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Published: December 15th 2007
National beer
only $1, look at the empty cans in the background!soo-a s'day (hello) from cambodia,
How weird does that feel for us, time is going so quickly at the min its abit surreal. Just a few months ago we were looking at all the pics and reading books about going away and know were in the mix of it all. Our first glimpses were of a slightly more developed country, well at least Phnom Pehn seems to be. Getting off the fastboat we headed for something to eat before deciding where we were going to stay. One thing that doesn't change around the southeast asia countries is being bombarded by tuk-tuk drivers all the time! We figured that it was easier to get in a tuk-tuk in the even hotter, humid heat and have them drive us around different hotels, than to walk it as it is quite a large city. It costs next to nothing to be driven around and after the previous couple of days it suited us. We found a nice hotel called the 'Flamingo', so we checked on, dumped our stuff and headed for the roof top bar for happy hour. We had the most amazing view of the sunset it was beautiful.
Just before
we arrived in Cambodia, a couple told us that it wasnt really safe to be walking around when dark in Phnom Pehn as there were alot of muggings etc, so we went to a nearby 'restaurant'. The reason we say 'restaurant' is because when we walked in there was about 20 girls behind the bar, all fully dressed in their scutty gear. Looking around there was a few older western guys sat with a couple of girls on each side-i wonder what he was up to??? It had clicked, our hotel was opposite a brothel! Well we had dinner there anyway and the food was actually really good, but we had to laugh at our choice of area!
We had arranged with the tuk-tuk driver to pick us up the next morning at 9am to take us to see all the sights, as the city was too big to do on foot. It also worked out stupidly cheap and he waited for us outside ever sight until we had finished. We paid $4 each for the day, which is about 2 pounds. First we visited the royal palace and silver pagoda, which was really beautiful. It was like a
Gecko!
there are hundreds in cambodia! Great! royal house how you expected it to be, like something from a film set. It was huge and the architecture was very different to what we've previously seen. We then went to Wat Phnom temple but was no where near impressive, even though the surrounding areas had monkeys running around. There was also a random elephant, which you can have rides on, but it didn't look particulary happy, so we didn'twant to ruin its day any more. Because of the convenience of having the tuk-tuk, we had time to see the russian market before lunch. It was abit manic there with so many fake shoes, bags, belts, wallets, clothes it was redonkulous (ridiculous, but we got this word from kate our canadian friend), but good for a little mouch.
We found a nice little restaurant, which was opposite the genecide musuem, so decided to eat there. The museum was good but you prepare for the worst and me and Rob were expecting it to be much gorier than what it was. But it was strange, as it was a school turned into the S-21 prison, where 14,000 people were tortured before taken to the killing fields (to be killed
the royal palace
open your eyes rob! there). In the prison there were still blood stains on the wall and floors, where the guards had tourtured the inmates.
The next day we got our tuk-tuk driver to pick us up to take us to the killing fields, this is where the tortured victims from S-21 were brought to be killed. The pits in which the victims were put into, some were big and some small, yet hundreds were put into them. The clothes in which they were wearing were stuck in the ground, along with bones, which are still visible to the eye. The next day we got on the Angkor express to take us to Siem Reap. It was the most luxurious bus we had been on yet.
Until next time, party on dudes
Rob and Han x x x x x x x
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