PHNOM PENH

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25.11.08

Km travelled 19182

Time to go. Our visit to Vietnam for this time is at the end. It's not yet the time for me to express my thoughts on this experience, I'm still meditating.
We leave quite early and the journey to Phnom Penh will take us seven hours.
We meet other travellers, we get bored together waiting at the border, we set foot together for the first time in the Kingdom of Cambodia. They are a couple of Scottish, a kiwi ex pat girl, and a Swedish girl. It's always good to have some mates for a trip like this.
I never put my mind into imagining how Cambodia would look like. My first impression of Cambodia doesn't differ in anything with the idea I've always had of India. Incredibly poor, terribly dirty, white bony cows hanging around, children sitting naked playing on endless rivers of rubbish. Generally not a pleasant view, and atmosphere, I would add.
Hordes of kids begging everywhere and crying (or I should say, pretending to) if you don't give them money. Even a tuk tuk driver did the same when we refused his offer after getting off the bus. We walked the short distance to the hotel along the main streets of Phnom Penh, wrapped in a revolting smell, with so much rubbish on the ground you didn't know where to walk, it seems the dump of the world. The hotel is fine, the room is on the fifth floor without a lift and there's no internet, but the room is wide and there's hot water and a fan.
We book a tuk tuk for tomorrow and we go for a walk. Some time I feel a bit uncomfortable with all the men in the streets looking and making comments, but I guess that is what it is.
We ask at the reception for a nice place to have dinner and the guy recommends us to walk to the end of the street to Ma Ma. It's all dark and I don't particularly like it. We sit at a table outside in the candle light. Very romantic. But after two minutes, everything lights up! It was a power cut!
Food wasn't exceptional but good and the service nice, we had a good time. Our nights at the hotel we watch Discovery Channel and National Geographic wishing we could experience everything we see.

26.11.08

At 8.00 a tuk tuk is waiting for us outside the hotel. We make a first stop for breakfast just around the corner. The first half of the day we spent it between Choeung Ek, better known to us as the Killing Fields, and Tuol Sleng, former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, today the Genocide Museum. Visiting these two places has been one of the most horrible experiences of our lives. I won't write anything about it, because words can't tell. You can look at the pictures in our separate entry.
It's my first experience on a tuk tuk tour. And it's actually very enjoyable. We drive around the busy streets of Phnom Penh and finally get ourselves into the crazy traffic. We ask our driver to drop us off along the riverside so we can have a walk and look for a place where to have lunch. This city is probably the dirtiest place I've ever set foot in, sometimes the smell of rubbish is so strong that you can't breath, and the heat doesn't help. Beggars are a plague as much as tuk tuk drivers, filling all the streets and following you around without a rest. Ladies selling gasoline in plastic bottles in tiny stands along the road.
The riverside is a long line of western bars and restaurants. We sit outside at the Hope and Anchor and have a light meal. We realize that Cambodia seems a lot more expensive that the rest of South East Asia, and we didn't really expected it. Probably it's not touristy enough to make the prices of goods for tourists lower. We'll have to watch our money a bit more.
In the afternoon we wander inside the gates of the Royal Palace. Being actually the residence of the King and the Royal Family, it's not possible to visit all of it. The Royal Palace as we see it today has been built in 1866 and includes several buildings and gardens.
In a separate enclosure within the palace boundaries, is the famous Silver Pagoda. So called for its silver floor, that we couldn't imagine before seeing, and that we find incredibly beautiful, it also has inside a gold statue of Buddha adorned with thousands of diamonds. There are many tourists around and we meet for the second time during the day the Scottish couple from the bus, but there's also a lot of students.
Outside the driver is waiting for us and before heading back to the hotel, we ask him to stop at the supermarket so we can buy something for dinner. We didn't find much but we need to save money!
Outside the hotel we pay the driver that seems to want a tip on top of that (!) and retire to our room.

27.11.08

Our plans of visiting a few sites outside Phnom Penh have been cancelled and replaced by a cheaper and more relaxing visit to the city. We book the bus tickets for tomorrow, and then we go for breakfast at Ma Ma. There's a lot of talking about the situation in Bangkok which we'll investigate more carefully.
We walk to the Wat Ounalom. The only beautiful thing you see around the streets of this city are the orange monks walking under the shade of their matching umbrellas.
When we cross the gate of the Wat, no one seems to be around apart from three kids playing. We have a look around and find a girl outside one of the temples that allows us in and then around the building. There are eleven thin cats sleeping and hanging around. Behind the main building we find the actual Wat, inside which it is said to be kept an eyebrow of Buddha. A girl lets us in there as well and we leave a donation, the place seems quite deserted.
Again along the riverside we stop for a break before reaching Wat Phnom. It is a temple built on top of a hill believed to be the founding place of the city.
A good number of beggars populate the site together with people carrying bird cages full of birds and asking for money to free one of them. We have a look inside the temple carrying our shoes with us because kids outside ask for money to help you put them back on.
We go for a last walk towards the lake but when we get close enough we realize it is impossible to get to it, plus it doesn't look very nice around there, so we give up. I think we could have probably stayed a day less. Phnom Penh doesn't have much to offer and to whoever plans a visit here I would say that one full day is enough.

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