We arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, Thursday night. It was late so we just ate at a nice restaurant then headed back to the hotel. While walking back we decided to briefly stop at another restaurant/bar because a local guy on a moto wouldn't stop following us! I don't think he meant any harm (he just kept saying "I love you!") but the streets were pretty dark and deserted so we were freaked out and didn't want to lead him back to our hotel. I had read in my Lonely Planet that it's like a national sport in Cambodia to poke fun at the foreigners but that it's all in good spirit. We encountered this pretty quickly...at this tiny restaurant/bar the waitress immediately started mocking us. It was probably because this was a very small casual place but we had put on make-up and skirts before our nice dinner so we looked a little out of place. As we walked in she was behind us imitating our girly walks with great exaggeration. She didn't mean any harm though, she was laughing and we laughed with her. She even sat at our table for a while and made fun of an obnoxiously drunk australian guy playing pool all by himself. It was pretty entertaining. After that we just went to bed. The hotel apparently lost our reservation for a 3-person room, so Justine and I were sharing a single bed, but I'm used to less than luxurious accommodations by now and I hardly noticed.
We got up early the next morning to see the sites in Phnom Penh. We lucked out with a hilarious tuk tuk driver who loved playing american hip hop and britney spears as he drove us around the city. First we went to the grand palace. The buildings were very beautiful and the gardening looked like it was straight out of Edward Scissorhands. However it was quite similar to the grand palace we already toured in Bangkok but smaller so we didn't stay too long.
We then headed a bit outside the city to see the killing fields. I won't bore you with the details of the history but I'll give some basics for any who aren't aware...from 1975-1979 Cambodia was under the power of Pol Pot and the Khmer Regime. Over 2 million Cambodians died during this time; some due to starvation, but most due to genocide. This rebellion brought Cambodia back to the stone age and is the reason for it's current state. (kind of a depressing thing to talk about in a blog, but I just thought I'd inform...) So anyway, the killing field is where thousands of executions occurred in the 70's. There isn't much there, it's just a big open area, but you can see the indents in the ground where each of the mass graves are. And there are disturbing signs in various places describing what used to happen in that spot. For example one sign against a tree read "this is the 'killing tree' against which executioners beat children". In the center there is one little tower that holds shelves covered in the victims skulls. It obviously wasn't the most upbeat touring I've done so far.
After this we headed back to the city center to catch our bus. We were taking a 3 hour trip to Sihanoukville which is a city in the south that sits right on the beaches of the Thai Gulf. It was already evening so we found a beach bungalow, got ready, and went for dinner. There are restaurants and bars all along the beach with the seating in the sand by the water. Instead of chairs, the restaurant we were at had those big porch swings. It was when we were swinging here in the sand sipping our tequila sunrises that we decided to stay in Sihanoukville until Sunday when our original plan was to only stay one night and go back to Phnom Penh Saturday afternoon. We loved it there. The one thing that took some getting used to was the beggers. As we ate our dinner we were approached numerous times by locals asking for money. Many of them were missing a limb, most likely a result of land mines, so they were actually crawling in the sand to approach us. It was extremely uncomfortable. They always smiled and were polite though, even if we didn't give them money. As it got later and later the bars started filling up and the music got louder. We loved the night atmosphere. We went back and forth between the casual beach bars meeting other travelers and playing pool. We stayed out really late and had a great time because we had nothing to do the next day but suntan!
Saturday we did nothing but lay on the beach and it was great. The waiters would deliver our chocolate pancakes and drinks right to our beach towels. I made a pretty good dent in the book I'm reading and also got in a pretty good nap. The beach was swarming with women and little kids trying to sell you fruit, bracelets, sarongs, pedicures, etc. They have this thing where if you say you don't want to buy something they say "later, later" then they grab your hand and make you pinkie swear! It's making you promise that if you decide to buy something later, you'll buy from them. The thing is that it's not really a two-sided agreement, they just grab your pinky. So by noon I had "promised" about 10 people that if I decided to buy something it would be from them. Some of the little kids decided they liked us despite our lack of purchases and ended up hanging out with us all afternoon. They all speak perfect english from talking to tourists all day so it was a lot of fun having them to talk to. A girl named Sreyoun was the cutest, sweetest girl ever. She said she was 14, but I'm guessing she was about 9 or 10. Her and a boy named "Mr. T" were our most loyal companions. We made the mistake of buying fruit and bracelets from them and then ended up with about 10 kids taking us on guilt trips and saying it’s not fair to buy from some of them but not others. One girl tricked me into playing tic-tac-toe with her where losing meant buying a bracelet. Turns out she’s a tic-tac-toe master. So in the end we each bought like 5 bracelets but it was fun because instead of giving us ones they already made they let us choose the colors then sat with us while they made it. That night we had another dinner on the beach then took a tuk tuk to another beach that was having a party we had been hearing about since we arrived. The beach wasn’t as nice as the one we were staying on and we weren’t in the right mood for the atmosphere, so we made it an early night and just went to bed.
In the morning we got up early to catch our 8am bus. We got to Phnom Penh around 12:30 and had to switch buses. We then headed to Siem Reap and didn’t arrive until about 6pm. The entire bus ride they were playing karaoke videos. Most were in Khmer (the language spoken in Cambodia) and the few English ones were songs like “top of the world” or “lean on me”. And they were set to these generic videos of like a woman walking through a field or city wearing an 80’s pants suit looking thoughtful. We got a kick out of it for awhile, but the volume was set pretty loud so after a couple hours of not being able to escape it, it got pretty old. After arriving in Siem Reap we found a hostel and Sari actually bargained for the price of our room! We went to dinner at a place called Dead Fish. It’s really cool in there. All of the tables are set on raised platforms. The heights of the platforms are staggered between about 10-25 feet above ground. So you climb the stairs up to your platform and there are suspended lines leading from the table to the bar where you slide down the sheet of paper with your order. The line also has a tray attached to it that they place your food on then crank the tray up to your table. The other girls loved their food, unfortunately I ordered “jungle curry with prawns” that tasted okay but immediately gave me a stomach ache that lasted next few days. After dinner we briefly browsed the night market then ended up watching The Lion King II in our hotel room and going to bed.
We woke up at 4:30am in order to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. The night before we had asked a tuk tuk driver to pick us up before 5 and take us to all of the temples. So we ate convenience store bread and sliced cheese for breakfast and started our temple-touring. The sunrise was great, and there’s a pond in front of the temple so you can get great pictures with the reflection. Don’t quote me but I’m pretty sure Angkor Wat is the largest religious building in Asia. We spent about 7 hours touring Angkor Wat and about 4 other temples in the surrounding area, but there isn’t too much describe. As power has changed in Cambodia the religion has also switched back and forth from Buddhism to Hinduism so many of the religious symbols and statues have been destroyed or changed . For example at one temple that was built during Buddhist rule, all of the buddha’s had later been given a 3rd eye on the forehead to make them represent a hindu image instead. We spent a lot of time in Angkor Thom which is the temple where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. It was pretty destroyed with piles of destroyed structures all around and enormous trees that have grown in the temple and are taking over a wall. It was big enough to get lost in. After 7 hours of climbing stairs and taking pictures, we headed back to the city center. We had a nice dinner then headed back to the night market for some serious shopping and bargaining.
That pretty much concluded the trip as we had a very early flight home the next morning.
Back in Singapore I spent the next weekend meeting with classmates to work on group projects. I had 2 group presentations on Monday, an individual final presentation on Tuesday, and a case study due and a quiz on Wednesday. But now that that week of hell has passed I only have one more group project to do and then finals. (but finals aren’t for 2 weeks so I’m not worrying about those yet!) The next Thursday I left for 4 days in Hong Kong! I just got back last night, and then I leave for a week in Bali tomorrow! So anyway my 1 day here in Singapore this week is pretty busy, but I’ll try to write about HK sometime soon!
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