Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 232

We took the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia), the guidebook said it would take about 8 or 9 hours. After about 5 hours we came to what we thought was a provincial town. When we asked if we were stopping for a break we were promptly informed that we were in the centre of Phnom Penh! It was not at all what we were expecting, normally in capital cities there are high rise office blocks and millions of people and heavy car traffic, here it was relatively quiet with wide boulevards and old French colonial architecture. We stayed at a lovely clean little place called Cozyna Hotel overlooking the river Tonle Sap. There are lots of great little cafes and restaurants along here, including the Foreign Correspondents Club, which quickly ... read more

04:15u, Ik ben wakker en bedenk me dat ik nog hele belangrijke Hattrick dingen voor elkaar moet maken voor ik weg kan.. Ik wil als ik k laar ben nog wel even gaan slapen, maar met die vreeslijk trage server, is het inmiddels 05:17 voor ik klaar ben. Nog maar een beetje Hattricken dus, een grote pot koffie zetten, inmiddels is de training er al geweest dus die kunnen we even bekijken, Joep maar eens uit laten en zo wordt het langzaam 8:00u. Op weg naar Schophol os het druk in de spits, maar rond een uur of negen zijn we er dan toch. Voor het inchecken rook ik nog even een peuk, nog voor ik hem heb aan gestoken vraagt Wijnand: ‘’Heb je je malariatabletten bij je?’’ ………eeeuuuhhh…..??..?..Nee, KUT die ben ik vergeten, denk, denk, ... read more

Hello again, I've written about communism, poverty, and world history. Yet the most response from any email has been: EDDIE MURPHY DID NOT SAY IT'S AFRICA HOT, IT WAS MATTHEW BROADRICK! I do appreciate the correction and apologize immensely to Neil Simon who deserves better than Eddie Murphy. Here's some neat things I've done in Cambodia... *Saw an alligator farm. In America, fences would be surrounding the alligators with sensors making sure that no one could possibly get hurt. Needless to say, the security is obviously very lax in Cambodia and I was literally 2 feet away from some of these beauties. It's pretty cool and scary at the same time. In order not to be bitten, I promised to never buy an alligator bag and to rent the B movie classic, Alligator. *The first hotel ... read more

The guy who sold me the tickets had told me that there was one place left on the minivan, and he was right in a way - there were only 3 of us with tickets on the minivan that would take 25 as I would find out later... The other two on the minivan were a couple from Australia and were good company as we traveled the extremely dusty road under construction across 5 ferry crossings. It was probably just as well that the road was under construction in that it had been flattened since some of the stories of huge potholes I had heard were made, but the dust was quite choking at times. At one of the crossings - I think the forth maybe - our bus wouldn't start so we gave it a ... read more

It finally feels like the trip has begun. We had a ridiculously early flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. I didn't really know what to expect... I had heard that the place was turning into a backpacker's Mecca but was pretty run down. Taking a look out the plane's window, the entire country seemed to be brown; it reminded me of an aerial photo of the North Korean country side. While the airport was pretty modern, with a somewhat unorganized customs system that rendered me $20 lighter and took up a page of passport space. We found a taxi and were off. The city was basically a disaster area, with beautiful colonial razer-wire-defended buildings and puddles of questionable liquids in the street. It appears that there's not public sanitation system for the ... read more