Pajamas and stuff...

I have mentioned this before I think but I remain fascinated by the way that Khmer women wear pajamas as regular street wear.  I guess it makes sense - cotton loose cool but it remains incongruous in my sight.  Da went out shopping yesterday in hers - I look forward to trying to persuade my daughter to do the same when she visits - I need to start compiling a collection of the most incongruous looking examples. Another thing that continues to amuse is the obvious lack of recognition of what we would consider socially suicidal - I am sitting in the lobby bar of the hotel where I stay when not renting (a hotel used almost entirely by Westerners) currently hearing completely uncensored rap and hip hop music with all the F/N/MF bombs intact - imagine that in the lobby of Sheraton or Westin in Seattle.  Tomorrow Da is leaving at 5am to go with various relatives to Kompong Speu - about 100 miles I think to pay tribute to some dead relative - I declined that particular trip (something about the 5am just didnt ring true with me) she returns on Saturday so I have liberty on Friday to have a night on the town alone - will be fun.  Then Saturday night she works so I get to stay home and overdose on English football on TV in bed with air conditioning and beer.  Sunday the Cambodian water festival starts - three days of boat races on the river - supposed to mark the time when the Tonle Sap reverses course (too much water coming down the Mekong - cannot get out the delta - floods back upstream reversing flow and filing Lake Tonle Sap - the richest ecodiversity-site in the world (after the Amazon apparently) and source of most seafood here)  but from what I can see the river is still flowing very quickly in the "right" direction - there have been warnings that the boat racers face the most dangerous conditions in many decades - will be there to film and take pics.  Aparently 2 million extra people come to PP for the event - the opposite of Thailand where everyone leaves the capital and heads to the proivinces for holidays.  Supposedly 350 boats representing al provinces, schools, branches of government - should be spectacular.