Critters, Domestic and Otherwise

 

It was a nice busy week at work, with my neck/shoulder pain easing after a crackin' good time with a chiropractor. Unfortunately, the pain had almost faded when I woke up with it renewed in intensity, so it's back to the drawing board. New pillows, massages, and a chiropractor haven't resolved it, nor drinking more water, nor muscle relaxants. I'm considering acupuncture, though may give the chiropractor another try first. 

That doesn't explain the elephant butt above, does it... 

On Friday, which was a local holiday, I went out to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Center and saw rescued elephants, various types of bears, a pair of binturongs (also known as "bear-cats"), gibbons, tigers, mountain goats and deer. It's a lovely swathe of land about an hour and a half south of Phnom Penh. Wildlife Alliance runs tours there right now, so my friend Lisa and her family and I booked one and off we went. We met Lucky (whose butt is above) and Choukk, the latter of whom was rescued as a young elephant whose foot got stuck in razor wire, and had to be removed. They weren't sure he was going to make it, but then a national prosthetics center took on the challenge and made him a shoe, which he outgrows every six months or so, but which allows him to walk normally. We fed the female elephants -the males being deemed too aggressive - and wandered the park, learning about the various animals. It's a somewhat sprawling park, so that it doesn't feel like the same enclosed horror that many zoos do. I enjoyed it and would go again. 

The tour also included lunch, which was delicious Khmer food: fried rice, cooked vegetables, beef lok lak, and noodle salad, all with a small bowl of Kampot pepper mixed with lime juice as a spice/seasoning. Yum!

I also ventured to two new-to-me restaurants this weekend, one higher end Khmer food and the other French. Both were good and I'll definitely go back!

Arc de Triumph?!

Jacques had a good weekend, too: Saturday and Sunday mornings we went to the Embassy to run around, and he played decently well with a couple other dogs! Closely supervised, of course, but he did great. We also walked somewhere new: Diamond Island, which is a five minute drive from where I live and has the strangest French-inspired construction of shopfronts, apartments, and monuments, all completely empty. It also has a boardwalk which overlooks the river, which is lovely. We'll be back there, too. 

The weather is in the mid-80s, with no rain. The city feels more alive as businesses re-open from their Covid hiatus. (Omicron is not terrible here (yet), but most people mask, inside and out.) A weekend of outings and restaurants, rooftop pool dips and daytime naps, critters both wild and domestic: what a life!