If The Heavens Could Cry.....

There is an old saying, “If the Heaven’s could cry, Cambodia would never know drought.” I always thought that was a sad saying, knowing the history of the country. But after visiting this land, I see the truth behind the words. In the next few installments, you will see the justification of this saying.
We arrived from the airport, our tuk tuk driver having to call the woman we were staying with for directions, because she lived in an unknown place. During this trip we would have to call her three more times for directions because no matter what we told the drivers, they never knew where we were going. To save money on this project, we decided to couch surf for a few nights. This was our first couch surfing experience. Our host gave us a key and then left. We were on our own. A musty room with a fan, a coconut mattress on the floor, and one pillow for two people, good thing I brought my own. We decided to try to find some dinner, we walked down the dark alley where children were riding bicycles that were bigger than them, nearly falling off because they cannot sit and pedal, they are too short, they must stand to pedal. We walked down the dirty street and saw some blue lights with a sign, “The Gold Rose Restaurant” good, someplace to eat. It looked too expensive for us, but we decided to look anyways. We asked the hostess sitting outside for a menu. They looked at each other and giggled like schoolgirls. That’s interesting. The Valet came to our rescue, only to laugh at us along with the girls. We had no clue what was going on. I wasn’t going to investigate further. I turned to my friend and said, “I don’t think this is a restaurant, let’s just go.” She insisted we try to communicate, opening her hands like a book and shoveling imaginary food into her mouth while saying, “MENU” very slowly. They continued to laugh until the door opened, inside were dim red lights, no tables and a bunch of scantily dressed girls. This was my first encounter with a brothel that wasn’t intentional. Where I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t remotely know the language. As we were in a VERY bad part of town, we decided it would be best to just spend the $10 on a taxi and find a restaurant in the tourist district. Best $10 I have ever spent.