Beach Town ... again

31 August - After going to the Killing Fields and the S21 museum I was still feeling very sickly but didn't want to waste any more time so I went for an easyish walk out to the river - had a spartan luncheon and saw the National Museum, which was very pleasant. There were lots of amazing statues and friezes showing different stages of Cambodian history and there were some reasonably good translated explanations along the way. I also noticed a couple of scholarly looking westerners who really seemed to 'know their shit' and were lecturing back to their local guides - not sure ithey really knew what was going on or if they were just pretentious twits. It finished off with a large selection of very old jars - I can never understand why old jars and plates get such high esteem in museums. Yes, they're very old but it's a firmly established historical fact that old civilisatoins used crockery - I hope to hell that Tupperware is given less signficiance in the exhibitions of the 20th century in years to come.
Wandered back to the guesthouse and tried to sleep for a while before heading down to the 7pm screening of the Killing Fields at the communal TV, the british girls (back to their full contingent of six again) had got to the couch before me and I was stuck on a very grand but extraordinarily uncomfortable wooden throne. Very good movie, very long, made a lot more signficant by what we had seen earilier in the day. The scenes with the westerners and cambodians trying to take refuge at the French Embassy was very similar to the scenes of Hotel Rwanda only that there was a much worse outcome for the natives.
This morning I took a four and a half hour bus jouney down to Sihanouk Ville where I plan to stay a day or two before heading up to Siam Reap. Not teribly uncomfortable due to its shortness, not looking forward to the journey back up north though. On the bus they were playing a bizarro Cambodian television show - can't really compare it to anything i've seen over here - there were a couple of guys with fake mustachios (or facial tattoos, I was sitting near the back) with very grating voices talking to each other in some kind of Abbott and Costello routine. their interchanges were interrupted by laughter on screen and by the few Cambodians on the bus (who were absolutely entranced by it) and then they would break into traditional songs which seemed quite serious until one of them started squawking ... Very strange - I don't think I could handle 12 hour of it, which might be the case heading to SR.
My cold and cough have abated somewhat so despite still getting quite bad stomach cramps and the occasional uncertainty of the bowels I decided to go for a run again - have felt quite atrophied by the constant bus and boat trips and other inactivities - Sihanoukville is an ideal place to do it - the air is certainly cleaner than Phnom Penh and Saigon and it's much nicer going along beaches than dodging traffic. Don't know if it was a completely good idea but certainly feel better on the psychological front.