In the style of a normal travelog
Sunday, 13 February 2005
I've decided to attempt to write this entry in the style of a normal travelog because I've been getting jealous of Rachel's extremely well written and eloquent accounts of her Laos adventures. I looked back over what we wrote about the same places and realised that we didn't even vaguely explain what it was like. Oops. So...
Over the last few days we have been in Cambodia's capital, Phomn Penn, which has been kind of underwelming for me as it was one of the places I was most looking forward to. From reading various material about it I'd gotten this impression of Phomn Penn as some kind of wild west style place where chaos ruled and anything went with the sound of gunshots ringing in the air and crazed debauchery, happy pizzas and opium dens taking place in broken old colonial buildings. Not an entirely pleasant image but an exciting one the same.
We arrived there on a perfectly sensible bus from Siem Reap to lots of touts shouting at us and burn hot sun beating down. The journey from Siem Reap had been along an entirely paved road going through endless rice paddies and villages made of bamboo in a similar way to Laos although it seems that western culture has permiated Cambodia much more than it's neighbour. Nearly every sign is either in Khmer and English or is a crude but quite cool hand painted representation of what the shop is. A man with an achie tooth for a dentist, a woman in a wedding dress for a pharmacy (don't ask me - I don't understand) There's literally every type of vehicle moving along these roads from huge carts pulled by water buffalos to these kind of motorized horse and carts that feature a large lawnmover engine instead of a horse. Of course though, the only cars are Toyota Camrys. It has also been chinese new year so to celebrate this the bus company held a raffle on the bus. I won first prize and stumbled down the isle to collect my stunning prize while everyone clapped. I'd won a ticket back to Siem Reap and another ticket from there back to Phomn Penn again!! Yeah!!!! I could sit on a bus indefinately for free!
When we got to Phomn Penn it looked, well, kind of normal. From the outside a just a big, shabby, asian city - I'd expected a French Colonial / Vientiane gone evil. Oh well, perhaps we've been here too long and just got used to asia. It's amazing what complete insanity passes for completely normal after a while of being round these parts.
We got our bags and got one of the extremely excitable tuk tuk drivers to take us to our randomly selected guesthouse from Lonely Planet in the well practiced style and ended up in a place called Narin 2 (which incidentally wasn't that good) while Catherine went in to see if they had rooms the tuk tuk guy started his sales pitch.
"Want Boom-Boom? Want to shoot guns? Want to go to killing fields?"
Now, until I actually got to Cambodia I'd kind of liked the idea of going to the military firing range and firing a bazooka and making a big explosion and this is probably the only place in the world that you can do it but now I just think it's taking the piss. There's alot of military hardware knocking around in Cambodia because they only finished fighting their last war in 98. This is not a good thing. I didn't want to take advantage of this terrible situation so yes, shooting bazookas is now off the agenda. On that point, alot of tourists go for this "Danger Landmines! Cambodia!" T-Shirt which I think is in real bad taste. It's like going to Ethiopia with a t-shirt on that says "Hungry?". Landmines still knock peoples limbs of with reasonable regularity.
We pretty much immediately set off to wander the streets to look for the Royal Palace which looked pretty spectacular on the way into town. Unfortunately Catherine wasn't allowed in because she was dressed inappropriately. Tut tut.
So, we ended up walking along the river bank where alot of the bars, resturants, amptuees and hawkers seemed to be and noticed several some general weirdness afoot as is the Cambodia way. Firstly, it seems to be fashionable for Khmer women to wear pyjamas while out and about on the town. Proper 2-piece patterned or silk pyjamas! Of course, photo evidence will be provided. As we walked down the road we saw a guy sat in the drivers seat of his jeep passed out with vomit all over him. Yum. Which brings me onto the driving...It's just nuts. I can't even hope to describe how random it is. Everyone is on every side of the road all the time and just beeps when things are in there way expecting said thing to notice and move. But everyone is beeping. There's mopeds with up to six people on (yes, the moped is a family car), amputees driving hand powered samlors, pickups with millions of people hanging off the back, blind people with portable book shops, women wearing pyjamas. All over the place. It's quite a site in the day but at night, especially when you are in the back of a moto, it's just mental. There's only about two sets of traffic lights in the city and they are only partially adhered to. Crossing the road is great.
The next day we got picked up by a tuk tuk driver who had been sat there for hours on the off chance that we would agree to go to hire him to go to Toul Sleng Genecide Museum. We got in and he took us to this residential part of Phomn Penn where there are no proper roads and parked up outside a pretty normal (for cambodia) looking school. It was Toul Sleng. Im not going to go into it but I'd have to say it was one of the most horrible experiences of the trip and possible my life (apart from the Shinjuku incident of course).
After that, we went to the National Museum and just ended up sitting down and having a quite drink away from the beggars, evil children, flower sellers, book sellers and tuk tuk drivers and didn't really look at the stuff - it was like they just nicked stuff out of Angkor.
Finally, we finished off with a trip to the famous Foreign Correspondents Club for happy hour and drank a few beers in a very colonial atmosphere and peered down at the chaos below.
Now we are in Kampot after a corwded bus journey with France's secret weapon, the evil Dr BO and his death armpits and a slavering, brainless, australian couple that squeezed each others spots, drooled and lay all over each other. If I wanted to see Drugged Monkeys trying to have sex I'd work for Huntingdon Life Sciences. The Khmers were as always very cool and good. The toursits are always the worst on these buses. Excellently, we were treated to some authentic Cambodian TV entertainment. The first programme was set entirely in a rice paddy and the second was like a Cambodian Benny Hill with AK-47s. I'm signing some deals to bring that little puppy over to the UK. It's going to go down a storm...
There. I did it more or less. A sensible entry about what we done. Boring wasn't it?
On February 13, 2005, Dad said:
Hi Dan & Catherine
This entry was not boring at all!!!! Very interesting .... and entertaining.... in the usual way.... looking forward to the next episode!
On February 14, 2005, J R Hartley said:
You seem to have fanned the flames, and have released an unbridaled demand for the serious and informative. Can you make sure that this is not at the expense of bong smoking children etc.
On February 15, 2005, Dan said:
The frivolity will return. We are in the Cambodian version of Benidorm now complete with banana boats, jekskis and people with no legs crawling around on the beach. Will explain in detail soon...
On April 03, 2005, Lawrence said:
cfafid poiuyt http://ghjklyefi.com/