Arrival in Phnom Penh

After a long but safe journey Tom Kenneth and I arrived this morning in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We have been here as a team from Norkirken Sandnes often enough to know we need to keep moving on arrival day so we checked into our guest house, left our luggage then headed out again. After a short night on the plane, sometimes with little sleep it is very tempting to crash on the bed but we know not to. If we did our body clock would take much longer to get into step with night and morning and we would spend the whole week feeling tired. Instead we went out to explore what has become for us a familiar city.

The annual river festival is on so naturally we made our way down to the riverside to see what was happening.

As you can see from the picture the Mekong river is very wide as it runs through the city center and there were hundreds and hundreds of people lining both the riverbanks  for a number of kilometers. The atmosphere was of a carnival with street traders selling toys, balloons and the usual Cambodian varieties of food and snacks. Families were out together strolling along the promenade, eating a picnic together or watching the boats.

I tried to count the number of people in each boat and think it was 75 rowing each boat. See if you agree with me from the picture below. After a while we went to buy a drink and watched the race from a café on the third floor of a riverfront building.

It is humid here but not as warm as usual, today is a very pleasant 26 degrees. Far better than the 4 degrees I left at home yesterday.

After a while we decided to treat ourselves to a massage before dinner. The massage parlour was very interesting, not least because it was run buy a number of blind people. The lady who worked on my tight and tired muscles was very nice and extremely good at speaking English and an excellent masseuse. Here is a link to their website if anyone wants to know more:

http://www.mekongresponsibletourism.org/cambodia/30-do-cambodia/50-body-mind-healing-in-cambodia/seeing-hands-massage.html

Below is a picture of the lady who worked on me.

Now it is time to settle down to do some other things before bed. Tomorrow we start work and it will be non-stop until we fly home so I better get my beauty sleep.