hello Phnom Penh

Sometimes we cycle through places to go to just get away. Cannot leave Cambodia because of passport issues with my wife. It’s different here renewing. So she asks her daughter to help. I would have liked to take her to Malaysia for some time in January or February. Can’t happen. So we settle on a nicer hotel in the city.

From here it’s a 5 hour bus ride. My wife takes care of all that. Leave at 9am. Get there by 2pm. Stay at Vrest hotel. Never stayed there before and they have an indoor pool. Breakfast included. Good reviews on booking.com. Enough for us. The city is not our favorite but it works for us to get away for days. I get a nice discount booking the room too.

So what to do in PP. Well…

• nothing. We won’t play tourist there too much so will do nothing besides some pool time, checking out the included breakfast, the room and location downtown.
• shopping. My wife will go to old market there and do whatever. I don’t do the shopping thing.
• walking. I’ll do a walk I enjoy there. Down the riverside walk to Independence Monument and then to Vietnamese Cambodian friendship monument. Another is to central market.
• eating and drinking. We don’t drink much any more thankfully. We do love to eat. So at hotel or I’ll talk my wife into Cambodian bbq. Then morning coffees. Phnom Penh is good for those things. I have a few favorites. My wife loves the first morning coffee and then she’s done.
• writing. Never stops. I figure words and screens and doing some is my way of describing, examining and finding.

Anyways from here to there and back again. I do coffee now. My wife searches her papers for the Cambodian ID card she needs. She doesn’t read too well so our daughter helps. I’d help but it’s all Khmer to me.

It will be two years with my wife on valentine’s day this year. In a month and days. So many memories and photos. Time well spent. A life given back to both of us. We both felt there would be no one else for us. Cambodia had a way of playing with that. Turning it around and showing us how wrong we could be.

together

So, we won’t go anywhere until then. Should have passport issues fixed so she can travel out of Cambodia by then. Then who knows. Likely a place she has not been.

Meanwhile there is realizing our two years. What it’s meant. What it’s done for and to us. I’m grateful. We both feel we have this life now many people here can’t have. It’s not all been good. Or bad. Often it follows the line of equanimity. There’s nothing wrong with that.

My daughter here says,

Daddy I want you and mom to have your best lives ever

She’s a keeper. And I gained a Khmer daughter even with feeling at times estranged from all America offered. Including this family there. What I realize though it has not been a family since 2009. That’s a long time. It all seems so gone though now.

So let’s do PP. Ride some bus. Do nothing. We deserve.