I Have Run, I Have Crawled, I Have Scaled These City Walls

Even in the far reaches of Asia, I am still able to draw comfort from certain things which remind me that globalisation is truly making the world seem smaller.

Although expensive, I noticed today for the first time that a convenience store sold bars of Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Other worldwide brands like Coca-Cola are also very prevalent here, and whenever you go into a shopping mall you always come across western shops like Gap or H&M.

These little things often help to make me feel more comfortable, and it really is incredible how many signs are actually written in English - some don't even contain any Cambodian script at all.
Obviously not being able to read any of the foreign languages I have or will encounter on this trip makes things an awful lot more difficult, and it's hard not to feel a touch ignorant when, for example, I have to go to a restaurant with an English menu, just so that I can feel a bit more at ease with that I am ordering.

I can't claim to speak any language other than my own fluently, but I feel like I have at least some understanding of French, German, English, Spanish and Korean - although with the latter my knowledge is gradually fading with each day. I have always had a significant amount of envy for people who I've met throughout my life who can naturally swap between two languages - and so many times on this trip I have been grateful that people in shops, restaurants and hotels have been able to converse with me in English.

I've discussed the difficulties I encountered in one of my original blogs, and it certainly hasn't got any easier as time has gone along. I try not to get flustered when it appears that there is a massive language barrier in the way, and I feel like keeping cool and calm has definitely helped me along the way or I will feel extremely overwhelmed by everything that is going on around me.

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With the weekend out of the way (I'm still amazed by my ability to keep track of what day it is) I was hoping that everything would now be back open and allow me to complete the important task of obtaining a visa for Vietnam - the next country I am scheduled to travel to.
I'd attempted to venture to the embassy on Saturday, but had arrived about an hour or so after it had closed, and with only a couple of days until I am due to fly in to Ho Chi Minh City, I was pretty anxious to get it all sorted as soon as possible.
I'd read online various bits of information about securing a visa, and even though I wasn't able to sort it either of my first two days here, I was pretty relieved that it was only a twenty or so minute walk from my hotel. The one thing I needed to try to sort out was a passport photo as unlike in Cambodia where I managed to pay and extra $2 for them to scan my passport fee it seemed like the visa wouldn't be granted unless I could actually get a picture taken.

When I asked about getting a photograph taken on Friday, the guy working on reception said that I should be able to get it done somewhere off the main road where I am staying, so after breakfast I went to get some further instructions about what the place was called and how exactly I could get there.

I tried following the directions I was given, but I couldn't find the place - it doesn't seem like they are very obviously placed as even the one I did find looked like a regular shop, it was only when I read some of the services they offer in the window that I confirmed they take pictures.

I headed out back towards the embassy, the photo shop was about half way between my hotel and my destination so I figured I had plenty of time to get there before the embassy closed for the morning at 11:45am. As well as not opening at weekends it also appears they close the visa applications office for two hours between 11:45 am and 1:45pm, no idea why.

I kept walking down the road until I reached the photo shop, and going inside I discovered that they did take pictures, but not the kind I was after. It was a bit like one of those places where you go to have a family photoshoot, and although they do print passport-sized pictures it would have been very expensive and I would have had to make an appointment to get them done.

Running out of ideas I decided that the best thing to do might be to go to the embassy and ask someone where to get the pictures printed. I carried on along the way and when I eventually got to the office it was just after 11 am and fairly crowded. There were some people lined up to process visas, but it looked like there were also a number of people sitting around waiting to collect them as well.
With the size of the queue, I didn't really have time to waste by waiting around for someone to ask so I figured that logically there would be somewhere around the place that would have the facility to take pictures. This is considering that the Brunei Embassy is across the road and I had also seen the Australian one on my way past.

Clearly no one had my business acumen as I walked about 20 minutes down the road until it basically ended and didn't see the sight of a single place. I found plenty of places that looked like they did printing and photocopying, but nowhere that seemed to take passport pictures. Considering people in Cambodia have ID cards as well as passport, there must be a market for it surely?

Realising that time was beginning to go against me I decided to go back to the embassy, fill in my form and then if it was a little bit quieter I'd be able to ask someone, or at least ask a person applying for a visa where they got theirs taken. I was very concious of time figuring that if it took 48 hours as it said online then I would be making an early trip back on Wednesday morning before flying out in the afternoon. If I didn't get there before it closed then that could very well throw a massive spanner in the works of my whole schedule.

I got to the office at about 11:35 am (definitely walked back a lot faster than when I'd gone looking for a photo shop) and began furiously filling out the form.

I was one of only two people in there and after they had completed their business I held my form up to the guy behind the desk and asked: "Do you know where I can get the photo taken?" Can you guess what his response was.....?

"What photo do you mean? For the form? It's OK, you don't need one". Brilliant. So glad I spent all that time searching round for three days to discover that you don't actually need a picture!!! 

Bear in mind I checked this with various different sites, including their official one, and I even saw the guy in front of me hand a picture over and put the rest of them he had taken back in his wallet!

That news was a bit of a weight of my mind thankfully and after handing over my $60 he told me to come back tomorrow afternoon to collect my passport with the visa completed. It is very typical after all that, that I actually didn't need one. In all honesty as I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, how many countries these days actually make people get visas for stays shorter than 30 days?
I can't imagine that there is a massive immigration problem into Vietnam so I really don't understand (aside from the obvious financial aspect) why it's necessary to hand over large sums of money for permission to get in.

With that sorted and out of the way at least I could go and spend the rest of my day doing something else. 

I debated a couple of options, but decided considering it was just after noon, the best thing to do would be to take in an activity relatively close to me. One of the things which fell into this category was going to the Royal Palace which is just a couple of streets over from my hotel. I briefly walked past it yesterday and there are some very regal looking roofs that you can see when you walk down by he river which belong to the palace itself, and the most famous attraction which is the silver pagoda.

It's strange that I have never been to the major palace in my own country but spent a couple of hours walking around the one in Bangkok, and was probably going to to the same today as headed out after taking a shower to cool off a little bit.
I don't know if it's the amount that I have been walking, how compact Cambodia is or another factor, but these last couple of days I have been feeling really warm. I'm not usually particularly affected by the heat, but today it has been extremely humid and I must have gone through six or seven bottles of water throughout the day.

Even though it is so close by, the entrance to the palace wasn't easy to find. It actually faces the river which means from where I am staying I can only see the back of the grounds. It took me a couple of minutes to navigate and go the right way, but I eventually found the way in.
I'd read that it was another one of those occasions to dress smartly, but I decided to go for some long shorts and then opt for taking my trousers in the bag just in case I was refused entry. I took solace from the fact that a few of the people I saw on the way were wearing shorts, although there were some females who had to buy 'Royal Palace of Cambodia' t-shirts and use them to cover up their bare arms.

The palace grounds themselves were pretty impressive:

I heard one tour guide mention that at the moment the king of Cambodia is in China, but I feel like this might well be a ceremonial house, and even if he was in the country he was hardly going to be spending his time in the gardens of his tourist-filled palace.
Upon entry you got a little card which demonstrated the way to walk around, but it was quite confusing, and two of the first six stops had signs in front of them saying 'Access Prohibited'.

You couldn't actually walk inside the palace itself, and you weren't allowed to take photos through the windows so they only thing I was able to grab were pictures of the still magnificently-decorated outside.
I continued following the path round past another couple of impressive looking, but non-descript buildings before eventually going in to a second rather more open courtyard. 

It had a bell tower shaped stupa in each corner and in the middle was the Silver Pagoda which is home to the precious emerald Buddha.

Around the edge of the who courtyard there was a mural around which appeared in one second to be being finished, but there were no explanations as to what it was depicting:

There were some other smaller buildings which you could enter, one which led to a small shrine with a golden statue of Buddha inside, and there was another one which contained an exhibit on the different façades of the palace and this also gave some information about what each building is used for:

I went inside the Silver Pagoda last. It was very busy, and I timed my exit wrongly by going in at the same moment as two tourist groups who then moved their way very slowly around:

Again I wasn't allowed to take pictured in there, but the Emerald Buddha was sitting about three quarters of the way towards the back of the room.
There was a large area of carpets in front which many people were using for worship. At the back there were some more statues that can be found in place in other sections of the grounds and the buildings themselves.

There wasn't really much else to see so after about an hour or so I decided to head towards the exit via a small collection of paintings which are related to the king's life and his coronation.
The palace itself was impressive, but it certainly didn't have as much of a 'wow' factor as the one I visited in Thailand.

Still with some time left in the day I decided to go and find somewhere to grab some food at that point and then I could just work on getting a snack later. I continued walking down the river from the palace before the Mekong turned to the left as I headed straight on towards the Aeon Mall which I figured as as good a place to find food as any. There was a food court on the top floor so I continued with efforts to eat as many different types of Cambodian food as possible. Tonight I ate something called Lar Chaar which was beef with noodles and vegetables. It was pretty delicious and filled a small gap until I started to get hungry again later on.

I managed to make it into the pool again tonight - I find it's a good way to relax even when it's dark and when the water isn't that cold I think it makes me much more encouraged to spend a bit of time in there.

Tomorrow is my last full day here so I will be attempting to do at least one more activity before leaving, and also collecting my passport from the visa office to make sure everything is all sorted before I head off to Vietnam.

Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
U2 (1987)