Flora and fauna

Sunday, August 24, 2008
1:34 AM ICT
Room 29, Golden Sun Guest House
Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh Province, Cambodia

I just re-read my post on the boat trip, and realized that I kind of forgot to mention the natural beauty. Seems to be a pattern on this blog: I focus on people, on poverty, social issues, and nearly dying, while generally failing to mention anything about the plant and animal life. So, to briefly correct that, tropical plants are awesome... can't say much more, because I can't identify species, but lots of interesting vines, bizarre trees with winding trunks, and coconut trees that grow everywhere and actually produce edible coconuts (the hotel I stayed in Siem Reap picked coconuts from the decorative trees in the parking lot to use in their cooking). There are geckos everywhere, often indoors - they're similarly common to, I dunno, dragonflies in Canada. Also there's lots of chickens around, apparently wild, just hanging around. There were monkeys at the temples. I've seen elephants, but they're Asian elephants and are really disappointingly small.... I still want to go for an elephant ride, tho.

Anyway, some pictures:

Rooster, chillaxing outside a clothing store in downtown Phnom Penh.

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A gecko, blending into the scenery at Bayon temple. They do the same thing on the walls of hotels and restaurants.

Somewhere I have some pictures of monkeys. But I can’t find them. So here’s a picture of some dogs at Bayon temple. (Aww, puppy!!) This country has a lot of random dogs, not apparently belonging to anyone, but looking pretty healthy, and surprisingly quiet and well-behaved.

A whole bunch of tropical plants on the water, all with roots on the sea floor.

Very cool selection of tropical plants by the riverside.

Tree near Angkor Wat. It’s hard to see from this tree, but this particular species seems to die in sections, so you’ll see a tree where the bottom half of the leaves are dead and drooped over, but the top is green and perky.


A tree at Bayon temple.

And, of course, the incredible trees with spider-web-like trunks that are invading Ta Promh.