they sometimes actually get better. So I wound up leaving the charger for my laptop in Phnom Phen. My first 4 phones calls yielded no help at all, they swore up and down that it wasn't there. Do you know how much it costs to replace a charger for an Apple laptop? $99. Yes, that's right, for a power cord. Needless to say I was having a stroke and on my last call I actually had to hang up because for the first time in 2 1/2 months I was
this close to going full on homo meltdown on someone. Thankfully the manager emailed today, oddly enough it was exactly where I said it was, plugged into the damn outlet beside the bed. Now we're just trying to figure out how to actually get it to Siem Reap. I don't care if I have to do a 13 hour roundtrip on a bus but he's trying to get it up here for me.
On other good news I found out you can actually take a very nice motor coach from Siem Reap to Bangkok, yes there is some issues with switching to mini-vans at one point and it's a 12 hour trip but it's almost as long to bus it down to Phnom Phen, wait at the airport, fly and then take a taxi into Bangkok. Added bonus? It costs $16 and the other alterative is $90.
Finally, I had the sweetest encounter with the old Cambodian grandma who runs the corner "store"near my hotel. Out of the blue today in her very limited English asked if I spoke French. Well, quelle surprise I do. Not very well mind you but we could have a much better limited conversation in French than in English. That's one of the cool things about Cambodia, while we can hate for the French for being rude the fact that they colonized southeast Asia and forced the people to adopt their language AND learn how to bake a killer baguette certainly wins them some points in my book.
