The next stop on our SE Asia tour was Cambodia. We boarded the Airbus A321 and noticed right away it was an older airplane, where the Economy seats still had ample leg room….you know like the old days. There was not a single person sitting in Business class or in the exit row. The only beverage they had was bottled water, which was provided before we took off. The snack was a cold fish sandwich with chilli sauce on a tray, no napkin or any other options. Landed at the brand new Techo International airport about 30 km outside of Phnom Penh. The airport opened a few months ago and was very big; there was a lot of space with not a lot of anything going on. The customs room was massive, but there was hardly anything going on in this massive space. We had to complete an arrival card, which they had provided a bunch of IPAD’s on a desk for us to use to fill out. Aside from that, they stamped the visa and that was all.
The initial plan was to get a GRAB to the hotel, but we found out that GRAB was no longer available at the airport. So we walked over to the express bus area and waited….and waited….and waited….It finally showed up almost an hour later. We got off on the 3rd stop then hailed a GRAB to the hotel. We hadn’t eaten since 11 am, so we were good an hungry. When in Cambodia, I guess you eat Korean!
Our second day was a lot more chill…especially after a busy week in Bangkok. We went for a walk to go checkout the area around the hotel and it didn’t take long before we we’re accosted by at least 5 tuktuk drivers wanting to take us on a tour. We were persistent in our no thank you….On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a Japanese ramen house (Todd’s first ramen and matcha drink). The rest of the afternoon we hung by the pool, then spent too much time in the room booking flights for the rest of our trip.
Around 7 we headed out for dinner and found a fantastic Taiwanese restaurant. Who knew there was so much other Asian cuisine in Cambodia…we haven’t even eaten Cambodian food yet!
We ordered so much (6 plates) the supervisor came by to ask us if we really wanted all if it! We didn’t really understand the issue until all the plates arrived, it was ALOT of food, but we were able to takeaway for lunch tomorrow.
The big tourism draw in Phnom Penh is the killing fields and the S-21 Genocide museum. The plan was to see the museum in the morning and the fields in the afternoon. It was an emotional and heart wrenching experience to say the least. The entire complex was originally a high school that was turned into a prison (interrogation and torture facility) between 1975-1979 for urban educated Cambodians that would speak out against the party. People (including women and children) were tortured and killed or tortured until they absolve their sins and then killed. There was so much killing going on, the prison had no room for the bodies and so that’s why they moved them out to the killing fields. We were pretty somber and disgusted by humanity, that we opted to not go to the killing fields. This happened in our lifetime, both of us vaguely remember hearing about this on the news in the 70’s about the Khmer Rouge.
Our afternoon activity was the Russian Market to find a pocket knife. We did finally end up finding one after quite a bit of searching. The market is very similar to markets in Mexico – everything you can imagine is sold here. We bought some produce and a cooked savoury rice patty and then saw a weird rice snack being made on the street. Sweet-rice-snack.html
Phnom Penh doesn’t have the public transportation system like Bangkok does, so we finally started using the GRAB TukTuks today…I think we took a total of 6 trips….and we did not pay more than $1.25 for any of the trips! It’s a pretty crazy ride…you keep thinking you are going to get hit…but nope, traffic just ebbs and flows.
Our 3rd full day in Phnom Penh, we took the hop on hop off bus – as we like to get an overview of the lay of the land. The cool thing about this bus trip is that you also get a ticket for a night cruise on the river, which we did the next evening. It was a pretty quick bus tour to all the 16 tourist highlights (10:00 – 11:20) and we ended up going for lunch at the place we started at. Today’s pick was a noodle soup stop and we both loved our choices. We had planned to get back on the bus at noon to head to the Royal Palace….but we didn’t realize that the bus stops running from noon-1 pm. So we Tuk tucked to the main tourist area and headed to the National Museum first. This was overwhelming as you can imagine. So many sculptures and artifacts dating as far back to the 7th century. I think this took about 1.5 hours to get through…we had also got the English audio tour, but honestly there was too much stuff to listen too and it was beyond our comprehension to retain anything. We left there and walked over to the Royal Palace…not to be confused with the Bangkok Grand Palace…also the amount of tourists at this Royal Palace were so minimal…it was hard to tell where the entrance was to the complex.
We hired a guide (Sonkan) here for $10 as there was no map and nothing on the grounds to explain the buildings, so we thought this was a good idea. He was THE BEST guide we could have asked for. First, he was the same age as us AND he survived under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970’s. He was separated from his parents at 8 years old, worked in the rice fields and the only reason he survived is that he collected cow dung for fertilizer and his fields yielded more than most. He told us all about the Cambodia government – there is 1 Democratic Party and a King that lives locked up on the Palace grounds (the bird in the golden cage). He told us all about the government history in the 1970’s to current state….it all boils down to money, greed and women! The current fight at the Cambodia/Thailand border is all about diamond mines….By 3:30 we were hot and tired and Tuk Tukked ourselves back the hotel for a cooling off dip in the pool.
I am challenged with posting photo’s and video’s using only my IPAD so this is all you get (at least i figured out how to add music this time!)