Crashing the nation's biggest party

We have a knack for interesting timing - we discovered, purely by throngs of people on the streets, a carnival atmosphere and stalls, floats and promos everywhere that yesterday (Sunday) was Cambodia's Independence Day. It's also quickly approaching the water festival which apparently celebrates the reversing of the Mekong's flow.

After we'd finally made it out of here yesterday we somewhat lamely followed the Lonely Planet's walking tour of the city. It took us past some magnificent French colonial buildings and into some intense experiences, such as the city's biggest market, Psar Themei. This outdoor shanty market, leaning onto the sides of a circular indoor market, is a mass of smells, colours and activity, very much for locals. We saw the lot - live water snakes (a.k.a. eels, I'm told), live crabs, bizarre fruit and vegetables etc. It was intensified by the extremely low canvas roof that dropped filth water on my prone noggin and grubby water all over the place. Interesting nonetheless.

We contrasted this experience with the very middle class new shopping mall/centre which was hospital-hygenic next to Psar Themei. It was also entirely lacking in soul and reeked of decadence and ostentatious affluence. Most bizarre was the supermarket itself which seemed to be almost dedicated to baby and youth products, particularly food supplements that will help your baby grow up big and strong. It seems the wealthiest and healthiest Cambodians are either tall, fat or both, and it seems a sign of achievement to be such. I guess the country's history explains this in part; the many wars and genocidal leaders of recent decades have literally decimated the nation's age profile, such that elderly people are extremely few and far between. In fact, most of the elders appear to be monks. There seems to be a 'baby culture' where advertising is targeted very much on one's responsibility to raise healthy (read: big) children. But I digress.

The walk took us past a sculpture and carving sector where there was no end of Buddha statues and other cultural-religious iconography in various stages of construction and took a break with a tasty Khmer lunch at a place called Frizz (owned by an expat called Fritz, if you need an explanation). The culinary discovery of the day was Bec's green mango salad which was so loaded with flavour it could have been a vegetarian schnitzel. It rocked. It was mainly mango, of course, with fresh basil, chilli, dried shrimps and countless tasty herbs. My Khmer crepe rocked but paled in comparison.

We decided to bail from the walking tour following this late lunch and, of course, a refreshing but diverting beer. As a result we skipped the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda until another day and instead tried to find the riverfront by walking down this boulevard that would have been empty if it weren't for literally hundreds of people setting up for an event of some kind. We quickly realised our way was blocked and the river inaccessible and, trying to find our way rapidly back to the well-trodden path ended up once again stumbling through a local-dominated scrub/swamp area that seemed to serve as the back operations for the independence day celebrations. Given our HCMC home invasion experience we made haste, stepping in a filth puddle or two on the way out.

Back on track we finally, and to much relief, made it back to the riverfront bars and restaurant area where we sat at the Pink Elephant for a couple until we realised the best thing about the place was the Engrish-heavy menu, replete with 'testy' dishes. Oh, how could I forget the other highlight - an unused tuk tuk was loaded with young Cambodians which was quickly abandoned when someone apparently dropped their guts, with much laughter and stage coughing. Funny.

We hightailed it back down the Quay a few shops and were astonished by the views afforded by the second floor balcony of the Foreign Correspondents' Club, a Phnom Penh institution. We snagged seats right by the balcony, fortuitously just as happy hour (half price cocktails) began and, to top things off, shortly before fireworks celebrating independence day were set to begin. We got talking with an Aussie and a couple from Siem Reap, our last destination here, and killed time (and brain cells) with tasty cocktails, before the fireworks and happy hour ended at 7. There was also meant to be a boat parade of sorts along the river, with boats all lit up and decked out with Government ministry symbols but apparently they could not make it past the Mekong flow, so we only saw these in the distance, being shoved around by the tide.

After some requisite traffic watching (the thousands of revellers on bikes and in cars turned Sithowath Quay into a one-way street - vehicular democracy in play), we settled back in at La Croissette where we'd quaffed cocktails our first night here. We had a relatively unmemorable dinner (except I had my long-craved cheeseburger) and tried to get a cheap tuk tuk back to the hotel, and ended up walking.

Anyhow, I've gone on long enough and have to talk to a man about a dog. Bec might have a few words. No, she doesn't.

Ciao