Today started with training with nice sunrise. Another interval session followed by some core training in the room before breakfast. Then we relaxed and laid by the pool.
We have some things to take care of today, but we’re in no hurry.
I have a long term goal and that include swimming. I suck at swimming even though I love being in water. I tend to “drag” my feet and not keeping the straight body needed for effective swimming. I have now started reading and looking at instructional videos on front crawl. Hopefully I can manage a longer distance in the future with less energy than I spent today.
We had the pool to ourselves today and I started doing some exercises for beginners. Katja jumped in and we both did some basic excercises. Katja is a helluva lot better than me when it comes to swimming. We worked together on my “dragging problem” and pulled from our knowledge of martial arts and yoga to find the right amount of tension vs power for keeping the feet up. I did better in the end so I think we’re on the right track. The track is long, though. But we had a good time and some good laughters.
From there we spent an hour cooling down in the room while doing some work on pictures and the blog before heading out for lunch. We need some laundry done and brought it along. Three kilo, three dollars, six hours. That’s laundry service, for ya.
We did lunch at Peace cafe. A vegetarian cafe who serves a lot of different dishes. The food was good, the juice even better and perfect coffee. If it wasn’t for the ant invasion at our table it would be perfect.

There is one thing that stuck with me from the menu. There were several quotes regarding vegetarian lifestyle. One claimed that the U.S. market alone uses 130 million tons of grain to produce 20 million tons of meat. The grain could have given a cup of grain to every person in the planet. My mathematical education is not extensive but I get 21 grams of grain per person. Roughly. That is thought provoking. Not the 21 grams but 130 to 20 ratio. The world need more vegetarians. Since I’m not first in line to convert I hope you are.
We are looking for the way of traveling to Phnom Penh from here. We looked at boat, bus and plane. Plane won and we fly out midday Sunday. We got the tickets in town and found they have one price for the locals and one for foreigners at the domestic airlines. At least they’re honest about it.
While walking thorough town we stopped at a foot massage place. Foot scrub three dollars. My feet looks like they’ve been through the wringer and are in dire need of some TLC. We both sat down and got a good run down and then thirty minutes of foot massage. After the running it was just what I needed. Sitting here in the afternoon with baby smooth feet feels quite all right.

Now it was time to meet our new Norwegian acquaintances for a coffee and planning of tomorrow’s tour. Trond, Yvonne and their kids Lea (13), Elias (11) and Embla (7) and we went to a cafe (probably with this countries most expensive coffee) and talked for a while. We go to know each other a bit better and feel good about the tour tomorrow. As a curiosity I can mention that geckos are nuts about laser lights. They obviously think it’s food and run around trying to catch the red little dot on the wall. Elias taught me that today. Bet he wouldn’t have known that if he was behind a desk at school back home.

We moved from there over to the minibus-parking-spot in the city and made a deal. We’ll go to one site 65km outside of Siem Reap and see the most Indiana Jones lookalike temple around here. We talked about doing a longer ride but the next temple outside that one is another  40km.
That settled we ended up talking with Trond and Yvonne for another hour before we went for dinner. I had a craving for pizza and had done some research on the subject. Turns out I did good job for the the pizza at Rico Pizza was delicious. Best one since my own home made.

On the way back we picked up the laundry and it smells good, is dry and we’re happy.
Now we’re once again working on pictures, writing the day up and are getting ready for bed. Another training session tomorrow and then pickup for the tour at 8:30.

I want to hang a map of the world in my house, and then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won’t fall down.

– Mitch Hedberg