Cambodia!

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As a general rule, the capital city of almost any country is my least favourite part of it. KL is the least interesting pert of Malaysia, for me. Bangkok is sprawilng, smelly and polluted and was teeming with the most aggressive tuk-tuk drivers in the country. Vientiane is the most formal part of Laos, a country I learned to love for it's informalities. Conversely, I've heard that the aggressive nature of the Viet people that defined my experience of the country is more accentuated in Hanoi, so I'm glad we decided to skip that leg of our trip altogether.

So we arrived in Phnom Penh after a surprisingly easy bus trip from Ho Chi Minh City (née Saigon). I was expecting another vaguely boring urban representation of an otherwise interesting country, but I was almost instantly convinced otherwise. Perhaps I was just relieved to be away from the socially defensive Vietnamese atmosphere and the strange undercurrent of grim efficiency that seemed to pervade the culture there. Perhaps Phnom Penh is just a nicer capital than the others listed above. Sure, it's still big and sprawling. Like Vientiane, though, it sprawls but doesn't rise high. I've heard that Cambodia is poorer than Laos, but looking at the capital, you'd think it was more developed.

Though the country does seem to have a decent infrastructure, it's apparent that there's something pretty wrong with the economy - the ATMs in Phnom Penh (installed in the last year or so - the first in the country) dispense only US dollars.

We spent one full day in Phnom Penh the first time there, visiting sites dediacated to the country's turbulent 20th century history. It was pretty harrowing to visit the Killing Fields - the site of the systematic extermination of millions of Kmer people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge (the Cambodian communist party wiped out practically anyone with a trace of education) - and the genocide museum, set in one of the Khmer Rouge's most notorious interrogation prison from which the inhabitants would be taken to the Killing Fields. Harrowing, but perhaps necessary. I think it was important to appreciate such a recent history - it only happened 30 years ago.

After that we took a four-hour bus ride south to the coastal town of Sihanoukville. It's right on the beaten track as one of the most obvious tourist destinations in Cambodia. Nice, though. Actually, the beaches there were my favourite so far in SE asia.

We ended up spending 3 days there not doing a lot again... I think we're getting a lot more lazy now. The though of the 3 days of sightseeing in Angkor we have lined up is actually seeming a bit daunting!

Well, I know this is my first blog in a week or more, and I know it's a bit rubbish that I'm not adding photos with it either, but I guess it must be true - I am gettimg lazier here!

Until next time!

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Comments

[dad]

k. fields
hi sam, nice to "talk" to you today, as you probably sussed i found the intermittent converstion a little disorientating, like you were there on the phone but you weren't, if you see what i mean. cambodia, the name is fearful to me from the contemporary accounts of the murders. made vietnam seem tame by comparison. i was once in munich (early 70s) and could have (should have?) gone to dachau, it then being only 30 years after the holocaust. couldn't do it. even in northern france where we saw the eclipse in 99, the first world war killing fields were a bit too much, barbed wire and human bones lying about in the ploughed fields. still i'm sure cambodia is a completely different place now, hope you have a great time there, if this message hasn't depressed you too much! plus side of things: bridge is retiring in the summer and mr tomsett is coming back to be the new head! good news all round, i think. reading a biography of philip k dick, what a nutter but waht a genius. still haven't seen A Scanner Darkly, but apparently it's v. good. speak/type to tou soon, much love, dad

[Munky]

Its liek that song "holiday in Cambodia"