I Know, I'm Sorry, I'm Behaving Like A Total Particle Accelerator. I'll Stop, Truly I Will, Please Don't Stay.

So one of the more vexing problems facing scientists who explore the quantum universe is that the very act of observing quantum phenomena (do dooo do do do) changes the thing observed. (Mah-nah-mah-nah.) That's why when looking at particles in a particle accelerator, they sometimes behave as a wave and other times behave as separate little bits. It just depends on what criteria you're observing by. That's where Schrodinger's Cat comes from, also, and why a quantum physicist can't tell you if the lab kitty is alive or dead for sure either way, until you poke it with a stick. Actually that's not quite right, it's weirder than that. If you put a cat in a box and point a laser at it, which is set off by a quantum trigger that goes off (or not) while the box is closed, the cat, until you actually open the box and observe it, is in a quantum simultaneous alive/dead state, being neither wholly one nor the other. I think. Dammit, it's been a while since I read any popular Quantum Physics books. That stuff is hard to keep in your head. Is my brain dead, or alive? I'd prefer a constant either/or state to actually knowing, thank you very much. Anyway, all this really goes to show is why people avoid scientists at parties, and especially avoid those of us who aren't scientists but try to explain scientific matters as if we had any clue about them whatsoever. But I had a point, really I did. Wait, it's coming back to me... oh there it is! So, quantum problem, the mere viewing of a quantum particle will alter it's behaviour, so you can never really know what it was up to or what it would have gotten up to until you came along and freaked it all out; you can only know what it did self-consciously under the lens of a quantum particle accelerator. And here's what I was trying to get at: Tourism, it's the same thing. But without the particle accelerator. The very act of tourism somewhat destroys what it is people were going to see in the first place. It's not as noticeable in places like Europe, except in small ways. The Vatican, for instance, since it was built, has always looked more or less the same, and remains unaffected physically by tourism, excepting minimal wear and tear. But the difference there is more aesthetic. There is a huge difference, I imagine, between being alone in the Sistine chapel and soaking in all that art at your leisure, and being one of 1000 people and fighting for space, with the whispers gradually reaching a level to where the priests in attendance have to go "SHHHHHHHHH!!", then the whispers die down for a time, gradually rising over the next five minutes until the priests do the dreaded "SHHHH!" again, this wave of whisperage going on constantly until, hot sweaty and tired of bumping into people, you leave.
But in places like Thailand, tourism does much worse. Think back to four score and seven years ago, maybe multiply that by 10 or so since I'm not actually entirely sure what quantity four score is. I think maybe I used to know. Anyway, back in those pristine days of yore, Thailand's beaches were, in all likelihood, serene, untouched places of indescribable beauty. Some intrepid hippie backpacker came across it one day, and pow, fast forward to four score and seven times ten years later, there are thousands and thousands of tourists (including me, I'm not judging) who all came in search of fabled beauty, but in the process tore it up and filled the place with dive shops and 7elevens, and lots of levelled jungle to make room for 5 star beach resorts. It's just not the same anymore. It's still really nice, but not the paradise it was, and I imagine it's only going to get worse. Ohh, maybe the particle accelerator could metaphorically be word-of-mouth and/or advertising about certain tourist hotspots! Well, no need to really run with metaphor, I suppose. The point is more or less made.
But where I was really going with all this, was that Cambodia is both more and less than Thailand, for me. So far. I really like Phnom Penh in some ways: There are a lot fewer white people around, so I can kind of feel like I'm treading new ground, (I know I'm not, it's just the feeling that modern tourists have to hope for the best for) and there is next to none of the usual tourist infrastructure, so you don't get cut off from the normal daily life of locals. I mean, there are hotels, even a few really big expensive ones, but the city itself is a thriving mass of streetlife, motorbikes, tuk tuks, people asking for money or begging you to take a ride on their cyclo, and there is no getting away from it! Not that you want to, when travelling. That's why you travel. But sometimes it's easy to avoid actually experiencing a country and just sit in cafes and go to museums and whatnot. Here, it's in your face and I kind of like that. I had a blast taking a 30 minute tuk tuk ride out to Choeung Ek today... dodging people, other vehicles, everybody waving hello because they're not entirely jaded on western tourists yet... it's a really poor country though, so that takes some of the fun out of it. Meaning that you wind up feeling bad about yourself alot for being able to afford to jaunt off to Cambodia, when alot of them make $20 a month... Choeung Ek, by the way, is the villiage where Pol Pot had his famous Killing Fields. That was also a downer, but interesting. I overheard one guide telling his group the grisly manner in which they killed children and babies, bashing them on trees and even worse. The S-21 prison, which is now a genocide museum dedicated to Pol Pot's victims, was sobering also. You know, most of his soldiers, the ones who did the majority of murdering, were little more than children themselves? That always seems to be the way, in murderous holocausts. Hitler had his Youth, Pol Pot brainwashed young Cambodians... beware of activist organizations breeding armies of children. Hmmm... we should all keep our eyes on this type of behaviour.
Anyway, things I don't like about Phnom Penh; ultimately, it's small and you can do everything in a day, and following the oft-quoted travelling rule of 1 day or 1 month (or is it 3 days or 3 months? Meh, in Phnom Penh, it's 1 day 1 month), I've been here a day too long. That's why I have so much time to blather. But tomorrow, Angkor Wat, for 5 days. I understand that that is a good amount of time there, so we'll see.

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[Miss Luongo]

If recruiting kids is the red flag, then Lyndon LaRouche is the one to watch out for.
http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/

[messiestobjects]

LaRouche, LaRouche, the roof is on fire.
Sorry, but little Jesus Nazis running around preparing for armageddon scares me more than little regular Nazis.