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Published: March 10th 2013
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Guilty !
Guilty of driving through little settlements , never again . The tuc tucs are great . For anyone who doesn´t know they are basically a 2 stroke moped dragging a carriage for 4 to 6 people behind it , very fast and rather dodgy .
They do vary in design ,for example in India and Thailand the carriage is fixed it is one vehicle , in Cambodia it is like a trailer attached and in the Philippines ths carriage is for max 2 but is a side car ,this is the dodgiest of them all but far the most fun.
Cambodia is a very poor country and exceptionally cheap . Beggers are everywhere and it is hard not to give a few cents to them especially when they have babies in their arms .
Phnom Penh has a city center that is rather well developed but go 5 kms out of the city and it is a very different story .Again like in most of SE Asia the roads are crazy with no apparant highway code I read somewhere the best way to cross the city streets is to follow a monk as they have right of way over everything so that is what I did to start with
Pol Pot
Not just a pretty face. , then you get used to the way they drive and you have to sort of walk across and dodge the cars, sounds risky but it is nt.
The food was ok in PP but just ok , I started off just eating the Khymer dishes which were laden with lemon grass , far too much for me ! But some of the street vendors had some nice stuff , if only I knew what it was that I was eating !
I soon needed to get out of this city , after a day or so I needed to explore but none of the online tour advisors could recommend anything due to the dangers of leaving the city so they recommend the rip off American operated tours which I try to avoid at all cost , although I did get suckerd into going on a quad ride around the outskirts of the city which was not nice burning rubber through the little villages much to the dislike of the local communities , a point I made via email to the owner at a later date and wrote lots of reviews on the advertising web sites telling them
Teddy bear
Kept starring at me ! it was disgusting to take quad tours through these little peacefull vlillages and endangering the locals as well .
So I was left to my own means of going far out of this city , surely it can´t be that dangerous ? The people are so freindly. Luckily I got talking to some beggers and street sellers in PP and askd them if they could help me . Seeing the dollars in my eyes or Rial ( local currency) they quickly organised a tuc tuc to be mine for whenever I wanted . The cost ws peanuts to me or to any western person but to them it was lucrative piece of fortune.
I asked him to pick me up at my accomodatin the next day and take me out of the city , so that is what they did . 11 am next day there was the tuc tuc waiting for me along with the 2 sisters of the tuc tuc owner , the girl begger I had met and her mate ! A scam I thought , they think I will feed them all day , so I asked what was going on and they quite
Teang
Teang , sister of the tuc tuc driver . She organised it all , a true survivalist. simply wanted to come along for the ride as they never ever get to leave the city , so that was ok .
We drove for about an hour to the Khymer war graves where Pol Pot did his stuff , not a very good memorial , the area suffers from waterlogging in the rainy season and the water washes the earth away to reveal more bones and stuff , quite often I would stumble across a jaw bone or someother skelton part !
The Cambodians with me were amazed , they knew about Pol Pot etc but had never seen the war graves, it was touching to see them soak in all the info and tell me about how their parents were on the run from him at that time . I wish I understood Khymer language as they were talking talking all the time whilst looking at all of this .For foreigners we pay the about 2 $ to get in , for locals it is free which is a nice touch .
That night I met the beggers again in the middle of PP and sat down and chatted with the whole family ..
Roadside cafe
Open all hours grandparents, kids , babies all of them, one of them spoke reasonable englsih and she translated to them all . All they do is beg and sell cheap stuff , it is a family thing and each day is a day to try to survive. And all along they never asked me for one penny , that was heart warming but I bought a few handkerchiefs to show my appreciation
Next time we met was to take me to some zoo miles away, again not a tourist zoo but for the locals I never saw one other white face there , actually there was no other persons there ! It was a massive zoo and took about 2 hours to drive around it , it was in a poor state as were some of the animlas .
On the way to the zoo down some backroad there were other beggers begging , but these were very old about 100 years old looking at them and what amzed me was, the beggers I was with actually gave them money and food ! I asked why and was told it was respect for age , these people were poor and they were giving to the poor even though they do not know them , I was amazed at these values and thier way of thinking , absoloutly amazed.
Over the days I got to know these people really well , all of the family and not once did they ask for or recieve money from me, I was cautious at first thinking they were after dollars but in fact they really were not , I felt a little guilty about my previous suspiscions.This was pure Khymer hospitality.
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inga
non-member comment
wonder, was there possible to meet people in india who would not try to rip off. how nice to be able to talk to street people and to know them life a little bit more w/o hassle. Real travelling and nice attitude, I am following you. Concerning americans, i need to add, it's inappropriate what they doing in that country, but they also hurting them own nation, as because of such, other people forced to think how bad most americans are.