Phnom Penh and Kampong Chnang, Cambodia 11-20-09

I landed and headed straight for customs to pick up my Cambodian Visa. Just a $20 fee and I’m given a month to explore this beautiful country. A tuk-tuk driver from my guesthouse, SUNDAY guesthouse, was waiting for me by baggage claim with a sign that had my name on it (that was written in chicken-scratch by what seemed like a child). My tuk-tuk driver and I left the terminal and walked down the street till he asked me to wait so he could bring around his tuk-tuk… from there we drove through the city and I got a good feel of what this place was like.

At first we passed little shops (like what we saw in the small towns in China), then passed a elementary school, houses, fruit markets, more shops, until finally reaching SUNDAY. I checked in and was escorted to my room upstairs which was down a corridor that I had to duck through to get in. I spent the evening catching up with friends online and then spoke with a retired French couple who have been traveling around Asia for a few months now. We traded traveling tips on places each other should see (me on China, them on Cambodia) and I headed back up to my room with a map of the roads and sights nearby and plan for what Richard and I would do when he arrived the next day.

I had some time in the morning to myself, so I walked down our street to check out the local market. I bought some dragon fruit, lychee fruit, rambutan fruit, a pomello, and an orange.. all for two dollars US. I even bought a coconut for about 50 cents from “the coconut man” as I call him. He and I had a pretty in depth conversation (in pantomime) about the knife he was using, the quality of his hands, and how much I liked his coconut cart. We became good friends and I promised to come back… I think he understood.

I’m realizing now that Cambodia is even cheaper than Thailand! The currency conversion works out that 4000 Cambodia Reil equals one US dollar and most food is between 50 cents and 1 dollar. But, the strange thing here is that everyone in Cambodia accepts US money or Reil as currency and if you pay with US money, your change will be in Reil. Even the ATM’s give out USmoney, which differs from every other country I’ve been to so far where they give out their country’s currency.

When Rich got in later in the afternoon I was so happy to see him. He had been traveling on a 6 hour bus from Vietnam since 5am, so he was a bit exhausted and starving. I had the fruit waiting for his arrival and we feasted as we caught up on our last month spent apart. He told me all about Vietnam and I caught him up on my time in Thailand. I told him about the couple I met last night and showed him our new itinerary; he was glad that we had a plan. Luckily since I met Rose in Thailand, I also had an itinerary for our next 2 weeks in Cambodia and 2 weeks in Laos, so Rich was pretty thankful to have a tour guide now, instead of how it was before when he was leading me blindly through China and I couldn’t even point out on a map where I was at that time.

The two most important (in respect to history) things to do in Phnom Penh (pronounced Nom Pen) are to see the Tuol Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek; neither particularly fun sites to visit. But, they needed to be done, so Rich and I set off to sight-see for the day.

Our tuk-tuk driver brought us to the Tuol Sleng National Museum first and we hopped out with high spirits, ready to see some of Cambodia. Well, stepping even one foot inside the “museum” takes your breath (and happiness) away. The museum is actually an old children’s school that was taken over by Pol Pot’s security forces and turned into a torture prison, known as S-21, in 1975. In just three years, more than 17,000 people were tortured and killed here. Walking around, we could see each “classroom” with a bed in the center that was nailed down, jail bars secured the doors and windows, and blood stains covered the walls and floors. It was one of the most shocking sights I’ve ever seen and definitely stripped me of any joyful thoughts or feelings I had in me. After viewing the three story building of torture/prison rooms we walked into another building which showed pictures of every man, woman, and child that was captured and held in S-21. Their blank expressions said it all and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be held here. After viewing some pictures of torture techniques (while someone was being tortured in the photo), reading about what went on, and gazing at prisoner’s skulls and clothing, we were ready to leave. And next up was to take our tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields, which were located 15km outside of the city center.

It was just after sunset when we arrived and we were able to check out the place briefly with the last of the sunlight in the sky. Not much to see really… this place was where all of the victims of S-21 were taken to be beaten to death (the Khmer Regime wanted to save bullets) and buried. Over 8000 skulls were visible in a glass case along with the clothes of the victims. Human bones and teeth were still visible at the bottom of the grassy pits and even around trees where often young children and babies were beaten to death against.

On the way out, 7 young Cambodian gypsy children followed us and were asking for money. They were pretty cute and we took some pictures with them and walked to leave, but as we were departing they started chasing our tuk-tuk down the street and jumping on! It was one of the funniest things to see and we were all just laughing and having the best time. Eventually they jumped off, yelled goodbye, and waved us off.

In the morning Rich and I bought some coconuts for breakfast from my favorite coconut man. Then turned in our passports to the Laos (and also Vietnam for me) Embassies, packed a light daypack, left our big backpacks with our hostel, and set off to rent motorbikes. It was my first time riding a manual bike, but it wasn’t too difficult to figure out.

So, Rich and I set off to explore a little town called Kampong Chnang, the French couple had told me about. We rode 2 hours North of Phnom Penh going as fast as these bikes would take us (about 65mph). At first we passed tons of little works shops but soon the sights cleared and we had a nice drive alone on the road, just our bikes and us.

When we arrived at Kampot Chanang it was around 4pm and we took our bikes down a dirt road that looked like it was heading towards the river we heard was here. Instead, the path lead us to a smaller dirt road with a few houses scattered around it. There were 2 little bamboo huts set up where someone was selling food, so we stopped at the one that was selling coconuts. We wound up talking to the Cambodian lady and her husband for a while and he even brought out his wedding photo album so we could look at their family history. The husband knew a little bit of English so we were able to understand him. He later showed us the VHS tape he had called “LEARN ENGLISH TODAY”.

After our snack Rich and I took the little dirt road to the main dirt road to get to the highway we had arrived on. We checked into a really nice hotel across the street and paid $3 for a large room and a floor to ourselves (actually, we had the whole hotel to ourselves since no one else was staying here). Then we took our bikes back towards the little dirt road to see the sunset. We saw water in the distance and came across a little palm fraun shack with children playing around it. We watched them climb all over the shack and Rich and I made friends with the kids by showing them our cameras. They LOVED seeing themselves in the pictures and we snapped so many pictures of these cute kids. As Rich and I were leaving we realized that their mother was our bamboo shack coconut friend. She was really happy to see us again and we took more pictures together before Rich and I left to find some dinner.

We ate some traditional Cambodian food at a little shop near our hostel which consisted of fish, a couple different kinds of soup, some noodles, and rice. Everyone who worked there was very curious about us westerners and they kept walking by and smiling at us; they were happy to see we liked their food.

In the morning Rich and I woke up at 7am to catch a glimpse of the school children going to school but when none showed up we realized it was a Sunday; funny how days of the week go unnoticed when you’re traveling.. especially when you’ve been traveling for so long. So, we headed back to that little bamboo hut to have some breakfast and see what else was in town. We heard there was a pagoda, temple, just down the road so we left to check that out.

One of the little boys from last night, Jon, was hanging around the steps of the pagoda and we walked over to him as some Monks walked over to us. Six monks approached us and started speaking to us in English. We learned that every weekend these monks go to the childrens’ school and an older monk teaches them all English. They spoke very well and we understood each other easily. They loved asking us questions about how to pronounce certain words like, studying, photographer, prison, quality, etc… it was funny because Rich has an British accent and I have an American accent, so we would sort of argue over which was more proper (obviously the American one). Interestingly, in school the monks learn both American and English pronunciations. We spoke to them for over an hour and a few more monks joined in with the questions. A couple of them wrote down my email address so they can ask me grammar and English questions if they ever get stuck in the future. I absolutely loved talking to them and this experience has since been set in my mind as one of the best cultural experiences I’ve had.

After Rich and I left the temple we rode out another 5km north of Kampong Chuang. We arrived at a little village and planned to just stop at the market to eat. We passed by a western looking couple on bicycles and they stopped to chat to us for a minute. They told us about a floating village 2km up the road which was the reason why they were visiting this area. So, after Rich and I ate some local food we drove some more looking for this village.

I was ahead of Rich on our bikes and noticed a river up ahead… all of a sudden people started running after me, yelling- “5 dollar- one hour” “pick me”. I had NO idea what they were talking about but then realized that they each wanted to take us out on a boat to tour the floating markets. I stopped and the mobs of Cambodian “tour guides” grew. They were all shouting to me and yelling out prices. I said I would do it for 4 dollars and they all yelled- “OKAY!” “YEAH!” “PICK ME!“. Hmm… maybe that was too high of a price? They were swarming so I pointed to Rich and said HE had all the money so instantaneously they ran from me over to him! It was the funniest thing to see his face as everyone was running towards him. Every guide around us was about 50 years old, but there was one young boy fighting for our business, I told Rich I wanted him and Rich agreed. I asked the boy if he would take us out for $3 and he said yes as he lifted his chest and proudly told all of the other people, in Cambodian, that HE would be taking us on the river.

For the next hour our little 8 year old boy, named Iam, paddled us around the water streets in the river. The houses here are actually floating on top of the water and were all connected to one another by bamboo poles and ropes. This area was VERY impoverished and it was amazing to see how these people lived. Every child would run out of their house when they saw our long-tail boat passing and would wave and yell out “HELLO”. At least 40 kids in total must have greeted us in the hour… it was remarkable. One of the best parts though was that Iam was so happy to be riding us around. He was the youngest boy paddling a boat in the village and every person we passed, Iam would put 3 fingers in the air and yell out in Cambodian how excited he was that we paid $3 US for an hour (probably as much as a normal worker makes in a day!). By the end of the trip, Rich and I got into the action and were showing the number 3 to everyone we passed and telling them that we paid $3. At one point we passed by a house and the father called out something to Iam in Cambodian, then Iam whispered to us that there was another boat in the river right now that paid $7 for an hour!! We all laughed and when we passed by the two girls from France we just smiled and said “bon jour”.

It was a really nice ride and we were happy to pay Iam for doing such a great job (I only had to assist and paddle at one point when we were out in the river trying to get back to the houses and the current was too strong for him). So, we said our good byes and then headed two and a half hours back to Phnom Penh, stopping only to check out a couple temples we passed along the way.

When we got back to SUNDAY, Rich’s friends he had traveled throughout Vietnam with were checking into our hostel! He knew they were coming to Phnom Penh at some point and we just got lucky that they checked into our same place! We had our introductions and then took a couple tuk-tuks to a restaurant called FRIENDS. The restaurant’s chefs were ophan children / street children that had been taken in a few years ago and taught how to cook. The restaurant runs so that a portion of the money from our meals goes back to the organization which funds this program of taking kids off the street in Cambodia an teaching them a trade to make money. The food was delicious and not too expensive (I think my meal of 2 main courses and a dessert came to about $5), and our group of 8 had a feast and a really nice time together.

Our plan for the next couple of weeks is to explore the south of Cambodia and then loop back up to check out the temples in Siem Reap before making our way to Laos. Rich and I are now on a 5 hour bus to Kampot and three of Rich’s friends (Emma, Will, and Russ), will meet up with us down there tomorrow. I’ve loved seeing some culture in central Cambodia and now we’re off to relax a bit and explore some beaches.