Today we went to the National Museum (interior courtyard pictured), which was a little dull in terms of exibits: there were a lot of statues. Most were much older than the typically un-lionine lions pictured, including some huge 2,500 year old vases and some prehistoric shaped stones.
Marijn and I were the annoying ones reading everything, the highlight being an explanation of the creation of the winged god Garuda, who is Vishnu's 'vehicle'. A fantastic story of jealousy, deals, quests and snake-eating which is as entertaining as it is nuts. I don't think saying this is offensive as no-one really professes to believe in the actual stories, plus blasphemy seems to be taken a lot more seriously in other religions. It appears to be a cultural and traditional religion and doesn't really pretend to be much more, with some of the more spiritual side coming from, as in Nepal, Buddist theology.
Juan, the Argentinian guy I travelled with in northern Laos turned up at the guesthouse in the evening and and the six of us headed to the lakeside for dinner. Our restaurant location was right by the lake and the food was pretty decent, but we hadn't fully appreciated that this was actually the backpacker headquarters of Phnom Penh and myriad pool and film bars had meant it felt like a less frenetic Khao San Road in Bangkok. That desn't mean we didn't play pool of course and I had one of those wonderful moments when I'd had just the right amount of alchohol to be a pool legend, rattling off 6 winning frames in a row against I suspect much better players in Tom and Juan. Said goodbye to Marika, Marijn and Kim again, I guess I'll stop running into them some time, but hope to again as they've been brilliant fun travelling with.
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