BRIDGING BARRIERS

Honestly this girl will not get out of bed for anything, reminds me a little bit of myself if truth be told. We just made check out at 12, and we were getting a bus back to Phnom Penh at 2pm. She asked me why we couldn't stay another day, I said she was welcome to but I had to get back to Bangkok to meet Wooly, she got a bit grumpy at the idea of staying by herself, and instead took the action of doing everything really slowly in the hope that we would miss the bus and be forced to stay. Sneeky Cambodian. I explained that this tactic would only force me to get a taxi back to the city and I would leave her here alone. I think she understood.

We had lunch on the beach, she bought some strange mango type fruit in slices and dipped it in this rancid fishy sauce, I was nearly sick, I guess it's an acquired taste. She bought herself a bracelet that she got a boy to thread my name into it, which was sweet. I asked her if she had a big pile of these in her room with various names on. She wasn't impressed. She doesn't show emotion very easily, and I think me belittling her efforts to be affectionate weren't appreciated.

She'd spent the early afternoon listening to my ipod, but was disappointed at the lack of hip hop on it, which is something that I always prided myself on. On the coach we watched the 90 minutes of Tom and Jerry cartoons that I had on it. It's nice to know that whenever you run into a language or cultural barrier it can be transcended quite easily by a mouse hitting a cat with a frying pan.

we stopped off for lunch at that service station again. She bought some weird looking apple thing, which I tried and it wasn't too bad. the thing about fruit in this country is that it seems to come it two distinct categories; under ripe, or rotting. This was a bit under ripe, Sophia was dipping her bit of the apple thing in some salt and eating it, seriously, what is wrong with these people? As I took another bite into the centre of it, she said to me “be careful of the pips, they make stomach very bad”, flashes of my previous troubles in cambodia came into my mind, and I spat it out of the bus window. which would have been fine if we'd actually started moving, but we were still at the stop. luckily I missed the woman walking along the side of the bus.

On the second part of the journey we watched the Simpsons movie on my ipod, for some reason she didn't like James Bond, women!

We arrived back in Phnom Penh and went back to the bar were she worked to see her sister and cousin. I checked in to a nearby guest house that smelt of feet and went to use the internet while she got showered and changed at home. We went for dinner on a sort of pontoon thing, the seats were really comfy and I nearly fell asleep. She'd never had spaghetti before so I ordered a carbonara. Honestly, who puts onions in a carbonara? I'll tell you who, Cambodians.

We headed back to the bar to pick up her sister and cousin and went to another bar nearby for a drink. I was quite happy to note that in this bar, and thinking about it, in most of the bars around town, apart from the girls who worked there I was the youngest person in there by a good 15 years. Made me feel young again.

Somehow I said something wrong which caused her to storm off, now I think I'd done quite well up to this point not to cause this sort of reaction, it just wouldn't be a night out with a girl unless I said the wrong thing at one point and made her angry. I'm sure Laura and Emma can testify to this.

After she calmed down we went to a really swanky karaoke bar. I'd had dealings with Cambodian karaoke bars before, so I was on guard. we pulled up at this really nice looking hotel/casino place. The car park was full of really expensive cars, and I got really worried. I was about 30 minutes out of town, on my own with 3 Cambodian locals, I thought I'd been caught in a honey trap. Bollocks. I said I felt uneasy and Sophia looked at me like I was crazy, we walked in and were shown to a room. Oh dear god, it was an actual karaoke room! I'd been searching asia for one of these bad boys and now I'd found it. Yet another benefit of having a local on your arm.

I sang a couple of english songs, which the girls weren't really impressed with, and they spent most of the hour singing 'famous' cambodian songs. Sophia is really good, I was really impressed. On the second night that we met she was telling me that she had a crazy dream of being a singer, but there's no money in it unless you're really good. Which she was. I found out that her step cousin was quite a famous singer in Cambodia.

She sang a couple of songs for me, she told me what they meant but honestly it could have been anything, but the videos were quite entertaining. You just couldn't get the mic off her. Hmmmmm; beautiful, funny, doesn't like getting out of bed, and loves karaoke? all we need now is a complete devotion to Liverpool Football Club and I think we have a winner! Sadly she likes football but doesn't have a club, although i found out that her sister fancies “number 8 and Number 9” (which to my delight I discovered was Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, there's hope for that family yet).

It was about 2am, my plane left at 8.40am and I had to be up at 6. Time for bed.