moderatelyExcessive

What a difference a day (and eight hours of sleep) makes.

I walked around the Royal palace today — a complex with about a dozen or so ornate yellow and orange temples. It is closed to visitors on Sunday, so I’ll have to return another day to get inside. While I was walking, I noticed that sky had started to darken with clouds and had taken on that eerie yellow-orange glow that accompanies torrential storms. I started making my way back to my guest house, but not before the sky opened up with the kind of rain that one seldom sees in New York. I took shelter under an awning where a young man was waiting with his moto, and decided I’d wait the rain out there. I introduced myself to him, and was pleasantly surprised by how well he spoke English. His name was Sambo, and as we talked, the rain fell harder and harder. He is studying I.T., which in addition to American and Cambodian history, gave us much to talk about. In mere minutes the street flooded up to the sidewalk, and Sambo and I found ourselves stranded on a small platform of bricks as the water grew deeper and deeper. The water began rushing down the street like a small river, and the persistent moto and tuk-tuk drivers who navigated it made it easy to see that it was at least ten inches deep in most areas.

At one point Sambo pointed to the rushing water and said, “Sometimes foreigners think this is blood.”

Sambo insisted on staying with me until I felt the rain had slowed enough to make a trip home possible. He gave me a ride to a nearby sidewalk which was relatively dry, but not before his moto stalled as well.

I waited some time for the waters to recede, as nearly every street was impassable. Several times children walked past and seeing me, made the international signs for dive in and swim.

Eventually a cyclo driver stopped for me, and the ensuing ride home, through knee-deep water at times, is one of those memories that will likely never fade. In particular, one little girl smiled so brightly as my cyclo passed by. I waved and shouted “hello”, to which she replied with a laughing “hello” of her own, before she laughed even harder and buried her head inside the folds of her mother’s dress. If only I had a water-proof case for my camera…

I am now back at my guest house, and the power has just gone out. Not just in this building, but as far as I can see. As I walked last night, the darkness of the streets had me imagining that the city was in a blackout and barely running on back-up generators. I may not have been so far off.