Hello Tuk Tuk - Phnom Penh

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Very Special Customer

After Luang Prabang, we returned to Bangkok and to the Westin, where Mr. Hoffman is a very special customer. Again we were greeted at the front desk by the manager, Mr. Wee, and escorted to the 24th floor for Executive Club check-in. Again we were greeted with a cold fruit drink and cold towel. Again we were upgraded to a 2 room suite. We could get use to this treatment. This time, though, we checked in early enough to be invited for a complimentary alcoholic beverage during happy hour. We arrived to the executive lounge for a drink thinking that after we would wander to find some food stalls to eat dinner. Instead, we stayed for three hours drinking wine and scotch, eating cheese and crackers and crème brulee, and speaking with a very nice Singaporean business man, K.C. K.C. enjoyed the conversation so much that he admitted he was scheduled to have a two hour massage after his drink and stayed to talk with us instead. We discussed travel in Asia, the A380, US and international politics, and transfer pricing, of course. He and his brother own a company that supplies cruise ships everything from wine and food to electronics. He has an extra 4 bedroom apartment in Singapore, overlooking the Singapore River, and suggested that if he has not sold it before the end of the summer that we were welcome to stay there while in town. It was thoroughly a wonderful conversation. And, all food and alcohol were free. On top of free breakfast and free wireless internet in the lounge, this was turning into our cheapest city so far on the trip. Suite, food, alcohol, and wireless, all for the bargain price of $45 plus some Starwood points each night. A suite deal indeed.

The Neon Lights are Bright in Bangkok

We returned to our room after happy hour around 9:30 and neither of us was very tired. We looked outside our window and about two blocks away was an alley with all sorts of neon lights extending up the sides of the buildings that framed it. We decided to take a walk and see what it was.
We walked down the road, under the sky train tracks, passing all sorts of clothing and bootleg CDs for sale, and some street food - grilled meats and noodle soup. We came to the entrance of the alley and we knew immediately what we were in for. This alley made Bourbon Street look like Disneyland. There were about 20 large restaurants/bars lining the alley. Each had the bright neon lights that drew us there in the first place. You could not see inside any of the bars, except for a little tease at the doorway. All of the bars had scantily clad Asian women standing outside, dancing, and calling to the men walking down the street. Many of the women had signs advertising drink specials, and one had a large yellow sign with black writing that read “Inside, a lot of beautiful women, some ugly ones, and a few fat ones.” Classic. Essentially, these were “strip clubs” where it seemed anything else that was desired would be available on request.

Now, I was not the only Western woman walking around. It had a tourist element to it, with gawkers just coming to see. And, there were both Asian and Western men partaking in the activities. I was not sure if this alley had a particular name or if there were dozens of them throughout Bangkok. It was not mentioned in our abridged Lonely Planet guide. I will say that we were staying on the business strip, where there are a lot of western hotels catering to traveling businessmen. Those businessmen were out in full force - older, grey hair, and unattractive, with young, petite, Thai women on their arms. At the end of the block were two traditional bars, with no extracurricular activity for sale. We had one beer (paying about $3 for a large Chang, which was way too expensive for Bangkok, but we could not complain after all of our earlier free drinks), sat outside and observed the spectacle. Across the patio from us was an older white man with a younger Asian woman having a conversation. Anywhere else in the world it may have looked like a first date for a couple in Viagra Triangle, Chicago. She was making her moves though, finding a way to joke about something on the TV to turn a high five into hand holding. Inside were two white businessmen and one Asian woman. I went in to the bar to use the toilet as one of the men said good night, and they agreed to meet at 8:30am in the morning in their hotel lobby to head to their meetings. The other man stayed behind with his new female companion. It was troubling to say the least. I could not imagine being on a business trip with one of my colleagues engaging in this behavior. I know this activity exists, in Thailand and elsewhere. I saw it in the bar of the Omni hotel in LA when I was on trial several years ago. Here, though, it was unusual in its blatancy. The way the white men and Asian women were walking hand in hand down the street, so that the man could fool himself into believing it was a real date. It was disturbing. The next day we saw the sign over the alley that read “Soi Cowboy - Entertainment,” which translates to Cowboy Road. Yuck.

The Deal Continues

We woke and enjoyed our free breakfast and free wireless before emerging out into Bangkok during day light hours. We felt no desire to see any tourist attractions, particularly since we were here two years ago. Instead, we were using the time to plan some future travel and run some errands. I bought some socks from a street vendor and Eric bought a new shirt. We bought toothpaste and new toothbrushes in the super market and then ate at the attached food court - roast pork with rice and roast duck with rice, totaling less than $3 for both dishes. We wandered and were offered everything from massage to cheap cheap tailored suits to tuk tuk tours of the city. The tailors were persistent. When we told them we have no jobs so we do not need suits, they suggested we buy suits for when we get jobs. How do I explain to a Thai tailor that I have a dozen suits in a suitcase in a storage unit in Chicago? We decided after our errands to head to the pool at the hotel and wait for happy hour. We needed a day to relax, and who knew when our next nice hotel pool would be. After soaking in the pool, we hit the food court again, and again hit the happy hour. We are creatures of habit. In the morning, we hit the food court one more time before heading off to the airport for our flight to Phnom Penh.

Hello Tuk Tuk

We arrived in Phnom Penh and it was somewhat of a shock to the system. We have been to Siem Reap, Cambodia, before and it was a little touristy town. PP is the complete opposite. It is a capital city with all the problems of a capital city, including traffic. We climbed into the back of a tuk tuk for our ride to the guesthouse. That alone was an experience, weaving in and out of traffic, breathing in the dust from the roads, and feeling the heat of the April sun - their hottest month. There really is no set traffic pattern and traffic lights mean very little. The traffic in Phnom Penh made Bangkok look like the order of the Beltway. People drive on the wrong side of the road if it gets them to where they are going quicker. At one point we hit a traffic jam at an intersection with no traffic light. I thought for sure we would be there all night as there seemed no order to the chaos. We saw a traffic cop but he was fairly ineffective. Welcome to Phnom Penh.

We arrived at our guesthouse, which I booked ahead on the internet based on a suggestion. The guesthouse itself was nice and clean, with Asian decorations and a decent bathroom. The location was another story. I assumed everything would be pretty close, thinking the city is so much smaller than Bangkok, and I did not pay attention much to location. In the end, we were fairly far from the river and sights, but also directly across the street from Tuol Sleng, also known as S21, the infamous “security center” and place of torture and murder, that is now the Khmer Rouge Genocide Museum. It was a tough locale, to be faced daily not only with the prison across the street, and the reminders of torture and death, but with the maimed beggars in front, trying to get some money from guilt ridden tourists.

We were meeting my friend, Sonja, for dinner that first night, and not really knowing where we were headed, we opted to walk to dinner, rather than take a tuk tuk. This is not as easy as you would think. The national motto for Cambodia, and in particular, Phnom Penh, should be “Hello Tuk Tuk.” Every street and every corner has a gaggle of tuk tuk drivers trying to get your business. It is slightly off-putting, particularly when you do not need a tuk tuk and try to tell them you want to walk. They respond, “where you going? It’s probably far.” If you do need a tuk tuk, there are generally a half dozen fighting over you to get your business. You would think that would mean a good deal, but instead there is some collusion going on here, because they do collude on the price. Sometimes you can get one to take it for a dollar less. At first this practice was almost charming, an element of being in the capital city, but it wears on you after the first few days, or hours.

We also learned about the infrastructure in PP on the way to dinner. The roads are filled with store front houses. Generally, people open the front of their ground floor to open a restaurant or sell anything from food and produce to computers to roofing tiles and car parts. The family will sleep in the rear of the house, or upstairs. Although the main streets were created with large brick sidewalks, most of these storefronts spill all the way to the street. With tuk tuks and motos parked everywhere it was a constant struggle trying not to walk in traffic. And, did I mention above how chaotic the traffic is here? The bricks in the sidewalk were often missing or broken, forcing us to concentrate on where we were placing our feet as much as on the traffic whirling around us. There was also a lot of rubbish outside, with no one using a receptacle of any kid for garbage. Without much incident, though, we found the restaurant and had a nice dinner with Sonja. We opted for a tuk tuk on the way back though.

In the morning we decided to take advantage of our location by forcing ourselves to walk to the river to see the sights, thinking this would be our daily exercise. Of course, it was hot as all hell, and the first road we took was a dead end because of construction requiring us to back track several blocks, so we must have lost several pounds from sweat alone - in the heat of the day. We also witnessed the longest motorcade we have ever seen. We lived in Washington, D.C. for five years and are used to motorcades, and we even saw the inauguration in 2000. I don’t know who was in this motorcade, but we were ushered to the side of the street and were unable to move until the 40 or so cars passed.

Lucky Charm

We spent the afternoon at our new favorite day time drinking spot, a corner barang bar (barang is foreigner in Khmer, similar to falang), drinking cold $0.80 Angkor beer in a chilled mug, under a great fan, almost looking over the river. I saw almost because there were huge piles of dirt on the promenade, blocking our view of the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. The Japanese are aiding the Cambodians in a sewer project along the waterfront to ease problems resulting from flooding during the wet season. We were outside of the famous Foreign Correspondents Club, and we saw a bus ticket vendor. I wandered over to see how we could get ourselves to Siem Reap in a few days. My new best friend, Sokhen, helped us with our tickets. When I approached, I asked her how she was doing today and she replied not good because it was slow and there were no tourists. I replied “I’m a tourist, and I am here.” She laughed. I ended up buying our tickets to Siem Reap, which made her happy, and we played with her son for a bit.
The next day we returned to our riverside bar for more icy cold Angkor. Sokhen saw us sit down and bolted right over to us. She said that after I bought my ticket it was a little slow in the afternoon, but then she sold a lot of tickets at night. She said I brought her good luck. She was so sweet. So, I took advantage of the compliment to ask some more questions about getting to Vietnam, from either Phnom Penh, or through a new overland border crossing closer to the water. She was very helpful. The following day, I brought Sonja’s friend, Corine, to see Sokhen to buy her ticket to join us on the bus ride to Siem Reap. Sokhen was so happy that I brought Corine for the ticket. Then, after we returned from Siem Reap we needed to purchase a bus ticket to head to the seaside resort, Sihanoukville. She was worried because it was late to purchase. It was a weekend heading into Khmer New Year, which is huge here. We asked her for two tickets, and informed her that we did not even have to sit near each other, particularly if we received two aisle seats. We said we have been married too long and do not need to spend the time talking to each other, particularly after 2 six hour bus rides to and from Siem Reap. She finally reserved us seats on her third choice for buses because nothing else was available, and came to our table to inform us that, unfortunately, we had to sit together. She was hysterical, completely following our joke. Then, she spent a few minutes saying thank you, and telling me that I was good luck for her, and telling Eric he should be thankful because he is lucky to have me, and her husband of four years is the same, also lucky to have her, and I think she said I was beautiful too. I apologized that it would be the last ticket I purchased from her because we were leaving PP, but that when we return on our next trip I would purchase more tickets from her. Sokhen, my new best friend.

Angkor My Friends

During our third night in PP, we decided to venture out on our own for dinner. The prior night we just grabbed food at our guesthouse, which was good, but just too expensive, with $3 Angkor beer and $5 entrees. We knew we could get a better deal. As we become more acclimatized to our travels, our standards have dropped. Once, where we required air conditioning to eat, now, if a place has a fan, we are happy. During one of our Hello Tuk Tuk rides back to our guesthouse, we saw a place less than one block away called My Friends, which had a fan. So, we hit it up for dinner. The menu was simple, and in English. In fact, the English menu only had bottled Angkor on it, but the locals were drinking pitchers, so we pointed, asked how much, and did as the locals do. We ordered some pork fried rice and red curry with pork. It was good food, and quite cheap, less than $3 an entrée, with $2 pitchers. We really liked the server, who was very friendly. We liked even better that we were the only barang in the restaurant. There was an Angkor Beer Girl, whose job it was to encourage people to drink more Angkor, and cheesy music played, including a cover of Richard Marx. I mean, who covers Richard Marx? There was a group of seven sitting towards the front and we realized they received the non-barang menu. On the way out, we looked at their table to see what they were eating: fried rice, bbq chicken, and beef ribs. They let us try the chicken, which was so tasty. I don’t know what seasonings they were using on that chicken, but the Colonel should take note.

The following night, we of course, returned. When we received the barang, English menu, we tried to ask our very nice server for what the large group had the night before, asking for the Khmer menu, which we, of course, could not read. He was having trouble understanding so we asked the table next to us, which we referred to as Table 2, if anyone spoke English, and they pointed at a guy sitting at, what we referred to as, Table 1. The guy at Table 1 helped us translate what we wanted - bbq pork or beef and fried chicken. Although the bbq pork was different than the night before, it was still quite tasty, almost like sliced black pepper pork. The fried chicken was amazing - at least we think it was chicken. The chicken bones were real small and reminded us more of a pigeon or a dove, which would be fine with us. Regardless, it was fantastic mystery winged bird. The entire time we were eating, Table 2 and Table 1 continuously raised their glasses to us to say cheers, and Happy Khmer New Year. When we ordered our second plate of yummy fried chicken, aka mystery bird, we offered a taste to our translator friend. He confirmed that it was chicken, but I still was not buying it. We had finished our second $2 pitcher of Angkor and the Angkor girl offered us a third, which seemed like a good idea at the time. She did a very good job of filling our glass before it was empty to encourage more drinking. This was her job at all of the tables. Also, it appeared that the locals like their beer with ice cubes, so she also ensured there was a full pitcher of ice cubes at each table. Right after we ordered the third pitcher, we knew it was a mistake. After a bit, the beer was warm, and I even used an ice cube to cool mine down, like the locals do. Not a big fan of that. With less than half a pitcher left, Table 2 was starting to wind down, passing on another pitcher from the ever persistent Angkor Girl. Table 1, with our translator friend had a full pitcher. So, we offered the remainder to Table 2, making them our new best friends. For almost a half hour, we stood between the two tables talking to all of them, learning new Khmer words, yelling cheers, and of course, Happy Khmer New Year. We spent some time speaking with our translator friend, Minnea, who has been speaking English for 20 years and works at one of the local universities. He asked us if we would be interested in a job teaching English either in Phnom Penh, or at their new locations in Siem Reap and Battambang. If so, he would recommend us for a job because he thought we would be very good English teachers. He must have heard of our success in Luang Prabang. It was a great night at My Friends. I think we are getting more and more comfortable with inserting ourselves into situations where we are learning more about the local culture, and staying away from sanitized barang experiences.

On a similar note to avoiding sanitized barang experiences, by the time we arrived in Phnom Penh Eric desperately needed a haircut. He was trying to grow it out as long as possible, like his college days, but could not wait anymore. We had seen on some travel shows that you can find barbers on the street in Vietnam, and we saw them in Bangkok, so we set out to find a street barber. There were two guys set up next to each other on one road, and of course we picked a scorcher of a day to sit outside. Eric was wrapped in a salon cape, which made him sweat even more. The barber found a chair for me, letting me sit under the umbrella to watch the action. The barber was meticulous. Eric’s hair seemed a bit shorter than I ever remember him having it before, but this guy did a great job. He took his time on the side burns and the back using a cool contraption that buzzed the hair real close. Then he finished with a straight razor to trim around the ears and the neck, even getting the little tiny hairs inside the ear, which made us both a little nervous. A straight razor shave was thrown into the price, but Eric had shaved that morning, so he politely refused. It was certainly not a barang experience, or price. $1 for the haircut, even with a shave thrown in.

Eric and his Ladies

For our last night in PP, we went to Sonja’s apartment to meet her two roommates. It was great to see their “humble” apartment, and what it would be like to live overseas. After some drinks on their humongous balcony, we went out to a nicer restaurant for dinner. There are a series of restaurants in PP that specialize in training local promising young adults how to cook both international and Khmer food, and to train them how to excel in the service industry. This enables them to be more competitive for the western restaurant jobs, which pay better. I should note, though, that we used the wireless access at a guesthouse around the corner from ours that is owned by the same people. There are three of these guesthouses in PP, the Bodhi Tree. They were one of the earlier guesthouses catering to westerners but also were proud of their use of organic and local ingredients, and their treatment and training of staff. We went to the other Boddhi Tree three times to use the internet and spent time each day speaking to Chivong. Chivong used to work outside doing hard labor, but the manager thought he was starting to learn English and seemed promising, so he brought Chivong inside to train as a waiter. Although Chivong made more money working outside, the restaurant gig offered him a chance to study his English each day on his own, and by talking with foreigners. He asked Eric for some help with a large questionnaire he had, we think from his boss, with a range of questions about his training, job experience, how happy he is with his boss, how well he gets along with others, etc. The questions required an answer from the range of highly satisfied to not satisfied. The questions were too difficult for him to understand, so Eric walked him through the pronunciation of the hard words and helped explain the questions so that Chivong could answer them. We learned that his manager is never there, and he does not like him that much, but, regardless, for those questions we told Chivong to mark that he was satisfied. We do not need him getting fired. When asked about whether he was satisfied with his salary, we also did not want him to provide an answer that led to him being fired. Chivong told us that his outside work paid him $112 a month, but as a waiter he only makes $90 a month. We were shocked. This is one of the higher paying jobs. I kept Chivong’s salary in mind when we were at this restaurant that helps train staff for high paying jobs at western establishments.

After the six of us took both a tuk tuk and a moto to get to the restaurant, a great table was reserved for us under a wooden roof, surrounded by trees and flowers. Eric and I purposely did not sit next to each other, as we relished the opportunity to speak with people other than ourselves. It was a great success! We had such a wonderful evening with Sonja, her friend Corine from St. Louis who came to Cambodia for vacation the same time we were there, and her roommates Betsy and Sibylle. Betsy, who is also from Missouri, is working in PP on the issue of sex crimes committed against children. It is the same thing my friend, Laura, did when she worked in PP a few years ago. Sibylle is German, and spent about five months traveling through Southeast Asia before landing a gig with a travel company in PP. We ordered several different dishes and several plates of mango sticky rice for desert. We were finally the last table in the restaurant after squatting at the table for well over two hours. We traded travel stories and learned more about living in Phnom Penh. One of my favorite stories that exemplified what becomes normal when on this side of the world was when Sonja was at her local internet café typing along and a rat fell from the ceiling and landed on the computer. No big deal though. The night before when we left our room at the guesthouse a large frog was hanging at the door and was about ready to hop on in our room. We shooed it away down the alley. We were not afraid of it; we just knew it would be a huge pain to try to get him back out of the room. Later that same night, when Eric was unlocking the door to the room a gecko fell from the ceiling and landed on him. He was surprised of course, but swatted him away and we went into our room free from geckos and frogs. Things like this just happen - it is a whole new set of rules of what is normal.

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Photos

Independence Memorial
The central monument on the main road, with wide French looking boulevards.

A day in the life
Trying to keep cool in the shade.

Angkor Draft
This became our favorite outdoor, cold beer joint - .80 a draft.

Bus Tickets
The woman I bought my bus tickets from - this is her son.

Picture Time
His mom, Sokhen, let him pose for us because I bought bus tickets.

Hello Tuk Tuk
Always a driver ready to sell a ride.

Phnom Penh traffic
A little nerve wracking in an open aired "vehicle".

Dinner?
We zoomed past this on the back of a tuk tuk and wanted to beg the driver to stop.

Serenity
In the middle of the craziness-the pond at the National Museum

Lunch Break
Overlooking the Tonle Sap River

Just a Trim Please
Eric's sidewalk haircut - $1

Gas Station
Sidewalk gas station near the barber.

Tuk Tuk Fun
Betsy and Sibylle on the way to dinner

Eric and the Ladies
Sonja, Betsy, Amber, Sibylle, Corine, and Eric

Funky Stache
The story of Sonja and the moustache is way too long to explain, just trust me.

Self Portrait
In the back of a Tuk Tuk