Let's Talk Some More About Cambodia

I know I said I wasn't going to post about the things Micha already posted about, but I didn't expect him to cover all of Cambodia in one post...

After Hong Kong, our RTW tickets took us over to Singapore, where we would have had a full two weeks time, but we quickly realized 1) that was entirely too much time in Singapore, a very tiny city/country, and 2) that amount of time would also completely destroy our budget if we stayed in said city/country that whole time. After humming and hawing about whether or not to return to Malaysia for part of those two weeks (we'd vacationed there a few years ago), we eventually came to the decision to spend some time exploring a brand new, and very different, country. Which is how we came to spend a night in the Singapore airport (a shockingly easy task; I could practically move in to that airport it's so well put together!) and end up in Phnom Penh before we ever even set foot in Singapore. This, however, all occurred after I managed to make us miss our flight from Hong Kong to Singapore. womp womp... I have never missed a flight in my life, so my blunder made me extra ridiculously emotional (read: sobby) when I realized that our flight was landing in Singapore as we arrived at the airport in Hong Kong. In my defense: the departure time on our original flight from our RTW tickets was 14:55. The flight time changed, without us receiving an update email (grrrr) and the new departure time just happened to be the exact same time as the previous arrival time. If that's not a recipe for disaster, then I don't know what is!

 Phnom Penh waterfront, which looks deceptively clean and orderly here...

But, the lovely Australian Qantas lady that I was connected to was helpful and all worked out in the end with only a bit of hassle and few more tears. A day later, we arrived in Phnom Penh and were immediately immersed in Southeast Asian culture, the good and the bad. The first sign of which was the "visa" process. I use the word visa lightly, as the whole process of applying for, paying for, and receiving the visa - a handwritten paper stuck into your passport - took about 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure $1 of the $20 we paid for the visa went to the actual bureaucractic process, the rest went right in to someone's pocket (including the extra $2 Micha paid because he had no picture. Speaking of which, what did they actually do with my picture...?).

 Tuk-tuking our way around

The next sign that we weren't in a developed country anymore was the immediate rush of about 50 taxi and tuk tuk drivers directly at us as we exited the airport, each shouting at us to take their vehicle to wherever it is we needed to go. Or, as they'd prefer, to a hotel of their choosing, should we not already have one. (We did, thank goodness.) We opted out of taxis and went straight for a local tuk tuk, whose strength our massive backpacks most definitely put to the test that afternoon.

The Cambodian equivalent of a farmers' market

 Bony chicken and green tomatoes, what a delicacy!

We found a friendly tuk tuk driver and negotiated the reasonable price, ($7, as we were informed by good ol' Lonely Planet) and, after some brief back-and-forth of words and laminated sightseeing tour pamphlets at red lights, even ended up agreeing to let him drive us around the next day to the Killing Fields and another location of our choosing. The hostel we stayed at was highly impressive (tuk tuk driver when we told him we were headed there: oooh, 88 Backpackers? Very nice...) and we may or may not have picked it solely based on its having a pool, which we took full advantage of during our two short days there. It also helped that their food was the best we had in the city and also extremely well priced. All of which happily made up for the fact that we felt like grandparents in the gap-year, party hostel atmosphere that surrounded us as the night went on.

Oh but that pool and that food were so good...

After extensive haggling with our newfound tour guide/tuk tuk driver the next morning - we saw no reason to pay him 50% more than the price a hostel-organized tour would have cost us - we headed off to S-21, the prison that Khmer Rouge sent enemies of the state to, and the Killing Fields, where said prisoners were subsequently, well, killed. Though our driver took us the sights in the opposite order. We thought at first that this would be an illogical way to view things but as it turns out, the Killing Fields site and museum are extremely well put together - including a free audio tour with survivor and worker stories - and the S-21 prison sight is still quite lacking in information. As you can imagine, spending a half day listening to stories of city inhabitants recall how they were suddenly and forcibly relocated to the countryside to work on the land when Pol Pot came to power (in 1976), and how most of them were unable to perform such work, let alone survive doing so with almost no food or sleep, or how they were imprisoned on suspicion of being enemies of the state (simply because they did not fit the radical Communist ideal of a farmer), tortured, and then, most often, brutally murdered and shoved into mass graves (obviously, such stories were told by a 3rd party), does not make for the most uplifting day one can have in a new city... We spent the rest of the evening in shock and wonder thinking about just how fresh the brutal history of this country still is.

 The Killing Fields

The requisite, post-Killing Fields beer consumption

A small bus that was actually a glorified minivan took us to our primary Cambodian destination the next day: Siem Reap, the launching point for visiting the temples of Angkor (including the most famous, Angkor Wat). Fun fact about traveling via small bus (which had been recommended to us by a well-meaning Australian guy over beers the day before): they are not roomier, contrary to his claims, and the bus companies don't take luggage into account when booking the seats. Which is how we ended up with 12 people in an extended minivan, two of whom had bags and boxes on their laps for the entire 5-hour journey, while the rest of pondered our chances of surviving a fiery crash should it come to one, seeing as my and one other giant backpack were shoved into the "aisle" of the bus once the laughably small trunk space was overloaded. But the star of the trip was the highway, which was so full of bumps and deep potholes that approximately every five minutes when we reached one, the four British kids in the back row were launched into midair among nervous laughs as they each tried desperately to shield the tops of their heads from colliding with the top of the "bus" before they were slammed back to down into their seats, or each others' laps, for the next round.

The highway

A totally appropriate location for luggage storage

Also, a totally appropriate way to transport a motorcycle and its driver

Siem Reap is a very cute little city, much more accustomed to tourists than Phnom Penh. We visited the central market - where I promptly overpaid for a scarf and a pair of pants, but gosh darnit, I am supremely gullible - and walked through and shuddered at the sight of the bar street, aptly named Pub Street, on our first night in town. We once again got lucky with accommodations, as the guesthouse we booked here was a cute little diamond in the rough. We took a chance on it and booked when we read that it was Khmer owned and had quite positive reviews (on hostelworld.com, where we've been booking most things ever since Sam recommended it for China) and we then immediately fell in love with the entire staff. It’s called Bou Savy Guesthouse, should you be interested (don't let the bad website scare you off!).

 Pub Street

Market delicacies

We spent the rest of our at the temples of Angkor - our main destination - but that will have to wait for another post! Enjoy those last two pictures in the meantime. :)