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Published: July 27th 2008
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View from My $3 Guesthouse
and i was payin half as i was sharin with Chen (75p a night NICE!) Ok i am now in vietnam but havnt yet written about Cambodia this is partly due to excessive smoking and also finding the time whilst travelling with others but mainly the latter LOL. as i am so far behind i wont write too much or i will never catch up.
so me and the boys endured a 10 hour or so bus to Phenom Penh with 2 English girls from Birmingham (Bromsgrove) called Kate and Jess and took the advice of a Cambodian tuk tuk driver who spoke in a cockney accent. he took us to the main backpacker area by the lake and we managed to find a room for $3 which was shared between 2 of us so 75p each! NICE! the locale was laced with bars and restaurants where just like Laos everything on the menu could be made 'happy' for an extra dollar. this was coupled with various guys outside the restaurants and bars who would pull out bags of weed and wave them at u all offering a lower price than the guy next to him, it wasnt just weed they sold either, pretty much whatever u wanted they had or could get. the most striking
thing was the way in which they had no quarms in pulling out all manner of drugs right out in the open and when u even showed the slightest glimmer of interest u had 5 of them around u all waving their bag in your face and trying to undercut the guy next to them. the 4-5 days (i forget excactly how many) we spent in Phenom Penh were pretty chilled. the days just semmed to drift by when we werent seeing the sights, this was partly because we didnt get up intil the afternoon on more than one occasion as we were out sampling the night life until stupid o'clock. The Heart of Darkness was the only real club worth going to where the music was still pretty cheesey, but bearable after a few drinks with a handfull of hookers thrown in for good measure (this is not unusual for South East Asia). we spent a couple of nights there along with a brief visit to Pontoon, another cheesey club but minus the hookers, which was less busy (hence the lack of hookers).
we made a visit to the Russian market which wasnt run by Russians, didnt sell Russian
goods and had nothing Russian about it, nonetheless i got some nice 'Armani' Sandals for 6quid which will hopefully last me longer than the other ones i've bought so far that have a lifespan of around 3 weeks max! other than that it wasnt the most intersting market unless u wanna buy fake goods and tacky souvenirs but it was worth a visit anyway.
the killing Fields themselves werent that impressive u just basically walk around a load of crators in the ground with plaques telling you that they were the mass graves that they excavated and various other signs telling you what used to be there like weapons storage etc. the Bone Monument was a pretty shocking collection of skulls and bones built in rememberance of those killed during Pol Pott's regime and was quite a sight. the S21 Museum, which was the former prison where the Khemer Rouge would torture its inmates before shipping them off to the Killing Fields for execution was more informative and had a lot of photos of what went on at the time including mug shots of the inmates with looks of shear terror (this included children), it also showed the torture methods
they used to get normal people to admitt to being 'the enemy'. without going into a history lesson it was interesting and also shocking to find out the atrocities that went on little more than 30 years ago, that apparently killed more Khmers than Hitler killed Jews.
the Royal Palace was, according to various other travellers we had met, not worth the $6 entry fee, as the best photo ops were from outside anyway, so we just took a few snaps and and pressed on.
be carefull if u are travelling to Phenom Penh as there is a fair bit of theft going on, i left my bag on the chair of my guesthouse restaurant one night with my wallet and camera in it, the next morning i went to collect it to find the 20 odd dollars in my wallet no longer there, i guess i was lucky they didnt steal everything but it still wound me up. also Kate and Jess gave a $100 bill to a guy they thought worked in the bar they ordered a drink in to get them change and never came back.............. so keep on your toes!
i know this is a bit
Bone Monument at The Killing Fields
the skulls of the dead that they discovered when they dug up the mass graves brief but its starting to become a bit of a chore for me after over 3 months especially since discovering skype but i will do my best to keep it updated.
until next time Much Love spk soon!
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