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taiwandude118
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OK, here goes on some info.
In Siem Reap driver's name Than Lourn. Also runs the Friendly Guesthouse. E-mail: friendly_gh@yahoo.com
Ph. # 885-12-870-926. Educated, friendly, informative about the Temples. Has a clean, new car with A/C and you can drink beer no problem between temple stops. I like the car idea as the A/C is good relief from the heat and you avoid all the dust from the road. He is $20/day
from early morning pick-up at hotel to after dinner. His family runs an alligator farm. Ask to see it, pretty cool. He can take you to a good Cambo rest. for dinner that has "beer girls" serving the tables. You can take them out. Stayed at the Freedom Hotel, $15/nite, big rooms, guest friendly, good food. Drank at Le Tigre de Papier next to the Angkor What? pub. French guy owns it, has a huge selection of used books. Nice girls working there, not sure if they are "take-out" (pretty sure 1 is). Brothel scene not too great. Girls so-so in my opinion. There are a few pubs where FL girls work from.
Took the boat south to PP. 6-7 hours. Not the most comfortable but good enuf. We had seats inside, the roof looked a bit crowded.
Driver in PP is Khan Ya, he works nite security at the Walkabout Pub/GH. Nice guy. Ph. # 011-95-93-94 and 012-70-89-55. E-mail: khan.ya@email.com Happy to show you all the sites, including ST/Pubs ($ 10 a pop). K11 and the Killing Fields cost a bit more as they are out of town. He was helpful at K11 as the doors were shut on all the places, but he got me in and around the neighborhood.
We visited Sharkey's (good selection of gals, decent pub) Martini's (hoards of ladies, many way too young, not my kind of place) but favored drinking around the Walkabout. Shanghai Pub & Howie's. Shanghai has 15 or so girls working behind the bar and plenty walking around the outside. I'm sure the employed ones are for take-out, but maybe with a barfine. We chose ours from the FL . Next door is Howie's. Nice guy, lived in Seattle for a while, good English and can give good advice on all things. Both places have pool tables. Drank late afternoon Happy hour at The Cathouse. Plenty of Expats hanging out, nice gals working the bar. Didn't hook up with any as they have to work until midnite. "Leave your firearm at the door." Stayed at the Chay Hour Hotel around the corner from Walkabout. A bit rundown but big rooms and clean. Nice, big selection in the Fishbowl on the 4th floor. You don't need to stay there to visit the "massage". Tried the Paris Hotel, good place, get a room in the back up on the 7/8 floor for a sweet view of the sunset over the lake. Fishbowl there too but gals seemed unimpressed.
4 hour bus to Sihanoukville. Stayed at "The Small Hotel". Swedish guy named Henrik owns it. Nice, clean, cheap. It's in the center of town, not near the beaches.
He can take you to the brothels up the hill from him, he knows a mamasan or 2. His driver is a guy called LokSan. Good motorbike and speaks good English. He took me around the town, to the beaches, waterfalls, up the hill for sunsets. He teaches English to the local kids in his neighborhood. I asked to help him and he said "of course". He lives on the other side of town. It was a great experiance. Fun kids with big smiles when they see the foreigner. His wife prepared some nice food for me also. He lives at the end of a LONG dusty road lined with many brothels. We stopped at the Disco/niteclub on the road to view the sites. I grabbed a cutie for $ 20/all nite. All girls I had in Cambo were $ 20/all nite. He took us back on his motorbike to my hotel after some more beers. There is a ST massage room in the back of the Disco. Too many brothels to count on both sides of the road.
Lots of good pubs/rest. for food & eats in Sville. I liked The Angkor Arms across from the bus station. Bert the owner is a nice guy. He has possibly 2 of the cutest girls in all of Cambo working for him and NO they are NOT for take-out, unfortunately. The Fishermans Den near the Small Hotel is good too. The big Kiwi owner used to own some pubs in Pattaya. He can find you ladies if need be. He has some great stories too. Beaches were good in Sville, not Thai standard but nice nonetheless.
Some websites;
www.talesofasia.com
www.canbypublications.com
www.pmgeiser.ch/cambodia/
www.iknowasia.com/travel/
all have links to more sites to check out. If you visit and see any of my friends, please tell them the American living in Taiwan says Hi. Enjoy your trip, I REALLY dug the place. Considering what these people have endured, their attitude on life is very positive and refreshing.
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 8:56 am on Dec. 8, 2002
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griffin
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thx for these very good and acurate infos. i'll try to use them on my next cambodia trip, hopefully they are still there as things change so quick in cambodia!
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 2:36 pm on Dec. 8, 2002
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califdann
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Just got back from Cambodia right after they opened up the border again with Thailand. Recommend flying in to Siem Reap, and skipping the border crossing coming into Cambodia.... Very bad scene. You can certainly take the overland route out from Siem Reap to Poi Pet.... crossing over to Thailand is not nearly as bad. Anyway, a good guide/driver/arranger can be contaced at veassna36@hotmail.com or veassna036@hotmail.com.... Dont remember which it was. His English is sometimes difficult, but I blame that on his English teacher. The ESL teachers here remind me of the students in my ESL class that I taught in California a couple of years ago. Anyway, he can and will arrange transportation, get you a good room, get you laid, anything you want. Oh yeah, he also knows the Temples and the history etc...
Recommed taking the Fast Boat to Phnom Penh ... $25.00 for us foreigners. I have taken it 3 times.... pretty good trip each time. But if you are going to stay inside for any period of time, bring something warm to wear because they have the damn A/C cranked up to max the whole trip. On top.... be sure to put your cap in your pocket, or it will be blown off into the water never to be retrieved. Also.... lots of sun screen applied liberaly. veassna can arrange boat trip and accomodations for you in Phnom Penh, and also will get you into places that few foriegners go to.... if you want to do that. Failing that, I recommend the California 2 guest house which is on the river. Run by a guy from San Diego, who knows everything!!!! Where to go, what to do, costs, advice etc.... Anyway, call ahead to get a room $15.00 USD or you will not get one as he is always booked.
Recommend bus trip to the beach/port city of Sihonakville (I cant spell it). Bus takes 4 hrs, and costs $3.00. Recommend staying in Mealy Chandra, or some place near the port, but not at the port. Make sure you get down to the (Infamous) BiBa nightclub, and take a walk along chicken village.... the STs are $5.00 USD. Scuba diving is only about 5 months old in this city, and the sites are still being discovered. But if you have a spare $65.00, you can dive with Scuba Nation, next to "Mash" restaurant. Want any other info.... give me an email at califdann@aol.com
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Sexy Bangkok Girls
Posted on: 3:31 am on Mar. 2, 2003
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califdann
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The New York Times
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Page A6
Spirits Get the Blame in Cambodian Illness
By SETH MYDANS
PING, Cambodia ? The skeletons of two chickens dangle ominously above the forest path that leads into Ping, warning of disease and death.
Inside the tiny village, straw effigies holding wood replicas of swords, rifles and even a rocket launcher guard flimsy huts against angry spirits.
Since early March, the 392 people of Ping and its mountain neighbor, Bornhok, have been locked in mortal struggle against a nameless disease
that has sickened more than 30 of them and killed 7 in an agony of coughing, choking and delirium.
None of the villagers seem to know just which spirits turned against them or what transgressions they were punishing here in the northwest mountains
of Ratanakiri Province, near Vietnam.
When doctors of Western medicine rushed in to help, they too were baffled by a mystery pulmonary disease that closely mimicked SARS, the new plague
of a distant outside world.
The World Health Organization described it as "an outbreak of an unidentified syndrome with fever, diarrhea and respiratory symptoms and a high fatality rate."
Unlike SARS, though, it seems to have responded to antibiotics. The deaths slowed and seem for now to have stopped.
Meou Vang, the chief of Bornhok village, said this proved the power not of modern medicine but of the tribal rituals he led ? the sacrifices of the
hanging chickens as well as pigs, the anointing of homes with a mixture of sacrificial blood and rice wine, and the fearsomeness of the straw sentries
that stand guard.
These effigies, like supernatural scarecrows, periodically appear in doorways and on fence posts in Cambodian villages when people sense the presence of ghosts.
Most often they are put up to protect against disease, but they can also be a response to the deaths of farm animals or even to the ominous barking of dogs or the moaning of frightened chickens.
"I know the disease was caused by spirits because after we held a big ceremony with all the villagers, people stopped dying and didn't get sick any more," the village chief said.
The random attacks of the disease have made it hard to pinpoint just which spirits are angry, he said.
One shaman told the people of Ping that they were being punished for felling sacred trees. Another told the family of a 16-year-old girl named Mel ? one of the first to die ? that she was being punished for having a
sexual affair.
Her older sister, Nieng, said the shaman had told the truth about Mel, who sometimes disappeared into the woods to collect cashew nuts. Nieng too had fallen ill, but recovered after 10 days in the provincial hospital, two hours' drive by motorbike through the forest.
Since then, someone has taken down the effigy from the front of their cursed house, and it lies now in a discarded heap of straw and rags.
Taking a cautious approach, Chief Meou Vang said he had led ceremonies to appease all the spirits that inhabit the surrounding forests.
Arak Chantoo, the mountain spirit, is the Zeus of the pantheon, and when it is angry it is believed to bring chest pains, headache, dizziness, high fever, hydrophobia and sometimes death, anthropologists say.
Arak Bree, the forest spirit, must approve new ultivation by these slash-and-burn hill tribe farmers. Arak Long and Arak Ghree, the tree spirits, must give permission for the cutting of any significant trees.
Arak Gow protects sacred stones and can bring headaches and insanity when these are stepped on. The cure is to wash the stones with the blood of
sacrificial animals.
After their recent sacrifices, the villagers ate the meat and drank the blood and wine, then retreated to their homes for 24 hours to allow the spirits to have their fill as well, Chief Meou Vang said.
Meanwhile, the practitioners of Western medicine were busy too. Every day, Lam Komchoeum, 42, a villager who runs a small government health post in the woods, made his rounds on his motorbike, trying to persuade sick residents to travel to the provincial hospital.
He was frightened to enter the disease-afflicted villages, he said, but the reason he gave for doing so anyway seemed more extraordinary than simple
heroism. It was bureaucratic duty. "If I didn't go, the provincial health department would be angry with me," he said.
These forests, along the heavily bombed Ho Chi Minh Trail of the Vietnam War, are well acquainted with death. Now, as outsiders move in to seize the land, the local tribes are forced deeper into the mountains, where they struggle with growing poverty and disease.
This deprivation lies at the heart of the epidemic, the World Health Organization reported after its researchers visited the villages. "The high fatality rate is probably due to the underlying bad health status of the
population," it said, "with chronic malnutrition and chronic infection with malaria and tuberculosis."
Last year, a private survey found that 60 percent of hill tribe children had suffered from fever in the previous two weeks, said Dr. Prudence Hamade, a doctor with Health Unlimited, a British medical group that works
with the poorest and most remote villagers in border areas. She said one in four children die here before they reach the age of 5.
The only furnishings in the house where Mel, the 16-year-old girl, died are a pile of tattered sleeping mats and a few woven baskets. Dozens of small gourds hold water that was carried from a distant stream and is so scarce that it is rarely used for washing. Beside them lay a pile of purple tubers.
"You eat them and you give them to the pigs," said Mr. Lam Komchoeum, the health worker. "Usually people have rice to eat from October until June or July." And after that ? he pointed to the tubers on the floor.[End]
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 2:55 pm on May 11, 2003
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