simpsons, Homer changes his name to something he saw on a hair dryer. He then tells his family, "There are three ways of doing everything: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power...
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Del Bokor Vista Phase II

It's a shame that most of Cambodia's tourist attractions involve ruined, abandoned cities. Sure Angkor was a lost cause eight hundred years ago, but along the south coast unless you're there for the beach, you've come to look at lovely...
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Drink in the Palm Trees

On the surface everything in Cambodia sucks. The weather's not so great; either it's incredibly hot and dusty or it's even hotter and rainy. The beer is not especially good. Most stores are actually drab shacks with a proprietor sleeping...
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A thousand words

Using the wireless internet and watching motorbike collisions on the street below at the Foreign Correspondent's Club (just a fancy ex-pat bar) in Phnom Penh, I've put up long awaited Angkor pictures. And some from my tour around Cambodia's South...
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