these are not my walls

So, here's the thing.

My hard drive crashed. Hard. Wah wah.

No, I hadn't backed it up.

Yes, I thought about doing it about a billion times since I came back from Cambodia, what with the billion pictures and whatnot.

Yes, that does make it extra annoying that I didn't do it.

I have a new - bigger, faster, better - hard drive, and a repaired case (which Apple is apparently doing for free, since they handed out such a crappy one in the first place, I guess), and now my OS is new enough that I can use bootcamp and launch a Windows platform, thereby playing evidence CDs and making my laptop work- and court-compatible (or so Alex tells me.)

Somehow, this is cold comfort.

There is a slim - very slim - chance that I will be able to recover the date from my hard drive (without paying thousands of dollars, which I apparently could if I wanted to pay a data-recovery place to do it), which would be lovely. I'm sure you've been waiting with bated breath for the rest of my travel pictures. :)

I'll try to get back to the trip report soon...

Aaaand we're home again!

Well, I'm home. Alex was home, but after very (VERY) few hours, we were up again and packing him off on another trip. He and the rest of the cast/crew are off to lovely Vernon to put on another performance of Ride the Cyclone, whilst I keep the home fires burning. Or something.

Our trip back was long, mostly due to layovers - hello, 7 freakin' hours in the Taipei airport; thank you, 4 wasted hours in the Vancouver airport - but relatively uneventful. Someone got into one of our suitcases somewhere between Phnom Penh and Vancouver, but only ripped up a few pieces of mail inside (no money, HA!) - probably because all the other things in that suitcase were dirty laundry.

We arrived home to our relatively clean apartment, worth all the effort before we left, and our balcony door open. Thankfully, we live on the third floor, so even with that clear open invitation, nobody appears to have broken in. Or if they did, they decided nothing we own was worth stealing. Our condo president let some workers in last week to do some work on the balcony, so they likely left the door open, unfortunately. The biggest problem was that our apartment was FREEZING - well, freezing for us; there have been crazy rain and windstorms the past few days, apparently, so an unpleasant weather welcome.

Now, having basically slept all day (bad way to recover from jet lag, I know, but I was *tired*...), I should probably shower and go forage for something...I may have to go outside! Perish the thought!

Over the next few days, I'll try and update more about our trip and upload pictures. For, I think, just my sister - hope you enjoy it, Erica! :)

After a quick jaunt to Siem Reap (which was mostly to see Angkor), Alex and I are back in Phnom Penh briefly before returning to the rainy coastal city we call home.

I have many, many, many pictures, but our internet access has been spotty and bandwidth minimal. I will have nothing but time to upload when I get home, though!

In other news, it's still hot and I'm still not sleeping well. More to come.

We're in Cambodia!

It remains hot. This morning we went out and got one errand done (changing tickets back to Victoria: check!), but not the second (money from ATM: not check! Apparently the bank machine processor was out of order.) Exhausted from that ordeal, we are now lounging around Mom and Ian's house, watching clothing dry. Well, not *watching* it, really. But waiting. We need space to hang up another load of wash, yo!

In other news, Mom treated herself and I to a Thai foot massage at the Bangkok airport last night. In theory, it was awesome. In practice, I may have forgotten to mention to y'all that, when I got into the boat last week for that river tour of Bangkok? I managed to scrape the inner calf on my left leg along the boat on my way in. Resulting in bruises up and down that part of my leg. (I tried to take pictures of them for you, but they didn't show up clearly - all you could see was my leg hair, which I really didn't think was all that photo-worthy.) HENNYWAYS, Thai foot massages involve a lot of massaging up and down the calf. By a lovely young Thai woman who didn't understand words like "bruise" and "gentle" and "stop touching me there, you sadistic torturer!"

My right leg felt awesome, though. :)

Day 3 in Bangkok, we went to Wat Po, which apparently goes by a different name now, but basically its the wat with the Reclining Buddha. (Side note: the interwebs tell me that just about everyone else has taken better pictures of the Reclining Buddha than I was able to. I may - just may - need a faster lens...)

It's right next to the Grand Palace, but Ian didn't feel like going there, so we left it for another day. We apparently picked the right day and/or time to go to Wat Po, though, because it wasn't jam-packed. There were some cool things:









And cats. Lots and lots of cats:



Then we wandered down to the river and went on a river tour, which was unfortunately hot when we had to wait for the locks (and the neckline on my shirt went sideways a bit, so I got a very jaunty angled-V sunburn) but otherwise awesome:









A woman paddled out and sold us some water. I didn't get a picture of her - I still feel mildly uncomfortable taking close-up pictures of people (unless I'm quickly moving out of their angry shouting/annoyance range) - but she looked like one of these:



Apparently, feeding fish is one of the attractions of the boat tour, and there is a specific location where people are supposed to throw the bread into the water to feed the fish. It's pretty clear the fish are aware of the spot, and hang out waiting to be fed.



Then we went to Wat Prayoon, which is apparently where the local monks take care of turtles. So there are turtles everywhere:



And there are also the ubiquitous catfish:



A woman was playing with this catfish, rubbing the food on it, and it would come out of the water gaping its mouth for it, for several minutes while her kids watched and giggled. It was hilarious to watch, though it did remind me a bit of Star Wars. :)

Then we took a taxi back to the apartment. I don't know why tourists ever take tuktuks in this town. Air condition taxis are super cost-efficient - a half-hour ride only costs about $3 - and they're air conditioned! AND, you're not inhaling pollution the entire time! Meanwhile, tuktuks are a set fee you have to negotiate - how would you ever know if you were overpaying? - and are open-air. And less safe. Eh, maybe it's one of those things you have to do once in Bangkok...though Ian tells me there are no taxis in Phnom Penh, only tuktuks, so I figure we can have our opportunity there. Well, Alex can have his; I've ridden in one before.

After that, we just hung out at the apt for the rest of the day and tried to a) cool down and b) consume our entire body weight in water. It was pretty fun. :)

Oh, yeah - my flickr account, in case you didn't already know, is here.

We had a day of rest yesterday, and I was thinking I would make a few blog posts, but Alex hogged the computer all day! Silly Alex. Should've brought his own!

Anyway, our second day here, Ian had plans for lunch, so Alex and I wandered around our neighbourhood and didn't do much exciting. Mostly we sweated. Then we went into the air-conditioned mall. Then we sweated some more. You know how it goes...

I took pictures of things I saw on the streets:













You can see more pictures at my flickr account if you want. Keep in mind that I appear to have selective Parkinsons (like, only when I'm trying to take pictures) and the light here is really glaringly bright. Be kind. :)

We did go out for dinner, though, over near where Mom and Ian used to live off Sukhumvit. We took the skytrain, which definitely did not exist on my last trip here, and was air-conditioned bliss! It's super convenient - and not at risk of flooding like the subway, according to Mom. :P We stopped at Cabbages and Condoms, which I always heard about when Mom and Ian lived here before. It was started by a doctor who was trying to make condoms fun and less threatening, thereby more likely to be used - you can read all about it at their website. Anyway, we only went so I could see it:





And buy souvenirs. Then we went to Crepes & Co. for dinner. Yummy! Though Ian has this habit of starting to order before I've even really had a chance to look at the menu, so I'm always making super-fast decisions, and possibly missing out on delicious things! But that night I had a feta salad that was so awesome that I'm pretty sure there was nothing else better than it on the menu. :P

Then we went home and went to bed. Because even though we aren't really suffering from jet lag too much, our sleep schedule has shifted to falling asleep between 8 and 9 p.m. and waking up between 5 and 6 p.m. I don't know how people do late-night partying in this town; you're just so sapped by the heat by the end of the day, and who the hell wants to drink alcohol and wake up hung over???

Aaaand still in Thailand...

Man, I had forgotten how much the heat just saps your energy, so that at the end of the day it's all I can do to crawl into bed and read, never mind writing a blog post! Ian was saying that he and Mom aren't acclimatized to the heat the way we were in Ghana, because here (and Phnom Penh) they're constantly in and out of air conditioning, which makes it much harder.

On the day Alex and I arrived (Tuesday, having basically lost Monday), we got in around noon and, of course, wanted to stay up into the evening to avoid jet lag as much as possible. So after a shower and a quick change, we went out for lunch - my stomach was all jittery, and I couldn't make up my mind, so I just had what Ian had. Which was a delicious curry sauce, rice, and a bunch of unidentifiable seafood. I mostly at the rice and sauce. :) This was at a food place in Central Silom (a mall by the Saladaeng skytrain station) where they also had coffee...I had an Americano, which I find an odd pairing with Thai curry, but apparently I'm alone in that!

We wandered around the neighbourhood a little bit, with Ian showing us around. We tried to find a currency exchange place, but every place we found had signs saying "back in X minutes". Must have been siesta time. So Alex and I went back to the apartment for a while, and Ian to his hotel, and then we went out for dinner.

I mentioned the apartment, didn't I? It's very nice, despite the tendency of the toilet to get clogged...Here's the kitchen:





The dining room:



The living room:





The view to the balcony from the living room:



The balcony:





The view from the balcony:



The swimming pool, seen from the balcony:



(Side note - in all the time we've been here, I've never seen anyone but Alex and I use the swimming pool. And yet, I swear I've seen them cleaning it in the morning, so...it must be safe, yes? Weird!)

The back balcony, off the dining room:



The bedroom:



And the bathroom:



We tried to organize ourselves a bit at the apartment. The owner's maid was there - for some reason my mind kept wanting to call her Kundun, but it appears that her name is actually Durian, although I have no idea if it's spelled that way or if her name has anything to do with the fruit - so we had an awkward conversation about how I look like my "Papa". Yes, all that complete lack of genetic tie between me and Ian makes for a close family resemblance...it's funny how much people convince themselves they see in other peoples' faces. It's like how nobody thinks Erica and I look alike until we tell them we're sisters, and then the convince themselves they can see it. Maybe Ian and I have shared facial expressions/gestures, which is how I think Erica and I look alike?

After resting for a bit, we went out for dinner - pizza!



It was decent thin-crust pizza. Though it was a bit weird to see them rolling the dough out with a rolling pin...

Then we went back to the apartment and succumbed to fatigue - we'd been up and travelling for about 48 hours by that point, with only a few hours of sleep snatched here and there, and did I mention it was hot? 'Cause it was. Hot. So we went to bed. :)