Dear Cambodia
Trip Start
Feb 05, 2008
1
39
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Thanks for having me. I would have loved to have stayed longer but I lingered too long with your neighbours'. Only 13 days remained on my visa. Turns out customs gave me 30 days from date of entry anyway, but I had already made plans to meet some people in Bangkok.
Your country is amazing with a history that is both colourful and dark. May Pol Pot rot wherever he is. Your people are amazing, especially considering their past. I think they are among some of the friendliest people I've encountered in South East Asia. Most of those who deal with tourists speak very good English and this allows us to really get to know some of them. The moto drivers are a lot of fun to talk to, especially in Siem Reap, and that's something I never thought I'd hear myself say
The view from the Grandview Hotel in Lakeview
. Tuel Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields were pretty sobering and it's hard to believe this happened so recently. When I was 18 my biggest worry was getting dates and loosing my driver's license. Phnom Penh is a pretty great city with some sights that rival those in any other SEA city. I was also impressed with its cosmopolitan selection of restaurants. The backpacker's ghetto in the lake district could use a little work. The drug dealers are overly pesky. The same guy asked me if wanted to score some weed about eight times inside of a half hour. He quit after I firmly said, 'Now you are starting to annoy me!".
My trip to Kampot to see Bokor National Park was a bit disappointing after a day of rain forced the cancellation of my tour. The eight hour round trip was for not, but it was nice to get out and see something of Cambodia off the beaten path.
Siem Reap is a great town. I stayed six days. To avoid another Halong Bay debacle, I made sure not to succumb to over hype about Angkor Wat and it paid off. What an amazing place! My arsenal of adjectives is much too small to do it any justice. One must simply see it
On the moto to the Killing Fields
. It has got to qualify as one of the seven wonders of the world. Words like massive, magnificent and awe inspiring come to mind. You don't need to spend much time there to appreciate its awesomeness. Its sheer size is one thing but perhaps more mind boggling is the carving and architecture, its artistry. And there's the fact that they had to haul all of the stone from such a distance. I visited three times, once at 6 a.m. to catch a sunrise which unfortunately was a dud. Surprisingly, Siem Reap has retained a relaxed small town feel despite the deluge of tourism and the many, many hotels that line the highway. I am told that 1.7 million tourists visit Cambodia every year (10M to Thailand). All of them must stop at Siem Reap.
Paradoxically your country is arguably the most expensive of those I've visited yet I've not seen so many poor before now and the gap between the rich and poor is painfully obvious. Lexuses and Mercedes Benzes are parked next to begging children. In an effort to get people to work you've allowed far too many of them to set up shop in one of the far too many stalls at Angkor Wat. Getting mobbed by children hawking post cards and bracelets and scarves as you exit the temples gets tired. You ought to do something about the punks who start guiding you through a site, looking for payment in return when you'd prefer just to walk around and take it in on your own
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. Apart from the accommodations where usually $7 to $10 gets you a great room, meals and drinks are at least about half what I would pay at home. It just doesn't make sense given the standard of living your people are (not) enjoying. Using the US dollar as your main currency isn't helping. It seems everything is simply priced in multiples of a dollar. Coffees two bucks! Come on. Beers, 620 mil, $2.50 or $3.00, typically, in Laos a buck, tops. 450 mils could be had for 65 cents in Vietnam. Using your own
Riel might help.
It would be nice to see you become a real democracy. I'm told your most popular political party threatens rural voters by offering them a glass of ice water with a bullet in it. You get the impression the place is rife with corruption. Easy to imagine why when you pay your cops $15 a month.
Oh and Poipet, that town at the Thai border.has got to be the worst shit-hole of a place I have ever seen (Other travelers say there are places in India that are worse but not much.). Piles of rotting stinking garbage everywhere. Dirt roads and large puddles. You ought to clean it up. Seems all those guys sitting around playing cards have some time on there hands. .
Anyway, thanks for the great time. Definitely will tell my friends to check it out. Now it's back to Bangkok and then on to the islands.
