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Published: January 3rd 2009
Cambodia Part 1 of 2
So there are tons of naked babies running around the Cambodian countryside. I'm pretty sure that it's the naked baby capital of SE Asia. I had a hard time taking pictures without naked babies in them, but I managed somehow.
Cambodia is hugely different than thailand. For one it's dirty. There is trash strewn about most everywhere. And as the Thai people say, the food is dirty. Which means that when you eat it there is a chance you will get sick. Which I did on New Years eve, after eating some curry at one of the overpriced jungle restaurants at Angkor Wat. Our tuk-tuk driver brought us there, I'm sure he got a commission, and ate with us but did not want to share any of my curry. He tried Emily's dish but demured to have any of mine. This should have been a warning. But I was hungry and am accustomed to people taking care of me a bit when I clearly have no idea whats going on. This is not the case in Cambodia. So after a trip to the hospital last night I have a enough medicine to open a
Koh Krang
view from Bob Barsmall pharmacy and I believe I am on the road to recovery.
At any rate, I will now take you on a journey back in time and explain the events leading up to my gastrointestinal maladies and hopefully explain a bit about our trip to Cambodia. So, first things first, we headed to Cambodia to visit our friends from MN, Angie and David, who are working at an orphanage in Phnom Penh. We had never ventured to Cambodia for more than a visa run while living here and we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to check it out. So we boarded the bus to the Hat Lek border crossing in the late morning of December 26th. A mere 6 hours later we arrived at Dtrang and boarded a mini-bus for Hat Lek. I must say that the ride from Dtrang to Hat Lek was one of the most beautiful I have ever been on. To the North were the jungle covered mountains of Cambodia and to the South was the sun setting over the ocean. It was absolutely gorgeous.
We arrived at the border just after sunset to be greeted by throngs of touts on
Cambodia
On our trip to Phnom Penh the Cambodian side who help you with your visa application and then try to steer you towards a certain guesthouse as they get a commision. The person who helped us was actually pretty nice and spoke English well, which is great because knowing Thai doesnt help at all in Cambodia. So we got through the visa procedures with no hang ups, save for the mysterious fee increase at this particular border crossing (1200 Baht instead of $20, almost double the actual price). But again, this is Cambodia and a little extortion at the border is par for the course.
With our shiny new Cambodian visas in hand we headed to a guesthouse in Koh Krang, a small island just inside the Cambodian border. The place was decent and reasonably priced and best of all was also run by the same family which owned the bus company that ran to Phnom Penh. So we checked in, bought tickets for Phnom Penh and got a bite to eat as we hadnt had anything substantial to eat since breakfast and it was almost 9 PM at this point. I tried a Cambodian curry there, which didnt make me sick, and it was
alright. Em had some noodle dish which ended up being ramen with some pork and vegetables on top, which was actually a little tastier than my curry. Then we headed to bed as tomorrow there was another day of bus travel ahead of us.
We woke up early the next morning and grabbed breakfast at Bob Bar, a nearby restaurant which had a pretty good breakfast which included homemade strawberry jam for our toast and some nice scrambled eggs. The coffee was remarkably terrible but after putting about a 1/4 cup of sugar and some milk like substance in it it tasted fine, albeit nothing like coffee. Then we boarded a bus which took us to another bus which departed for Phnom Penh. There was a little confusion with the bus to Phnom Penh as they had double booked our seats and we were told to go get on the other bus to Phnom Penh, the driver of which sent us back to the first bus, who then sent us back to the second bus, who wouldnt let us on, insisting that we belonged on the other bus. I started getting a little frustrated and refused to go back
to the first bus and so the driver from the second bus went over and talked with the person on the first bus and they got it figured out. So they stuffed us into the last row of the second bus and we were off. The route was through the mountains and was very pretty. The whole area is a national park and is a vast expanse of untouched jungle. Previously, this road was one of the more difficult ways to Phnom Penh as the Khmer Rouge had destroyed the bridges over the 3 or 4 major rivers that wound through the mountains. To our surprise and delight the bridges had been completed this last year and we were able to cross the rivers without having to get off the bus and take a ferry. So the trip was shorter than we had anticipated but any trip on a bus that's more than a few hours seems plenty long. Especially considering that the road was full of steep inclines and hairpin turns. But our driver seemed to value the lives of his passengers and seo we made it through the mountains without any problems.
We arrived in Phnom Penh
some time in the mid-afternoon two days after leaving Bangkok. I think the first thing I noticed coming into the city was the huge piles of rotting garbage in the ditches. Not a pretty site. Actually it grossed me out. But as we headed further into the city it got a bit better. We arrived near a market in Phnom Penh and the tuk-tuk drivers were so excited one could have sworn that Brittney Spears' tour bus had just pulled up. Some were literaly jumping up and down with signs for different quest houses shouting "Where do you go?!" Little did we know that this phenomenon isnt isolated to the bus drop off points but is pretty much the way it goes everywhere in Phnom Penh. The whole time we were there everywhere we would walk there was a constant flood of tuk-tuk drivers offering rides and children selling things. It can get a bit intense at times and is clearly preventing Phnom Penh from being listed as among the world's best walking cities. So we grabbed a tuk-tuk or more accurately a tuk-tuk grabbed at us and we headed to the guesthouse where our friends Angie and David were
staying.
We checked into our room, a small air-conditioned one with a window looking out into the Vietnamese restaurant below and another looking out at the underside of the awning for the building. It had a hot shower, clean sheets and was pretty inexpensive so it worked for us. Angie and David were out at the moment so we got cleaned up a bit and then checked in again to see if they had arrived back at the hotel. Angie was in the room when we checked back and it was great to see her. It's always fun to see people from back home on the other side of the planet, I'm not exactly sure why, but it is. So we caught up on what she had been up to and got the lowdown on Phnom Penh. She seemed to be doing well, especially considering the adjustment required to relocate to Asia for any significant amount of time. David arrived home shortly thereafter and they had a meeting at a local club called Pontoon that David was trying to negotiate some type of convoluted business deal with the owners of. The club was actually a pontoon boat converted into
On the bridge
beats the ferry hands down a club that parked on the banks of a river (can't recall the name) that connects with the Mekong. We sat around and had a beer while they worked out details and eagerly anticipated dinner. We grabbed some indian food for dinner and it was pretty good and pretty cheap.
Anyhow, our intro to Phnom Penh had been clubs, beer, agressive tuk-tuk drivers and Indian food. This was changing my concept of SE Asia. We headed back to the guesthouse after the beer and food and headed to bed. Around 1 AM we were awakened by the sound of our window opening and the traffic noises flooding into our room. (To be Continued...)
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Albert
non-member comment
I cannot fathom Southeast Asia. These pictures are baffling and unreal. Come hit the West Coast soon!