Cambodia -- Part Two
Trip Start
Oct 12, 2005
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22
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Trip End
Mar 31, 2006
Kep and Sihanoukville,
Cambodia
Sunday, December 4, 2005
We've received a request from several different readers asking us to tell them about some of the culture shock we've experienced on our travels so far. Since we haven't done anything too exciting in Southern Cambodia (lazing around in a hammock doesn't exactly make for great travelogues), we thought it might be fun to share some of our foreign observations as well as some general long-term travel tips.
Children
Children in Cambodia (and in some parts of rural Vietnam)are very business savvy. It's very disconcerting for us to children as little as two year olds out on the streets hustling tourists for dollars. At Siem Reap we received a very coherent lecture on the application of the economic theory of supply and demand from an eight year old. After explaining why she charged such outrageous prices for her wares, we noticed that she was looking toward some kids playing in the river
01 Phnom Penh
. We asked her if she goes swimming. She said, "Yes, I get to swim from 1 - 5, but I sell in the morning."Animals
What can you say? They do eat dogs here (we saw a sad basketful of them in the back of a truvk in Vietnam). Cats are uniformly hated and neglected. We are even hesitant to touch a cat here. We did make one cat friend at Le Champey in Kep but the French owner sent her sailing over a brick wall when she was coming around a little too often. In his defence, most tourists don't like cats or dogs hanging around the dining room waiting for scraps!
Cows and pigs are hilarious in Cambodia. In Kep, they roam freely around town and don't appreciate all the beeping when people want to drive on roads where they've decided to stand. And there's nothing like being woken up by the death-squeel of pig to remind you that you aren't in kansas anymore.
Small Towns are Really Small
It's not uncommon for motorbike drivers or tour operators to "track" your activities in town. In small towns everyone knows each other so for example, if you rent a motorbike for the day from one guy, it's likely he'll tell everyone what you did and where you went. That opens the door for another guy to say - hey, you haven't been on a trip to xyz site yet, I can take you, etc.... FYI - renting a motorbike simply involves asking someone with a bike if you can use their bike for a small fee. No paperwork, no pesky license check - you just go and pay when you return. It is customary to fill the motorbike with 1 liter of gas when you return it
02 S21
. Note: This may only apply in small towns. In Sihanoukville they wanted our passport as collateral, which we declined to do.Long-term Travel
* Did you know that not all hotels in Cambodia have hot water? (Cold showers are getting a little old).
* It's a sad day when you have to wear your bathing suit b/c you're waiting for your laundry to come back from the guesthouse laundress. (It always seems to take way longer than it should to do our laundry).
* We think longingly of our bed at home everytime we have to sleep on a $10 a night hotel mattress.
* When traveling, it is never necessary to match one's clothing. It all magically goes together if it's clean. (as evidenced by some of the crazy clothing combos you may have seen in our photos!)
Cambodia - Part Two
So besides thinking of funny cultural anecdotes what have we been doing since Siem Reap? When we arrived in Phnom Penh we were city-weary so we took a targeted traveling appraoch
03 Skulls
. Arrive - find cheap guesthouse - walk around the city in the afternoon - get up the next day and spend it touring the National Museum, S-21 Prison and the Killing Fields. Much of Cambodia's tourism outside of the ruins at Siem Reap, is based on the Khmer Rouge's genocide in the late 1970's. The S-21 Prison, which is within the city of Phnom Penh, was a former high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into an intelligence gathering (i.e. torture) prison. As you may recall, the Khmer Rouge took control of the country in the mid-70's and quickly evacuated Cambodian citizens to rural work communes -- educated and wealthy Cambodians were tortured and killed as well as any ordinary citizen suspected of opposing the Khmer Rouge. At the end of this four year long genocide, Khmer Rouge were killing their own members under suspicion of treason. Once the Khmer Rouge were finished "questioning" their suspects they were sent to the Killing Fields outside the city for "liquidation (this was the term used by our guide). Many Cambodians who spent time in S-21 didn't make it to the Killing Fields alive. As you can imagine this was a very sobering day of touring. We were struck by how recent the genocide occurred and particularly affected by the fact that our guide at S-21 had been relocated along with her mother twice during the Khmer regime. When they returned to Phnom Penh, their house had been destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. Her father had also been one of the thousands upon thousands who were executed.
04 Cambodia's only golf pro
Since we were anxious for a rest after our whirlwind travels through Southern Vietnam and more northern parts of Cambodia, we headed by bus for the rural southern beach village of Kep. Prior to the Khmer Rouge regime, Kep was a fancy seaside town where the rich mixed and mingled. Now, it's a pokey little town with a 1 km beach, with seafront of burned out former french villas. Over our four days in Kep, we stayed at two wonderful guest houses: The Vernada which was up on a jungle hillside overlooking the ocean and the Champey Inn at the ocean's edge with a pool. They were both double and triple our $10 daily housing budget) but so worth it. Since there is no phone service or electricity in Kep (save for the generators the guesthouses use at night), we spent our days lounging, reading and motorbiking around. On our final day in Kep, we took a great group tour of Bokor hill station -- a crumbling former French resort town on the top of Bokor mountain which was abandoned in the 70's when the Khmer Rouge came on the scene. The fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge in this area was particularly fierce and very few buildings were left standing. Check out the pics.
It seems that more and more people are catching on to Kep! Many of the previously abadoned mansions are being bought up for development and electricity is on the way. We're currently overnighting in Sihanoukville (about two hours Southwest of Kep) on the way to Bangkok overland. We're not particularly fond of this rough around the edges beach town, but it's the best place to get transport to Bangkok from this part of the country.
Until next time...
