June 4: Phnom Penh

I've been in town for almost 24 hours now, and have only received one offer of "lady boom boom."

"Nah," I told Ali, the driver who said he would procure the aforementioned lady for me. "I'm married."

"Is your wife here? No. She is in your home country," he countered. "She doesn't have eyes that can see into Cambodia."

"Ah, but she does have eyes like that," I said. "She somehow knows everything that happens!"

"Okay," he said, passing me his business card. "But if you change your mind, you call me, okay?"

Assuring him I would call him first if I found myself in need of any extramarital boom boom, I walked away, just as he asked the inevitable next question. "Where you staying?"

"Um, yeah, you don't need to know that, Ali. I have your phone number, remember?"

"Okay, okay," he said dejectedly. It's low season, and everyone is hustling hard to make a buck, and I'm sure I cost him a healthy boom boom commission.

Although I'm staying near the center of a city of 1.2 million people, I woke up at 5:30 this morning to the sounds of crowing roosters. I've had an interesting wander around the city, though I couldn't find a church to attend this morning. The Phnom Penh yellow pages, though in English, were not terribly helpful in pointing me towards a particular church, so I ended up not going.

Internet access is incredibly cheap in Phnom Penh. After spending $1.25 an hour in Siem Reap, I'm now paying just 50 cents an hour for a relatively fast connection. Phnom Penh doesn't have a big backpacker ghetto like many southeast Asia cities, which probably accounts for the better, more local, rates.