The
border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia from the province Trat is
damn corrupt. well, it's not terrible, but they do suck out an extra
$15 or so, when you should only be paying a simple $20 american. plus
they have all these people helping you out and then ask for payment for
their services after when you thought they were just being nice or
doing their job that someone else paid them for.... live and learn
right? i'm now very skeptical of kind people in thailand.... which
leads me to Cambodia. less touts, less con artists (aside from the
border)
I've found the natural country side much more aesthetically pleasing and the people alot more laid back and authentically kind. don't get me wrong, i'm not bashing thailand by any means, it's still great there, but there's just a little more crap than here. i love them both.
ok! so phnom penh... the first night was spent at number 9 guest house, lakeside. i do not recommend it. it was loud late at night and there were rats and roaches and the bathroom absolutely sucked. i mean, you get the odd cockroach anywhere but we ended up getting a far superior place close by for a just a tiny bit more money. speaking of which, you may find it a little interesting that american dollars are more widely accepted out here and their own currency, riel, is mostly used as change. no coins, ...riel. it's been a strange adjustment from always working out in our heads how much we were spending in thailand with baht to spending money very similar in numbers to our own currency. it made me realize how much i actually was spending in thailand and i'll be much more careful in the future.... cambodia is much cheaper. i can get a large bottle of excellent beer and a filling meal for under 5 dollars. we also met our first friend that we conversed with at great length in phnom penh. he was from san francisco and we enjoyed him enough to chill with him again before he left for vietnam.
cheery sides to our travels also have sad sides and this came in the form of a significant part of cambodia's history, and shockingly recent. We visited the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum. if you are not familiar with who the Khmer Rouge are or who Pol Pot is, google that shit. not to really delve into it too much, it was an oppresive rule over cambodia 1975-79 where the country was reduced to 2 classes and monetary systems, courthouses and schooling etc was abolished. they turned on high school (tuel sleng) into a prison and it was brutal... if you're interested, like i said, google it. after the 70's they turned this prison into a museum and i sometimes had a hard time associating the events depicted there with it actually happening where i stood.
alot of the prisoners were stuffed into trucks and transported to the killing fields where they were executed in viscious fashion. we also visited the killing fields, and it was actually a very beautiful place, very serene. butterflies, impossible trees, ponds etc... then there were the exhumed mass graves and the memorial tower in which lay the skulls of the 8000+ victims.
we also saw Wat Phnom, which had awesome Naga statues all over the place, and monkeys chillin'in the surrounding trees. just as we were leaving an elephant even made an appearance and was washed by the owner, who then walked him out into a busy street and away. wouldn't it be odd to have to slow down traffic for an elephant crossing? regular shit here will surely make north america a duller place.
almost inappropriately, i also visited a shooting range and for a fee got to fire an AK-47 and an uzi. they are so loud and powerful..... makes hollywood movies where dudes are running around with an AK in each hand firing seem like complete bullshit. glad i did it for the experience, however i still disagree with guns. so.
our last few days in phnom penh, we just did relaxed things. checked out the market, the shopping mall and royal palace.the market was annoying. same shit, different pile describes it perfectly. hundreds of stalls and it's either luggage, watches, shirts, scarfs, bras, dresses and suits. none any different from any others. the mall was ho-hum aswell.
the palace was a sight to behold though. i'll let the pictures do the talking for that. our last two days before we headed to Siem Reap (means "siamese defeated") were at okay guest house and it was the most upscale room we've had to date. and for a reasonable price at that. we mostly just lazed around there and watched a few movies, like lady in the water and blood diamond, and this is england. oh right, there was also georgia rule with lindsay lohan and that REALLY sucked. anyways the chair i'm in is uncomfortable and i'm tired of typing... i type with two jabbing fingers, fyi. that said, i will have a Siem Reap entry hopefully soon.
