AngeLog

Phnom Penh – The rest

We did eventually make it to the Royal Palace one hot afternoon. It really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but maybe we just weren’t in the right mood to appreciate it. And it didn’t take me long to tire of taking my shoes on and off as we entered different temples on the site.

But possibly the funniest moment of the entire trip happened on the way to the Palace. As we walked along a main street that the palace shares a wall with a van drove past. I don’t remember it being a commercial van – I’m pretty sure it had a couple of rows of seats – but this was hard to tell because I was so distracted by it being absolutely chock full of cabbages! I’m sure some were even resting on the driver’s head! It was definitely a clowns in a Mini scene, and it definitely overshadowed the sombre visit to the Palace.

Street 242 was the place to go for upmarket shopping. Nicole bought a funky red dress from one of the shops and I looked at everything wanting to buy something, but not really finding anything. There was a very cute bakery that had things I hadn’t seen for weeks like lemon tarts, but I’d prefer to have the wonderful mangosteen fruit (which we were reguarly buying at the markets for a few dollars a kilo) easily accessible at home and do without lemon tarts altogether.

We decided to sample some of day spas of the area too. It was the first time I had somebody scrub me down, wrap me in plastic and a blanket and then leave the room, but I’d do it again.

There’s a second hand bookstore on 242 as well, but while it had more books than the one on Norodom Blvd, there wasn’t anything I liked as much. So later I went back to the Norodom store and bought The Girl With A Pearl Earring as an easy read to tie me over for a couple of days in Bangkok. It was a nice change from reading Chandler’s book on S-21 and Douglas Rushkoff’s Bull (which was most enjoyable).

Phnom Penh – By Night

It was a Saturday night and we were walking uptown from our guesthouse. The park along Sihanouk Boulevard up from the Independence Monument was full of sweet looking families and young couples playing badmiton as the sun was setting. It was like a film clip for a bad love ballad of the ’80s, complete with naked kids playing in the fountain at one end. It was a reminder to the fact that Phnom Penh is also home to many wealthy locals.

At the end of the park were two giant posters – one of the King and one of his son. They seem to be pretty popular around here.

We headed towards a scary looking theme park so we could walk uptown by the river instead of the quickly darkening back streets. Turns out that walking isn’t really catered for in that neck of the woods. The narrow footpath (when it existed) was either covered by motorbikes, cars, people or food stalls. It was impossible to walk through. We crossed the road and found ourselves tip-toe-ing through mats placed down for people to eat road side takeaway from. It was definitely easier to walk along the river, but we were then faced with the problem of getting back to THE OTHER SIDE. The road was so full of continuous traffic – motorbikes, tuk-tuks, cars, cyclos and bicycles – that the idea of looking left, then right, then left again was utterly ridiculous. Instead we preyed on some young local girls who were about to cross the road. We stood very close and crossed when they did, which made them giggle but got us across the road. The way to do it is just slowly step into the traffic and continue to walk slowly and consistantly across the road with the traffic going around you. Easier said than done. Who needs a theme park when you’ve got cheap thrills like this?

We stopped for a drink in the safety of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club and watched the traffic from three storeys up before heading off to another fantastic dinner, this time at a place called Friends. By eating here we were doing our bit for the locals at the same time as having excellent food and inventive cocktails. The place is used to train disadvantaged kids up in hospitality – they run the entire place and all profits go back into the organisation. Their tapas menu tempted us with zucchini and cheddar fritters, smokey eggplant dip and sweet potato chips with curry mayonnaise. And then there were seconds… and the strawberry and green pepper margarita. Mmmm.

Phnom Penh – By day

The Garden Cafe was the venue for breakfast the next morning. The menu was huge and full of exciting breakfast things you’d get in a cafe on Bondi Beach. It was a hard decision but it’d been so long that I had to go for the baked beans and cheese. Even more exciting was Proper Coffee and the coconut shake that must’ve been entirely made of ice cream and coconut cream. Kinda funny that I lived to tell the tale of a breakfast like that.

The Garden Cafe was meant to be the home of another Seeing Hands massage place, but it had moved to somewhere nearby. We were getting hot and annoyed trying to find it so we instead decided to find a tuk-tuk. Much harder than you’d think. Phnom Penh was far bigger than any other place we’d visited and the tuk-tuks tended to loiter by the river in the centre of the tourist section. There were many motorbike riders offering to give us a lift, but these roads were far too scary and dangerous to risk such a thing.

Long story short, we ended up at the Tuol Sleng Museum and decided to stop in case we didn’t find it again. It was a truly horrifying experience. This place was a high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a jail and interrogation centre. Very few people who went in ever came out. Especially troubling was that this happened less than 30 years ago. The records kept by the Khmer Rouge of S-21 (their name for the prison) were detailed and meticulous. Many of the rooms were filled with mug-shots of the prisoners – even toddlers and women with babies – as well as torture devices.

For an academic account of how s-21 worked you can read David Chandlers book Voices from S-21
Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison. I picked up a copy in a second hand store in Vientiane.

Our original plans to go to the Russian Markets were temporarily abandoned to instead have some quiet time by the hotel pool. Good thing we did because the markets, once we got there, were overwhelming. The aisles were only one person wide and the stalls were bursting with fake and real designer clothes, scarves, pirate software and anything else you could possibly want. We bought a photocopied version of the Bangkok Lonely Planet from a lovely lady with a badly scarred face. I bought some sweatshop Ralph Lauren shirts for my brother and yet another scarf for myself.

Phnom Penh – Day 1

Waking up at 6am or earlier was getting more and more common. The reason on this day was to catch a 7am bus to Phnom Penh. After waiting in front of our guesthouse for what was probably only 15 minutes we started to worry that they’d forgotton about us. This was probably only partially due to the fact that the road we were waiting on was narrower than a bus (and we were waiting for a BIGGGG coach), and it was also bumpier than the bumpiest cobblestone road in London.

Half an hour later a mini bus arrived to pick us up and took us to a HUGE bus station where many, many coaches were all going somewhere. And of course, where there are tourists you can always be assured that there’ll be someone selling fresh warm baguettes…. even if it’s from a bus station. I miss that.

The bus trip was meant to take something like four hours, but that wasn’t including the extra hour to get to the bus station and wait for the bus to decide to leave, or the hour “lunch” stop at around 10am in a hot miscellaneous town. I think the moral of the story is to chill out and forget about efficency.

There were quite a few fun things about the bus trip. Firstly, we had hostess much like you get on a plane. She came in traditional dress and did a running commentary on the various features of places we were driving through. She also handed us all a box of yummy pasteries and refresher towels.

When we made the halfway “lunch” stop there were plenty of beggars waiting. As I was buying a bag of chopped up pineapple that’s served with toothpicks a hungry looking boy stood next to me so I offered him the same as what I was getting. He pointed to something else which I bought for him, but not long after Nicole was sure she saw the same boy sans fruit and trying to get more. I don’t mind if he was doing a cash deal with the fruit selling woman, as long as he wasn’t going hungry to pass the money onto others.

Back on the bus.

We hit a traffic jam and so I knew we must be getting close to Phnom Penh. For some reason there were heaps of little shops selling brightly coloured ceramics animals – identical animals shop after shop after shop. Surely that’s not good for competition? Nicole was dozing at the time and so I can’t confirm that I wasn’t just imagining things.

Arriving in Phnom Penh made us want to run away from the place. We got an insight into how rock bands must feel when they arrive in Japan to screaming fans. Before we were even off the bus local men were holding signs to the bus windows trying to entice us to stay at a certain guesthouse. We fought through the scrum of tuk-tuk drivers and accommodation pushers to get our bags, but realised we’d actually need to take one of them up on their offer to drive us to our guesthouse. So we went with the one who seemed least annoying (it was a difficult choice). The funny thing was that a couple of days later when we needed a tuk-tuk the same guy spotted us and remembered us and where we were staying.

From there Phnom Penh could only get better and it certainly did.

We wandered down the road from the Scandic where we were staying and stopped at the first decent looking restaurant. We ate more excellent Thai food and listened to excellent music drift down from the building next door. Nicole was sure someone was listening to Triple J. Turns out it was a record store called Boom Boom Room. This place seriously rocked. It had a fantastic selection of rock, electronic and hip-hop from the best labels around the world and all the CDs were $2-3, oh and they just happened to be burnt and photocopied versions. I decided that I didn’t actually need to spend money on CDs that I could download and burn for free back home, but I loved the place so much that I went back a couple of days later to buy some funky Cambodia pants, a Boom Boom Room singlet, and a Boom Boom Room double compilation CD with classics from The Cure, Yo La Tengo, Pixies and The Clash.

The day was really coming to an end so we thought we’d squeeze in a trip to the Royal Palace. Too bad the Lonely Planet didn’t tell us no singlets were allowed.

What’s one to do but go back to the guesthouse for more swimming? The European men who were smoking and drinking at the bar when we checked in were still there – still smoking and drinking. In fact, for the few days we were in Phnom Penh, these men were ALWAYS at the bar. Sometimes more rowdy than other times, sometimes smoking funny smelling things, sometimes just eating breakfast. But they never left and rarely saw us or said anything to us. Very bizarre.