Cambodia

Phnom Penh - Day 1-2

Who on earth thought it was a good idea to explore Cambodia at its hottest time of the year! No wonder the tickets were cheap!! It is hovering around 35-37 degrees at the moment, which makes for a lot of sweat and buying of water bottles. Anyhow, that’s not what you want to read about.

I arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday after lunch and I’m so glad I booked this hotel, last minute, the day before, nothing like winging it. It’s called One Up Banana Hotel (no idea why?) and is tucked away down a little narrow laneway about 2m wide, just enough for a person and a motorbike to pass. As I walked into the open foyer area I was greeted with “hello Arlene, welcome!” Huh? How did he know who I was? He smiled at me when I looked at him quizzically and said its because I was the only person they had arriving that day. Still made me feel a little bit special!  I was personally taken up to the gorgeous rooftop suite by the manager and handed the key. What a welcome, amazing what paying a few extra dollars can get you in the way of accommodation here. I think I’m paying the exorbitant rate of $30 per night for a double! 

Phnom Penh and the Cambodian countryside are similar to Vietnam but with enough differences in culture, food and history to make it interesting. Its poorer than Vietnam, or at least like the poorest parts I have seen in Vietnam, tumble down houses on the edges of the roads with little stalls out the front lining the road all the way from the border into Phnom Penh which is about 200km  I think. The land is flat as a tack in that area, as far as the eye can see no hills and I swear we didn’t turn a corner or even curve in the road for the first 100km, it felt dead straight. I suppose it couldn’t have possibly been though. The land is mostly cleared with cattle grazing here and there and rice paddies around the place, not much else in the way of productive land, well in the area we drove through in any case. What I did see was huge factories with Vietnamese names on them closer to the border. A local told me today that the Vietnamese government has done a deal with the Khmer government to lease the land for 99 years for a paltry sum, they use the land and local labour to operate their factories and import the goods directly into Vietnam, so the money is mostly going to Vietnamese business owners. Not so good really.

What is fascinating about Phnom Penh is that it’s a large spread out city with numbers instead of street names, 608 one direction and at least 271 the other. So in a way its really easy to find your way around, an address might read as: No. 46, 258 Street, a bit like New York I suppose. For the most part its well laid out, wide, long streets, avenues etc. All due to the French who helped build the city into what it became when they took over ownership of the country way back in the 19^th Century I think it was. And its not nearly as busy or dangerous as getting about Ho Chi Minh City, lots of the footpaths are wide enough to cater for cars completely pulled up on them and still allow for people to get past, just. That’s the other thing, there are a lot of big western brand cars here, not sure if they belong to expats or locals made rich. And Tuk Tuk’s everywhere! The main and really the only form of public transport, no taxi’s to speak of and no buses. Cheap and cheerful,  little 2 seat wagons pulled along like a trailer attached to dodgy old motor bikes, they hang around on every street corner, the guys lounging around with their feet up on the handlebars waiting for their next passenger, “you need tuk tuk?” constantly ringing in your ears as you walk around the place. You can buy T-shirts here that say, “no tuk tuk today”….

I did a bit or touristing today, visited the Royal Palace which whilst was nice to look at and located in lovely grounds, its not the most amazing thing I have seen. I believe there is a queen and her son who has succeeded his father the king living somewhere on the grounds in separate accommodation to what tourists can go into. The outfits that the royalty used to wear, ie, the more traditional clothing is so amazingly brightly coloured, a different coloured silk woven outfit for each day of the week supposedly. Gorgeous. Lots of silver and gold cups, containers, jewellery on display but nothing showing amazing wealth. I’m wondering if Pol Pot made things disappear when he was in power, like he did with the thousands of people. Speaking of the Pol Pot regime, I’m not going to take a trip to the killing fields which is supposedly what everyone does, I think it would make me too sad. 
I didn’t do much research on this country before I came, so finding bits and pieces out as I go. The people, land and economy were almost destroyed  during and immediately after his time. I read yesterday that he made every single person living in Phnom Penh  at the time, leave the city, 400,000 of them, and go out into the countryside to learn how to work the land again in special training schools, read death camps. Most people disappeared along with the other hundreds of thousands he ordered killed because they were educated or businessmen and a threat to his regime supposedly. 
So now I understand a bit more about why they are so far behind their neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam in terms of development. Their country and their people  were almost obliterated, (more so even than the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war), in terms of proportion of the population killed and proportion of land laid to waste. 21% of the population were killed by their own government, that’s equivalent to the current Aussie government executing the whole of Sydney, men, women and children!! Incredible and terrifying. It seems that Cambodia was pretty much de-skilled as a country, lost a lot of history, culture, knowledge, education etc and had to start again. 
Sounds like East Timor to me and there are other similarities to East Timor as well. Lots of expats, NGO’s etc. Loads of them in fact. So lots of funky bars, art gallerys, quirky shops and coffee places, all very much focusing on attracting the expat living there rather than the tourism dollar that Vietnam chases. Most of the back packers I see around here are your more hard core type,  who look like they have been travelling through Asia on $20 per day for months. A lot less Aussie travellers here than Vietnam, more Europeans, which isn't a bad thing. Every now and then i come across someone looking awfully bogan and i can tell from 50 paces that they will have an aussie accent. Ah, we are a charming and attractive people! Not. Sadly the aussies are just not as good looking as most of europe and half of the US. Luckily we generally have nice personalities....I digress.

Saw  my fill of pagoda’s today, well I only saw 3 but that was enough in the scorching heat. I also saw a couple of lazy, well looked after cats making the most of shady areas around the outside of one pagoda. 

 

And one last photo for those who know just how strict the current Australian safety requirements are on construction sites. See the guy  half way up? There were 3 or 4 others precariouly balanced around the other side.