Silk and Bullets

Another birthday has come and gone for Marilu and as many of you know, Simon always comes up with something pretty special for her birthdays. This year was no exception. We started the day with a nice walk around the Royal University grounds. Unfortunately this haven of knowledge has seen better days. The picture is of the university swimming pool, Simon has been running around there in the mornings and has seen people catching fish out of the filthy water. It doesn't look as if Michael Phelps will be challenged anytime soon by the Camodian college team. We then went for a banana pancake breakfast and some lovely gifts. Simon knows how much I love bags/purses and so he went out and found me a lovely, handmade silk bag. It is beautiful.



Then we set off on a moto adventure. Up past the airport, through flooded streets we were off to find the shooting range. After getting lost a couple of times we finally hired a tuk-tuk driver to lead us to the range. He promptly led us to the go-kart track (who knew they had a go-kart track here in PP - and it is a huge one at that!). After much gesturing and signing we got directions from the go-kart guys and went through a military check point into the Special Forces training center. Set amongst bunkers, climbing walls, and commando training fields is a shooting range.



I was politely greeted by a bunch of guys in t shirts and shorts (the instructors) who showed us the menu (which includes, so we are told, shooting an old cow with a bazooka- at $700 we declined this option). Next we chose the guns... I first shot 40 rounds with an AK47 - I have always wanted to shoot one of those after seeing them in all the movies. Then Simon talked me into firing the M-60 machine gun.....See the attached photos . It was amazing! The bunker we were shooting in, the sounds, the recoil (the instructor had to brace me up while I shot the AK and the machine gun was all over the place as you can see with the blur in the photos.) So, I shot 40 rounds with the AK and hit the target about 7-8 times (but accurately when I did get it). I had 150 rounds with the machine gun and hit the target 3 times! (Do not believe all you see on those Rambo movies)

What a hoot - a once in a lifetime shooting experience.



Aside from the birthday, things are going well here. We have bought a moto. We got pulled over by 3 policemen within 7 minutes of owning our new moto (named Dora by the way, see photo of the styling footmats). The policeman had batons out and demanded a $30 fine. We had no id except a Nevada driver's license, no proof of ownership of the moto, and even I have to admit, Simon was going the wrong way around a round about (others were doing that too). But in the true Cambodian bartering spirit, Simon managed to go from a $30 fine to a $3 fine. After handshakes, pats on the back and smiles, we headed back into the traffic once again, the wrong way.

We are keeping up with the Olympics, it seems the Cambodian coverage of the Olympics consists of pirating the live feed from Australia and over dubbing their own voices over the top. The overdubbing is annoying when they know something about the sport, like badminton, but really good when it comes to swimming, and track and field as they have nothing to say.

Everything else is good - exploring the neighborhood (see our local fish market), we even got haircuts yesterday at our local salon, 40 minute cut and a 30 minute hair washing which includes head massage for the grand total of $2 each.

And oh yea, by the way, school is fine.

That's all for now, keep the emails coming, all the best, Machine Gun Kelly and Easy Rider