Once upon a time… French influence

Kampot town - South Cambodia

It is probably impossible to get rid of one’s colonial past, and you could ask yourself if the past is just a part of your Culture like anything else.So why not embrace it and be proud of it?

• See French influence pictures below (more pics coming)

Around South-East Asia the French have been very active, and I must say that the most of the beautiful architecture (the houses or areas that would jump to the eye and stick out) are French. Around Cambodia for example many of the quaint areas, are the streets where some of the French colonial houses ‘survived’.

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A day or a year in Kep

Beautiful French villas - in ruins

Kep is the place where everybody would want to extend his stay to a year. It must be a mix of laid-back-ness, the history that breathes through the ruins of former French colonial villas and the up-and-coming tourism revival. I was here before, and just had to come back to enjoy it to the full – with some surprises thrown in for the same price.

Life is too short to be floating around haphazardly: if you know some places (or people) that are nice, the only clever thing to do is to enjoy them. I adored Kep (South Cambodia), with its lovely sunsets, the relaxed atmosphere and the historic ruins of houses.

Moreover I had found last time a couple of good places to eat, sleep and swim, so I decided to go to the places that I actually liked, rather than adding more and more to the cultural geographical confusion in my head. There’s only so many new places, languages, people and impressions that fit in one’s mind, so I guess I wanted to protect me from overkill. But still I bumped into some lovely new people, drove around the area and crashed a motorbike inthe process…

Being Happy with Little Things in Life

How local is local

Traveling a few months has a big impact on one’s perks and pleasures. It’s wonderful how you get enchanted by the little things in life – give me a sunset and a hammock and I’m in heaven. Your standard of living alters and the most simple thing bring a smile to your face – just the view of cheese makes me utterly happy.

• See the Pailin Picture Post for more pictures

Traveling to remote places like Pailin or Kep (Cambodia) also forces you to get back to basics, because there basically is nothing else but the basics. It also becomes so blatantly clear that you are a ‘barang’ (foreigner) and often the only one in the village.

Living Cambodian Style

I had the pleasure of sharing a flat with

Computer blues

The last time I used my netbook before it died...

Is there life without computer & internet?  Why do I blog?

I will certainly have to give internet-less life a try the next 2 weeks as my netbook went into coma last week (so only compact blogging from internet cafes – sorry). One beautiful day I closed it, and it would never come to life again, whatever buttons I pushed, no matter how much I stroked or kissed it, egal what I whispered into its orifices…

I ran around about all the computer shops in Battambang (the second city of Cambodia), even some monks at the computer shop helped me out with some translation, but the verdict was unanimous:

• a hardware problem – shiiiiiiiit – and the only way of resuscitation would be to go to the head office of the most renowned computer shop in Phnom Penh – or go to computer hospital (Acer service centre) in Bangkok.

I just came back from the computer shop in Phnom Penh and

Shihanoukville or Kep: bustle or bliss

Shihanoukville Sunset

Shihanoukville was nice. You could just feel that you were at the beach. There were beach bars, lots of (smelly) seafood, shops selling floating animals, offers for boat trips left right and centre… I had found a local guesthouse (no English spoken) which brought my daily lodging budget down to 7 US$. There was no hot water, but there was satellite television with BBC world, RAI, TVE, TV5 monde and the whole shebang, besides the usual Indonesian, Hong Kong, Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and a few Cambodian channels… Yep, we’re in Asia here! The guesthouse even had free internet, if you’d connect your lap top to the cable sticking out of the wall on the terrace. Well it did the job ;-)

Shihanoukville beach has lots of animation and infrastructure.