Like a disease from a Cambodian prostitute, the urge to go back to Thailand was an itch that no amount of scratching would satisfy. The solution? Shave our testicles. Or, pack up our things and head back across the border. In the end, we did both; and so it was that we arrived in the border town of Aranya Prathet as hairless as the day we were born.

From here we went our separate ways, with Erin having to go back to Bangkok for “work” (read: hitting small children with large sticks and relishing every bloodthirsty minute), Lachlan going north to “find himself” (read: drinking alone and crying himself to sleep while staring helplessly at his bony, girlish arms) and Adam going to Chiang Mai to “party” (read: feverishly masturbating into a sock while watching the Shopping Network). We envisaged that we would all film separate narratives and weave them seamlessly together into a masterful tapestry, but we found it far easier just to put up a “One Week Later” title screen and forget the whole thing ever happened.

AND SO: we finish our time in Cambodia in the town of Battambang, far to the northwest. A town of crumbling French villas, endless scrums of children begging for food, long riverboats rides and life-threatening tuk-tuk rides, Battambang ended up being the mose intense, enjoyable and depressing place we travelled to in the country.

Things that happened during the period covered by this clip but did not get filmed:

* We ate a lot of hot baguettes
* Lachlan spent over thirteen hours cycling endlessly through the seventy-odd cable channels available at our guesthouse while making low moaning sounds of an increasingly disturbing nature.
* It rained and then stopped, at which point Adam quipped, “Hey dudes, it’s stopped raining”.
* We covered our feet and legs in mud and then cleaned them in the bathroom and left a thick layer of scum all over the bathroom floor, which we neglected to clean before we left.
* Erin took a lot of photos of stuff happening on the street, which she then deleted, because they were pictures of a street.
* Lachlan fled into the jungle and was adopted by a local tribe as a deity figure, after which Erin was sent by Adam to retrieve him, “with extreme prejudice”. In the end she coaxed him out with a small tube of Vegemite, a VHS recording of old episodes of ‘Home Improvement’ and a solemn promise that Adam would stop calling him ‘fagtits’.

Enjoy! Next week we’ll be comin’ at you from the mountains of northern Thailand.

The PPKP Team

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Lower Quality (and should work on iPhone)

EPISODE THREE: Angkor What?
So – can I take back what I said about Cambodian music last episode? When I said “sucks ass”, what I really meant was, “is awesome”. The music this week is like the soundtrack to some movie about kung fu-trained Catholic nuns armed with machine guns trying to save the world from the evil machinations of a Siberian prince with bad teeth.

Which, in a funny way, is exactly what this episode is about.

Though, in another, less funny but more accurate way, it has nothing whatsoever to do with this episode, as we head out from Phnom Penh to get our kicks among the ruins of Angkor Wat and interview Cambodians about police corruption.

Now: sorry to go all Bono on you, but Cambodians have a very hard lot in life. Land mines, glue sniffing, a shambolic government riddled with corruption. The poverty we were witness to in our short time there eclipses anything any of us have ever seen before (and some of us have been to Wagga Wagga). If you have an urge to donate (rather than just kidnapping the children a la Angelina Jolie), may we humbly refer you to the following sites:

The Cambodia Trust (helping out amputees, victims of polio and other physically disabled Cambodians)
www.cambodiatrust.com

Help the Cambodian Children
www.helpthecambodianchldren.org

CamKids – The Cambodian Children’s Charity
www.camkids.org

SOS Children
www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/sponsor-a-child/asian-child-sponsorship/cambodia.htm

The PPKP Team

download QuickTime here.

IN WHICH: we leave Thailand, crossing the border into Cambodia in a van loaded down with several hundred kilograms of palm oil machinery because we just love palm oil so goddamn much that we almost want to marry it. 

Also the episode in which we get snared by the bright lights of Phnom Penh. Sort of like moths pulled to a flame, except that there are no moths and no flame, just three sweaty white people trying not to get ripped off.

Also the episode in which we learnt that talking to the camera goes some way toward compensating for the lack of interesting footage.

Also the episode in which we find that Cambodian music sucks ass.

Also the episode in which we find that we are lazy enough to keep the music in the clip despite it sucking ass, because we spent all day getting it and if you don’t like it, gfy.

Enjoy!

The PPKP Team

AND NOW: the long-awaited debut of Ping Pong Ka-Pow! In this thrilling episode, Erin shows us how to make a spice rack, Adam gives us tips on getting the best from your winter vegetables, and Lachlan shows us correct posture in a ballroom gown.

Plus, we leave Bangkok forever to hit our first destination, the lovely island of Ko Chang, in Thailand’s southeast. While we were there we watched monkeys race along power lines, lizards getting caught and barbecued, and got stuck into a whole lot of party action. Unfortunately, we forgot to film any of it.

It’s going to take us a while to get used to actually, you know, filming things that are happening at the time rather than just gawking and then later stringing together some scenery shots and foisting it off on our friends and families.

We’ll get the hang of it; bear with us.

And stay tuned for episode two, coming at you soon from somewhere in Cambodia.

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download QUICKTIME version here