To start with, here are some more Angkor Wat flicks. Even though these photos look cool, it was truly overwhelming for me to see it live. Next time, I really want to go back and spend more time with certain temples instead of flying around from place to place. I would love to just relax and chill as it's a most inspiring place to read, write, sit and think.
After leaving the town near Angkor Wat, Siem Reap (which means "we defeated Siam" a reference to the difficult times between Thailand and Cambodia), Rob and I took a bus to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. While waiting for our bus in Siem Reap to take off, we noticed the throngs of motocycle guys who swarm passengers as they get off the bus. The moto-drivers are hoping to get hired as a chaffeurs so they can earn somewhere between $5-8 per day (depending on the bargaining skills of the tourist/traveller).
This scene, as you can see, can get hectic, and we preferred not to be beholden to motorcycle guys, who will wait around for you in the hotels and wherever you are and kind of stalk you. To avoid this scenario, Rob arranged with the concierge at our hotel in Siem Reap to have a taxi waiting for us at the bus station in Phnom Penh where we would be whisked away to the sister hotel of our hotel in Siem Reap. And, of course, when Rob gave them our names, he made sure to make it memorable.
Although we only stayed for a couple of days in Phnom Penh, we both liked it, despite its grittiness. For example, garbage from the markets is routinely thrown into the streets - in a contrast to Bangkok which is really good about street cleaning, at least in the major areas.
Cambodia's rough and tumble recent history is not easy to overcome and it will stay a solidly third world place for some time. But I could detect that there is movement towards a more "normal" existence.
However, there are no McDonalds, Starbucks or 7-Elevens even, which is nice actually. People whom we asked hadn't even heard of them. But on a more unpleasant note, we saw scary amounts of very young looking prostitutes, poor and disfigured people from land mines were everywhere, a legacy of the brutality of the Khmer Rouge.
But besides the sad aspects of life in Cambodia, the third worldiness offered some funny moments: like when we hired rickshaw drivers to take us to our hotel, somewhere that should have been easy to get to as it was on a numbered street. They had no idea where they were going though, even after insisted that they did. Another memorable moment was when we were watching Revenge of the Sith on TV, which was dubbed into Khmer language (with English subtitles!) and during the annoying love scenes between Anakin and Natalie Portman's character, they didn't play the regular Star Wars music but dubbed in a muzac version of "That's What Friends are For."
Phnom Penh infrastructurally is coming along and from these views, it doesn't look so different from Bangkok ....
Some of the nice sites include the temple, Wat Phnom, which is located atop a hill and is inhabited by many monkeys.
The Royal Palace was good for some photos, but as beautiful as it was, it felt wrong that so many resources should be given to it while so many people outside are hungry and poor.
Atop the one big mall in town, there is this cool, mirrored roof made up of pyramids where Rob and I took photos of our reflections. These photos are always fun.
Sitting down for a meal in an outdoor cafe means that you are open game to beggars and people selling all types of things that you don't need.
This young mother was definitely working her assets - her cute baby - to get a buck out of me. At first I said no, but she continued to play with her kid in front of me for about ten minutes until I finally caved in.
Ironically enough, these orphans below seemed to be the happiest kids around, as they were well taken care of, while the kids with their mothers begging in the streets seemed distraught.
The markets had inexpensive goodies and lots of fun, bustling, photogenic moments.
There is a bit of a nightlife as well. The expat scene is small and it seems like everybody goes to the same place each night. But we did stumble across a couple of cool spots where we met foreigners working at the local English newspapers and at NGOs who had interesting stories and analysis of the area.
Need a banana?
Leaving Phnom Penh, we saw this and thought it was kind of funny.
Next for us after Phnom Penh was a trip to the south of the country to explore some of their beaches, such as Kep and Sihanoukville. On the way down, we experienced the legendarily bad Cambodian roads. Although I knew about them, it was crazy to see that major roads are made of dirt and need to be smoothed out by bulldozers every so often because the potholes are so out of contol.
The ride was, to put it mildly, bumpy. We were constantly being thrown out of our seats and hitting our heads on the bus structure above us.
The beaches totally disappointed. Kep was once a French luxurious getaway but has been reduced to pretty much nothing now. The beach was small and not nice and the whole area was desolate. Looking to our Lonely Planet guidebook, which totally overhyped the area, we saw a recommendation to take a ferry to Rabbit Island, which sounded cool and supposedly had better beaches.
It was late in the day and we wanted to at least make something of the trip to this area so we hopped on board a private boat with a Dutch guy who we met on the bus. We watched as dark clouds from a different direction raced us to the island and it was clear that we were going to have to stay there for the night.
As we approached, we wondered why we couldn't see anything on the island but jungle, but once we arrived, we realized that indeed there was nothing at all going on there at all. Near the water, there were a few bungalow huts for people to stay in - otherwise the island was thick deep jungle, not unlike Skull island in King Kong. There was a nicer beach, but that wasn't saying much, and with the rain that ended up pouring down, we weren't going anywhere but inside the leaky huts.
We did have a not-so-tasty overpriced dinner made by the hutkeepers. But that was the only thing to do. There was electricity for a bit, run by a generator, but that cut out around 8 or 9. Other than watching the hutkeepers playing cards in the rain there was little to do but sleep in the uncomfortable beds in the wet huts.
But even sleeping was made difficult as Rob brought up the fact that we were totally at the hutkeepers mercy and that, really, they could do anything to us that they wanted and probably no one would ever find out. That wasn't the best thought to go to sleep to.
We left early in the morning and I took this shot which makes Rabbit Island look pretty awesome, but in reality there was so much garbage thrown everywhere that whatever pristine elements existed were overwhelmed by the poor upkeep.
Next was Sihanoukville, which was better but that isn't saying much. The beach was very dirty and the motel we stayed in seemed littered with pedophiles. As it was low season, the only thing to do at night that we could find, was to watch World Cup at an English bar. At that point it was an early round and as Americans, we found it kind of boring. Afterwards they had karaoke to Weird Al Yankovic songs, but not to any of his "hits" like "Eat It" or "I Lost on Jeopardy" So that wasn't exactly the most happening thing. Motorcycle drivers did want to take us whoring, but that wasn't going to happen.
We left Sihanouville after one night and went to the port where we took a roach infested ferry to the Thai border. But before going, Rob and I were surprised at how badly kept the Sihanoukville port (pictured below) was. The road should be an important one, it's a main pier where goods are imported and tourists pass through, but yet the road, as you can see was in total disrepair.
I won't go back to the Cambodian beaches, that's for sure, as when we hit the island, Ko Chang, in Thailand, it was clear how much a difference an awesome clean environment with a beautifully kept coast can be.
But I will go back to Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh though and I'd like to explore deeper in Cambodia as it was a fascinating experience filled with adventure.
Stay tuned for L.A.!
1 comments:
Cambodian travel rule #1: Save some pizza for the rest of us!
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