Phnom Penh

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We took the bus from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh and the border crossing was slightly more organised than the China-Vietnam one! The journey seemed to take forever though due to the driver stopping randomly every five minutes to open and shut the luggage hold.

Our first impressions of Cambodia were mixed. It was certainly very interesting and you could clearly see differences between there and Vietnam. It seemed considerably more undeveloped, with a lot of raggedy street children and yappy dogs who spring from holes in the ground. We also didn't get off to a good start as we couldn't find our hostel and were wandering around for an hour in the heat with our bags on!

It was quite hot and muggy and the streets were very dusty. We went for a walk to the river, which was nice, and bought Galaxy chocolate from a supermarket woo! But everything is surpisingly more expensive because they use US dollars as their main currency - when you go to the ATM you get dollars, not the Cambodian currency and then they give you change in both - it's quite bizarre!

Our hostel was really nice, set in a little garden, which was also a restaurant where we ate in the evening, trying some of the local Cambodian food - vegetable noodle curry soup and fried rice! It was also directly opposite the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly S-21, where Pol Pot tortured thousands of people - it certainly looked pretty grim from the outside. A sort of Cambodian Auschwitz / major tourist hot spot. We didn't have time to visit in the end though!

After spending one night here we moved on to Siem Reap.

A and R x

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Comments

[Helen]

eek
'yappy dogs who spring from holes in the ground' :-O Oh my goodness.