Jessica has left the building - Cambodia here I come!!!

Woohoo! April 30th 2008 finally came and I started off on my travels around the world. It was sad leaving, it always seems to happen to people who before they go they have a great time at home, which was the case for me. Saying goodbye was sad. First I couldn't understand why everybody was so upset seeing as I have lived abroad before but then Italy and Australia are two different kettles of fish...

So the flight over to Bangkok was fine, I took a sleeping tablet and fell asleep listening to my new Zen so I wouldn't be knackered on arrival. A girl beside me was a bit annoying though, she kept turning around and staring at me and even asked me to turn off my phone before the bloody pilot did. Where are we? A neighbourhood watch meeting?! So I escaped (or so I thought) to a vacant row of empty seats behind and set up camp for the night. As I dosed off I woke up mid-darkness to a hand on my leg. Groggy, I sprung up to see neighbourhood watch girl standing over me. She had mistaken seats. Ugh, that image haunted my dreams. Luckily that was it for the rest of the flight. So when I landed I had fully prepared myself for a scene out of the Jetsons after hearing what different people had said to me. So when coming out in arrivals I was suprised to not get bombarded, or maybe I didn't because I was equipped with my blue steel face. My first impressions were pretty positive although you can't get much from an airport. I could tell by the little things that it was going to be a culture shock when I got to my first port of call. I was getting really excited at this stage. All the cold feet and nervous jitters were left with the rain in Ireland. I was sniggering to myself because the pilot announced to the ongoing passengers on my flight (going to Australia) that they would not get called back to the gate to reboard their flight because the airport was a "silent airport." Yeah right, as silent as a group of monkeys uncovering a lifetime supply of bananas!
So I get to the hotel where I am staying for a few hours which was pretty snazzy. They wouldn't hear of me carrying my rucksack and I was greeted by a sea of bows. What the hell! There was so much to take in that I didn't manage to reciprocate 20 bows so I just nodded and gave a little wave like an Irish elderly man on seeing a good friend in the pub. Yes I was one of those people who I hate - I had none of the language and was unaccustomed with the customs. I spent the evening taking advantage of the plush surroundings: widescreen tv, the lovely fluffy hotel dressing gown and slippers and the complimentary teas and coffees knowing that this would be the last time fo a long time. I rang Emma (my long time friend travel buddy for the next few months) to make plans and she warned me that Phnom Penn was going to be crazy compared to Bangkok. Gulp!

I could instantly see the difference of wealth between Bangkok and Phnom Penh on seeing the small airport and the way the people dressed. I could see police on the side of the street interrogating people - I heard later on that they happily take bribes so corruption seemed rife from first glance. Emma had arranged a moped taxi driver to pick me up and to bring us to the guest house - that's how they do it over here. So my grand entrance into Phnom Penn city was on the back of a moped with the driver holding my rucksack under his legs at the front and me clutching onto my backpack for dear life. It didn't help that I had just read about how drive by robberies can be committed and how the robbers target Westerners on the back of moto-taxis. If anyone has ever been to an Asian city, you will know what I mean by how the traffic works over there. You beep to let the person in front know that you are coming so they either move or don't move, something tells me that one must be very instinctive to master this and in Phnom Pehn's case, there aint no traffic lights in this city so there was maximum weaving and me frequently glancing down to check and see if my toes were still there. My driver; Sok had a habit of turning around and talking to me mid-weave. Despite fearing my life I was taking everything in like a newborn; this is completely different to anything I have ever seen in my entire life. The traffic system itself was like a Harley Davidson invasion, they love their bikes over here!!! I felt like the Director writes in this part of the musical script: "que the bikes." Now I know why people in Asia wear masks - there is so much dust/smoke and general dirty stuff you don't want to be breathing in. While on the back of the taxi moped I was looking around at my passing surroundings wide-eyed and open-mouthed to only be reminded every few seconds by a mouthful of dust to keep em' all shut. A culture shock to say the least. I have seen nothing like this before. The closest I have probably come to such poverty was St. Lucia and Barbados. All human and motor traffic occurred on the roads and the footpaths were solely for rubbish and street stalls selling anything from food to hardware materials.

My bed for the next 3 nights in Phnom Penh was in the #9 guesthouse by the lake. It was a far cry from the night before with toilets that have to be manually flushed but it had a fan which was all I cared about in this blustering heat. The guesthouse was cool, everything is on the actual lake so it has a kind of a safari meets Venice vibe going on so we spent most of our nights there in the communal area as it was well stocked with a bar, hammocks, dvds, a pool table and people. I was told anyway that the nightclubs were too seedy - full of drugs and prostitutes so we were happy going to the places by the lakeside after the sun went in. The day I arrived we went to a shooting range and to the killing fields. I wasn't really feeling the idea of the first port of call so I just watched. Here you can shoot all sorts of stuff. Apparently somebody killed a cow earlier on. Not my idea of fun. Now I can understand why soldiers get so many hearing problems, every time a gun sounded, the whole room vibrated! When we were there a load of Cavan lads came in decked out in handlebar moustaches, Hawaiin shirts and smoking Cuban cigars for the occasion! Afterwards we went to the killing fields which was where most of the 1.5 - 3 million people were murdered as a result of evil Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime only ending 3 decades ago. I found it hard to imagine what went on there and the stacks of skulls piling up as far as a church steeple would go was eerie alright but it didn't really connect with me until I went S-21 the next day. That was pretty heavy stuff. S-21 is basically a school where all the detainees were imprisoned before being brought off to the killing fields. Many people died here too but it was mainly a place for torture and other things these people saw to be educational. It was strange that outside was a bustling city centre street decorated with pretty flowers and inside was a grim torture ground where there were probably at least 100 tourists but you could hear a pin drop when walking around. At one point I thought I had gone out of bounds but then I realised that there were actually people in the room. You are first greeted by the list of demands for the detainees before entering the first of four two-storey blocks. Some of the rooms show pictures of single corpses on a single iron bed and the actual bed is placed underneath the image with the torture weapons placed on the bed in the same way as the photo. Other rooms showed photos of the victims. Other rooms displayed more torture images and then others gave personal accounts of family members who lost their loved ones to Pol Pot's regime. I only made it through two of the blocks, it was pretty gruesome stuff and not pleasent to see on my birthday but another year older, another year wiser and another year that these people never got to live.

While some of the main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh aren't happy ones, there are plently of cool things to see do. Seriously, Asia (or at least Cambodia) is mental, you see extraordinary things all the time (well at least for a Westerner!); we were driving in a tuk tuk along the outskirts of the city and happened across an elephant! I particularly liked the riverside area of PP. First I saw Watt Phnom, a beautiful temple on a hill full of monkeys and monks! You can't go by a minute without being reminded of the poverty and the troubles Cambodia has had - lining the stairs leading to the temple were various people begging and most were without one than one limb. The shrine itself was spectacular, they put so much effort into everything in these temples. The neon lights and kaliedoscope effect makes a nice change from dark churches. Just across the road from Watt Phnom is a long riverside strip of old French colonial bars and cafes so in the space of 3 minutes, you feel like you are in a tropical Paris! We had a cocktail in the FCC bar which I really liked - fans, wicker chairs - that kind of thing. Friends cafe near the riverside is also a cool place to check out, all the proceeds go to the children who stay here - the idea is that they are trained in different skills so they can go out and make a life in cheffing, hairdressing etc. instead of a life on the streets where they are exposed to child sex trafficking. The food is amazing. This is one of a few different projects I have seen around the city - it's cool to see stuff like this going on here.

It's easy and cheap to get by here - they use dollars along with their local currency. You do have to watch out for being ripped off but once you agree a price with your taxi driver or don't appear willing to pay anything they'll be fair enough. I have been spending about $35 a day (around EUR20) and could do it a lot cheaper. All in all it has been good start: I arrived in one piece, got over the culture shock, I like Cambodia and have made some friends. 2 nights were definately enough for me in Phnom Penh (I am a country bumpkin at heart especially when it's edging on 40 degrees!) and I have been looking forward to the laidback atmosphere of Siem Riep...

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